Winner forecast

[Tom]

I'm convinced that lags and glitches have a significant impact to outcome of every 1 vs 1 battle in VC:MP. I'm also convinced that lags and glitches are almost decisive things in 1 vs 1 duel format (open area without covers and shotguns as a primary weapon).
So, based on this, I'm doing the forecast: VCDC winner will be a hard-lagging glitcher.

So, according to this, IMO tournament favorites are:
[DU]Moskvish - lags hard enough to outlag the most part of VCMP players
[DZ]Noori - also a lagger, but less then Moskvish, may be better than him in glitching
[SS]anMexican - good lag coupled with of
[SS]Daniel - good representative of lag + glitch formula
[DnA]Bryce - one of the top laggers of tournamet, but lacks of skill

All of them are lag and glitch enough to win. I'm not going to make a forecast which of them is strongest.
Group stage isn't over yet, so some details may change, but IMO hard glitching lagger will win.

You may agree with me or don't. You may discuss my forecast, post your opinion or offer your favorites.
I'm not making any bet, I just post it to share my opinion and produce some discussion.

[Kelvin]

Is this the reason you dont participate?

[stormeus]

You make it sound like VC:MP has a HaveGlitchersAndLaggersWinFights function, and not that the "higher skilled "players haven't realized that the fire-and-forget shotgun switching style is unreliable now.

[NewK]

Meh. Laggers have always had the advantage in VC:MP, this is not new, it's the same in SA:MP, MTA, etc... However, 0.4 doesn't seem to be very good at handling laggers in comparison to 0.3zR2. The sync is definitely better now for low pingers but when it comes to laggers, it has become insanely harder to hit them. I was thinking about this the other day, maybe we just can't have both. Maybe we just can't have a sync that works best for both low ping players and laggers. We either have a good and precise sync for low pingers or we have a different kind of sync that makes it easier to hit laggers but in comparison low ping fights won't be as precise ( I believe this was the case in 0.3zR2 ). I don't really know if this is how it works technically, but this is the impression I have.

One mistake you're making though is that you're taking VC:MP as a competitively viable game/mod. If you're going to do that you're in for a world of pain and frustration, because VC:MP will never be fair. There will always be players with higher pings and they'll always have the advantage over players with a low ping. There's nothing we can do about that. Other games solve this by grouping players of the same region together and having them play on a server on that region, but since VC:MP already has small userbase we can't afford to be splitting the userbase like that and make it even smaller.

players haven't realized that the fire-and-forget shotgun switching style is unreliable now.

I find it to be just as reliable as it was back in 0.3zR2, just not against laggers. Low ping fights work pretty much like they used to when it comes to shotgun/stubby, the sync's even better imo. But when it comes to laggers, I can barely can hit anyone >150 ping. I don't know if this is just me, I usually have 58/60 ping, but I don't think so, I've heard other low pingers complain aswell. Just the other day in LW I spawned in DT as one of those green whores and was fighting with a group against 1 guy. There was 3 of us against this 1 cop with a shotgun that just kept jumping 0.3x style. He kept doing this repeatedly while running in and out of he pharmacy. While in the middle of the fight, he had the time to stop, type !heal and jump just as a stubby shot hit him, making him lose hp but not falling. This kept happening during all the fights with him. And he wasn't having fps lagg, he wasn't warping, his movements were smooth. As I was fighthing I remember thinking that he must've had like 300 or 400 ping but when I checked the scoreboard, I noticed he only had 200 ping, which is not even that high by 0.3z standards but it really makes a big difference in 0.4.

[GangstaRas]

If I could rate Newk's post higher......couldn't agree more. Now I'm not the best player out there nor do I have the best ping (150s for Europe) but I have similar issues that Newk described. From my perspective the sync from my ping to a lower pinger seems somewhat the same although before, lets say I'm facing someone 80 and under I didn't have to lead aim for them, as it is now, even if it's 20 ping I still have to have a slight lead aim.

