66 replies to this topic

[B0oN]

Before HSR people were able to hit consistenly WHEN leading according to mechs speed .
After HSR server seems to decide randomly to register hits .

What is easier to use ?
A stable leading function, directly dependent on target mech speed
OR
A randomly working algorithm, giving the short stick to this player or that in no discernible way

???

[Thunder Child]

As a New Zealander that loves Battletech/Mechwarrior, as much as I hate wonky hitreg (firestarters), with a Ping average of 250 I need HSR to actually register hits with ballistics.

Back before HSR, I ran a Dragon with an LBX10. To hit ANYTHING moving, I had to guesstimate shots, with anywhere up to a 1 second lag time, so the LBX was one of the few weapons that I could hit with 50% of the time. Seriously, rig an egg timer to a shotgun, start spinning on the spot, and set the timer to something random. Now try to hit the watermelon at 50m, while spinning in circles. THAT was my game before HSR.

Removal of HSR would ONLY benefit these people with less than 100 Ping. It's a terrible idea, as at least HALF the player base is not in the USA.

[Rex Budman]

darkkterror, on 26 December 2014 - 05:19 PM, said:

Having more/better servers doesn't necessarily mean that hit reg problems will suddenly vanish.

It will for high pingers, or at least reduce the missed reg. It's tough pinging 300 and playing with a PPC or Ballistic dominant mech. I still play but it could be WAY better. Oceania players always ping high.

[o0Marduk0o]

Rad Hanzo, on 27 December 2014 - 02:31 AM, said:

Before HSR people were able to hit consistenly WHEN leading according to mechs speed .
After HSR server seems to decide randomly to register hits .

What is easier to use ?
A stable leading function, directly dependent on target mech speed
OR
A randomly working algorithm, giving the short stick to this player or that in no discernible way

???

I see, you want people to use more LRM, Streaks, Lasers and less PPC and AC. Basically like it was during closed beta before they added HSR.

[Kyynele]

Some of you people make HSR sound like a lottery. I suppose your experiences are generally completely different from mine.

I play with a typical EU ping of around 140. Before HSR, the only usable weapons were lasers (with them you could 'adjust' your aim to hit fast moving targets), Streaks, LRMs and SRMs (thanks to the huge and bugged splash damage.)

I still remember the revelation I felt when ballistic HSR was implemented and I first legged a light at 800m with Gauss (with the slow Gauss projectile) by actually aiming where I expected I'd hit. It also improved the immersion of the game by leaps and bounds, as I could actually shoot the targets on the screen instead of the air in front of them to kill them.

I just looked at screenshots of the last stockings matches I played last night, and every match had player pings ranging from around 40 to 280. Adding more servers doesn't solve anything, even in the best case, if they'd use regional servers, it'd just change who has the low and who has the high ping making things even less predictable. Or make matchmaking impossible, if you'd only match players of the same region together - there just aren't enough players for that.

MWO is actually a pretty ambitious project when it comes to net code. I can't think of very many games with 1) players with hugely different max speed differences 2) tons of relatively slow speed non-hitscan projectiles in the air and 3) moving hit locations. And there's no way to get rid of lag. It's just way easier to hide in simpler games.

/ 0.02$

[generalazure]

Rokuzachi, on 26 December 2014 - 05:18 PM, said:

What exactly prevents the hit reg in this game from being as good as other online shooty games similar to it? Is it just the servers/lack of or is there some shenanigans going on with the engine too?

The other online shooty games I've played so far (bf3, ps2) just used crappy client side hit detection with some ridiculous "you can shoot what you can see, even if it's actually somewhere else" mantra. This is not my definition of "good", in fact it's so far from it that I've stopped playing those games...

[Vassago Rain]

Rokuzachi, on 26 December 2014 - 05:18 PM, said:

What exactly prevents the hit reg in this game from being as good as other online shooty games similar to it? Is it just the servers/lack of or is there some shenanigans going on with the engine too?

Almost every other game ever has regional servers. So if I play a brown and bloom shooter, it'll try to sort me with other euros, ensuring we have good pings and stability.

MWO has one server, and it's located in Canada.

