EA Lag Compensation Deep Dive
Per EA Deep Dive article for Apex Legends, copied and pasted below - written by Samy (Ricklesauceur): https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/servers-netcode-developer-deep-dive (note lag compen...
Forum Discussion
I understand the concept of what they're saying but disagree vehemently with their so-called "solution"
These kinds of issues already dealt with a long time ago when we had rental servers and could set ping limits on players joining them.
And it's total bunk....the solution isn't the solution that is in place and that's for sure. I've got hundreds of clips of me getting shot long after getting behind cover or shot long before I break cover. Clips where I've landed the first shot sometimes multiple shots and still lose the gunfight with the same weapon. It's constant. There are weapons I just simply CANNOT use because of the state of this network code. ALL of this with SUB 40ms PING!!!!!!!
I have older clips where I was forced to play on DSL because the area I live had nothing else and it's way, way, waaaaay better than this garbage on 200M bandwidth with an insane low ping. It's 2021 after all.
I've got great ping, a 2.5K PC that plays the game on less than 25% of it's power and I'M THE ONE WHO SUFFERS? Nice try though....
I disagree with the statement saying if LOW and HIGH come around a corner at the same time, LOW will see HIGH first. From my experience it's the opposite, HIGH will see LOW first.
Lag compensation favors high ping players in the vast majority of situations. This is due to time syncronization which allows high ping players to time travel further into the future than low ping players.
Essentially this means the server allows HIGH to render more ticks into the future, allowing HIGH to guess what the future might look like. HIGH is essentially shooting LOW from the future.
Time synchronization is the main mechanic behind lag compensation.
https://timonpost.medium.com/game-networking-9-bonus-overwatch-model-4faba078cf05
@OskooI_007 wrote:I disagree with the statement saying if LOW and HIGH come around a corner at the same time, LOW will see HIGH first. From my experience it's the opposite, HIGH will see LOW first.
Lag compensation favors high ping players in the vast majority of situations. This is due to time syncronization which allows high ping players to time travel further into the future than low ping players.
Essentially this means the server allows HIGH to render more ticks into the future, allowing HIGH to guess what the future might look like. HIGH is essentially shooting LOW from the future.
Time synchronization is the main mechanic behind lag compensation.
https://timonpost.medium.com/game-networking-9-bonus-overwatch-model-4faba078cf05
Exactly right @OskooI_007 !
Lag Compensation is exactly that. Compensating the lag for the players that have a HIGH latency, so they still can play in an environment with LOW latency players. And it is all the other enemy players with LOWer latency that pays the price for it! Exactly because the lag compensation is artificially placing the HIGH latency players onto the screen of the LOW latency players, all without absolute certainty that they actually are indeed at that location. Result is that the LOW latency players are shooting at a fata morgana of the HIGH latency players, while they in reality may be somewhere else.
While the opposite is not the case to the same degree for the HIGH latency players, as the LOW latency player locations will always be more true to reality of the physical gameplay of the players. LOW latency players have a low latency before their true location is confirmed and hence where they are shown to be by server to other players in the game is closer to the true position when the lag compensation/game mechanic calculus have been completed and damage/kills are being determined.
EA tech team is trying to make it sound sweet and good, but fact is that HIGH latency players are making the gaming experience poor for the LOW latency players. And EA knows this very well, reason why we have not had any player PING score now in the last many games, as EA runs the server parks cheap, so we are bundled up with other HIGH latency far out of region players to play on the same single server box.
We had the option on Community run servers in the past to set a max latency threshold for players to join/not get kicked. And it was a true delight to play on those!
I ran a survey 1-2 years back to hear the sentiment here on this BF forum across players what latency level they found acceptable to play with enemies on. The hard stop came already around 80 to max 100ms. And especially the PC gamers (who knows and played with this option the longest) were the hardest judges on this term. While console gamers tended to be ok with latencies upwards to max 140-160ms.
Current state in BF2042 is terrible. No other word to describe it. But also driven by the fact that there are simply no longer enough players around to make servers viable across all world regions. (though one could argue this was exact reason for bringing in the AI soldiers...). So fact is that we (like me here in Europe with a latency of 16-22ms to European servers) are typically playing with players also joining from e.g. South America and Japan, despite their latencies are up in the 600-1,200 ms range on our European servers.
Good luck to the Lag Compensation to make that look pretty...
Because it ain't !
@CyberDyme
Good post, very informative and helps explain a lot.👍
"That’s a tradeoff which is designed intentionally into our system. But the upside is that you can play Apex Legends and play relatively well even if you have higher than average latency, which is really important for rural players, or for players in regions where connectivity is unstable. We believe we should reduce “nonsense” at every opportunity, but when we have to deal with less-than-ideal experiences, we want to do so in a way that’s equal and fair to all players"
I prefer this system which I believe Dice uses though I do know in at least one recent game they gave more of an advantage to low ping. Can't remember which one, 1 or V, but I remember them talking about it.
Regarding public servers, in my opinion your location to the server in your region shouldn't give you a much better chance at winning than someone else further away from the server.
At OP thanks for sharing, great easy to digest explanation of lag compensation.
Had so many debates over the years on battlefield forums with uneducated morons who have no idea about how the internet works and couldn't grasp the simple concept that there will always be lag in an online multiplayer video game.
Lag comp is one of the issues, but there are others that make the issues with hit reg even worse.
BF2042 has introduced low TTK weapons and faster moving players into the game compared to the previous two games (BFV and BF1). The speed of players, speed of kills, server tick rate, and lag comp were fairly decently balanced when you played with players with relatively the same ping in the last two games. That is where a server browser helped and servers that had ping restrictions. The games felt tighter.
Now, with a 45Hz tick rate, faster TTK weapons, and faster moving players, you have a recipe for disaster which we are now experiencing.
Honestly, one fix would be to slightly lower RoFs and/or damage enough that the fastest possible kills can't be packaged in one frame of death (unless headshot, etc). The bundling of bullets gives you the feeling that you were insta-killed (normally by a higher ping player) when the server caught up and sent you their info. You will often be killed safely behind cover.
I know this would not be popular as this is supposed to be a modern shooter, but unless they upped the tick rate to 60Hz, and added a Server Browser with static servers/lobbies, I don't know if this will ever be fixed.
@AdamonicIndeed things like movement are a big factor in the whole story. In older Battlefield games movement was slower but also strafing was almost non existent so movement was more predictable for the players and the sever. These new movement changes in FPS games make them more modern but they introduce many many big issues. Vaulting over objects in BF3 was such a mess for the netcode and the sliding in BFV was just dumb. And Sundance in 2042 gotta wait till she has stopped spazzing around bouncing on the floor before you can shoot her most often can’t even tell if its a ragdolling corpse or a player.
These things just introduce more problems than they fix.
Developers are biting off more than they are allowed to chew by the publisher and marketing department. All these big changes give big technical issues many that can’t be fixed but are still pushed into FPS games. Like the stupidly big maps and 128 players.
These are just video games but as an automation programmer myself if I don’t trust the code or know there is a better solution I push for it because it could have effect on the proces in a negative way.
I know these developers must feel the same but seem to have too little impact to actually stand for a good product.
