Update on Deterministic Lockstep

Hey Chris. Or anyone else that can answer this. How will the deterministic lockstep process actions that are happening a few hundred times a second? Such as flicker strike builds or the endless calculations for CoC. How will it process spell echo and multistrike?

So if I understand correctly...

if you have high latency, you are going to desync a lot and GGG recommends using the client predictive mode which doesn't prevent desync.

if you have low latency, you won't desync often and GGG recommends using the Deterministic Lockstep mode which prevents desync.

though it seems upside down, I think I understand why

high latency in Deterministic Lockstep mode, will make every action very unresponsive

low latency in client predictive mode, won't prevent you from desyncing

in other words

if you have high latency, you are still screwed, choose your poison, desync or unresponsive gameplay

I prefer "better safe than sorry" but "things are still going to be bad, just a different kind of bad"

No, I'm not bashing GGG, in fact I am very pleased they finally got rid of desync, they deserve all the praise they get

I'm just being negative, pessimistic or maybe too grimly realistic

an online only game can't play like an offline one

GGG also said they would get several new servers around the globe so that majority of gamers can enjoy lockstep mode.

Good news, can't wait to test it my latency has already gone down from 65 in Standard PoE to 52 in the Closed Beta.

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HeaT1 wrote:

what constitutes a lag spike where monsters might stop moving?

my ping regularly fluctuates, and by regularly i mean every few seconds from 60 to 80, id consider that a spike. or we talking about 60 to 170 lag spike?

-HeaT

Those are not kind of spikes that will deeply affect your gameplay. The worst spikes are spikes that occur when a packet is lost, which can lock your game for up to few seconds.

"

Deterministic Lockstep represents a gigantic amount of time and re-engineering.

A well worth investment, ~30ms master race checking in, can't wait to try it out.

Edit: WTB: Stockholm based server for even better ping.

Really awesome news. Cant wait to try it !

66MS = Awesome news!

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Coal48 wrote:

So if I understand correctly...

if you have high latency, you are going to desync a lot and GGG recommends using the client predictive mode which doesn't prevent desync.

if you have low latency, you won't desync often and GGG recommends using the Deterministic Lockstep mode which prevents desync.

Desync is not caused by latency. Having low latency does not mean you will not desync. Latency has an effect but that is not the root cause of it. The primary cause is due to conflicting client predictions and what the server says really happened. By using lockstep all actions are verified first and the client predicts nothing so you are always in sync but introduces 'input lag' into your actions.

I can't wait to try out this change!

Would it be possible to get lockstep added without a wipe? I would be very interested in testing my current beta characters with lockset to get a good idea of the difference in how the game feels.