Forums » Suggestions
"how about a cap on ping during a duel, or the duel ends"
Ending a duel due to bad networking is not a great idea, because then degrading your network becomes a viable tactic to get out of a duel you're losing. It would be better to instead have it declare somebody the loser if they have a sufficiently bad network, and as Sieger said, possibly prevent them from engaging in a /duel in the first place if their network is bad. This is a bit exclusionary, but then /duels are a more formal and optional part of the game.
"Alternative option: Ask if they are on mobile and if yes, don't PvP them."
This only works if you only engage in consensual combat. It isn't sufficient for people who want to enforce blockades, pirate traders, kill pirates, or otherwise play the game at a level beyond sitting in B8 asking for fights. Besides which, there are plenty of mobile users with perfectly acceptable network performance, and there are some PC users who seem to be phoning it in from the Moon.
Ending a duel due to bad networking is not a great idea, because then degrading your network becomes a viable tactic to get out of a duel you're losing. It would be better to instead have it declare somebody the loser if they have a sufficiently bad network, and as Sieger said, possibly prevent them from engaging in a /duel in the first place if their network is bad. This is a bit exclusionary, but then /duels are a more formal and optional part of the game.
"Alternative option: Ask if they are on mobile and if yes, don't PvP them."
This only works if you only engage in consensual combat. It isn't sufficient for people who want to enforce blockades, pirate traders, kill pirates, or otherwise play the game at a level beyond sitting in B8 asking for fights. Besides which, there are plenty of mobile users with perfectly acceptable network performance, and there are some PC users who seem to be phoning it in from the Moon.
My ping is often high (device-to-router connection issues), but I also just mine roids these days, or occasionally trade or do short low-risk escort missions. why should someone like me get kicked from the game? I do like the idea of balancing fights the way biretak suggested, but since I don't fight too much...
how about a cap on ping during a duel, or the duel ends
or
<"Harpo" (ping: 300 +/- 50ms; bps out: 5 in: 7) has challenged you (ping 67.2 +/- 4.0ms ; bps out: 0 in: 0) to a duel. Do you accept?">
/duel ping-decline "Harpo"
<"Conflict Diamond" has declined the duel because your ping sucks :P>
or
<"Harpo" (ping: 300 +/- 50ms; bps out: 5 in: 7) has challenged you (ping 67.2 +/- 4.0ms ; bps out: 0 in: 0) to a duel. Do you accept?">
/duel ping-decline "Harpo"
<"Conflict Diamond" has declined the duel because your ping sucks :P>
People with worse ping should not have an advantage, mobile player from asia gets much less milage then a PC player from a english speaking country.
Inc, it's not unreasonable for there to be a requirement of a reliable internet connection in order to play this game.
+1 to the OP
+1 to the OP
It isn't fair to people who actually subscribe and actually do everything combat related in VO.
The poeple who are what VO are really about lose out when f2p mobiles come to town.
The poeple who are what VO are really about lose out when f2p mobiles come to town.
Inc, it's not unreasonable for there to be a requirement of a reliable internet connection in order to play this game.
Yes it is, because the "reliable" internet connection you mention does not really exist. Not outside of North American and perhaps some European desktop broadband users. Even playing on a mobile phone in the US has serious latency variations due to all the carrier gateways.
You're asking me to refuse everyone from Asia, and some from Europe and South America, plus a lot of people on cell networks and wifi. I am not going to do that. Ever.
People are welcome to continue suggesting mitigating heuristics. The whole point is that it doesn't have to be advantageous to people on connections with jittery latency. It's completely possible to mitigate the issue, but there are tradeoffs to any solution.
Those tradeoffs are what we should be discussing, instead of trivial "ban everyone except me" options.
Yes it is, because the "reliable" internet connection you mention does not really exist. Not outside of North American and perhaps some European desktop broadband users. Even playing on a mobile phone in the US has serious latency variations due to all the carrier gateways.
You're asking me to refuse everyone from Asia, and some from Europe and South America, plus a lot of people on cell networks and wifi. I am not going to do that. Ever.
People are welcome to continue suggesting mitigating heuristics. The whole point is that it doesn't have to be advantageous to people on connections with jittery latency. It's completely possible to mitigate the issue, but there are tradeoffs to any solution.
