blah blah blah
CCP FoxSocksFour is working on some changes for the wiki page to document this properly.
blah blah blah

So PC battles started today...

I can't even login, it just keeps saying updating.

I can't even login, it just keeps saying updating.

But will the name change go through?

I played 4 PC matches, had issues with almost all of them.

1st match
District: Kadlina IV - District 6
Time of battle: 2013.05.16 14:40:00
Everyone queued up, we got into the warbarge. At 3 mins left on the timer until the match startd, we all got booted out into the merc quarters. There was no mails about anything, our clones went up so we assume we won.

2nd & 3rd matches
District: Aeditide V - District 3
Time of battle: 2013.05.16 15:10:00

District: Aeditide V - District 7
Time of battle: 2013.05.16 19:50:00

Both suffered from the extreme low FPS. They were all 5 point maps.
For the 15:10 battle, as we were majority Australian players, we were given a server with FULL connection strength, so I don't think it was network lag. For the 19:50 match, we were a mishmash of players. For me the server's network was only 2 bars, and for others it was 1-3.
They both had the same installation in game. The place where the low FPS caused the most pain was in a HAV, driving around the installation where C/CRU/Supply depot are. (Best picture of what the installation is where CRU is in E7 https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=48088&find=unread ).
The low FPS was so bad that trying to turn my HAV turret 180, would result in me seeing it turn in roughly 30 degree amounts.
I lost a bunch of HAVs in the same place, where I'd see I've got 3/4 armour (in armour tanked HAV), then next frame I am destroyed with no idea of what happened.

4th match
District: Aeditide V - District 2
Time of battle: 2013.05.16 20:40:00

The other side were no shows. The installation was the same. But this time the fighting wasn't concentrated indoors at the same E7 spot (as the other team were no shows). There didn't seem to be any FPS issues.


My corp members in the matches reported the same symptoms, but some were swearing it was network lag, not FPS. Others were saying it was low FPS & network latency.

Corp members ran another match while I slept, I was told there were low FPS issues here also
District: Aeditide V - District 6
Time of battle: 2013.05.17 00:50:00

I hope this was enough detailed information for you.

What i would really like to see is that the eve side gets more dominant than it is right now. I thought the warbage strikes where turned off and all orbitals now had to be delivered by an actual eve player. Are there any updates coming to reinforce the bond between eve and dust making it much more viable to have eve guys above than it is in the instance right now where eve players are basically not needed ??

Or did i miss something regarding warbarge orbitals compared to eve player orbitals as costing equal amount of WP ?

is it that hard to figure out? you guys friggen built it... oh wait my guess is that next to none of the devs actually play their own game. how could they play it, given the decision they've made with the last build. either THEY'RE the blueberries i TK'ed for being dipshits in chromosome or marketing's so far up their ass they can't even see two feet in front of them.

Seems like the PS3 can't handle 16 v 16 matches. FPS drops dramatically in cqc, with hit detection being terrible.

Ennur VI, District 5 at 21:20 on May 16th

I didn't notice much latency, but extremely heavy framerate issues. When I tried to turn my view would jump around and the enemies we were facing would blink across the ground. It was like swimming in mud. There was a small amount of this framerate lag for me at the beginning when we spawned in, reaching its peak when we got to the facility. From what I've seen and read our opponents didn't have any lag at all.

Everyone on my team had this problem, including the people who jumped in to replace those whose clients crashed entirely. Most of our players were North American.

Definitely Framerate lag. I was probably around 1-2 fps literally. The moment I was in the main battle area I was unable to move at all. I took a video of it with my phone right before I dropped the battle... I'll try to post the youtube link here if the forum will let me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZegcxtjWy8M&feature=youtu.be

This is unacceptable, I am really disappointed.

+1, I had 2-3 FPS running around inside the facility, and maybe 5-6 fames around Delta and Charlie. We also had two people drop from the match due to skating across the map. We were the defenders in this battle.

LAG
There are a few threads about performance of the PC battles. We need to determine whether this is latency or frame rate as these are 2 very different problems. A low frame rate is going to mean your character feels like it moves slowly or the client locks up or stall and most importantly it effects how slow it is to look around. High latency is a network related problem and can cause rubber banding of your own character and others or hit detection issues but does not effect the camera being able to freely look around. If you have any detailed comments on this please let us know and we will look into it.

LAG


Some threads have identified that a mostly EU corp versus a US corp can produce high latency for one side depending on where the server is located. The location of the server for the PC battle is chosen based on the best available region for players connected but only if they connect within the first 2 minutes of the battle becoming available on the battle finder. While it still says "Waiting For Deployment" we are giving everyone the chance to get signed up before determining which server, so you should take advantage of that. We have some ideas on how to make that experience smoother and more obvious for a later release.

.

Definitely Framerate lag. I was probably around 1-2 fps literally. The moment I was in the main battle area I was unable to move at all. I took a video of it with my phone right before I dropped the battle... I'll try to post the youtube link here if the forum will let me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZegcxtjWy8M&feature=youtu.be

Definitely Framerate lag. I was probably around 1-2 fps literally. The moment I was in the main battle area I was unable to move at all. I took a video of it with my phone right before I dropped the battle... I'll try to post the youtube link here if the forum will let me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZegcxtjWy8M&feature=youtu.be

This is unacceptable, I am really disappointed.

I played 4 PC matches, had issues with almost all of them.

1st match
District: Kadlina IV - District 6
Time of battle: 2013.05.16 14:40:00
Everyone queued up, we got into the warbarge. At 3 mins left on the timer until the match startd, we all got booted out into the merc quarters. There was no mails about anything, our clones went up so we assume we won.

