We need to change the lobby

[LittleKiller]

Today, I was banned for 24 hours.

admittedly, not entirely unfair. However, the banning is reason for me to start this topic. Let me give a short introduction to what led me to start this topic.

A few weeks (?) ago I joined a game 6v6 zepilot's dual gap. I don't remember the host his name, and it doesn't matter, but at one point. The host was starting to lag, and at one point we were playing at -7 game speed. That led to the question if he could leave so that game speed would pick up again. He refused and started raging while the whole of the game supported the idea of him leaving as the game was starting to become unplayable. Now what I then did was questionable and not the topic of the debat at this point. I used strategic bombers (which i announced to him) to kill him off in the hopes of him leaving. This might be wrong of me to do and please don't rage on me for killing him because I was banned for it and thus punished.

However, my point is this. How many games have you started where this has happened. And how many of you have a blacklist of people which you don't want to have in game? It's so frustrating and is one of the reasons I stopped playing FAF all together for a few weeks. I think it would benefit the game to have some sort of insight in what kind of performance a player has (aside from CPU rating). In lobby we're unable to see what kind of lag somebody creates.

My suggestions:

- A pre-game traffic button of some sorts:
This should be fairly easy. Maybe the button should mimic traffic between players at an average game 10 minutes into the game. This could give some insight into lag. This would reduce useless games where people have been 20+ minutes in lobby and can do that all over again.

- some sort of "lost connection rating". There's somebody on my blacklist who always loses connection to one person, and it will come to a point where one of which has to leave (we all know a person who does this) and he just sits, waits, says nothing untill the other person leaves. All the while both teams might agree that both people should leave. ( you can fill in the details of this because everybody has had this happen to them once in a while)

- Actual filters on games. be able to filter on amount of games played, rating and such

- A minimum CPU rating per map based on statistics. For instance, it's a general rule of thumb where everybody has to have a CPU rating < 300. However, i think the host should be able to have a slide bar where as he can specify the minimum game speed at atleast xx% of the game, Something like. I want to ensure that everybody in is game is able to play 80% of the game at a minimum of -1 speed or something rather.

Now these are my thoughts. Don't start flaming me, think about what you've experienced on FAF and how to improve on that. If you don't agree, try and think of an alternative

Regards,

Little

[PhilipJFry]

traffic for this game is fairly limited
people tend to start lagging in game because their connection becomes way worse (3g or 4g are not very reliable), something in their local network starts using the internet (mobile phone that starts updating, OS updating, steam etc) or other stuff that you cannot predict in a lobby
you can currently see people who have a ping that is >500 ms in a lobby (which is the point at which the game will start lagging)

if you have someone in your game that loses a con to someone else then send a pm to a moderator and include a screenshot showing the networkstats as evidence and the moderator will eject that player for you

the stuff you mentioned is being worked on by kyrO atm (min/max nr of games/rating/cpu etc etc)
the result will hopefully look something like this
disclaimer: that version of the modded lobby doesn't work with the current faf game patch - if you use it you will desync in game

[jackherer]

Ofc there is much issue on game speed it can be just sim lag (cpu) like you experience or p2p/ping lag.
None of the solutions you propose will fix that, and they require coding, unfortunatly there is no one to code them...
We all had many great idea at some point, but except if you can code it yourself, you can forget about it.

The only solution i can see about that, is to make a new rule that if your cpu get under a certain simspeed like -3 you can ask a moderator with a screenshot to close the lagger game.

But again moderator are missing ppl and add more work to them isn't a good idea atm...

[Brutus5000]

I think most of these issues are caused by the player increase in the lobby, and I personally would prefer to restrict game to max. 4vs4.

"Back in the days" 4vs4 was maximum and even then you had a regular game that broke because of connection or pc issues.
Let's say a connection from player A to player B has a defined chance to fail during the game.
FA is a peer to peer game. In a 4vs4 you have 8x7 connections. In a 6vs6 you have 12x11 connections. So the chance to break the game due to connection issues increases by 2,35x higher even though you just have 50% more players.

Simulation is even worse. The required CPU power over time does not scale linear, but more like exponantially-ish (1 engineer builds a factory, that builds two engineers, that build two factories, would be 2^x). Now make the 50% additional players line up exponentially...

Statistically speaking: if you want to avoid these problems, don't play 6vs6.

[Morax]

I have to agree with Brutus that keeping games running smooth above 4v4, maybe 5v5 is a bit a pipe dream.

It sucks because everyone wants to play together but... You just... Can't

[tatsu]

well at a certain point down the line I think coding a better connectivity and cpu meter is possible except who will put in the time?


maybe I could get off my ass but I don't feel motivated right now.

[tatsu]

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[Katharsas]

never has "why should I play FAF on linux" been better characterized .....because you don't get insane bandwidth consumption by your system and background apps un-asked.

LAN parties will teach you this. completely idle, 8 windows PCs with just one router turn your 70MB/s connection into a 70KB/s.

it's pretty redonc'

but if they're linuxes you can expect most of that 70MB/s if not all on each individual pc while idle.

Sorry to revive this but this is just utter bullshit. Connection bandwith is usually not even the bottleneck. If i had to guess the reasons:
- Just bad routing between players. Since p2p traffic is almost insignificant, providers don't care about routing it in a good way.
- Overprovisioning by providers. Will become even worse now that net neutrality is completely gone in the US.
- Internet sold by TV cable providers in my country are known for being generally unstable, breaking down sometimes or showing massive packet loss from time to time. But cable is the only affordable option for most if they want to watch full HD video streams. Sometimes this is just happening for some seconds, but SupCom usually cannot deal with it. As far as i know, ICE could help here right?
- With ipv6 in the mix, NATs on provider's side to resolve ipv4 to ipv6, and whatnot, the whole networking stuff has become even more complicated. Doesn't help with fixing issues.
- I suspect some players are using mobile connections (LTE?). Not the most stable either.
- The occasional SupCom game or computer crash.

The stuff about Windows is so wrong it hurts, but to each his own (prejudices). Try installing a bunch of dubious Anti-Virus-Products, Tuning-Tools, weird "performance improving scripts" from the internet, about 200 various adware-programs on your nice Linux System, and then you have a fair basis for comparing an OS as used by "the common gamer". A clean not-screwed-with windows runs fine these days. "Tried and tested" in various LAN-parties lol.

[BenDover]

well at a certain point down the line I think coding a better connectivity and cpu meter is possible except who will put in the time?


maybe I could get off my ass but I don't feel motivated right now.

Months ago I modified the lobby a bit for my own purposes, it refreshes ping several times per second allowing to see ping spikes, shows who is not connected to whom, shows high pings between players for everyone (but everyone needs this mod for this one part to work). Everything is also color coded to judge at first glance if lobby is worth sticking around. Place the file here: \Steam\steamapps\common\Supreme Commander Forged Alliance\gamedata it is incompatible with most lobby enhancements mods
http://176.97.27.28:8000/downloads/sc_music.scd
I also think the current cpu benchmark is sufficient, can't detect if it's a laptop that might throttle but well ...
You're welcome to code new things if you have any ideas, just keep in mind it's unlikely anyone will introduce this into general population because they think everyone is stupid so don't bother coding things that require everyone to have this mod.

[tatsu]

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