Weapon delay myths.

[Zaer505]

I have been a drk for a while now and I have heard a lot of different opinions about this. Here goes. While using a scythe or gswrd, does casting or shooting a chrossbow in between swings affect it? I have tried it a good bit and can't really tell for sure. Also when a scythe or whatever has a 480 delay, I used to think that that meant it was 4.8 seconds, but i'm not too sure about this opinion.

I know that this has been brought up before I am sure, just figured I would ask for someone that has a good opinion or good facts about it.

The biggest reason I want to know is I am having hell keeping gwsrd, scythe, crossbow and my magics capped. I wanted to know if I am hurting myself by casting in between swings or shooting a crossbow. I honestly don't know how some of you guys do it. I am 20 and I still have yet to cap any of the things that I listed lol.

Any suggestions or links to good drk information sites pleast and thank you.

[Mhurron]

About keeping weapons capped. The real important ones are G.Sword and Scythe. Marksmanship (crossbow) skill is quite low on DRK, it will take even longer to level then your long delay A weapons so I doubt you really need to worry about it. Elemental and Dark magic skill are also going to take a lot of time to skill, but you'll "easily" cap Dark Magic skill once you have Drain, Aspir, Stun and the Absorb-* spells. Elemental skill on a DRK just isn't that important for EXP and you have a limited MP pool as it is. I would reccomend leaving that to skill up on your own and later skill up in skillup parties.

What I did to keep Scythe and G.Sword capped was use one for 2 levels, then switch to the other for two levels, and continue that back and forth. If one capped before the two levels was up, I switched early, if it didn't cap I switched anyway. It kept the skills for both capped or very close to capped until doing bats in Garliage. Skillups really slowed down there, but picked right up killing crawlers in the Nest.

[Lmnop]

yes, casting slows down your next auto-attack. casting a 4 second Drain will halt your swings for 4-5 seconds.

480 delay is 8 seconds flat. Every 60 frames = 1 second. So take delay divided by 60, and you'll have how many seconds you have to wait between swings.

[Tipsy]

Just level BLM and RNG before you level DRK :P

[Ghostraven]

Every 60 frames = 1 second.
I thought the game was capped at 30fps?

[Mhurron]

I thought the game was capped at 30fps?
It is on the client. 60 is still used as the base reference.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/Delay

Incidentally, I do not agree with the reason why 60 is used as presented on the ffxiclopedia as it makes no sense.

[IfritnoItazura]

People has a tendency to confuse delay with frame rate for some reason. Anyway, it seems to be an established fact that 60 delay is 1 second, or 1 delay is 1/60th of a second.

Frame rate is this variable thing that changes depending on condition. Out of the box, FFXI is capped at 30 frame/second max, but I believe I've read somewhere that there are hacks to increase the cap to 60 frames/second. Which is nice, but I doubt my computers can get above 10 frame/second during any Besieged, hack or no hack...

Edit:
Mhurron is right; the FFXIclopedia page on Delay is pretty stupid. Don't look at it. (Why did you post that link? >_>; )

[raidenn]

Level Rng to work on your xbow. Even with just decent equipment, Rng can still hit the mobs with very little problems (well WS hits are kinda unpredictable)

[Mhurron]

Mhurron is right; the FFXIclopedia page on Delay is pretty stupid. Don't look at it. (Why did you post that link? >_>; )
The math does appear to be correct, but the reason for using 60 is stupid. More likely is a RTC on a 60Hz cycle, if not something much simpler related to the speed of time in Vana'diel.

[IfritnoItazura]

I think it's just convention; for whatever the reason, time unit in programming tend to be in milliseconds or 1/60th second. I remember vaguely that there are regular hardware-generated system interrupts every 1/60th of a second for many platforms, so programmers/hardware designers to use it to sync graphic buffer blitz or something.

(I could be very, very wrong on that... >_>; )

[Wise Donkey]

Casting or Shooting in the middle of your Weapon swing does not exactly lengthen the time between swings. 480 Delay is still 8 seconds. Doing other things just pauses, if you will, the weapon swing timer while the action goes on. The timer then restarts once that action completes.

[Lmnop]

i.e. a pause button is hit on the attack delay.