[Farix]

Rokuzachi, on 26 December 2014 - 05:18 PM, said:

What exactly prevents the hit reg in this game from being as good as other online shooty games similar to it? Is it just the servers/lack of or is there some shenanigans going on with the engine too?

Cryengine is notorious for its terrible netcode.

And yes, ballistics were useless before HSR.

[Vassago Rain]

Farix, on 27 December 2014 - 04:18 AM, said:

Cryengine is notorious for its terrible netcode.

And yes, ballistics were useless before HSR.

Correction: crysis 2 and MWO are notorious for their terrible netcode.

[Farix]

Vassago Rain, on 27 December 2014 - 04:19 AM, said:

Correction: crysis 2 and MWO are notorious for their terrible netcode.

Those aren't the only games that have been suffering from CryEngine's netcode. A certain Roberts' game has been facing the same problems.

[Redshift2k5]

You will always need HSR, every online game uses HSR is one form or another because there is always latency no matter what system is in place or how many servers there are.

Here is an article about how Valve deals with what they call "lag compensaton" which is the exact same as HSR https://developer.va...ayer_Networking

[Bidetlol]

darkkterror, on 26 December 2014 - 05:19 PM, said:

Having more/better servers doesn't necessarily mean that hit reg problems will suddenly vanish.

yes

Battlefield 3/4 is the best example with its terrible netcode

[Kiiyor]

Rad Hanzo, on 27 December 2014 - 02:31 AM, said:

Before HSR people were able to hit consistenly WHEN leading according to mechs speed .
After HSR server seems to decide randomly to register hits .

What is easier to use ?
A stable leading function, directly dependent on target mech speed
OR
A randomly working algorithm, giving the short stick to this player or that in no discernible way

???

I don't know what sort of ping you have, but in days of yore aiming off to hit was anything but predictable.

HSR is light years ahead of what we had beforehand. It's like comparing an assault rifle to a stone axe.

[LordKnightFandragon]

OK, ive seen HSR thrown around a bit adn thought it meant like Hit Registration, but now I see it means Host State Rewind. What exactly does this mean? Google here I come?

[AssaultPig]

It's pretty clear OP doesn't understand what HSR is or why it's necessary.

The issue isn't that the MWO servers can't send you data fast enough; the issue is that MWO uses server side hit detection and the server has to reconcile two different clients giving it different information about the locations of mechs. HSR is the server's attempt to register hits in a way that conforms to both clients.

Imagine two players that each have ~100ms ping to the server. Player one sees an enemy mech and fires; 100ms later the server records that shot and looks to see whether it hit based on where player 2's client last told it player 2's mech was, then sends the result to Player 2. 100ms later (200ms after P1 fired) player 2's client receives that info and gets told whether or not they got hit.

This is potentially frustrating for both players; P2 may get 'hit' after they think they've moved behind cover or twisted, and P1 may see what looks like a hit only to have it not register because P2's client is telling the server P2 is in a different spot. This problem gets worse the higher the two players' pings are relative to the server; when people talk about a 'lag shield,' this is what they mean.

Host state rewind is the server's attempt to reconcile these potential client disagreements; the server 'remembers' where players were XYZ amount of time ago, and calculates hits based on that information and the players' ping. It's not totally perfect, but it's better than not having it.

The alternative method of calculating hitreg is just to do everything at the client level (CS:GO, CoD, etc.) Since player clients are deciding whether a hit is made, the server doesn't have to do anything other than report hits back and forth between the clients. This means that your shots will always land if you see them land, but it also means that players being shot at have less opportunity to react (i.e. you can shoot them before they see you come around the corner), and that they may take hits it doesn't appear that they should take (i.e. they duck behind cover, but still get hit because your client reports that you hit them where they were ~200ms ago.)

In a game like MWO where most targets don't move particularly quickly and weapons aren't hitscan, server side is probably the better way to go.

ed: something folks don't realize is that while hits are being calculated by the server, the graphical effects are all done at the client level. This is why sometimes you'll see an AC20 round or whatever hit the target and explode but not do any damage. The client doesn't check with the server to see if there was a hit before playing the animation.

Edited by AssaultPig, 27 December 2014 - 04:47 PM.

