Enough is enough

[iAmE]

6 minutes ago, Arkasaurio said:

On the lag piece, as lag increases does turret performance decline equally across the board?

Yes

6 minutes ago, Arkasaurio said:

Do my hypothetical turtle and ptera take the same number of bullets per second, only difference being that my ptera makes it to the wall faster?

Yes. However one thing to take into account is that the Ptera can get from point A to point B faster, meaning that it is in view of the turrets far less, meaning it could take no dammage at all. 

6 minutes ago, Arkasaurio said:

Or, does turret performance decline first/more quickly when the server lags for hitting faster animals?

Turret Tracking and Lag are connected. The laggier the server, the longer it takes the turret to "Target and shoot". Therefore there is a connection between fast dinos, and avoiding damage (IE it takes 15 seconds for the turret to "Acquire and Fire", however it takes a Ptera 1 Second to get to the wall, therefore it won't shoot you, in heavy lag.)

6 minutes ago, Arkasaurio said:

Basically does lag (before we get to the point turrets totally stop working) impact turret performance against every speed of animal equally?

Turret lag occurs independently of the Animal, and has no direct link to the speed of the animal. Faster animals can exploit the increased Targetting window, but the speed itself, does not, and do not, cause the turrets to have issues acquiring the target or shooting it.

6 minutes ago, Arkasaurio said:

 I don't think that's the case (because it doesn't make much sense in my mind) but I admittedly don't have a mountain of experience in large raids.

I've played since Steam Release, on Official PvP, and have around eight thousand hours of recorded time (Though how much of that is AFK time and how much isn't, I literally have no clue, but a substantial amount of it is AFK time thanks to the water babies) spent exclusively on Ark Official PvP. So take it as you will. 

6 minutes ago, Arkasaurio said:

I'm not sure I follow the lasers bit, how that really makes a difference from bullets. I get that its mostly about HP being higher than total turret DPS for the amount of time required under fire, so all you have to do is be able to take all of the bullets it takes to get to the wall and if you're to the wall very quickly there's not much time to take bullets.

Lasers refers to constant sustained DPS without any interruptions or breaks. You got the gist of it however.

6 minutes ago, Arkasaurio said:

If lag impacts ability for turrets to hit faster targets it's still a "performance issue" in my mind. Do you think the game will ever be totally free of lag, in all/most situations, particularly if players feel they have an advantage for doing anything the can to generate lag? That would be awesome, but I personally don't see it happening.

No, quite frankly, I don't think that Lag will ever be solved in this game. Not serverside, nor client side the devs can attempt to fix it, as much as possible, but it's highly unlikely that it will ever be solved to the point that this/these issues are no longer problematic. 

 

As it stands, all you really need to do to see severe turret response time degradation is to log onto an official server, that is capped, and just run at a turret box. Most of the time you can walk right up on top of it and just drop C4, without getting shot once. 

I could post several links showing the phenomenon in action, but linking outside links on these forums is an actionable offense, so if you want them, I can PM them to you. 

[cfrostyscriv]

A player can lag while the turrets do not, big base in hidden lake that when flown over would lag the player flying, if low enough and in range of the turrets they would lag and stop but when lag finished they would be dead as the turrets had killed them while they were lagging.

 

On xbox lag is your number one best defence. 

[iAmE]

2 minutes ago, cfrostyscriv said:

A player can lag while the turrets do not, big base in hidden lake that when flown over would lag the player flying, if low enough and in range of the turrets they would lag and stop but when lag finished they would be dead as the turrets had killed them while they were lagging.

 

On xbox lag is your number one best defence. 

Client side lag vs server lag are two seperate beasts. Serverside lag basically prevents turrets from working. Client side lag doesn't affect them at all.

 

Apologies if that was unclear. 

[cfrostyscriv]

2 minutes ago, iAmE said:

Client side lag vs server lag are two seperate beasts. Serverside lag basically prevents turrets from working. Client side lag doesn't affect them at all.

 

Apologies if that was unclear. 

Its the lag a player receives as they render in the base, on xbox it can literally stop you dead for 30 seconds. Im not sure much can be done about that tho as the more performance one is given the more they will build.

[iAmE]

3 minutes ago, cfrostyscriv said:

Its the lag a player receives as they render in the base, on xbox it can literally stop you dead for 30 seconds. Im not sure much can be done about that tho as the more performance one is given the more they will build.

