A Redditor Explains why Destiny's Netcode is Bunk

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/5amkyw/understanding_destiny_networking_why_packet_loss/

In addition to the interpolation and lack of dedicated servers and lack of standard host/client connection issues I've raised here in the past, an issue I was previously unaware of is that the game is using a 10 tick (10 updates per second). CS-GO uses a 64 tick, and many top gamers play only on private 128 tick servers. 10 tick is absurdly slow. One update every 100 milliseconds. Think about that. A ping of 16 ms is considered "fast" but a ping of 30 ms is considered "okay" while a ping of 100 ms is clearly "slow." This game basically forces everyone into 100 ms connections. Which is why there are so many kill trades and the ever likely postmortem melee kills that haunt my enemies.

As one commenter in the thread posted: in 2003 a 20 tick was the standard. Overwatch is currently running on a 60 tick.

Get with the program, Bungie. Your netcode is why PvP is so frustrating.

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Always sound like the same people who ask about "dedotated wam" to me.

Dedicated servers are not the Jesus Internet that people seem to think they are (look at Halo 5), and if anything, I look at them the same way I see MS's 300,000 cloud servers of blast processing.

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Always sound like the same people who ask about "dedotated wam" to me.

Dedicated servers are not the Jesus Internet that people seem to think they are (look at Halo 5), and if anything, I look at them the same way I see MS's 300,000 cloud servers of blast processing.

Dedicated servers completely stop the main modes of cheating in Trials. Lag switch on a dedicated server, and only your performance suffers. You also can't DDOS someone with dedicated servers since only the server knows everyone else's IP.

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Who wants that?

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I hope D2 uses a single server and they put it just across the lake at Bungie HQ. You guys will have shitty pings but I'll become a PVP god.

It's all well and good for those of us in major cities or play with people from all over. But if you live a little ways off the beaten-internet-path and play with local friends, a dedicated server is going to make their experience worse. There are always tradeoffs.

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I hope D2 uses a single server and they put it just across the lake at Bungie HQ. You guys will have shitty pings but I'll become a PVP god.

It's all well and good for those of us in major cities or play with people from all over. But if you live a little ways off the beaten-internet-path and play with local friends, a dedicated server is going to make their experience worse. There are always tradeoffs.

TItanfall 1 did this, and so do most (maybe all?) CoD games:

The servers keep track of players' connection quality, disconnects, and reports of cheating, and establish lists of which consoles that are capable of hosting games are also trustworthy. Those then become default hosts for a standard host/client peer to peer setup (where the host system is the arbiter of who hit what and where people moved etc.). Players who lag-switch or frequently disconnect will find that they are never the host and therefore their cheats don't work (a lag switching client in a traditional client/host networking scheme is just a guy standing perfectly still, waiting to be shot - they aren't immune to damage or able to fire time-traveling bullets like they are in Destiny).

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Always sound like the same people who ask about "dedotated wam" to me.

Dedicated servers are not the Jesus Internet that people seem to think they are (look at Halo 5), and if anything, I look at them the same way I see MS's 300,000 cloud servers of blast processing.

I haven't played since very early this year, but Halo 5's PvP connections were miles better than anything I've ever seen Destiny PvP. Anecdotal evidence and all that, sure, but I've encountered more bad connection issues in Destiny than any game I've played in probably the last five years.

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an issue I was previously unaware of is that the game is using a 10 tick (10 updates per second). CS-GO uses a 64 tick, and many top gamers play only on private 128 tick servers. 10 tick is absurdly slow. One update every 100 milliseconds. Think about that. A ping of 16 ms is considered "fast" but a ping of 30 ms is considered "okay" while a ping of 100 ms is clearly "slow." This game basically forces everyone into 100 ms connections. Which is why there are so many kill trades and the ever likely postmortem melee kills that haunt my enemies.

Get with the program, Bungie. Your netcode is why PvP is so frustrating.

I'm pretty sure we can assume that the developers writing the netcode aren't dumb. I imagine this was a deliberate choice made for specific reasons. My question is why did they decide on a 10 tick update? Likely a compromise of some sort, but why?

