The Hit detection is so poor.

Miffy · 2012-12-07, 08:46 PM

In games like Planetside it didn't matter so much because the TTK wasn't as short and you could always get away, I'm sure they used some other method too because it didn't feel much like an FPS compared to others around.

I just find myself running round corners and then dying, taking cover and then being hit and it's very much like TF2 all over again. Like FFS, I run round a corner and then a sniper gets me, I'm like 2m round in cover FFS! I expect this from Source or maybe even what ever shit net code they use over at DICE, I don't want it to become the norm. Why have we gotten to this point where latency has become so low and yet games don't seem to care any more? I miss the days of perfect hit detection with Id, John Carmack always seemed to care about latency. Now it seems like graphics come before it..... sorta like how the monitor industry has become, find it funny how we can ping a server from half way across the world than some TVs and monitors......

It has become the point where it is really annoying me, AA turret weapons suffer from it, you have to aim in an unusual position to hit because of the bad hit detection. I also find that if I ever get shot, I'm dead even if I go to run round a corner before I'm hit. Like people moan about the TTK but I swear they're just having problems like this.

Maybe it is the shitty EU servers? I dunno because SOE only allow 3 fucking characters. Test it, sit by a corner, then when being fired upon, run round it and see if you die afterwards, it always happens to me and it pisses me off. Nearly as much as landing on the edge of a platform and it flipping my aircraft over :\

Zaik · 2012-12-08, 01:59 AM

Hit detection is client side, probably for performance reasons.

Players don't have to shoot a person's actual position, just where their picture appears on their screen.

Once you realize it and alter your playstyle accordingly it's not much different than doing things normally.

Electrofreak · 2012-12-08, 05:27 AM

Yeah, as Zaik mentioned, hit detection is client-side, so if someone shoots you on their screen and it connects, it's a moment before that information is transmitted to the server and then to you, hence dying after you ran around the corner.

It sucks but it's how SOE gets 2000 players on a map.

Sturmhardt · 2012-12-08, 05:56 AM

Yup, it's the netcode, not the hit detection... but it became the norm. Quake 3 had decent netcode, but nowadays.... this shit is the norm, where every ass with a 56k modem can play and it looks smooth to them but you get shot 2m behind a corner.

Electrofreak · 2012-12-08, 06:03 AM

Originally Posted by Sturmhardt

Yup, it's the netcode, not the hit detection... but it became the norm. Quake 3 had decent netcode, but nowadays.... this shit is the norm, where every ass with a 56k modem can play and it looks smooth to them but you get shot 2m behind a corner.

Not even netcode really, but the simple fact that latency, packet loss, and jitter exist. You can have the best heuristics imaginable but it all falls apart over 200 ms latency, because that's the threshold for human reaction time and making predictions about actions outside of that reaction time threshold is a lot less accurate than making predictions within the threshold, because its not likely the player will have had time to react yet to an action in-game. Packet loss contributes as well. Even if latency is low, a little bit of loss acts as a multiplier of that latency which can again cause heuristics to be inaccurate. Jitter throws it off as well because the latency is inconsistent, affecting the accuracy of the netcode as well.

Frankly, latency is the lesser of the 3 evils. Latency over 100 ms but less than 200 ms, if consistent, is fairly easily handled by the heuristics in the netcode. It may be slow, but it's predictably slow. Loss and jitter throw random variables into the equation and are what really screw things up.

Latency, loss, and jitter do NOT mean a bad internet connection either. Latency-sensitive traffic is affected by other traffic on the connection. For example, you might have a great connection, but your link is maxed out by other people on your LAN causing packet delays or loss, or someone may be using an application which produces bursty traffic that results in transmission delays for the UDP packets PS2 utilizes. The same could be said about the player on the other end of your rifle. Throw wireless LAN connections in congested RF space into the mix and you can easily have a recipe for disaster.

In short, there's a lot of things that play into it. If we could get everyone on wired low-latency, low-loss, low-jitter connections with QoS prioritizing PS2 packets across the link, there would be a lot less problems. Unfortunately, it isn't going to happen.

I work for a major ISP (on the enterprise side, not residential thankfully) and the reality is that a lot of people out there have really crappy internet connections and don't even know it. Most internet traffic is TCP and is re-transmitted if it's dropped, and packet delays in TCP traffic often aren't noticeable. Then, as soon as you fire up a game like PS2 that uses primarily latency-sensitive UDP traffic (which is not re-transmitted) and you see lag and poor performance, the first thing people tend to do is blame other players and the game netcode.

And honestly, your ISP isn't going to tell you if your connection is crappy; if you're not complaining about it, they're not going to do anything about it. Often they don't even know about it because sometimes problem isn't on their network, but with another ISP they're peering with, and would only be visible when running tests between the client and server.

So, I recommend anyone having issues, try running NetAlyzr. It's a web-based, comprehensive, WAN link analyzer made by Berkley's International Computer Science Institute, and it's quite good.

http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/

cooonips · 2012-12-10, 12:16 AM

I am one from the other side of the fence who has a less fortunate internet connection, were lag does poke its nose in my online gaming.

planetside 2 will not run on a 56k modem at all. yes, most other games will, but this planetside is a little larger scale than the likes of cod. watching the network activity I have seen it eats over 100kb/s download, even more in more busy areas, so from that i would say you need atleast a dedicated 1mbit connection to play this smoothly. it certainly could do with a little optimization, just like the hardware requirements of this game.

of course for most people thats nothing, but for some that could be their whole connection. most people arent actually aware of how much bandwidth this game actually needs. you may assume its like any other game, but it is not. for comparison, planetside uses ~100kb/s download, battlefield 3 uses ~6kb/s download. both games use barely any upload.

apart from that, the main problem is that it allows you to keep playing normally and still count your shots even if you have 3 second ping or something. on our side of the lag barrier, it can be like this: peek out of cover, see enemy, shoot enemy lots, duck back into cover, wait a few seconds for the hitmarkers and hopefully get a kill.
it isnt fun for me either to play with that much ping, which is why i dont. however, there is people who do, weather its because they suck too much to realise whats going on, or on purpose so they can abuse it.

the solution is simple. freeze people who have over a certain amount of ping. most online games will show some disconnecty icon and not allow you to move, but on the server you will still be standing still. sometimes the connection may come and go so the client teleports you back to your real position which is where you get rubber banding.

oh wow. all this rambling has made this post longer than i thought. oh well.
TL;DR version:
the solution is to freeze players who have too high ping

Ghoest9 · 2012-12-10, 01:16 AM

A good general rule is move forward(or flank)- dont camp. This applies even if you have small ping.