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.

No. That's revisionist, plain and simple. Halo 1, Host was almost invincible. Even in LAN games. In Halo 3, the game would lag for minutes at a time and I'd just take damage from literally nowhere. And then my shields would fail to recharge. And then I'd keel over seemingly at random. I honestly cannot recall anything like that ever happening in Destiny. Even if its something similar, Destiny manages to give me a little idea of where the enemy is while Halo often wouldn't.

It's not revisionist at all. I never experienced any of the issues you describe.

- 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.

I cannot believe that dropping in a new premade network stack to Destiny is anything other than impossible. No other studio has something that will power Destiny's Crucible, and Patrol, and Raids. It took Bungie multiple tries to get Raids to perform the way they wanted, and that was with their own code. Someone else's is just going to replace all that? Not a chance.

You did see where I said, "It's clearly impossible," right?

With regards to other studios, there's nothing that says crucible has to run on the same matchmaking schema as the rest of the game, and the netcode for patrol, missions, strikes, and raids works great.

I can't see your predictive death working well either. You kill the guy on your screen... except you didn't really kill him in actuality ... then what happens? A guy who the game showed you killing will magically comes back to life and kill you instead. What kind of solution is that? Maybe it works in one narrow case or even is balanced more in the favor of the player with a good connection, but overall it sounds at least as problematic as what happens now, if not more so.

What would happen is that when the guy's packets caught up, he'd die on his system, but he'd have already been dead on your system so you wouldn't be wasting rounds on him.

It's okay, there are other options. Bullets could pass through lagging players. Or lagging players could be put into "stasis" and made unable to move or act (or be acted upon) until they caught up (not ideal, but better than the current I think). Or connection quality standards could be put in place to prevent matches with any players who have a worse connection than the worst member of your fireteam. Even regional filtering to prevent overseas matches or games between players more than 1000 miles apart would be a big help. Hell, make a crucible playlist called "good connections only" and let people opt-in. My point is that there are many many things that could be done to reduce lag, and lag is a serious issue in Destiny, more so than in other games because the game makes the lagging player soak damage while he's lagging. If players had infinite rockets or super, it wouldn't matter, but because those are exceedingly limited resources, it's a big deal.

- 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.

Yeah, I simply haven't seen that. Not saying it doesn't happen though. Trials seems to be the place people see the worst and most questionable lag and I don't hardly play it. The non-self-revive rules do not appeal to me. I'm actually quite good at Skirmish, it maybe be my best gametype, but I think my play style is just one step too risky and one step too adaptive (where Trials does not allow you to adapt mid round) to have much fun.

It seemed to have peaked during last summer, and has certainly died down as players have lost interest and/or been banned. Often it's hard to tell if someone is lag-switching or just lagging, but occasionally there's clear ghost murderers running around. Actually it's exceedingly rare. Maybe 1 out of 50 games right now for me. I'm on PS4, which may matter... I feel like PSN is inferior to Xbox Live and is less likely to filter out or remove players who are reported for cheating.

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.

No. That's revisionist, plain and simple. Halo 1, Host was almost invincible. Even in LAN games. In Halo 3, the game would lag for minutes at a time and I'd just take damage from literally nowhere. And then my shields would fail to recharge. And then I'd keel over seemingly at random. I honestly cannot recall anything like that ever happening in Destiny. Even if its something similar, Destiny manages to give me a little idea of where the enemy is while Halo often wouldn't.

- 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.

I cannot believe that dropping in a new premade network stack to Destiny is anything other than impossible. No other studio has something that will power Destiny's Crucible, and Patrol, and Raids. It took Bungie multiple tries to get Raids to perform the way they wanted, and that was with their own code. Someone else's is just going to replace all that? Not a chance.

I can't see your predictive death working well either. You kill the guy on your screen... except you didn't really kill him in actuality ... then what happens? A guy who the game showed you killing will magically comes back to life and kill you instead. What kind of solution is that? Maybe it works in one narrow case or even is balanced more in the favor of the player with a good connection, but overall it sounds at least as problematic as what happens now, if not more so.

- 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.

Yeah, I simply haven't seen that. Not saying it doesn't happen though. Trials seems to be the place people see the worst and most questionable lag and I don't hardly play it. The non-self-revive rules do not appeal to me. I'm actually quite good at Skirmish, it maybe be my best gametype, but I think my play style is just one step too risky and one step too adaptive (where Trials does not allow you to adapt mid round) to have much fun.

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.

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.

