I think that's nonsense. (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Tuesday, January 26, 2016, 03:41 (3319 days ago) @ Ragashingo

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)

- Destiny is certainly better than Halo in that Halo forced every system to match all the time, which was rough and made for some lengthy "catching up" pauses and lots of host migrations etc.. to find the best server. Absolutely. But halo had a lot of things to commend it. Notably that it felt fair (disclaimer: I have not played any Halo since Reach, and I almost mostly played Halo PvP with friends during LAN parties rather than online with strangers, so my exposure to actual online halo is pretty low), even if it had connectivity issues.

- 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.

While I think a wholly new network stack would be ideal, it's clearly impossible. It's probably impossible for Destiny 2 also, unless they get loaned a network stack from another studio (not unheard of, but still unlikely, especially as Bungie prides themselves on doing it themselves). The realistic change I'm asking for is a change in how bullet damage polling works so that when I kill a guy on my system, he dies on my system, even if he hasn't died yet on his actual system (but will when he catches up). Bungie is already using predictive algorithms quite a bit - why not predict that I did enough damage to kill the guy? Then I won't be wasting more ammo on someone who is already dead.

- 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.

Agreed, and I've been trying to avoid that subject. My above posts are all aimed at general lag, not at lag switchers. A lag-switcher still gets real-time downward traffic, so they can see where you are and shoot you. Then when they switch their lag off, all of their bullets fire at once, and kill everyone they shot, all while they were effectively moving invisibly through the map. I have played against a couple of serious lag switchers in trials and it's not fun. You see a guy running into a wall for a bit and then all three players on your team are dead at once, all from the same guy who just teleported back behind you. Also: While I did encounter a pretty obvious lag switcher in salvage earlier this week, I haven't seen one in trials or IB for at least a month. Even though Bungie's been pretty mum on when they ban people and how many they ban, it seems to be pretty effective.