Incidentally, I meant to type 60 delay = 1 second in my original post. I was thinking about frames obviously, but I was actually trying my best to avoid that term. Yes, your computer being laggy won't make your character swing any slower, because it's figured on their end. Even if you're D/Cing, your char remains in game auto-attacking as normal for the 30 seconds that it can't detect you (or however that works).

[Mhurron]

I remember vaguely that there are regular hardware-generated system interrupts every 1/60th of a second for many platforms, so programmers/hardware designers to use it to sync graphic buffer blitz or something.
(I could be very, very wrong on that... >_>; )
That would be a 60Hz RTC :P

[IfritnoItazura]

Even if you're D/Cing, your char remains in game auto-attacking as normal for the 30 seconds that it can't detect you (or however that works).

Oh, that's simple to explain. Your computer/PS2/xBox360 plays no role in auto-attack. It doesn't wait x seconds and tell the server to "swing again!" All of that happen on the server side, and it occasionally tells your client software to "display attack animation #n". If you client didn't get the memo? Tough.

That's why the frame rate on your computer has nothing to do with the attack delay--heck, nothing on your FFXI client has anything to do with the attack delay.

[Macht]

Oh, that's simple to explain. Your computer/PS2/xBox360 plays no role in auto-attack. It doesn't wait x seconds and tell the server to "swing again!" All of that happen on the server side, and it occasionally tells your client software to "display attack animation #n". If you client didn't get the memo? Tough.
That's why the frame rate on your computer has nothing to do with the attack delay--heck, nothing on your FFXI client has anything to do with the attack delay.

Actually, that hasn't been the case for me. I've lagged and even had the server lag and the client still attacked. It's like the client does have a low level knowledge of what it should be doing. I use to call it one thing until Icemage decided to start attacking me for that. Basically though the client does have programming to it to determine what it should be doing.

So naturally if characters are engaged in a fight with the mob the client still continues the fight (meaning if your character should swing the they will) even if the server isn't there. I've watched a fight were a guy was killing Yagudo in 1-2 hits and when the server stopped for a few seconds I saw this guy engaged in a fight with the Yagudo for well over 8 hits.

The client still continued the motions that it knew to do. On the occurences of were you were engaged with a mob attacking it the client seemed to even know the mobs HP so battle between the mob and you still would actually happen even without the server. When the mob died though you'd see your members put away their weapons and just sit there. That's usually been the indicator for me that I'm lagging out, has always been that my party members stop responding and after battle don't do anything.

You also can't say that the client side doesn't effect anything when clearly the issues of overclocked systems and other anomalies happening client side have given players an almost speed hack like behavior. Makes sense that this would be happening given the method of how the server and client communicate while in-game.

The things you end up not seeing if something goes wrong will be stuff other players initialize. So a spell or WS they do you won't see if you lag bad enough. However you will still see your own attacks.

[IfritnoItazura]

My experiences with disconnects during battle has always been:
1. Able to move around.
2. Everyone else frozen--not moving or attacking.
3. I'm not attacking, even if I was on auto-attack.
4. If I was casting spell, the special effects loops on for a while, but no completion animation (e.g. Not lifting arms for white magic.).

Why you see something opposite? I've no idea.... ._.

You also can't say that the client side doesn't effect anything when clearly the issues of overclocked systems and other anomalies happening client side have given players an almost speed hack like behavior. Makes sense that this would be happening given the method of how the server and client communicate while in-game.

You're confusing auto-attack with other aspects of the game; my comment was limited to only auto-attack.

That speed/pos hacks are possible indicates clients sent position instead of direction/velocity vectors--at least the server doesn't check the vectors very closely if system is using vectors. Other things apparently under client control are the recast timers for abilities (and possibly spells), which would be why S-E had to ban a whole bunch of those cheaters in the last round of sanitizing campaign. But, as I indicated earlier, neither one of those things is auto-attack.

Why I actually say auto-attack has nothing to do with the clients? Because, I see people in party with the dreaded red-dot icon swinging away until fully d/c'ed. Well, if their client isn't communicating with the server, what's making them swing? Can't be the d/c'ing people's clients (since it's disconnected), and can't be my client (which has no business ordering other characters to do anything). That leaves only the server software as the logical candidate.

