The problem with ignoring "unintentional" laggers.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by cbk1994

Internet games always favor those with lower latency. If clientside is "even", then lag wouldn't be a problem, which according to this thread, it is.

lol @ you nitpicking down to this level. It's ok though, I'm fine with it.

Clientside HD doesn't favor anyone. Serverside HD does. The problem doesn't have to do with clientside hd suddenly changing it's behaviour due to a player's lag, it has to do with a player becomming hard to hit because he's blinking all over the spar with random bursts of speed. This thread isn't about hit detection and changing it to serverside isn't a viable solution.

In the vast majority of the spars on UN lag isn't an issue. There will always be latency, but it only becomes a problem when the other player is excessively lagging. Even then it varies but what we consider "excessive"/unacceptable is a completely different issue. The matter at hand is whether UN is willing to put their foot down, at their own descretion, and disqualify these people from our competitive tournies and events.

[cbk1994]

Originally Posted by Crono

lol @ you nitpicking down to this level. It's ok though, I'm fine with it.

Clientside HD doesn't favor anyone. Serverside HD does. The problem doesn't have to do with clientside hd suddenly changing it's behaviour due to a player's lag, it has to do with a player becomming hard to hit because he's blinking all over the spar with random bursts of speed. This thread isn't about hit detection and changing it to serverside isn't a viable solution.

In the vast majority of the spars on UN lag isn't an issue. There will always be latency, but it only becomes a problem when the other player is excessively lagging. Even then it varies but what we consider "excessive"/unacceptable is a completely different issue. The matter at hand is whether UN is willing to put their foot down, at their own descretion, and disqualify these people from our competitive tournies and events.

I said earlier I support excluding players from events based on the reasonable opinion of a staff member. I'm against arbitrary ping limits, which seems to be what the OP was suggesting. We even have a guideline on Era for Events Team members that players with 300 MS or more of "lag" can be removed if they're excessively disrupting the event.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by cbk1994

I said earlier I support excluding players from events based on the reasonable opinion of a staff member. I'm against arbitrary ping limits, which seems to be what the OP was suggesting.

I'm pretty sure Rufus means this too. 500ms and above is pretty much given but is there a way to measure player skipping and whatnot?

[WaDaFack]

Sooo.... if the limit was 500 MS and it was TTUTC/UTC finals, the guy is about to win than all of the sudden the server spikes and everyone goes to 10k MS, the player would be kicked? IMO, I'd rage.

A limit isn't necessary. Chakrah has 23 Event wins, so I really don't see what the problem is. In a spar, if you're going to complain when you lose, than just don't spar him.

[DustyPorViva]

Originally Posted by WaDaFack

Sooo.... if the limit was 500 MS and it was TTUTC/UTC finals, the guy is about to win than all of the sudden the server spikes and everyone goes to 10k MS, the player would be kicked? IMO, I'd rage.

No. Everyone seems to be jumping to conclusions here.

[PrayDoh]

Originally Posted by WaDaFack

Sooo.... if the limit was 500 MS and it was TTUTC/UTC finals, the guy is about to win than all of the sudden the server spikes and everyone goes to 10k MS, the player would be kicked? IMO, I'd rage.

A lot of the discussion here is trying to find a solution to the problem, not necessarily trying to use a system that we've already tried and proven faulty.

Originally Posted by WaDaFack

A limit isn't necessary. Chakrah has 23 Event wins, so I really don't see what the problem is. In a spar, if you're going to complain when you lose, than just don't spar him.

Event wins aren't counted in team events, where his lag is causing a lot of problems (i.e. FreezeTag, TTPK)

--
The PR Admin, both GP Admins and the ET Admin all agree that it's an unfair advantage, and that players with excessive lag should be disallowed from participating in certain activities.

That being said, it sort of changes the nature of the thread. The question is no longer whether or not we should disallow people with excessive lag, but how.

I'm in favour of coreys' idea, where it'll be up to the ET/GP/Spar Mods discretion. We had this system in place a year or two ago, and only 2 players were banned for an extended period of time due to lag.(eagle4 and BlobZ)

[salesman]

Originally Posted by PrayDoh

I'm in favour of coreys' idea, where it'll be up to the ET/GP/Spar Mods discretion. We had this system in place a year or two ago, and only 2 players were banned for an extended period of time due to lag.(eagle4 and BlobZ)

Banned for lagging? What the ****?

