18 replies to this topic

[MavRCK]

You get penalized for having a low ping and playing with high ping players -- shots hit you seconds later.. Seriously -- this needs to be fixed.

[ShinVector]

MavRCK, on 20 February 2014 - 11:52 AM, said:

You get penalized for having a low ping and playing with high ping players -- shots hit you seconds later.. Seriously -- this needs to be fixed.

Ok..... When you worded it this way. I agree. PGI should fix hit detection/HSR.

Some people in the past like stating that high ping has an advantage over low ping.. Which is total bull-poo..
I have videos here and there showing me getting kill by shots that hasn't reached my mech based on my prospective, now that's bull-poo

Anyway... Let's see if they are going to bring in server authoritative hit effects. That might help me focus my lasers better.

[FuzzyLog1c]

Because of PGI's lack of attention to this (and pretty much everything else), people are adopting the age-old strategy of running Bittorrent to increase their ping in order to level the playing field. You'd be a moron not to.

The real problem becomes lag escalation. It's happened on just about every competitive game with shoddy lag compensation published in the last five years. People keep throttling their bandwidth and using other tricks to simulate poor internet connections until the game is all but broken for everyone. The publisher, who is usually out of the loop, may keep trying to "tune" their algorithm, but this is in vain because these tweaks trigger wave after wave of increasingly aggressive tactics from the playerbase.

Presently (i.e.: tonight, last night, and over the last three to five weeks), without any form of latency inflation, I've had shots hit me more than two or three seconds after the last player fired. That's enough time to walk around the side of a building before you [randomly] explode. Same goes with airstrikes...sometimes they land before the smoke appears, and sometimes they land after the smoke is almost gone. When things are this bad, you either have to change your internet connectivity strategy or stop playing altogether.

Edited by FuzzyLog1c, 20 February 2014 - 08:05 PM.

[DEMAX51]

It does suck - I was playing the other night and out of nowhere I hear Betty say "Head Critically Damaged." About a full second later I saw the shot actually hit me.

[Flying Blind]

FuzzyLog1c, on 20 February 2014 - 07:54 PM, said:

Because of PGI's lack of attention to this (and pretty much everything else), people are adopting the age-old strategy of running Bittorrent to increase their ping in order to level the playing field. You'd be a moron not to.

The real problem becomes lag escalation. It's happened on just about every competitive game with shoddy lag compensation published in the last five years. People keep throttling their bandwidth and using other tricks to simulate poor internet connections until the game is all but broken for everyone. The publisher, who is usually out of the loop, may keep trying to "tune" their algorithm, but this is in vain because these tweaks trigger wave after wave of increasingly aggressive tactics from the playerbase.

Presently (i.e.: tonight, last night, and over the last three to five weeks), without any form of latency inflation, I've had shots hit me more than two or three seconds after the last player fired. That's enough time to walk around the side of a building before you [randomly] explode. Same goes with airstrikes...sometimes they land before the smoke appears, and sometimes they land after the smoke is almost gone. When things are this bad, you either have to change your internet connectivity strategy or stop playing altogether.

Well then I'm a moron, and proud of it. I also have a 100 Mbps cable internet service and i play late at night.
My game experience is great and I never see the lag shots you do. I have played in prime time and seen lag shot but I wouldn't say they were common and I have no idea when they are done on purpose but I know some people will do it.

[Modo44]

It works both ways. When the pings are different, both sides can get HSR freebies.

[Albert Meyburgh]

MavRCK, on 20 February 2014 - 11:52 AM, said:

You get penalized for having a low ping and playing with high ping players -- shots hit you seconds later.. Seriously -- this needs to be fixed.

afaik, the maximum ping we support through HSR is somewhere near 500ms, which would mean that if you have a good ping of say 20ms, the maximum time it would take for you to see yourself getting hit from a high ping player is 500ms + server frame time (lets say a very very very conservative guess of worst case scenario 100ms?), + your 20ms of ping + your frame time (lets say you are getting 60fps+, so 16ms~) + maybe another 10-30ms for your LCD delay depending on model

So in the worst case scenario, that's still not near "seconds later" as you describe, so I am trying to think what else could explain your experience.. HmmMmmm... lets continue the analysis, assuming that it's a perception thing, and that half a second "feels" like "several," that really isn't that raw a deal for you since the high ping player would have the same symmetric experience...

