This is a big deal for me. Network lag is inevitable regardless of how great your coding is, how powerful your servers are, or how fast your Internet connection is. In this hypothetical scenario:
Somewhere, somehow, the client/server connection is interrupted. Eventually the connection is re-established. Will Pantheon:
1) “Rubber band” the player’s client back to the last known spot the server acknowledged the client’s location?
2) Accept the client’s location and force the server to conform to that?
I’ve played games where method 1 was used and I can say it’s one of the most infuriating mechanisms in online gaming. It simply is not acceptable to be constantly pulled back to previous locations because the server is behind. As I said, for me, it’s extremely irritating and really makes me start to hate the experience.
I’ve also played other games, like EQ, where the game used method 2. If there was lag, when the connection was reestablished, the server would accept the client’s location. This often appeared to others as someone warping or flashing in and out. But it has the downside that the player may not know where their character is on the server if the game is lagging out. This option is more acceptable to me.
Does the community and developers have an opinion, or does anyone know pro's and con's?
bigdogchris said:This is a big deal for me. Network lag is inevitable regardless of how great your coding is, how powerful your servers are, or how fast your Internet connection is. In this hypothetical scenario:
Somewhere, somehow, the client/server connection is interrupted. Eventually the connection is re-established. Will Pantheon:
1) “Rubber band” the player’s client back to the last known spot the server acknowledged the client’s location?
2) Accept the client’s location and force the server to conform to that?
I’ve played games where method 1 was used and I can say it’s one of the most infuriating mechanisms in online gaming. It simply is not acceptable to be constantly pulled back to previous locations because the server is behind. As I said, for me, it’s extremely irritating and really makes me start to hate the experience.
I’ve also played other games, like EQ, where the game used method 2. If there was lag, when the connection was reestablished, the server would accept the client’s location. This often appeared to others as someone warping or flashing in and out. But it has the downside that the player may not know where their character is on the server if the game is lagging out. This option is more acceptable to me.
Does the community and developers have an opinion, or does anyone know pro's and con's?
There is also an option 3. Server continues the character's current path until the connection is reestablished, than accepts the client's location and verifies that it was possible to move to that location during the lost time.
shihiro said:There is also an option 3. Server continues the character's current path until the connection is reestablished, than accepts the client's location and verifies that it was possible to move to that location during the lost time.
I think that's similar to how EQ worked. If you were running and lagging out your character just continued on. I'm not sure if the game calculated if it was possible to travel that far or not since lagging out could almost mean certain doom anyways. The downside is the game might run you right through a camp of enemies or something and you get killed. That happened to me multiple times.
I'm not sure that I can remember the last time I've experienced lag in a game...
Maybe it was back in 99' on AoL dial up lol.
Now graphical lag on a poorly optimised game well that is a big deal.
I definitely wouldn't group with someone who was lagging out all over the place especially in a dungeon.
Kiz~
I remember back in EQ1 where people would deliberately interrupt their connection so they could run through areas without aggro so as I'd have to go with the server returning you to the last location confirmed by the server. But these days 'network lag' is rarely an issue. As Jimm0thy and Angrykiz pointed out, lag these days is graphic in nature..low frame rates.
When I look at the screenshots I'm already trying to gauge framerates with 70 people in frame and spell effects going off constantly...and I'm getting worried. Will I have a high end system for this game? Absolutely, but even a high end system can choke on these scenes.
jimm0thy said:I have to agree with Kiz, can't remember the last time I experienced any network lag. Sure maybe my internet connection goes down or cuts out but thats not lag. And most of what people refer to as lag is actually graphical and caused by low framerate drops
This is true, but before this topic runs off the rails we need to clearly define for everyone reading what lag is. Lag is a general term used to describe the preception of latency in a system. This can be framerate lag, network lag, input lag, etc. There are many different types of lag players can experience and they are ALL valid for the gerneral term "lag".
For this discussion, the OP is referring specifically to network lag (latency over a network connection) and not graphic lag (latency in framerate).
Sorry to take such a base approach at this... I'm not trying to insult anyones intelligence on this subject, but these topics almost always drift over to framerate/graphic lag (which is not what is being discussed) much to the frustration of the OP and others involved in the convo.
Dekaden said:This is true, but before this topic runs off the rails we need to clearly define for everyone reading what lag is. Lag is a general term used to describe the preception of latency in a system. This can be framerate lag, network lag, input lag, etc. There are many different types of lag players can experience and they are ALL valid for the gerneral term "lag".
For this discussion, the OP is referring specifically to network lag (latency over a network connection) and not graphic lag (latency in framerate).
Sorry to take such a base approach at this... I'm not trying to insult anyones intelligence on this subject, but these topics almost always drift over to framerate/graphic lag (which is not what is being discussed) much to the frustration of the OP and others involved in the convo.
Yes, thank you for clearing that up.
Vandraad said:I remember back in EQ1 where people would deliberately interrupt their connection so they could run through areas without aggro so as I'd have to go with the server returning you to the last location confirmed by the server. But these days 'network lag' is rarely an issue. As Jimm0thy and Angrykiz pointed out, lag these days is graphic in nature..low frame rates.
When I look at the screenshots I'm already trying to gauge framerates with 70 people in frame and spell effects going off constantly...and I'm getting worried. Will I have a high end system for this game? Absolutely, but even a high end system can choke on these scenes.
I would hope in 2015 there would be ways to combat cheating but not rubberband you around the gameworld at the same time. The times I lost network connectivity while running I usually wound up dead or lost. I can't imagine why someone would do it intentionally.
Perhaps a middle ground in the form of a 10 second buffer? If network interruption happens, the server keeps the character moving on it's last known heading and speed for 10 seconds before stoping the character and beginning the log-out timer.
This allows time for packet loss to correct and player control to be regained in a bad but not broken connection. It also means if you're going to disco die, it happens within reach of where you could previously get too, rather than across the zone where your corpse may be unreachable.