[April 12] Initial Development Manifesto Feedback

95% of my current deaths can be attributed to one of two things: Physical reflect and desynch deaths. The first I can control. The second is frustrating beyond words. By FAR the worst cases occur in places like spider lairs or close-quarters crypts. Doorways seem designed strictly to screw me. I stop my character just outside a doorway and start firing, then back up... only to get hit a half dozen times, die, and find my body warped inside the room where I never set foot. Exploding mobs rush at me, so I drop a totem and back up, only to die and have my corpse warped to the other side of my totem. Constantly, I'll shoot at mobs, and they'll take no damage, because the game thinks I'm two steps to the left of where it shows me, and I'm firing into a wall. I can't go the length of a dungeon without having an obvious, jarring, frustrating experience where I'm either taking damage from something I can't see, or something I'm shooting isn't taking damage from me. Neither Diablo 3 nor Torchlight 2 had any such problems. Given the death penalty here is MUCH worse than either of them, the game can't afford this kind of a problem. I just lost half a level of xp at 80 to damage from mobs through walls. I guarantee I won't be able to keep playing if this keeps up.

Also, I'm not even slightly a fan of the map system. Today I ran a 74, 73, a couple 72's, and a couple 71's, used alchs and chaoses and chisels galore, and came away with a single 70 map, out of like 7 runs. I spent considerably more currency than I got. I'm really not a fan of farming something just to be able to farm appropriate level content, nor of having to spend hard-earned currency with no guarantee of any return from my investment. Throwing alchs and chaoses and chisels at maps only to walk away empty-handed time and time again is beyond infuriating.

I would like to see the higher difficulty map mods result in a guaranteed map drop of equal or higher level, or something of that nature. If I have to farm the map, then farm chisels to improve the map, then farm orbs to roll attributes for the map, I'd like some sort of guarantee that my time and investment hasn't been totally wasted. Today I started with a collection of 71-74 maps, a stack of alchs and chisels and a few chaoses, and spent them all on the maps, and all that remains is a 70. I did maps upwards of 90% difficulty, dying repeatedly only to eke out a win (for example, over a particularly nasty Piety-clone in Temple with -max resists and +boss dmg), only to get absolutely nothing for my trouble.

Right now, it seems we have to farm a higher end map, farm some chisels, farm alchs or chaoses, JUST to be able to farm for items we want. There are too many ways for that chain to break down, and result in a net waste of time, waste of currency, and gain of frustration. The itemization system is random enough on crafting and drops and such... do we really need another multi-tiered layer of randomness for more chances to just get screwed by RNG?

It's sad to see such great game being slowly eaten away by desync.I have lost all my chars to desync there were only 2cases where it was my own fault and that is out of 15chars over level 55,but that's not really the main issue here in permanent league you stash your shit and then you can re level again no problem.The main problem is the races where you die and its over then its either early on or towards the end which is even more annoying.


Yes i have read the developer crap and while they are writing that shit and making useless skill gems and wasting time on stuff that game can go on without that just fine.The desync still remains and its not getting any better AT AL every single time you collide with mob in tight space you will get desynced or if theres very big pack of mobs and you are trying to get out of pack colliding with mobs will also desync you and that's guarantee desync.


So please do something about that shit so i can play your godly great game.

Cheers

To piggu back on the guy above me....Where I dont agree with th game being eaten away by desynce. I do agree that is should become top priority in the manifesto. I know you guys are working hard on it and I am not going to leave because of it. But before all these new skills come out, it would be nice to see a update coming soon to help improve it. I currently use /oos religously to re sync me to the server so I dont have an issue much with it. I dont see is going away ever completely, as every ARPG I have played has it...

On another note, looking forward to Melee receiving more love. I think the biggest improvement should be to all armor/all evasion melee builds. The mitigations for those just doesnt seem to work the way it should currently for melee. I think looking into Evasion getting a buff in regards to parcal hits. Not just hit or miss. Its like a boxer kinda dodging a punch, the hit is mitigated a lot. I think this aspect could help improve evasion melee builds a lot.

Obviously, another client-server desync related post:

- Ok, so the client is receiving packets with the fact that you're getting hit (while the screen isn't showing anything hitting you)... you try to run away from danger but while on your screen is showing that you're running away, you're actually not (probably being stuck in a corner)

Question: Why not send your ACTUAL position on the server every time when sending some data related to feedback ? (the fact that you're getting hit, or that your hits have caused elemental effects, etc.)
It would be awesome to continuously update monster positions as well...

It's freeking damn frustrating to try to run away but you have no idea if you're actually getting away...

I don't think that entity positions are THAT much bandwidth, really... so it's you, maybe some minions and a couple of mobs... each with X and Y positions, perhaps direction and movement speed (the client can calculate Z depending on map).

So that's between 10 and 40 entities, with 4 values to send, each being a 4-byte FLOAT value ( optimizations could be done to further reduce this )... Let's say update this 5 times per second ... that is 10*4*4 to 40*4*4 (*5) = 800 bps to 3.2 kbps, to almost eliminate the entire problem of being in one place on your screen and in another place on the server.

