Forum Discussion

Re: Tickrate Stuff

@DoYaSeeMeBattlefield.

''Doubling the data rate simply requires twice the bandwidth and probably twice as many server''

They pay tiny amounts for the data like $0.001 or 2 per gigabyte and you only have half the games population in ranked so it'll double to $0.003/4 per gb for that performance gain for 40% of the playerbase who played over 5 hrs in ranked (without bad LTMs forced on us increasing traffic to ranked it would be much lower overall) with the added revenue after of making it a more viable e sport and likely better performance for most users. They're not poor or doing badly enough not to make those improvements so they should double down. 

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20 Replies

  • DoYaSeeMe's avatar
    DoYaSeeMe
    5 years ago

    @apostolateofDOOMIf you want a proper comparison, please provide the following ( for Battlefield & Apex):

    • average number of shots or projectiles / server update;
    • hit calculation formula;
    • number of different characters (usually distinguished by shape, size, animations types);
    • average number of hitboxes / map;
    • average number of interactibles / map;

    There are more that can be added to the list, but these will suffice to prove how different these games are under the hood. Note: all of the above affect the amount of data being sent / received

  • @DoYaSeeMe I'm not searching that but feel free to share if you have it. xD

    Battlefield has more interactable stuff, weapons, vehicles and a generally more complex environment compared to Apex with more players that was at a lower rate but got increased with noticeable performance gains.

    None of this changes the fact it's currently bad here and could be improved. Maybe not worth it from a business perspective, but it's entirely possible.
  • DoYaSeeMe's avatar
    DoYaSeeMe
    5 years ago

    @apostolateofDOOMWell, you brought Battlefield in, should be your task to do a detailed research to support your statement. Let me give you one basic comparison though:

    - An explosion/destruction in Battlefield is visually more complex than an Apex deathbox, right? Well, yes, but this has a client side impact. Netcode wise, the explosion is calling an item to change state (which then plays the related animation on the client) or an animation to be played at a certain coordinate and moment in time, data which can be sent only once, in a single update. A deathbox is a simple object, but which is affected by the game's physics engine, so its position, rotation, skin id have to be sent continuously while the box is falling or carried by a flyer, while its owner banner id, list of item ids, amount per item, ping /dibsed flags per items, etc. have to be sent continuously to the players that loot the box. Already easy to conclude that this deathbox takes many times more data space in an update, for a longer period of time,so many ticks or updates.

  • @DoYaSeeMeThat's why i suggested in my thread to remove them (think i just put flyers and prowlers but deathboxes too if that's the case) as it doesn't really enhance the experience and it's an unnecessary drain on server resources when performance is already lacking.

    The logic applied in improving performance is the same as waiting for 8 seasons for them to balance wraith and change her hitbox when anyone could have told them that's where the problem is. Then they release Horizon.. 😛

  • DoYaSeeMe's avatar
    DoYaSeeMe
    5 years ago

    @apostolateofDOOMI'm totally against butchering the game for the sake of esport level of performance. The vast majority of players don't care about that or don't have devices powerful enough to support it anyway. I would prefer them to keep experimenting stuff rather than prioritizing esports, which implies a lot of rigidity.

    Respawn didn't "wait" for 8 seasons to nerf Wraith properly, they just had more important priorities and goals to achieve that go way back, well beyond the launch of Apex. Also, fiddling with a legend's hitbox after players have already put thousands of hours in mastering that legend is pretty dangerous, so it's understandable why they tried to avoid it for so long.

  • @DoYaSeeMe You make it sound like they would ruin the game by improving performance which isn't necessarily the case when the number one complaint since launch from mainly PC players but also consoles too, excluding audio, is the servers (or inconsistency of performance) or whatever is hindering it backend that's beyond our control. Also as the e sport side is growing with more teams joining and competitions with larger audiences with the advertising, plus extra revenue that brings then i think they should focus more (not completely) on that as it will have a positive knock on effect for everyone else if the game runs smoother. It's a balancing act with sacrifices, sure, but there's more than enough that will benefit from those improvements including content creators that promote the game that brings in new players which Respawn like to cater for.

    It clearly was one of their goals when they were nerfing her abilities several times then completely reworking them, removing naruto run and whatever else they did every single season only to address the obvious problem in the end anyway.
  • DoYaSeeMe's avatar
    DoYaSeeMe
    5 years ago
    @apostolateofDOOM So the game isn't "ruined" by the reduction of gas & smoke particles then? Or by the drop in audio quality that happened a while ago? Or by the removal of the train from World's Edge? Ok, let's cut deathboxes, flyers, prowlers, doors, tridents. Probably not enough to hit 60Hz for snapshot rate, let's also make weapons hitscan. But true eSports are now at 128Hz, let's also cut out some abilities, remove loot and drop people with full loadout, remove a ton of stuff (hitboxes) from the maps, make them smaller.. Chop chop chop. Sounds like butchering to me.

    It is cool that eSports are growing, but that doesn't mean that everyone should mindlessly jump on the bandwagon. It comes with rigidity, hindering creativity and fun that are very often associated with shakes of meta, unbalance and randomness.

