ScrotieMcB vs Desync Dev Manifesto (Massive Wall Map of Text)

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HellGauss wrote:

So PoE server should not trust the client when it is sending commands because it can be a bot. PoE should not exists at all. I do not say that there is no drawback, i say that the benefits are so high that even if a bot can take 10-20% more loot exploiting this it would be acceptable.

Again, i do not see so much exploitability on the RNG seed. GGG has already make evasion deterministic (even without RNG seeds). Is there any bots that exploit this? How much advantages the bot takes from the deterministic evasion?

Again, i would trust GGG opinion on this, since they are the only one that have the data to give a proper answer.

Go back to the bottom of the previous page and read my reply.

Basically, it feels like Scrotie just read and evaluated your suggestion at a surface level and is implying that your method won't work because of the interdependency of events in POE (example: monsters decide how to attack based on your position, and your position is a data point sent from your client). This wouldn't be about bots

I took it a bit deeper in thinking how a seed system like yours would be implemented, but who knows if GGG can go deeper than that or if they would find problems with it.

It isn't exactly about "bots looting x% more," it's more about opening the floodgates for code to be developed that can really screw with the game, like duping 30 Shavs and selling them to everyone for 1 fusing.

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adghar wrote:

It isn't exactly about "bots looting x% more," it's more about opening the floodgates for code to be developed that can really screw with the game, like duping 30 Shavs and selling them to everyone for 1 fusing.

Pretty much this. If the client has the RNG seed, that means a hack could give someone information about that seed. So maybe all the hack does is flash a little alarm when the following condition is met: the hack knows that if you Chance an Occultist Vestment at an exact time, before any other random action occurs, you'll get a Shav's; it offers a countdown prior to this happening, and then if you use the Chance right then, before any other RNG rolls occur, you get your unique. Then you have people wandering around with Chances and Vestments in their inventory, and when the hack tells them they stop spamming, try like hell to prevent a monster from attacking and thus making a crit chance roll to go past the countdown mark (admittedly difficult), and then get a Shav's. Even a 4-5 second window wouldn't be small enough for players not to try to exploit it.

The deluxe version might even add in a script/macro to open your inventory and pop the Chance at near-instant speed, which would help a lot to reduce interference from enemy crit chance rolls.

And that's just a hack I could think of off the top of my head. Imagine if someone truly clever set their mind to it.

@adghar
i read your post ony after mine.

The problem that Scrotie describes is that the bot have a few seconds of predictability on what could happen, and can tune his chooses on that. However there is some sort of (statistical) predictability even without rng-seeds.

A problem that may occour with this method is in hardcore play. I can modify the client in such a way that if I die, I recalculate a better sequence of events, run away instead of fighting and then send the client the disconnect command. However some sort of thing is already exploited by HC players with alt-f4.

Solution:
When a player disconnect, he cast some sort of 'teleport' spell which takes 5 seconds to be cast. The result is that you can safely disconnect only if there are no monster near you.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Pretty much this. If the client has the RNG seed, that means a hack could give someone information about that seed. So maybe all the hack does is flash a little alarm when the following condition is met: the hack knows that if you Chance an Occultist Vestment at an exact time, before any other random action occurs, you'll get a Shav's; it offers a countdown prior to this happening, and then if you use the Chance right then, before any other RNG rolls occur, you get your unique. Then you have people wandering around with Chances and Vestments in their inventory, and when the hack tells them they stop spamming, try like hell to prevent a monster from attacking and thus making a crit chance roll to go past the countdown mark (admittedly difficult), and then get a Shav's. Even a 4-5 second window wouldn't be small enough for players not to try to exploit it.

The deluxe version might even add in a script/macro to open your inventory and pop the Chance at near-instant speed, which would help a lot to reduce interference from enemy crit chance rolls.

And that's just a hack I could think of off the top of my head. Imagine if someone truly clever set their mind to it.

Did you read my suggestion? I explicitly say that non time critical events such as loot definition and effect of orbs must be completely calculated serverside.

That is explicitally thinked for that problem

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HellGauss wrote:

However some sort of thing is already exploited by HC players with alt-f4.

Solution:
When a player disconnect, he cast some sort of 'teleport' spell which takes 5 seconds to be cast. The result is that you can safely disconnect only if there are no monster near you.

This, like your RNG seed idea, is another incredibly poor suggestion.

A good Alt+F4 fix has two qualities:
1) it discourages Alt+F4 abuse
2) it minimizes collateral damage on players with legitimate issues (power outages, client crashes, et cetera)

Your suggestion is one of the very few I've seen that essentially guarantees a 100% collateral damage rate; if your Hardcore character is even remotely close to combat and your kid thinks it's funny to pull your computer's power out of the socket, you're all but guaranteed a move to Standard League.

