[April 12] Initial Development Manifesto Feedback

Cyclone + multistrike = Where Am I? Oh yeah, dead.

Regarding desync, i dont think using a full mmo-based model where the server dictates everything and the client only would send keystrokes would be too bad.

There will be an delay in Actions of course, but as League of Legends shows, which is using a similar Model because in such games desync cannot be allowed and everything must be the same on every client at the same time+lag, it is really playable. You need to kite and react instantly in this game and althrough iam on the side that plays with 16ms, even playing with 50-100ms isnt too bad(i know how it feels from the testserver which i got 120ms to) that i would call it unplayable for an ARPG it only gets very ugly at 150ms+

but if you count that most playstyles in path of exile is spamming 2-3 buttons i dont think that would be too bad

maybe you could try such an model on an testserver and let the community feel how this would be or you could even let the player decide what model he would like (in the options), it would be more effort maintaining 2 models but it would be possible and many players with good internet connections would like that

Just to give an idea to devs. When I use my "heavy srtike", which does single target dmg, everything goes a lot smoother. I can clear a large pack one by one without a problem if I can keep up with the incoming damage. But the big problem comes from aoe. When I use my infernal blow with melee splash on a large pack, everything instantly goes desync, most time I can't even get control of my character for 1-2 seconds and 2 seconds enough to kill this poor marauder who relies on hits and leeches.

Regarding the syncing issue.

So, I see the issue here.
The players which are far away from the server will not be able to play at all if you would have to await the packets from the server.

However, I sit on fiber close to my gateway.
My highest ping is 40, on a bad day.

I feel my experience would be so much more enjoyable with the second method,
therefore I wish that you could make it an option in the settings.

Let us choose how we want the client to act.

Choice is never(well sometimes, but not this time) bad.

/Fredrik

I seen alot announcements from Chris about up coming patch but never seen he said fix this.
I died more again with desync, how long they will fix this? OMG!!

What we're planning to do to improve synchronisation

There are a lot of changes that we're experimenting with that may individually improve the synchonisation of the combat simulation (along with their potential drawbacks):

Have monsters on the client attack your server location rather than client location to reduce entropy. Maybe compromise on them attacking a mid-way point between the two. The drawback here is that it means they'll appear they are swinging at the air, but they're technically more in sync.
Display blood and elemental effects at the contact point on the client rather than as damage confirmation. This will mean that combat feels more impactful, but we lose the communicated visual information about whether damage was actually dealt. It could be that this is easier to apply to effects from spells because they generally don't have a hit/miss calculation.
Resync entities that successfully hit you when nothing is on the client near you. This may actually pull the entity even more out-of-sync if you're in the wrong place yourself.
Resync everything in an area around a desynced entity. This reduces overall entropy massively but would be pretty jarring.
Delay actions if the client was ahead on its path. This will solve the case where monsters die before you get to them (if you were out of sync) but technically results in lower combat efficiency for players in these cases.
Improve the distance-based resyncing that occurs for things that are far away from where they should be. It doesn't currently take movement speed into account properly. This is why Rhoas feel quite out of sync when charging.
Measure overall entropy around the player and force a resync if it exceeds some threshold. The problem is that by the time the resynced information gets to the client, more actions could have occured.
Fix bugs with specific skills that cause them to act differently on the client and server (Whirling Blades, for example, sometimes fails to trigger based on distance on one end).
Other changes too subtle/difficult to explain clearly here

when?
or u will fix after grim dawn release? it's too late.

"Due to the fact that we want to have hardcore game mechanics (i.e. ones where position matters)"

Hah, nice one Chris.
So a hardcore mechanic where position matters, except you literally don't know where you are on the server after moving for a few seconds after entering an instance. Nor do you know where the monsters exactly are on the server. How can you make well made decisions based on faulty information? How does this translate into a hardcore mechanic? Without being 100% in sync with the server and letting the client predict where you are, and where the monsters are, you're throwing the word 'hardcore' around but it means absolutely nothing in this case. The game as it currently stands is unplayable on a 'hardcore' level simply due to desync being an actual problem, even more, an actual mechanic of the game, since the developers are too stubborn to admit they made a mistake with the netcode, it won't disappear. The desyncs will never go away, and even if you 'rubberband' every 3 seconds, it just makes the gameplay less fluid. You know when the gameplay would be the most fluid? When there would be no need for rubberbanding to disrupt the gameplay and players had the correct information on the location of their characters.

It's not hardcore to have to alt+f4 just because you desynced into a pack of swift, LMP dogs. It would be hardcore if you knew the dogs were there, you knew you would die if you went running into them, and take them on one at a time. That would be skilled, but that doesn't happen currently, can't happen.

And finally, to further address the 'hardcore' point, the only things you can dodge in this game are ranged attacks. If a golem rolls at you, even if you dodge it, you take damage. Golem rolls in and of itself are flawed currently with the sync mechanics, around a fifth of the time you don't even see their animations.

You're forced to spamming /oos every minute or so if you want to stay alive, and log out at any hint of desync.

Thank you for reading.

I feel like there was something missing in the explanation of active synchronisation.

When PoE receives information from the client, does it compute the command based on the server world right now? or does it compute the effect based on what the world was like 200ms earlier, when the client actually send the command?

"

visiON123 wrote:

It's not hardcore to have to alt+f4 just because you desynced into a pack of swift, LMP dogs. It would be hardcore if you knew the dogs were there, you knew you would die if you went running into them, and take them on one at a time. That would be skilled, but that doesn't happen currently, can't happen.

And finally, to further address the 'hardcore' point, the only things you can dodge in this game are ranged attacks. If a golem rolls at you, even if you dodge it, you take damage. Golem rolls in and of itself are flawed currently with the sync mechanics, around a fifth of the time you don't even see their animations.

You're forced to spamming /oos every minute or so if you want to stay alive, and log out at any hint of desync.

Thank you for reading.

I did anything before and so fucking lazy change some gear from inventory for cast 6 auras and then keep it in inventory after alt+F4 every 15 min.

I have to admit that I feel the prediction code in POE runs reasonably smoothly. Sure I think there's probably room for some tweaking and tuning. But I don't fully understand the hue and cry over it. It doesn't seem any worse than playing D2. Heck, there we had not simply sync problems but also graphic load issues. It was easy to get smoked by a boss that hadn't even appeared on your screen. It's a part of the hardcore experience until someone repeals the laws of physics or comes up with a trusted computing model that allows these calculations to be done more client-side.

I want to give my feedback now, right after the 0.11.2 patch.

The changes in the ranger tree look very good to me, balancing IR:Armor, improving life and evasion and damage nodes.

The same kind of changes for the Templar and Marauder tree are highly appreciated.