kotaku: Destiny 2 for PC, won't carry over year 1 characters (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Wednesday, September 28, 2016, 21:25 (2785 days ago) @ dogcow

There is, however, an opportunity here. I'm assuming that Bungie did the right thing and threw out their entire backend and development system from Destiny 1 and built a brand new one that is dynamic and responsive in the way that you need to be when you have live online support for a shared world environment. Something that can make on the fly geometry changes to the live game, daily or weekly tweaks to weapons traits for balance purposes, and can easily adjust spawns, drops, etc.. I'm also praying that they eliminated the bullshit lag-fest nonsense of their pseudo token-ring architecture for PvP and established some dedicated servers. Because any modern online FPS needs dedicated servers. I really hope they learned these lessons from Destiny 1. Assuming Bungie did the behind-the-scenes stuff correctly, there is also an opportunity to design the game by approving the story FIRST and then building the game to match the script. Please, guys, give me a game worthy of your logo.

to·ken ring
noun COMPUTING
a local area network in which a node can transmit only when in possession of a sequence of bits (called the token) that is passed to each node in turn.

In my research I've never seen any mention of Destiny's networking being a token-ring type architecture. I have never found any evidence or statement by a Bungie employee that would backup such a claim. It just doesn't make sense to pass a token around to allow transmission. In fact, just today I skimmed Shared World Shooter - Destiny's Networked Mission Architecture and listened to I Shot you First! Gameplay Networking in Halo: Reach, no mention of passing tokens in either presentation. If you have some statement by an employee claiming their networking model is based on token passing then I'd like to see it, please. I love to learn more about their networking model.

From everything I've read & watched Destiny uses an improved and expanded version of Reach's PvP networking model. Perhaps a better phrase could be used to describe what you're getting at, but token-ring is not a good term. I'm guessing you mean having a physics host on the user's box & physics host migration? I really doubt Bungie will ditch using that system for D2 in favor of dedicated physics servers, they've been using it ever since Halo 2.

You're right that it's not a true token ring, but I'm not aware of a more descriptive term for it, at least in terms of the end-users' results. "Player to player network mesh" is the term that's more technically accurate (and I believe the one coined by Bungie employees in their GDC talk), but - as I stated - the result (for PvP purposes) is essentially the same for the end user as when you use a token ring: Each system tells all of the others whether or not it took damage, or moved, or actually was where the other systems thought it was, and each system spends a lot of time guessing at where lagging players are, which results in showing avatars on screen that are out of sync with the true location of the other players. This can also be intentionally exploited via lag-switching in ways that a standard host-client pvp model cannot be.

For clarity: Similar to a token ring in the sense that there is no true host, and that all systems pass information to the others that is automatically trusted by the others. Not at all like a token ring in the sense that there's no ring and systems can pass tokens as often as their network speeds permit.

This has the advantage of not requiring a single host to have an amazing network connection capable of sending and receiving all of the data to and from every client all of the time, but the disadvantages, to my mind, far outstrip the advantages since it results in unreliable visuals on screen and opens the door for easy cheating via lag.

I should note that I have no idea how the "damage referee" works. My understanding of the code is that there is no one single host who can dictate whether or not a shot landed, so I would lean towards the damage referee being more of a poll of all systems as to whether or not they saw the shot land? Even so, that seems horribly inefficient as far as network usage, so I'd be surprised if that was what they used as well. Some sort of dedicated server monitor would make sense, but then why not have dedicated servers, period?

Also, in the interest of transparency, I have noticed a distinct reduction in lag since the update to PoE, so they may have figured out a better way to handle their network mesh. Even so, I believe it is not up to E-Sports standards for accuracy and reliability, and thus not worthy of the nuance and precision that the Destiny PvP game is capable of. I hold firm that a more traditional dedicated server host to client architecture would greatly improve the Destiny PvP experience.