Packetloss Restrictions

[CidHighwind]

Many people still have the notion that ping means everything in internet lag. Calling someone at 50 ping a lagger? "UNH-UNH GURLFREND, NO YOU DI'NT, MY PING IS ALL THAT AND A BAG OF CHIPS" is the common response prompted from the accused. Unfortunately they lack the knowledge of a certain internet black magic known as "packetloss."

To start off, Ping != Packetloss.

Packetloss is just that, a loss of packets AKA collections of data that pass through the series of tubes that Al Gore claims to have invented. Ping is a delayed sending and receiving, but at least the data is still being sent. A 50 ping 1% packetloss player can be harder to kill than a 400 ping 0% player. Reason? In simplest terms, your ammo data isn't being fully received, and their location data isn't being fully sent. 1% PL doesn't mean a 1% loss of damage dealt, in case you were thinking that it's such a trivial number.

Also, packetloss can be easily forced in high amounts, and timed properly to avoid the checks the game does for the averages.

The players that are teleporting around as any plane that's not a miranda are doing so because of a high packetloss. (Keeping in mind that anything over 0.3% PL is considered high.) The restrictions that the game currently has for packetloss are way too lenient. I've mentioned before that there should be a packetloss chart, and for the game to track it better.

On a bit of a different tangent...

Objectives (balls and bombs) still appear to be on a player to player basis, rather than the location data being sent to the server for confirmation, resulting in bombs and balls that pass through players, and hit the base / goal without a safety check. Fix please?

One other note to a select few individuals - Please stop flooding Bittorrent to burstlag.

[classicallad]

I lag at the moment and its horrible =( i can't kill s**t. Damn wifi.

[Fellow]

Originally Posted by classicallad

I lag at the moment and its horrible =( i can't kill s**t. Damn wifi.

Hi. First. Sorry my english. I´m from argentina and my grammatic is not good.
I always lag. My ping is 180 constant. But this doesn´t affect my aim. I will try to put some examples.
If i hit a plane on my screen , then that plane take damage. Maybe the other player feel safe behind a rock. But in my screen he is still in range to take the shoot and hit. Its common that i hit and kill someone in x place and take the health-pack on other place. And viceverza happen to me. I feel that im for example in a safe distance for randa lazor and i take damage too. Same thing when i feel safe behind a rock.
So, what im wanting to say is: if with lag i cant kill someone is not because of lag. Is because a bad aiming.
I think the game works different when y put a wall. In my screen it shows a little funny. For example: i put a wall in front an enemy plane and hi crash into it, but a fraction of second later hi continuous flying with no damage. My explain for that, is that in my screen i put it right in front, but on the other side, the enemy plane is 180ms ahead, so he pass through without problem. Same happen when i try to take a power up. Im in front of a teammate plane, i touch the powerup before, but because of my lag, i dont get anything. lol. I can talk about far more situations, including bombing. But im sure you already know what happen.

Well, going back to the title of the thread, i think packet loss should be discriminated. Im not talking about banning someone for more than 2 minutes, at first. I think, that maybe the server can auto kick that player giving him the reason and letting him to try it again inmediately. If the server detect 3 attempts, and that player keep having packet loss, then a 2 minutes ban will be right. Of course, with the correspondent explanation that he didnt resolve the packet loss issue.

cya in the sky! (Mad) Fellow

[CidHighwind]

This thread was about packetloss, and already mentioned that ping is a delayed sending and receiving, but the data is still being transmitted, so that's not the issue being brought up here.

Packetloss is a complete loss of data, and the coding seems to have a low tickrate built-in, so the interpolation of the planes get majorly shafted with small amounts of packetloss, causing "lag teleporting".

To better illustrate -
----------------------------------------------------------------------
<Plane 1> has 10 Ping, 0% Packetloss

<Plane 1> moves smoothly from <Location A> to <Location B>, with many turns along the way, no problems.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
<Plane 2> has 400 ping, 0% Packetloss

<Plane 2> moves smoothly from <Location A> to <Location B>, with many turns along the way, however with a delayed viewing time.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
<Plane 3> has "x" Ping, 1% Packetloss (x is any number and irrelevant for the example)

<Plane 3> teleports at random intervals while moving from <Location A> to <Location B>, ignoring damage and being difficult to fight, because the data is completely missing at those teleports, and can be one-way either by poor ISP or via abuse of client-side Upload/Download link, giving the player an advantage either way at survival or objective carrying.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Fellow]

Hi cid i know what you want to say about packet loss. At least, i think i understand. Not only the plane 3 you mentioned travel from A to B. Imagine Point A B C. If the other plane have packet loss, what i see in my screen is the plane going from A to B. But meanwhile he turns to C. Then, beacause of lost information, i continue following the plane from A to B while the plane isn´t there, lol! he is going to point C. There is when you can see the teleporting issue. Its pretty annoying, worst than lag. Thats why in my other post (last parragraph) i proposed a solution.
I´m sorry for the offtopic. I only wanted to clarify that lag doesnt affect the aim. Thats why i quoted Classicallad.

(MAD) Fellow

[CidHighwind]

Your idea has merit, and I considered it myself, however because the player-base is so low, I'm certain the devs are reluctant to implement more auto-kick/ban features.

My proposed idea is now to drop the ball (stationary placement) and drop the bomb (standard item loss on death and vertical falling motion) on carriers that spike in packetloss or ping (instead of a stable lag), and/or have a greater than 0.2% ~ 0.3% packetloss average. This would enable forcers (little children) and the unfortunate players with poor ISP to continue playing without disrupting the flow of objective-based games as much.

This would be a simple fix to the code, merely tying already existing removal and placement methods to ping/packetloss checks that also already exist.

[mikesol]

I'd like to see this implemented - I think it would help a lot

[trendy11one]

If i understand right, currently its a "number" set somewhere, if packetloss exceeds it, played get kicked. If so, why dont make this number optional, like ping limit. This will allow us to set certain numbers for certain competitive levels.

Btw, maybe server owners can track this at their own?And auto-kick command on someone, who spiking.