Idea: Reduce Lag Induced Frustration
buffaloburger
Join Date: 2012-11-28 Member: 173530Members
Join Date: 2012-11-28 Member: 173530Members
Hey all, made this post on Reddit and feel I should toss it here too.
"Hey all. As most of us know NS2 has some rather generous treatment towards high ping players. Also, for whatever reason, it seems euros have little interest in using local servers. This means late night NA games are flooded with 200-300+ ping players.
Dieing after clearing corners and being bit from 5 meters away gets super frustrating quick. I believe that instantly being able to visually identify a high ping opponent would allow reasonable "anti bullshit" counterplay.
I propose an optional setting to highlight or shade player models based on their current ping (say the average of last 10 seconds to smooth the effect).
Say a 0-100 ping player appears normally. A 101-150 had a yellowish tint. 151-200 becomes more orange. 200+ becomes darker and darker red.
This would allow one to react appropriately to the games lag compensation mechanics. Lerking/Fading in a room with a high ping marine? You would know this and know to GTFO. Getting swarmed by 4 skulks early game with your marine bro? Shoot the lagger first so your strafing is reliable at least.
I get that Ns2 being generous to high ping is needed with low playercounts, but this isn't UT99 where weapons and movespeed were literally optimized for triple digit modem pings. Let's at least make counterplay more intuitive than memorizing the laggers names every lobby.
Thoughts?"
Maybe coloring player models slightly would damage alien balance (2 EZ 2 see?). Possible the option could be an addition to healthbars. Perhaps color coordinate the outlining effect of models.
I don't know the ideal implementation as I am no UI designer, but I feel strongly that having this option would be a big quality of life boost, reduce frustration, and avoid bitterness to laggers.
Sure lagging is still detrimental in NS2, but it is much less so than any arena FPS, arcade shooter, or class shooter I have ever played and provides not insignificant advantages.
So how do you all feel about having this option implemented? Would visual identification of players relative ping be valuable to you? Would it break the game somehow? Would it be excess info you would choose to ignore? Is keeping a mental tab on pings based on names a L2P thing and only noobs care? Discuss.
"Hey all. As most of us know NS2 has some rather generous treatment towards high ping players. Also, for whatever reason, it seems euros have little interest in using local servers. This means late night NA games are flooded with 200-300+ ping players.
Dieing after clearing corners and being bit from 5 meters away gets super frustrating quick. I believe that instantly being able to visually identify a high ping opponent would allow reasonable "anti bullshit" counterplay.
I propose an optional setting to highlight or shade player models based on their current ping (say the average of last 10 seconds to smooth the effect).
Say a 0-100 ping player appears normally. A 101-150 had a yellowish tint. 151-200 becomes more orange. 200+ becomes darker and darker red.
This would allow one to react appropriately to the games lag compensation mechanics. Lerking/Fading in a room with a high ping marine? You would know this and know to GTFO. Getting swarmed by 4 skulks early game with your marine bro? Shoot the lagger first so your strafing is reliable at least.
I get that Ns2 being generous to high ping is needed with low playercounts, but this isn't UT99 where weapons and movespeed were literally optimized for triple digit modem pings. Let's at least make counterplay more intuitive than memorizing the laggers names every lobby.
Thoughts?"
Maybe coloring player models slightly would damage alien balance (2 EZ 2 see?). Possible the option could be an addition to healthbars. Perhaps color coordinate the outlining effect of models.
I don't know the ideal implementation as I am no UI designer, but I feel strongly that having this option would be a big quality of life boost, reduce frustration, and avoid bitterness to laggers.
Sure lagging is still detrimental in NS2, but it is much less so than any arena FPS, arcade shooter, or class shooter I have ever played and provides not insignificant advantages.
So how do you all feel about having this option implemented? Would visual identification of players relative ping be valuable to you? Would it break the game somehow? Would it be excess info you would choose to ignore? Is keeping a mental tab on pings based on names a L2P thing and only noobs care? Discuss.
Comments
And I have to stop you right there.
There are plenty of EU servers populated by regulars, and also some regular (returning?) US players on EU servers.
The reason why US servers are getting EU players late night is solely because of the timezones. We have no populated servers at 2AM local, but you guys are still at 8PM.
Regarding the tinting idea, I personally think it's terrible.
A game should not concern itself with "environmental" variables.
If you're frustrated by high pings, ask the server admin to set the high latency auto-kick limit lower (it's in NS2+ afaik).
Also, I don't think the pain of others will give you any comfort, but you can consider that high pingers have it twice as bad because have to deal with the same problem but their hits register later, and thrice as bad because the latency issue is doubled when they face other high pingers. It sucks for everyone involved.