On the other hand perhaps there is some other bug that is not related to player latency but instead some other strange situation that could cause damage to appear as if it's delayed.. so maybe if you have some more info on the type of situation your experience occurs in. Perhaps its related to the type of weapon? Maybe invisible LRMs are flying at you? Maybe there's something funny with HSR and airstrikes/artillery? (I'm not saying there is, just trying to brainstorm out loud)

Is it possible your own ping has momentary spikes? If your ping spikes to 2000ms for a moment now and then it may explain your situation. The ingame ping is 'smoothed out' over many many seconds, so ping spikes wouldn't show up there unfortunately.

I would say the best way to 'solve' the experience with high ping players is to provide regional based servers since then the matchmaker could put players together in games where each player's ping to the server could be as low as possible. I have no knowledge of what the plans (if any?) or priority for that is. I am personally always a proponent of better tech and deployment, but that's not my role here... though that doesn't stop me from bugging the people who's job it indeed is but that doesn't mean there isn't some more priority feature such as say CW or weight matching, or what have you!

[Chavette]

Albert Meyburgh, on 24 February 2014 - 12:19 PM, said:

I would say the best way to 'solve' the experience with high ping players is to provide regional based servers since then the matchmaker could put players together in games where each player's ping to the server could be as low as possible. I have no knowledge of what the plans (if any?) or priority for that is. I am personally always a proponent of better tech and deployment, but that's not my role here... though that doesn't stop me from bugging the people who's job it indeed is but that doesn't mean there isn't some more priority feature such as say CW or weight matching, or what have you!

That was the plan before HSR was introduced and network code was rewritten, with those updates it went from "unplayable, 100m leads" to "working more or less with annoyances(see this thread)". I guess it became a low priority with that, and regional servers were forgotten about completely.

[SniperCon]

I've played more than 100 drops with both low ping (40-60 ms) and high ping (350-500 ms). From experience, it is much easier to play with low ping. It is not impossible to play with high ping, which is a testament to the game design, but it is certainly not advantaged.

[MavRCK]

Albert Meyburgh, on 24 February 2014 - 12:19 PM, said:

afaik, the maximum ping we support through HSR is somewhere near 500ms, which would mean that if you have a good ping of say 20ms, the maximum time it would take for you to see yourself getting hit from a high ping player is 500ms + server frame time (lets say a very very very conservative guess of worst case scenario 100ms?), + your 20ms of ping + your frame time (lets say you are getting 60fps+, so 16ms~) + maybe another 10-30ms for your LCD delay depending on model

So in the worst case scenario, that's still not near "seconds later" as you describe, so I am trying to think what else could explain your experience.. HmmMmmm... lets continue the analysis, assuming that it's a perception thing, and that half a second "feels" like "several," that really isn't that raw a deal for you since the high ping player would have the same symmetric experience...

On the other hand perhaps there is some other bug that is not related to player latency but instead some other strange situation that could cause damage to appear as if it's delayed.. so maybe if you have some more info on the type of situation your experience occurs in. Perhaps its related to the type of weapon? Maybe invisible LRMs are flying at you? Maybe there's something funny with HSR and airstrikes/artillery? (I'm not saying there is, just trying to brainstorm out loud)

Is it possible your own ping has momentary spikes? If your ping spikes to 2000ms for a moment now and then it may explain your situation. The ingame ping is 'smoothed out' over many many seconds, so ping spikes wouldn't show up there unfortunately.

I would say the best way to 'solve' the experience with high ping players is to provide regional based servers since then the matchmaker could put players together in games where each player's ping to the server could be as low as possible. I have no knowledge of what the plans (if any?) or priority for that is. I am personally always a proponent of better tech and deployment, but that's not my role here... though that doesn't stop me from bugging the people who's job it indeed is but that doesn't mean there isn't some more priority feature such as say CW or weight matching, or what have you!