The only thing I would add is that I believe laggers often do have a direct advantage against non-laggers in a 1-on-1 engagement. As you already described, I (a non-lagger) can be shooting at a lagger and hitting them right in the head, only for the game to realize the thing I'm shooting at isn't where it appears to be on my screen, therefore applying no damage. Meanwhile, the lagger is able to deal consistent damage to me. How exactly is this possible? I have no idea. Perhaps the lagger, despite their poor connection, is able to get a more accurate view of where I really am at all times thanks to my solid connection. Perhaps some laggers are able to receive game-state updates more frequently than they are able to send them out. I have no idea how it really works. All I know is that I'm able to win more 1v1 duels than I lose... but against laggers I almost always lose.

Which is interesting to me, because I don't think of lagging players as having an advantage. Mainly, they bounce around the map and don't do a lot of damage, if any. It's as if they don't have a good idea of where I am and can't fight effectively... which makes perfect sense if I'm bouncing around on their screens as much or more as they are on mine.

As Kahzgul said below, it's the way they distract or disrupt the flow of a battle that's their biggest weapon. But laggy players disrupting a team is hardly a Destiny only problem.

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).

My age is clearly getting to me :)

Heh - I'm willing to admit that this might be the reason I don't get too worked up about this stuff. :) I KNOW my age is a factor in my losses... so I'm more willing to attribute shenanigans to ME than someone who has more confidence in their own ability. ;)

Hah... I think it's safe to say we bring our share of shenanigans to the game :)

All of this brings up an interesting point, though. If I think of it, I'll take a screen-cap of the post game scoreboard every time I play with laggy players, just to see if it actually does make a significant difference over time.

Now that I think about it, it would be great to have player connection quality displayed in the post game carnage report on BNet.

My age is clearly getting to me :)

Heh - I'm willing to admit that this might be the reason I don't get too worked up about this stuff. :) I KNOW my age is a factor in my losses... so I'm more willing to attribute shenanigans to ME than someone who has more confidence in their own ability. ;)

To be honest, proper planning and game awareness can improve your play MUCH more than twitch reaction speed. There was the saying back in the Halo days, LOW IS PRO, referring the the look sensitivity. The idea was that if you needed a fast speed to quickly react to something, you didn't think far enough ahead.

My age is clearly getting to me :)

Heh - I'm willing to admit that this might be the reason I don't get too worked up about this stuff. :) I KNOW my age is a factor in my losses... so I'm more willing to attribute shenanigans to ME than someone who has more confidence in their own ability. ;)

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.

That's certainly possible, although I know for certain that I often go against laggy players who end up at or near the top of the score board. During the December Iron Banner, Slycrel and I had a run of 9 or 10 losses in a row, with red-bar players leading the enemy team every single time. It wasn't the same specific players each game, either.

I should also point out that as someone who records a boatload of gameplay footage, my opinions on this matter are not based on my "in-the-moment" first impressions. I'm constantly re-watching games I've recorded, searching for good clips. So a lot of the laggy encounters I'm basing my opinions on are moments that I've rewatched, often in slow motion. Not to say I don't get plenty of stuff wrong, but I have looked back at a lot of it a second time.

On a related note, I've caught many situations where I was *SURE* I should have gotten a kill, but when I slow down the footage and rewatch it I can see my crosshair is clearly not on the target when I'm firing. My age is clearly getting to me :)

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.

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.

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.

Just for fun (and knowing it's completely anecdotal info), I kept a count of kills I thought I SHOULD have had last night - but also of kills that surprised me (as in, I knew I was shooting badly but the guy still died).

There were 14 non-kills in 9 games that really felt wrong to me. There were also 4 kills that probably shouldn't have happened, if what was happening on MY screen was the objective reality.

I wonder how that ratio would change if I did this consistently, every night (I won't, because it's a pain in the ass, and I don't care enough), because I'm USED to looking for kills I SHOULD have gotten, but last night was the very first night I looked for kills I SHOULDN'T have.

I'm sorry that you lag a lot, and I'm sorry that you feel like my complaints about lag are personal attacks against you. They aren't. The reason it sucks to play with laggers is not because they are lagging. It's because of how the game handles the lag, which is by making the lagger invincible during lag times. If the game handled lag in a more fair manner from a gameplay standpoint, then I would not be complaining about laggers.

I don't see your complaint as a personal attack against me. I see your suggested solution as unfair to me, because it is. If the game handled lag the way you want, of course you'd have no complaints-- those kills wouldn't just be easy, they'd be free!

I'm glad you're not taking it personally; it really seemed from your previous statements that you were.

