Anti Lag/ Net code needs work

(imPuls3) #1

This is a big ask but something needs to be done with the anti lag. Players should not have an advantage while playing with 100+ ping. The hit registration is terrible and they are able to peek and hit shots even though their target is behind cover. I am not sure if anything has changed with the netcode recently but it seems like thing have gotten worse. Either that or there are a lot more high ping players connecting to est servers.

I know I am not alone in this feeling as many of the old ET players have been complaining about the same thing.

(watsyurdeal) #2

I actually have to agree a lot, but the problem is Unreal itself.

Every Unreal game I’ve played in the last 3 years has had this exact same problem, higher ping players tend to have an advantage. Blacklight Retribution, Tribes Ascend, and Dirty Bomb all have this, and I think it has to do with how it communicates client side to server side.

You would think with the lower ping, you’d send data to the server that you landed x hits and did y damage and killed player B before he killed you, but it seems like the engine offers a forgivable amount of time for the higher ping players to catch up. So in other words, the engine is giving them the edge in determining who was shot first.

I’m sure I’m wrong as that’s just a theory, and I don’t quite know enough about net code yet. Hell our game in project dev, we couldn’t even get the local multiplayer to work. XD

(YeOldeButtcheek) #3

I’m having a better connection in South AM servers than US East servers.

This is not okay.

(Zenity) #4

It’s all perception, high ping players definitely do not have the advantage. Anything that happens to their victims also happens to themselves in equal measure, plus a bunch of other disadvantages. You could argue that they are more used to it so they deal with it better, but that really is nitpicking.

Dirty Bomb does a great job at minimizing the effects of lag, but everything considered it’s still a disadvantage.

(kibloy) #5

You will always get shot behind walls and around corners in every FPS in existence unless you’re playing on LAN. It’s in inherent consequence of lag compensation, no matter how well it’s done. The only alternative would be not compensating for lag at all, you’d have to aim ahead of your target depending on your ping.

To be honest, Dirty Bomb is one of the very few games where I don’t complain about shitty net code at all. Maybe it’s because the high TTK is very forgiving in that regard.

(Amerika) #6

You do not in any way shape or form get an advantage as a higher ping player. It doesn’t work that way. Higher ping players simply don’t have as much of a disadvantage as they once did.

ET only allowed people who were incredibly close geographically to even play on the same server without massive disadvantages. If somebody had an 90 ping in ET against people who had 30, the 90 ping player was at a rather large disadvantage. In Dirty Bomb the 90 ping player is on the same playing field as the 30 due to how the rollback/predictive and more clientside netcode works in games these days. Basically, if you’re a Q3/ET/etc player stop looking at pings on a scoreboard and immediately expecting to have a massive advantage if you have a better ping.

You have to deal with some sync issues like players killing each other at the same time or feeling like you got shot behind a wall but instead of eliminating most of the potential playerbase based on a tiny amount of ping difference you get to play with a lot of people you normally wouldn’t.

Also, there are a ton of South AM people playing on US East servers right now because the South AM servers are located in Miami currently. So if any of them are sorting by ping they are probably picking whatever is open. And due to geographic distance combined the amount of networks they have to get through (hops) there is a chance a few of them are encountering packet loss or random latency (rubber banding) which causes them to warp a bit. They also see the warping on their screen but are probably fine with it. They don’t get an advantage…they just don’t care.

(imPuls3) #7

I am fully aware its never going to be perfect but when peeking and tracking people to a corner a player with a 150 ping (which seems to be the sweet spot) and I have tested this in foreign servers. You can follow they player matrix and get the kill even though he is off screen and vice versa you are well behind cover and get killed. With that advantage a strong peek style of play player super easy to get a kill

(Jostabeere) #8

[quote=“Zenity;151416”]It’s all perception, high ping players definitely do not have the advantage. Anything that happens to their victims also happens to themselves in equal measure, plus a bunch of other disadvantages. You could argue that they are more used to it so they deal with it better, but that really is nitpicking.

Dirty Bomb does a great job at minimizing the effects of lag, but everything considered it’s still a disadvantage.[/quote]

When I happen to play on US East, I get far more kills on people what are already behind walls. And this never happens to me, when I have a high ping. On the other hand, more frequently if someone is lagging, and I have my 16 on EU.

