Where's the "This Game Sucks" thread?

[Nebu]

Bear in mind I haven't been at Mythic since 2005, never worked on Warhammer, and am probably not high on Mark Jacobs' Christmas card list. It's kind of refreshing going back to the role of "whiny player", too!

I realize, but you still have considerably more expertise than the whining hordes (like myself).  I'm finding it both interesting and annoying that players will find a way to win at all cost.  I just hope that Mythic takes the issue more seriously than they did in DAoC.  Printing a statement on the Herald that loosly translates to "circle strafing exhibits skillful play" is like pissing in my corn flakes. 

[Lum]

Although it just occurred to me that if players are trying to spoof client-side prediction via window-dragging, either they aren't getting around collision detection or the colliision detection is actually client-side.

I hope for Mythic's sake it's not the latter, or I see some pretty hideous hacks in their future....

Printing a statement on the Herald that loosly translates to "circle strafing exhibits skillful play" is like pissing in my corn flakes. 

Still hard to beat the company line from UO circa 1998 that house-breaking exploits were "creative uses of magic".

[Ingmar]

I'm just going to throw this out there:

I would love an option to opt out for PQ loot.  When I'm just farming influence, and I've already gotten (or don't need) rewards from the PQ, I feel like shit turning it into cash. 

Also, when in a scenario, if you are a level 10 healer, and a level 2 healer shows up and curb-stomps you in the healing charts, you should be temp-banned and your significant other should be sent a box of wire coat hangars. 

Keep in mind that every time that level 2 healer dies and runs back into the action, he's getting healing credit for his hp going up from bolster. 

[Nebu]

Right now, as a healer, I see collision being more of a detriment than a help.  Often when I pre-kite, I just run into a wall of my own players rather than gain benefit from collision.  I think collision detection needs to be only between realms to be beneficial, but I may be alone in this opinion. 

[Ingmar]

Right now, as a healer, I see collision being more of a detriment than a help.  Often when I pre-kite, I just run into a wall of my own players rather than gain benefit from collision.  I think collision detection needs to be only between realms to be beneficial, but I may be alone in this opinion. 

Ugh, targeting someone on the move is hard enough without them being all in a stack too!

[Nebu]

Ugh, targeting someone on the move is hard enough without them being all in a stack too!

I've all but given up trying to heal outside of my own group.  Being nice to people just to have someone in my group die isn't worth it.

[ffc]

Printing a statement on the Herald that loosly translates to "circle strafing exhibits skillful play" is like pissing in my corn flakes. 

Circle-strafing should be treated as a separate issue from window-dragging.

Circle-strafing is necessary for classes that have positional moves, like Witch Hunter / Witch Elf / White Lion / Marauder.  It is also necessary to avoid an enemy's cone of fire.  This is not cheating.

Window-dragging to warp around and not be hit is cheating.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I don't see how circle strafing can be stopped, or really even how it is much of a problem. The fact that you can't run through casters to keep their spells from firing off in WAR solves most of what was the problem with that sort of thing in DAOC.

[Nebu]

Circle-strafing as a movement is fine.  Circle-strafing as a means to induce lag-related warping is not.  They need to solve the lag related warping.  If they manage to fix the lag issues, then this would result in circle strafing being a skill-based movement rather than a lag-inducing affair meant to generate "Out of sight" lag issues.

i.e. If I'm a good player, I should be able to counteract someone circle strafing with an in-game mechanic.  Lag is NOT an in-game mechanic and cannot be countered consistently with another in-game mechanic.

[Riggswolfe]

I've been reading about the collision detection and the layman consensus is that it's client side and this is why, if you block someone from moving, they warp away from you usually.

[Goreschach]

The thing is, most mmo's are susceptible to similar cable pulling, using a program like gear to play with internal clocks, and that kind of stuff because the mmo servers need to trust the client on things like player position.

You don't have to have it as an either/or thing, you can overcome lag by assuming that the server will eventually get around to okaying the movement, and thus drawing it on the screen before you hear back from the sever.  The client experiences no latency and the server still gets to proof the movement.  If you have a disconnect or severe packet loss, then you'll rubberband back to the initial position (or last approved server position).

Likely this is "too much" checking for the client, so some middle ground is chosen, but you can avoid things like teleport hacks or fast run speed by checking the state of the player, which is maintained server side (i.e. walking, running, sprinting), vs the straight-line distance moved over any given period of time.  If the distance is greater than acceptable (by some margin of error) then boot the player.  That simple check won't fix the circle strafing/warping issue that DAoCWAR is experiencing, but it must be fixable since there are other games that do not experience the problem.

