Development Manifesto - Desync

Well, I can say this. I am playing from San Diego on Fiber. I usually get 20-30ms pings for most games. My average ping for PoE varies between 50-60ms. I'm playing a Tornado Ranger (Herald of Ice and Fire). I would say the game is out of sync 50% of the time; mainly with mobs coming at me; and the manual "reset" on the desync takes ~5 seconds... POP! Everything goes back to where it should be. This is now common, and it happens every 30 seconds or so as I clear maps. I've even had the game rubber band me in open areas with no monsters. It's playing horribly (been worse past day or so).

There's really no excuse for this. The only thing keeping me alive is running maps and such that I can mow through, but I dare not undertake any really challenging content. I've died.. oh, 4-5 times total I think, the majority of the deaths related to desync.

I read into Chris's post on Reddit today that 1.4 is going to have some new "technology". I hope to god they are including a complete overhaul/rewrite of the networking system. The simple fact is PoE plays as if it's a BETA product. It's sad, because it really is a good game, but until they resolve this issue, it'll always be a B-player at best. To add insult to bad design (and the players), most of the "real" players use AutoHotKey to map /oos to a hotkey (and to exit the game quickly to avoid death penalty). When players are using 3rd party tools to work around such problems, it's obvious the problems need to be addressed. I'm not aware of any other game that requires such "support applications" to "play properly" or "safely".

"

Mooginator wrote:

Well, I can say this. I am playing from San Diego on Fiber. I usually get 20-30ms pings for most games. My average ping for PoE varies between 50-60ms. I'm playing a Tornado Ranger (Herald of Ice and Fire). I would say the game is out of sync 50% of the time; mainly with mobs coming at me; and the manual "reset" on the desync takes ~5 seconds... POP! Everything goes back to where it should be. This is now common, and it happens every 30 seconds or so as I clear maps. I've even had the game rubber band me in open areas with no monsters. It's playing horribly (been worse past day or so).

There's really no excuse for this. The only thing keeping me alive is running maps and such that I can mow through, but I dare not undertake any really challenging content. I've died.. oh, 4-5 times total I think, the majority of the deaths related to desync.

I read into Chris's post on Reddit today that 1.4 is going to have some new "technology". I hope to god they are including a complete overhaul/rewrite of the networking system. The simple fact is PoE plays as if it's a BETA product. It's sad, because it really is a good game, but until they resolve this issue, it'll always be a B-player at best. To add insult to bad design (and the players), most of the "real" players use AutoHotKey to map /oos to a hotkey (and to exit the game quickly to avoid death penalty). When players are using 3rd party tools to work around such problems, it's obvious the problems need to be addressed. I'm not aware of any other game that requires such "support applications" to "play properly" or "safely".

PoE does play like a beta product. The severe desync is inexcusable. There are plenty of games that doesnt have hacks (D3/LoL/Dota2 immidiately comes to mind) that can make desyncs virtually unnoticeable... saying "poe desyncs like this is because this is the only way to prevent hacking" is extremely laughable and all that extreme desyncs (coz its anti-cheat measure) sure didnt prevent all those botters making thousands and thousands of exalts...

"

Nightmare90 wrote:

Also worth a read as the GGG responds are more in-depth and updated compared to the manifesto and most communication is done by the actual man in charge of the problem:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/626664/
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/626664/filter-account-type/staff

It is also overall a pleasant, constructive thread aside all the ad-hominem attacks all over the place.

Crap, crap, and triple crap. So back in November of 2013 GGG acknowledged that PoE is full of desync with the server side authority and Mark_GGG has indirectly admitted that we have no way to protect the client from hacks so PoE will alway be an "appalling dump heap overflowing with the most disgraceful
assortment of rubbish imaginable mangled up in tangled up knots!"... oops... I digressed into a view of The Grinch. My bad. Hmm... desync in PoE and the server side authoritarian iron-fisted control leads to:

1. RE-SYNC... the client matches the server on exile and mob positions and movement.
2. We control our exile and move from point S (synced starting point) to X.
3. The server uses "action guessing" and says we moved from point S to Y.
4. The client running it's own simulation updates all creatures positions based on our client movement.
5. We attack/dodge/defend from what we see on our screen (what else can we do?).
6. We notice that are attacks are doing nothing, mobs take no damage.
7. We run away and spam life flasks knowing that another desync has occurred
    (let's see know, that's desync #666 in the last hour... oh shit).
8. When the server re-syncs finally or we send /OOS to force a re-sync we pray not to be dead.
9. We either are in bad way (heavy damage and/or in a bad location) or are dead.
10. We swear at the devs and curse that PoE is this bad and "FU", etc.
11. We settle down emotionally and continue to feed our arpg habit.
     (after all, anyone who plays PoE long term is an arpg junkie).