Those tradeoffs are what we should be discussing, instead of trivial "ban everyone except me" options.
Inc, can the person with the 30ms ping with 75mbs up and down bandwidth provide more data for the server and that data gets prioritized? The slower the connection, the less the server considers the data and prioritizes the better faster connection for the data in range.
When two players engage, I'm all for the faster connection getting an advantage (with some buffer, ofcourse, since I do not want advantage with someone within a certain respectable ping, just to keep the ratio that the person with the better connecting is not at a disadvantage).
edited to add: like expand the hit impact of flares, jacks and nuets by as many meters as the other person is jumping around plus 10 percent and let there be a later timing of the hit adjusted by the lag
When two players engage, I'm all for the faster connection getting an advantage (with some buffer, ofcourse, since I do not want advantage with someone within a certain respectable ping, just to keep the ratio that the person with the better connecting is not at a disadvantage).
edited to add: like expand the hit impact of flares, jacks and nuets by as many meters as the other person is jumping around plus 10 percent and let there be a later timing of the hit adjusted by the lag
If you can't maintain at least 750 ping or less then combat should become ineffective for both parties then.
If you can't maintain at least 750 ping or less then combat should become ineffective for both parties then.
Which would be massively exploited by those wishing to avoid non-consensual PvP.
The more I red-text I see in this thread, the more pissed off I get. In effect, I read Inc. as saying:
No, we get that the bulk of new mobile and international users we're targeting will usually - perhaps even necessarily - present this issue. Yes, we get that this kind of insane jumping around makes the core aspect of our game unplayable.
But things being completely broken by the combination of those two things is NOT our problem, paying customers: it's yours. We didn't come up with a way to mitigate the issue in advance because we just don't give a fuck about it, and we're not going to get proactive about it now. If you want something done, YOU'D better come up with a carefully-reasoned suggestion and put it here for us to ponder. Maybe next year we'll even implement such a thing!
Until then, just live with it. XOXO, GS
This is not some stupid bug, or a question of how to balance a functional, existing gameplay aspect. It's one step short of your whole Goddamn game server setup being on fire - start fucking acting like it.
Which would be massively exploited by those wishing to avoid non-consensual PvP.
The more I red-text I see in this thread, the more pissed off I get. In effect, I read Inc. as saying:
No, we get that the bulk of new mobile and international users we're targeting will usually - perhaps even necessarily - present this issue. Yes, we get that this kind of insane jumping around makes the core aspect of our game unplayable.
But things being completely broken by the combination of those two things is NOT our problem, paying customers: it's yours. We didn't come up with a way to mitigate the issue in advance because we just don't give a fuck about it, and we're not going to get proactive about it now. If you want something done, YOU'D better come up with a carefully-reasoned suggestion and put it here for us to ponder. Maybe next year we'll even implement such a thing!
Until then, just live with it. XOXO, GS
This is not some stupid bug, or a question of how to balance a functional, existing gameplay aspect. It's one step short of your whole Goddamn game server setup being on fire - start fucking acting like it.
Abuse should be grounds for admistrative action.
edited to add: like expand the hit impact of flares, jacks and nuets by as many meters as the other person is jumping around plus 10 percent and let there be a later timing of the hit adjusted by the lag
Yeah, it may be possible to do something like that. Or it may also be possible to just broaden the bounds-checking of the server to have a great bias towards believing people on lower-latency connections (making "close enough" a little larger, as I mentioned previously in this thread).
It would not resolve the issue of people actually jumping around. So, if we made someone 4x easier to hit, but their jitter makes them 10x harder to actually aim at, it might not be enough. But, a lot of this is really about finding a "middle ground" that handles most cases better, not aiming for perfection.
For really terrible locational jitter, the only other option is to enforce server-defined positions on people who are jumping around too much. The tradeoff is that that then creates a terrible user experience for them, as the client interpolation code is no longer masking their issues, and instead the entire world is "jumping" around them, making flying or navigating very difficult and confusing. So, instead of banning people in Asia, you just make the game unplayable for them.
Some might cheer that, of course, but going back to Pizzasgood's earlier comment, we wouldn't want to enforce that sort of thing across all game styles. Like for PvE, it's fine for them to have good client-side interpolation and still be able to shoot slow-moving bots. Which gets into a bit of a conundrum of "how do you figure out when PvP is happening". Ship-to-ship distance alone would have a lot of false positives.