(HunterAssassin5) #9

[quote=“Ye_Olde_Buttcheeks;151411”]I’m having a better connection in South AM servers than US East servers.

This is not okay.[/quote]

I have a better connection to EU and US servers than the ASIA servers. This isn’t even funny anymore.

Nowadays I play with 200+ ping unless the magical 20 ping ASIAN server has an empty spot or two, and if it doesn’t say it’s full for some reason(probably spectators).
Personally I don’t notice if higher ping granted me an advantage or not, though there were times people on the enemy team were telling me I was a phantom proxy, teleporting everywhere and swinging a bat(though I was actually wrestling with the ping while sprinting with my melee out).
I think teleporting puts me further ahead than I would’ve been, I don’t know. Usually I just end up walking into a wall, though.

(blonk) #10

I read somewhere that DB allows the client to have authority over if a hit was successful or not (i.e. clientside hit detection), is there any truth to this? The jury’s out looking at some google results on the subject but people seem to generally hint that it is clientside. I have seen some crazy things happen in firefights personally, people hitting me when I’m well behind a wall, people seeming unloading enough damage to kill a full health merc in a single shot and the likes

Edit: holy smokes look at this video

REMOVED
Please do not link to vids of people cheating.

(Amerika) #11

What was your testing methodology and can you link to your recorded footage? You say you tested it so I’m interested in your findings.

[quote=“blonk;156553”]I read somewhere that DB allows the client to have authority over if a hit was successful or not (i.e. clientside hit detection), is there any truth to this? The jury’s out looking at some google results on the subject but people seem to generally hint that it is clientside. I have seen some crazy things happen in firefights personally, people hitting me when I’m well behind a wall, people seeming unloading enough damage to kill a full health merc in a single shot and the likes

Edit: holy smokes look at this video

REMOVED
Please do not link to vids of people cheating.[/quote]

DB does use client side hit detection. Nearly every game since OSP Q3 does in some form or another. It’s how predictive netcode works. I send my data, they send their data, the server looks through it all and determines what actually happened. That is a super rough explanation and the time window for all of that happening is extremely tiny. It allows clients of varying ping to play each other and not give a lower ping player a huge advantage over a higher ping player. However, it’s not a miracle worker. Sometimes there are server lag spikes, one of the clients lag spikes, one of the clients have rubberbanding connections with a varying ping that can’t be predicted easily by the server and some oddities can happen. Even things known as rollbacks where it looks like you did something on your screen but the server doesn’t agree (like getting that Vas headshot only for you to die and them not to).

It’s not perfect because it can’t make peoples connections good and it’s doing predictive calculations so there is a chance that it could screw up. However, one psychological side-effect of this is some people hit their tab key to bring up the scoreboard, see a guy that is actually competing with them at 100 ping or so and they are upset because somebody with 100 ping is competing against their 20-30 ping instead of being an easy kill. Where in the past anti-lag wasn’t tuned that heavily (mostly because it chews up server processing power).

If 150 ping gave people an advantage, all of the Cups we’ve had that are between NA and EU would have had players fighting to go on their opponents servers.

(Litego) #12

Yeah sorry, but that’s not how it works. You always have an advantage when peeking, but the more ping you have, the less of an advantage you get. The only advantage of high ping is that you start teleporting on the enemies screen. But if that also happens on your screen (don’t know if it does in DB), it’s not much of an advantage. Killing people behind walls is not an advantage, it’s just a side effect of lag compensation, it equals the playing field a little bit, but the low ping player still has the advantage.

(blonk) #13

[quote=“blonk;156553”]
REMOVED
Please do not link to vids of people cheating.[/quote]

Sorry 'bout that, did occur to me that might not be appreciated (though the forum rules aren’t crystal clear about it, I did check). For anyone who’s curious, the video showed a player using some kind of aimbot intentionally disrupting his connection, jumping and firing at some players (in like an instant) then resuming his connection, killing a whole spawn wave in one go. Incredibly blatant hacking, but the fact he can do that at all is because the processing is on the client, right?

