Lunaro unfair advantages due to game engine (Serious thread, DE feedback welcome)

[Tzirael]

Before positing in this thread, read this post or at least understand that I am not moaning about better gaming rig/better internet = advantage, this thread is about game logic and game engine, not about having reresh rate advantage in competitive games.

TL;DR :  Having over 60 in-game fps in Lunaro makes you faster, even on a 60hz monitor, appears to be 10/10 coding.  

This is a serious thread about unfair advantages Lunaro offers to a subset of players, before I explain them let me start by saying that I am a "veteran" Lunaro player having played over 800 games and I am a member of a Lunaro focused clan which houses most of the best Lunaro players in the game. I would also like to say I feel that Lunaro is a great addition to Warframe and it is what keeps me coming back to it while waiting for the War Within. 

Many newer players find Lunaro incredibly hard to get into because of the huge skill gap currently present and terrible p2p hosting. Many good players are called awful names and accused of hacking, the truth is being a good Lunaro players requires very fast reaction speed and, knowledge and skill of the many techniques that have been developed by veteran players (various dribbling techniques, unstable techniques, passing setups , checking and defending and so on). But there is an unfair advantage which appears to be rooted in the game code itself. 

The basis of the theory is a simple [Higher FPS = Faster game logic]

1) The Discovery

Player A is a veteran Lunaro player like myself and a friend of mine, while he was always a little bit ahead of me in terms of skill we were always pretty close match. One day Player A upgraded to a more powerful gaming machine with which he could achieve fps in the range of 140, suddenly the said player becomes an untouchable Lunaro god. He has always been incredibly skilled but suddenly he jumped ahead of everyone and can toy around with veteran players almost as if they it was their first Lunaro game. He recovers from staggers quicker, moves the ball faster and generally everything seems a lot faster when he is involved.

Before anyone says "Okay, so Player A also got himself a 144hz monitor therefore, he benefits from framerate above 60" let me say this isn't the case, his monitor is 60hz. So how can a framerate above 60 possibly benefit a player who's monitor only displays 60fps? 

 

2) The Investigation 

Player B , who is another friend of mine, decided to set his framerate to unlimited on a 72hz monitor, game output was showing over 100 fps, suddenly this player finds himself performing actions faster and with more accuracy. While previously his autopass techniques have often missed now he could do them more reliably, he experienced a similar boost not as great as Player A but a significant boost nevertheless. Player B challenged Player A to a 1v1 match under a condition that he limits his in-game fps to 60, this resulted in Player A seemingly becoming weaker than his usual self post his PC upgrade. The connection between in-game FPS (not actual displayed fps) and game performance is established. 

 

3) My Lunaro story and personal experience with FPS

I have always been running Warframe at unlimited FPS averaging about 180-280 fps in Lunaro. I became one of the best players around, to many people's surprise because I did not use unstable shots, instead I relied on simple movement and dunk shots, a "Berserker" playstyle. Over the course of the past months both Player A and B tried teaching me various unstable shots, but seemingly I was absolutely hopeless at them and could not hit the ball most of the time. Since the update that introduced incredible checking buffs my playstyle was destroyed, I could no longer recover from being check spammed and would lose the ball most of the time instead of scoring like in the past, now the only way to be one of the top players was to learn an advanced dribbling technique and start learning unstable shots (which btw many people may not realise this but it actually makes the game even worse for new players, even though your intentions were the opposite, DE).

I have managed to learn an advanced dribbling technique which has put me back in the major league but I still couldn't do even the most basic unstable technique, my frame would seemingly just go through the ball or over it, that was until I decided to cap my FPS at 144 and suddenly I was performing techniques I could never do before. Before the cap my FPS was a lot higher than Player A's and B's therefore the game logic was much faster and possibly too fast for me to perform the techniques correctly. One thing I noticed is that while I gained the ability to perform unstable techniques and my checking has become more consistent (previously my checks would often have no effect even if they 100% connected) I have become a lot slower at dribbling and easier to intercept. 