While you're right that the more basic exploits can be corrected, in a game with a movement system like WAR's you're not going to be able to fix the circle strafing problem with server position checking. Possibly not even alleviate it much. Most mmos will have a system where if you drop connection for more than a second, or 5, or whatever then if you reestablish connection you'll rubberband back to the last confirmed area. This would help, to some degree, with the problem of actually breaking the connection. And speedhacking can usually be detected by just monitoring the player's movement. However, the problem with the window resizing isn't that it breaks the network response for a significant period of time(if I'm understanding peoples' complaints correctly), but that it simply creates sizeable gaps(maybe a couple hundred ms?) between updates. In a game with realistic physics this wouldn't matter much, as the server could accurately predict where most objects would be in that period of time.

The problem comes about when you consider the way players in WAR move. Players run, without fatigue, at approximately the speed of a cheetah on a cocaine high. What's worse is that they basically have zero momentum, and can start, stop, and turn in any direction instantly.  This makes any kind of accurate prediction on the order of more than maybe 100ms impossible if the player is doing something involving a lot of starting/stopping/mouse movement. Like circle strafing.

This impossibility to make accurate movement predictions over any significant length of time does two things. First, it allows the circle strafing problem to show up to begin with(ignoring window resizing screwing with the network updating). Second, it also makes impossible what you suggest about using a system that constantly re-updates the player position based on a stream of server confirmations. A system like that would cause a constant stream of rebands as the client synchronizes your position to each server response. In some games, something like this would be possible, but the degree of the constant rebanding is inversely proportional to the network speed and the accuracy of the player movement prediction. In a game like WAR, where the network is huge and slow, and player movement prediction is hard, then you wouldn't be able to implement a system like that without experience constant rebanding when you do something other than stand still or run straight ahead. This is why most games like this use a 'grace period' before rebanding takes effect. Unless things go out of whack for more than a given period(maybe a couple seconds), or the discrepancy between what is expected and what happens is very large, the server just trusts the client.

So what they need to do to fix this resizing problem is fix the resizing problem, and not waste time dicking around with position confirmation.

[Nonentity]

I made a terrible analogy last night, but one that is totally appropriate.

The WAR client is like a...

Okay, no, I won't share it.

Lets just say that it doesn't play nice, and I want to be able to beat the crap out of my MMO client, and if I run the goddamn thing in 'fullscreen windowed' mode, it should not FUCKING MINIMIZE when I go to another program.

The CPU usage of the client should not GO UP AND AFFECT ALL OTHER PROGRAMS when I am in it.

[Mrbloodworth]

No more chain kill xp bonus?  Ok.  

Yeah, wait, what happened to that anyway? i don't think i have seen it since launch?

[Oz]

I just run into a wall of my own players rather than gain benefit from collision. 

this Annoyed us to no end in human T1, where all the order players would just stop on the bridge.  Not a good idea if your melee people are not in front of you...

[Hawkbit]

The game should not have released without at least a tank, healer and dps for each tier.  That would resolve at least some of the imbalance issues.

Imo, as a tank, I really like collision detection... it sucks having people run in front of you, but it's ok.

[Riggswolfe]

I just run into a wall of my own players rather than gain benefit from collision. 

this Annoyed us to no end in human T1, where all the order players would just stop on the bridge.  Not a good idea if your melee people are not in front of you...

This happens way to much. Order gets intimidated and freezes on that damn bridge. It's really annoying.

[Fraeg]

hmm... would window dragging explain this?

in Phoenix Gate yesterday there was a witch elf grabbing our flag (Violet on Volkmar ), standard deal, pops out of stealth and hits sprint.  I am a WH and was standing on the steps.  As soon as she pops i am firing my gun for its snare, she gets snared.  I run up to hit her and get "Target Not In Range"  and i was standing right on top of her.  This happened the entire way back to their flag cap point.  I could only  hit her with my gun to slow her down, and not enough damage to kill her. And eventually i of course got stomped by her team.

At first, i thought ok.. Lag?!?!?.  But she then proceeded to do the exact same thing with the same results til the game was over.

So... Next Scenerio... the exact same thing with a DOK (Blite on Volkmar ). I was the only one chasing this guy, and only hitable with my ranged gun even if i was standing on him.  then once backup for him showed up... all of a sudden i could hit him, and he was hitting me.  Once more order showed up and wiped out his healers...*poof* suddenly "Target Out of Range" again.  He then proceeded to show me a new exploit.  Hop up the hill Destro Side to get to starting point while holding flag, and have lvl 55+ guards keeping you safe while you hold the flag.

