Suggestion to help manage Cyclone desync
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The change I would like to propose to Cyclone (and perhaps also Whirling Blades, as both are susceptible to the same issue) is to make the skill target purely locations on the ground, rather than being able to target a specific mob. The following case study will describe why I think this is a good idea.
Under normal netcode mechanics, the server informs the client that there is a mob of monsters nearby and they are attempting to move to the player to attack it. The monsters have problems moving around each other, resulting in some minor inherent desync. As a result, a monster the client is showing at one edge of the pack may in fact be at the other edge or in the middle of the pack somewhere. The problem occurs when you use Cyclone with that particular mob targeted - the client will show that you have ended up at the edge of the pack with the mob, where the result on the server may actually have been that you went clear through the pack to the other side. After a few iterations of this (uses of cyclone), your position and the monsters' positions are normally quite largely out of sync as compared to what they actually are on the server, which usually results in a fairly jarring resync process occurring at some point. Let's take the same situation, except now Cyclone initiates movement to a target location on the ground. In this case, the client will cyclone toward the edge of the pack of monsters on the client and also on the server because the target was a spot on the ground, not the actual monster. This may produce a slight continuity disconnect since you may not necessarily hit the specific monster you were targeting, but you will hit other monsters in the vicinity, and if/when the server issues a resync command, the result should not be anywhere near as jarring even after repeated casts of Cyclone (since both the client and server have used the same location as the skill's target regardless of how out of sync the monsters are). The one downside to this is that it will effectively necessitate that Multistrike be disabled for Cyclone, however I do not believe this is a serious issue as under present netcode, attempting to use Cyclone linked to Multistrike usually leads to hair-pulling experiences with desync. Please give this serious consideration, as I believe it would vastly help with fluidity of gameplay when using Cyclone as a major part of one's build. Minor edit for grammar. Last edited by lordbean on Jul 28, 2014, 7:16:13 PM
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I've suggested exact same thing, for the exact same reasons, to get the exact same reply. (someone else also told me they had suggested this.)
Kinda obvious solution, and kind of disappointing to never get a reply to it. Getting pretty tire of the "we're fixing it!" line they've been quoting for a couple of years now while suggestions like these aren't implemented. note that if we use the position of any targeted mob on the client as the destination for the skill multistrike and mob targeting would also work fine. |
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I don't think the Multistrike issue is quite that simple - Multistrike's targeting is done server-side and the client tries to make a "best guess" at what the server did (try it with flicker strike - sometimes the client will say you went here and then you suddenly warp a screen away because the server actually moved you to a different mob). It could still potentially be coded to work, but the server would have to give the client ground-based coordinates of Multistrike's auto-targeted uses of the skill in order to prevent things from going out of sync.
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The only changes i would make is to add rules to the targeting behavior particularly on multi strikes follow up hits.
Will not target Fleeing monsters Will not target monsters that have just cast lightning warp Maybe change it so cyclone can't travel through doorways Other one would be that it can't fail to initiate which it seems to do every now and then Ancestral Bond. It's a thing that does stuff. -Vipermagi
He who controls the pants controls the galaxy. - Rick & Morty S3E1 |
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kinda understand why you guys keep complaining about the desync...before yesterday, I have very little desync problem as I mostly get away with them but once I reached Act 3 M, I dead a few times while against corrupted boss (exile type with firestorm) My build is run&hit which i have 30% movement buff. I clearly ran to the other room and just a sec or 2 later i got killed and I am not in that room...and or the game is like just suddenly disconnected...when it back normal, i mostly surrounded by enemy...
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1119850
Selling Crit Bow ilvl 68-75 (Mostly White) |
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" The targeting behavior of multistrike isn't really what causes the desync issues, it's the fact that the server does the targeting for you and tells the client which mobs it targeted for the two auto-casts. This ends up in the player normally being quite badly out of sync because the client shows you moving toward wherever the monsters are on the client side, rather than the server side. Having the skill not move through doorways would be a much larger technical hurdle than it sounds, because the entire skill would have to be recoded to take its surrounding environment into account. " It fails to initiate when you're too close to a piece of terrain which is solid. Whirling blades often suffers from the same issue. | |
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I think you misunderstood what I meant about the mob targeting for multistrike and normal mob targeting.
I think skills like these (whirling blades, lightning warp, cyclone), should always target a ground position, and the only data that should be sent to the server is the ground position you are going towards. Its also more than possible to have that destination be the client side position of the mob you've locked onto, but noooo, let's desync for days instead. Its completely unnecessary. Honestly, the desync is annoying. along with alot of the other issues this game has. What's really infuriating is that they don't wanna fix it and seem to wanna convince me it can't be fixed. It can. It isn't. ugh. /rant |
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You didn't quite understand, the game has 2 versions running the server is the rule the client is what you see, if you change the rule set on multistrike you will not be moving into another room chasing a monster that has moved(the main cause for cyclone/multistrike) on either the server OR the client.
And it should never fail to initiate even if you are to close to something, you are occasionally in the position of face hugging the walls on the server but client side you are out in the open...if it always activates you regain the benefit of leaching AND the follow up hits from multistrike moving you back into play(though this wouldn't save whirling blades) Ancestral Bond. It's a thing that does stuff. -Vipermagi He who controls the pants controls the galaxy. - Rick & Morty S3E1 Last edited by lagwin1980 on Jul 29, 2014, 10:48:11 AM
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" I understand perfectly how the system works - the reason why it's harder than you think to change Cyclone to be aware of doors is not because the server is running the master copy of the game. It's because the skill would have to have a complete targeting overhaul in order to make that suggestion happen. Incidentally, the fact that "the server is the rule the client is what you see" is where the bulk of the desync issues with Cyclone are coming from in the first place. Notably, it targets monsters - not monsters' positions. The game only communicates back and forth which monster was targeted, which results in the client and server often causing Cyclone to path in two different directions (because the same monster is not in the same position between client/server). " At its core nature, they are correct in that desync itself is not something that can be entirely eliminated - however, there are a lot of things they could be doing (such as ground-targeting for Cyclone) that would help improve the flow of gameplay, despite that some desync is still happening. I do agree that their stance of repeating "we're working on it" is infuriating - the game has been in release phase for just about a year now, and this is really all they've said on the issue. I think the GGG devs would really benefit from some additional transparency into what they're working on, and why. | |
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I know this is a necro, but I've been using cyclone recently, and seeing such a simple and obvious fix not being used is really frustrating me.
I'm going to message ggg and see if I can get a reply on this. I actually really hope I'm wrong, there is some basic flaw in my reasoning, and that it can't be implemented for some reason or another. That way, I'm not feeling frustrated and annoyed every time I play the game, and I don't have to wait for a fix. alternatively, I'd like to know that they have at least considered this, before I give up on this company completely. |
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