For high pingers, I'd say 200 and over, something's just not right. Sometimes you could have such beautiful timing, you predicted their position flawlessly, your shot came out before they settled at that position and the delay between your shot and the summated ping delay of you and your opponent seems just right for all of this to work out for you, and the shot just didn't do one thing. I mean that kind of happened in 0.3 days but its far too often now in 0.4. Is it just the sole difference of fps perhaps? no warp if they're running at 30 fps but if you're too fast @60fps your shot wont register? like a Call of Duty scenario

[krystianoo]

[DZ]Noori.

Need not to explain.

[NewK]

For high pingers, I'd say 200 and over, something's just not right. Sometimes you could have such beautiful timing, you predicted their position flawlessly, your shot came out before they settled at that position and the delay between your shot and the summated ping delay of you and your opponent seems just right for all of this to work out for you, and the shot just didn't do one thing. I mean that kind of happened in 0.3 days but its far too often now in 0.4. Is it just the sole difference of fps perhaps? no warp if they're running at 30 fps but if you're too fast @60fps your shot wont register? like a Call of Duty scenario

Yes, this exactly. But sometimes I'm amazed by how precise the sync is, I truly am, and I notice this more and more when I'm against low pingers. I find myself not even needing to lead aim, and just have to shoot at the actual body, that by itself impressed me the most in 0.4. But it's so troll, sometimes (almost always against 200 pingers) It's just like it refuses to work just to fuck with me. Doesn't feel as consistent as 0.3zR2. 0.3zR2 sync wasn't very good overall, but it felt consistent. When it was shitty in some situation, it was always shitty, when it was good, it was always good. The Cod scenario is definitely a possibility imo. Back in Cod2 when you hit 200fps, other players would stop hearing your footsteps. This was insanely op because you could just run around and no one would hear you comming. This was also the reason why most servers limited the fps to 125 or 150.

In vcmp the scenario of: low pinger with frame limit on VS >=200 pinger with frame limiter off should be looked into. I don't know exactly what's happening or if these problems only occur in this situation, but it's like you said, something's just not right.

[aXXo]

My theory:
0.3z registered shots when a player presses the fire button (resulted in ghost shots)
0.4 registers shots a little late, when the bullets leave your barrel.

This delay could be the reason why 0.3z sync felt better in case of shotguns.
For automatic weapons this delay does not matter, hence  0.4 sync feels far superior. Kills through M4/M60 are much more frequent in 0.4.

Another thing I noticed is, on a localhost server, my ping used to be either 30 or 60 in 0.3z. It is 0 in 0.4 servers as it should be.
That means, 0.3z added 30 or 60 to every ping, and we are used to judge playability in reference to that ping. So, if you see a player with 180 ping, assume he has 240 ping(add 60). All server's ping limiter should also be updated accordingly.

[Kessu]

Back in Cod2 when you hit 200fps, other players would stop hearing your footsteps.

Nope. The FPS limit for footsteps starting to disappear was 333 and above. At 333 FPS your steps would go silent only when using "Heavy guns" such as mp44, but when you hit say 500, all of your steps were silent (read; does not include jumping).


As for the topic itself, I do kind of agree with NewK. Laggers have become far harder to hit, especially jumping one, but that doesn't make them invicible.

As for lowping fight sync, it is godlike in 0.4 

[Milko]

NewK said it all. But, as Kessu says, they're not invincible.

The winner will be Noori, unless Moskvish outgostglitches him.

[NewK]

My theory:
0.3z registered shots when a player presses the fire button (resulted in ghost shots)
0.4 registers shots a little late, when the bullets leave your barrel.

This delay could be the reason why 0.3z sync felt better in case of shotguns.

This is an interesting theory, I believe this is it, you might be correct aXXo. This makes alot of sense to me. And it's not like 0.4 has bad shotgun sync. Like I said, the low ping fights are nearly spot on. Be it with shotguns, rifles, automatic weapons, etc....But when there's a big difference between pings (about 100/150), the player with the lowest ping will be severely handicaped. This would also explain why 200 pingers feel like they have 300/400 ping now. Because 0.4 in a effort to prevent ghost shots, registers the shots later, which is not a problem for fights between low pingers, but this delay is a real problem when fighting laggers, because a lagger's position is already delayed and on top of that 0.4 still delays your shots to prevent ghost shots, it's like adding 100 ping to their original ping, making it seem like people lagg more than they actually do. With automatic weapons it's not as important, but I can notice the delay is still there, and it becomes easier to notice the higher the ping of your enemy is.