 

4) Conclusion

• Get a PC capable of running the game at 144 fps, no need for 144hz monitor. 
• Turn off v-sync and unlock your framerate
• ???
• PROFIT

Seriously though, to benefit from this you do have to be a skilled player with knowledge and experience of advanced techniques, but that doesn't make an unfair advantage okay does it? 

Game speed tied to fps, a phenomenon I recall from Bethesda games where forcing over 60 fps (those games are capped at max 60fps) can make the game so fast it is unplayable and breaks the physics, it appears either Warframe or just Conclave/Lunaro at some level exhibits a similar behaviour, which in an online game almost seems like a speedhack.

Bad coding? Just my imagination? There is 100% something going on behind the scenes that gives players advantage due to their hardware, is it significant enough to warrant a thread? Dunno, but maybe it's something worth looking into. 

 

 

 

Edited September 28, 2016 by Tzirael
Removed the humorous "clickbait title"

[Fomiru]

This is an engine problem in general, where the games physics engine is tied to its FPS, because the physics are calculated with every frame, and the more frames there are, the weirder the physics act as calculations happening faster and slower causes extreme variation.

It does need looked at though yes, especially if they are going to have these Conclave modes that are supposed to be competitive.

[Nesodos]

did you know?

higher ping gives you an advantage too!

you can get the ball on your screen before it updates on your enemies end

 

save 2 win is a problem too

 

srsly its the same with any other game engine

[chaotea]

You get this an almost all games though. Get a high resolution monitor and you get an advantage in a shooter.

 

I can see the issue, and agree something should be done, but i think its incorrect to refer to it as P2W.

[Pythadragon]

Better hardware is not pay to win. Pay to win would be "I paid DE $20 so that my frame gained a 0.2 mobility advantage over my opponents".

A gradient of hardware is inherent in any pc gaming community. It should be no surprise that top players play on better hardware than the average player. 

Before anyone says "Okay, so Player A also got himself a 144hz monitor therefore, he benefits from framerate above 60" let me say this isn't the case, his monitor is 60hz. So how can a framerate above 60 possibly benefit a player who's monitor only displays 60fps? 

Warframe has a specific quirk where you gain increased responsiveness at twice the refresh rate of the monitor. Due to a 1 frame camera delay. If you are rendering the game at 2x monitor refresh rate, the the 1 frame camera delay disappears. Therefore a player running at 120fps consistently on a 60hz monitor has nearly the same input lag advantage as a player running 144fps on a 144hz monitor, but without the motion fluidity advantage given by the higher refresh rate monitor.

 

Edited September 28, 2016 by Pythadragon

[Tzirael]

I admit my title is clickbait, it's not really P2W, but it is an unfair advantage due to the way the game engine is coded, and in a competitive game mode that shouldn't be the case. And I am well aware having higher resolution or refresh rate will always give you an advantage, but as my post explains it has nothing to do with either of those. 

As for the ping, well say hello to P2P hosting, servers are desperately needed, but again the issue presented in this thread has nothing to do with ping..

Edited September 28, 2016 by Tzirael

[beppe93]

yo dude why don't just playing it? without bother yourself? i have a laptop, when there are 4° outside i'll go at 35 FPS in summer i can get to 10, do i ever yelled in the forum that is sad that people with a better pc beat me cause i can't see S#&$ when there are 2 warframe in my screen? just play, enjoy what you are doing and relax, DEVs are focussing on making this game better and better, there are more problem than a 20 FPS advantage in a non competitive gamemode done just for having fun.

[Tzirael]

5 minutes ago, beppe93 said:

yo dude why don't just playing it? without bother yourself? i have a laptop, when there are 4° outside i'll go at 35 FPS in summer i can get to 10, do i ever yelled in the forum that is sad that people with a better pc beat me cause i can't see S#&$ when there are 2 warframe in my screen? just play, enjoy what you are doing and relax, DEVs are focussing on making this game better and better, there are more problem than a 20 FPS advantage in a non competitive gamemode done just for having fun.