Let me say that I am not advocating change because I personally feel it is unfair. I worked in video game development for 13 years. A significant portion of that time was working on competitive PvP FPS games. Lag is an issue that I'm intimately familiar with from both the player and designer standpoint. I'm clearly doing a poor job of explaining how a change is needed, and how that change would be more fair to both non-laggers and laggers alike. Sorry about that.

Presently, if someone lags, the predictive algorithms in the game keep the avatar of the lagged player moving in the direction they were before they lagged. When the game catches up, it then figures out if the bullets fired at that avatar hit where the player actually was at those times. Usually they don't, and often its because they were stopped by the avatar!

The best solution is dedicated servers. Always and forever.

Second best is to make the player with the best connection the host. This provides a small advantage to the host, but otherwise means that what's actually going on within the game is managed by a solid connection, which would reduce lag as much as possible without having dedicated servers.

Neither of these solutions mean you have to be stuck in place while lagging. Bungie has impressive predictive algorithms which generally make the game look incredibly smooth. Those should stay in place. The change I'm advocating is that instead of asking an individual player's system whether or not that player got hit by any given bullet, all of that polling is answered by the host machine or dedicated server.

For a lagger, the result would probably not look any different than it does today. Honestly, you'd notice almost no difference. For non-laggers, however, the change would mean that laggers would die immediately when you shot them rather than several seconds later. Those corpses would still be able to shoot you because the host would not be preventing the lagged players from shooting after they died on the host system if they had not yet died on their lagging system. But they would not be soaking up supers, rockets, and bullets from the non-lagged players. It would still be annoying to a degree, but the advantage that exists right now would be eliminated.

You're never going to eliminate all lag, and people with chronically lagged connections are always going to have a sub-par experience with online multiplayer. The goal is to minimize the disruption caused by lag to all players. 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.

Of course, people will be more inclined to blame the other side. Human nature.

The primary way of using lag to gain an advantage is to lagswitch. I'm not talking about that.

Unfortunately, lag switches are pretty prevalent. Regardless, changes to netcode to force laggers to take damage or at least prevent them from dealing damage during packet catch up would remove the advantages granted by lag switching.

So you want anyone with an above average ping to take damage when they shouldn't, regardless of whether or not they're exploiting?

F that. Seriously. In the ear.

Uh... no. I honestly don't even see how you're connecting "take damage when shot by bullets" to "when they should not take damage." Right now, a lagging player causes other systems to use predictive animation to make a phantom version of that lagger that moves along the same vector as the last received packet. That phantom will absorb bullets as if it were the player, but when the lag catches up, the game sees that the bullets did not reach the actual position of the lagger (sometimes because the phantom was between where the lagger was and where the shooter was and stopped those bullets) so the lagger takes no damage. Maybe a lagger would think "well I shouldn't take damage from that rocket, it clearly detonated in mid-air several yards in front of me where absolutely no one at all was standing," but they'd be wrong to think that, because every other player in the game saw the rocket hit you in the face. You can only shoot at what you see, and when you connect with your target, it needs to deal damage to that target.

The game is not a democracy. It doesn't matter what "everyone else saw". The game should do as good a job as it can at managing the state of the playing field, and meshing its predictions with reality as it can. The answer to how to handle the situation when the game fails to do so, for whatever reason, is not to poll the non-lagged players. For the game to have even the appearance of fairness, each viewpoint needs to be as accurate as it can be, and when it can't be, it needs to fail gracefully. Bungie has apparently decided that letting a lagged player get away instead of dying is the way to fail gracefully. As a lagged player I agree, although I think I'd probably agree even if my ping was 5ms instead of 200.

[snip]

Again, what? The actual effect of lag is that the damage receiving part of the player is not the same as the visible animated part of the player, and that's broken.

Not the same as the visible animated part of the player FOR YOU. The game was bought and paid for by all the players, not just you, and not just for people with low latency connections like you. If you're trying to convince me that the big problem with crucible is that some low k/d players just aren't dying enough to enemies they never see... I just don't know what to say.

They need to be the same thing in order to be fair and un-exploitable. I guess I can't convince you that bots aren't needed to observe the effects of lag in a game, but perhaps you'll realize that inventing an impossible scenario as the only means I have of convincing you that it does isn't particularly helpful. I'm simply unable to manifest your destiny lag bots in order to prove my point.

If the lagged player is damaged by projectiles he doesn't see, how is that fairer than lagged players not being damaged by projectiles the other players do see? Frankly I doubt lagswitching is anywhere near as prevalent as people say it is. People see a player teleport, that they think should have died, and they just jump to "oh he's a cheater". I've been accused of it myself.