 I got the picture of PoE soon after OB when GGG would actually talk about ways to mitigate desync but never did solve it. I quickly realized that being in New Zealand meant that they must always protect their "precious" game economy at the expense of all else including making players happy. Then with the patch 1.3 hideout bug GGG really shot themselves in both feet and severely (maybe irreparably, we'll never know for sure) damage their own "precious" game economy that they have sought so hard to protect, again at the players expense.

 Now after 2+ years from OB, GGG doesn't want to talk about desync as they have so solution to protect the client from hacks (curse the damn hackers all to Hell for wanting to cheat to win!). I give a nod to the recent change to stagger the mobs on opening a strongbox as a nice improvement to lower that huge desync moment (I assume everyone opens a strongbox and jumps/warps/blinks etc. away as fast as possible).

I'll answer your rhetorical in 5). We can learn to play the game that's being played out on the server. You will eventually learn to act in a way that the server doesn't mistake your actions... or not. Up to you. You claim you move to X, and the server thinks you move to Y. Learn to move to Y.

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

I'll answer your rhetorical in 5). We can learn to play the game that's being played out on the server. You will eventually learn to act in a way that the server doesn't mistake your actions... or not. Up to you. You claim you move to X, and the server thinks you move to Y. Learn to move to Y.

this is the most idiotic answer I've heard
And sadly I hear it on every desync thead

Saying this is like saying

"We can learn to drive with Toyota in a way pedal doesn't get stuck.. Or not. Up to you. "
It's drivers problem if pedal gets stuck, not Toyota... That what I hear when you talk like that about desync

A product that as issues will make the company lose credibility and customers
Sure learning how to avoid it is a solutions
But it can only be a short term solution, not a definitive

But sadly GGG like to turn short term solutions into definitive ones
Like maps, which were short term end game and by laziness and lack of imagination became POEs endgame

"

Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Curious necro, but timely.

That's still a brilliant post by Chris explaining the situation, acknowledging the problems and detailing why they chose what they chose.

No one should walk away from reading that not fully understanding what desync is. You don't have to agree with their decisions, but it's difficult to ignore why they made them.

There's one surprisingly selfish reason in there too. Glad to see GGG were thinking of their own, even it meant making things potentially worse for others.

Oh well. See what happens next, eh?

The problem is there ARE secure netcodes that does NOT have out of control desyncs happening on minute bases... and they have been used in plenty of other games. Just like I mentioned there are other ARPGs as well as most competitive mobas (which is essentially the same thing, the netcode is handling both mobs movements as well as multiple player movements at much faster pace and much higher precision. Why doesnt GGG choose to use better netcodes and insist on using their own, flawed, code is beyond me.

Even if GGG is stubborn enough to treat desync as if it's just player's stupid imagination and doesnt exist, they could have better server prediction coding, loosen the grasp on client-trusting or increase force resync frequency.

After all its all about effort and money if they want to fix (or at least alleviate) the issue. Sure there are a lot of mmo junkies that stuck to the game no matter how stupid desync is... but to think no players/profit is lost due to the severe desyncs is ignorant.

Lastly sure Chris made that post to explain in detail why PoE desyncs like hell... but the again thats also virtually the last time GGG ever talk about desyncs and they pretty much ignored the thousands and thousands of complains about this.

Most gamers especially younger generations are used to silky smooth modern gameplays on their high end PC and even some with blazing fast fiber optics internet... sure die hard fan will stick to PoE no matter how bad the game plays at the same time die hard fans are surely not the majority thats why we are called "die-hard" fans.

People appalling other players who demends a better gameplay experience, flame them how they are too stupid to spam /oos every chance they got, white-knighting every single bad decision GGG makes... this ultimately leads power creep and GGG may think they can do wtf they want... but just look back into the history... they are MANY great online games die due to bad/ignorant community and power creep from the company.

What bothers me personally is this part:

"

Games using client action prediction like ours run into exactly the same sync issues that we do unless they cheat on certain aspects of the simulation. For example, it's common for Action RPGs to do some combination of the following:

Entities can hit each other from a long distance away
There's no chance to hit - all hits occur for sure
Various speed/collision concessions that make it easy to speedhack and/or walk through monsters with modified clients
Attack animations cannot be interrupted (i.e. what we treat as Stun).


Unfortunately, we don't want to do any of those things! They each individually ruin part of the hardcore experience: by allowing combat/movement cheats, preventing accuracy from existing as a mechanic, prevent stunlock, preventing people getting blocked in, etc.

