Client-server Action Synchronisation

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ManicCompression wrote:

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thantos2024 wrote:

Now GGG could solve a huge number of the desyncs by simply opening up the maps and removing most of the ground clutter

Would this make bots easier to implement?
Curious, is this the (one of the) primary reasons why we have cluttered zones/maps?

Does GGG intended these obstacles to be used for defensive positions?

It allows for more creative pathing from the enemies, instead of them just making a straight beeline for you they instead have to navigate a maze of obstacles which you can use to your advantage and extend how long it takes before (or if) they reach you.

It also allows for strategic positioning instead of only kiting.

just tell me one thing: how did the snowstorm company did handle these problems in 2000?

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Nicholas_Steel wrote:

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ManicCompression wrote:

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thantos2024 wrote:

Now GGG could solve a huge number of the desyncs by simply opening up the maps and removing most of the ground clutter

Would this make bots easier to implement?
Curious, is this the (one of the) primary reasons why we have cluttered zones/maps?

Does GGG intended these obstacles to be used for defensive positions?

It allows for more creative pathing from the enemies, instead of them just making a straight beeline for you they instead have to navigate a maze of obstacles which you can use to your advantage and extend how long it takes before (or if) they reach you.

It also allows for strategic positioning instead of only kiting.

It does theoretically. Sadly, in practice clever use of obstacles and terrain makes desync even worse.

First I want to note that I have not read every page of this thread, so maybe this has been said before but I think it is a crucial hole in the argument that Chris makes stating that the current method of synchronization is the "best" one.

The main problem with his arguement is that while Chris states that getting more servers ("throwing money at the problem" etc.. will not solve the problem, the only reason that is the case is because of the current implementation of synchronization.

He states that using the present system over the system that many MOBAs etc use where there is a delay which instead of desync results in "lag" for people with high latency will allow people in more remote areas relative to the servers enjoy PoE.

However, what he doesn't state is that if they did use that more common model of synchronization then getting more servers WOULD fix the problem, because it would be creating a larger network of points for those players in remote areas to synchronize with, effectively reducing their latency.

This is why, as many people have already said (although not very many people have provided reasoning to back it up), GGG is trying to take the most cost effective solution to their problem. While their solution does benefit players who have poor latency, I would tend to agree (anecdotally speaking) that from a financial standpoint the players that they stand to lose who have good latency would outweigh those they gain.

Another aspect of this is their server location. With the current model, server location is not so important, because their current model allows players to play reasonably with high latency, so they can just find the cheapest locations for their servers, without paying too much attention to the location versus the distribution of the density of their users.

I understand that GGG is not a huge company like some others, but I feel like they have just decided that they will not spend the money to advance onto a system that provides ultimately a much better experience to its users. Look at LoL for example, before the Oceannia server was made, players from NZ and Australia etc.. had to deal with very bad latency, but even that withstanding, the player base there still provided enough support to Riot to warrant eventually making a server specific to them.

What reasoning does GGG have to not use this type of system? How many donations / microtransactions must be purchased before you decide to actually fix this problem in a way that is acceptable? All you have to do is find out where most of your players are located, and develop a server network that provides the lowest average latency possible to these players. As time goes on and you grow financially (I think it is fairly certain that you all are making a profit with this game, if not then you might consider doing something else) then perhaps you can try to identify some new target areas which would benefit from adding a new server. ( meaning that putting a server there would a profitable venture for you, because the better experience it would provide would cause enough player growth for it to be worthwhile to you)

Now I dont have numerical evidence to support this, but I would venture to say that you would actually make more money if you used the aforementioned strategy than you do now. It might not happen right away (although it might) but definitely the ceiling for profit with that type of system is MUCH higher, because instead of providing an OK experience to everyone around the world, it provides an EXCELLENT experience to people in the places that are important to you. This means that more people in those areas where word it obviously already out and your product is in demand will be getting a better experience which will foster much more growth than the current (assumed) state of things where you really just hold onto your most die hard fans.

Doubt this will actually get read but just some food for thought.

The fundamental problem with the dumb-client model (which PoE employs) is that it doesn't perform well when there are highly populated and highly dense regions of objects that have interdependencies (e.g, mobile monsters) due to the low determinism over short time scales which hurts client-side extrapolation, and the sheer quantity of delta state information that must be propagated to clients.

A simultaneous simulation approach adapted to PoE, I argue would be much better for a few reasons:

* Deterministic game state means propagating no more than the bare minimum amount of information -- user input.

* Arbitrarily complex game objects without needing to figure out how to encode their state on the wire.

* Much easier debugging; simply dump the input streams and replay to reproduce.

* Obviously, byte-perfect synchronization between all clients (in virtual time, at least)

As for the issue of responsiveness; there are a few solutions, one would be to maintain a parallel copy of the simulation client-side which would enable the usage of the usual extrapolation techniques while being aligned time-to-time with the authoritative state.

Fundamentally the worst case scenario in terms of delay is the client's RTT, which is the baseline anyway.

There are some security issues (inheriting for the fact it's a perfect-information game) however nothing major since the server is still the authority on the game state.

I'm really tired.

