Client-server Action Synchronisation

i forgot to laugh about "...If you're far away (New Zealand, for example)...."

Funny enough it is goty in many sites.

Trusting the client,is like trusting your opinion.Faulty.

Poe didnt even try to kill d3,d3 is dead from start.

Poe is a far superior game.Desync can happen but people cant understand why,even when it gets explained.

Situation can be improved though.

Desync level in PoE cant be justified. It breaks apart whole hardcore mechanics. When you cant trust what you see on the screen, you cant use hardcore mechanics, as statedin 1-st post.
So, what is the reason to push a "hardcore" game, if the game engine itself doent allow hardcore mechanics? In fact, safe-playing PoE means you should litter screens with AoE, while standing still and hoping to hit enemies, no matter where they really are. Or you summon a bulk of minions, and they fight instead of you. Since minions are controlled on server-side, they never desync.
GGG, i suggest you to make desync a №1-priority issue, that should be fixed at all costs.
Or, if it is too complex, better begin development of PoE2, and this time with PROPERLY made engine.
PoE will never have a bright future with that level of desync.

Everyone is talking about the EFFECTS of desync. But here is the real CAUSE of the problem.

So in short, desync happens when client prediction and server prediction doesn't match up during the latency (let's say 200ms which is typical, for the sake of this exercise).

So in short, the root of all the problems is latency.

I'm not going to explain why the typical 200ms is far too long a time. In a game like this, A LOT can happen in 200ms, which is 0.2 seconds, especially when fighting large number of mobs. Hell, your attack speed often far exceeds 0.2 seconds. But the point is, 50-200ms is a horrible latency for any online game in this day and age.

Other games don't have this problem, because they have good ping. If you have played any first person shooter, you will know anything ABOVE 50ms is unacceptable. PoE has an even worse effect from poor ping, because there is a lot more things going on in an action RPG then a first person shooter. You have path-finding, multiple skills going on at the same time, range detection and hit detection of many targets. In a shooters game, it is a lot simpler, because you only have the players position, and the point you are shooting at.

Another reason is because these actions take place over a longer period of time in ARPG than FPS, so their effects compound. PoE path finding affects the whole journey of you walking from point A to point B, and if anything happens, your desync effects accumulate and stack. In an FPS it is only the immediate instant moment that is affected (you either hit or you don't).

So there is no way you can remove desync if you don't remove latency.

So now I am getting at my point.

Why the hell do you not sprinkle servers across the globe and make everyone have the best ping possible, like you would do with an FPS game? You can rent servers in every country and effectively run the game like Counter Strike or Quake Live where latency is king. This is especially more important for your game because of the reasons above you have even a greater interest in minimizing ping than pro-FPS games. You are aiming at below 10ms.

I don't understand why this is not the TOP priority of your company, because this is where your problem is. You blame everything on lightspeed, but you don't do anything to shorten this distance like what FPS games do.

Basically to solve desync, you need to rethink your attitude to your ping time (it is much more important than everything else), and you need to do it like you would with Counter Strike (sprinkle servers EVERYWHERE).

Your ping is now your king. There, REAL problem addressed. Now do something about it.

If I hear you say "50-200ms" and not "20ms" one more god damn time, I will quit and play D3.

TLDR: We counter strike now

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Chris wrote:

These servers exist all over the world (Texas, Amsterdam, Singapore and Australia), but due to the speed of light and other physical limitations, it's not instant to send or receive data from them. We typically see response times between our players and the servers of around 50-250ms.

This is THE single and ultimate problem. If you tell this to a Counter Strike player, he will just quit without even touching the game, because he knows for sure the game will be laggy.

50-250ms is just bad.

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074 wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

These servers exist all over the world (Texas, Amsterdam, Singapore and Australia), but due to the speed of light and other physical limitations, it's not instant to send or receive data from them. We typically see response times between our players and the servers of around 50-250ms.

This is THE single and ultimate problem. If you tell this to a Counter Strike player, he will just quit without even touching the game, because he knows for sure the game will be laggy.

50-250ms is just bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S1gg9C6Kog

Counterstrike isn't much better. When CSS first came out, there was desync/lag and hitboxes were way off. The video above is after they "fixed" it by having the hitbox snap to the ragdoll when a shot is fired. Similar to how in PoE you snap back/resync on stun.

I'm just curious... How does Diablo 2-3 do it? I havent played Diablo 3 myself, but when I've watched Kripp play it I havent really seen any desyncs or seen him complain about desyncs. Diablo 3 is always online too (for pc atleast) right? And I have never really had any desync problems in diablo 2 that I can remember right now.

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Worldbreaker wrote:

Counterstrike isn't much better.

Your reply is irrelevant.

1. Counter strike (or any FPS game) have a much less tolerance of high ping, which is the cause of PoE's desync. 50-200ms is an "unplayable" range in FPS games.

2. PoE needs to be on-par and even go above this tolerance (need better ping). FPS games lag is just lag, which affects the immediate moment only. PoE is different. PoE desync are multi-entity multi-action multi-movements over a duration of the entire actions and movements, so any lag will stack and accumulate creating client-server not synced to even have the same thing happening. This is a more complex problem that has a lot worse effects than simply "lag".

3. Because of the ping having even a bigger effect on gameplay in PoE, we need to have low ping.

4. Counterstrike has a low ping attitide, PoE should do the same.

5. Counterstrike "isn't much better" is not relevant because it's a different genre and as I mentioned, they just have lag, not desync (differences in prediction).

6. The point is, the more lag (high ping), the more exponential amount of desync in PoE. Hence we need as good if not better ping than FPS games in general.

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wakko wrote:

I'm just curious... How does Diablo 2-3 do it? I havent played Diablo 3 myself, but when I've watched Kripp play it I havent really seen any desyncs or seen him complain about desyncs. Diablo 3 is always online too (for pc atleast) right? And I have never really had any desync problems in diablo 2 that I can remember right now.

They don't try to do "predictions" like PoE. You click, you send a command, you get server saying ok, and you get results, which ensures everything happens exactly as they should. They have fast servers around the world to ensure low ping. To conclude: 1. They don't have "predictions" to mess up. 2. They have much better ping which results in immediate response of clickings.

PoE tries to do "predictions" probably because they want to "emulate" a low ping gameplay. You only need this when you want to PRETEND you have good servers (good locations and low ping). But you can pretend all you want, you can't escape the effects of lag.

Also, check the last page for my explanation on why the problem lies in their ping.

A typical latency of 50-200 ms is really unacceptable.