Syringe accuracy at main Legacy server

[Poyer]

Hi there,

Yesterday it was quite busy in the main Legacy server (for example xen, Mister J, Ande, Indej, Star and forgive me if I forgot the others) and we had a minor discussion about "the needle". It struck both Mister J and me that it seems that the accuracy of the medics' syringe has been altered. Don't know who also participated further in this discussion (I thought Ande, Indej and xen also mentioned something about it), but it seems more people noticed the inaccuracy of "the needle".

Could there've been any changes recently that had impact on the accuracy of the syringe? And more importantly: could it be changed back in order to make the syringe as accurate as in the past ? Since I mostly play as medic I'm opting this now. It would really help the teamplay if the accuracy came back, because as a medic I really want to help engineers for example by healing them (when planting dyna or whatsoever).

Just asking

Poyer

[Mister J]

To add to this.

Hitboxes in general seem to be way off, and very weird. While aiming at an AFK at the head, I hit the body. Aiming in the air would hit the head. Then proning sometimes makes you invincible, and you have to aim below your proning enemy in order to hit him. Syringes right in the middle of a body seem to miss most of the times. 

Also, there is a weird bounce from bullethits and nades. Enemy nades isntanly turn you into a NASA-pilot.  

[DiNg]

Haven't noticed anything special with the medic's needle, it still feels like ET.

Playing medic on RTCW was way more difficult haha

[Spyhawk]

The syringe "accuracy" hasn't changed for many months - and when it did change it was to make revive easier.

There have been changes on collision boxes though, with some issues fixed  - but TM is running an old version currently.

[Jessica]

2 hours ago, Spyhawk said:

The syringe "accuracy" hasn't changed for many months - and when it did change it was to make revive easier.

There have been changes on collision boxes though, with some issues fixed  - but TM is running an old version currently.

Still. This is the 2nd time it is mentioned , the other was 4 ~6 weeks ago !

[Mister J]

6 hours ago, Spyhawk said:

The syringe "accuracy" hasn't changed for many months - and when it did change it was to make revive easier.

There have been changes on collision boxes though, with some issues fixed  - but TM is running an old version currently.

So this would mean in the passed days nothing has changed. But gameplay is totally different compared to, say last week. How is this possible? 

 

8 hours ago, Mister J said:

While aiming at an AFK at the head, I hit the body. Aiming in the air would hit the head. Then proning sometimes makes you invincible, and you have to aim below your proning enemy in order to hit him. Syringes right in the middle of a body seem to miss most of the times. 

This wasn't the case last week.

 

 

[Spyhawk]

32 minutes ago, Mister J said:

So this would mean in the passed days nothing has changed. But gameplay is totally different compared to, say last week. How is this possible? 

TM has been running on the same build since April 17 (2.76-1002). Nothing has changed in the code for the past 2 weeks...

Edited April 30, 2020 by Spyhawk

[Poyer]

First of all thank you for answering @Spyhawk! Unfortunately it doesn't solve my problem (yet)

As you mention the date of the 17th of April, that might be something? Has there been a kind of change that day that would alter/infer with the abovementioned problems maybe? No technie here, so forgive me if that's an idiot question

[Spyhawk]

Yes, I see two possibilities that might be related:

* As I mentioned above, the collision code has been adjusted in -1002, but we have found a bug since then and fixed it (long story short: rounding error, where boxes shouldn't collide but might collide very slightly on some occasion, depending on the colliding objects orientation on the map). Some of you reported it as "sticky chairs", but the issue might apply in other cases too. This has been fixed and the build ready since a week ago, but the new build isn't on TM yet.

* TM main server is often full. Due to limitation of the engine, when a server has many/too players, too many events start to happen at the same time and stuff start to fall apart left and right, in a somewhat unpredictable way. Server with 32 players is most probably fine, but any server with 40+ players is playing with fire.

[sty]

Thanks for the explanation Spyhawk. Maybe the solution is to try to populate campaign server with players from main by advertising. Especially in peak times. Win win for all.

[Poyer]

16 hours ago, Spyhawk said:

Yes, I see two possibilities that might be related:

* As I mentioned above, the collision code has been adjusted in -1002, but we have found a bug since then and fixed it (long story short: rounding error, where boxes shouldn't collide but might collide very slightly on some occasion, depending on the colliding objects orientation on the map). Some of you reported it as "sticky chairs", but the issue might apply in other cases too. This has been fixed and the build ready since a week ago, but the new build isn't on TM yet.