Legitimate question that I would like an answer for...
Why do I constantly get more and more out of sync the longer I -DON'T- spam "/oos"?

Chris says in the original post that rubberbanding is "good", which it really isn't however, rubberbanding would be 100x better than what happens on my end. I don't rubberband unless I spam "/oos", so it feels like my desync compounds more and more when I don't hit the button or change areas.
Last night while playing, I killed a few packs of monsters in Act 3 Warehouse sewers, grabbed my loot and clicked NEAR a doorway. I instantly took a big chunk of my health, then died a second later. Apparently when I clicked NEAR the door, due to my accumulated(?) desyc, it walked me INTO/THROUGH the door, and into view of a pack of monsters.

Some stats for the record:
I'm from the North East in America, I get 140+FPS (VSync is on so capped at 60), game says 66ms ping most of the time (<10ms to my local hub).
My character was Lv34 in Normal (5 levels above area level), 50% mitigation from armor, 33%+ resists/6-8% Chaos. It may not have been the greatest gear in the world, but I cleared Docks (Lv32) with no issue.


Another question, if I click to attack a monster that I can hit on my screen, but the server says "No, you're too far away", why does it attack the monster and completely whiff?
Why doesn't the server say "Oh, you want to attack that monster that I say you're out of range from? Let me quickly calculate the shortest path so you are in range to do that, THEN I'll let you attack."?
If you're going to have the server have the first and last say, why not add a little bit of logic to the actions? I know there is a 'predictive' system, but if it can't figure out that I want to MOVE CLOSER to monster that is one pixel out of range (ACCORDING TO THE SERVER ONLY), then it's not doing it's job properly.


It's just really frustrating that a game I like SO much is such a pain to play because of something the developers REFUSE to address.

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Nicholas_Steel wrote:

It allows for more creative pathing from the enemies, instead of them just making a straight beeline for you they instead have to navigate a maze of obstacles which you can use to your advantage and extend how long it takes before (or if) they reach you.

It also allows for strategic positioning instead of only kiting.

HAHAHAHAHAHA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZUkTMj319w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W57tXASj9F4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYMc1lIT504
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjbl0yf2NCk

So I read the thread...

It does NOT explain to me why other games run smoothest and POE constantly sux when it comes to the desync topic (and frankly I don't care if I use that right - everybody knows what I mean, it's the same EVERYBODY means.).
If you want me to play and enjoy the game in order to spend some more money on it - EFFING FIX IT.
Get better developers, beg users for money if that fixes the problem, we surely are willing to support this great game, but the desync is so bad, it's unplayable.

.) I keep shooting at monsters that aren't there - tadaaa! out of mana, feeling stupid much - great!
.) Monsters suddenly kill me who weren't there so I could not outrun OR shoot them - feeling stupid much, great!
.) Monsters run around the corner but in fact the haven't, they are still on the other side... This happens over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And YOU ARE TRYING to tell me, that's because of the server feedback? I am not moving at ALL I am just standing there and shoot and wait til that effing thing ACTUALLY comes around, not his desync GHOST!
.) I move - ZAP! pulled back a sec latter right in the middle of a fiery death pit, great!
.) Strongboxes are a f**king nightmare because of this. No sense in bringing such updates to the game if I have to avoid them because the chance of desync caused death is to damn high!

This is ridiculous!

I can't trust what i am seeing on the screen with a 100mbit cable connection and a ping of 40ms?!?!?!?
You would have my sympathy if no other game got that issue right, but THEY DID!
You hear me? No, there are no such experiences with the client based games in battle.net. Don't bullshit your customers.


Well guys, here's the thing:
1) You are able to fix this.
But I guess, you are not...'cause you would have done it already, wouldn't you.
2) Player DON'T lose XP when dying anymore, because fuck leveling or Hardcore for that matter if I can't shoot or avoid the things that kill me! If I wanna play a game like that I role a dice, 'cause it sure ain't has nothing to do with my build or skill...
3) Next season of D3 is coming soon - change anything, or I am gone.

I just wanna enjoy a decent game, I don't wanna become an expert of in lags, desync and coding. I don't care, it's not my job - it's yours.
The fact that I made the effort to google all this, read all this, shows how much I care and what a f***king tragedy this is - that a great game gets pulled down by bad coding which really ruins the gameing experience totally!

Thx and bye

The game has become freaking unplayable as of this weekend. The constant desync is just f... unbelievable for me since this weekend. Last week I could play the game very well ... but no more. And I am getting really freaking annoyed by the fact that even though GGG knows those problems exist since almost the beginning of the game, and that they simply refuse to solve those issues.

As I mentioned before on these forums ( At least I think I did. ) ... things are getting worse with every patch GGG brings out. So for crying out loud GGG step up and stop mentioning that it would require to rewrite the games engine code. Fix these problems before doing anything else.

I have been trying to get through the Lunaris Temple last evening and the furthest I got before a major desync or disconnect is the beginning of the Lunaris temple level 2. And that is in playing around 2+ hours. ( You all imagine how often I got a desync/disconnect in that time! )

Since 1.3 dominus completley out of sync. I have never seen him "teleport" around like he does lately, and I´m not talking about his usual teleport skill. Anyone else noticed that?