ScrotieMcB vs Desync Dev Manifesto (Massive Wall Map of Text)

ScrotieMcB:

I can't respond with a point-by-point reply to your analysis of my sync article, but I believe from your reply that I must not have explained certain points well enough in my initial article. I can see that you have a good understanding of the general case of why maintaining server-authoritative sync across latency is difficult, and you have a clear passion to want Path of Exile's sync code to be improved, but your criticisms of my article show that I have not properly communicated how and why our system works as it does. I honestly feel that people are unfairly critical of this system considering it's probably one of the most advanced ones that has had to be made for an action RPG of this type. While it certainly has its flaws and can cause some terrible gameplay experiences, it does allow PoE to be one of two Action RPGs that allows zero client manipulation of combat results.

The point is somewhat moot though, because we do have substantial changes coming up to deploy to the production realm in the coming weeks. I'd rather get those done than spend ages arguing about semantics :)

The changes to map generation so that the client doesn't have the entire map in memory will be some time in their implementation. I acknowledged the issue, and scheduled a fix, but it's large enough to not be on our horizon for the initial release which is rapidly approaching. Iin the meantime we have to rely continuing to ban people who run maphack software, rather than making their software less effective. It's a change I'd desperately love to see in, but is less important and more time consuming than other changes we have to have in by release. Such as better sync code.