* TM main server is often full. Due to limitation of the engine, when a server has many/too players, too many events start to happen at the same time and stuff start to fall apart left and right, in a somewhat unpredictable way. Server with 32 players is most probably fine, but any server with 40+ players is playing with fire.

Thank you so much for the elaboration.

Next thing to do is uploading the new build in our TM-server right? Then see what happens and possibly the 'issues' with the syringe (and hitboxes) are resolved. If not I also see another possibility... your second raised point about things falling apart right and left due to 'overpopulation' of the server.. I know we have a busy server with a lot of slots. I really like that, but if that means it's less reliable, we might need to consider reducing to 36 (or even 'safe' 32) slots eh? That's not a decision for me to make of course, but if more people start to notice behavior that they don't like, we might really want to consider downgrading the slots.

Dunno how the others think about this?

[Charlie]

13 hours ago, stypek said:

Thanks for the explanation Spyhawk. Maybe the solution is to try to populate campaign server with players from main by advertising. Especially in peak times. Win win for all.

Would you like to me coax people from ETL2 to another server? Would the Nitmod regulars like me poaching their players away? Probably not. People are free to play where they enjoy themselves but we aren't going to advertise one server over another nor try to pull people away from where they like to be. When the main server is full we redirect to our third most popular server. We also will recommend any other TM server if that is the settings a player would prefer.

8 hours ago, Poyer said:

Thank you so much for the elaboration.

Next thing to do is uploading the new build in our TM-server right? Then see what happens and possibly the 'issues' with the syringe (and hitboxes) are resolved. If not I also see another possibility... your second raised point about things falling apart right and left due to 'overpopulation' of the server.. I know we have a busy server with a lot of slots. I really like that, but if that means it's less reliable, we might need to consider reducing to 36 (or even 'safe' 32) slots eh? That's not a decision for me to make of course, but if more people start to notice behavior that they don't like, we might really want to consider downgrading the slots.

Dunno how the others think about this?

We won't update the main server going forward until we can guarantee the database will not have to be reset again. It isn't fair to people who actually like doing prestige nor those who really don't want to level skills again and again. We won't increase or decrease the slots on the main server either at the moment. As far as I know ETL2 will receive the updates the devs push out and that is also a cosy 26+4 slots so things won't "fall apart left and right" for the devs.

[Spyhawk]

13 hours ago, Charlie said:

so things won't "fall apart left and right" for the devs.

Just to clarify: Things do not "fall apart" for the devs, they fall apart for the players.

Someone asked why stuff might feel weird from one session to another, despite not code change, I simply answered.

It's hard to say what the players limit should be, because there are so many variables and depends on what exactly happens on the server (f.e, having most players leveled up with Field Ops 4 and double airstrike compounds the problem), but I do know ET has been designed around a practical limit of 32 players, and that the probability of seeing weird things increases with more players. 

Edited May 2, 2020 by Spyhawk

[Spyhawk]

12 hours ago, Charlie said:

We won't update the main server going forward until we can guarantee the database will not have to be reset again.

There is one way to help with that, and without going into the technical details, it requires TM admins (as the ones that can update the server, work with DB and stuff) to be available and have the time to do proper migration, which has been a problem in the past week due to current IRL issue.

[Spyhawk]

moved to 

.

Edited May 2, 2020 by Spyhawk

[Mister J]

So hitboxes are still weird, and movement is buggy. Bumping into a player feels sticky. Are there any resolutions for this?  

[MiniMuppet]

@Mister J we are still waiting to update to the next build, we will let you know when we do so you can let us know if its any better.

[Spyhawk]

Yes. But what else is it to know that we don't already know?

• The collision box issue ("sticky chair" that might be seen in other context), has been solved nearly two weeks ago.
• There isn't anyone at TM that has free time to update the server in a way that ensure the transition is smooth (Eagle is busy as hell, and TM doesn't seem to have anybody else as backup), so the update isn't applied.
• We (ETL team) can't do anything about weird issues that pop up because of a server that is too crowded. Blame the ET engine. Apparently TM admins decided they "won't increase or decrease the slots on the main server either at the moment" despite possible bad consequences. ¯\(°_o)/¯

[Mister J]

2 hours ago, Spyhawk said:

The collision box issue ("sticky chair" that might be seen in other context), has been solved nearly two weeks ago.

