19 replies to this topic

[Imbaland]

I play MWO with an average of 300 ping. I'm from an Australia-esque region, except with a smaller local gaming community, so I have played many games with this ping. While I will say that it is non-ideal, it is far from unplayable in most cases. Latency compensation has come a long way, and even indie first person shooters like Natural-Selection 2 can handle and compensate the ping to make the game enjoyable and playable.

Enter MWO.
Now to be honest, I am pretty shocked that I have any issues at all, this being the crytech engine. Everything should already be built in, and working perfectly. But it isn't. Oh man, it isn't.

I'm all about energy weapons in mech warrior. In MW4 I typically always ran laser heavy mechs, so I did the same in MWO. My first mech was a jenner with 4x medium lasers (I don't mix my weapons up very much). Everything was fine while I didn't know what I was doing or what was going on, but slowly I started to realize that something was very wrong.

Sneaking up on heavies wasn't a problem. Slow moving (if moving at all) meant that damage was plentiful. It was when brawling 1v1 with other lights that I saw the problem. I would be running in circles with another light, focusing the laser shots on them the entire time, and I would eventually die with close to no damage. Absolutely none of it was hitting. When I found out that the crosshair indicator for hits was server side, I become even more annoyed, because I could actually see the mistakes that the server was making. Every shot would be hitting the enemy mech, but my crosshair just wouldn't light up.

I thought that maybe it was because of the persistent nature of the laser weapons, so I changed to PPCs instead. Just as bad. As a cicada with 2x ER PPC (lol build I know), I have to run away from any and all lights/mediums that I see. There is simply no way that I can connect a shot with them without a tremendous amount of luck. I've even tried leading the target by great distance like the old quake days, but the amount to lead by is so big that its just a shot in the dark in the end.

Compared to other games, mech warrior involves incredibly slow moving targets and very fast moving projectiles. I really don't understand why the compensation is so poor at the moment. I really want to avoid having to become a no skill boater.

On a related note, but not one that I am complaining about. playing a light with moderately high latency really is impossible. I always wondered why heavies that I circled still took me out, until I saw one shoot into the hills, while I was directly behind its vision line, but my mech still got hit. Due to the positional difference involved with latency, it just isn't possible to avoid an enemies fire, which makes it impossible to pilot something that can't afford to get hit.

[One Medic Army]

Well, Host State Rewind should be rewinding enemy positions to those that you saw on your screen when you took the shot.

The big question, is if the error is dependant on time of day, if it's random, or if it's constant.

If your shots are off by a constant time-amount you can do what many of us had to do before HSR: lead with everything including lasers, often by as much as 3 mechlengths for lights. You could also limit yourself to play with Ballistic and seeking-missile type weapons, since the former will destroy a light with one or two solid hits, and the later will handle their own aim.

If your latency related issues vary based on time of day, you can try to relocate your playing time to times when it's less prevalent.

Believe me when I say most of the players who have been around here a while understand the frustration, we all played before host-state-rewind and had to compensate for it. It is possible, but not easy nor precise.

You could also try using a VPN or Proxy to Toronto to try and stabilize your connection to the MWO servers.

[Kitane]

The game has a lag compensation that requires a stable ping. It can rewind your target's position back in time to evaluate your shot, so as long as your latency doesn't change much, it will have little effect on your aim.

If your ping isn't stable enough, it can't accurately rewind the game state and your accuracy will suffer. There is no solution for people with high unstable latency, except moving the hit detection to the client. And that would be a huge invitation for cheaters.

[PEEFsmash]

Please post video evidence with this sort of claim. Very often, pilot overconfidence/misremembering turns out to be the culprit.

[Imbaland]

I know how the system works, and as I've said, I've played games that have made it work correctly, or at least playably.

MWO is essentially unplayable for me though (against lights). My ping is stable at 300, and honestly I get the feeling it isn't even trying to compensate it.
My theory is that they've capped the compensation to something around 150ms, because players often get angry about being shot around corners.

[Gaan Cathal]

Imbaland, on 12 June 2013 - 11:22 PM, said:

MWO is essentially unplayable for me though (against lights). My ping is stable at 300, and honestly I get the feeling it isn't even trying to compensate it.
My theory is that they've capped the compensation to something around 150ms, because players often get angry about being shot around corners.

Imbaland, on 12 June 2013 - 10:37 PM, said:

On a related note, but not one that I am complaining about. playing a light with moderately high latency really is impossible. I always wondered why heavies that I circled still took me out, until I saw one shoot into the hills, while I was directly behind its vision line, but my mech still got hit. Due to the positional difference involved with latency, it just isn't possible to avoid an enemies fire, which makes it impossible to pilot something that can't afford to get hit.

Including you, apparently. Bullets turning corners would be a problem, and if latency correction needs to be reduced at extreme pings to fix it then it's probably the right trade-off, tbh.

[Flying Fox 333]

I know how you feel mate, I am from Sydney with pretty much a stable ping at ~300. Before host state rewind was implemented, it was hell playing when Raven's were the flavour of the month late last year. I do find the system works though.

But on occasions I have these hiccups on certain opponents who may have, as mentioned before, unstable ping's themselves. Not your fault, and not much can be done about it. Except to pull those players over to your friends to hopefully make short work of them.

On the downside for high ping players though is the human reaction factor (average is around 230ms). Our ping makes our reaction time slower to our opponents who have lower pings. This is something host state rewind also can't compensate for unfortunately.

[Valore]

You're just unlucky with the timing.

Things were great after they introduced HSR, which basically ensured that people with higher ping could hit targets without any issues, first with lasers, then with ballistics.

