So to simulate the changes in ping that often occurs in combat I decided the best method was to put my internet connection under load. Unfortunately I was not able to fully simulate the maximum latency I see often under large scale combat, but I was able to get close to it.
I live just outside New York. From here to Texas is roughly 1,600 miles. I pay for the fastest residential internet available in my area. So I can not do anything more to improve performance on my end at this time. From what I can see if you play ArcheAge and live in or near NY you will not be able to play these rapid fire skills in any serious form of combat.
In the bellow poorly narrated video you will see my network monitor capturing the current latency to the PTS, and a speedtest.net window. The speed test is NOT testing the PTS latency. It is simply being used to consume network resources in place of large scale combat.
I feel this test clearly shows how drastic of a change even a slight ping difference has on these rapid fire skills. There is a noticeable rate of fire drop just going from 50ms to 70ms and so on.
Skill queue as far as I understand it works like this. The skill is added to a queue on the server when a button press is received after the skill cool down has ended, but before the skill animation has completed. Once the animation completes the queued skill is executed.
The issue with this and latency that makes it impossible for the rapid fire skills to ever work is how short the skill animation is. Basically the users button press can not reach the server faster than the skill is designed to complete.
For example, If the total animation time of 1 endless arrow is 30ms and my ping is 35ms, my button press takes 5ms longer to reach the server than the skill takes to complete. In essence the Skill Queue feature never even comes into play when the latency is greater than the skills execution time.
It is understandable that a high enough ping will always have a noticeable impact on any skill usage. The skill queue could potentially remove this issue for most skills and most players. But skills designed with such a fast animation and cool down results in a excessively low tolerance to even slight ping changes.
You can not Program away latency. You MUST design your systems around it.
Or is anyone who lives more than 600 miles from the Texas servers too much of a looser for you to be bothered with?
I live just outside New York. From here to Texas is roughly 1,600 miles. I pay for the fastest residential internet available in my area. So I can not do anything more to improve performance on my end at this time. From what I can see if you play ArcheAge and live in or near NY you will not be able to play these rapid fire skills in any serious form of combat.
In the bellow poorly narrated video you will see my network monitor capturing the current latency to the PTS, and a speedtest.net window. The speed test is NOT testing the PTS latency. It is simply being used to consume network resources in place of large scale combat.
I feel this test clearly shows how drastic of a change even a slight ping difference has on these rapid fire skills. There is a noticeable rate of fire drop just going from 50ms to 70ms and so on.
Skill queue as far as I understand it works like this. The skill is added to a queue on the server when a button press is received after the skill cool down has ended, but before the skill animation has completed. Once the animation completes the queued skill is executed.
The issue with this and latency that makes it impossible for the rapid fire skills to ever work is how short the skill animation is. Basically the users button press can not reach the server faster than the skill is designed to complete.
For example, If the total animation time of 1 endless arrow is 30ms and my ping is 35ms, my button press takes 5ms longer to reach the server than the skill takes to complete. In essence the Skill Queue feature never even comes into play when the latency is greater than the skills execution time.
It is understandable that a high enough ping will always have a noticeable impact on any skill usage. The skill queue could potentially remove this issue for most skills and most players. But skills designed with such a fast animation and cool down results in a excessively low tolerance to even slight ping changes.
You can not Program away latency. You MUST design your systems around it.
Or is anyone who lives more than 600 miles from the Texas servers too much of a looser for you to be bothered with?