[PrayDoh]

Originally Posted by salesman

Banned for lagging? What the ****?

Sorry. UN has ban features for both events and spars, and thats what I was referring to.

[Deeek]

Originally Posted by Rufus

Everybody experiences server lag, I don't see how this is relevant to what anybody is saying.

....

Serverside HD is a horrible idea, as is the suggestion of averaging out a player's latency via ping over a period of time and then just barring them from events and such if it's over a certain MS (gotta give credit to who thought this up!). Player latency is already bad enough without considering the server's - making something like this will only end in player genocide if the server hiccups. How is Server HD going to make this better? It only resets the argument that rewards players with closer/faster connections to the server and gives them an advantage over others. Isn't that pretty much the same thing as were talking about right now?

UDP is frowned upon because Graal's protocol for it sucks, and players like me who are stuck behind a router have a hard enough time already trying not to fart without the server throwing us around all over the place (I can't open a port to keep packets bouncing off my router).

[CharlieM]

lol on era one time I was torrenting and there was a huge raid, I lagged out in the elevator and sat there holding D with PBP, I got like 20 kills 1 death over and over again because half the time they couldn't even see me it was so bad

[maximus_asinus]

I remember a time where 56k was considered fast, we should have banned all those 28kers when we had a chance!

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by CharlieM

lol on era one time I was torrenting and there was a huge raid, I lagged out in the elevator and sat there holding D with PBP, I got like 20 kills 1 death over and over again because half the time they couldn't even see me it was so bad

That is because damage from guns is handled clientside. You don't take damage from guns unless you see the bullet hit you on your own screen.

Melee is serverside though, so if somebody ran up beside you they could punch you to death before you even realised they were there hitting you. It takes about 6 seconds for somebody with an axe to kill you if you're standing still. If you're lagging, keep moving.

All healing is handled serverside though. So you'll get warped to the hospital and still have 0 health until the serverside catches up and you'll just keep dying, over and over again.
I don't have terrible lag (about 400ms average) and sometimes when I die I get about 3 or 4 deaths.

Because of the mixed damage system lag isn't as much of an issue on Era as it is on UN, and then even on UN it only matters for players who actually skip around the screen. Laggers who move fluidly the whole time and just delay aren't that much trouble because you can see where they're going and slash infront of them.

[Hiro]

the main problem is not that players lag; it's the players who lag for long periods of time that create the unfair advantage, whether intentional of not

Originally Posted by Heroin

can someone teach that idiot the difference between cheating on purpose and an issue you have no control about?

other than that, YES, it is unfair to the majority of the players to some degree, but expelling everyone from certain parts of the game just because of their handicap connection-wise is not the right way to go either.

if someone is actually going to look into this, good luck on making everyone happy.

this is essentially the problem, and great care has to be taken into consideration in dealing with this (assuming we are actually going to deal with it right now)

Originally Posted by Deeek

No one here has yet to explain the difference between "unintentional" lagging. Stop scapegoating people with poor connections.

i'll explain the difference. when someone can control their ping, especially during events/sparring, then you realize that they are lagging on purpose. when someone is constantly lagging no matter what they are doing, then it can have the appearance of legitimacy. both cause problems, in that laggy players, who albeit are beatable at least in sparring and to a lesser extent in events, take a certain type of "playing" in order to achieve it, and it's ridiculous when these players get any sort of lag spike where you just suddenly get hit 4-5 times in a row with literally no control over it

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

Does it matter, though? Lag is lag is lag. The advantage of lag, whether it's intentional or not, is there. People do intentionally lag themselves, but it doesn't matter regardless. All laggers should be treated the same specifically because we can't really prove who is just abusing it and who is not.

this is true, because the problem stays the same whether being intentional or not, so the solution must affect all laggers

Originally Posted by LordSquirt

I don't see what the big problem is.

