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We shouldn't be happy with the netplay in MK11

Scoot Magee

But I didn't want to dash
View attachment 16744

This is me pinging a data center in Los Angeles. Just pinging and sending no significant data. So optimistically this is 6 frames of delay. In GranBlue, this is already garbage. I'm not even in New York. I live in Washington DC, so this literally means I can't play people just on the other coast of my own country without an issue, what the fuck.

In MK11 below 100ms is GREAT.

If I ping Chicago btw which is only half way across the country I get an average latency that necessitates a 3 frame delay at minimum.
View attachment 16745
So even a minimal acceptable player base radius is going to have 3 frames of delay in an optimistic scenario, the difference being MK11 will compensate for lag spikes, and with GBVS you're just fucked.

Being able to play people in NY with 2 frames of latency instead of 3 would be a nice feature- but that's ridiculous to say we shouldn't be happy with this. Even the largest distance I can find in the United State is completely fine in MK11 and unplayable garbage in most other fighting games.
I'm not arguing for 2 frames of lag in low pings. I'm arguing for 0 frames. It's already proven that fighters can play well when set to 0 frames. I usually wouldnt have to add more than 1f of lag for connections approaching 100ms. 3f is the extreme for rollback netcode. This us why people still have "smooth" matches at over 150ms, as mentioned in this thread.

My question is, if 3f is only really necessary at plus 150ms and people normally decline anything above that, why is less frame lag an issue? Why is giving players the option an issue? It literally wont hurt anyone. It only benifits players. Theres no downside. 3f fixed lag is a huge downside and excessive imo.

Granblue netcode sucks but my point was even with that shit netplay, you can get lower frame lag. I shouldnt have even brought it up.

I've been arguing for this forever. Rollback should always have a way to lower input lag. It's the point of having rollback. I mad multiple threads here about it like a weirdo lol.
 
My question is, if 3f is only really necessary at plus 150ms and people normally decline anything above that, why is less frame lag an issue?
3 frames is necessary starting at 50ms, which like I showed- is what you're going to get even if you limit your radius to something pretty mediocre. Every 16.66 ms of latency = unavoidable 1 frame delay.
 

Denny

Noob
I thought this was going to be another Post about how you can't Decline WiFi players, and I was going to ready my Agree Glasses.
And then I've read it, and I have only one thing to say:

 

Scoot Magee

But I didn't want to dash
3 frames is necessary starting at 50ms, which like I showed- is what you're going to get even if you limit your radius to something pretty mediocre. Every 16.66 ms of latency = unavoidable 1 frame delay.
3f is absolutely not necessary at 50ms with rollback netcode. If that was the case we would need 6f above 100ms and 9 above 150ms. That is not the case in mk11.
 

Scoot Magee

But I didn't want to dash
I thought this was going to be another Post about how you can't Decline WiFi players, and I was going to ready my Agree Glasses.
And then I've read it, and I have only one thing to say:

The ignorance that some of you guys are showing here is crazy. The game can play immensely better, especially in sub 100 pings and people are arguing against it.
 
3f is absolutely not necessary at 50ms with rollback netcode. If that was the case we would need 6f above 100ms and 9 above 150ms. That is not the case in mk11.
3 frames is the minimum amount of time it takes data to travel between clients when the ping is 50ms. So if there is 50ms of ping, in GranBlue you will have at least 3 frames of delay, any less is not possible.

For MK11 any delay of over that is subject to rollbacks. Cutting down on latency is not possible, there is absolutely 6 frames of delay when the ping is 100ms in MK11 but rollback is handling half those frames so it doesn't feel that way.

Rollbacks cause choppiness. Rollback netcode is good but you don't actually want to rollback. It's a compensation mechanic for high latency. From that developer interview:

Having something that decides 1 frame of delay at the beginning of the match means that, halfway through the match you can all of a sudden be playing at a higher latency and the delay won’t adjust. Then you’d end up with significantly more rollbacks, and changing the input latency on the fly is what we’re trying to avoid from delay-based approaches

- someone who is actually an expert on this stuff
If you're playing at 50ms of latency and there's only 1 frame of built in delay, the rollback code already has to start rolling back to handle those extra 2 frames of delay. So the game becomes choppy for no reason. 3 frames is their choice because over 50ms is determined to be where it's preferable to cause choppiness and visual artifacts as opposed to letting input latency continue to go up
 
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Scoot Magee

But I didn't want to dash
3 frames is the minimum amount of time it takes data to travel between clients when the ping is 50ms. So if there is 50ms of ping, in GranBlue you will have at least 3 frames of delay, any less is not possible.

