Render Distance: PS2 totally broken

phungus · 2013-02-18, 03:01 PM

It's just unplayable.

PS2 was very neat for the first couple weeks, then lack of meta etc made PS2 fall into the boringness duldrums. I did discover the ESF at that time and given my favorite space fighting game, Allegiance, had hit the final stages of death for a game I still found some fun flying around (no rocket pods though, just cheese A2A). I had alot of fun with the mossy; focused on shooting down other ESFs which kept me going a couple more months. Unfortunately for ESFs it's impossible to fly now (outside of a friendly air zerg). I think this is a combination of factors primarily being how they toned down render priority on ESFs, secondary issues include lack of targets (less people flying), and ground AA. While ESF render priority has "fixed" the anhilator issue (what a crap way to fix the problem, by making the target invisible and invulnerable...), the unfortunate side effect is that it makes to so enemy ESFs pop into existence at 100 meters; which is a death sentence when there are multiple enemy ESFs. Also in the dogfighting side game where you fly at max altitude the render priority has made it all but impossible to locate targets, basically forcing you on Connery to head to the VS warpgate where render distance improves, and the sythe's lack of speed gives you an advantage, this gets old quick.

In a tank you can huck shells and defend for a bit, but once you get more then a 100 players or so engaged in a battle then invisible ghosts kill you, with no possibility to retaliate. I've seen this happen multiple times, most noteably while defending, you can stop infantry for a while, but then they start blinking in and out of existance right in front of you, followed shortly after by invisible lock on rocket death. For infantry things can seem OK, but it's wierd that you can ignore masses of tanks 200 meters away - but then you realize you have invisible god mode, but even infantry fights get completely ruined by rendering in big enough battles, and sniping is just pointless.

In smaller engagments, about a platoon vs platoon or so in a 1 sq km area, things work perfectly, weapons even seem well balanced and you have actual combined arms fighting. But on Connery you pretty much have a couple large battles where render distance completely breaks things (especially for ESFs, where enemy swarms pop into existance within weapon range), or total ghost towns with no action - no in between.

The game could be awesome. Like I said you get good glimpses of what "large epic battles" are when platoons collide, but once you add in a few pubs and randoms spawning in (or the zerg's inherent compulsion to mass with other large masses of players) everything goes to complete shit. We're not talking like minor issues, it's straight up invisible god mode enemies killing you, or in the case of ESFs, getting stuck in the middle of enemy swarms because a fraction of a second later they didn't exist.

It's just completely and utterly broken. Having to decide between being stuck in a massive battle against invisible god mode enemies, or going on a ghost capping snore fest makes me chose BF3. And that's pretty much the existant dichotomy in PS2 now - well that or I could play my Vanu on Helios, but every time I do it gets ruined by hackers (which is odd because on Connery hacking issues are pretty equivalent to other FPSes, Helios is just overrun, but that's a separate issue).

Sledgecrushr · 2013-02-18, 03:37 PM

I was piloting a liberator the other day and I got swamped by an air zeeg of about thirty mossies. They seemed to render just fine for me on connery. Before you quit come out and fly and see what ps2 has in store next month.

phungus · 2013-02-18, 04:04 PM

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

I was piloting a liberator the other day and I got swamped by an air zeeg of about thirty mossies. They seemed to render just fine for me on connery.

Seriously WTF does this have to do with anything? Can you get in positions where the game will render some threats at a distance? Sure. The problem is it is a common occurance for multiple enemies not to render, which can give them invisible god mode that utterly ruins gameplay for tanks and sniping, and also causes ESFs to pop into existence litterally in the same distance it takes you to airbrake and turn around. These are gamebreaking issues, that aren't rare, they are common place and a standard part of any large battle.

I see you have the 666 tags. Do you spend most of your time in the middle of a friendly zerg? In that case most rendering issues are going to break the game for your opponents, not to mention the fact you're putting yourself in positions where you always have overwhelming force which can seem fun for a while but many people look for challenges and do things like intentionally switch to the losing team in BF3, etc. If you like giving yourself challenges and object oriented missions (beyond follow the zerg, ie platoon waypoint) rendering issues mask critical information in battles, as well as makes certain areas impossible to approach -not due to player skill or strategic concerns, but simply due to invisible god mode having a huge affect on gameplay.

VR Draco · 2013-02-18, 03:58 PM

Try to inform before crying....

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...?postid=888935

Render distance just got fixed, only on 2 servers but they are working on it and it seems that they have massive success on Miller and Connery.

phungus · 2013-02-18, 04:09 PM

Originally Posted by VR Draco

Try to inform before crying....