[AssaultPig]

Rex Budman, on 27 December 2014 - 02:43 AM, said:

It will for high pingers, or at least reduce the missed reg. It's tough pinging 300 and playing with a PPC or Ballistic dominant mech. I still play but it could be WAY better. Oceania players always ping high.

ping is not a product of the MWO server being too slow, it's a product of distance between the client and the server. Oceanic players ping high because there is a much larger physical distance between them and toronto than there is for (say) new yorkers. This is not a problem that can be solved with more server capacity, unless you're talking about putting a MWO server cluster in austrailia.

Edited by AssaultPig, 27 December 2014 - 04:51 PM.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Well, AssaultPig, Planetside 2 uses Client Side hit detection and their hit detect is so far gone and so unreliable its not even funny. Its one of the main reasons I up and quit that game after deleting a lvl 67 and Lvl 53 characters. A Year ago, their hit detect was fairly reliable. The basic math says 6-12 bullets for a kill, the lag maths and real world maths used to add up to 13-16 rounds for a kill and that was doable because it was reliable and generally straight across the board for all players.

Planetside 2 HIt detect now is one minute you will unload 15 rounds into a guy and he dies, he might fire back at you and brely dent you, the next minute the tables turn and after firing, no joke, 45 rounds into 1 guy, and after 4 seconds of being hit, he turns and pop, your dead. So, I cant quite understand Client side hit detect, you evne say, IF on your screen you hit, then you hit....then if that is the case, why does it take 30-50 rounds to kill one guy then 12-18 to kill the next? What did SoE do to thier hit detect to make it so unreliable and random? The math numbers are hard and fast, you wont take more then maybe 8-12 rounds and your dead.....their maths fluctuate so much the game is just horrid to even play.

I used to play it perfectly fine on mostly medium settings, its to the point where the game barely functions on low settings.

MWO Hit detection seems to be alot more spot on them PS2. Thing is here, since everything is DoT, and there is so much more from one mech to calculate, the server lags and loses more info...instead of 1 gun firing 30 bullets, MWO we get 8 mechs needing to register like 1.5s worth of ticks of damage into multiple locations at once...and yet still, MWO hit reg seems to be more spot on. I have poor FPS in thsi game and yet lately ive been dealing 600+ dmg in just my WHK. My last game I dealt like 963dmg, in a Pug skirmish, I dealt 910....

[cSand]

Rad Hanzo, on 27 December 2014 - 02:31 AM, said:

Before HSR people were able to hit consistenly WHEN leading according to mechs speed .
After HSR server seems to decide randomly to register hits .

What is easier to use ?
A stable leading function, directly dependent on target mech speed
OR
A randomly working algorithm, giving the short stick to this player or that in no discernible way

???

Lol people with no technical knowledge telling how things should be done



"sir you need to put gas in the car to make it run, it's how an engine works"

"DON'T TELL ME ABOUT THIS RANDOM HAND WAVEY BS, JUST MAKE THIS PIECE OF SH*T RUN DAMN YOU"

"But it needs gas....."
"GIVE ME A NEW ENGINE"

Edited by cSand, 27 December 2014 - 05:58 PM.

[Mahnmut]

Ursh, on 26 December 2014 - 11:16 PM, said:

You'd think that with today's technology and the proliferation of cloud services that ping-dependent FPS games could be set up on a rolling server system, where the game servers roll locations geographically based on where prime time is happening at the moment.

Example:
Day starts with servers hosted in Singapore for Asian/Australia/NewZealand players
Shifts to Moscow or another European backbone city for Euro prime time
Shifts to a North American backbone hub for NA prime time

But maybe that's a bit too evolutionary of a solution for Game developers as long as they can keep giving us terrible ping while asking us to give them money.

I would like to see them move to a cloud based solution but still keep HSR. Anyone should be able to play whenever they want and still have a decent game experience.

The beauty of cloud based servers is you only need to spin up enough servers based on the current load rather than always having a large amount on standby just in case you get load spikes. It would save hosting cost in the long run, and as mentioned already, you can then roll the physical location based on regional prime time to give the majority of current players the best possible experience.

[Zergling]

HSR is the main reason I can enjoy MWO now.

Before HSR, there simply wasn't any point in trying to play.