Call of Duty: Black Ops - Page 381

Quick scoping is what keeps me away from MW2 as well. But crap I don't know what bothers me more QS or the troubles I have been having with BLOPS. I am going to give MW2 a shot tonight and see. Thanks for the convo and I appreciate the information.

gamer tags:

Problmhouston
Houstonproblm

I'd honestly like to see a video that shows what youre talking about, the difference between mw2 and blops hit detection. The one you linked point blank says theres no difference, which is what I've always been saying. The others I've seen is all killcam/theater rage which is based on faulty information. I'm more than happy to be proven wrong on this.

All I'm really saying is if you and others spent the amount of time you do complaining about the HD/netcode, and spent some time learning how it actually works, you might find that it's not as broken as you think it is.

Well that's good. Haven't seen you on in awhile, btw!

From the horse's mouth:

Developer Responses
JD_2020 wrote:
First and foremost, I can assure you there is nothing wrong or unusual with the hit detection in Black Ops. The reason it is being brought into question with greater frequency than in previous COD titles is because we have new features that encourage and enable further scrutiny than ever before (namely, Theater).

I saw a YouTube video where a player loaded a Wager Match in Theater Mode slowed down time, and showed his bullet traveling straight through his opponent's chest in One in the Chamber. Yet his opponent did not die, and winds up getting the kill instead. As you know, One in the Chamber is a One-Shot-Kill game mode, so the natural conclusion is that there is a bug with hit detection. In reality, it's the visual replay that is misleading you.

The explanation lies within networking, and physics. The fact is, your Ping (latency between you and the Host) will affect what you think you see happening, and what actually happens in a match. Because Theater films are based on the Host's recordings of events, the visual disparity between what you see happening in the game from your perspective may differ from another player's (or more importantly, the Host's). This can result in occasions, like my example above, where misleading visual replays occur. Now, thanks to Theater, so many more people can go back, scrutinize, and upload their cases to YouTube and flood social media with questions. Whereas in past games, the debate stopped at shouting "GAH, stupid lag!" over the mic.

Killcam works a little differently, but the same principles apply. Some people notice that a guy was *way* outside of Knife range, but still got the knife kill. This leads to another perception that there is problem with Knife hit detection. This can be especially visible in Game Winning Killcams that end with a knife, often times it looks like the knife comes nowhere near the guy, but it still gets the kill. Because especially when a player is already on the outer-boundaries of knife range, that extra half-step of disparity can really stick out like a sore thumb.

The Bottom Line: You shouldn't use Killcam or Theater mode as justification for your kills / deaths. They are designed to be fun replay features for the game, not forensic science lab tools to make your case on YouTube and social media.

Lag is something that frustrates all gamers sometimes. Network delays are a reality that all games and gamers must face. In Black Ops, we have Locale Matchmaking to help mitigate this, and are constantly refining our Host Selection and weeding out poor hosts over time. Ironically enough, the more you play, the better it gets!

In response to more questioning:

JD_2020 wrote:
It's not a matter of being dismissive, it's a matter of this being a lose-lose argument. As someone already pointed out since my response, it's not what most people wanted to hear, and people won't accept that answer (even though it is 100% accurate. I've spoken at lengths to our engineers about this).

There is "anti-lag" in Black Ops, but it has been in the last 3 or 4 COD's as well. Black Ops is no different in this regard, and the only reasons there are perceptions the network coding has changed is because of my last response - Theater makes it so much easier to scrutinize and discuss the problems via Social Media than ever before.

There are a lot of really smart people at Treyarch who have contributed to the technologies that power Multiplayer. I'd never challenge their intelligence on technical matters like these, and respectfully, don't think forum threads are going to teach them anything they don't already know either .

I didn't come here to debate how the game should be made with you guys, I just wanted to shed some light on why it seems things are broken when they really are not. If there was something we could solve, we'd happily do it - just look at the Community Update stickies. You could argue that Host Selection / Matchmaking needs to be improved then, to match you with players closer to you to minimize lag. But that's a separate problem from "hit detection" - and, gets better over time (the more bad hosts that get host banned for having inadequate internet connection speeds).