Thanks for the answer!

There's definitely a trend... and it's hard to say it's subjective vs objective.. i'll try streaming again and keep a recording if it occurs and send it to you guys..

This weekend, before the servers got a reset / crash? I was noticing this and it was that other random players were mentioning it that lead me to post.. it's very frustrating.. I can barely respond to jump snipers and shoot up a hill... (i swear I'm an above average shot! ) but reverse the situation with my low vs high ping scenario and I take a ton of dmg after I land.

I know other people post that it doesn't exist, but i think I'm on to something with the number of hours that I've spent playing this game.. and I have been noticing this for over a year.. truthfully, when I see the pings very high and i'm the lone low ping person, I used to run Neverwinter nights torrent downloader in the hopes to to raise my ping to 50-60 ms which I felt stabilized my gameplay. Now, with my new connection this year, nothing I run (multiple twitch streams, my own stream, torrents, etc) seems to dent my ping...

Essentially, I modify my playing style (when I feel like it) and hope I'm with NA players.



Thanks again!

[Modo44]

3 situations seem to occur. You can see no damage, damage with a slight delay, and instances where it is literally seconds before damage registers out of nowhere. Like a buffer that gets flushed inconsistently.

Edited by Modo44, 24 February 2014 - 01:16 PM.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

I play with a consistent 200ms (+/- 15) ping, and I completely understand the frustrations associated with your shots not landing where you think they should or others' shots hitting you when you think they shouldn't have.

Part of the issue is that the visual effects for your shots (especially ballistics and to a lesser extent lasers) happens in your client (in my case, in Japan), but the hit registration and damage application happens in Toronto, and then the visual effects and damage indicators happen where ever your target's computer happens to be, and in the reticule flash, paper doll update, and damage effects happen in your client. Each step in that chain takes a little bit of time.

While a fraction of a second here and there doesn't seem like that big of a deal in an assault slugfest, it can (and often does) mean getting cored out after you're already behind cover, particularly in a light.

It works (and doesn't work) both ways ... it's not perfect, but it's pretty good, considering we're playing with and against people all over the world. Given the choice between what we have now (where I can play with who I want, whether it's PUGs in Australia during the week or my team in North America on the weekend), and regional servers (where I might have to choose one or the other), I'm happy with what we have.

[TriOptimum]

I never noticed this until recently, but now I get hit with shots all the time seconds after I duck behind cover, when nobody had a line of sight to me. It's becoming an issue for me in every day gameplay.

[Willard Phule]

All I know is, I consistently ping in at about 60 (I'm in Colorado) and if MW:O is the only thing I have up and running, I have the exact same issue that the OP is describing.

But...if I have three windows open as well as Outlook and Photoshop, all of a sudden...it stops.

No idea why that is, but there you have it. Maybe it's a DX9 thing that'll go away with DX11?

[ShinVector]

Albert Meyburgh, on 24 February 2014 - 12:19 PM, said:

afaik, the maximum ping we support through HSR is somewhere near 500ms, which would mean that if you have a good ping of say 20ms, the maximum time it would take for you to see yourself getting hit from a high ping player is 500ms + server frame time (lets say a very very very conservative guess of worst case scenario 100ms?), + your 20ms of ping + your frame time (lets say you are getting 60fps+, so 16ms~) + maybe another 10-30ms for your LCD delay depending on model

Albert,
Could advise whether there is any plan to allow MWO to use gaming proxies like WTFast to help lower latency and reduce network jitter to the MWO game servers ?
Currently for some reason the MWO gaming client fails to work with WTFast and dump you can into the mechlab.

This is a workaround to improving the latency and jitter issues for high pingers.
Based on their inbuilt stats it could help significantly lower my latency and stop a lot of jitter to the MWO servers.

Edited by ShinVector, 25 February 2014 - 09:10 AM.