I do understand that, as the lagger, you do not feel advantaged. All I can say is that, as not the lagger, I do feel that people with a single lagger on their team have an advantage. I also can say that I'm not alone. Just search the many bungie forums for complaints about laggers and you can see that this isn't something I just made up to goad you with, but a real problem that many people are observing.

It is not a real problem people are observing. It is a real thing people feel as they play the game. That's not the same thing at all. Lots of people feel that vaccines cause autism and that the moon landing was faked and that angels are real and that GMOs cause cancer and that climate change is a fraud, but lots of people feeling that way doesn't make it so.

I am a lagged player. (I'm also not great at the game, but that's a second thing.) I struggle to keep a k/d above .5. I rarely am on the winning side of a team game. When things get lopsided, people quit. I often find myself facing the kill leader more often than not because I'm an easy mark; most often the player who sees his or her target first, who gets the first shot off and lands it, is going to win, and that is usually not the lagged player. Even when I see myself firing first, either the shot doesn't land or the delay means it landed late.

About the only "advantage" I feel I've ever experienced is a slightly higher than normal chance to get dead man kills, usually with grenades-- presumably because the game allows for the completion of a grenade throw animation that I started before my client saw my death, but that to other players began after I was dead. There is no basis for the preference of the other client, or the other clients' view of the game state as being more authoritative than mine based solely on latency.

I'm sure Bungie already HAS all of this information. In the current setup, the only ones who can collect data from all clients, see how lag effects each, and make decisions on how matchmaking should work are Bungie. Yet apparently the consensus viewpoint is that Bungie is using this information to sneakily ally themselves with lagswitchers and people with bad connections against everyone else. What would possibly motivate this is beyond me, so I think one or more of the underlying assumptions needs re-examining.

Again, no. I don't even know what you're arguing here, and I think I need to step away from this conversation at this point. No one, NO ONE, thinks Bungie wants lag switching in their game. That being said, lag switching IS in the game, and there are ways to change the game code so that lagging of any kind, including the switching variety, does not separate the damage receiving part of the player from the visible and shootable part of the player. That's what I want.

What I'm saying is that Bungie knows there are lag switchers, and it knows there are lagged players. Their system works the way it does because that's the way they want it to. I think they are aware of your possible "solution" and have rejected it

When you shoot something, I want it to take damage. I cannot state it more simply than that.

If I don't see you shoot me, then you didn't shoot me. If that's because I lagswitched, then I'm a cheater, and they should catch me and ban me. If it was because of lag... tough crap, it happens, and it'll rob me of more kills than it ever will you or anyone who has ever played against me.

I'm sorry that you lag a lot, and I'm sorry that you feel like my complaints about lag are personal attacks against you. They aren't. The reason it sucks to play with laggers is not because they are lagging. It's because of how the game handles the lag, which is by making the lagger invincible during lag times. If the game handled lag in a more fair manner from a gameplay standpoint, then I would not be complaining about laggers.

I don't see your complaint as a personal attack against me. I see your suggested solution as unfair to me, because it is. If the game handled lag the way you want, of course you'd have no complaints-- those kills wouldn't just be easy, they'd be free!

The primary way of using lag to gain an advantage is to lagswitch. I'm not talking about that.

Unfortunately, lag switches are pretty prevalent. Regardless, changes to netcode to force laggers to take damage or at least prevent them from dealing damage during packet catch up would remove the advantages granted by lag switching.

So you want anyone with an above average ping to take damage when they shouldn't, regardless of whether or not they're exploiting?

F that. Seriously. In the ear.

Uh... no. I honestly don't even see how you're connecting "take damage when shot by bullets" to "when they should not take damage." Right now, a lagging player causes other systems to use predictive animation to make a phantom version of that lagger that moves along the same vector as the last received packet. That phantom will absorb bullets as if it were the player, but when the lag catches up, the game sees that the bullets did not reach the actual position of the lagger (sometimes because the phantom was between where the lagger was and where the shooter was and stopped those bullets) so the lagger takes no damage. Maybe a lagger would think "well I shouldn't take damage from that rocket, it clearly detonated in mid-air several yards in front of me where absolutely no one at all was standing," but they'd be wrong to think that, because every other player in the game saw the rocket hit you in the face. You can only shoot at what you see, and when you connect with your target, it needs to deal damage to that target.

