[Macht]

Originally Posted by little ninja

So are you guys saying that S.E in attempts to make Besieged injoyable for all systems an system speeds, that it only sends out the most basic of UDP packets?

UDP packets are very basic. The have absolutly no overhead. It makes it were a lot more data can be sent out faster, the price for it though is that receiving end is not guarenteed to get the information.

Now you can compensate for this by creating software to check the data it receives and send back a request for missing info (or send the more important data multiple times). However if you are doing this for every bit of data coming over then you might as well just use a TCP connection (Since TCP is already built to this specification and is more Hardware driven then Software).

About the only major reason you'd want to do UDP with software checking the data is if only a part of the data is a must to receive and the other data (which happens to be the larger quantity) can essentially be ignored, or you want data accuracy but don't care about order in which it's received. As it is messages about the damage you've dealt and received can in most part be ignored as long as your HP bar and mob's HP bar is accurate.

The other downfall of UDP is data sent to you is not structured, it can easily be put out of order (This is another thing that TCP would prevent but the cost is a speed penalty), this is why you can see sometimes that someone responds about an item drop before it ever reaches you. In reality what happened is the item drop list and the guys responce got shuffled going from router to router when it finally got to you. One reason that could happen would be along the path your connection established to SE's servers it's likely a router was using a FILO (First in Last Out) structure instead of a FIFO (First in First out) structure.

Any easy way to think of it (for me anyway), is imagine someone with a deck of cards tossing them 1 at a time to another person, who also tosses them to another, and so on till it reaches the last person. In TCP any cards that fall to the ground person picks up and then also reorders the cards back from lowest to highest. In UDP any cards that fall to the ground are ignored and the guy just tosses what's in hand to the next person. Of course when the system does this it's more able to catch most of the cards.

So really when you see an anomily like that it means the first UDP packet your system received was the guys responce to the items and right after the items reach you, even though the server would of sent the items info first and then that player's comment second. This also were you get into those anomalies you see were players report someone being able to attack a target before them. It's also were you get the odd occurences of when you attack a mob at the same time someone else has and think you got claim to suddenly see it change on you.

UDP is fast but still needs something to mask the delay that's still there and that's were you have the system coding predictions on what the out-come is till it gets a confirmation from the server.

The one time I can recall the game actually lagging from server side I was still able to move, type, and think I was sending messages. The truth of the matter though is all the stuff I had sent when the server recovered from it's lag were ignored. I happened to be in the middle of a shot when this happened, and what's funny is when the server recovered it continued the actions I had started.

So I was running around poking other players, waving, doing LS messages, etc... and getting no responce they were all like statues once they finished the fight with whatever mob they were fighting. About the only moving other then me were the mobs, yet they didn't engage in fights or aggro. Then suddenly out of the blue my character finishes the shot animation I started back in a different area of the zone.

The funny part of it all was I didn't think anything of it till I suddenly saw a train of Yagudo (Far more then I could handle) coming at me. They were clearly from the area of the zone I was at when I started the shot.

Ehh, sorry for the story. Mind trailed there. Oh, got to say that's a decent illustration there Icemage. Not entirely accurate but it is simplified for better understanding on what's happening.

[little ninja]

Just posting this before i forget. This weekend i saw 6 besieged, (wrong place right time i guess). When besieged was around 400 i didnt notice much of a lag. sure it was here an there, but for the most part it was very playable. Its not until it got around 500, an up til the 700 max that besieged doesnt run as smooth as one think its should. It seemed like the higher the number the more intense the lag ended up to be..

So should S.E lower the # of players active in besieged to around a 400-500 max?

[Karinya]

Only if they do something to exclude afkers/mules, otherwise more people will just be shut out and frustrated (and possibly lose because some of the people inside were useless and some of the people that would have been useful couldn't get in).

[seq]

Originally Posted by Macht

I can play Besiege with full effects and have no lag problems. Well until recently but I stupidly did got on an installing spree so I'm sure a program I installed is the culprit of my degraded performance.

i'de like to know what kind of system you got, because even my XBox360 lags in besieged.

[little ninja]

Originally Posted by Karinya

Only if they do something to exclude afkers/mules, otherwise more people will just be shut out and frustrated (and possibly lose because some of the people inside were useless and some of the people that would have been useful couldn't get in).

Naa actually not to many afkers in Besieged that i know of. Infact i rarely even come across them standing around. After the last 2 days of besieged the total number of players in the zone afterwards was 25-39 total peeps. 25-39 taken up slots wont win or lose the besieged not even for the lvl 6.

The problem with besieged is the total numbers of players it can handle. it seems 500+ is overloading the system. 707 just sets my machine into overdrive....

[Shifty]

well, since everyone is against afk players in beseiged, this will probably piss someone off, but i found out something interesting. if your afk in besieged, you get exp anyways. i woke up one morning just after they retreated, and i gained 147 exp haha. just throwin it out there

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

As far as the Whitegate situation goes, if the Imperial Ward (if its more than just a CS trigger, anyway) opens up, that may ease up things in Whitegate just a bit. I assume high mercenary rank and mission progress would be required for it, though. Its still one of the parts of the city, like the Colossieum, that we can't access yet.

[Macht]

Originally Posted by seq

i'de like to know what kind of system you got, because even my XBox360 lags in besieged.

360 has title of powerful only because of it's techincal specs. You take in account it's poor cooling design and it's no wonder the 360 would lag. Aside from that I'll have to see if I can find it online anywere.

Aside from that if you payed attention to the XBox360's Video Card it's actually no better then a mediocre video card that was obsolette before it was released. Any of the recent 512MB Video Cards could beat it especially one with SLI technology. Hell the XBox360 only does 500 million triangles per second, that's like around Nvidia GeForce 6 series power. The GeForce 7 series and 8 series can just about double that or better.

Outside of that XBox360's RAM is not even near what most PCs can do. I mean combined it's like 1.3GB RAM mine at it's Min. runs 1GB RAM and maxes at 4GB which I happen to be at.

Do realize that FFXI was ported to 360 only because the 360 was able to read it with very little conversion and went to 360 instead of XBox because the XBox didn't have that capability to support the game. It doesn't mean squat speed wise for the game that it's on a 360, the Further Draw Distance was a sort patch job to accomidate the "High Definition" and simply because the XBox 360 has specs higher then the PS2 so it was able to handle more then the PS2.

Great for illusion tricks to make people believe it's stronger when really it only claims that more powerful statement by only being CPU stronger and only by about 15% (Running safely too, person with a good CPU can just over-clock it enough to cover most of that margin). About the only 'cutting edge' thing that the XBox 360 has is the WiFi, customizable face plate, and it's specially treated case. Outside of that if you want real cutting edge stuff for the XBox 360 then that would be the HD-DVD you have to purchase separately.