Due to the fact that we want to have hardcore game mechanics (i.e. ones where position matters and it's difficult to cheat in PvP), the only option for us has been to put a lot of work into improving our combat simulation and resync code.

This is a problem I've got with GGG... they somehow want the game to be a certain way, but just don't seem to realise that it makes no sense.

Just take the accuracy thing... I mean... it might be great to have it, but it's not a mechanic I'm super hyped on. (who acutally is?)
The problem is: accuracy combined with the current desync issues make the gameplay super annoying. Why? Because you always wonder "Am I just missing all my hits right now, or am I actually just standing behind a wall because I'm desynced?".

They just made a huge mistake designing the game the way they did.
Everythign comes with a price... and having mechanics like stunlock, accuracy and so on just doesn't justify the huge issues with desync. The game pretty much plays like a buggy alpha state game most of the time.

Certain game content is affected by desync way to much... Haku missions (where you pretty much just need to run) are super deadly if you get desynced. In narrow maps you get desynced sooooooo damn often.

And the most important thing: other ARPG's work pretty damn fine... so why the hell
does GGG need to choose such unfitting mechanics?

"

Sexcalibure wrote:

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

I'll answer your rhetorical in 5). We can learn to play the game that's being played out on the server. You will eventually learn to act in a way that the server doesn't mistake your actions... or not. Up to you. You claim you move to X, and the server thinks you move to Y. Learn to move to Y.

this is the most idiotic answer I've heard
And sadly I hear it on every desync thead.

Saying this is like saying

"We can learn to drive with Toyota in a way pedal doesn't get stuck.. Or not. Up to you. "
It's drivers problem if pedal gets stuck, not Toyota... That what I hear when you talk like that about desync

A product that has issues will make the company lose credibility and customers
Sure learning how to avoid it is a solutions
But it can only be a short term solution, not a definitive

But sadly GGG like to turn short term solutions into definitive ones
Like maps, which were short term end game and by laziness and lack of imagination became PoE's endgame

 I just got home from church. Thanks for the reply to that idiotic comment on my 5). Sure, we all know that tight passages and doorways and cutting corners increases the likelihood of a desync. But so does playing PoE at all instead of being a PoE commodity flipper or just a forum troll and not playing at all. Yes, anyone who defends GGGs server tight authoritarian control by stating "learn to play to the server" is an idiot. How the hell do I know what the server simulation is doing? I can only see what my client displays and if it isn't the same as the server then PoE is fucked up. GGG needs a server/client communication re-do that let's the client update the server and at the same time be protected from hacks in real time. We've needed this like forever. Sure I know it's difficult, but GGG needs to cross that ocean if they want PoE to be the next legendary arpg and have a 10 act life and be a bigger fish in the arpg world.

 Also true on endgame maps. Ive been stating for awhile now that GGG has always needed a true and proper level 100 finale with our exile being freed to leave Wraeclast and sail back to Oriath as a free person again. A great cinematic ending (ala D3) would be very nice and provide a very satisfying ending to our daily grind. Then that build is permanently retired to a retired exile ladder with date and total time played with 2 links, 1 to the gear in use when the exile reached level 100, and the 2nd to that builds passive tree so others can learn from it for their own current and future builds.

 "Carrot and Stick" method of game play is the desired way to keep us motivated to play a build to level 100. GGG's relentless efforts to suppress our desires to continue to play a build past level 80 (for most players endgame maps devolve into boring endless zombie grinding for xp... no-lifers need not reply) is the wrong way of looking at their game. There are more than enough skills and millions of build permutations to keep the 99% happily playing PoE and build crafting for years to come. Now all we need is a better playing experience with much less desync, a better endgame with item progression all the way to level 100, and a real satisfying level 100 goal. Not the way it is now with "ok, I have reached level 100. I'm not ever getting off this Devil's Island prison. I guess it's now time to fall on my sword."

"

Sexcalibure wrote:

Saying this is like saying

"We can learn to drive with Toyota in a way pedal doesn't get stuck.. Or not. Up to you. "
It's drivers problem if pedal gets stuck, not Toyota... That what I hear when you talk like that about desync

Not at all. One endangers your life and the life of others, while the other is mildly annoying in a game without any risk to life or limb.

If you guys want to see a new level of desync you should try chasing an american bow character who runs around pillars with your european melee in a pvp match.

I did some spectating on my eu friends in the swiss today and yesterday. I've seen them stand around in the corner getting shot at while they thought they were flickering on the opponents face, cycloning etc while dealing no damage, or cycloning from a far away point and moving slowly leaving them open to attacks while again they thought they were right next to their target.

Although i can accept desync on the regular game, i've had enough of that shit in pvp...