[Armando]

My experiences when disconnecting are identical to Itazura's. Also, when I lag, my character stops attacking (like in Itazura's point No.3 at the top) until I stop lagging, but then my client animates all the missing swings in a very short burst. That's indicative that the client was waiting on the server's instructions and got them all at once after the lag ended if you ask me.

[Feba]

Saying your frame rate isn't tied to your attack delay isn't completely true. Since so much of FFXI is client based, and because the way FFXI was coded in 30/60FPS (apparently normal for Japanese PS2 games from what i've read), it IS true that your attack speed will not slow down when your client does, like in besieged or lag, it IS also true that if you raise your FPS beyond the 30FPS cap, say by overclocking, your game will actually run fast, in the same way that early games would run faster when you pressed the turbo button on your CPU :p

FFXI relies on your hardware's clock, when you increase that, it throws FFXI off. This is why people who overclock their GPU/CPUs have been banned for Speedhacking on more than one occasion. This was also known to have increased delay speed.

What you are talking about, with the client continuing to attack, could be a result of the client getting R0, but still being able to send data, or SE could've changed the code since what I wrote above was true. It is possible SE changed it from a client side function to a server side function to prevent abuse.

[Lunaryn]

Back onto the original topic, I seem to recall the Tarutaru DRK guide on gamefaqs had some useful info on delay. I've seen conflicting claims on how this works, but the general consensus holds that short spells cast well in-between swings do not adversely affect attack rate that much. Depending on your race and whether or not you have a source of refresh, you may want to stick to just the vital spells, or you may want to cast a spell after every swing. Also, the changes to signet are very kind to DRKs who actually use their MP.

As for keeping weapon skills capped, I haven't experimented extensively, but as a tarutaru I've had the best results with +DEX equipment and not too much +Acc. At one point I was getting no skillups at all for most of a level, despite being well under cap, while I had a fair bit of +Acc. After swapping Venerer Ring with Deft Ring and I think Battle Gloves with Wonder Mitts, I started getting skillups at a decent rate again.

And I have to agree, Marksmanship isn't worth the bother. You don't need to be able to hit a mob to pull it, and you'll never be particularly effective with ranged. I don't even bother bringing ranged weapons to my static trio (our BLU pulls). If you want Marksmanship skill, consider leveling RNG.

[IfritnoItazura]

Saying your frame rate isn't tied to your attack delay isn't completely true.
/sigh [Deleted most of the the long explanation on how "above cap" frame rate affects auto-attack delay while low frame rate does not could be possible.]

What you are talking about, with the client continuing to attack, could be a result of the client getting R0, but still being able to send data,

Here are two ways to look at the possibility of client controlled attack speed in this scenario:

1. When the network connection is degrading, and if the client is really directing every swing, when watching other people d/c in the middle of auto-attack, we (those with good connection) should notice much longer than normal period of not swinging (packet lost), and much shorter than normal swings delays (packet resent and timely packet for next swing) from time to time. This, I've not seen; Auto-attack tends to be fairly regular for everyone in party, as long as I maintain connection myself.

2. If client controls the attack speed, like the movement speed, why hasn't S-E banned anyone hacking that, to our knowledge? The apparent lack of such hacks is evidence (though not proof) pointing toward server side control of attack speed.


or SE could've changed the code since what I wrote above was true. It is possible SE changed it from a client side function to a server side function to prevent abuse.

I don't know what it was like once upon a time, but for my entirety as a FFXI player, what I saw indicates the server side controls auto-attack speed. YMMV.

[Feba]

People have been banned for speedhacking, this falls under that. Generally, actual hackers don't bitch much when they get banned.

And I do distinctly remember a time when I was around lv30, I went to take some food to an LS group partying in Boyahda tree, one of the characters (A RNG or THF or NIN, some mithra) was happily swinging their daggers about, and stopped. DCd 30 seconds afterwards.

I'm not saying it's always been like that, and i'm not saying that couldn't have been something else (crab just a few feet in the wrong direction, I think we've all been annoyed by that at some point or another), but I have heard people who have overclocked reporting their characters attacking faster, and given how FFXI is frame and client based, it is possible. It would be a huge oversight on SE's part, and they would fix it, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

[IfritnoItazura]

People have been banned for speedhacking, this falls under that.
Don't know what you mean...