Host Selection and geographical matchmaking is quite good in Black Ops. Still, for players in geographically isolated areas, or areas where there aren't a ton of COD players online at the time, the game will match you into the next-closest game possible (though, that may wind up being a bit far away). The logic here is, it's better to get you playing than have you just sit idle in a lobby forever.

More:

f I can save you some time, I can't really sink much more into this. Tonight's it. There are more pressing issues to attend to, things we can affect and change. I do hope I answered your questions to the best of my ability, but don't really want to debate it. I've said what I have to, and surely you can ask more questions but I can't spare the time (mine or developers') to appease all your inquisitiveness . Rest assured, there's no conspiracy here haha. Your reports of lag / bad hit detection have been thoroughly investigated by me and engineers, and what I'm telling you here is the truth. The disparity between what you see, and what happens to your opponents is a result of the lag. Some of the guys here at Treyarch them have been doing this stuff for 15+ years... And that doesn't mean they don't make mistakes / bugs (because they do) - but when they do, they identify them, and patch them. This isn't a bug.t will surely be here tomorrow to find me. Cheers!

If you think Black Ops is drastically different (from other games), it's most likely a perception caused by Theater mode and the over-awareness of this perceived disparity because of it. If not, then it is a technical error that I am confident Customer Support can help you with. It is not a bug in the game that we need to patch... If it were, we'd happily do so to end the debate .

(I wish I had a blue-in-the-face emoticon to choose from lol)

If you look back about 6mos ago in this thread you'll see I covered all this.
(BTW - Jitu's video dates from January.)

MW2 had lag, W@W had lag, Blops has lag, blah, blah, blah...

The bottom line is that if you don't like the game don't play it,
and if you don't play it STFU and stop wasting space on this thread.

BTW - one thing you can't deny: Treyarch kicks IW's in support & community engagement.
Everything the community has asked for they've gotten and more.

If people actually care, I can certainly dig around and try and find some sort of primer on lag compensation, client side hit detection, etc.

I think I'm starting to feel JD2020s frustration a bit. I'm genuinely not trying to be a dick or win some sort of war. I truly believe that if people understood enough about net code to understand why these sorts of things happen, then it becomes a non-issue because you can accept it without raging about it. But if you just want to bury your head in the sand, then you just miss out, and it's a shame for people to miss out on fun times because of some perceived flaw in an otherwise fantastic game.

And you have always shown how much of an a$$hole you really are.

What I do is none of your business. You don't own this forum or administer it so you can stfu.

Lastly, I was only talking to a certain few members in here and it didn't include you.

So, you can go f u c k yourself.

Classy.

Yeah, treyarch has done a good job responding to the community and rebalancing as time goes on. Theres definitely been a dialogue there that was nonexistent with MW2. I wouldn't call it great because they were pretty slow to fix a few things like the overpowered famas, but it got there eventually. IW did nothing but fix basically game breaking exploits, but to be fair, their studio was imploding at the time so they get a bit of a pass. But it's clear that treyarch isn't the B team anymore...I'm just as excited about the prospects of blops 2 as I am about MW3.

I understand what you and jitu's video and JD_2020 and Jammy are all saying. However, that doesn't make it any less annoying when it happens. In my memory, MW2 wasn't as bad in this regard, which makes me think they did something different in the host selection or lag compensation area. I'll be the first to admit that I have no proof and I'm not going to bother going back and playing that buggy PoS just to find out either. lol. The fact of the matter is that problem or no problem it's not going to change from now until MW3 so I'm over bitching about it here. Also, I'll be on in about 15-20 if anybody's playing tonight.

We can't win BB. Those who cannot see the problem deny its existence.

And for the record, Treyarch's denying the existence of a problem means nothing to me. There is no source on the planet more biased on the matter. OF COURSE they will deny it. It could be even more obvious and they would do the same. It would have to be downright blatant for them to acknowledge it, and it's far from obvious or blatant. 95% of players probably don't even notice it. Depending on what Treyarch is measuring, the information they are providing could be 100% true and accurate, but perhaps that data does not capture whatever causes the "feel" we are upset about. Perhaps purposely even.

FWIW, we ran a poll on this site, and something like 75% of people found that MW2 was much better for lag and hit detection, so at least we are not alone, we are in the majority among those who voted at least, for whatever that's worth. You wouldn't think so based on the endless debate on the subject in this thread since launch day.