That said... I'd love to see a way to statistically and objectively substantiate the effects of lag, one way or another. Probably not possible with Destiny, but... if you had a game with client-side prediction that allowed the remote connection by otherwise identical bots-- ones that actually parse the visible field and don't just auto-aim to a precise location-- it'd be interesting to see how bots on the host fare against bots connecting remotely with a latency of, say, 200ms.

There's no "host" in Destiny. Or, rather, everyone is hosting themselves. But I get what you're saying. Seeing a team of 6 with great connections vs. a team of 6 with crap connections to see how everyone does would be interesting. But I think you'd better be able to see the real advantage of a lagger in a game where 11 people have good connections and only one bot lags.

I know Destiny has no host, but without a host I think there's no way to make the comparison. All I'm really trying to do is isolate the actual effects of lag from the psychological effects. Bots are the only reliable way I can think of doing that, and the games I know of that allow the configuration I described above use a strict client/server architecture rather than peer to peer.

Again, what? The actual effect of lag is that the damage receiving part of the player is not the same as the visible animated part of the player, and that's broken. They need to be the same thing in order to be fair and un-exploitable. I guess I can't convince you that bots aren't needed to observe the effects of lag in a game, but perhaps you'll realize that inventing an impossible scenario as the only means I have of convincing you that it does isn't particularly helpful. I'm simply unable to manifest your destiny lag bots in order to prove my point.

I do understand that, as the lagger, you do not feel advantaged. All I can say is that, as not the lagger, I do feel that people with a single lagger on their team have an advantage. I also can say that I'm not alone. Just search the many bungie forums for complaints about laggers and you can see that this isn't something I just made up to goad you with, but a real problem that many people are observing.

I'm sure Bungie already HAS all of this information. In the current setup, the only ones who can collect data from all clients, see how lag effects each, and make decisions on how matchmaking should work are Bungie. Yet apparently the consensus viewpoint is that Bungie is using this information to sneakily ally themselves with lagswitchers and people with bad connections against everyone else. What would possibly motivate this is beyond me, so I think one or more of the underlying assumptions needs re-examining.

Again, no. I don't even know what you're arguing here, and I think I need to step away from this conversation at this point. No one, NO ONE, thinks Bungie wants lag switching in their game. That being said, lag switching IS in the game, and there are ways to change the game code so that lagging of any kind, including the switching variety, does not separate the damage receiving part of the player from the visible and shootable part of the player. That's what I want.

When you shoot something, I want it to take damage. I cannot state it more simply than that. I'm sorry that you lag a lot, and I'm sorry that you feel like my complaints about lag are personal attacks against you. They aren't. The reason it sucks to play with laggers is not because they are lagging. It's because of how the game handles the lag, which is by making the lagger invincible during lag times. If the game handled lag in a more fair manner from a gameplay standpoint, then I would not be complaining about laggers.

The primary way of using lag to gain an advantage is to lagswitch. I'm not talking about that.

Unfortunately, lag switches are pretty prevalent. Regardless, changes to netcode to force laggers to take damage or at least prevent them from dealing damage during packet catch up would remove the advantages granted by lag switching.

So you want anyone with an above average ping to take damage when they shouldn't, regardless of whether or not they're exploiting?

F that. Seriously. In the ear.

That said... I'd love to see a way to statistically and objectively substantiate the effects of lag, one way or another. Probably not possible with Destiny, but... if you had a game with client-side prediction that allowed the remote connection by otherwise identical bots-- ones that actually parse the visible field and don't just auto-aim to a precise location-- it'd be interesting to see how bots on the host fare against bots connecting remotely with a latency of, say, 200ms.

There's no "host" in Destiny. Or, rather, everyone is hosting themselves. But I get what you're saying. Seeing a team of 6 with great connections vs. a team of 6 with crap connections to see how everyone does would be interesting. But I think you'd better be able to see the real advantage of a lagger in a game where 11 people have good connections and only one bot lags.

I know Destiny has no host, but without a host I think there's no way to make the comparison. All I'm really trying to do is isolate the actual effects of lag from the psychological effects. Bots are the only reliable way I can think of doing that, and the games I know of that allow the configuration I described above use a strict client/server architecture rather than peer to peer.

I'm sure Bungie already HAS all of this information. In the current setup, the only ones who can collect data from all clients, see how lag effects each, and make decisions on how matchmaking should work are Bungie. Yet apparently the consensus viewpoint is that Bungie is using this information to sneakily ally themselves with lagswitchers and people with bad connections against everyone else. What would possibly motivate this is beyond me, so I think one or more of the underlying assumptions needs re-examining.