Cal Predine
StarKnight Security
37
   |
Posted - 2013.01.03 14:00:00 -
[1] - Quote
Network problems are out in force on the new build:
- teleporting across the field
- enemy characters not moving smoothly at close range.
- enemy characters vanishing/ reappearing at longer range when viewed through a scoped weapon (could be another variation of the teleport effect, or due to them stepping outside the draw distance).
- enemies not taking damage even when the game client clearly thinks they should (i.e. enemy shield flares)
- clear mismatch in effects during "toe-to-toe" battles (one side being damaged normally, other side very little or not at all).
It would appear from observing these problems (as a programmer but not a game programmer) that the hit/ miss calculation is being handled client side, while damage calculation and allocation is relying on that round-trip to/ from the server, but that round-trip s not happening.
Damage allocation problems are very frequent, affecting perhaps two thirds of all matches to some extent. Serious problems depend upon where you draw the "serious" line, obviously, but I'd say I feel pretty irrelevant in 1/4 to 1/3 of all matches due to not being able to affect the gameworld in any meaningful way. 
Load-times on new matches and the suit loadouts, which I initially considered a great strength of the new build, are becoming longer in some (not all) cases - I've no idea why that should be, but obviously I suspect network problems again.
I'm being booted out of games again - hasn't happened for quite some time, but 3 times in the last 2 days (admittedly I've been playing a lot over those days. ..) This coincided with other problems as described above, attributable to network problems.
Weapon reloading now sometimes stalls in some way, leaving you with an unusable weapon in your hands. I've managed to work around this by swapping weapons and then back again (if I have time), otherwise I just lose another clone to it  I'll try to find a way to recreate it, but I'm guessing that ammo count may be recorded server side?
And it's only fair to mention, since I like playing with networks, I can tell you that these problems persist across 2 different routers, regardless of whether they're set up using UPnP, port triggering/ forwarding or (reluctantly) DMZing the whole Playstation.
Network connection is 20Mb cable with no other problems observed, I have a wired Gb connection to the router via a Cisco switch, all other FPS games seem to run fine, and ping times whenever I've tested then have been just fine.
as an aside on the UPnP front, one of my routers gives me a nice list of all the machines and their UPnP-derived port mapping relationships with the router. The PS3 negotiates one as soon as it's turned on (I'm seeing UDP on port 3658), but Dust, it seems doesn't add its port requirements.
EDIT: Forgot to mention -
Using an official Sony PS3 Bluetooth keyboard, I'm also being plagued with menus popping up at inopportune times - that never used to happen, and has cost me a fair few clones. For example, the vehicle/ off-map support menu likes to pop up in combat when my fingers are nowhere near the "V" key. Other screens (such as he player list) also do this now and then. |
Cal Predine
StarKnight Security
37
|
Posted - 2013.01.04 09:31:00 -
[2] - Quote
Cal Predine wrote:...ping times whenever I've tested then have been just fine...
It seems this comment of mine was actually rather flawed..
In frustration at consistently unplayable performance, I set up my PC to make a persistent ping test every 30 seconds, the idea being that if the lag is intermittent or "bursty" a one-off ping would be quite likely to miss it. The results were... oh dear...
Ping statistics for 159.253.143.196:
Packets: Sent = 23, Received = 12, Lost = 11 (47% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 36ms, Maximum = 212ms, Average = 86ms
47% packet loss, and some pretty high delays. No wonder I'm getting pwnd! 
So I delved a little further, and traced the route to the EU server...
Now, I should add a few caveats to my findings...
- the location of trans-oceanic internet pipes isn't well publicised for obvious reasons, so I'm not sure if this is normal behaviour (obviously I only started checking when it went wrong).
- IP geographical lookup sites are notoriously unreliable
But, that said, I was a little surprised to find that my link from south-coast UK to the Nederlands was not making the expected brief trip under the North Sea, and was in fact being routed (for 3 of the 13 hops) via Dallas Texas...
As far as I could tell (which required some interpretation, so not 100%) most of the packet-loss is happening after the last US router, but before or at the first Nederlands one.
This would certainly go some way to explaining the odd behaviour UK players are experiencing in games against continental European players!
It also indicates that UK players should be better off playing on US servers (which are in, yup, Dallas Tx) than the EU ones...
And there's probably nothing CCP can do abut this. Suckage.
However, during the recent HK game show we were given back the ability to choose to games hosted on the Asian server (some beta testers may remember we used to be able to do this for all matches before the match-balancing system was introduced).
I understood that the match-balancing system took connectivity into account when assigning players to matches, but clearly this isn't working properly - I wonder if (as has oft been requested) we could be given back free choice as to which server zone we connect to? |