When ground items that should have disappeared, summons, and finished timers pile up without being cleaned up, every tick has more work to do the longer the server stays up.
Why Ground items, summons, expired timers, and empty party data aren’t removed on time → Effect The lists walked every tick grow longer day by day → On screen Fine right after maintenance, then after a few days only that server or area gets more and more sluggish
Record entity count per area as a metric and watch the trend, give each entity a lifetime and a count cap, clean up periodically.
Ballpark numbers
On a server that walks every entity once per tick, doubling the entity count doubles that part of the tick time.
On the graph
Sawtooth · Entity count per zone, server tick time
Where to look
Entity count (ground items, summons, timers) and tick time per zone and server, over a period longer than the maintenance cycle (several weeks)
Confirmed if
Entity count and tick time start low after maintenance, climb every day, and drop sharply at each maintenance or restart, over and over, while memory stays ample
Ruled out if
Ticks unchanged while memory keeps climbing: points to a memory leak
Check with
Game server or client logs and metrics
Learn more
Like a memory leak, it gets worse the longer the server runs, but here memory is fine and only tick time grows. If the entity count graph forms a sawtooth with each maintenance cycle, this is the cause.
Sources
Actor Ticking in Unreal EngineEpic Games Actors and components tick once every frame unless given their own interval, and ticking can be turned off when not needed
AActor::SetLifeSpanEpic Games Setting a lifespan on an actor destroys it automatically when it expires