@apostolateofDOOM There's no way to show the performance of a server when there's none booked yet. Keeping a machine reserved for much longer than a match goes completely against this scale with demand model.
Pros were supposed to have competitions on LAN, but the pandemic removed this option for a while. Competitions and private tournaments do benefit from private, dedicated servers, most probably, but their connection is not protected from network related issues. Add this to the fact that pros are the most sensitive type of players and you get the perfect recipe for endless whining.
Here is good proof that the servers were able to send updates at a rate over 60Hz 2 years ago. They made some changes since then, I think that the graph would probably stay around 60hz now. But there's no way to make updates fit into a single packet and, judging by the evolution of this game, there are chances that the servers send packets even at 128Hz, to keep an entire update around 20-30Hz. What would you say if the instability would actually be caused by a tickrate increase?
@DoYaSeeMe I imagine it's set at 60hz but will have a slight threshold buffer but that's not saying you will consistently get those higher rates. You keep saying they made changes but the experience is much worse now. Season 1 and 2 which weren't perfect by any means was much sharper than S3 onwards and the problems just keeps going downhill from there with no noticeable improvement.
Pros or even just those adept at FPS games criticize, complain or whine as you put it because they're able to see when the backend isn't performing to expectations and it's currently that bad even most casuals are recognising the problems. Look around at those that have played since the beginning and been avid supports of the game see it's in an unhealthy state. It's undeniable that server performance (or whatever is bottlenecking the experience) has always been underwhelming for the users and far from improving over time it's getting far worse.
Look at the main selling point for Valorant and their focus on performance.
“The Valorant team has put extensive effort into determining the best combination of tick rate and latency that will minimize peeker’s advantage, and those tests showed that a 128hz tick rate and 35ms (or less) latency would be best for our players,” said Dave Heironymus, technical director of Valorant at Riot Games. “Blind tests also showed that elite FPS players … can reliably detect when the game is running at a lower tick rate.”
I know they have much smaller matches and an entirely different setup but Apex is a much better game overall and if Respawn focused on these things that comp players having been asking for it would attract many of those players back. Battlefield did when there was a outcry from their community and overwatch did when they started focusing more on the comp side.
@apostolateofDOOMWell, Respawn's problem dumbed down sounds like this:
"We have 100kg of potatoes and this one regular bucket. We need to make all of them fit in to deliver them in one shipment. Multiple shipments are unacceptable, people are hungry and not willing to wait."
Please, tell me, how much focus do you need to solve this? If I give you a billion, will you do it by tomorrow? If I get angry and punch puppies, call you lazy or unfit for your job, threaten to sue or go on a hunger strike until you succeed, will you feel more motivated to do it?
Oh, let me tell you how I think you should do it as well. Throw in the bucket a small black hole, it's 2021, we know enough about black holes and we've been having this hadron collider for years now, let's just rent it and put it to good work. Or, melt that bucket and print an advanced structure that can hold all the load, I've seen this in some movies. I'm sure you can afford all the tools, research, testing because you sell expensive food.
@DoYaSeeMe Don't bring potatoes into this!
Skin, dice, dehydrate, and compress them into potato starch and once we removed the unnecessary water weight, for a billion i'll shove it up my backside (no lube) walk and deliver it by hand within 24hrs. No puppies harmed! 😃
I'm not throwing insults, threatening, or calling Respawn lazy. This is their job they're underperforming in and they should welcome our feedback on stuff we would like to see that they can improve upon. I just know if they focus and invest into these problems with the same effort they do in their collection events (i know they're not same people but you get my meaning) we should and can see improvement. The reason i'm troubleshooting for them is because we highlighted these issues from day one but don't even get a response to servers till very recently and still nothing tangible from them.
They try a one size fits all approach and for a lot of people it's not satisfactory.
On a positive note, I think everyone here just wants to see Apex be the best it can be and it's falling short of that so hopefully minds with a better understanding on the subject can work some magic. 🧙
@apostolateofDOOMYou know, water molecules are kind of important for the flavor and I assume people want to eat decent food, not dust with a hint of broken back blood and sweat. You just gave me a reason to accuse you of not paying attention to player needs :P
Everyone here and at Respawn as well. They are very well aware of all the big issues and most probably had to deal with them for much longer than our Apex life. They actually dug very deep inside the Source engine to address a lot of issues it had on the networking side, besides other things. And they've been doing this for some years before the launch of Apex. But, to be somewhat satisfied, people want devs tied to their desks, working at 110% capacity 24/7, while also being thankful for their 10$ investment into hundreds of hours of entertainment.
