woahz wrote:well yeah, without actual data we cant really say whether the new netcode killed some of the playerbase or not but we do have the poll that eric created. correct me if i'm wrong but the poll barely won in favor of new netcode where the community hadnt even played with the new netcode yet. this just shows half the community wanted a sort of change whereas the other half wanted to keep the game the same probably cause of nostalgia etc.
the problem with this type of poll/voting system is the same problem that some political voting systems have where you have half the people who won the vote who are happy and you have the other half unhappy. in an ideal world you would be able to leave both sides happy and not create a divide between voters which this update clearly did - people are complaining about new netcode and the people who like the new netcode are talking back creating a constant argument (like seriously, years after the update this is still controversial somehow).
such ideal world is impossible, but the closest to to it would be a new netcode (one that syncs bullets and weapon states etc) with way better servers, the issue is this is expensive as deliciously exquisite pizza sauce, the best we might get is the current one with better servers but that is also not going to happen, but people will still be mad they cant tank as much and now are on the least advantageous side because of how their packet loss/desync/high ping isnt making them OP anymore
theres another issue w this type of poll, theres a ton of people who dont answer polls!
the problem with politics is not so easy to fix but i think in pb2's case it could have been handled much better. instead of making old multiplayer doomed by making you have to complete the campaign he could have just made new netcode completely optional as a setting before creating a match.
actually, i mean, it was made optional, the new multiplayer vs old multiplayer thing, the issue is that the old multiplayer shenanigans required you to play the 42 levels, this also gets to an issue that is, a game requires an amount of people to play, if you divide the servers in two it is likely that the threshold were things just die is going to be hit, just like when you open europe theres few people because most people play in california so that is p much the only place you can find matches
i don't see how this wouldn't be unfair but you do mention people using hacks/etc and my response to that is people will hack in virtually every game, eric could have updated the game to make it harder for hackers instead - fixing some forms of hacking was a side product of the new netcode.
making it harder for hackers requires changes in netcode, ive hacked pb2 before and ive told eric how i do it and he said it wasnt solvable and well it isnt perfect but the new system is better at this since its more server synced than the last one, making it harder to hack does inherently require changing the netcode a bit, didnt have to be completely but the hacker would still have his ping value to have fun without being punished in the last one, also pb2 does have a few anti-hack systems
letting the players choose what type of netcode they want and playing with others who think the same seems ideal so i don't see why eric chose to leave old netcode in the gutter considering half the players didnt want the change in the first place and the other half hadn't even played with the new netcode
the issue is that new players probably would be confused and most people generally go in what is new instead of what is old, so the new netcode would win, also they would go for what is more popular, if by the small data we have the new netcode won but not by much, the idea is that it would be more popular since it was the more popular result and people would migrate or naturally use it by default in the case of new players
you do mention higher ping players having an advantage in old netcode but with an optional system it is completely up to the choice of low ping players to play in old multiplayer or new multiplayer so you can't really complain.
this gets to an issue, what about top 100 and PL? is it fair that someone can tank a ton of bullets and such in the old netcode while being extremely hard to deal with, or might be able to do some hacking (this used to be more of a thing in 2012-2013 but still should work in the old netcode more than in the new one i think), vs someone who is still playing with a delay on the servers that just happens to be a lower value than someone else? also what about PL and other sort of competitive play? would it be divided in two? the issue with this kind of thing is that it cuts the community of a dying game in half which should slow down its death
i'm not here to dispute everything you said in reply since at the end without facts/data this is all based on opinion
i feel like what you said about custom maps (not approved) keeping the game alive is right on the money though since i am a living representation of that
this has always been known and eric has confirmed this, also most of the info on the netcode im giving is mostly factual, i am a programmer, ive played w pb2 before as in a slighty more technical side, ive made netcodes before (not as complicated as pb2s) and did have classes on the topic, as i said ive hacked/modded pb2 (eric knows that and eric has a very interesting view on this idk if he ever made this public, i also told him how i did it), and i do have a good idea of how servers work since i do pay mine and such
but the data itself is hard to work with, even the poll one considering what ive said, theres also the fact its outdated as you mention
my idea with this post was to be more informative showing a few facts people ignore, such as the fact packet loss is a thing and everybody ignores it in this game while it is very relevant in others and it is the bane of game developers in my experience, also to show that other games are alive and well even with trash netcode (see escape from tarkov)
Master Chief 0 wrote:Plazmaburst 2 netcode in general is BAD. None of that netcodes is as good as the other as well, if both exist then I would commit that both sucks as hell and the multiplayer is HORRIBLE at all time and it will stay bad forever because each netcode is more retard than the other, the old one makes your weapons shots after 0,5 seconds where you can literally dodge any shot and miss the point where the other opponents could've killed you easily.