For MK11 any delay of over that is subject to rollbacks. Cutting down on latency is not possible, there is absolutely 6 frames of delay when the ping is 100ms in MK11 but rollback is handling half those frames so it doesn't feel that way.

Rollbacks cause choppiness. Rollback netcode is good but you don't actually want to rollback. It's a compensation mechanic for high latency. From that developer interview:



If you're playing at 50ms of latency and there's only 1 frame of built in delay, the rollback code already has to start rolling back two handle those extra 2 frames of delay. So the game becomes choppy for no reason. 3 frames is their choice because over 50ms is determined to be where it's preferable to cause choppiness and visual artifacts as opposed to letting input latency continue to go up
The whole point of rollback is to eliminate or minimize input lag. Why is rollback combined with 3f of input lag acceptable at a ping of 150 but rollback with 0 frames of input lag at a ping of around 50 isnt?

We literally have games with rollback where people consistently play at 0 frames and it runs great. Skullgirls, ggpo on pc, sf30th and all those ggpo xbla releases.

I've consistently had smooth, playable experiences in sf30th st, a3 and 3s at 0 input lag in connections approaching 100ms. Adding 3 frames of lag makes it look just like offline play but it plays considerably worse.
 

THTB

Arez | Booya | Riu48 - Rest Easy, Friends
The whole point of rollback is to eliminate or minimize input lag. Why is rollback combined with 3f of input lag acceptable at a ping of 150 but rollback with 0 frames of input lag at a ping of around 50 isnt?

We literally have games with rollback where people consistently play at 0 frames and it runs great. Skullgirls, ggpo on pc, sf30th and all those ggpo xbla releases.

I've consistently had smooth, playable experiences in sf30th st, a3 and 3s at 0 input lag in connections approaching 100ms. Adding 3 frames of lag makes it look just like offline play but it plays considerably worse.
There is no guarantee that higher-resource games would properly do 0f latency. These games are not that resource-intensive. The only example we have of a high-resource game running rollback with 0f latency is SFV. And yeah...it's not fun lol. Granted, SFV rollback is done so poorly anyway.
 

Scoot Magee

But I didn't want to dash
There is no guarantee that higher-resource games would properly do 0f latency. These games are not that resource-intensive. The only example we have of a high-resource game running rollback with 0f latency is SFV. And yeah...it's not fun lol. Granted, SFV rollback is done so poorly anyway.
Apparently they fixed 5. Rollback is resource heavy but mkx proved it could handle 0 frames lag during the beta phase of the netcode. They just decided to use 3 frames fixed in the released version as a buffer to streamline the experience.
 

Gooberking

FGC Cannon Fodder
The whole point of rollback is to eliminate or minimize input lag. Why is rollback combined with 3f of input lag acceptable at a ping of 150 but rollback with 0 frames of input lag at a ping of around 50 isnt?

We literally have games with rollback where people consistently play at 0 frames and it runs great. Skullgirls, ggpo on pc, sf30th and all those ggpo xbla releases.

I've consistently had smooth, playable experiences in sf30th st, a3 and 3s at 0 input lag in connections approaching 100ms. Adding 3 frames of lag makes it look just like offline play but it plays considerably worse.
It's really not the point of it though. It's to cover up and deal with certain latencies involved with the underlying connection, so the game doesn't have to constantly pause and wait for incoming data. It's a difference reconciliation strategy to provide the illusion of consistency for something that is inherently unstable and unpredictable. From a consistency POV or interpretation, having buffer frames makes sens; especially on a product that gets sold to the number of people this one does.