Yeah, it may be possible to do something like that. Or it may also be possible to just broaden the bounds-checking of the server to have a great bias towards believing people on lower-latency connections (making "close enough" a little larger, as I mentioned previously in this thread).
It would not resolve the issue of people actually jumping around. So, if we made someone 4x easier to hit, but their jitter makes them 10x harder to actually aim at, it might not be enough. But, a lot of this is really about finding a "middle ground" that handles most cases better, not aiming for perfection.
For really terrible locational jitter, the only other option is to enforce server-defined positions on people who are jumping around too much. The tradeoff is that that then creates a terrible user experience for them, as the client interpolation code is no longer masking their issues, and instead the entire world is "jumping" around them, making flying or navigating very difficult and confusing. So, instead of banning people in Asia, you just make the game unplayable for them.
Some might cheer that, of course, but going back to Pizzasgood's earlier comment, we wouldn't want to enforce that sort of thing across all game styles. Like for PvE, it's fine for them to have good client-side interpolation and still be able to shoot slow-moving bots. Which gets into a bit of a conundrum of "how do you figure out when PvP is happening". Ship-to-ship distance alone would have a lot of false positives.
But things being completely broken by the combination of those two things is NOT our problem, paying customers: it's yours. We didn't come up with a way to mitigate the issue in advance because we just don't give a fuck about it, and we're not going to get proactive about it now. If you want something done, YOU'D better come up with a carefully-reasoned suggestion and put it here for us to ponder. Maybe next year we'll even implement such a thing!
Lecter, if you don't have anything constructive to contribute, stay off the forums.
This is a hard problem to solve, I definitely care about solving it, I've always cared about solving it (and we spent a solid week on it last year), but it creates tradeoffs. I cannot sustain this company on the people from this forum who are vocally complaining about this problem. So yes, I care about other markets and other types of gamers.
I absolutely DO NOT HAVE THE DEVELOPMENT TIME to drop what we're doing this second and suddenly start doing this, because you happen to have a burr up your ass. I'm under contract, it's what's actually paying for a lot of current development that people say they want, and we are totally saturated. (I might have dev-time next month, but I'll want to have a specific plan if we attack this again, which is another reason for continued discussion).
So, I could just say "Yes, we know it's a problem, we're going to look into it". But instead I thought I would open up to more feedback and ideas? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THIS FORUM IS FOR. It isn't the complaint forum, or the bugs forum, or the "I'm bitter and don't believe anything significant will ever happen, so I will shit on everyone else's discussions" forum.
Suggestions is fundamentally about Ideas and Hope. If you don't have either, feel free to not post here.
Lecter, if you don't have anything constructive to contribute, stay off the forums.
This is a hard problem to solve, I definitely care about solving it, I've always cared about solving it (and we spent a solid week on it last year), but it creates tradeoffs. I cannot sustain this company on the people from this forum who are vocally complaining about this problem. So yes, I care about other markets and other types of gamers.
I absolutely DO NOT HAVE THE DEVELOPMENT TIME to drop what we're doing this second and suddenly start doing this, because you happen to have a burr up your ass. I'm under contract, it's what's actually paying for a lot of current development that people say they want, and we are totally saturated. (I might have dev-time next month, but I'll want to have a specific plan if we attack this again, which is another reason for continued discussion).
So, I could just say "Yes, we know it's a problem, we're going to look into it". But instead I thought I would open up to more feedback and ideas? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THIS FORUM IS FOR. It isn't the complaint forum, or the bugs forum, or the "I'm bitter and don't believe anything significant will ever happen, so I will shit on everyone else's discussions" forum.
Suggestions is fundamentally about Ideas and Hope. If you don't have either, feel free to not post here.
"Which gets into a bit of a conundrum of "how do you figure out when PvP is happening". Ship-to-ship distance alone would have a lot of false positives."
What about if you added a configurable option for pirates and other aggressors to designate a particular hail that when sent to a target designates the start of PvP and imposes the stricter server-side positioning on the target? Of course, there should be a check to ensure the players are in the same sector and within radar range to prevent abuse.