I should note: I had no problems hitting anyone else in both scenarios.. it was just these two players who *happened* to be carrying the flag.

Is this Window Dragging? or something else?


If this persists, and/or gets worse... that's a deal breaker for a game i have been loving since ~January.

Hell it made me make my first "@" post in probably 5 years.

/rant off

[rattran]

Stuff like the client forgetting there is a keep, and thus being able to walk/target through walls doesn't fill me with confidence in mythic's client skills.

[Bzalthek]

I did some window dragging tests (outside of pvp, in a pve camp) and I was walking up damn near vertical inclines.  Without the dragging, I'd just be stuck at the bottom running in place.

For a PvP centric game, some of this shit needs some quick attention.

[nurtsi]

I get the 'target not in range' on my black orc in PVE all the time. I'm standing on the mob but can't hit it. Then I have to manually move around to find where the mob really is and where my client thinks it is. Happens more on mobs that use ranged attacks. Basically it seems like the client and the game server are out of sync (same stuff happened with WoW warriors after charging in the early days). Haven't had this happen in WoW for a long time now so I hope Mythic can fix it as well.

[raydeen]

I get the 'target not in range' on my black orc in PVE all the time. I'm standing on the mob but can't hit it. Then I have to manually move around to find where the mob really is and where my client thinks it is. Happens more on mobs that use ranged attacks. Basically it seems like the client and the game server are out of sync (same stuff happened with WoW warriors after charging in the early days). Haven't had this happen in WoW for a long time now so I hope Mythic can fix it as well.

I've been seeing A LOT of this. I was chalking it up to my machine only having 1 GB (2 GB should arrive tomorrow) and just choking on the memory requirement. Fortunately, both of the toons I've rolled have ranged attacks so I just have to jockey around until the range kicks in. Haven't seen this in PvP yet. Frankly, AoC performs a lot better than WAR does. Lower overall framerate but much more consistant in mob/player pathing and targeting. And WAR is a lot more crash prone. Sometimes it will just consider crashing to the desktop (screen gamma will go way up and the game will lock for about 30 secs then recover-enough to get me killed), or it will crash to the login screen a few times in a row, or just shit it's pants to the desktop, one time so severe that I got dumped down to 640x480x16 and had to restart completely. I'm really hoping Mythic does some optimizing on this thing.

[Drubear]

I get the 'target not in range' on my black orc in PVE all the time.

I was on my BlackOrc as well, and noticed it on the range mobs too. It seemed to happen more when I moved up to them, and then tried to dmg-pull them back a bit (to try to avoid some bof/range aggro from friends.) I was pretty much unable to do that and once I moved further back out of range, the mob "warped back" to their starting position.

It looked to me like I was pulling them back, and my client was obliging, but (Little Britain voice) "the server said no." Perhaps there's some npc in-combat movement/location bugs?

Verra annoying.

[Wasted]

With my Shadow Warrior I can't use my snare at all in PVE as the mob appears to continue to follow me when it really is actually snared.  All melee attacks with say out of range even though its showing as right in front of me and moving whilst all all range attacks are still red to indicate too close.  This doesn't seem to happen in pvp though.

[murdoc]

I get the 'target not in range' on my black orc in PVE all the time. I'm standing on the mob but can't hit it. Then I have to manually move around to find where the mob really is and where my client thinks it is. Happens more on mobs that use ranged attacks. Basically it seems like the client and the game server are out of sync (same stuff happened with WoW warriors after charging in the early days). Haven't had this happen in WoW for a long time now so I hope Mythic can fix it as well.

Yup, same thing with me. I was playing with two other guildmates in the room and they would keep asking 'why are you standing over there?' On my screen, my Black Orc was right beside the mobs swinging away too 'target not in range', on their screens it showed my just standing off in a distance.

Only time I had it happen in pvp I was chasing down a player in Tier 2. Would get on my mount and chase them down to the point where I'd be blocking them from running forward, dismount and get 'target not in range' over and over as they ran away.

[Paelos]

The targetting bug in melee is extremely annoying, especially if other targets are pounding on you. I had one point where one mob bugged while another shot me in the back, then i dragged that bugged mob to the mob shooting me, and that one bugged. Finally, I had them both unbugged, very little health, and somehow managed to beat them both up with about 100 health left.

Then a spider came out of nowhere, and bit me in the ass. I died, and the game crashed. If there was a queue, I might have cancelled right there.

[Lantyssa]

The bad mob sync is really annoying.  It's even worse if you play a class with a lot of positional attacks like a White Lion.