Edit: is it just that destiny's game loop runs at 10 ticks/sec? I have trouble believing that.

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I did some looking, here are some reference numbers:

BF1 60
BF4 (PS4,XB1) 30 but later increased to 45
BF4 (PS3, XBX360) 10

Maybe it was simply because they wanted to support last Gen. Maybe we will see an improvement in Destiny 2 if this is the case, because they will not have to worry about Last gen platform support.

It's a shot in the dark anyway

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I did some looking, here are some reference numbers:

BF1 60
BF4 (PS4,XB1) 30 but later increased to 45
BF4 (PS3, XBX360) 10

Maybe it was simply because they wanted to support last Gen. Maybe we will see an improvement in Destiny 2 if this is the case, because they will not have to worry about Last gen platform support.

It's a shot in the dark anyway

Overwatch was running 60/20 at launch, and that was fine. Supposedly it's been increased to 60 all around, but who knows, since folks still have issues (see: Roadhog's hook).

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I'm too lazy to look up the article that said it, but Destiny was not designed to be a competitive PvP game, nor was it even designed to be a 50/50 PvE/PvP game like it is in practice. Rather, it was designed to be a PvE game that also had PvP. So the netcode was written to support PvE (and it's completely great at that. Let's not forget - destiny PvE is nearly flawless when it comes to connection quality) and likely adapted to PvP later rather than being wholly re-written for the PvP environment.

For Des2ny I'm hoping they build it with e-sports level PvP in mind (god knows the core mechanics support that level of play), and also build a nimble backend that is quick to adjust for balance changes, map adjustments, etc etc.. unlike the interminably slow-moving beast of burden that is Ragnarok (all those questions about why we don't get more for our microtrans money are ignoring the fact that building anything significant in Ragnarok takes eons - Bungie could fully have 20 people dedicated full time to live support and still might barely be making those 4 new microtrans dances in time for the next update... I exaggerate, but only a little).

I'd hope they'd scale the fidelity of the transmission frequency to adapt to the activity at hand so that these changes wouldn't result in fewer players in social spaces (or net lag which, again, there isn't any of in social spaces right now).

But that's all spit in the breeze on my part. Bungie hasn't said anything (afaik) about the backend or netcode changes between D1 and 2D2Furious.

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I'm too lazy to look up the article that said it, but Destiny was not designed to be a competitive PvP game, nor was it even designed to be a 50/50 PvE/PvP game like it is in practice. Rather, it was designed to be a PvE game that also had PvP. So the netcode was written to support PvE (and it's completely great at that. Let's not forget - destiny PvE is nearly flawless when it comes to connection quality) and likely adapted to PvP later rather than being wholly re-written for the PvP environment.

That sounds pretty made up to me. Maybe go ahead and look up your article?

For one, a laggy player can screw up a Strike just as badly as one can screw up a Crucible match. Your "PVE is nearly flawless when it comes to connection quality" is just a complete fabrication. PVE enemies will stop moving, stop responding, weapons shots will freeze in midair, enemies can stop taking damage, they'll die and immediately come back to life, they'll blip around the play area, they'll repeat jumps over and over, etc, etc.

But that's all spit in the breeze on my part..

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For one, a laggy player can screw up a Strike just as badly as one can screw up a Crucible match. Your "PVE is nearly flawless when it comes to connection quality" is just a complete fabrication. PVE enemies will stop moving, stop responding, weapons shots will freeze in midair, enemies can stop taking damage, they'll die and immediately come back to life, they'll blip around the play area, they'll repeat jumps over and over, etc, etc.

You know what happened if someone had a bad connection in Halo 3 co-op? The game would play in slow motion - for everyone.

Destiny's solution is far superior.

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For one, a laggy player can screw up a Strike just as badly as one can screw up a Crucible match. Your "PVE is nearly flawless when it comes to connection quality" is just a complete fabrication. PVE enemies will stop moving, stop responding, weapons shots will freeze in midair, enemies can stop taking damage, they'll die and immediately come back to life, they'll blip around the play area, they'll repeat jumps over and over, etc, etc.

