if it was your processor or something like that, offline would behave similar to online. what you are experiencing is latency and packet loss...skuzzy explains it much better than i could.
in very simplistic terms, lets say you have an "average" ping rate of 50ms to the lwma...you get into a dogfight with a guy who also has an "average" ping rate of 50ms...there is a 100ms separation between you which means the events your system registers will be slightly different than what the other persons system registers by that many milliseconds. in a perfect world both of your systems would register the data between you would be synchronously at the server, but we don't have a perfect world, especially the u.s. retardnet infrastucture (overburdened and old). packet loss (data that is dropped enroute to the server) for whatever reason will break that synchronization and cause you to experience the things you describe. it's worsened if both parties are experiencing packet loss and it seems a lot more people are starting to experience it to varying degrees for various reasons, some areas are worse than others.
with latency, you fire your weapons at another player, your system sends data to the server that says "register event on object xxx at yyy location", the server does a check for that information and sends data to the other persons computer...the other persons computer reports back that its object xxx is at yyyyy location, not yyy...the server then registers a miss and all you see on you screen is rubber bullets. with packet loss it's worse, data necessary for the server to properly register the event is lost before it even gets to the server and never gets registered on the server and the other players system...
again very simplistic and there are other variables but, packet loss and latency are the key elements. not much you can do about it unless you want to move to wherever the arena servers are and tap into the network they are connected to. even then, if your system struggles when you get into a crowd, you could still experience similar issues because it's not processing the information as quickly as needs to.
I've heard this before but as explained by HTC staff, MY FE is the only thing determining my hits on a bandit. To my bullets he IS where he APEARS on my screen. My FE then transmits the hit information to the server, which passes it on to the bandit to let him know he's been hit. His front end registers the hit and activates Damage, then confirms damage back to the server, which passes it back to my FE which animates the damage. I get that.
This means that hit sprites could be animated on my machine regardless of whether the server recognized them, and they would not be affected by Latency issues, only the damage would.
Does the game wait for confirmation from the server of a registered hit, before animating sprites? This would mean Latency/lag effects the sprite too. I guess I assume the sprites would always show, and in that way I would know my aim was fine, but I have lost hit packets in transmission. But perhaps this created many upset pilots how thought the bandit had a forcefield hack.
So perhaps HTC linked the sprites to registered server hits as well, so that non-registered hits look like misses. I think I agree with that approach, I just want to understand it because there are three possibilities in these situations:
1) I think I'm missing, so I adjust what I'm doing (this leads to frustration and disbelief when shooting.)
2) My processor isn't keeping up with all the required calculations, so the problem is in my hardware. ( I can get a better processor)
3) Lag/Latency is causing hits to not be registered or
displayed. ( I understand it so I deal with it. )
knowing would be good, because the first two I can do something about. The last one is a fact of life as you say.
Vinkman
