State of the Beta - Post #3

You guys are AWESOME!! Always keeping your community happy!!! I can't wait till the EXP goes live!!!

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geradon wrote:

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creampuffed4u wrote:

first putting reserved mana reservation on a gem that is already was over priced and has an extreme low drop rate. now what are they going to do put life leech on empower? GOODBYE casual player

just quoting it for later to blame you that it was your idea :-)

This is not a bad idea, after all.
As long as life leech gem is retained.
Same practise should be followed on the Enlighten gem: Enlighten should give -X% less mana reserved for auras plus what it gives now. And at the same time keep the Reduced mana reduced mana mod for auras, but at a lower rate, compared to Enlighten. so both casual players and rich ones have a motivation. Existing mechanics will still work, rich pleyers will have an additional motivation to find more expensive gems.

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aryosgr wrote:

Same practise should be followed on the Enlighten gem: Enlighten should give -X% less mana reserved for auras plus what it gives now. And at the same time keep the Reduced mana reduced mana mod for auras, but at a lower rate, compared to Enlighten. so both casual players and rich ones have a motivation.

i saw no dev ever explaining why the old enlighten gem functionality had to go completely, this maybe is a nice place to ask for it (again).

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piratkuk wrote:

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geradon wrote:

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piratkuk wrote:

this seems great and all, except i dont have a beta

30 dollars aren't much for a game you like.

if you have no money and no real income then yes it is much for a game and weatheryou like it or not have close to no impact

yeah, you're right. cut that "you like" in my post.

Great news !

Anyone have spare beta key, would really like to test out lockstep and new mara builds :) ?

So gems will become very cheap, let's see if vendors sell also good support or only main skills.

Thats so important for the beta, in the normal game I never had any problem finding a gem but in the beta was so annoying.

/oos

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geradon wrote:

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Kingdestiny wrote:

If your a high latency player there is no fix. You have high latency.

not true.

jonathan said (in a interview) that while implementing lockstep, he fixed alot of bugs in regular skills which may have caused desync for players.

so the implementation of lockstep benefits you even if you don't use it.

i play the beta and i don't notice any difference in terms of desync in comparison to the live version of the game

Since there seems to be a bit of confusion about lockstep I'll "repost" what it is in a nutshell.

Lockstep (as the name might suggest) is basically perma-sync.
It works like this:

1. Client issues order (move here)
2. Data gets transmitted to server (latency!)
3. Server verifies data (should be pretty fast)
4. Server transmits data back to you (latency!)
5. Client receives and displays the data that has been confirmed

The latency you have will now determine the input/output lag you get by using lockstep.

If you're playing with 200ms and lockstep it means that every time you click it takes at least 200ms for the click to get "displayed".
The other issue is packet loss. If you have some amount of packet loss while playing with lockstep it's possible for the server to not register your clicks at all.
You can click that Life Flask all day long if the server never gets the information that you actually clicked it.

Here's some tips on how to reduce issues with latency, lag and packet loss:

- Get a LAN cable.
Seriously this is big. Playing online games which are latency-sensitive over WLAN or god forbid mobile internet like 4G is horrifying. If you're using a cable already and having issues with interference on way to your router upgrade the cable to Cat 6/6a.
I'm always getting complaints by people in our guild about desync only to find out that they're having packet loss.

- Packet loss is bad
Sometimes you can't do much about it as the issue could be anywhere ranging from your PC to an undersea cable or someone running a microwave close to some ground cables ;)

Packet loss can be caused by pretty much any electronic interference. Microwaves and hairdryers are a common cause when being run close to an ethernet cable.

It can also be caused by software issues or your ISP's hard/software so if you're sure that you've cleared the issues on your side give them a call and ask if they're seeing something wrong on their side too.

- Only game while gaming
Really guys, I've been called for "ZOMG HIGH PINGZ" and "DESYNC WTF" only to find out that they're watching a stream while listening to music while running a 5GB steam update all while trying to play PoE.
You only have so much bandwidth and once either upstream or downstream are maxed out your internet "dies" and you'll have packet loss, high latency or even disconnects.

Keep your network as low on load as you can while playing games.
If you have IPTV turn it off during gaming sessions.
If you have pending updates let them run during offline time (eg. playing singleplayer games or sitting in town trading)

- Play around desync
I've got an extremely low amount of desync and while a lot of that comes from my rock-solid connection it's also influenced by my movement style.
The only times I get hard desyncs is when I try to move too fast and get stuck on geometry.
Trying to rush through mobs or doors and around objects in the gameworld can get you desynced until the server resyncs you.

Try to stay "on the beaten path".
Try to avoid moving through mob packs without a quartz flask.
If you're using Whirling Blades try to aim so you don't get stuck on rocks and tables.

Hope this helps.

The biggest cause of desync is wrong movement like when you clip objects and being stunned. Get close to a pack -> get hit -> run away only to get rubberbanded back into the pack and probably die because you were stunned on the hit and the running away that was displayed from the game was not really sync with the server which had your char stunned and standing still.

Having noticed frequent latency spikes, on a 60ms connection, I am wondering if there are other factors affecting latency.
For example, we occasionally have to sync with notifications from the friends list (status updates, online user statuses, and more). Even if these could be push and not pull architecture notifications, I am not sure if they could affect the in-game latency. Therefore, in such a case, maybe it could help if the social panel contents (and all of its notifications) could optionally load on demand (for example load / refresh the friends list and the notifications only when you have actively opened the social panel). Not sure if the same server architecture is used for the chat functionality too, in which case it would mean global chat disabling, unless enabled on demand; therefore, 2 separate architectures one for in-game party chatting and one for everything else could help.