Chair has, players seems to be a new issue.

 

2 hours ago, Spyhawk said:

There isn't anyone at TM that has free time to update the server in a way that ensure the transition is smooth (Eagle is busy as hell, and TM doesn't seem to have anybody else as backup), so the update isn't applied.

I get that. Very unfortunate.

 

2 hours ago, Spyhawk said:

We (ETL team) can't do anything about weird issues that pop up because of a server that is too crowded. Blame the ET engine. Apparently TM admins decided they "won't increase or decrease the slots on the main server either at the moment" despite possible bad consequences. ¯\(°_o)/¯

I don't expect the offset hitboxes to have something to do with the population of the server.  This problem has never occurred before, even with the high numbers of players. 

 

2 hours ago, MiniMuppet said:

@Mister J we are still waiting to update to the next build, we will let you know when we do so you can let us know if its any better.

Thank you Mini, that's a good perspective. Let's hope for the better then.

[Spyhawk]

11 hours ago, Mister J said:

I don't expect the offset hitboxes to have something to do with the population of the server.  This problem has never occurred before, even with the high numbers of players. 

The last adjustment to antilag changes are dated from March 17. That build was shipped on TM server on March 19, nearly 7 weeks ago. And apart the collision box issue (sticky chair), I don't see any other changes done recently that could affect players.

Since, according to you, the issue appeared only recently, all I can say is:

• this might be related to the box collision issue.
• this might be related to the high population of the server, coupled to some other factors (settings, number of people having maxed out levels which might compound the issue, etc.)
• this might even be due to external factors (ddos, bad actor sending corrupted data, and such). Since nobody is monitoring server logs atm, it's a possibility (though I guess it's unlikely, but it happened in the past afaik). 

We'll know more when TM installs the fixed build. Until then, it is all useless speculation.

 

Edited May 5, 2020 by Spyhawk

[MiniMuppet]

We will be updating the server later tonight or in the morning depend on the amount of players on the server. Please let us know if there is any new issues or if its no correct the one you are seeing.

Cheers

[Mister J]

I think it has improved a bit. Some things I did notice, and I will try to be specific to make it more tangible.

• For many people the med-packs are not shown, they do seem to work (although invisible).
• Sometimes the body of your enemy disappears, literally. So you don't need to gib.  But you cant pickup their gun for ammo either.
• Sometimes this happens to a player. I was shooting this medic, when suddenly WOOSH, gone. No body, no sound, no notification of self-kill or any of that. Just vanished instantly. Not even a weapon on the floor.
• Walking into teammates is still sticky, hitboxes are still off.

All these things happened on a 7 vs 7 session, so not too many people online actually.. Well, hope this can be of any help.

Also, I do hear a lot of complains on the forum as well as online, and people are actually leaving the server due to the problems. Even members start to leave our community right now. I don't want to be the bad guy, but I think we should be critical here. The current approach to the development seems to come with a high cost and maybe the costs are starting to get too high. Can we think of a solution for this? Members leaving our clan is probably not what we want. 

 

 

[ryzyk]

I know that ET kinda always had problems with hitboxes and hit registration (and it can look even worse in replays) and I will go off-topic here but yesterday I had a funny/sad situation and its about hitboxes anyway.

https://streamable.com/wux7fb

Im not the best aimer by any means but sometimes I feel like on top of it I get cases like this where you feel you should hit but don't and they are not so clear to see like here in the video. As I said I always thought in ET situations like that are rather common place and I was fine with it, because I love this game anyway but I just wanted to share :p

[Mister J]

Well this is exactly what is wrong with the hitboxes right now. It has been better in the past so I am hoping the current situation will be fixed in the future. For me most fun is currently out of the game to be honest. 

[Oldman]

I was also noticing strange behavior with regards to reviving, but also to healing someone - often times the needle just does not hit, although "social distance" seemed an unlike cause. I thought it was me being clumsy until now, but according to the above it seems more like a bug.

When reading the developer notes...

Quote

this might be (...) other factors (settings, number of people having maxed out levels which might compound the issue, etc.)

... maybe it's time to test server and gameplay with reduced amount of spam (e.g. less artillery)?