Client-server Action Synchronisation

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Nicholas_Steel wrote:

Unless the game uses SSL or similar encryption for the transfer of data to/from the server (Greatly increasing server work load/slowing the process down heavily) the hackers will directly attack the data stream and completely bypass any local encryption, possibly with a forged certificate (Dunno how hard that is to pull off).

Maybe using SSL would greatly increase the workload of the server, but given that the rest of my suggested multiplayer method is implemented, the quantity of data that the server needs to send out has been greatly reduced, so perhaps the added SSL overhead wouldn't be that much of a big deal?

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Nicholas_Steel wrote:

I also don't think encryption can work when the values being returned to the server can vary.

I'm very close to certain that variability of the values being returned to the server makes no difference for encryption. In fact, the values being returned to the server, the results of the calculations, probably don't need to be encrypted anyway. What needs to be encrypted is what the server supplies to the clients, and the calculating code on the client itself.

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Nicholas_Steel wrote:

Lastly, I kinda stopped reading about 2 3rds of the way through :/ Your post just kept going, and going, and going, and going, are you sure you're not running on Energizer power?

Haha! I don't blame you, it was a bit of a wall of text. Perhaps you can sense my OCDness. :S But that's cool anyway, you quoted the most important part of it. :)

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HoneyBadGerMan wrote:

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Nicholas_Steel wrote:

Unless the game uses SSL or similar encryption for the transfer of data to/from the server (Greatly increasing server work load/slowing the process down heavily) the hackers will directly attack the data stream and completely bypass any local encryption, possibly with a forged certificate (Dunno how hard that is to pull off).

Maybe using SSL would greatly increase the workload of the server, but given that the rest of my suggested multiplayer method is implemented, the quantity of data that the server needs to send out has been greatly reduced, so perhaps the added SSL overhead wouldn't be that much of a big deal?

The main issue with using SSL is time. Why? because you are on-the-fly encrypting/decrypting data and that process takes time on both ends, introducing notable latency. It's why basically no game ever uses it except maaaybe turn based games.

The way syncing is handled right now just isn't acceptable. Anti cheat shouldn't rule the whole game, it shouldn't be so in your face that you can't play 5 minutes without being reminded about what cheating ass hats we would be if given the chance. Why not just have the TOS as a pop up window in combat every 45 seconds?

At the very least you could trust the client to a certain point in standard PvE areas. Update server positions by client data unless the client data is reporting unseemly positions too often, then kick in client positions updated by server data. Or track accounts who are making ridiculous amounts of client/server disparities, investigate the worst offenders, and ban them. I can't wrap my mind around how the current method is an acceptable form of anti cheat, and it's holding this game back so hard. How many people have uninstalled this game after half an hour because they didn't understand the nonstop assault of rubber banding and warping was intentionally hard coded into the game?

Now that the manifesto is updated to show that constant resync isn't a strain on the servers, why is there a 10 second cooldown on /oos still?

If the players end up making things worse by using it too much or while moving, that's up to them, but the playerbase already adapts their gameplay around desync. Eventually people will learn when and how to use /oos right. The current cooldown just means macros doing it automatically asap, which can lead to it being entered while the player is moving or attacking which is probably worse than a player who uses it every other second but only when standing still.

I'd like to have an explanation as to why the cooldown is still there.

What about improvements to the techniques used for syncing the data. Can nothing be gained there?

The guidelines for prioritizing ports on the players router indicate that the TCP protocol is used for data transfer. Some of my friends are programmers with experience in network coding, according to them UDP is more suited for such data transfers because its less impacted by data loss. Don't know exactly as I'm no coder, but might be worth investigating.

Also, I see a lot of comparison to FPS's in this thread. But what about games like StarCraft? I see a lot of similarities; rather big but limited environments, lots of units to keep track of, lots of events to keep track of, lots of user input. I know that in the pro-scene multiple players have 400+ apm. I have watched a lot of tournaments, surely the amount of desync that plagues PoE would have been noticed, but I've never seen anything like that. What technique do they use for data transfer?



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Hope it can be fixed eventually, I would love to play with my brother again. He's not very lucky finding big currency and after he used his last currency on switching his main character to Cyclone he experienced more desync than sync. Never seen him on the battlefield since :(
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DirkAustin wrote:

Holy shit, what a wall of text that is. O_O

Seriously, it comes down to people cheating the crap out of games as soon as they have the means to do so which are of course the files and codes.

Sadly he's right. So many games are completely ruined by cheaters. How frustrating desync sometimes might be, the amount of cheating some other games are plagued by would have made me quit PoE long ago.

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Wooser69 wrote:

Now that the manifesto is updated to show that constant resync isn't a strain on the servers, why is there a 10 second cooldown on /oos still?

If the players end up making things worse by using it too much or while moving, that's up to them, but the playerbase already adapts their gameplay around desync. Eventually people will learn when and how to use /oos right. The current cooldown just means macros doing it automatically asap, which can lead to it being entered while the player is moving or attacking which is probably worse than a player who uses it every other second but only when standing still.

I'd like to have an explanation as to why the cooldown is still there.

It states that if the servers are under too much load the gameplay will be unaffected for existing instances but no new instances can be generated. That is probably what was happening when there was no limit on /oos.

In regards to cyclone wouldn't it be an idea to change how for instance multistrike works with it, since that is the single support that seems to cause the most problems. Instead of making cyclone float between targets, just make it spin faster. Aside from causing balance issues, would that not help make it less out-of-sync prone?

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Lauicus wrote:

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DirkAustin wrote:

Holy shit, what a wall of text that is. O_O

Seriously, it comes down to people cheating the crap out of games as soon as they have the means to do so which are of course the files and codes.

Sadly he's right. So many games are completely ruined by cheaters. How frustrating desync sometimes might be, the amount of cheating some other games are plagued by would have made me quit PoE long ago.

Eh... not me. I learned to stop caring about cheating thanks to D1 and D2. I considered it a part of the game. I usually played legit, but sometimes I'd cheat a char to test a build. And yeah, I still had fun. Not a big fan of cheating, but I'll take the risk of cheating over having shit gameplay any day. Games are supposed to be fun... that people are concerned enough about economic and competitive integrity to sacrifice good gameplay just strikes me as sad on a few levels. Sorta losing sight of what games are about.