That lag happens to any and everyone. I freeze up for 30 seconds on PC despite having 32g of Ram, an SSD, 1080 Founders and an I5 CPU. It's a question of optimization to be sure

[Sphere]

Just now, iAmE said:

That lag happens to any and everyone. I freeze up for 30 seconds on PC despite having 32g of Ram, an SSD, 1080 Founders and an I5 CPU. It's a question of optimization to be sure

I have my suspicions that freezing is to do with the level of quality of the textures. I used to use epic, but they would cause 8 second freezes, which is unbearable. That drastically dropped for me when going down to high. What do you think?

To mods, this has to do with a form of lag. /topic

[iAmE]

2 minutes ago, Sphere said:

I have my suspicions that freezing is to do with the level of quality of the textures. I used to use epic, but they would cause 8 second freezes, which is unbearable. That drastically dropped for me when going down to high. What do you think?

To mods, this has to do with a form of lag. /topic

Turning it down helps, but it doesn't eliminate it. Adding more structures can still push those lag/freeze spikes back up there. 

[Jenessa]

On 7/27/2017 at 2:52 PM, Palenor said:

Guess you never played Everquest or Runescape or World of Warcraft or RIFT or World of Tanks or Destiny or.........insert game here

Started EQ when it began on PvP teams, leveling was hard as hell, but stuck with it for a few years. EQ2 was boring enough to make a persons eyes cross. Went to WoW PvP for a few years then switched to PvE...whomever said WoW isn't a grind hasn't done the Flying in Draenor or Legion quests. I came to Ark to get away from the monotony. I go back to WoW when ARK gets boring and switch back and forth. Ark is nice for the freedom to just go do what you want.

On 7/28/2017 at 6:08 AM, CCRogerWilco said:

Yeah. The only way to enjoy ARK is with your own private server and some friends.

 

I agree with this- the all out bullying, griefing and not penalizing those who do it was the reason we ended up going private. It was far too reminiscent of the start of EQ PvP when the game first came out but without any sort of GM control at all. Maniacal pvp'rs taking advantage of early release and bugs wasn't what we wanted to be playing a game for- didn't want to deal with that headache, we wanted to enjoy the game, and you can.

[tidalblade]

4 hours ago, Arkasaurio said:

Thanks, follow up question is does increasing that value hurt performance meaningfully? Faster tracking in that case means the calculations have to go faster, which means taking computational resources from other places, right? I have no idea if that's enough to meaningfully impact anything else, but it seems to me that it could at least.

I'm assuming 'tracking' is done at a set rate which is fast enough that it doesn't need to be changed at all(most likely multiple times a second), all that needs to be changed is the rotation speed of the turret.

 

4 hours ago, Arkasaurio said:

If lag impacts ability for turrets to hit faster targets it's still a "performance issue" in my mind. Do you think the game will ever be totally free of lag, in all/most situations, particularly if players feel they have an advantage for doing anything the can to generate lag? That would be awesome, but I personally don't see it happening.

I don't think what they explained was that faster things evade 'tracking', instead that such huge levels of lag caused by other things (ddos's etc) would prevent the 'tracking' from being done at all.  Which is why when turrets stop shooting all together, they stop shooting turtles and pteras, because the server isn't sending/getting any of the information that would allow it, to allow turrets to actually fire, such as creature info which includes the creatures vector and location.

[Arkasaurio]

6 hours ago, iAmE said:

Turret Tracking and Lag are connected. The laggier the server, the longer it takes the turret to "Target and shoot". Therefore there is a connection between fast dinos, and avoiding damage (IE it takes 15 seconds for the turret to "Acquire and Fire", however it takes a Ptera 1 Second to get to the wall, therefore it won't shoot you, in heavy lag.)

Turret lag occurs independently of the Animal, and has no direct link to the speed of the animal. Faster animals can exploit the increased Targetting window, but the speed itself, does not, and do not, cause the turrets to have issues acquiring the target or shooting it.

 

Appreciate the response. This is kinda what I was suggesting and wondering about. Basically in a laggy environment faster animals are harder for turrets to track, up until the point the server is so laggy the turrets don't work at all, then it really doesn't matter. That's a travesty, by the way; playing on mostly lower population servers, it's that's not really something I've dealt with.

1 hour ago, tidalblade said:

I'm assuming 'tracking' is done at a set rate which is fast enough that it doesn't need to be changed at all(most likely multiple times a second), all that needs to be changed is the rotation speed of the turret.

