Client-server Action Synchronisation
" It won't happen. It really should, but it won't. I mean, seriously: People play League of Legends on overseas servers and still do extremely well. And if we're talking about how the delayed movement of a MOBA wouldn't feel good in PoE...no, fuck that. I'm pretty sure having a constant delay still feels better than having my screen lie to me. |
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Just give us a slider to decide how fast the game syncs our character: max(default) will be the current value, min will sync always (each packet). People with good connection (good ping) could put that to minimum while others could experiment with other values.
IGN: Drusek
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" That would kill GGG's servers. |
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"During times of ultra-peak use, perhaps. However, in general, no, it wouldn't. As Chris said, when the servers are overloaded, what they cut back on first is new instance generation (creating longer instance load times), not less resyncs. But it might make the game look like utter shit. More frequent resyncs would not substantially decrease the total distance of resync teleports; instead of a few longer teleports, there would be more shorter ones. It wouldn't be a straight linear ratio, either; the more you force rapid resyncs, the less behind-the-scenes tricks you can use to make the resyncs as invisible as possible. Set resync rate high enough and you might even be able to trigger epilepsy. On one extreme, you have a game which is more accurate but much, much uglier. On the other extreme you have a game which is prettier but much less accurate. Truth lies somewhere in the middle ground. Although, on the other hand, if the middle ground is large enough, maybe players could be given a slider anyway... just with a more fine-tuned min and max value. I'm not saying it's a solution or anything, because I think it solves nothing, but might be simply cool to have. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Apr 21, 2014, 4:24:44 PM
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on the D3 sync model:
D3 can choose to trust the client with most of the mechanics (stun, movement speed, etc). They can even opt to trust the client completely. Why is that?: Business Model If you ban an account in D3, he will need to buy another license to operate again. This means you can invest on more people to look for cheaters, because it pays for itself. POE has a f2p model, and banning a free account just means the cheater can just make another one. PvE Competitions D3 does not have competitions like POE. Doing these competitions mean that you trust POE to prevent cheaters when you play. Putting all your calculations on the server means just that. D3 does not need a lot of "integrity" to host a solo-online-smartdropped-arpg. on the POE sync model: There is really not much you can do with it, as long as all calculations lie on the server. In order to improve, POE must give up some of the calculations to the client, which GGG will never do. I need more purple titles
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Chris, I don't buy this, sorry.
Just one example: I rush through Submerged, casting Ice Nova. At some point I see ice nova being cast from another part of the screen. That's right: the center of the nova circle is half-screen away from where my char is shown to be! This nonsense is going on for several seconds (waaay more than ping time), and when i finally oos i get teleported to where ice nova was cast from. If you don't believe me, do this experiment yourself. What does this mean? It clearly means that the client knows, where i actually am, but shows me in a wrong place! This has nothing to do with client-server interaction, with speed of light etc. This is just the way the client is coded. As for "looking clunky" argument, I can't see how "looking clunky" is even comparable with "not working properly". How can automatic resync hurt in situations when the player has to resync anyway? |
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So... in order to facilitate certain mechanics you won't be able to significantly improve the situation with desyncs. Which basically means the current situation is here to stay (with some tiny changes). Oh well, good to know so I won't return to the game (gave up cause of those desyncs). I still love your skill system though (both gems and passives).
The only annoying thing for me though is that those mechanics you think are necessary for the hardcore feel of the game are imo not necessary at all. Giving up accuracy and microstuns for a smooth gameplay? I'd say hell yes. I mean, do really many people think, oh, having 87% chance to hit is so interesting in practice? (I mean, how many people go dang, haven't hit 95% yet this is so much fun! or just go resolute to get it out of the way.) The big failure of D3 is not its gameplay, which is just perfectly smooth its everything else (boring skill system, no user agency in defining ones char, meaningless level ups, boring item design, horrible story, boring setting, etc.). Maybe I'm really not cut out for games like this but having the feature of accuracy (as a stat) in the game to be more important then smooth gameplay... I just don't understand that at all... | |
" I guess you never played League of Legends with a ping over 200+. PoE has way more tolerance against such pings than LoL has. Believe me, you don't want such a system in ARPGs were you perform much more actions than in mobas like LoL. Sometimes you would just click like hell without anything happening in the next half second or more. That would not only destroy the gaming flow, it would be also deathly. " Complexity is part of the gameplay, I don't know why you separate that. In ARPGs you not only kill monsters but also find/trade items which you can equip to improve yourself, also you can customize your character, at least in most cases to be able to kill more monsters. That's part of the gameplay. Last edited by darkmatch on Apr 21, 2014, 5:10:52 PM
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Hello Chris, very enlightening, thank you,
Has the team considered preventive periodic re-syncs as temporary improvement? This would consist in full re-sync (like the /oos command) that would automatically happened every few seconds, people already use /oos command quite often. Or you could give players a short key assigned (with all keyboard options) that would trigger the /oos command, this sounds more convenient (still as temporary improvement) To state my personnal experience, I curently use cyclone, and as you mentionned, I experience lots of de-sync, either by my current position or monsters' positions that are not correct, this results in a fight against the wind that can last for seconds, and usually happened again soon after a re-sync. Last edited by EnafAequi on Apr 21, 2014, 5:12:52 PM
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" Yeah, as someone who only played his first moba after poe (dota 2) it was pretty weird when I saw a tower about to shoot me, ran out of its range, and still got hit by it. Same with other skills as stuff..it didn't matter if I moved out of the way, as long I was there when the person cast it I got hit. Sure they're different games and obviously people have done an amazing job adapting to things like this in dota, but like your example it would pretty much mean you can't even melee vaal because if he ever started a smash it wouldn't matter if you moved because you'd still be dead. |
