in every real game, lag is a bad thing to have. any thing your client reports, the server verifies, and if it don't add up, the server wins by default. In most games, the client only reports control inputs, and whenever those input reach the server is when they are applied. now, i don't know exactly how vo is setup, but i know it's screwed. when some one can jump 100 meters, not because of my lag, but because of theirs, it plainly shows that the server is not double checking the clients reporting. I find any comparision between vo and quake completly unfounded on this basis alone. this issue, in my opinion, is a game breaker. and i would appreciate knowing when it is going to be fixed.

I agree there can be a big problem at times. Ships jump around hundreds of meters.

While lag is a pain... I don't see it getting solved anytime soon. A large majority of lag problems are completely out of the devs hands.

Couldn't they simply put the ships 100m ahead of their packets?

Har.

That's how VO works, too, TRS. All packets are sanity checked. So people can't jump farther than it's possible for them to move in the same time. As to the devs fixing it, well, I hear they're working on installing a dedicated "Vendetta line" cable into the house of every subscriber so that we don't have to use the regular Internet. Then they'll have control over lag. Until then, there's not that much that tehy can do.

If there´s something VO is known about is its reliability and almost lag-free gameplay

It´s not me, you can read it in every review

but, of course, it´ll depend on everyone´s connection

Ayuh, I forgot to mention that I very rarely experience any lag. Not of other people, and never of myself (w00t for 50ms ping). On the few occassions when I have seen somebody really lagging, they can't shoot me any better than I can shoot them, because if they're lagging, it appears that -everybody else- is lagging. So it's relatively a nonissue.

I never expect anyone to be responsible for some one elses connection issues. But this is exactly the position the game is placing me in. I am responsible for having to fight some one that is in effect defying vo physics. When someones packets get lost or delayed, and then suddenly arrive, they are counted as good, and the server sends my correction information, say "we thought x was located here, but it was really located over there". This is the exact opposite of the way it should be. When packets fail to arrive on time, the server should simple calculate a path in a striat line, and when the packets finnally do arrive, the server should send corrections to the offender, saying "you failed to turn where you thought you where turning, and your position is really here".To every one watching (with a good connection), all the action was smooth and in agreement with vo physics. This way the person with the lag issue is the only one to suffer from that issue, and lag will never be considered an advantage in combat.

Having an over simplified check that says a ship can not change positions more than 500m/s multiplied by the number of second between consecutive packets is just plain lame.

It should be that a ship cannot change positions more than (current speed) x (max accel/decel) x (Max delay between packets) where "max accel/decel" can be an over simplified value depending on how refined you make "Max delay between packets".

This is a simple an issue to address logically, and while I understand that writing a formula does not a program make, this is to big an issue to let go.

As fair warning, all mmorpg that enjoy massive popularity take it for granted that thier client will always be continuoisly hacked, and the only effective safeguards are implemented on the server. (I take it back, there are some mmorpg that try to patch too fast to be hacked, but they fail, a new hacks are typically completed within 24 hours, and sometimes even within an hour of release).

This issue will not survive massive popularity (or massive popularity will not survive this issue), please fix it as a matter of highest priority.

edit: Please disreguard the formula I listed. Quake solved this issue long ago (and QuakeWorld even added client side latancy smoothing). Any one that has played quake will consider it the standard of preformance. The Quake source code is publicly available.

I doubt that the player's ping is the only source of lag. There are sectors and/or circumstances where lag occurs whatever your ping is. The later updates seem to have drastically reduced the lag that was caused by numbers of bots/objects, which resulted in strobe lighting fights. However there remains a lot of small lag periods when you're frozen for a couple of seconds. I'm confident devs can do something about that.

As regards the ping lag, this is annoying with the lighter fighters. Things have not changed much with the somewhat heavier ships.

@ TRS: What kind of system and connection are you running VO on?