I think this situation falls into that problem I was talking about on my first post. We probably can't have a sync that works best for both laggers and low pingers. 0.3's sync seemed to be more balanced but the result of that was ghost shots all over the place. To be honest I don't think they're capable of fixing this, although I wish they could fix it, but I don't really see how. It'd be interesting to see how this is handled if they decide to try and fix it.

Back in Cod2 when you hit 200fps, other players would stop hearing your footsteps.

Nope. The FPS limit for footsteps starting to disappear was 333 and above. At 333 FPS your steps would go silent only when using "Heavy guns" such as mp44, but when you hit say 500, all of your steps were silent (read; does not include jumping).

You're absolutely right, sorry my memory is a bit hazy, haven't played in a long time

[GangstaRas]

I think this situation falls into that problem I was talking about on my first post. We probably can't have a sync that works best for both laggers and low pingers. 0.3's sync seemed to be more balanced but the result of that was ghost shots all over the place. To be honest I don't think they're capable of fixing this, although I wish they could fix it, but I don't really see how. It'd be interesting to see how this is handled if they decide to try and fix it.

How I see one SA:MP server handle this is through the aim. Idk how they do it (maybe a reverse engineer of aimbotting, idk) but they seem to sync position of the crosshairs from a player so that even if his ping is 500+, this sync will still makes his shots register where the player intented to aim. If that was implemented in the VC:MP world, it would turn a world of wanky & glitchy moves cuz the body of the player is still lagging so what happens is that if the body is facing away from you, the gun shots are bending from muzzle and registering hitting you. Imagine that in the fast combat of VC:MP

[stormeus]

0.4 does not register shots as soon as they leave the barrel. Shots are registered as soon as you press your fire key. In a perfect world, this would mean that players with higher pings would just see your shots later.

However, if packets are received out of order, as they usually are at higher and higher pings, then players may not see your shots appeared because the "not firing" packet arrived too early (desync). Or, they could see you shooting when your bullets haven't left the barrel because their "not firing" packet arrived too late (ghosting).

If you look at the 0.1c source code and the 0.4 source code (or at least what I'm talking you about it), this is how weapon sync has always worked. However, I would also imagine that jumping RakNet versions and rewriting the entire core would result in some changes in how these situations end up affecting gameplay.

I think this situation falls into that problem I was talking about on my first post. We probably can't have a sync that works best for both laggers and low pingers. 0.3's sync seemed to be more balanced but the result of that was ghost shots all over the place. To be honest I don't think they're capable of fixing this, although I wish they could fix it, but I don't really see how. It'd be interesting to see how this is handled if they decide to try and fix it.

How I see one SA:MP server handle this is through the aim. Idk how they do it (maybe a reverse engineer of aimbotting, idk) but they seem to sync position of the crosshairs from a player so that even if his ping is 500+, this sync will still makes his shots register where the player intented to aim. If that was implemented in the VC:MP world, it would turn a world of wanky & glitchy moves cuz the body of the player is still lagging so what happens is that if the body is facing away from you, the gun shots are bending from muzzle and registering hitting you. Imagine that in the fast combat of VC:MP

SA:MP has experimental lag compensation. The problem with lag compensation is that yes, at higher pings, the state of the game world becomes increasingly inaccurate. If a player shoots you on their screen because they're lagging, but on your screen you just ran around a corner, it could look like you're getting shot through walls. TF2 exhibits pretty much the same problem, but it's more refined, and most players don't play on servers where they lag anyway.

[Tom]

Is this the reason you dont participate?

This is the reason I don't duel at all.
And was I supposed to participate? I'm pragmatic player who knows his strengths and weaknesses. 1 vs 1 stubby duel isn't my style.

You make it sound like VC:MP has a HaveGlitchersAndLaggersWinFights function, and not that the "higher skilled "players haven't realized that the fire-and-forget shotgun switching style is unreliable now.

Lack of skills can be compensated by lags. You can't deny it.

[koray]

If we are talking about the lag,I was able to beat SaM.I cant compare him with anyone