Chill dude, that's just like, your opinion, man. I am not asking DE to drop everything they are doing and "fix" this, all I am doing is bringing awareness to an issue, whether it is ever addressed does not concern me.

EDIT: Also as the name of this section of the forum suggests it is for Conclave feedback, which I believe this sorta counts.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Tzirael
reasons

[Master-Nachash]

18 minutes ago, Tzirael said:

TL;DR :  Having over 60 in-game fps in Lunaro makes you faster, even on a 60hz monitor, appears to be 10/10 coding.  

 

This is a serious thread about unfair advantages Lunaro offers to a subset of players, before I explain them let me start by saying that I am a "veteran" Lunaro player having played over 800 games and I am a member of a Lunaro focused clan which houses most of the best Lunaro players in the game. I would also like to say I feel that Lunaro is a great addition to Warframe and it is what keeps me coming back to it while waiting for the War Within. 

Many newer players find Lunaro incredibly hard to get into because of the huge skill gap currently present and terrible p2p hosting. Many good players are called awful names and accused of hacking, the truth is being a good Lunaro players requires very fast reaction speed and, knowledge and skill of the many techniques that have been developed by veteran players (various dribbling techniques, unstable techniques, passing setups , checking and defending and so on). But there is an unfair advantage which appears to be rooted in the game code itself. 

The basis of the theory is a simple [Higher FPS = Faster game logic]

1) The Discovery

Player A is a veteran Lunaro player like myself and a friend of mine, while he was always a little bit ahead of me in terms of skill we were always pretty close match. One day Player A upgraded to a more powerful gaming machine with which he could achieve fps in the range of 140, suddenly the said player becomes an untouchable Lunaro god. He has always been incredibly skilled but suddenly he jumped ahead of everyone and can toy around with veteran players almost as if they it was their first Lunaro game. He recovers from staggers quicker, moves the ball faster and generally everything seems a lot faster when he is involved.

Before anyone says "Okay, so Player A also got himself a 144hz monitor therefore, he benefits from framerate above 60" let me say this isn't the case, his monitor is 60hz. So how can a framerate above 60 possibly benefit a player who's monitor only displays 60fps? 

 

2) The Investigation 

Player B , who is another friend of mine, decided to set his framerate to unlimited on a 72hz monitor, game output was showing over 100 fps, suddenly this player finds himself performing actions faster and with more accuracy. While previously his autopass techniques have often missed now he could do them more reliably, he experienced a similar boost not as great as Player A but a significant boost nevertheless. Player B challenged Player A to a 1v1 match under a condition that he limits his in-game fps to 60, this resulted in Player A seemingly becoming weaker than his usual self post his PC upgrade. The connection between in-game FPS (not actual displayed fps) and game performance is established. 

 

3) My Lunaro story and personal experience with FPS

I have always been running Warframe at unlimited FPS averaging about 180-280 fps in Lunaro. I became one of the best players around, to many people's surprise because I did not use unstable shots, instead I relied on simple movement and dunk shots, a "Berserker" playstyle. Over the course of the past months both Player A and B tried teaching me various unstable shots, but seemingly I was absolutely hopeless at them and could not hit the ball most of the time. Since the update that introduced incredible checking buffs my playstyle was destroyed, I could no longer recover from being check spammed and would lose the ball most of the time instead of scoring like in the past, now the only way to be one of the top players was to learn an advanced dribbling technique and start learning unstable shots (which btw many people may not realise this but it actually makes the game even worse for new players, even though your intentions were the opposite, DE).

I have managed to learn an advanced dribbling technique which has put me back in the major league but I still couldn't do even the most basic unstable technique, my frame would seemingly just go through the ball or over it, that was until I decided to cap my FPS at 144 and suddenly I was performing techniques I could never do before. Before the cap my FPS was a lot higher than Player A's and B's therefore the game logic was much faster and possibly too fast for me to perform the techniques correctly. One thing I noticed is that while I gained the ability to perform unstable techniques and my checking has become more consistent (previously my checks would often have no effect even if they 100% connected) I have become a lot slower at dribbling and easier to intercept. 