And kind of what you were getting at BB... whether we argue that it's the same as MW2 or not, even if someone doesn't agree with that, can we all at least agree that even if it is the same for both games, that there is room for improvement? I wish games did it more like Halo (reach at least) or BF, where both parties just die if it's close. I never ever feel cheated in those games. Particularly in Halo. EVERY single bullet you shoot and grenade you throw in halo counts, no matter what. I never found an exception. Even with a lot of lag. Nothing disappears. In the lag, things can get delayed, but time doesn't rewind and things don't disappear IME with the game. No blanks in your gun, no grenades you watch get thrown that magically go *poof* and disappear, no stabbing through someone, retracting your knife and then dying without a kill. I love it when what you do counts, what you see happen happened. I wish it could be brought to COD. I hate being the better player on my screen, but still dying because what I saw did not matter at all because it was never real. That drives me insane.

In other words, regardless of how you feel about MW2 vs BLOPS, can we at least agree that there is room for improvement? I seriously, seriously doubt MW3 will bring that, but I will at least say I can't wait for the COD installment that revamps the engine and DOES bring it.

One final thing. If there is any truth to the video Jitu posted, I'm curious, because to my eye, both COD4 and MW2 hold a much steadier framerate that seems higher on average than BLOPS (I have no proof, those games just feel faster and smoother in the framerate dept). I feel more sluggishness to the framerate in BLOPS than I did in those games. If framerate is important to perceived lag, maybe that's part of the cause of what some of us are experiencing? Hell, maybe certain versions of the console are more susceptible to it or something, I don't know. My console is one thing I haven't changed while playing BLOPS to see if it affected perceived lag.

If it's not too much trouble, I would like to read up on lag compensation. I understand completely how lag works with it's effect on players, and the host. My feeling is that it's whatever they're doing in the way of compensation that is the problem. I'd like to understand it more.

Cary

In regards to the repost of from JD_2020, with all due respect, by his own admission, he's not one of the technical guys and can't speak to the possible issues that might be causing this.

I still think something has been introduced recently in one of the latest updates. I know how lag works (heck, FWIW, I am an engineer) but I suspect this has something to do with how they compensate for it.

Something has changed. My network latency/lag hasn't changed but they sure have been pushing code updates down. They can't change my network but they can change how they handle the lag in their code.

I went back to an older game (Treyarch's actually), World at War. No such issues. It seemed fair. I played lots of matches in different lobbies (therefore different hosts), it was refreshing to *not* play a game where my only chance of getting a kill was camping and shooting someone in the back.

I'm not trying to b!tch, although I am pointing a finger at Treyarch. I'm more interested in understanding the problem or at least getting some visibility so that someone who does understand it can either fix it, or tell me why it's not an issue.

Cary

PS. I have looked at the Theater results. Looks fine. I'm not complaining about that or using it as a forensics tool. I'm only discussing what happens to me during actual game-play.

It's always encouraging to see an internal investigation done by an interested party I'm not saying it's not credible but investigative findings conducted by an interested party often posses bias even if to a small degree.

I really don't care what the excuse is, for me the bottom line is what I see on my screen doesn't match the kill cam too often not to call BS. I've had fewer problems with this than some but it has been an issue and one that I had not experienced in MW2 or at least not nearly as often.

On a different note, have you watched the remake of Fright Night? I watched it and it was really good. Went home afterwards and watched the original and it was good too. I love the old school special fx.

Underworld is coming out in January of next year and it sux that is coming out so late. It would be nice to have horror movies come out in October but don't understand why it isn't that way.

Ok, back on topic...carry on =]

Not yet but Mrs Kenobi got some free movie passes and is taking me to see Don't Be Afraid of the Dark on Sat. I also saw a new rendition of Hellraiser coming out thant Clive Barker said, I believe his words were "that did'nt come from my mind, it wouldn't have even come from my butthole" or something like that. It looks terrible, they've totally ruined Pinhead and my favorite Chatterer It's not often you can best the classics with a crumby remake.