Lagging in spars has always been a problem. There's not really a need for this to change. You just have to learn how you can beat lag, and if you can't try and try again.

btw: whose this Chakrah guy? Is he some new player or what. I've seen him on UN recently, but never heard of him when I played.

chakrah is the new torrent except not as cool (jk (8)

just because it's always been a problem doesn't mean we couldn't manage something in the ways of controlling it, or equalizing it for the fairness of the large majority of players who do not lag. so here is the question: should we really care about this argument of players not being able to get high speed internet?

let's say we do: if yes, then we have to implement a very opinionated and somewhat corruptible system of circumstantial policing. if there is any evidence of a player abusing the ability to make themselves lag then they can be banned from events/sparring for a period of time. players who constantly lag can be allowed, but if any changes to their lag at some point occurs (they do not keep up a constant lag) then they can be banned in a similar fashion to the above. obviously things like lag spikes will be taken into consideration, as we want to allow everyone to play regardless of how they lag

let's say we don't: if no, then we implement a lag threshold that can be flexible enough to allow a lag spike but throughout enough to weed out the constant/intentional laggers. this means there isn't a bias in the decision: even if you lag spike and get kicked, you went over the lag limit so you lose. even if you live in a location where you cannot get a solid internet connection, to bad: you went over the lag limit, so do what you can to get a better connection. to make this more fair (as it seems pretty harsh right now) we could allow exceptions to the limit, depending on just how laggy the person is. if someone just has a spike every 5 minutes that kicks him off but is a solid 50MS the entire rest of the time, we can obviously let him slip by so he can continue playing. maintaining a 300MS is a bit more troublesome, because that's so large a lag that it can lead to an unusual raise and ease to winning, so perhaps an exception but a banning from certain events/sparring tournaments would allow the player to continue playing but not cheapen the win when it counts

fact of the matter is, the majority of players do not lag: we cannot lessen their experience (which is how it's supposed to be experienced) for the (very) few laggers who get screwed over by lame internet companies

[Deeek]

Originally Posted by Hiro

i'll explain the difference. when someone can control their ping, especially during events/sparring, then you realize that they are lagging on purpose. when someone is constantly lagging no matter what they are doing, then it can have the appearance of legitimacy. both cause problems, in that laggy players, who albeit are beatable at least in sparring and to a lesser extent in events, take a certain type of "playing" in order to achieve it, and it's ridiculous when these players get any sort of lag spike where you just suddenly get hit 4-5 times in a row with literally no control over it

I consider that more of a emulation of lag instead of true latency, like if I were to download a program of sorts that controlled the outflow of packets I could appear to be lagging but not in it's true entire definition, which is what I'm assuming we've been talking about here. Emulation isn't really a problem because that's obviously cheating and we all know what to do with cheaters around here

There's people who lag at no fault, people who lag and are jerks about it, and people who cheat using exploits/3rd party programs. If you don't define this then you run into a problem of ambiguity...

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by Rufus

People abuse lag to win activities such as events and sparring are no better than those who use trainers. It is an unfair advantage, and both the players and staff are sick of it. For most people I personally believe it is controlled, and the only measure that is in place is, "If they can't be hit, they can't take part!" which doesn't do much. Most people can get at least 1 hit on someone who is lagging, but that doesn't mean they should be allowed to play. Laggers are taking liberties, and with no incentives to stop lagging to win, why would anyone even bother to not lag?

I usually download overnight, but the over the last three days I decided that when I wanted to download something, I'd continue to play Graal and see how I fair up. With my torrented lag I could easily target certain individuals in events and had no problem winning a lot of the time. I've played Castle Wars with torrents on before too, and when you're constantly warping around the place you can easily take it over.

Yes there are people who have problems with lag out of their control, but to put it bluntly, that is their problem. PrayDoh has a bad connection and he hasn't just sat and made it awkward for everyone else; he has made every effort to fix the issue, but I don't see the same for anyone else that lags. The other players shouldn't be placed in the position they are because of it and even if you can't control your lag, it doesn't remove that it is unfair to everyone else. If they're over a certain ping, they should not be allowed to participate in the competitive aspects of the server, simple as that.

Would be neat if there were specific areas of spar limited by latency. 40ms and below zone one, 41-100ms for zone two, and 101ms+ are zone three.