[quote=“Amerika;156560”]
DB does use client side hit detection. Nearly every game since OSP Q3 does in some form or another. It’s how predictive netcode works. I send my data, they send their data, the server looks through it all and determines what actually happened. That is a super rough explanation and the time window for all of that happening is extremely tiny. It allows clients of varying ping to play each other and not give a lower ping player a huge advantage over a higher ping player. However, it’s not a miracle worker. Sometimes there are server lag spikes, one of the clients lag spikes, one of the clients have rubberbanding connections with a varying ping that can’t be predicted easily by the server and some oddities can happen. Even things known as rollbacks where it looks like you did something on your screen but the server doesn’t agree (like getting that Vas headshot only for you to die and them not to).[/quote]

I’m not so sure to be honest, I know the basics of interpolation and how games smooth out what the player sees to reduce the impact of server hit calculations and the resulting imperfections, but I would say the server should be the one making 99% of the call. Why on earth should the server be taking the “input” that hack produced (loads of shots in like a second during a peak of packet loss) as gospel? That’s the whole problem. Clients can tell lies, be it mistakenly or not. Obviously a middle ground needs to be reached between experience and true hit detection, but it looks to me like the server is putting way too much faith in the client.

(Amerika) #14

[quote=“blonk;156568”]

[quote=“blonk;156553”]
REMOVED
Please do not link to vids of people cheating.[/quote]

Sorry 'bout that, did occur to me that might not be appreciated (though the forum rules aren’t crystal clear about it, I did check). For anyone who’s curious, the video showed a player using some kind of aimbot intentionally disrupting his connection, jumping and firing at some players (in like an instant) then resuming his connection, killing a whole spawn wave in one go. Incredibly blatant hacking, but the fact he can do that at all is because the processing is on the client, right?

It’s a tradeoff. The more you offload to the server to make the call the less likely that the antilag will make connections smooth. The whole point of relying more on a client is so you get exact calculations on what happened in a fight from each players point of view and then put them together. Some systems relies less on these calculations which results in lowers pings having more of an advantage and making higher ping players have more issues. The way DB and many other games are setup it relies more on client-side to make sure that the game works well for a huge amount of players. It also guarantees that we have a large player pool that can play against each other. So instead of having only about 100-300 people who are geographically close to play against you now have access to thousands.

However, that doesn’t come without risk. Many times when you have a higher ping it sometimes also means that the connection isn’t as stable because you’re going through more hops. So there is a larger chance you’ll end up with somebody on your server who is warping due to dropped packets or has a rubberbanding connection. High ping does not cause warping typically until you start going north of 200 in DB. However, unstable connections that are constantly going up and down or dropping packets do. Also, due to how this antilag works it can be manipulated by cheats…but you get aimbots regardless of netcode implementation.

(B_Montiel) #15

For now, as long as they allow people with quite high pings on servers, not much can be done about the sluggish feeling.

Personally, and this still remains unanswered for a long time, I always asked if it was possible to get ping limits on some servers and reduced anti-lag. I totally understand with the current quite remote location of servers right now, but I truly hope, if they are coming one day, that rental servers would allow us to choose ping limits and fiddle with the anti-lag settings.

The main problem right now is, as far as I can experience, is the tickrate which needs to be quite high to provide a good smooth experience with UE3. 40 is quite low thus providing a below standard feeling. And with crowded servers, I’m not mentioning literal stutters we experience in EU regularly.

(Amerika) #16

It would be amazing if the community got that type of granular control with rented servers.

(B_Montiel) #17

Yes, quite interestingly, throughout the different periods of the beta, I’ve discussed with half a dozen hardcore cs:go friends who tried db. And they all did remarks about hit-reg, netcode and stuff, which is… Deeply paradoxical, from a historical point of view.

But still, something this recurring in their mouths, knowing how poor source engine’s netcode can be, should not remain unheard.

(TheVulpesFox) #18

Try playing on 200+ ping when playing ranked then! Then you will feel the pain!

(HunterAssassin5) #19

I have felt the pain.

(Matuno) #20

I’m not too concerned about high pings, during community events hosted on American servers, I notice all too well that it’s a lot harder to make plays when lagging. I wouldn’t call it an advantage per sé.

What does happen, even with a decent (reported) ping, is that some players may begin warping around. You see them strafe or run in one direction and suddenly pop to the other side with no smoothing involved. Not only does this throw your aim off, but when engaging multiple targets, you’re now dealing with a weapon that’s already built up bullet spread.

You’ve given up the element of surprise, and what was supposed to be a calculated fight where one enemy bites the dust in the engagement, you’re now fighting all of them.

This happens A LOT, in nearly every round I play.