 

I don't think what they explained was that faster things evade 'tracking', instead that such huge levels of lag caused by other things (ddos's etc) would prevent the 'tracking' from being done at all.  Which is why when turrets stop shooting all together, they stop shooting turtles and pteras, because the server isn't sending/getting any of the information that would allow it, to allow turrets to actually fire, such as creature info which includes the creatures vector and location.

Agreed, at least after thinking through this more. Based on what @iAmE is saying though, its not always an absolute thing; there's a whole range of lag where extremely fast animals will get hit less than slower movers. If the server lags to the point that turrets don't work at all, then yes, speed becomes irrelevant in this equation.

While I don't think they'll ever eliminate enough lag that that extremely fast movers aren't a specific unintended advantage due to that lag, I think they'll fix lag to the point turrets stop targeting at all - basically because they have to, if this is as common as it's sounding. The technical limitation here is how much they realistically think they can reduce lag, then make sure all animal speed falls in a range that turrets can still track shoot.

[iAmE]

4 minutes ago, Arkasaurio said:

 

While I don't think they'll ever eliminate enough lag that that extremely fast movers aren't a specific unintended advantage due to that lag, I think they'll fix lag to the point turrets stop targeting at all - basically because they have to, if this is as common as it's sounding. The technical limitation here is how much they realistically think they can reduce lag, then make sure all animal speed falls in a range that turrets can still track shoot.

Problem being, you open a whole new can of worms at that point. Optimization.

Let's be frank. This game is horribly optimized. I have tribe mates with thousands upon thousands of dollars sunk into gaming rigs (Including one with a 1080 founders, I7 top of the line, CPU, 32G of Ram and a 2 TB SSD. On full low, he still maxes out his resources, and during large scale PvP, crashes like the rest of us peasants). I can't imagine it's any better serverside, considering servers, Official ones, at least, go down routinely due to completely normal wear and tear PvP, let alone when people are lag switching/ddosing/blowing up huge towers. 

Given the scale of optimization that they've done since the game was released, we could probably see years before your post can even feasibly be considered a goal, and likely, I would expect, that would have more to do with technology overtaking Ark, then inherent optimization to the engine or game itself. 

[Arkasaurio]

1 hour ago, iAmE said:

Problem being, you open a whole new can of worms at that point. Optimization.

Let's be frank. This game is horribly optimized. I have tribe mates with thousands upon thousands of dollars sunk into gaming rigs (Including one with a 1080 founders, I7 top of the line, CPU, 32G of Ram and a 2 TB SSD. On full low, he still maxes out his resources, and during large scale PvP, crashes like the rest of us peasants). I can't imagine it's any better serverside, considering servers, Official ones, at least, go down routinely due to completely normal wear and tear PvP, let alone when people are lag switching/ddosing/blowing up huge towers. 

Given the scale of optimization that they've done since the game was released, we could probably see years before your post can even feasibly be considered a goal, and likely, I would expect, that would have more to do with technology overtaking Ark, then inherent optimization to the engine or game itself. 

Definitely a whole other can of worms.

Yes, the game is horribly optimized, and I'm actually not that surprised ultra high end gaming rigs still have issues.

You've put in 8K hours on official PvP, and based on the level of discourse (and some of your other posts if I'm remembering right), you want the game to succeed. However, here it basically sounds like you don't think it can. Lag is one thing, lag to the point where the one thin line of defense players have while offline doesn't work at all (not to mention all the other issues that come with that kind of lag) is game breaking - stating the obvious. My point is, if it continues to be that bad and common after WC can't say EA anymore, I don't think official PvP exists in anything like it's current form, if at all, a year from now. So if you don't think they'll ever be able to optimize the game out of broken, why bother playing?

I personally stake my faith on WC optimizing the game and greatly improving lag (for now), but your 8K >> my 500 hours, so if you genuinely don't think WC can fix these things what keeps you going?

[iAmE]

21 minutes ago, Arkasaurio said:

Definitely a whole other can of worms.

Yes, the game is horribly optimized, and I'm actually not that surprised ultra high end gaming rigs still have issues.

You've put in 8K hours on official PvP, and based on the level of discourse (and some of your other posts if I'm remembering right), you want the game to succeed. However, here it basically sounds like you don't think it can. Lag is one thing, lag to the point where the one thin line of defense players have while offline doesn't work at all (not to mention all the other issues that come with that kind of lag) is game breaking - stating the obvious. My point is, if it continues to be that bad and common after WC can't say EA anymore, I don't think official PvP exists in anything like it's current form, if at all, a year from now. So if you don't think they'll ever be able to optimize the game out of broken, why bother playing?

