Client-server Action Synchronisation

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silumit wrote:

Bingo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8wTE71aXFI

JHC, some programmers should be seriously embarassed after watching that...

a small comment. while making this game and still develop it in future, stuff shud be taken into account what content is released, for example. 2.10 ias weapons multistrike flikker. or the vall summon skeletons ability to exiles.. something ingame just causes a over load in "rubber banding" and shud never have been possible or released.

I typically have a descent connection, and limited issues with desync.

But recently during races at prime time I was getting occasional horrible spikes over 1000 ms of latency. This created a horrible feel of input lag, which I honestly didn't expect.

This looked almost like throttling. At some point, it makes me wonder, will lack of net neutrality ever kill the play experience for POE? Will companies whom pay for priority ruin online gaming experiences? I can't say that was the cause.

I'm not really sure what I was seeing, but it was completely unplayable, multiple times, to the point where I quite some time ago decided to take a break until the next league.

Kinda hard to play hardcore when the game is randomly unplayable. This didn't cause me to die, but did cause me to not desire playing.

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Gregoriel wrote:

I typically have a descent connection, and limited issues with desync.

But recently during races at prime time I was getting occasional horrible spikes over 1000 ms of latency. This created a horrible feel of input lag, which I honestly didn't expect.

This looked almost like throttling. At some point, it makes me wonder, will lack of net neutrality ever kill the play experience for POE? Will companies whom pay for priority ruin online gaming experiences? I can't say that was the cause.

I'm not really sure what I was seeing, but it was completely unplayable, multiple times, to the point where I quite some time ago decided to take a break until the next league.

Kinda hard to play hardcore when the game is randomly unplayable. This didn't cause me to die, but did cause me to not desire playing.

Probably many other people in your location streaming videos or pirating stuff at the time and causing excessive load on your neighborhood infrastructure.

I'm currently playing on taiwan server with decent connections.
I have 2 cycloners, one is mathil's crit dw evasion cycloner and the other is fakener.

Desync is still big problem for me, but it is somehow predictable. Whenever I run into a place with stairs, slopes or corners I know for sure desync will occur. And it indeed occurs.

Something interesting is when I played on ggg's server, whirling blades caused lots of desync, while on taiwan server, whirling blades are quite ok to use. But desync still occurs sometimes.

I will gladly pay 20$ to play this game locally, on my computer, without desynch or an online connection fucking me over. I'd like that very much.

@Chris

Thank You. Some of the material was already known, some i guessed and a load of it is now really clear to me, to the point that it can be explained a lot better to third parties now.
Really a helpful post.


Regards, Gray.

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Gregoriel wrote:

I typically have a descent connection, and limited issues with desync.

An internet connection on a downward slope ?

if diablo 2 vanilla could create a dsync free game
perhaps
your doing it wrong

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q45412 wrote:

you speak with certainty that this horrible desync thing is absolutely crippling path of exile. id like to see you back up your certainty with numbers, and not anecdotal evidence (or the lack thereof). personally, i think rubberbanding is a very interesting way of dealing with desync, and not something to quit the game over, but im a softcore player.

It is. It takes the thrill out of the fighting part out of the game. This game has many aspects, but in the end one is left with the grinding aspect only.

Let me clarify. The game is designed as an action RPG, fast-paced and very attractive due to the intense fights the player encounters. The most beautiful part is that players do need quick responses, but its not demanding in terms of APM like other games. This makes the thrill of astringent action available to people who have good reflexes but didn't grow up with a keyboard and mouse under their pillow.

In addition to the battle-experience there is a character design and gear part, to fuel the intense fighting. This part is ridiculously demanding, to acquire gear to properly face the end-game content one needs to invest a lot of time and grinding. So far a real nice hardcore ARPG experience.

Until one notices that skill and reflexes don't matter in the most intense fights. No matter what you do, you can't get trough the best and most exciting fights with good play, because you WILL eventually die due to the fact that your actions aren't registered. And believe me, this is very very VERY frustrating.
Only a few weeks ago my brother was playing a quite difficult modded Palace map with a friend of ours. In the boss-fight, our friend died but my brother continued the fight and gave his best, which is quite a lot of player-skill after playing the game for almost two years now. A lightning fist was building up and my brother -knowing well the deadly power of it- immediately leap slammed out of range... to end dead next to Dominus. Our friend who watched the entire fight (he didn't resurrect) asked him: "Why didn't you move away, didn't you see the lightning fist coming?". "I did, I leaped away out of range." "Well, on my screen you didn't move at all, you just stood there and took the slam, doing nothing."

The 10% XP he lost was the result of hours and hours grinding the highest level maps, and even more lower level maps taken into account the highest maps are (too) rare.

This makes players to skip the best and most exciting fights when leveling, no thrill anymore. When you finally gained a level there's that window you don't have XP to lose, so now you can do that good fights. But... not having anything to lose takes away the thrill of the fight. It's still interesting in terms of "I wonder if my build is good enough to be able to handle that boss?", but sweat in your hands... no. Oh, hardcore mode. Yeah, right, hardcore mode, well... it's there.

So in the end, their solution to deal with cheating is killing the game as much as cheating would do, or even more. Don't take me wrong, I do understand their fear for cheating, whole games are being cheated into oblivion by that people who can't resist the urge to play foul. Notice I said "people", other words are popping up in my head, but those aren't suitable for posting.

To be honest, I too get more and more disappointed. Many of my friends left this game solely due to desync. Despite many promises and statements, desync is just as a game-killer as it was at the start of open beta.
Maybe the current state of the internet doesn't allow the solution of the currently implemented client-server model. Maybe there's another way to prevent cheating, or at least bring it down to a minimum. Does the currently implemented anti-cheat model really outweigh losing the thrill of the game?

As stated, in the end one is left with the grinding aspect only. And while finding a ridiculously rare item or finally gaining a level really is satisfactory, I more and more get the feeling I'm addicted to a sort of The Sims for Men.

Why do companies that have the means to create a really good game produce commercial crap and why do companies that are able to design a really good game lack the means to produce it properly?