What about if you added a configurable option for pirates and other aggressors to designate a particular hail that when sent to a target designates the start of PvP and imposes the stricter server-side positioning on the target? Of course, there should be a check to ensure the players are in the same sector and within radar range to prevent abuse.
Yeah, it may be possible to do something like that. Or it may also be possible to just broaden the bounds-checking of the server to have a great bias towards believing people on lower-latency connections (making "close enough" a little larger, as I mentioned previously in this thread).
Maybe not even making it larger so much as keeping older positions around as valid "hits" when someone lag-jumps.
From what I've seen, high pings aren't really what does it. It's really lossy and unstable connections.
Maybe not even making it larger so much as keeping older positions around as valid "hits" when someone lag-jumps.
From what I've seen, high pings aren't really what does it. It's really lossy and unstable connections.
I think this is being blown way out of proportion
I posted about this ages ago. Well before the Android port, so people saying that is the main cause is just silly. (Anyone remember Maso?) Anyway, I'm from the UK and even though my ping is in the 110-120 mark, my connection is probably one of the best. So yeah, it's not really about just a ping number, but maybe instead of just saying "huh, you have a crappy ping, f-off" you should be looking at packet loss.
If there is too much packet loss, make that client sit still for a bit so they get dead if a player is about. I dunno, maybe 10% = 1 second is a good number? No need to kick em, just make laggy people PvP fodder, not PvP annoyances.
If there is too much packet loss, make that client sit still for a bit so they get dead if a player is about. I dunno, maybe 10% = 1 second is a good number? No need to kick em, just make laggy people PvP fodder, not PvP annoyances.
I think this is being blown way out of proportion
I can't believe I'm saying this, but...Boda is right.
I have pretty much exclusively been doing combat when I sign on for the past few months. The lag that some players have is not always an advantage to them. It is sometimes a severe disadvantage. It is so random, in fact, that I would argue that it isn't currently relevant.
Once we start getting a shitload of more users from Iphone and Steam, and the variation in latency becomes EXTREMELY wide and the degree to which those players are interacting because very large...then I could see it becoming an issue. Currently, it really isn't that common of an issue to require immediate action.
I think a discussion of possible ideas to mitigate the problem, if it becomes more widespread than it currently is, is more the mindset we should have here.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but...Boda is right.
I have pretty much exclusively been doing combat when I sign on for the past few months. The lag that some players have is not always an advantage to them. It is sometimes a severe disadvantage. It is so random, in fact, that I would argue that it isn't currently relevant.
Once we start getting a shitload of more users from Iphone and Steam, and the variation in latency becomes EXTREMELY wide and the degree to which those players are interacting because very large...then I could see it becoming an issue. Currently, it really isn't that common of an issue to require immediate action.
I think a discussion of possible ideas to mitigate the problem, if it becomes more widespread than it currently is, is more the mindset we should have here.
It isn't even necessarily about loss, either. It's really about "jitter", which can be because of loss (re-transmissions) or because of latency variations. And, importantly, it can happen to anyone. Because the aforementioned "stable internet connection" is not really a thing, and the internet always sucks somewhere. So, when considering really draconian reactions, keep in mind that the next time someone in your house (or cable-connected neighborhood, apt building, or even possibly "region", depending on infrastructure and routing) happens to start a big download or something while you're playing combat in VO, you may be the one who is forcibly held in place by the server, or forced to stick to an un-intended trajectory. Same goes for any time a peering point gets overloaded, which happens more than anyone would like.
I know that as soon as I put into place some server-enforcement based on latency variation, I'm going to have a whole new thread of angry people who "didn't realize it would apply to them". Because frankly, concealing that from the local individual is exactly what our game is great at.
I think a discussion of possible ideas to mitigate the problem, if it becomes more widespread than it currently is, is more the mindset we should have here.
I couldn't agree more. And not just because of relative proportion of the issue, but because it's a challenging thing to test and solve. We have to build a whole lab-setup to really hit this issue (varying latency/loss simulation), and it requires more than one of us to really successfully test it. So, I'm still fine with putting in the dev time "relatively" soon, it really requires a specific plan of a few different options to test and try.
Maybe not even making it larger so much as keeping older positions around as valid "hits" when someone lag-jumps.
