9 replies to this topic

[Fatal25]

I don't know how in 2014 we are still dealing with lag issues in modern games. I remember playing Tribes 15 years ago and where you shot is where you hit and the enemy took damaged based on what you saw. Direct fire weapons only seem to hit where you shoot half the time. Some games they are spot on and others they are no where close. I am no network administrator, but there has to be a way to fix the lag. I feel like I am playing the same mechwarrior I used to play on the MSN network 15 years ago.

[Aresye]

We don't really have, "lag," in terms of actually having to shoot ahead of where you see the target. What we do have is poor hit detection.

[Jun Watarase]

Uh, yes we do have lag.



Notice how i have to shoot thin air to actually do damage? That is lag.

[Impyrium]

It's less of a problem with the game and more of an issue with individual connections. Remember this is an international game, and not every country has the same infrastructure as America. Unless you severely limit ping, cutting off a good chunk of this game's players (and me), there's not very many ways to fix it without ruining someone's game.

[Jun Watarase]

What? Nobody mentioned anything about restricting game access?

[Atkins0n]

Uh how about the servers are hosted in canada? which is far from majority of west coast of the us and other countries. Mix in aussies with 250+ ping and eus with 120+ ping with Americans haveing around 80-120 ping don't think there is going to be 100% perfect reg unless they come out with some sort of regional servers which cost alot.

[Reitrix]

As an Australian with an average of 250 ping, I'm going to have to ask ... What lag?

Ever heard of Client Side Hit Detection? 15 years ago, Server Side Hit Detection (that which is in all online games now) would of been a pipe dream.
Additionally, I doubt you were playing on dedicated servers overseas, its more likely you were using the same sort of horrible Player Hosting systems that the Warhammer 40k Space Marine multiplayer uses, which gives the owner 0 ping, but no one else can hit him because his internet is horrible.
MWO uses Host State Rewind to mimic the effects of Client Side Hit Detection, without giving the client the authority that allows aim hacks to work.
It is by no means a perfect system. But I'd rather take HSR over SSHD.

[SirLANsalot]

Tricepticon, on 25 May 2014 - 03:37 AM, said:

Uh how about the servers are hosted in canada? which is far from majority of west coast of the us and other countries. Mix in aussies with 250+ ping and eus with 120+ ping with Americans haveing around 80-120 ping don't think there is going to be 100% perfect reg unless they come out with some sort of regional servers which cost alot.

They are in Canada but are hosted by IGP over on the east coast. I could only wish they were hosted in BC over here on the west coast.


How I can tell is I have a ping of ~80 which is about right for going from West Coast to Midwest/East Coast servers. This also explains why the Aussies have such horrid ping, if it was on the west coast, it wouldn't be so bad (you would have around 150ish instead of 250+). However having it where it is dose help EU people, provided they do not have shitternet (which is hit or miss over there).

[Screech]

Reitrix, on 25 May 2014 - 04:40 AM, said:

Additionally, I doubt you were playing on dedicated servers overseas, its more likely you were using the same sort of horrible Player Hosting systems that the Warhammer 40k Space Marine multiplayer uses, which gives the owner 0 ping, but no one else can hit him because his internet is horrible.

Not having dedicated servers is what killed off the Space Marine multi-player and it still annoys me. That game was fun as hell to play and got killed by its crap hosting system. Hopefully the up coming 40k MMO will pick up the pieces

[Jun Watarase]

Reitrix, on 25 May 2014 - 04:40 AM, said:

As an Australian with an average of 250 ping, I'm going to have to ask ... What lag?

Ever heard of Client Side Hit Detection? 15 years ago, Server Side Hit Detection (that which is in all online games now) would of been a pipe dream.
Additionally, I doubt you were playing on dedicated servers overseas, its more likely you were using the same sort of horrible Player Hosting systems that the Warhammer 40k Space Marine multiplayer uses, which gives the owner 0 ping, but no one else can hit him because his internet is horrible.
MWO uses Host State Rewind to mimic the effects of Client Side Hit Detection, without giving the client the authority that allows aim hacks to work.
It is by no means a perfect system. But I'd rather take HSR over SSHD.

Spoilers : HSR doesnt prevent aimbots from working, this stems from a misconception of what client side hit detection does.

Lets say a game has client side hit detection, it works like this :

1. You mouse over the enemy and fire
2. The game checks to see your crosshair was over the enemy at that time and awards you the hit
3. You do damage

There is nothing special about this that is particularly vulnerable to being hacked (assuming of course that basic anti cheat measures are in)

With HSR, you have :

1. You mouse over the enemy and fire
2. The game trys to coincide what you see with what the server sees, but the server wins out always
3. You miss because the server refuses to believe your crosshair was on target

See the video i uploaded where two pointblank volleys fail to do any damage because HSR simply does not work.

Now assuming someone uses an aimbot with HSR AND has low ping :

1. You mouse over the enemy and fire
2. Since you have low ping, both the game and server agrees you hit
3. You do damage

If you have high ping, you miss because HSR doesnt work. Whether or not an aimbot is involved is irrelevant...infact the aimbot will GUARANTEE you miss because you need to lead targets by a random amount and the aimbot wont do that for you. The only real difference between HSR and client side hit detection is that one allows high pingers to use aimbots while the other doesnt, low pingers can still aimbot perfectly fine (as demonstrated before). Since low pingers can hit a target just by shooting at it, HSR simply has no relevance to them, since whether or not they have an aimbot, they would be aiming at the mech model instead of leading the target.

People seem to think game hacking is some magical thing where you can just load up a hack and press a button to make the server believe you did 1000 damage to all enemy mechs and HSR would prevent that. It does not work that way. Every online game has very basic anti cheat measures to prevent a hilarious scenario like that. Even if MWO had client side hit detection and someone tried to make the server believe the rock you were shooting at was an enemy mech, the server would simply go "lol no nice try". Half life 1 for example had client side hit detection and nobody ever made a hack that lets you sit in your spawn shoot the wall and kill people across the map because the server thinks the wall is a enemy player, thats because its not possible.

The most basic aimbots (popularized with early FPSes) work simply by looking for a target model on your screen and locking your crosshair on it (optional auto firing included). This doesnt work perfectly in MWO because lots of weapons have projectile travel times forcing you to lead targets and lasers are spread damage. Once again, whether or not a game uses client side or HSR wouldnt prevent an aimbot from "looking" for a target model to "lock on" to.

Also considering how ridiculously easy it is to keep crosshairs on an enemy mech in MWO, the demand for a aimbot would be extremely low. Take for example a game called Vindictus...it is extremely easy to level in that game. The demand for a leveling bot or hack is pretty much zero, only chinese gold farmers use it to mass level botting accounts.

I think the misunderstanding largely came about because with client side hit detection, high ping players would shoot low ping players, and the low ping players would take damage after they had taken cover. So the low ping players go "wtf??? bs he must be cheating!!!1 how can i take damage AFTER i am safely behind cover??? he must have hacked the server or something!!!" when in reality the high ping player was simply shooting at a valid target on his screen.

You saw this quite often in MPBT 3025 which had client side hit detection that actually WORKED (unlike HSR). I had 300+ ping in that game and i never missed a shot because the server decided "lol no he wasnt actually there i dont care what you saw on your screen tough luck". Low ping players would complain all the time about people shooting them after they had taken cover and that somehow it was "unfair" to them.

In reality even with client side hit detection, there is a very serious disadvantage high ping players face because there is a significant lag delay before any damage they deal takes effect....and if you die or someone else shoots the target at the same time, your damage gets discarded because the server goes "oh you deal X damage? but your low ping ally killed him already! it doesnt count!".