Soul orbs timing, buffering, lag compensation

.kate

Member
Sometimes you shoot the orb, you get a hit sound, hit marker, but you dont get the orb.

(simulated 50ms ping in video below)

View attachment eaten.mp4

I went to recreate and investigate this, and discovered the following:


With net_fakelag 25 (50ms ping), cl_interp_ratio 1 and cl_tickpacket_desired_queuelength 1 the sandbox orb timer will report the claim time to be longer by the amount of ping

With net_fakelag 25 (50ms ping), cl_interp_ratio 0 and cl_tickpacket_desired_queuelength 0 the sandbox orb timer will report the claim time to be longer by the amount of ping + 1 frame (~16ms)

View attachment orb_delay.mp4


On top of that there is a considerable amount of delay between hitting the orb and getting hit feedback in the form of a hitmarker or hit sound (around 5 to 7 frames at 60fps), which makes the entire process of shooting orbs feel delayed and unresponsive.

I've seen people talking about cases where they even can't deny orbs that aren't being claimed by the enemies. I've also seen people talking about (it also happens to me consistently, tho I don't have any video footage of it) situations where they will get a hit marker and hit sound on a friendly orb, but it will still get denied by the enemies.

With current player numbers some people often play on servers outside their area, which is a very large advantage for people living in more populated parts of their regions. I'm in Poland and almost all of my games are on London or Netherlands servers, which means I'm always playing on 50-70ms ping. I've seen North American players talk about the same thing, with east coast players getting games almost exclusively on west coast servers or vice versa.

Right now orbs are basically impossible to deny consistently, even if the enemies are behind a wall and physically can't shoot them, unless you are playing on low ping. In some situations even friendly orbs become hard or completely impossible to secure. This leads me to believe the orb buffering system that was talked about in the patch notes is either broken in some way, or it's been disabled without notice. Please investigate this further cuz I'm stupid and I don't know anything other than it feels bad and inconsistent 🙂

volvo pls fix
yoshi5.jpg
 
Can you test with 2+ clients in the shooting range with the orb debug enabled?

The orbs do feel unresponsive and inconsistent in some way, maybe the orb VFX could change color based on what state it's in?
Right now I feel like it sounds like it's hit when it's not or sth, quite often.

The inconsistency gets worse because friendly and enemy
(and maybe last hitted) soul orbs make the orb favor certain players ???
and give them more time to hit it?



50 ping vs 150 ping:
orb appears
-> player reacts (150ms)
-> player clicks
-> send click to server 50ms ping
-> destroy the orb?
-> send result to client 50ms ping
-> orb VFX on client
orb appears
-> player reacts (100ms)
-> player clicks
-> send click to server 150ms ping
-> destroy the orb?
-> send result to client 150ms ping
-> orb VFX on client


Now ideally the player who spends the least amount of real world time to hit the orb should score it, regardless of ping.
So it will be unresponsive in feedback to players if optimized for competitiveness.


Perhaps if a player hits the orb it can have a slight tint of color which signals what's happening?
black - can't hit
Red- hit too early
Yellow - orb hit, waiting for orb buffer result
 
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