Yeah, that's basically what I meant. By "broaden the bounds-checking" I meant more temporally than physically. That's actually what we did last year.. well.. we did both, if I recall. It will help people "land" shots on laggy targets, but it will not keep them from jumping around. But that may be enough?
I know that as soon as I put into place some server-enforcement based on latency variation, I'm going to have a whole new thread of angry people who "didn't realize it would apply to them". Because frankly, concealing that from the local individual is exactly what our game is great at.
I think a discussion of possible ideas to mitigate the problem, if it becomes more widespread than it currently is, is more the mindset we should have here.
I couldn't agree more. And not just because of relative proportion of the issue, but because it's a challenging thing to test and solve. We have to build a whole lab-setup to really hit this issue (varying latency/loss simulation), and it requires more than one of us to really successfully test it. So, I'm still fine with putting in the dev time "relatively" soon, it really requires a specific plan of a few different options to test and try.
Maybe not even making it larger so much as keeping older positions around as valid "hits" when someone lag-jumps.
Yeah, that's basically what I meant. By "broaden the bounds-checking" I meant more temporally than physically. That's actually what we did last year.. well.. we did both, if I recall. It will help people "land" shots on laggy targets, but it will not keep them from jumping around. But that may be enough?
Meridian's suggestion is good. It would also be nice to have a silent option (/aggro SomeGuy) since not everybody wants to announce their intention all the time. A /duel should also imply PVP, of course.
Causing damage to somebody should initiate the PVP state as well, as should missile-lock and near misses from a weapon (but perhaps not rep guns). How near? Maybe a 500m radius? Exception: Ignore hits and near misses from people in your /group and /guild, because you might just be out botting with them. (If you want to spar with guild/group mates, use /aggro or /duel in order to override this exception.)
As for switching back out of PVP mode, that should happen as soon as you are sufficiently far from anybody who you've been considered to be in PVP with within the last several minutes (1500m?). So if I was attacking you as you mined in a station sector, but then I decide to leave you alone and I go back near the station for some reason, you should revert back to the smooth PVE mode right away without waiting for the timeout. However, if I then return to harass you some more, it should switch to PVP mode automatically since we were just recently fighting. That's especially important for chases, since the pursuer is likely to arrive at the destination after the pursued, and they shouldn't have to frantically try to aggro-hail them at each hop.
There should be a command to voluntarily end hostility as well. Partly because accidents happen, but also because if somebody stops and pays me, I want to be able to revoke my aggro-hail so that they don't have a degraded experience any time I come near for the next couple minutes (such as if we both happen visit the same station).
But yeah, I do agree this isn't a pressing issue, and I'm mostly only concerned about the people who outright lag-jump. People who are just a little bit laggy are annoying, but not a big deal. Any attempt to deal with the minorly-laggy should probably be handled more via bounds checking like Inc has been talking about.
Causing damage to somebody should initiate the PVP state as well, as should missile-lock and near misses from a weapon (but perhaps not rep guns). How near? Maybe a 500m radius? Exception: Ignore hits and near misses from people in your /group and /guild, because you might just be out botting with them. (If you want to spar with guild/group mates, use /aggro or /duel in order to override this exception.)
As for switching back out of PVP mode, that should happen as soon as you are sufficiently far from anybody who you've been considered to be in PVP with within the last several minutes (1500m?). So if I was attacking you as you mined in a station sector, but then I decide to leave you alone and I go back near the station for some reason, you should revert back to the smooth PVE mode right away without waiting for the timeout. However, if I then return to harass you some more, it should switch to PVP mode automatically since we were just recently fighting. That's especially important for chases, since the pursuer is likely to arrive at the destination after the pursued, and they shouldn't have to frantically try to aggro-hail them at each hop.
There should be a command to voluntarily end hostility as well. Partly because accidents happen, but also because if somebody stops and pays me, I want to be able to revoke my aggro-hail so that they don't have a degraded experience any time I come near for the next couple minutes (such as if we both happen visit the same station).
But yeah, I do agree this isn't a pressing issue, and I'm mostly only concerned about the people who outright lag-jump. People who are just a little bit laggy are annoying, but not a big deal. Any attempt to deal with the minorly-laggy should probably be handled more via bounds checking like Inc has been talking about.