C-c-c-combo Breaker Woes Begone

Greetings!

We are currently looking into creating a marker to be displayed in version 2.0 that will make it easier to determine which way the enemy you are fighting is facing so that combos can be executed without having to worry about whether or not your target is facing the correct way. However, with any online game, there is always the chance of encountering some amount of latency, so it's not a 100% guarantee each and every time.

Good news everyone

Nice! Looking forward to it :D

It sounds good, but ... why another indicator that needs same update as the monster model itself? Why not just update monster's position more efficiently?

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

It sounds good, but ... why another indicator that needs same update as the monster model itself? Why not just update monster's position more efficiently?

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Honestly, they just can't really.
No matter how they swing it there's always gonna be a slight lag.
Best they can do is take away as much as they can, but for someone like me, the lowest ping to the servers in japan is 350ms or 1/3 a second.
That's not including lag through my ISP, there's, server lag or lag from my PC.

I'm sure though they can make some improvements on what they had though. At the very least trick us into not noticing it as much.

With online games there's always a little guesswork, like shooters, always aim just ever so slightly in front

Great, I guess. Though I was kinda hoping we wouldn't need this in 2.0, kinda makes me worry.

Some monster positioning can sometimes not be entirely clear cut, say with lance wielder beast-men.

I think this indicator has less to do with graphical latency as much as confusion in the middle of all the particle effects and action. Could be wrong of course, but it would be helpful to know where the mobs is facing when it's obscured in a massive explosives and crowding bodies.

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

It sounds good, but ... why another indicator that needs same update as the monster model itself? Why not just update monster's position more efficiently?

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Essentially, during the shower of particle effects of most team efforts it's very, very difficult to keep track of where the frontal side of the enemy even is at all times.
Furthermore, there are certain mobs which have ambiguous fronts, for example the majority of the Amal'jaa. You basically have to aim for their left shoulder instead of the front side of their torso because because stand in a sideways battle stance, making their 'front', that is the side that faces you, closer to their left side than their actual front side.

Love the Killer Instinct reference :)

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings!

We are currently looking into creating a marker to be displayed in version 2.0 that will make it easier to determine which way the enemy you are fighting is facing so that combos can be executed without having to worry about whether or not your target is facing the correct way. However, with any online game, there is always the chance of encountering some amount of latency, so it's not a 100% guarantee each and every time.

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They're preparing us for the worst :P ? Still hoping in the server structure fix (confirmed) + Regional server.. And then we can talk of "any online game" cause almost every online game has decent structure and regional servers.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings!

We are currently looking into creating a marker to be displayed in version 2.0 that will make it easier to determine which way the enemy you are fighting is facing so that combos can be executed without having to worry about whether or not your target is facing the correct way. However, with any online game, there is always the chance of encountering some amount of latency, so it's not a 100% guarantee each and every time.

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Thank you for this, I look forward to not running through beasties to get behind them for combos only to notice I ran to the front lol.

"c-c-c-combo Breaker "<----I c wut u did there :P

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

It sounds good, but ... why another indicator that needs same update as the monster model itself? Why not just update monster's position more efficiently?

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Try figuring out the facing of a wisp monster. ;)

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

It sounds good, but ... why another indicator that needs same update as the monster model itself? Why not just update monster's position more efficiently?

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Yeah... I had an instance where I knew which direction the enemy was facing but failed a combo. It was facing me, stopped and did a ranged attack, and I ran up to it to attack from the front with Pummel, but apparently it was right next to me and I believe I hit it from behind. Attacking froze its position in the wrong place.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings!

We are currently looking into creating a marker to be displayed in version 2.0 that will make it easier to determine which way the enemy you are fighting is facing so that combos can be executed without having to worry about whether or not your target is facing the correct way. However, with any online game, there is always the chance of encountering some amount of latency, so it's not a 100% guarantee each and every time.

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Add a Halo ring around each action, and then create a color system when it's "optimal" to use from a particular side.

- Green Halo with TP required would be optimal with action highlighted.
- Red Halo with TP required would be useable, but not optimal use.

-2 cents

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Originally Posted by ESAR

Honestly, they just can't really.
No matter how they swing it there's always gonna be a slight lag.

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Updating an indicator or a model position is all the same to your network or the game, so while there might be cases where it will be easier to tell where the mob is facing, it will do absolutely nothing in terms of improving the speed of the update.

edit: unless they can somehow implement it in a more reliable way than usual position synchs, which is kinda unlikely seeing them struggling with stuff that should be easy on a decent engine. If that's a temporary solution for 1.x, then it good to have. But for 2.0, they better fix their positioning code instead of overloading the UI even more.

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

Updating an indicator or a model position is all the same to your network or the game, so while there might be cases where it will be easier to tell where the mob is facing, it will do absolutely nothing in terms of improving the speed of the update.

edit: unless they can somehow implement it in a more reliable way than usual position synchs, which is kinda unlikely seeing them struggling with stuff that should be easy on a decent engine. If that's a temporary solution for 1.x, then it good to have. But for 2.0, they better fix their positioning code instead of overloading the UI even more.

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This.

