I think that's nonsense. (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, January 26, 2016, 00:26 (3020 days ago) @ Kahzgul

This is a problem that has been solved by many previous games, and it's weird that Bungie has insisted on reinventing the wheel when it comes to handling lag, and - sadly - their new wheel is a little bit square.

In all the discussion about this topic I've seen, this is the assertion (and you've made it multiple times, so I'm pretty sure I'm not misinterpreting something you mean in a different way) that bothers me the most - because as far as I can tell, NO previous game has solved this problem. EVERY multiplayer game I've ever played has lag issues - it's just that they're not all the SAME lag issues.

I won't put words in Kahzgul's mouth, but my interpretation of his argument is that lag will happen in any online game... it's just that the way Destiny deals with lag creates an advantage for the lagger that doesn't exist in other games. I don't have Kahzgul's expertise or developer-side knowledge, but my anectodal experience very much lines up with what he is saying.

I've spent more time playing online shooters than any other genre over the past 15 years... From Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 to the Halo franchise, Gears, CoD, Titanfall, Battlefield, Splinter Cell, and many more. Lag is always an issue (more in some games than others). Personally, my experience with lag in pretty much every case but Destiny is the encounter turns into a giant coin toss. Lag makes things weird, and sometimes you come out on top, sometimes you don't. But with Destiny, I feel almost certain I will come out the looser every time I go toe-to-toe with a severe lagger. Either their shots don't register as they hit, so I don't know I'm being hit until they all kick in at once and I drop dead, or I empty 2 clips into their face without scoring a point of damage, and their teammate gets the jump on me while I'm reloading.

So while I don't understand the technical nuances of what is going on, I can say I feel disadvantaged against laggy Destiny players in a way that doesn't happen in most other games.

And I think what I was trying to point out was that this interpretation (that you're coming out the loser in the majority of interactions) has a lot to do with your BELIEF that you will come out the loser in the majority of interactions - you're paying attention to the examples of that more than you are to the examples of the converse.

I was in a 6-person party the other night where lag (on the other team) was a pretty major thing; people were raging about the kills they were getting, the kills we WEREN'T getting... but then, near the end of the game, someone noticed that the two red-bar players on the other team were at the BOTTOM OF THE SCOREBOARD. By a significant chunk.

We won the game, and the laggers (who caused no end of frustration to all of us) were the folks who paid the highest price.

In fact, if you'd been watching the game as an objective observer, I think you'd have been hard-pressed to reconcile the rage with the final result.

Jumping back in here. Cruel is interpreting my statements correctly. Also, the lag is not necessarily an advantage for the lagger in Destiny. Rather it is an advantage for the lagger's team. Lagging doesn't mean the lagger magically gets more kills. Rather it means that the enemies of the lagger waste a lot of ammunition and abilities trying to kill the invincible lagger instead of his teammates, which means those teammates are taking less damage and able to kill more enemies. Obviously a team facing a lagger can minimize the lagger's advantage by identifying the lagger and ignoring him throughout the match. Depending on how bad the lag is, this may or may not help the non-lagging team as it could result in the lagger finding that they can move with impunity through the battlespace, or it may simply minimize the impact that the lagger has on the game, essentially resulting in a de facto 6 on 5 game, with the lagger's team in the minority.

Regardless, because the potential for grave exploitation exists within the bounds of how Destiny handles lag, I find the mulitplayer netcode lacking, and would advise Bungie to improve the situation for subsequent releases (assuming it is far too late for the sort of massive netcode overhaul it would take to resolve these issues in the current iteration of Destiny).

I guess I still have a few problems with your whole outlook on this:

- I still don't really buy that Destiny's handling of lag is significantly worse than any other game. And I think you underrepresent the advantages Destiny's systems brought us when compared to Bungie's previous titles. (Those advantages being things like drop-in matchmaking, never going to a black screen to try and reconnect players after a host drop, minimal gameplay disruption when any player drops, etc)

- I think your suggestion that they rewrite the network stack is just plain silly. Surely you understand that what you are suggesting isn't just some minor task that can be completed over a weekend, or a week, or a month. And given that all of Destiny seems to run on the same type of networking vs the split types the Halos used, rewriting the networking and having both the Crucible and single player continue to function seems like a complete impossibility. But instead of acknowledging that you ding Bungie over and over for not doing it.

- Finally, I think perhaps we should stop talking about the possible advantages Destiny gives to laggers manipulating network traffic. Specifically: Those people are not laggers and lag is no longer the issue. Those people are cheaters and the best way to fix the problem, no matter how the networking does or doesn't work in their favor, would be to ban the heck out of them, delete their profiles, and tell them to never come back.