Forged Alliance Forever

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-17T07:17:23+02:00

You'd be surprised how many people still have unreliable connections that spike, more often than not I see people with over 450 or 500 ping to me, stable or not, but def not comfortable to play. And if someone has high ping to me with my half gbit connection I'm dreaded to think what they have to others. Also doing ping tests is easy because everything is already implemented and all you have to do is edit lua, there is nothing regarding packet loss detection as far as I can see, also I don't think lua is the best choice for this. I guess you could use the built in function to send large random tables and see what happens but I honestly have no idea if this wouldn't impact other data sent (I would imagine so). You're welcome to try though if you need someone to test it with you just say.

Statistics: Posted by BenDover — 17 May 2017, 07:17

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-17T02:45:50+02:00

this is quite derailing ~_~

ping / latency is almost a non issue in the 21st century for this game.

the issue lies with packet drops and bandwidth limitation. This is what needs to be tested in the lobby not the avg 300 ~ 400 ms latency Germany has to Aussi. Btw thats right about as far away as two countries can be from each other... I have never had latency issues with Australians.THATS A NON ISSUE - But every so often I meet a player who drops packets like the rain during monsune effectively slowing sim speed to -3 right off the bat.
THAT IS AN ISSUE and that is what would need testing not the ping. Obviously his connection can't handle a steady stream of data without bottlenecking.
Heck I'll programm and commit this myself if someone gives me a crash course in lua and UDP

Statistics: Posted by andybe — 17 May 2017, 02:45

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-11T17:02:01+02:00

http://imgur.com/a/LbZfT IMO much better already, still think those bars look meh, collecting ping info from all players is much more work and I will try to create something during this weekend.

Statistics: Posted by BenDover — 11 May 2017, 17:02

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-11T06:36:36+02:00

Look at how cables are laid out in the ocean and you'll see why Australians get kicked, they might have 300 ping to Europe but not everywhere is so perfect, if another player is from South Africa the game will lag and there is nothing you can do or say to change that, some parts of Australia have insufferable pings even to Europe. Besides not everyone (in fact most doesn't from what I've noticed) has the perfect connection to maintain stable <500 ping at all times, if it's 450 in the lobby then you'll see some in game lag too.

Statistics: Posted by BenDover — 11 May 2017, 06:36

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-11T03:01:52+02:00

Spoiler: show

as for ping ratings, would be nice to know better but i feel like the majority of people won't know how to use the ping bar and then fail to host games properly (kicking Australians for having 300 ping etc etc is already a huge issue made on lack of knowledge)
as for OP point 2, what stops a salty player from rating the winners players connection as poor in the hopes that that player gets alienated by hosts for the rest of the month?

Statistics: Posted by biass — 11 May 2017, 03:01

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-10T21:05:19+02:00

https://github.com/FAForever/fa/issues
There you could make an issue with your suggestions for lobby improvements. (the better you explain it, the more chance you have to convince people)
No complaining, only constructive ideas.

Statistics: Posted by KeyBlue — 10 May 2017, 21:05

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-10T20:15:27+02:00

Oh. I guess I have to contribute some code with a PR. Is there a way to ask the smart FAF coder people to look into these ideas?

Statistics: Posted by megatron219 — 10 May 2017, 20:15

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-10T20:14:18+02:00

PhilipJFry wrote:
PR is short for Pull Request. With PRs you can contribute code to a project on github. For example FAF.

Ah, thanks. For this topic, should I put a request under Lua code or Python code?

Statistics: Posted by megatron219 — 10 May 2017, 20:14

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-10T20:10:04+02:00

PR is short for Pull Request. With PRs you can contribute code to a project on github. For example FAF.

Statistics: Posted by PhilipJFry — 10 May 2017, 20:10

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-10T20:15:38+02:00

KeyBlue wrote:
You do know that you can hover over the bars to get the actual number, right?
Bars are there because its easier to see the issue with something graphic compared to numbers.

I must be new in this hovering thing, how can I hover over something that isn't there? Also - no it's not easier to see if something's wrong with bars when there is absolutely no reference point, current CPU rating is the perfect example, is it better when it's short? Long? How long exactly is considered playable for 4v4, half? 3/4? When you want something easy to understand you use colors, text, provide some reference. Nobody says oh his CPU rating is half a bar long, lets kick him, they use numbers, why? Because normal people understand numbers.

Statistics: Posted by BenDover — 10 May 2017, 20:09

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-10T20:06:46+02:00

KeyBlue wrote:
What I do know is that this subject has been talked about and the people in charge wanted to keep it this way.

Most of what I'm talking about here isn't about whether to have a bar or number. It's about what information is used to produce that bar or number.

Is there a better place to bring this up? I do think we can make some advances here that would help the game and community

Statistics: Posted by megatron219 — 10 May 2017, 20:06

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-10T20:02:13+02:00

So is there a better place for me to post this request? What does PR stand for here?

Like I said, I don't know how to code, but I'm trying to delve into the issues that a person who would code this would need to understand, so they can code it better.

Statistics: Posted by megatron219 — 10 May 2017, 20:02

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-10T19:59:59+02:00

BenDover wrote:
we don't have number just those stupid bars.

You do know that you can hover over the bars to get the actual number, right?
Bars are there because its easier to see the issue with something graphic compared to numbers.

PhilipJFry wrote:
sounds cool
i just remember what we had when i started on faf
a colored bar that turned yellow when someone wasn't connected to someone else
the amount of rejoining and kicking was insufferable

BenDover wrote:
Simple ping meter that displayed an actual number like you would expect, was green when a person had connection to everyone, yellow when there was no connection between some players.

I'm fairly sure this is how it currently works. But with the restriction that it only shows you the bar when that person has 500+ ping.

I wasn't here when the ping was always visible so I don't know if showing it only for 500+ was a positive change.
What I do know is that this subject has been talked about and the people in charge wanted to keep it this way.

Statistics: Posted by KeyBlue — 10 May 2017, 19:59

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-10T19:58:38+02:00

PhilipJFry wrote:
I wasn't playing on gpgnet so i have no idea what the tools that the community had were like.

The GPGnet lobby just showed a ping that was similar to the ping shown on the colored F11 menu. And it had the same problem - it was either smoothed out or wasn't refreshed enough. I could usually tell when somebody's connection had a problem because their ping would fluctuate by more than 3 ms in the lobby (in real life, if it was reported constantly/accurately - you'd see a lot of short-lasting ping spikes.)

Statistics: Posted by megatron219 — 10 May 2017, 19:58

Re: A better game experience

2017-05-10T19:54:51+02:00

PhilipJFry wrote:
The people who like to look at fancy colors instead of using the console to show the networkstats wouldn't use it in the first place. Kinda hard to stop them from doing so without removing pings from the F11 menu window.

I agree - but I think it's because we've misled most people to think the ping that's reported there is accurate. It's not (because the refresh rate isn't high enough) Also, if we give them the correct tool - something that shows the quality of ping over time (while under game-time stress loads), instead of just current ping, even noobs will be able to figure out who has a bad connection

PhilipJFry wrote:
I'm with you about giving hosts a proper tool to make an educated decision but as long as nobody codes such a feature we kinda have to work with what we have.

You're right. Unfortunately, I don't know how to code. What I'm trying to do here is to inform someone who does know how to code on what the issue is, so they can understand it and code it correctly.

Statistics: Posted by megatron219 — 10 May 2017, 19:54