Unfortunately about 2 patches ago, in an attempt to fix problems some people were having with packets, they instead proceeded to break something, which screwed around with people's ping. Suspicion is that it increased ping by a percentage.

So if you had good ping to the PGI servers, say around 50, you'd see an increase to around 75. If you were unfortunate to be somewhere like Australia, your ping would go from maybe 300 to 400 - 500.

This was annoying, but still workable, because HSR simply compensated for it. You'd lag in terms of acquiring targets and typing in chat, but your shooting would still be accurate.

PGI said this would be fixed in the June 4th patch, which would also introduce HSR for missiles.

Unfortunately, the patch did the exact opposite, and broke something even more badly. Now hits don't register at all at random, while HSR seems to have completely gone out the window.

We've still yet to receive any feedback or comments from PGI concerning this, which is absolutely crap because while this is happening, its an absolute drag to play the bloody game, and people have premium time ticking away and nothing but frustration to show for it.

Edited by Valore, 13 June 2013 - 12:36 AM.

[Jonnara]

I have to aggre with the OP, HSR seems to be a hit and miss atm as it some times works and some times it doesn't.

In either case everything here is anecdotal evidence and we can only voice what feedback we can according to our own experience.

[El Bandito]

This is why I prefer to use Streaks and LRMs. 300 ping can be cheated with those.

[Imbaland]

El Bandito, on 13 June 2013 - 01:04 AM, said:

This is why I prefer to use Streaks and LRMs. 300 ping can be cheated with those.

I don't really enjoy playing an FPS with autoaim

[El Bandito]

Imbaland, on 13 June 2013 - 01:20 AM, said:

I don't really enjoy playing an FPS with autoaim

I think playing any online FPS game with 300 ping is even worse experience.

I would have flamed you if you said missiles take no skill, but then my overwhelming pity towards Oceanic gamers (they are screwed all the time by most on-line titles) had calmed me down.

Edited by El Bandito, 13 June 2013 - 01:47 AM.

[Farpenoodle]

I also play with a 300 ping and personally find it pretty good now. Although I also played a lot when HSR wasn't a thing.

[James Warren]

I have noticed a decrease in the effectiveness of the HSR since the last major patch.

It truly felt like a godsend when the laser HSR was first implemented. I think I starting using exclusively laser builds until the next phase was introduced. All of a sudden I could make drive-by lasers work.

It seems far less consistent now than it did back then. My ping is relatively stable (~270) during play but I always get a spike to around 300 or more when I first enter a match. I'm not sure if this is throwing the HSR off. Some opponents get hit fine, but using weapons on fast moving lights feels more like a game of 'guess how much to lead' at the moment. Even lasers, which are supposed to be instant-hit (actually its most noticeable with lasers), are doing nothing half of the time. Beams that at the very least should have been dragged across a target briefly (or ran through) are not even lighting up the crosshair or paper doll at times.

Been playing the BJ with an AC20 a lot lately and some shots that I think really shouldn't have hit have lit up the crosshair. Shots that visibly hit the ground a few feet in front of a target, etc. Then other shots that very squarely hit a target moving in a direct line away from me are missing.

Again, this is off and on. Some matches will be fine, then I'll get one or two where nothing feels right. I get that its a beta and I'm hoping this is something that can be fixed soon (I'm sure the international players amount to a considerable part of the playerbase).

Edited by James Warren, 13 June 2013 - 02:05 AM.

[Imbaland]

Farpenoodle, on 13 June 2013 - 01:53 AM, said:

I also play with a 300 ping and personally find it pretty good now. Although I also played a lot when HSR wasn't a thing.

Do you actively avoid lights and fast mediums?

This is obviously only an issue against fast, small mechs for me. I have a lot of fun fighting against bigger mechs, but when it comes to smaller ones, I am forced to run, even if they are much weaker than I am.

[Farpenoodle]

Imbaland, on 13 June 2013 - 02:05 AM, said:

Do you actively avoid lights and fast mediums?

This is obviously only an issue against fast, small mechs for me. I have a lot of fun fighting against bigger mechs, but when it comes to smaller ones, I am forced to run, even if they are much weaker than I am.

I actually feel pretty okay about taking on fast mechs now. So yeah. Again, this is as compared to when HSR didn't exist.

My main problem with ping is that there are a lot of situations where other people seem to simply react and shoot way faster than I can. It makes a big difference when both of us are down to internals and the next shot will kill.

[Joseph Mallan]

Imbaland, on 13 June 2013 - 01:20 AM, said:

I don't really enjoy playing an FPS with autoaim

I had a similar issue but mine was FpS instead of Ping. Missiles, especially streaks, will solve the issue in the short term. I have an Alt that I chose to be laser intensive, it is my worst K/D win/loss Alt (K/D 0.83).

[DerSpecht]

Quote

Now to be honest, I am pretty shocked that I have any issues at all, this being the crytech engine. Everything should already be built in, and working perfectly. But it isn't. Oh man, it isn't.

How does a GRAPHICS engine manage NETCODE? I'm really curious about that. Wheres teh interfaces?

[Imbaland]

DerSpecht, on 13 June 2013 - 02:51 AM, said:

How does a GRAPHICS engine manage NETCODE? I'm really curious about that. Wheres teh interfaces?

Cryengine is a game engine, not a graphics engine. The engine controls far more than just the graphics, assuming they make use of those features in MWO.

[Jun Watarase]

PGI has so far demonstrated they are incapable of basic lag compensations that was present in old games like half life 1. The end.

I am sick and tired of seeing light mechs tank more fire than an atlas because "lol no damage xdddd". Light mechs just have no fear because as long as they can hit 100+ kph and have ECM they can run through an entire team with minimal damage.

I wonder if we will get lag compensation this year or will we have to wait till next year...