Cal Predine
StarKnight Security
47
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Posted - 2013.12.11 16:42:00 -
[1] - Quote
It's not a new problem, although it certainly affects different players to different degrees - I've had it since maybe a couple of months into the beta, becoming steadily worse with each update, regularly reported, fixes regularly requested. It's a problem that has never been seriously addressed, but 1.7 really takes it to new depths...
Initially, in early beta, I thought it was due to my getting a strange network route to my "nearest" servers (south coast UK to Amsterdam via Texas!?!), but I've done plenty of network analysis on the problem - packet analysis and the like, but I've never been able to find a consistent correlation between, say, server location and especially poor performance.
Framerate *is* consistently below-standard, but prior to 1.7 it started out bearable (at the start of a gaming session) and appeared to deteriorate over time. Whether this is due to code errors (e.g. memory leaks) or the playstation simply being over-taxed by the game and therefore overheating is not clear, certainly it runs warmer for Dust than it does for most games. There is a precedent for this problem in several other games, although it's not clear if the cause it the same, and those games were re-coded to give smoother visuals. Many players have reported improvements by modifying their PS3 with a SSD or hybrid drive, so there's clear evidence that the target system (i.e. an unmodified PS3) struggles with Dust 514.
This aside, the main problem I experience is that some players bring their own slowdown to the battle with them, such that attempting to engage them reduces your screen to stutter-vision, and quite often your hits aren't registered by the game (or, quite often, their shield and armour bars drops to nearly nothing, then further hits have no effect and they just keep on fighting). Needless to say you die, and their K/D ratios suggest that it's not an isolated problem.
There is some evidence that this is related to the geographical location of the players concerned, so I guess we're back to network considerations again. When I've tried to discuss this with some of those players, they weren't especially forthcoming, as they clearly thought I was having a dig, but one *did* volunteer that he was downloading files at the same time, so I can't help but wonder if Dust is somehow over-compensating for what it perceives as a bad connection? There is a history of such problems, in some FPS games the high-score table became known as the "high-ping table" as a good connection doomed you to failure.
Often, I think the almost godlike invincability of these is attributed to their using Proto gear regularly. I think that's effect rather than cause, though - I think they use proto gear because they know they're not throwing it away, and that it may make a difference to their game. The things that makes the biggest difference to my game is how many of the enemy reduced my screen to strobo-vision when they come in sight, so why would I bother wasting proto gear on a game like that? It's not going to be a significant factor in my performance when compared to the wider problems with the game.
These are, I would suggest, all factors which CCP could track if they wanted to deal with this problem seriously - analyse the player's game results against PING, cost of fitting used - I'd guess they could even get hold of the model details from the PS3 to see if this is related to original PS3s, or slims, or the new ultra-slims...
I can only sympathise with everyone suffering from this, and hope that the growing number of voices describing this same problem convinces CCP to look into it. |