Sunsout: i can really relate on the lag issues. I was trying to do the 40 SEG daily hunt mission and i died 4 times on one second entity. Four times! That's never happened to me, even when i did deliberate revive killing a few times for fun years ago as a "weak" hp avatar.
It would go something like this: tag the SEG and keep firing. Half the shots simply wouldn't register (no miss, no hit, and these are targeted using the mob bar because after the hit box "improvement", there's just no way to consistently manually target a jumping SEG. So i lose half my dps from that as it approaches. Then there's the little pauses as it tries to aim a the hitbox, even though it's already pointed a the hitbox. Another fraction of my dps is lost.
I switch to arson chip when it's in range, and switch back... only it doesn't switch back. 2-3 seconds later, on the third or fourth try, it switches back to main weapon. By then the SEG is hacking me to pieces. Then there are the "fail"ed shots, one per mob usually.
I fly back from revive, and pick up my vehicle... only it doesn't pick up. I wait. And wait. THREE MINUTES LATER it finally goes into my inventory.
I've never gotten so frustrated with gameplay before in the 8 years since i started participating (BTW happy birthday to me last month i guess).
I asked in soc chat about it and it seemed few were having similar problems (they're mostly in Europe), so it may be that this is a combination of the server lag we've seen lately with things like auction and inventory and that ugly problem with the telia connection to the US nodes that has reared its head in the past. I didn't do a tracert to check, though.
The point is that it's time to implement "client friendly" features that have been overdue for years. I can always count on being outdamaged by European teammates if we have weapons of even remotely similar DPS; it's been that way for years. It's time to decouple the rate that repetitive things happen from the round trip network rate.
These measures won't resolve the issues with the servers, but it will make the customer experience more fair and less frustrating.
These are just two obvious things that should be implemented that would make a huge difference:
- when autouse tool is activated, the autouse should be serverside, not client side, and remain active during desynchronization of up to a few seconds. In the past this had the potential undesirable side effect of wasting shots, but now that untargeted shots don't use ammo, there's no more hangups. This would give everyone the true dps their weapon should have, and smooth out the little hiccups when engaged with a mob.
- When server/client synchronization is lost for more than the few seconds that autouse remains active serverside, the mob may not attack. It's only fair if the player can't attack that the mob can't attack.