2nd & 3rd matches
District: Aeditide V - District 3
Time of battle: 2013.05.16 15:10:00

District: Aeditide V - District 7
Time of battle: 2013.05.16 19:50:00

Both suffered from the extreme low FPS. They were all 5 point maps.
For the 15:10 battle, as we were majority Australian players, we were given a server with FULL connection strength, so I don't think it was network lag. For the 19:50 match, we were a mishmash of players. For me the server's network was only 2 bars, and for others it was 1-3.
They both had the same installation in game. The place where the low FPS caused the most pain was in a HAV, driving around the installation where C/CRU/Supply depot are. (Best picture of what the installation is where CRU is in E7 https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=48088&find=unread ).
The low FPS was so bad that trying to turn my HAV turret 180, would result in me seeing it turn in roughly 30 degree amounts.
I lost a bunch of HAVs in the same place, where I'd see I've got 3/4 armour (in armour tanked HAV), then next frame I am destroyed with no idea of what happened.

4th match
District: Aeditide V - District 2
Time of battle: 2013.05.16 20:40:00

The other side were no shows. The installation was the same. But this time the fighting wasn't concentrated indoors at the same E7 spot (as the other team were no shows). There didn't seem to be any FPS issues.


My corp members in the matches reported the same symptoms, but some were swearing it was network lag, not FPS. Others were saying it was low FPS & network latency.

Corp members ran another match while I slept, I was told there were low FPS issues here also
District: Aeditide V - District 6
Time of battle: 2013.05.17 00:50:00

I hope this was enough detailed information for you.

Definitely Framerate lag. I was probably around 1-2 fps literally. The moment I was in the main battle area I was unable to move at all. I took a video of it with my phone right before I dropped the battle... I'll try to post the youtube link here if the forum will let me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZegcxtjWy8M&feature=youtu.be

This is unacceptable, I am really disappointed.

Which district was this battle on? ...we want to follow up what happened here, thanks for posting.

Which district was this battle on? The video is really helpful and we want to follow up what happened here, thanks for posting.

Which district was this battle on? The video is really helpful and we want to follow up what happened here, thanks for posting.

Disconnected in match halfway through both times.


Time for second one which I remember is 9:00. UA vs .137

Which district was this battle on? The video is really helpful and we want to follow up what happened here, thanks for posting.

Is anyone experiencing these problems on PC maps other than Skim Junction?


The only other major issue I have right now with PC is with the initial spawning. Since we all know that different hardware setups, and different server connections can DRASTICALLY alter the speed at which you initially get to spawn, players with a good server connection and an SSD hard drive installed get a HUGE early advantage in these matches.

In our match with Ahrendee that was outlined on the previous page, they were literally hacking 3 objectives within 3 seconds of my initial spawn in. Our entire team was within about 30 feet of the "yard" where we spawned when they we got the notification that A, B, and D were all being hacked by the enemy.

Shouldn't this game, like basically every other FPS in existence, start out with all players corralled in the beginning spawn area (the MCC would make a lot of sense in this context) and a countdown timer? This would give players with a slower connection and the stock HDD the same chance at the beginning of the match as those with lower ping and an SDD installed.

Is that what happened? We thought you guys were setting something up. But I feel you because in the first match, I didn't play because of the framerate issue. But for the second match, I reset right before it started and I didn't have a real big framerate issue in that one.

But I can assure you that maybe one of us have an SSD harddrive...and tbh, I'm not sure if he was talking about his pc or his ps3. And I know this because we all spoke about it and felt that SSD seems like the way to go but wouldn't know how to install it. I just think that it has something to do with Dust or the Unreal engine or something.

Once a PC battle starts, that starts a 1 hour exclusivity period where only the side currently attacking the district may issue another attack. You can either do this during the current battle or afterwards provided it is no more than 1 hour after the start of your PC battle. It will also mean the next battle will be scheduled the following day, meaning the defending side has no clone reinforcements before the next battle. If you wait until after the hour you not only risk another corporation swooping in and attacking instead, but you also give the defender an additional 24 hours for their district to generate a new batch of clones, making your war of attrition more difficult.

Awoxing
We are discussing with the CPM various options and timelines for this, expect to see a forum thread to discuss the ideas in the next couple of weeks.

Seriously? You may want to fast track this one as it is effecting the community for new players. You can already see Dust corps reacting badly to this. Closing off recruitment to new people, shunting all their "non-core" players out to 2ndary corps.
It is fragmenting the community due to this broken mechanic, and the community of new players are going to pay for it.

Awoxing
There has been a lot of discussion about spies infiltrating corporations and messing with PC battles. They are not breaking any rules but we certainly agree it is a little too easy to do and difficult for directors to keep under control. We don't want to completely remove spying from the game but our plans for this year include tools to help manage who can enter corporation battles. We are discussing with the CPM various options and timelines for this, expect to see a forum thread to discuss the ideas in the next couple of weeks.

A progress update on some of the things in the OP...

Mysterious Extra Clones
We are also deep in investigating reports of districts coming out of lock down and generating more clones than they should, causing issues for corporations trying to attack them. Our early analysis suggests this is not the result of players exploiting some loophole but just the system behaving incorrectly. This is my top priority at the moment to track down and fix for hopefully Wednesday or if not, shortly after.

I feel the need to say that some districts in particular have been know to be inserted with GEN packs (not regening clones) whilst under attack (locked down).

Seriously? You may want to fast track this one as it is effecting the community for new players. You can already see Dust corps reacting badly to this. Closing off recruitment to new people, shunting all their "non-core" players out to 2ndary corps.
It is fragmenting the community due to this broken mechanic, and the community of new players are going to pay for it.

Loyality points would save FW