BTW - The Thing prequel will be out in Oct and Dream House Sept 30 so you could wait a few days and see that one in Oct too

The Thing! i saw the trailer and looks awesome and so does Dream House. I love October and it's right around the corner. Btw, have I showed you the photos of our halloween party from last year?

No, shoot me a PM. The photos from my desk decor from last Halloween are linked in my sig in the 2010 horror movie thread, I also have a video on the tube you can find if you search any of my blops vids.

Framerate in blops can be marginally less than previous games, but not enough to notice. It only really happens under some conditions (hosting, lots of smoke fire, playing in 3D). But it's effectively a solid 60.

The main thing to know is that while there are other ways to handle netcode, none of them are perfect. If they revamp it to make one aspect better, it'll make other parts worse. They obviously made choices that make everyone happy with MW, but not blops. On a next gen platform they might have more free resources at hand to up the precision a little bit, but latency is latency, no matter how fast the connection and how often it updates - it still needs to be dealt with.

I'm personally not a fan of people being able to kill each other at the same time with hitscan weapons, but that is a choice they can make. But then you'd have just as many people bitching that they keep dying long after they killed the other guy.

So you are saying the effects of lag will not ever be improved because it cannot be?

Have you measured the framerate of BLOPS running on your 360, or are you guessing that it's a solid 60?

I feel like I get the WTF how did I die all the time.

I just go back to the what someone said in this thread, it sucked but I think its the truth.

I once had a 1.15 K/d ratio and loved this game as time went on it dropped to .95 k/d and I feel like I die all the time because of netcode/lag/etc

someone here said face the facts I suck at the game, the people left playing are the hardcore players, when my 1.15 k/d ratio was when the game first came out & was still popular, and players who were worse than me still played

why do I believe this, I can have a very crappy night on the game, then I join a group of friends who I know suck at this game, and I will be MVP every round.

Think about it for a second, you may just suck at this game

I think killcam & theater has a lot to do with more complaints, but I still feel there is some lag.

It can be improved, but at this point that's more up to your ISP than netcode. And not kidding, the physical speed of light and electrical transmission is a factor here. Your average packet of data flying across the Internet even to a regional server probably hops across a dozen routers and a few hundred/thousand miles before it reaches it's destination. Then add in router processing delays and realistically there will always be a few frames of lag that need to be compensated for, even in 2050.

I know this might be hard for some of you to stomach if you haven't played much else, but CoD has world class netcode. It's based on quake, and not too long ago it was literally the only playable engine on the Internet. Valve's netcode is probably the only other true competitor in my eyes, and they do it basically the same way id/CoD does. It took a LONG time for unreal engine's netcode to even be playable, and I still don't think it's good enough for a fast paced game like CoD on an average connection. You want to see serious host advantage, that's where you'll find it.

The point is, there will always be lag. ALWAYS. The only perfect solution is to have every system on a LAN.

As far as framerate goes, I haven't measured it personally, but no one needs to when eurogamer does such a good job with this stuff on their digital foundry section. The takeaway is that on 360, it's a rock solid 60fps until explosions start flying, then it might drop down to 45-50, but it so slight and momentary that youll never notice it unless you measure it like they do. The only time I've personally noticed a serious decrease in framerate is when I'm host, which adds some CPU load, and the napalm starts flying. Then it seems to drop to 30 while I'm facing the fire.

And when I play in 3D, which looks awesome, but literally cuts the framerate in half, not to mention makes it about 10x more difficult.

So BLOPS plays as well as any other FPS you've ever played in the lag compensation area?

Anyway, bd, you sound really in tune with the game. I'm surprised you don't notice the difference between MW2 and BLOPS. Have you played them back to back lately? You should try it and report back. I'm curious what your impression is.

Hey PJ! I will play blops with you guys only if its private match and we do olympia in nuketown =p

or you can play with us in MW2 and we can play BB Pro so there aren't any killstreaks to worry about. I know, however, you are itching to make it rain up in this bizznatch with ac130, lol!

My 50 down 30 up must be upgraded to the new 110 down and 50 up, that my provider just announced. Host pro please.

Last night we had some great games. Mortons steak delivery is very much still in business. I love that shotgun.

Yeah, good games. You are a dedicated worker, delivering steaks after your shift was over and all. Still don't understand why your customers were upset - you delivered their orders as soon as they placed them!