 

4) Conclusion

• Get a PC capable of running the game at 144 fps, no need for 144hz monitor. (Here is the PAY2WIN)
• Turn off v-sync and unlock your framerate
• ???
• PROFIT

Seriously though, to benefit from this you do have to be a skilled player with knowledge and experience of advanced techniques, but that doesn't make an unfair advantage okay does it? 

Game speed tied to fps, a phenomenon I recall from Bethesda games where forcing over 60 fps (those games are capped at max 60fps) can make the game so fast it is unplayable and breaks the physics, it appears either Warframe or just Conclave/Lunaro at some level exhibits a similar behaviour, which in an online game almost seems like a speedhack.

Bad coding? Just my imagination? There is 100% something going on behind the scenes that gives players advantage due to their hardware, is it significant enough to warrant a thread? Dunno, but maybe it's something worth looking into. 

 

 

 

Ayyyyyyyyyyyyy Tzirael mate, me again.

I realised this just this week. There is a direct connection between FPS + performance in conclave.

I do REALLY well when I have 60fps or above, and when my fps decreases, so does my performance.

I've noticed that my fps is lowest in matches that are full as well.

It's highly frustrating.

My fps is roughly 60fps no matter the tileset or mission across the board in PVE. I'd really like it if it was the same in PVP.

[Deshiel]

This might explain why there are certain Lunaro players that are always there first...

Always geting the ball first, always reaching it first (even tho you see only yourself in the grabing distance)

 

[Tzirael]

1 minute ago, Deshiel said:

This might explain why there are certain Lunaro players that are always there first...

Always geting the ball first, always reaching it first (even tho you see only yourself in the grabing distance)

 

In part yes, a big problem with this is also host power, the host almost always grabs the ball much faster even if you get to it before the host player. Also various dribbling techniques seemingly improve your chances of snatching the ball first. And then there is also the game logic which would amplify both the host power and the dribbling favouritism if running at high fps. But a skilled player can easily defeat a less skilled host unless the said host gives them terrible ping, in which case gg.  

[Praxxor]

Oh, then there's CSGO, you know, one of the most popular competitive games worldwide? You get a big advantage if your PC can run it with ridiculous FPS as well, mainly because your reaction time is better, but the point is that this is a thing in every single game and you can't do anything about it. Unless you lock the FPS, which would cause a riot for sure.

[Tzirael]

1 minute ago, Praxxor said:

Oh, then there's CSGO, you know, one of the most popular competitive games worldwide? You get a big advantage if your PC can run it with ridiculous FPS as well, mainly because your reaction time is better, but the point is that this is a thing in every single game and you can't do anything about it. Unless you lock the FPS, which would cause a riot for sure.

Again as I explained now multiple times and in the OP, this is not about reaction time. With a 60hz monitor you can only ever see 60 fps displayed, no matter what the in-game fps counter tells you. The problem is the game logic speeds up with framerate resulting in you just simply being faster than someone who has capped 60fps.

[Gelkor]

Hasn't this always been a thing with competitive gaming? If you have a better gaming rig and a better internet connection you have an advantage? And you know clickbait titles are against the rules, right?

[Buzz_B]

1 minute ago, Gelkor said:

Hasn't this always been a thing with competitive gaming? If you have a better gaming rig and a better internet connection you have an advantage? And you know clickbait titles are against the rules, right?

He isn't saying a higher FPS shouldn't give you an advantage, it always will. But when the frames are linked to the games dynamics selecting 144 over 60 fps regardless of your "rig" will change actions in the game.

eg. for a player who selects 144 fps (doesn't have to own a 144hz monitor)  the ball will drop a meter off the ground at the start of the game, every time. For a 60 fps player it will be completely random.

yw

[Vohim]

so this is why people seem to run faster than me at base speeds whilst i have rush and armored agility :L

 

guess i ll give this a try after im done with college 

[Praxxor]

33 minutes ago, Tzirael said:

Again as I explained now multiple times and in the OP, this is not about reaction time. With a 60hz monitor you can only ever see 60 fps displayed, no matter what the in-game fps counter tells you. The problem is the game logic speeds up with framerate resulting in you just simply being faster than someone who has capped 60fps.