Generally, actual hackers don't bitch much when they get banned.
I suppose those in prison claiming innocence were falsely accused, to a man. :P

but I have heard people who have overclocked reporting their characters attacking faster, and given how FFXI is frame and client based, it is possible.
Placebo effect, maybe? If you expect the game to "run faster" (or other nebulous concept like "perform better") by this "overclocking", and you do see some other changes, it becomes easy to fool one's own mind to see more than there is.

What do you mean by "FFXI is frame and client based"? To me, that's like saying web sites are web browser and HTML rendering engine based.

[Feba]

FFXI movement is based on frame rate. FFXI in general is based on the client, the server doesn't have control over a lot of things it should, in a lot of ways. This is why so many hacks that shouldn't be possible are, such as teleporting. If the server controlled movement, it could easily slow down speedhackers, or move teleporters back where they should be.

[IfritnoItazura]

I give up. Feba wins. EVERYTHING is frame rate based. :rolleyes:

After all, when programmers write routines, they wouldn't do a system call to calculate elapses time. Heck, maybe no such system calls exist. Instead, the code monkies sync everything to frames. Opps. Excuse me; I mean "frame rate", not "frames." EVERYTHING--spell, movement, ability, weapon delay--yes WEAPON DELAYS--despite observational evidence to the contrary!--are based on how fast things are displayed on the client.

Hopefully, Feba knows what a "frame" is when he make these kinds of statements about "rates".

Done with this (off) topic now; sorry about the large amount screen space I took. :P

[Feba]

Raising your max frame rate causes your character to move quicker, and it has been reported by various people that other actions are sped up. SE might've changed this.

There's no point being pissy, it is a fact that FFXI is based on a 30FPS cap in at least some ways, and it used to be that attacks were one of them.

You might have observational evidence to the contrary, however, so do I. It's more a matter of updates and SE's coding than what either of us see.

[Macht]

My experiences with disconnects during battle has always been:
1. Able to move around.
2. Everyone else frozen--not moving or attacking.
3. I'm not attacking, even if I was on auto-attack.
4. If I was casting spell, the special effects loops on for a while, but no completion animation (e.g. Not lifting arms for white magic.).

Actually the stuff you stated here I've seen happen as well. But these I've only been able to relate to when my end lags. It's totally different when it's a hangup on my end vs. and hangup on the server. These do not happen when the server side has it's "hiccups".

When the server hiccups the game still appears to run like normal. Yes there are certain things that do not happen if the client doesn't get the UDP packet from the server. If you initialized the WS then you will see it on your client it is not guarenteed the other clients will get the UDP and see it, this is the same for ending sequences on spells and ranged attacks (except these are global, not even your client will see the ending sequence if it doesn't get it from the server).

The client however doesn't wait for the server to ok an action back to it that is obvious. Obvious being if a player is engaged with a mob in a melee fight that player will be stricking the mob at set intervals. You can see that the client does share some of the control with the server by just watching a running player hitting a wall. On the player's client he's still running and see's his model bouncing around, to everyone else it appears he's walking. Two totally different views of the same action only because it's client info vs. server info.

You also can see that the client runs that attack part by watching things like Range attacks being engaged. On multiple occasions I've activated my range attack exactly at the same time that I auto-attack. It results in a graphical messup on my end were it'll look like I'm about to fire my dagger I had in hand, but to everyone else they see the attack happen cleanly and right after the bow is drawn.

In this case I believe SE intentionally made it were server had to respond back so that the bow shooting would end the same on everyone properly setting my auto-attacks on their client to continue engaging like normal without an offset. You can actually create an offset effect intentionally with the worms, by stepping just far enough away when they cast a spell. You'll see the server responds that the spell was cast, but the client didn't end the worms spell casting. You can repeat this action with such control that there is no way you missed the UDP packet that many times, it just makes it painfully obvious that the server isn't sending the client that info. That info is actually controlled by the client and when you step far enough away the client doesn't get it right.

[Gilge]

I thought the game was capped at 30fps?

lol, could you imagine a 16 second delay on a 480 wep?

and you thought guns had a long delay as is...