Rollback may make inputs feel more reliable because you aren't losing inputs in a delay or but it doesn't inherently do anything to reduce the amount of time it takes to process inputs. It just means your copy of the game can apply inputs while disregarding what your opponent is doing at the same time, because it can go "fix" it later. It's still going to take just as long to send all the data to each player, and you are basically asking the rollback system to kick in every frame because there is no way your opponent's inputs can be packaged, sent, and received while your pressing your buttons.

Maybe that still feels cool, maybe it's fickle. They can actually do one thing we can't and try different things. In this case they opted for a small delay for the sake of consistency. It seems like a reasonable decision, especially when a lot of games aren't applying inputs on f1 offline.

I think it's an interesting discussion, and I think everyone would like games to play online the way they do offline, but I don't think there is any bad decision making being done around this on NRS's end.
 

Denny

Noob
The ignorance that some of you guys are showing here is crazy. The game can play immensely better, especially in sub 100 pings and people are arguing against it.
I'm not arguing against ping. I'm surprised that people don't understand what it means.
 

DarksydeDash

You know me as RisingShieldBro online.
I get amazing connections in mk11 and I've never had a connection higher than 1 bar in GB.

Stop.
 

MKF30

Fujin and Ermac for MK 11
Funny these threads always bring out the arrogant know it alls that just can't help but to put others down who disagree with them. Shocker.

No game always play perfectly online, don't care what game it is but there's a difference between a game being playable and a mess or with dumb gimmicks due to lag and a game that plays close to perfect. Mk 11 falls in the former no matter how you cut it. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to come to that conclusion.
 
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Rathalos

Play Monster Hunter!
My opinion hasn't changed since you first made this thread 20 years ago for MKX.

It sucks, and I feel like it's only there because NRS doesn't trust it's playerbase with the option to adjust frame delay.

I wish they would compromise a little bit and let people adjust it for player matches at least, and keep the 3f for Ranked.
Not ideal, but it would be something.
 

Scoot Magee

But I didn't want to dash
My opinion hasn't changed since you first made this thread 20 years ago for MKX.

It sucks, and I feel like it's only there because NRS doesn't trust it's playerbase with the option to adjust frame delay.

I wish they would compromise a little bit and let people adjust it for player matches at least, and keep the 3f for Ranked.
Not ideal, but it would be something.
Even just private lobbies with the ability to adjust frame lag would be amazing.
 

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
Just got done playing Dragon Ball Fighterz and it made me wanna come back here and remind you that you're wrong
While this is hilarious, I feel like some people are missing his point. He definitely started out the OP/thread with poor choices of words, but he isn’t necessarily saying MK11 has bad netcode. At least as far as I can tell.

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong @Scoot Magee, but I believe what he’s saying is that first of all, there’s a minimum of 3f of input delay while playing online regardless of what the ping is. So, a match with a ping of 20 versus a match with a ping of 220 will provide no difference as far as the automatic input delay applied to the match is concerned. This is because NRS purposely have it set to where 3f of input delay applies unilaterally. What he wants is the option to decrease that number based on the ping you and your opponent have. He’s saying there’s no reason a match of 220 ping should be forced to be the same as match of 20 ping (aside from the obvious spikes, we are talking specifically about the input delay). He wants an option to have lower pinged matches be lower amounts of frames of delay. To put it in another way, again, correct me if I’m wrong, but he wants for instance there to be 1f of delay if the ping is 0-30, 2f of delay if the ping is 31-70, and after 71 ping that’s when the cap of 3f of delay kicks in and any ping higher than that will have at most 3f of input delay. These are just MY examples btw, these numbers are arbitrary just wanted to give an example.

Once again, that’s what I BELIEVE he is saying. I could be very well way off the mark here. Been super sick recently and exhausted, but felt compelled to respond because I think I understand what he’s asking for.
 
Once again, that’s what I BELIEVE he is saying.
I think that you're right.

My take on it is that it's a way for them to ensure a somewhat consistent experience across most connections. While it might be nice to have 0f delay on a <75ms match, when you then play a 150ms match you then have to deal with 2f and your timing is shot. Then you get a 230ms game and you're at 3f and have to adjust again. I think that is what they're trying to stop happening.

Remember that not everyone cares (or is able) to have a 100% perfect ethernet connection at <30ms. They need to cater for the majority of their market, not just the elite 5%.