The point was that Warframe isn't the only game where FPS gives you an advantage, in this case only the type of advantage differs.

And there's no such thing as "game logic", just consider that The Evolution Engine was never meant to be for PVP, DE even refused to implement such gamemodes initially, the engine works pretty well for PVE but, as you said, it becomes clunky with lower framerates. In order to fix that they'd have to do some pretty serious work on the engine and maybe even on the netcode, is it really worth it? Changing stuff in an engine can break a lot of things. And we don't want more broken things, especially because of the engine.

[Anonfox12345]

If this applies to other conclave modes, would it affect how well certain tracking abilities track and/or the softlock on different abilities? Sounds like it would, and it could explain how I've been on games where shruikens and psychic bolts track better than bombard rockets from the enemy while mine fly in lazy, drunken arcs before wasting themselves on walls and doors and stuff. 

[-Ryuurei-]

Hi there Tzi, I have a pretty good idea of who this player A is =P

This makes a lot of sense though, I remember trying out warframe on my potato pc a long time ago and how everything was rather slow to accomodate my terrible fps. And this also explains why some people always seem to move faster, no matter what you do. Said player A also kept telling me to deselect vsync to improve my fps, now I know why. Too bad my pc is outdated to the point I can only mamage around 60 fps either way (at max settings, gotta have stuff look nice).

Sad part is, the only real fix I can see here would be limiting conclave to 60 fps, which is still realisticly achievable for the large majority without hampering visual fluidity too noticeably.

[Phasedragon]

Curiously, there's even more problems that happen when you run it above 200 fps. Half the times you try to do a check in the air, it does nothing at all. I've had to limit my fps to 150 because of this (oh I know, boohoo). Frame rate of the host of the game also significantly affects how high the hall pops up at the start and after each goal. I experimented with  locking to several different options. At 120+fps, it actually doesn't move at all. At 90, it goes about 5 meters. At 60, it goes 10. At 30, it goes the highest, almost touching the ceiling. However at 15 it only goes about 10 meters again.

I've been aware of these issues for awhile, but I've never heard of the ones you're talking about. They seem to be significantly worse as well, due to their implications.

Edited September 28, 2016 by Phasedragon

[TaylorsContraction]

Great insight. I noticed that some players would recover from rolls faster than me. I tested it with a player and indeed it was true. We assumed this was due to latency about which nothing could be done. But as you point out this is due to fps. Not sure what could be done about this.

[clemza]

Thats why i had an hard time in conclave and lunaro with my 25 -30 fps :l

Now i have a new gpu i can get about 500fps, but i havnt tried any conclave yet, ill see :O

[Caorun]

How could i have missed this topic for so long god dimmwit !

Tzirael bro.....your sounding like a butthurt guy in the ears of the general public, while in fact your the only brave guy out of the old school players who are literaly crying in silence because of this S#&$, i love you son, i came to share the burden.

I say it in advance !!! for all of you who will not acknowledge this problem as a legit excuse that i will be able to use against Player A next time i meet him!! i declare war!

this is not a shared issue with all fps games, In lunaro depending of your fps your (virtual)physical actions are different. as one of the exemples i can tell you is that with 72fps and lower i can jump on the ball to make a 'triple' jump while over 72 i cant.

i am speaking about all of this mess as an overall 'fps' problem while in fact it involves not only fps but also other factors that are a total mystery to me, even to tell you specificaly witch actions does it affect i wouldn't know what to tell you. It even happens that 2 players with same fps get different attributes from this fps advantage, wierd. So yeah it looks like there is slight differences from player to player....

We still manage to get our fun, this problem is even maybe a part of it, and make it less boring lol but well just came to share a bit.

Peace

 

[Lawmonark]

Wait, is this for real?

 

no wonder why it seems people are going 2x faster than me.

[Nesodos]

Big necro dude