Given the consistently horrible nature of your past suggestions, I have no hope for the ones you submit in the future. In any case, they belong in the Suggestions Forum, where both users and devs can ignore them at their convenience. Please stop spamming my thread with your self-gratifying derails.

edit: If loot isn't based on that RNG seed, then something else — blocking, crit chance, etc. — could be. Just imagine a simple hack that tells you, before you make it, if your next attack will be a critical or not, and if the next attack will be blocked or not (important when fighting Kole). Even that's useful. Trusting the client is always insanely stupid.

Disagree with "get out of my thread" comments. Public forums are meant for public discussion, yaddayadda. Dude's just trying to present a solution to desync in a thread about desync. The hardcore issue was a bit self-centered but totally understandable in the context of trying to develop a solution to desync in a thread about desync.

Personally I still think a fixed-seed system is worth looking into, especially if hybridized like proposed. Current system for non-time-critical events, and fixed seed for desync-causing-combat-aspects like accuracy and stun only.

Is it possible to pseudo-randomly generate different results for accuracy and stun from one seed in a non-predictable way? I haven't looked up this math yet and doubt I could get it from one glance at a Wikipedia article.

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Chris wrote:

ScrotieMcB:

I can't respond with a point-by-point reply to your analysis of my sync article,

Then only respond to the most important part, which is monster resync every time you hit one via the targeting system through a "Y attacked X at position A,B" (and possibly "from position C,D"). If a mob is too far away from the clients reported coodinates, force resync.

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adghar wrote:

Disagree with "get out of my thread" comments. Public forums are meant for public discussion, yaddayadda. Dude's just trying to present a solution to desync in a thread about desync. The hardcore issue was a bit self-centered but totally understandable in the context of trying to develop a solution to desync in a thread about desync.

1) Actually, now that I think about it, the client and server can't even agree on the order in which events occur, and thus couldn't decide the order in which a RNG seed would apply anyway. Perhaps I was being a little overly harsh on this one, but to me his suggestion was so obviously not a desync fix that I did not interpret his suggestion as desync related; it didn't occur to me that it may have been a misguided attempt at a desync suggestion. Knowing a little bit about HellGauss' previous posting history, I may have been too quick to assume that it was a self-serving attempt at attention-seeking.

2) The Alt+F4 suggestion had absolutely nothing to do with desync and reveals HellGauss' true intention of seeking attention rather than providing quality solutions. If you think it was in any way related to the topic of this thread, you are wrong. I may have been overly harsh with him about the RNG seed thing; I have absolutely no regrets on my reply to his Alt+F4 suggestion.

In any case, I intend to completely ignore everything HellGuass related for the remainder of this thread.

i think that if anything this game should not do the oh so lovely overengineering - that is, make it simple and dont try to solve issues that are not there

most visible (for me a as ex-melee player, albeit i still try..) issue is the 'monsters are not where they are visible - causing a) certain skill to completely suck (whirlblades, reave, leap for certain degree and several others to a smaller degree) b) player chasing shadows and dying in a room he never visited before

solution - without any fancy seed logic (that is TOO fancy for this issue) - just send positioning data every Nth frame (dont know the granularity of your netcode). monsters will 'float a little' but this can be fixed with animations/AI

this should be cheap, POE maps are rather small (for bigger ones you can switch to 'spawn monsters when closer than') and not that dense so the payload is insignificant.

this is base scenario

optimized one is 'variable Nth' frame based on client calculation. and this is already in! please take note that what you can see (frequently): you kill a monster in place A,B - loot drops C,D. if dist([a,b],[c,d])>__DesyncTreshold lower N.

all required information is ALREADY available to client. loot drop position, molten shell explosion and many many other animation-related/sound-related (i use sound to hear if i desync or not!) are already correctly dispatched to client. what lacks is bringing monsters to their true position

diablo 2 is a game from previous century, literally. when you compare poe and diablo 2 please take that into account. there are so many things we take as a given in 2013 that were not available in 2000 or even in 2005.

diablo 3 is a dull game at this moment, but one thing they did (almost) perfectly is the game flow and fluidity of combat. theyve learnt their lesson. as much as i dont like blizz recent attitude - they ALWAYS learn they lessons and i have a strong feeling d3ex will not be a flop

btw - i do not know poe playerbase count, but i can easily check diablo 2' one - it is impressive for a game that old and with so many flaws. maybe people dont care about these if they play solo/with friends they trust?

this is the end of diablo 2 comment

if POE is aimed at the niche you mention.. i hope there are more people like you (with lots of money to donate) because server-side games have certain considerable costs that HAVE to be paid. niche game might not have enough revenue to cover these expenses. so catering to not-so-niche games is inevitable. and they would like their game to not lie to them every minute

when you mention GGG knowing that desync is a problem and doing something about that.. well.. to be honest given their track record.. i dont believe that is the case. same with broken melee vs ranged and certain braindead uniques (but hey, theyve just relased another broken-beyond-belief bow.. so it seems that RMT is the way to go in this game as game is balanced AROUND these broken items - kaoms had its own patch!)