I personally stake my faith on WC optimizing the game and greatly improving lag (for now), but your 8K >> my 500 hours, so if you genuinely don't think WC can fix these things what keeps you going?

Success isn't tied to how well the game is optimized. 

I think the game can succeed, regardless of how blind the developers are to PvP. Official PvP, however, won't thrive, succeed, or work. Mods are a great thing. 

Further, I don't think Wildcard can optimize the game without huge overhaul of the general game, that they can't do this late into development. Instead, what I am banking on, is technology, such as Servers, simply getting better, to handle the "Fat" of the program, so to speak. 

[Arkasaurio]

1 hour ago, iAmE said:

Success isn't tied to how well the game is optimized. 

I think the game can succeed, regardless of how blind the developers are to PvP. Official PvP, however, won't thrive, succeed, or work. Mods are a great thing. 

Further, I don't think Wildcard can optimize the game without huge overhaul of the general game, that they can't do this late into development. Instead, what I am banking on, is technology, such as Servers, simply getting better, to handle the "Fat" of the program, so to speak. 

I guess I was thinking that you'd want/expect your preferred game mode to get better. If not why not make the jump to unofficials now? I got badly raided a little while back and have been experimenting with unofficial again for a bit while waiting for launch servers - mods are amazing. Having a good, fair admin to sort out issues is also great. If I could find the right clustered set of servers, with good QOL mods, that didn't wipe, with a fair admin, and vanilla rates (or at least not crazy), I might never come back. I have 3 of 5 of those where I'm playing now - my dream might be out there!

I do absolutely love the contentedness of the transfer system and the very open nature to PvP on official (not that these things couldn't use balancing work), but if there's no chance issues like what we're talking about, lag so bad turrets don't work, get fixed, what's the point? 

On waiting for the technology to get better another thing that I don't know enough about, but it seems to me that unless that server technology already exist somewhere (a reasonably accessible level to a company like WC), and it's a matter of upgrading or switching service providers, waiting for that kind of solution seems like it puts it out of the primary lifespan of the game. If we're waiting for the technology to actually get better to be able to handle the bloat of Ark, we also have to wait for that technology to be implemented at a cost that WC thinks they can afford, which seems like several years, at least. This all being true, WC would be well served to cut max players per server, severely reduce structure and tame limits (even for PvP), and do whatever they can to deal with ddosing. Then as they can either optimize the game or the technology gets to the point it can handle it, increase those limits.

[CCRogerWilco]

5 hours ago, iAmE said:

Success isn't tied to how well the game is optimized. 

I think the game can succeed, regardless of how blind the developers are to PvP. Official PvP, however, won't thrive, succeed, or work. Mods are a great thing. 

Further, I don't think Wildcard can optimize the game without huge overhaul of the general game, that they can't do this late into development. Instead, what I am banking on, is technology, such as Servers, simply getting better, to handle the "Fat" of the program, so to speak. 

A general adagium in software engineering is that more powerful hardware will not really solve fundamental problems in the design of the code.

I think the performance of ARK will be a problem until they overhaul the engine. I'm not sure Wildcard has the resources, the knowledge or the management to make that decision.

I think most of the fundamental problems are here to stay.

Some could be solved by redesigning parts of the game. For example, turrets could not do tracking but just do damage in a bubble around them. But that's not the kind of direction that Wildcard seems to be willing to take.

[Jamage007]

On 7/28/2017 at 4:08 AM, Parth311 said:

Agree ark has gotten boring over as the updates progressed, I for one don't like the direction its going and I think other agree based on the recent steam reviews. 

Way too much base maintenance now with constant oil & meat runs. #notfunanymore

[jsjjohnsonii]

i dont know i have almost 2500 hrs on ark and i am still loving it.  i dont tame anymore and have to many bases to worry about building but that chance of getting a super nice random mutation when breeding never lets me down.  

[iAmE]

On 8/7/2017 at 2:51 AM, CCRogerWilco said:

A general adagium in software engineering is that more powerful hardware will not really solve fundamental problems in the design of the code.

No, but I fully believe it's the best improvement we will ever see in this game short of Wildcard somehow discovering the time, and desire, to almost completely rehaul the game. Which, I will admit, has happened in the past to some games, PoE and FF14? to name a couple, but the developers of those games show direct desire to improve their game's play and feel. Ark feels more like the devs just want to bury the fundamental gameplay and design problems with a mass amount of content. Sweep it under the rug if you will.