[Albert Meyburgh]

ShinVector, on 25 February 2014 - 09:07 AM, said:

Albert, Could advise whether there is any plan to allow MWO to use gaming proxies like WTFast to help lower latency and reduce network jitter to the MWO game servers ? Currently for some reason the MWO gaming client fails to work with WTFast and dump you can into the mechlab. This is a workaround to improving the latency and jitter issues for high pingers. Based on their inbuilt stats it could help significantly lower my latency and stop a lot of jitter to the MWO servers.

I am not aware of any reason why we would want to prohibit using a VPN (that's what this is? I've never used it myself)

I suspect that there's probably a problem with their system if it doesn't allow you to connect to dedicated servers. The mechlab/frontend connects to our backend systems, while loading into a game is the part that connects to the dedicated servers. I _think_ they are on the same domain/IP but run on different ports though I am not familiar with the production IT configuration/deployments.

I'll ask a few people, but like I said--I doubt that we've gone out of our way to prevent people from connecting to our servers

Update: I notice we're not on this list http://www.wtfast.co...upported_games/ which leads me to think that perhaps their system requires that they have to add support on their end.

[Tesunie]

My issue isn't so much the delayed hit (or the hit that hasn't been visually shot yet), I have a larger problem with taking some serious hits, with no indication that I'm getting hit/damaged besides losing armor/structure/body parts. HSR hits (I think) don't seem to make any noise, shake, or anything, but damage is still applied.

Am I making sense here...?

Edited by Tesunie, 25 February 2014 - 09:53 AM.

[JoJoxy]

To me the problem sounds like the effect of a very small amount of packet loss on your end. So the player shooting at you hits you after server-side HSR calculations. The server sends the packet containing the new state of your mech to you, but it gets lost somewhere on the way. Now the server will either notice that from a missing ACK and retry, or dismiss it altogether and just rely on the next state packet.
In both cases you get the information after what feels like seconds, but you wont get disconnected for a single lost packet.

So maybe there have been changes in networks between you and PGI's servers, maybe a link is almost at capacity but the owner is to cheap to upgrade, damaged sea cables at reduced capacity, could really be anything.

In short: I don't want to dismiss your argument, but present a different possible scenario.

[ShinVector]

Albert Meyburgh, on 25 February 2014 - 09:26 AM, said:

I am not aware of any reason why we would want to prohibit using a VPN (that's what this is? I've never used it myself)

I suspect that there's probably a problem with their system if it doesn't allow you to connect to dedicated servers. The mechlab/frontend connects to our backend systems, while loading into a game is the part that connects to the dedicated servers. I _think_ they are on the same domain/IP but run on different ports though I am not familiar with the production IT configuration/deployments.

I'll ask a few people, but like I said--I doubt that we've gone out of our way to prevent people from connecting to our servers

Update: I notice we're not on this list http://www.wtfast.co...upported_games/ which leads me to think that perhaps their system requires that they have to add support on their end.

Thanks for the reply on the policy.

Had spoken with the WTFast owner on this issue before was saying he trying fix the problem with MWO but I guess he wasn't successful.

WTFast doesn't not work like your traditional VPN. I have tried typical VPNs and they work with MWO but little improvement.
They WTFast functions is more like a transparent gaming proxy which hooks on the programs that you want to specifically send to their gaming VPN network.
I am not sure whether they are running a bunch of inter connected WAN optimisers/accelerators all over the world.
The gaming proxy method does make sense since games use little bandwidth compared to your normal internet usage.

Maybe I post some screenshots of how WTFast works so, for your info.
Maybe I will create a separate thread for this later.

Anyway I tried custom game configuration (gameclient + launcher) for the Neverwinter last night and it work right off the bat.
The improvement statistics says only like 2% but right off the bat, I could see significant improvement like less warping.

Now if MWO can work with it.
--

Updated:
Ok speaking with the WTFast owner on the issue with MWO. He believes WTFast has issues with hooking all the data from MWO and a fixed is being planned in a couple months.
I guess I will wait out then.

Edited by ShinVector, 25 February 2014 - 11:22 PM.