No need to update projectiles, if that position is wrong... well, it's acceptable. Just a constant stream of mob/player positions would be WONDERFUL !

Seriously, the year is 2013, I think the internet CAN TAKE IT.
Thank you !

i seen the post about new melee buffing and for me i hope it will be awesome i play a build that almost no1 plays not coz i am a idiot just coz i want 2 play what i play i play a dual strike double dagger crit CI shadow and its hard as **** to play could read above what other players wrote,i am saying its rly hard coz i have less ES then other CI user's coz i dont use a shield first of all since u implemented dualwield passives on the start of the shadow side of the tree i am confused why is that so coz no1 takes it but "idiots" like me.

All melee wannabe CI users are gimped at start coz of frozen/chilled i saw one guy QQing about HP users witch is rly funny for me and HP regen/leech.
i aint QQing over this i picked a class/build that was hard from the start its my only char and i will stick to it even tho its almost impossible but i see ppl playing braindead builds and getting endgame rly easy and ppl like me get eaten by desync coz we play fast paced builds,multistrike and gems that where a big bonus to melee players got nerfed if u ask me too much nerf was gonna hit as i saw it but not this hard so i am rly looking forward 2 the buffing of melee classes or we should all maybe play summoners (not only easy build) get some and run around and pick stuff from the ground.

At the end i dont wanna be the guy that is all over the bad sides of the game and stuff i dont like i fall in love with the game coz its unique imo and the DEV's point of the view i saw in some video on youtube that made me play it @ the start.

Regards Gdark

PS:its almost 5AM kid woke up 10 times in last few hours if i didnt write in a normal way i mean if i was all over the place in this post coz :P

Regarding Client/server Action Synchronisation.

I read all that has been written there in the topic. It's all nice.
What confuses me is this:
in CB, ~10 months ago or more (I don't remember exactly) during my two months of solo play (rarely partied) desync was noticable once in a week. Today, also playing solo, desync is "omnipresent" (happens all the time in solo).

My ISP is the same, my internet is good, my latency is 40-60 (EU) my CPU got better etc. Leaves me with conclusion that either:

a) you changed something in the way connection works and it is making problems
b) you seriously need to upgrade servers bcs they just can't handle the load no matter what your tech staff is telling you.
c) If your servers are fine, than look under a) again. :)

Cheers.

Would changing +%armour nodes to +%armour and armour effectiveness be a solution for the crappy armour?

Or maybe change some to +%armour +%armour-effectiveness and +%Life

You need to make pure armour (as in armour without temp armour support or special stuff) possibly viable compared to armour + granites or + endurance charges for or armour + Kaom's Heart.

It should not be possible that as a melee I could better play as a Shadow with only ES then a pure armour Templar or Marauder as far as defence is concerned.

"

wavetrex wrote:

Obviously, another client-server desync related post:

- Ok, so the client is receiving packets with the fact that you're getting hit (while the screen isn't showing anything hitting you)... you try to run away from danger but while on your screen is showing that you're running away, you're actually not (probably being stuck in a corner)

Question: Why not send your ACTUAL position on the server every time when sending some data related to feedback ? (the fact that you're getting hit, or that your hits have caused elemental effects, etc.)
It would be awesome to continuously update monster positions as well...

It's freeking damn frustrating to try to run away but you have no idea if you're actually getting away...

I don't think that entity positions are THAT much bandwidth, really... so it's you, maybe some minions and a couple of mobs... each with X and Y positions, perhaps direction and movement speed (the client can calculate Z depending on map).

So that's between 10 and 40 entities, with 4 values to send, each being a 4-byte FLOAT value ( optimizations could be done to further reduce this )... Let's say update this 5 times per second ... that is 10*4*4 to 40*4*4 (*5) = 800 bps to 3.2 kbps, to almost eliminate the entire problem of being in one place on your screen and in another place on the server.

No need to update projectiles, if that position is wrong... well, it's acceptable. Just a constant stream of mob/player positions would be WONDERFUL !

Seriously, the year is 2013, I think the internet CAN TAKE IT.
Thank you !

The problem with that is that it isn't the internet that has to 'take it'. It's the servers.


Now, with the amount of clients connecting the server at one time. Information has to be streamlined or the server will be overloaded. Therefore, they can't send data updates to each client ever frame, this has to be parsed into what is an acceptable sync rate.

Character position is by far the most important. I will agree. And it should be updated regularly. So that the user can not notice any desync with their character. Then priority should be given to the monsters immediately around you.

I could imagine a system where sync rate is depending on the distance from you to the monster, with levels of priority.

Monsters within melee range = updated at character sync rate (CSR)
Monsters within 1 times melee to 2 times melee range = updated at 2 times CSR
Monsters within 2 times melee to 4 times melee = updated at 8 times CSR
...
etc


So we have a power of 2 for determine levels or priority, with a power of 3 for sync rates. Thus, everything outside immediate range has a fall off in sync rate pretty fast, hopefully lowering the load on the server.