Ok two things... In response to TRS:

Having a system that merely forced a player who was laggy to abide by the server side rules you layed out would make this game more unpopular than what is in place now. If when laggy, you were forced to travel in a straight line, you would be cannon fodder for whomever you were fighting. This is happens every now and then anyhow, and it is always disasterous for whoever lagged. Personally I prefer the hoppy-hoppy method. I don't necessarily like it when I'm fighting someone (cue self-righteous music) and they lag like that, allowing me to easily knock off half their armour.

...But on the flipside.... In response to Roguelazer:

The lag in VO is most definately not an "all sides are having to deal with it so its a non-issue"...issue. Much of the time they can most definately shoot you better than you can shoot them. Before I left in November, I was having major problems with cogentco (who wasn't). For about 3 months, my ping was bouncing all over the place constantly, which was making me a sitting duck for almost anybody I fought (Leebs was beating me consistently in light fights, 'nuff said [sorry Leebs :P]). In fact, everybody was beating me during that time.

Now, after a six or seven month break, and a nice mix of Cogentco seeming to work out their problems and Guild implementing some new anti-lag protocols, things are mostly back to normal for me.

Conclusion? IMHO the way VO deals with lag is not as big an issue concerning release as content, but it is something to be considered concerning fair play.

You're talking about much smaller distances in Quake, plus the fact that there's no persistant universe to worry about. PLUS the fact that damn near every calculation is performed server-side that can be possibly performed server-side without the servers exploding (in VO, that is). Plus the fact that most people never see any lag effects...

First off, VO is my Anti Lag.
My Anti other MMO's.
My Anti Earth and Beyond.

Secondly, couldn't there be a direct connection created to all clients/players within 1000m of you.
This way when two people are fighting, they're modems are talking directly to each other.
Thus reducing latency.

Now sure it all has to be checked by the server but the server can do that anyways.

Ok, why am I wrong.

A direct connection? Well, numerous reasons.

First, and all for now since I'm at work: Synchronization of actions of multiple players would, instead of each player sending ONE packet to the server of THEIR actions and downloading ONE (large) packet summarizing everyone elses, every player would have to send every other player an individual packet containing all of their actions. If you're in a fight with 100 people in it, that means 100 separate packets, each of which has its own latency. Instead of improving the lag situation, this would make it hundreds and hundreds of times worse.

/duel challenge "roguelazer"
roguelazer accepts your challenge
Direct Connection Established

That'd be cool.

Except then everybody else would see both of you as lagged... And direct connections would either A) be slow because you'd need to wait for the server to sanity-check things or B) be insecure because of reduced sanity-checking. The only reason people can't cheat now is because the protocol is massively complicated (wouldn't stand up to cryptographic analysis, though, I'd bet) and because the server sanity-checks EVERYTHING anyway.

Direct connection = bad idea

@TRS: Just to bump my question, what connection and computer setup are you running?

Rogue,
There'd be no point in cheating for a duel.
Unless someone wants a high duel rating?
That'd just be stupid.

And maybe the clients could send the server a reduced amount of data.
This way the server could still pinpoint where you two were.
Yet after the fight, the two computers both send their versions of what happened.

Then the server checks to make sure they both coincide w/ each other and make sense.
If it doesn't make sense *BANAGE!*
Then all is happy.

This would help two computers w/ a bad ping.
Wouldn't help a low bandwidth problem.

There'd be no point of cheating? What about if you set up a duel between yourself and a friend, then you both used your uber-laggy status to go kill other people? Or what if you set up a direct connection, then turned on some protocol-level cheater and (since sanity-checking is either off or delayed now) gave yourself a billion credits? The system wouldn't catch it for a few seconds, and you could probably cause a bit of a problem.

Direct connection = still bad idea.

AHHA!
I haven't given up yet.
Ok so hows about you get transported to a different sector where its just YOU and THEM.
Noone else to gank.
Money/character doesn't exist in this state.

Basically I'm saying we need an arena.
THEN my DC idea might work.
Cause there'd be nothing to gain except killing the other person.
Plus duels couldn't be interrupted.