    How would you know whether they've tested the hitbox increase on Wraith 7 seasons ago or not? I'm pretty sure she would still be "OP" in her release form with solely the hitbox increase nerf applied. Also, it may very well be the placebo effect of this nerf making players think that she's OK now, that Respawn "listened" and their suggestion "finally" got implemented.
  • @DoYaSeeMe The gas and particle changes ruin the game to accommodate inferior hardware when the game barely ran properly on last gen consoles so Respawn with all their ''experience'' but more importantly thirst for more profit decided to chop it for Switch and throw them into the same matches with console and PC too.  Another one size fits all approach as with everything else. It's also this thirst for profit that they don't increase the server costs and give us improvements. Chopping the game to keep their server expenditure the same to make those improvements would be a choice, not a necessity as many clients could take the increased rate just as the servers can provide them with an increased cost. 

    Most users have better hardware and internet connections compared to 5 years ago.

    Money is what it ultimately boils down to and evaluating cost vs benefits, is it sought after enough to warrant the changes, can we make more cost effective changes elsewhere and whatever other business considerations.

    FPS games should be played at 60 fps standard over a decade ago with vast improvements in both user and server hardware since then. Why should they dumb the game down so a few can play a FPS at 30fps? Likely some of the sound and other issues are also related to lower spec platforms as a lot of the changes appear to be CPU, GPU or RAM cuts rather than server resources. You say that most won't be able to make the most of these changes but on PC playing FPS @ 60 is the bare minimum, not optimal so i imagine a lot of them would benefit and the same with next gen consoles.

    Who knows. It wouldn't be the first time and a bit of a pattern now of they said they would or wouldn't do something that ends up not being the case with ''provide a quality experience'' or ''not milking our players'' or  ''we fixed audio'' or ''we fixed rank'' just to name a few off the top of my head.

  • PODERINGPUGALIS's avatar
    PODERINGPUGALIS
    5 years ago

    Whatever man, defend all you want, but all I know is that it is about an every game occurrence for me that at some point I will take almost a full shields worth of damage after I have already closed a door, cleared a corner or even dropped off a ledge. To me that is basically unacceptable, but I guess not because I keep playing, a lot of the time miserably lol. 

  • DoYaSeeMe's avatar
    DoYaSeeMe
    5 years ago

    @PODERINGPUGALISTAnd you will keep getting this even at 128Hz snapshot rate. Want to get rid of it? Move the whole lobby close to the data center, then LAN everyone to the match servers. Though even then you will only be 99.999% safe from this issue.

    Seen the peeker's advantage issue in Valorant, with all its praised internet backbone and fast servers. Also seen players there with 200ms lag, so I guess you can try this game too if you want to feel another kind of misery :P.

  • @hayhor I think this is bound to happen to some extent anyway with how matchmaking is handled. It's also likely more noticeable for those in higher tiers as split second decisions can leave little margin for error and in those cases where you're trying to make a play you'll notice when things don't go how they should because of that delay before it happens on your screen.

    I wouldn't have a problem if we're talking milliseconds but LL finished her quip when popping a drone and half way through a bat before the shot came through which is ridiculous.
  • hayhor's avatar
    hayhor
    Hero
    5 years ago
    @apostolateofDOOM Every match?

    Also the higher level players are the biggest moaners and will blame the game when they do something dumb. For example when wraith got her hitbox nerf there was a great video of tsm reps crying about it when he died in 2 situations where he put himself as the sole focus of all 3 players of enemy teams. It wasnt the nerf but all his watchers and followers probably believed him.
  • @hayhor You wouldn't notice it every match but it happens several times in a few hr session and enough for it to be frustrating as hell when trying to climb ranked which is why i don't bother with it anymore even though i would like to.

    I don't deny there's times when the blame is put on the game or anything and everything else in heat of the moment but other times it is just the game and people defend it like there's no issue or it couldn't possibly be improved upon.
  • @DoYaSeeMe So to sum it up you're basically saying that nothing can be done about the major issues of this game? 

  • @Cro_Pittt I'm saying that a tickrate increase may have very little to no impact, but with a potentially bad impact on stability, all this at a huge cost because it doubles the bandwidth required. Network is not Respawn's responsibility, so most related issues can't get fixed by them.

    Also, no dev will tell you "nothing can be done". What's true today may be false tomorrow. Some issues are very elusive, you can spend a year looking for the needle in the haystack, but you can also be lucky enough and see its metallic reflection in the first 5 minutes.
  • Vdstrk's avatar
    Vdstrk
    Seasoned Ace
    5 years ago
    @DoYaSeeMe

    Agreed on the Wraith change. While it was the "right" thing to do, it was at the beginning. At season 8 it only feels like harassing Wraith mains.
  • @DoYaSeeMe I'm not a technical expert, i know only the basics so i won't talk about that stuff because i don't have the knowledge to do it. But i am an Apex player. And I judge what i see. And what i've seen for 2 years is the game getting worse in some things, which is really frustrating. I love the gameplay, the gunfights, the legends concept, the lore behind them, the cosmetics and other stuff as well. But if the things that make the game run don't work properly everything else will be affected by it. People are frustrated because they don't see an improvement coming in the near future based on what we've seen in the past 2 years.

  • @Cro_Pittt I can totally understand frustration. And guess what: devs feel it too! We're all human. How can we address this though?

    Well, let's consider frustration ratio = expectations / reality. The higher it is, the worse things feel. To lower it efficiently, work should be done on both increasing the denominator (the value of reality) and lowering the numerator (the level of expectations). Reality is mostly on developers, providers, technology, only little push power is left in the hands of the clients. The level of expectations though, that's almost entirely in our back yard and anchoring it to the reality is where I keep aiming at with so many of my posts.