Some Interesting Bits Regarding Apex Servers & Netcode

@Koochi-Q Last Battle(non)sense video on Apex dropped June 17th. The patch that came June 20th fixed the update rate of the client, raising it from 20 to over 60 per second, after it was accidentally left low when fixing some hitreg related issues. As for the reviewer not talking about the difference in complexity, I disagree. Complexity can heavily affect the data that needs to be sent, the time it takes for a simulation tick to get processed. Sending updates multiple times to account for packet loss is also eating bandwidth and it's not hard to determine that increasing the server tickrate would load the bandwidth significantly.

Apex uses a heavily modified Source engine, which is very capable, but some say it's a bit hacker friendly (and it shows, isn't it?).

@Fr3dY2 Client update rate is set at over 60, with certain updates sent multiple times. I don't think it' s a bad thing that the servers are at lower tickrate, because this allows them to get more data from the clients, resulting in more accurate predictions and simulations, with less missing data due to packet loss or lag spikes.

@pastaclown Seeing and hearing shots hitting are the result of client side predictive nature of the simulation, but the server will not confirm those hits if there is desynchronization, as it runs its own simulation. This can happen because of lag spikes and packet loss. Low tickrate can lead to multiple shots coming at once, but I believe a good simulation can smooth that out as well. It happened to me in Apex, but with very rare occurence.

@pastaclown I definitely doubt 60Hz is the tick rate even seeing clips now let alone since the beginning of the year.

@GRiPSViGiL Welcome back! 🙂

Server updates are most probably not 60Hz, but the clients do update the server at 60Hz. 128Hz means a massive jump in costs for hosting (possibly 4x higher or more), while also risking some instability , especially since not all are dedicated, high end game servers.

If you want to understand the efforts, here's Valorant's example: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/valorants-128-tick-servers . Note that Riot games is like 5-10x bigger than Respawn, while Valorant has 5x less players on a map that's many times smaller, with simpler mechanics and slower movement.