both netcodes suck, i agree, the thing is, this one is solvable, the other one isnt, a third option is probably too much, pb2.5/3/whatever will probably use one similar to the current one
the old one your weapons didnt shoot after 0.5 seconds, people took damage after 0.5, you only shot 0.5 seconds after if you have a ping of 500, in that case you rly shouldnt be playing a game yno, can you play any other game consistently with 500 ping? theres a reason why most games are unplayable with that, youre half a second in delay, the new one you actually are half a second in delay and it is unplayable, but it is fair for other players and 500 might be too much but 100, 200 etc is still playable, not to mention how theres less desync with the new system making custom maps better, but yeah the old system was easy to abuse for high ping players
The new one is just uhh. pretty much worse than you think because even if your weapons shot faster but there is a definite nightmare ass tanking in the game cause your weapon wasn't charged but fully tricks you and thinks that it's ready for use and when you shot at someone it doesn't count and also that because of the slow frame rate that always players use like 30 WTF they don't know the most suggested one is 60?
this was a thing in the old netcode as well, people seem to ignore this, syncing bullets and weapon states is extremely costly on the server side so it is not viable, mostly for pb2, yno, this isnt an issue of the new netcode people! its an issue of any netcode that is viable for pb2, what you can do is think, hold the weapon for longer after picking it up so it charges, the most frustrating thing is how how accurate the weapon youre firing is randomized locally which can be very frustrating, but syncing this for fast firing weapons is going to cause so much general lag in the servers and such it is not viable, also the 20/30/60 FPS thing also happens in the older netcode, it is also an issue of PB2, this is probably what contributes people with bad computers (who in practice play the game at FPS values lower than 15) generally seem to have an advantage, a lot of players considered good in the past fit this, an example that comes to mind is the player king xlr who had a youtube channel,
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuwzyS ... qem55CZf5wAnd soo while they move they think they are moving fast but with the low fps they do be lagging while self boosting, once you get one and basically it doesn't count your shot cause his moves are so delayed and well so bad, there isn't a game that delays gun firing trigger like the hell is this type of game do we play?
yeah it looks like they are teleporting because of the server syncing and such, you need to predict that, it is unfair, how to solve that? give good computers to everyone??? FPS requirements??? anyway any sort of method of separation betwen players is just worse for the game in general, MAYBE fine for ranked but still, pb2 isnt a game community id say has good computers (a dude said he runs pb2 poorly, the thign is, the min requirements to play pb2 minimally well are way, way lower than what is required to play good like poggers 3d games, the issue is that pb2 is poorly optimized, mostly because of flash, so you cant get super high FPS values in it)
Just not to be annoying like every time i just wanna say that Plazma burst 2 multiplayer netcodes are f*cked up where each one of them delay something in the game to prevent that thing from working at the current required time.
this is implied by ANY netcode, you ask games that do this, go play cs go, battlefield, fortnite, whatever, actually, go play any game, might as well be a moba, try ot hit a skillshot in league or dota, or even deliciously exquisite pizza sauce go play online chess, if your ping is high, you will have a delay, just like how the current netcode works, if you ahve half a second left in chess and make a move it MIGHT (this might be handled locally) make your move not go and you lose because of lack of time, this is extremely easy to see in valve games imo because of how they are programmed, cs go and dota it is literally a delay that makes it borderline unplayable in cs go and if ur rly good u can still play dota, but half a second? 500 ms? for that to happen you must be playing rly far from home, like im from brazil, if i queue on chinese servers i dont get 500 ms, ping is affected by internet speed tho (its the size of the package youre sending/receiving divided by the internet speed of yours in miliseconds, upload and download respectively)
the thing is, other games have money, and they can pay for good servers, which causes the games to give you literally 10 ping in close servers, while in pb2... you get... two servers which arent even taht good and ive never seen someone w that low of a ping, even with people who live near the servers like washington (used to be better cuz lower load) or california or ukraine
Weird thing that you are talking about the PB2 netcode nowadays in 2021 of flash's death.
whats the issue w giving some information about how netcodes work in general and explaining why i believe the new one is better and how it is solvable with more resources, it is very likely what eric will use for pb2.5/3/whatever considering his comments on the topic before