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...?postid=888935

Render distance just got fixed, only on 2 servers but they are working on it and it seems that they have massive success on Miller and Connery.

Rendering issues are not fixed. There was a test done on Connery, and I was playing while they tested this. It did improve things, but it did not fix them. Also it was after this test where ESF render range changed (I'm assuming they have a different threat level), which did have a huge impact on annhilators - but it has also made ESFs pop into existence at ridiculous ranges, including friendly aircraft that can render into existence on collision courses and require split second reflexes to avoid -- I wish I was joking.

DirtyBird · 2013-02-18, 05:35 PM

Originally Posted by VR Draco

Try to inform before crying....

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...?postid=888935

Render distance just got fixed, only on 2 servers but they are working on it and it seems that they have massive success on Miller and Connery.

CQC rendering isnt fixed nor is it being worked on afaik and I would consider it part of the rendering problems.
I think one of the devs might have even come out and said they wont be fixing this issue because it affected those with older PC's.
I would have thought that in these situations it was just as, if not more, important to be able to see the enemy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=sUcMP2b3734

Koadster · 2013-02-20, 12:57 AM

Originally Posted by VR Draco

Try to inform before crying....

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...?postid=888935

Render distance just got fixed, only on 2 servers but they are working on it and it seems that they have massive success on Miller and Connery.

Im on Connery, personally im finding it worse, with less sized battles im having more people just pop in. Hell there was one base that only had max 50 people and they were still dropping in and out.

camycamera · 2013-02-18, 05:20 PM

VR Draco · 2013-02-18, 05:43 PM

At a point it is TECHNICALY impossible...

I have explained this fact some times ago and I wont do this again.

Just in short, the problem is that the server load raises EXPONENTIAL with the number of players "shown".
You can't "render" 200 people in an CQC, it is (state of the art) not possible.
Accept it or give an technical solution for this problem, which is still unsolved in every "big" MMO.

But to say "everything is shit and PS2 will die" is just bullshit and brings us nowhere.

DirtyBird · 2013-02-18, 05:58 PM

Roadmap: January - Rendering Distance Based on Threat 1751 upvotes

This is listed as completed in the Roadmap.
I'd consider someone 30m away as more of a threat than the guy 200m away.
Dont pimp it if its not TECHNICALLY possible.

VR Draco · 2013-02-19, 05:37 AM

Originally Posted by DirtyBird

Roadmap: January - Rendering Distance Based on Threat 1751 upvotes

This is listed as completed in the Roadmap.
I'd consider someone 30m away as more of a threat than the guy 200m away.
Dont pimp it if its not TECHNICALLY possible.

OH DEAR IT IS THAT EASY? OMG, why don't they give you a job, you have ideas nobody would EVER think of...

/sarcasm

Sorry buddy, if it would be THAT easy to fix, don't you think the developers would have fixed this long time ago?
If you have to calculate the distance between every player on the battlefield and this in EVERY position change, so every few milliseconds, then bandwith would not be your problem, then the "CPU" would be your problem. And this calculation also raises EXPONENTIALY with the number of players in an area.

So please, stop those "easy" ideas....there are working developers...and they have something called brain and they use it. Just accept that THIS problem is not that trivial to fix, not with this scale of battle.

Redshift · 2013-02-19, 07:07 AM

Yea it's completly fucked on miller right now, giving up for the day, waste of time trying to do anything atm

Thunderhawk · 2013-02-19, 08:12 AM

Originally Posted by Redshift

Yea it's completly fucked on miller right now, giving up for the day, waste of time trying to do anything atm

Have they done any new changes to Miller ? I was playing all of last night (In work atm) and there were no issues.

Any patch applied ?

DirtyBird · 2013-02-19, 08:15 AM

Originally Posted by VR Draco

blah BLAH blah

Whats so easy? I never posted my ideas, yet you seem to think I have plastered them all over this thread.
I posted an opinion, you should know the difference, if not you probably do now.

Anyway I thought we'd seen the last of your posts on the matter, you've apparently told us so many times in the past and you said you wouldnt do it again.
And here you are giving us the short and extended version, we know, we've read it before.

I've simply posted what the devs said would be done in regard to rendering. You understand its not my idea?
1751 people thought it was a good one, no one down voted it, yet it never made it into the patch.
I ask myself if the (dev)ideas on the roadmap are not technically possible(in your opinion) then why are they on there.
And that goes for any dev idea on the roadmap.

Sledgecrushr · 2013-02-19, 07:23 AM

Phungus I took the opportunity to look your character up. It looks like that you play on Cobalt and that you have a total of 1 hr and 27 minutes logged in. Since you really dont have much of an investment with this character I suggest you try miller or connery for a couple of hours.