Packetloss Forcing Preventative Measures

[CidHighwind]

Over the last year or so, Ping and Packetloss Forcing have become increasingly annoying issues. More and more players are resorting to it to take advantage of the well-known poor Netcode of Altitude - AKA objectives and ammo being carried by laggy players continue to carry the player's lag to the receiving player instead of being redirected to the server to handle - resulting in lagbombs / lagshots that pass through the non-lagging players.

My suggestions are to use filters and charts similar to Infantry (originally by Harmless Games, bought out by SOE).

1) Options for servers to filter Packetloss, and a lesser amount of tolerance. I.E.: 0.1% packetloss is enough to cause visible glitches/lag in a game such as this. 0.3% and above should never be tolerated on an important Ladder / League game.
2) Implement a Packetloss chart showing the %'s per player at any given time with streaming updates.
3) Packetloss and ping tracking, keeping track of highs, lows, and averages of each.

[CidHighwind]

Should we assume the devs are gone or simply don't have the technical capacity to fix the Netcode, or at least include simple packetloss charts?

[lamster]

The ping displayed on the score screen is a composite network performance number, based on ping but heavily penalized for packet loss. There are already server options to automatically kick players for exceeding a specific composite ping threshold, and JSON log entries that allow servers to implement custom rules based on trends over time.

I am willing to expose additional, finer-grained network information and add a server option to kick based on that, but I'm not sure how much it will help with the core problem. Network kicks can be just as disruptive to a ladder game as the lagging player's plane skipping. Judging from the loose kick thresholds currently in place on competitive servers, I'm assuming most hosts will choose not to utilize more draconian controls. Those that are interested can achieve a very similar effect by setting a low max ping threshold in the current build.

I will make an effort to improve the network code governing lag bombs in a future patch, but it's a tricky issue with no perfect solution.

[bitabur]

The issue is that the client side seems to have control of whether a bomb hits, or a ball scores, so exploiting lag allows players to score, or bomb a base, before the other players can kill them.

I know I *ALWAYS* have a higher score when I'm playing on european servers with 200+ ping than when im on american servers with 50-70 ping.

The fact is, lag is an advantage in altitude, and in my opinion that needs to change.

[Ribilla]

I do think more could be done, but I don't think lag is an advantage. Yes it makes your bombs harder to block, but in turn it makes it very difficult for a laggy player to block bombs over their own base.

I am primarily a killer/controller rather than a runner, but I almost always do better when I have low pings. I have a home connection and a uni connection, my uni connection is significantly better (50 ping better) and I can't wait to go back so I can start owning again.

It is really frustrating when someone lag bombs, the only solution I can think of is to make it a ladder rule that any player with over 200 ping isn't allowed to run on a team-bomb map, it's not perfect, but it might help and it's kind of an unspoken rule anyway.

[Hollywood]

Originally Posted by Ribilla

I don't think lag is an advantage. Yes it makes your bombs harder to block, but in turn it makes it very difficult for a laggy player to block bombs over their own base.

Thats where your wrong, I have this ping modification program that allows me to play and act just like a laggy player in the range of 200+ ping to 300+ ping and back down to 30 ping. Anyways, the point is when we were testing this. It does give a huge advantage because even as a killer you teleport and are able to get into positions before the other players can react BECAUSE you lag.

It's like you go to the top of the map but on the other persons screen your right beside the hill on hills and then they see a jump where you are right in front of them and then they are like "Well damn I thought he was somewhere else etc etc"

Edit: Also the main point around this, is the person who is lagging can't tell if they are lagging by just playing. When I was testing this out, it was like I wasn't lagging but with high ping, and on the other side everyone said that it was so bad it was unfair.

[XX1]

Originally Posted by Hollywood

Thats where your wrong, I have this ping modification program that allows me to play and act just like a laggy player in the range of 200+ ping to 300+ ping and back down to 30 ping. Anyways, the point is when we were testing this. It does give a huge advantage because even as a killer you teleport and are able to get into positions before the other players can react BECAUSE you lag.

It's like you go to the top of the map but on the other persons screen your right beside the hill on hills and then they see a jump where you are right in front of them and then they are like "Well damn I thought he was somewhere else etc etc"

Lol lag... Basically there are trades if you lag or not. When you lag you can pretty much say goodbye to shielding bombs at certain angles... but you can totally bs a lot of people and completely throw them off their game. When your not lagging well, your playing a fair game pretty much, and you can block/shield bombs much easier. In all honestly i do really enjoy my London ping to irritate players with whatever i can lag with.

Oh Holly thats more spike, than bad connection i noticed that a lot with my old internet and Danielle as well. But there are laggy players who dont "Jump across the map"

BTW:lag is not really an advantage people just cant deal with it. or play with it

[Ribilla]

Generally I find lag hinders my killing, except for killing TAs, they tend to anchor slightly too late so the kill counts. Other than that I'd much rather I had green pings. Also, I would like to point out that all of the best (TA) runners have low pings, go figure.

[Tekn0]

Originally Posted by bitabur

The issue is that the client side seems to have control of whether a bomb hits, or a ball scores, so exploiting lag allows players to score, or bomb a base, before the other players can kill them.

I know I *ALWAYS* have a higher score when I'm playing on european servers with 200+ ping than when im on american servers with 50-70 ping.

The fact is, lag is an advantage in altitude, and in my opinion that needs to change.

Lag works both ways. In ball if you have a high lag simply picking up the ball can be difficult because you're either not really there or packetloss causes the collision detection to not happen.

I play much better on Euro servers with 20 ping than US servers with 150 ping (over wifi which means a tiny bit more packet loss).