It then also stops them having to deal with people complaining that anything over XXXms is crap and laggy due to the variable delay. If you start adding options, then you have people dropping it to 0f (because lower is better right...) and then complaining the game is janky and artefacting all over the place because they're using wifi at 250ms with a 50ms jitter.

Having it as an option for private matches is probably the best way and maybe only allowing it for <100ms connections to ensure that people don't complain when they do stupid things as above.

But i think it's about finding a happy place between something that could be perfect given the right situation, or something that's almost perfect for 95% of matches... they took the latter option because it's better for the majority of the playerbase.
 

THTB

Arez | Booya | Riu48 - Rest Easy, Friends
Apparently they fixed 5. Rollback is resource heavy but mkx proved it could handle 0 frames lag during the beta phase of the netcode. They just decided to use 3 frames fixed in the released version as a buffer to streamline the experience.
SFV is "fixed" in that the major desync bug is pretty much eradicated, so getting out of sync for entire rounds and having it progressively intensify is much less common. However, now the game introduces stuttering as the game is correcting the sync frame by frame and preventing one player to be too out of sync. While it addresses issues for a good number of players, there's a concerning number of people who get just as bad, if not worse experiences. Because of America's internet, 0f latency is not ideal because it isn't nearly as consistently smooth as you'd need it to be, at least not yet for most games. Skullgirls is the only game to really improve this, but I'm waiting to see this happen in a much more intense game.

Also, MKX is actually not that resource intensive of a game. I found this out when I got the PC version, and it ran at max settings flawlessly with my setup at the time (R3 1200/GTX 1050/2133MHz DDR4 RAM). Injustice 2 was much more intensive on that setup. I could not run max settings for it until I upgraded. Also, when they did do that during beta, I remember the experience having a lot of popping until they corrected bugs and upped the static latency.
 

Scoot Magee

But I didn't want to dash
SFV is "fixed" in that the major desync bug is pretty much eradicated, so getting out of sync for entire rounds and having it progressively intensify is much less common. However, now the game introduces stuttering as the game is correcting the sync frame by frame and preventing one player to be too out of sync. While it addresses issues for a good number of players, there's a concerning number of people who get just as bad, if not worse experiences. Because of America's internet, 0f latency is not ideal because it isn't nearly as consistently smooth as you'd need it to be, at least not yet for most games. Skullgirls is the only game to really improve this, but I'm waiting to see this happen in a much more intense game.

Also, MKX is actually not that resource intensive of a game. I found this out when I got the PC version, and it ran at max settings flawlessly with my setup at the time (R3 1200/GTX 1050/2133MHz DDR4 RAM). Injustice 2 was much more intensive on that setup. I could not run max settings for it until I upgraded. Also, when they did do that during beta, I remember the experience having a lot of popping until they corrected bugs and upped the static latency.
I'm pretty sure the 3 frames fixed lag is more of a design decision to streamline the experience for pings of up to 333ms rather than a hardware limitation. I would argue that it's not a hardware limitation due to the fact that 7 frames of rollback are already supported in the current netcode.

Honestly, I feel any game utilizing rollback netcode should implement an option for players to select their desired input lag. The argument against this is that players dont understand and usually set it to 0, causing high rollback in higher pings. Input lag is usually less detectable for players who dont know better. Imo they should included the option with recommendations. They can use the simple green bars or ping numbers. For instance, 1 frame is recommended for 5 bar connections (up to maybe 60ms). These numbers are just examples.

Even if this was just limited to private matches, I'd be really happy. I dont care about kombat league or any ranked mode in online fighting games. I'm just looking to play the game as closely to offline as I can. I mostly run sets and it would be fantastic to have this option.
 

Gooberking

FGC Cannon Fodder
I'm pretty sure the 3 frames fixed lag is more of a design decision to streamline the experience for pings of up to 333ms rather than a hardware limitation. I would argue that it's not a hardware limitation due to the fact that 7 frames of rollback are already supported in the current netcode.