It definately on the server side though, as a group of people will have difficulty hitting the same target.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, I have this happen quite a bit in PvE as well, and it is sometimes something that other people in my group will experience at the same time and sometimes not. I think sometimes it's terrain linked (not unlike how a mob can get bugged in WoW by getting stuck in terrain). Sometimes it seems to me to involve a ranged mob where the server-side doesn't recognize that the mob has been engaged at melee distance, and so keeps insisting that the mob is still attacking at range. (You can tell this in part by the animations. This is almost the worst of these kinds of events, because it's well-nigh impossible to clear, short of getting out of the mob's range altogether.) Sometimes I have no idea what it is. What's especially annoying in all cases is that the mob can still hurt you, and will often rubberband to you even if you back up or run away, while retaining its status as untargetable. At least in WoW, if a mob gets bugged, it can't hurt you any more than you can hurt it. Getting beat on by something that you can't affect is really goddamn annoying, and if it happens enough, borderline game-breaking.

If people learn how to do this deliberately in RvR, the game is fucked. I've seen only one case now of a player who seemed untargetable--a White Lion. And it was only in two sessions of STC, so I'll chock it up to a bug for now. When I see window dragging, in contrast, what I see are players who suddenly warp away from their last visible location or warp around behind you or who pass through what look like solid objects. You can still target them, but they may suddenly be out of range (e.g., their new location is 'real' to the server in relationship to your location). They don't rubberband back to where you previously saw them, and the solid objects they've passed through they "really" passed through.

[Fraeg]

If people learn how to do this deliberately in RvR, the game is fucked. I've seen only one case now of a player who seemed untargetable--a White Lion. And it was only in two sessions of STC, so I'll chock it up to a bug for now. When I see window dragging, in contrast, what I see are players who suddenly warp away from their last visible location or warp around behind you or who pass through what look like solid objects. You can still target them, but they may suddenly be out of range (e.g., their new location is 'real' to the server in relationship to your location). They don't rubberband back to where you previously saw them, and the solid objects they've passed through they "really" passed through.

I had my third instance last night of the Target out of range in Phoenix gate.  Every time it  has been the flag carrier.  This time it wasn't just me there was a train of 4 order melee all trying to hit the guy, and all that would work were our throwing weapons.   Every time i have seen this it just so happens to be the person running the flag, and i have zero issues targetting and hitting any other opponents.   3 does not a statistically valid population  make... but i am getting pretty damn suspicious at this point that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.


sigh..... I know I should know better than to think people won't do assgoblin stuff like this if they think they can get away with it, but it still bums me out.

[HaemishM]

sigh..... I know I should know better than to think people won't do assgoblin stuff like this if they think they can get away with it, but it still bums me out.

Of course people will be assgoblins. Which is why it's incumbent on Mythic to fix things like window dragging FAST.

[SnakeCharmer]

Still debating on whether or not to pick this up.

And I'm still not sure what window dragging is.

[cevik]

Still debating on whether or not to pick this up.

And I'm still not sure what window dragging is.

It's a ubiquitous way for people who are terrible at pvp to cheat and pretend it's skill.  If you like real pvp, wait until mythic fixes window dragging before picking up this game.

[Ingmar]

Its a Mythic game. When it is fun, it is more fun than anything else on the market, but that fun comes with a lot of little caveats like bad communication from the company and a number of small crappy quality-of-life type issues. Mythic doesn't do polish very well, but the core PVP experience is so much fun that unless cheating becomes rampant (a possibility) the other stuff isn't enough to kill it.

[Nebu]

Its a Mythic game. When it is fun, it is more fun than anything else on the market, but that fun comes with a lot of little caveats like bad communication from the company and a number of small crappy quality-of-life type issues. Mythic doesn't do polish very well, but the core PVP experience is so much fun that unless cheating becomes rampant (a possibility) the other stuff isn't enough to kill it.

So true... oddly that describes early UO for me as well. 

Let's hope that having 500k subscribers brings a little urgency to the table.  I'd hate to see WAR go the way of AoC.

[schild]

500k was for 1 week.

I have no clue what they're at now, but I'd bet it's much better.
 
Imo, the more subscribers the more urgency, you have a lot more to lose.

[Nebu]

500k was for 1 week.

I have no clue what they're at now, but I'd bet it's much better.
 
Imo, the more subscribers the more urgency, you have a lot more to lose.

You all know that I've been a fan of DAoC for 6 years.  I want this game to succeed.  I want it desperately. 

Unless they slam the door on lag exploits, the people that have come to the game for accessible pvp will leave in droves.  I will be holding the door for them.