[VZX]

FFXI movement is based on frame rate. FFXI in general is based on the client, the server doesn't have control over a lot of things it should, in a lot of ways. This is why so many hacks that shouldn't be possible are, such as teleporting. If the server controlled movement, it could easily slow down speedhackers, or move teleporters back where they should be.
I think that's caused by "Server always trust whatever clients say". When it's possible to fake the message being sent by client, time-cheating is possible.
I remember one of my friend attempted and succeeded to remove the delay between synthesis.

[Feba]

lol, could you imagine a 16 second delay on a 480 wep?He is correct. While Delay rates are based off 60FPS, the actual graphics (output) will never go over 30

[Feba]

I don't think <pos> hack can be one example/prove for the statement of "ffxi movement is based on frame rate"If you read my post, you'd know that isn't what i'm saying.

They are two very seperate points.

FFXI movement is based on frame rate. FFXI in general is based on the client, the server doesn't have control over a lot of things it should, in a lot of ways. This is why so many hacks that shouldn't be possible are, such as teleporting.

[Aeni]

I give up. Feba wins. EVERYTHING is frame rate based. :rolleyes:

After all, when programmers write routines, they wouldn't do a system call to calculate elapses time. Heck, maybe no such system calls exist. Instead, the code monkies sync everything to frames. Opps. Excuse me; I mean "frame rate", not "frames." EVERYTHING--spell, movement, ability, weapon delay--yes WEAPON DELAYS--despite observational evidence to the contrary!--are based on how fast things are displayed on the client.

Hopefully, Feba knows what a "frame" is when he make these kinds of statements about "rates".

Done with this (off) topic now; sorry about the large amount screen space I took. :P

Why would you want to do a system call to EVERY SINGLE FREAKING THING that's being done in game? Do you realize what the hell you're doing to that server? Not to mention, the poor routers getting cock-blocked with requests of all kinds.

I do some progamming every now and then relating to server-client relationships (Web programming) as well as having many friends within that kind of line of work (One of them programs routines into plant robots at Intel) Let me tell you one thing, with advent of new ways to handle client-side requests incoming to the server over a medium like the internet, e.g., AJAX, the main focus is to keep from loading the server and having to process calls to it and then WAITING for it and they do this by having the clients handle some of this load but still maintain the illusion of real-time "second-by-second" updates.

S-E had attempted to do this with this game over 6 years ago through their development. However, they did not foresee (who could have?) just how much of a problem that their version of this system could cause. Their servers and routers are all capped to do minimal work (Why do you think our patch downloads are capped?) in order to appease the masses as it would. Why are you thinking that they don't do this with server-side requests? They do and are doing so by moving the bulk of processing to the client side.

So, how does the client side handle these requests then? What is the one thing everyone has that can be relied upon? Everything ties back to either internal clocks or a ponit of reference, like FPS, for programmers to depend on.

Whether or not SE actually uses a lame point of reference like video refresh rate or they use a complicated routine to determine the time off CPUs is for another discussion. One thing for sure, there's been plenty of evidence that client side "activities" have been able to run their course independant of the server and many hacks and cheats exists because of them.

[RenkeiMaster]

I believe that the reason movement in online games, FFXI or most of the First Person Shooter games, are client based is to give the impression of a 0-lag environment.
The characters would be hard to move if they had a 0.5s response time.
When you press left, the character on screen would move immediately, but the image on the server wouldn't be updated until a few hundreds of milliseconds later. The downside of doing the movement client-side is being vulnerable to speedhacks or telehacks.
Other actions, such as using job abilities, auto-attack, casting spells, seem to be done on the server side.
The auto-attack is obvious if you are a melee chasing a kited mob. On your screen, you may be within melee range of the kited mob but your character won't swing because the image on the server is a little behind and, therefore, outside the melee range.

[Feba]

Please don't tell me you bumped this thread just to tell us what everyone already knew.

[RenkeiMaster]

Please don't tell me you bumped this thread just to tell us what everyone already knew.
No, the point of my post was to say that attack delay is calculated on the server side, not on the client side like your posts suggest.
Anyway, this thread was in the first page, among the most recent threads, when I posted.