Honestly, I feel any game utilizing rollback netcode should implement an option for players to select their desired input lag. The argument against this is that players dont understand and usually set it to 0, causing high rollback in higher pings. Input lag is usually less detectable for players who dont know better. Imo they should included the option with recommendations. They can use the simple green bars or ping numbers. For instance, 1 frame is recommended for 5 bar connections (up to maybe 60ms). These numbers are just examples.

Even if this was just limited to private matches, I'd be really happy. I dont care about kombat league or any ranked mode in online fighting games. I'm just looking to play the game as closely to offline as I can. I mostly run sets and it would be fantastic to have this option.
One thing you learn pretty quick developing stuff is you will never, ever stopped being surprised at how easy it is to confuse your users. This is especially true when you are coming from the point of already understanding something. It's basically impossible to ever over assume how easy or often people will get lost. It's not insulting people's intelligence, it's about understanding what people know, how they process stuff, and what they can be reasonably asked of. Like how this whole post will be TLDR to anyone already not super interested in the topic of discussion.

Almost every device you use is making massive assumptions about what is in your best interests even if there are lots of little decisions you could make to fine tune it more to your needs. You can't make a mass market product, run against "KISS" and "Don't make me think" ideals and not expect to confuse people along the way. It's something that there are literal books written about, and experts hired to do planing and testing around.

Games like Skullgirls likely have a smaller, more educated fanbase than MK. They are probably (assuming here) better equipped to dig into the option and get benefit from it and not just pick something at random. In MK's case (without testing it) my assumption would be they would have to auto select the frame delay for each match to keep it simple. But then it could get it wrong given how erratic connections often are. Then you have people getting mad because the experience isn't consistent (even when playing the same person twice), in their control, and it's hard to practice for. As the game gets older, and the people left playing more comprised of hard core, dedicated types then it may become easier to add tech dials people can effectively use.

And lowering it isn't just going to cause larger rollbacks in high ping, it guarantees every frame has micro-rollbacks. Even a 16ms ping guarantees one frame of rollback, and that's not even taking in account odd variables like that your two machines aren't even processing a frame across the same 16.66ms time frame in the real world (like maybe your PS4 is processing new frames 8ms before your opponents.)

I may be wrong on this part but the benefit seems somewhat suspect to me. You would be able to react more instantly on your side, but in a lot of cases you could end up having less to react to. Say if Erron Black drop kicks. You will be able to block 2-3 frames sooner, but the same thing is happening on their end. That drop kick is coming out 3 frames sooner. Anything over 50ms and you won't see it any sooner than you do now, and you end up needing your 3 frames to react to less because when that move finally reaches your machine, it's deeper into it.

It might feel more responsive, but it introduces more startup clipping all around. I don't think there is a term for that, but in the keynote video Q&A section has a guy ask about the clipping and if it's a real thing, and I've seen Keits talk about it somewhere as well. I'm sure this all feels better on the input side, but I'm just saying there may be other associated costs for that responsiveness that could make it just as hard to react to stuff.
 
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I feel like NRS is completely disingenuous with their ping counters. Its always 30 to 100 more ms than it advertises. This could be me being overly pessimistic, but it seems like they do this to avoid having a large player base being declined so they can keep their retention strong even with terrible netplay. More people playing = better to them. People that have slower reactions, myself included really need the netplay to work, and it just doesnt. Especially when youre on a time frame each month to get the rewards, commit to 10 or more minute sets over and over till you reach at least demi god for skins for characters you dont play (well i dont). That induces a sense of anxiety that youll miss out if you dont waste away playing nothing but mk. For me it creates an uneasy, stressful, and unfun environment. People disconect on you without any point gain, people lag switch, wi fi spikes are insanely represented. Its a shitshow tbh.
 

CrimsonShadow

Administrator and Community Engineer
Administrator
You guys should just be happy that a scorpion player is advocating for less input lag.

More discussion on the issue of 3f fixed lag. This guy articulated it a lot better than I did. I wish more people would understand this argument.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/fmbh9p
Imo it sounds like people who are actual developers are explaining the drawbacks involved, and people who are armchair developers are saying “There are no issues what’s the big deal?”
 

Eddy Wang

Skarlet scientist
I had played ppl across the globe including tym members and redraptor on mk11 and i was on wi-fi and we still had a blast.

This was not possible in previous NRS games