Throwing more things onto the UI to make up for mechanics that simply do not work well is a mistake... and a big one. I hope this is nothing more than temporary.

What this can help with is tell the player the actual facing of the mob, as the models usually do not update in sync very well.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings!

We are currently looking into creating a marker to be displayed in version 2.0 that will make it easier to determine which way the enemy you are fighting is facing so that combos can be executed without having to worry about whether or not your target is facing the correct way. However, with any online game, there is always the chance of encountering some amount of latency, so it's not a 100% guarantee each and every time.

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Let me jump on a monster's back, easy combo from the rear! :D

Silliness aside, cool news!

Could be nice to have like an arrow or a line along the ground indicating the front of the mob. Make it easily visible and just integrate it with the target cursor.

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Originally Posted by Dragonheart

They're preparing us for the worst :P ? Still hoping in the server structure fix (confirmed) + Regional server.. And then we can talk of "any online game" cause almost every online game has decent structure and regional servers.

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Regional servers on a global MMO doesn't really work out,no? I don't wanna miss out playing with all you americans, arabs, japanese, greek, italian, whatsoever ^^

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

Some monster positioning can sometimes not be entirely clear cut, say with lance wielder beast-men.

I think this indicator has less to do with graphical latency as much as confusion in the middle of all the particle effects and action. Could be wrong of course, but it would be helpful to know where the mobs is facing when it's obscured in a massive explosives and crowding bodies.

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Agreed...it can also be difficult know which way a firefly, group of bees, or even one of Ifrit's spikes are facing o.o (I hear the spikes actually have a "face point"...so this would be nice.)

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Originally Posted by Gentaro

Regional servers on a global MMO doesn't really work out,no? I don't wanna miss out playing with all you americans, arabs, japanese, greek, italian, whatsoever ^^

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There's no reason it wouldn't work.

Can we stay on topic please, instead of turning it into another global vs regional debate thread? There are enough of them out there.

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Originally Posted by ESAR

Honestly, they just can't really.
No matter how they swing it there's always gonna be a slight lag.
Best they can do is take away as much as they can, but for someone like me, the lowest ping to the servers in japan is 350ms or 1/3 a second.
That's not including lag through my ISP, there's, server lag or lag from my PC.

I'm sure though they can make some improvements on what they had though. At the very least trick us into not noticing it as much.

With online games there's always a little guesswork, like shooters, always aim just ever so slightly in front

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350 ms ping is 3.5 seconds, 33 ms ping is 1/3 of a second.

>_>

3.5 seconds delay on stuff seems right with the way I run out of stuff, still die then slide across others' screens.

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Originally Posted by Forerunner

350 ms ping is 3.5 seconds, 33 ms ping is 1/3 of a second.

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Wrong. 3500ms is 3.5 seconds, ms being milliseconds or a 1/1000 seconds. You're probably confusing it for microseconds, which is 1/10 and is written as µs

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>_>

3.5 seconds delay on stuff seems right with the way I run out of stuff, still die then slide across others' screens.

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The delay is higher because the ping only accounts for a single packet reaching the server, it doesn't account for processing times on the server nor for the time a response packet needs to reach you, nor for the fact that usually it needs more than one packet to deliver the data.

In short, ping is not really reliable for determining your exact latency.

Yeah, there's just no way around network latencies no matter what you do with the server infrastructure, unless you count the geographical location of the server as part of the server infrastructure. Of course ping isn't the only factor in play, but when it takes a quarter second from the server tells me that something happens to I see it, and then another quarter second from I tell the server what I did until it receives that, that's half a second lost in network traffic alone, it is definitely a significant part of the latency issue.

Personally, I seem to be seeing a delay of roughly 750 ms between command input and stuff happening on screen when I have about 250ms ping, which seems right, considering the game probably buffers 2-3 frames or something on the client alone (so-called input lag, approximately 50 ms depending on framerate), a bit of processing done on the server (1-200ms?), and another bit of input lag as the results reach my client again.

Being an european player, I would be satisfied if they just added US east coast servers for us "western" players. My latency to east coast servers is around 100-120 ms, which is less than half as much as it is to Japanese servers (250+ ms). US East seems to me to be a good place to put servers, seeing as it would be likely to give most american and european better latencies than we both have to Japan right now, and at the same time let all the English-capable europeans (most of us, really) play with americans.

For those who complain about not being to play with X region players, all they need to do is to not enforce regional servers, so that people could have alts on whichever servers they want. With the pricing models they seem to be going for in v2, it seems like one character per server, up to 8 in total will be included in the price, making it possible to create characters on 7 other servers without paying more than what the basic service costs.

On topic, they could just make them "grayed out" unless you're in the correct position for the directional based combos. If the combos "lit up" as an indicator (for now) that'd be pretty nice way to make it less of a guessing game at times as well. I'd like either way really, but an indicator for direction in any shape or form is something of a step in the right direction. (I'd just like to see a simple version before 2.0 since it's extremely annoying for some things)

Graying them out sounds restrictive etc etc but when did the combo system not restrict you? Plus, if you miss a combo you're pretty much screwed for 10s or so as it is on top of 1-1.5k tp poorer.