Hi Andaho,

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Epic items really shouldn't be winnable in breakables to start with, so we will probably adjust the loot on those to not scale up equipment wins the same way battles do in Heroic instances.

The issue with not seeing someone break them is definitely a bug and is not a latency related issue.

While I was aware it was happening it has had a super low priority fix level, as it is annoying, but doesn't cause any real harm. I can see about getting it looked at.

Ping is not necessarily an indicator of the quality or speed of your internet connection. It is an indication of the time it takes to get to a destination server and back. Connections over the internet are NOT direct, they route from server to server to get to the destination. For example it takes 13 hops for me to get from my work computer here to the play server.

http://tools.pingdom.com/ping/?target=shardsps1.djartsgames.ca&o=1&save=true

Your in game ping is also effected by how long it takes the game to update, if you are running at 30fps then each frame takes 33ms to run and as such that time gets added into your ping - not precisely a network ping, but it does represent how long it is taking you to respond to messages. If you are running slow at say 20fps then that adds 50ms... Again not precise, but it does indicate who might be causing any latency issues.

Regardless, You are in the UK (correct?), and our servers are in the US, so getting rock solid pings to game servers that are within 100 miles of you (assumption) is not indicative of how fast you should expect to connect to servers that are an ocean away...

-David

Hi Andaho,

The game communicates using websockets over TCP. The TCP layer guarantees that packets arrive in order (packets are numbered, and the TCP layer knows which was the last good received number). TCP also guarantees delivery. So if a packet is detected as dropped - if a packet number higher than expected is received - it will re-request starting at the last good packet number. If it cannot get the missing packets it will eventually time-out and close the connection.

There is lots of info online about how TCP works, but long story short is packets are delivered in order and without any missing OR the connection is closed with an error.

What I think is happening with the breakables is a timing issue with the animations or perhaps a pathing issue. If the player on the remote client cannot get to the barrel, or is doing another animation when the message to break the barrel comes in and we aren't properly accounting for those cases it could result in the issue described.

-David

Hi Andaho,

I always enjoy discussing how the games work, most players only care that it does work, not how it works. So I definitely don't find it a nuisance. But it is always hard to convey tone in text, we almost always end up reading it the way we think it is being said, or how we are worried it is being said.

When discussing technical aspects I always default to speaking as though the person I am speaking with doesn't have the specific knowledge on the subject. Players don't often have the knowledge required - heck many fellow developers don't have the knowledge because they specialized in other areas, or because they have forgotten the details of a class they took 10 years ago... I will be honest with you, I don't know what an MCP or CCNA is so I don't know what that says you should or should not have experience with.

To be fair, you did not specify at what level you thought the issue was occurring, (transport or application). You also mentioned the possibility of messages arriving out of order. If we were using UDP that would be a possibility in game, but we are using TCP so that could only happen at the transport layer. Because you didn't specify which protocol you though we were using I thought I would just explain what we were using and why the messages wouldn't arrive out of order. Making no assumptions about your level of knowledge.

-David