You know what happened if someone had a bad connection in Halo 3 co-op? The game would play in slow motion - for everyone.

Destiny's solution is far superior.

Completely agree.

I was just pointing out that PvE isn't somehow immune to players with bad connections. Destiny handles mediocre connections pretty well and I think that's true of both PvE and PvP, its just in PvP we notice every minor imperfection a ton more. Nobody gives it much care if hits on a Dreg were delayed by a second but surely controllers have been broken over a few tenths of a second of lag in Trials of Osiris.

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Comcast and Brazilians get you every time.

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Seriously, though, worst timing ever for that to happen. Solar Burn Shield Brothers Nightfall is no laughing matter.

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You had yourself and a friend playing, and then two dead bodies of the same other guy?

BUT: The enemies weren't frozen in place. They weren't shooting invisible bullets. They weren't mapping you with melee attacks. They weren't killing you in unfair and unavoidable ways. Yes, your buddy totally had a bad connection and wasn't able to help, but the results of a poor connection in PvE were not nearly as gamebreaking as the same connection issues in pvp are.

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You had yourself and a friend playing, and then two dead bodies of the same other guy?

BUT: The enemies weren't frozen in place.

What do you call the enemies at 10 seconds when I was reviving master? that seems pretty frozen in place to me :-D

They were literally in (warlock) punching range and they didn't even turn to do anything while I revived.

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Not in that one video. But all of those things do happen. I've been insta-killed by PvE enemies due to lag. I've had Strikes refuse to trigger the next wave of enemies or open the next set of doors because of lag. Heck, I've had Strikes simply refuse to spawn any enemies in an entire 3 person Strike specific area until someone who was lagging got kicked.

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I think a lot of that has to do with the time-to-kill in those scenarios. A few bullets can kill you quicker in PvP, plus the human players tend to have better aim. Which is just to say, when things are screwy in PvP it can get you dead a lot faster.

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The redditor's source for the netcode being 10Hz is page 83 of the GDC presentation, which is explicitly talking about the Activity Host operations, the low-bandwidth low-responsiveness stuff being run on dedicated servers. While it's technically possible that physics/gunplay networking is using the same tick, there's nothing in particular that indicates this.

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The redditor's source for the netcode being 10Hz is page 83 of the GDC presentation, which is explicitly talking about the Activity Host operations, the low-bandwidth low-responsiveness stuff being run on dedicated servers. While it's technically possible that physics/gunplay networking is using the same tick, there's nothing in particular that indicates this.

Should be easy enough to sniff the network & find out. Maybe I'll do that sometime (hah).

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Bungie, don't change anything. I've never played a game that worked so well across countries and distances and varied connections.

I'd like to say I don't know if what he says is right or what, but I think it's fantastic.

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A Redditor Explains why Destiny's Netcode is Bunk (Destiny)

Can't stand people who whine for dedicated servers...

I wouldn't call that Whining, if the facts check

Halo 5 feels a lot smoother to me so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Can't stand people who whine for dedicated servers...

Yeah, they're only literally the superior option

I want dedicated servers, NOW. It's my only hope.

The other option for competitive pvp is trusted peer hosts

Can't stand people who whine for dedicated servers...

but why 10 ticks/sec?

Last Gen Support?

Last Gen Support?

Likely a design choice + LCD

Because PvP was an afterthought

Because PvP was an afterthought

Because PvP was an afterthought

Because PvP was an afterthought

PvE is not immune.

Look, ma! I'm famous!

That was certainly weird

That was certainly weird

That was certainly weird

Can anecdotally confirm all those are real

That was certainly weird

Questionable source.

Questionable source.

I like trading at 0.1 seconds though...

No wonder it's so great!

You don't pvp much, do you?

You do know he plays through his phone's internet; right?

Oh dear god.

Right. Madden has dedicated servers and they are trash.