Icebound, on 15 November 2012 - 06:09 AM, said:
Not only is netcode still messed up, but I often get tremendous lag spikes while my ping remains at ~70-80 that last for either seconds or up to half a minute where I can't do anything but warp helplessly around the map. This wasn't the case for me a month ago, and I've seen other people reporting the same thing so I know it isn't just me.
Your ping's only 70 and you warp? My ping's
264-373! You guys in North America don't know how lucky you are!
These are the stats for my connection to the local network and to the three stations available in Vancouver. Given how my minimum lag is 264 and the minimum ping here is 239, there's going to be no significant improvement until regional servers are produced - their ping is already very close to the theoretical minimum values given distance. I don't normally like to disclose my location on the globe, but in this case knowing my location is imperative to this train of argument, so it can't be helped.
If a regional server is based here we're located well enough to give acceptable ping all the way to Japan, China, Australia and the Philippines.
Or, locating a server in Perth will bring lag down to acceptable levels, and serve the Southeast Asian/Australian population pretty well, as well. That said, that won't do anything for Korean, Chinese or Japanese gamers, so if that group gets large enough you might want to locate a regional server for them in Hong Kong, if you're opting for Perth instead of Singapore as the Australasian server location. You will know the stats for how many gamers hail from where better than me.
Until servers are located in Europe and Australasia (optimally one in Korea/Japan as well for the K/J/China population), it is literally
physically impossible to solve the lag problem. Regardless of how optimised your code is, you're not going to be able to deal with the delayed input-delayed feedback issue that distance brings.
Some game companies have gone to the extreme of cutting out the entire population outside North America entirely to avoid our latency effects bringing problems to the North American gamer subpopulation, but in doing so
lose out on revenue from European and the rapidly growing Asian gamer market.
To the developers:
If you've budgetary problems acquiring regional servers, a temp fix will be to have two servers - one 'North American' and one 'Global'. In the 'North American' server, the North American players with <100 ping will play with next to no 'netcode' issue. Players with ping any greater than 100 will be shunted to the 'Global' server when play is initiated - this server is ALSO located in Vancouver in your office - it can even be a server you already possess, if you have more than one server running at the moment, but players with >100 ping will all lag together here. This will let us at least play (which region locking the servers would not - DON'T do that unless you want a couple thousand MechWarrior fans and Founders on your tail), and will also solve the concerns of the North American gamer subpopulation, until you get enough funding to acquire regional servers to drop lag for everyone else. Every time you put a regional server, players with <100 ping will be autoassigned to it, and the 'global' server will take care of the large remainder. Lastly, if players decide to drop as a group, they will all drop in the same server (well duh...) so it will default to the Global server if even one of the players has >100 ping, and the North American server if EVERYSINGLE PLAYER in the group has <100 ping.
Does this sound fair to everyone? It is, after all, an
immediate fix that would help the North American based players massively
at no cost, while not changing life for the rest of us at all. Well, maybe it's a minor improvement for the rest of us. Because now North American gamers
can't shoot us before our reaction to their presence makes it through to the Vancouver game server, we'll actually have more of a fighting chance too!
All you need to implement the tempfix are:
- At least two servers, or a single server capable of splitting instances between two groups. I don't know what hardware you guys have on your end.
- A code to ping the user when 'Launch' is clicked - because our ping already shows on Tab, we know you already have this, it's just that it isn't triggered by the launch button yet.
- Based on this ping, a second piece of code. If >100 ping, send to Global waiting queue. If <100 ping, send to North American waiting queue.
- ?????
- PROFIT!
Pingtest stats
This be the local version:
and this be the Vancouver version.
Some particularly offensive players like to insinuate that everyone who has bad lag has a bad connection or a bad computer, but my Alienware m14x and 49 MB/s link show the problem has nothing to do with me, and nothing to do with PGI - and everything to do with lacks of regional servers. Don't even think of complaining about us being hard to hit until you try hitting a 260 ping player when you're 260 ping with ballistics. 520 combined ping + firing delay + bullet speeds = very annoying lagshield. And given how my Gausscat can still hit stuff more than half the time, and how other 250 ping Gausscats can still leg my Jenner, it's clear the lag problem isn't insurmountable with a ridiculous dose of leading the target.
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