Chicken Little: The sky is not falling.

Nope, don't pvp...my point was it is totally possible for them to do it...guess you just added proof.

 

I remember when the releases were just a weekend long.

 

So despite that collisions aren't happening in 90% of the encounters that PVE playerbase are experiencing, everything is sunny because it is otherwise working well.
Some people claim that the sky is falling because they believe that others are too loudly admiring the emperor's new outfit.

 

Not me. The game is broken in many ways. In some ways it's not even created to the point it can be broken. Some elements are in pre-Broken. Hopefully we move into Broken soon and then Not-Broken following that and eventually E1 occurs.

The iterative process I have observed from R7 makes me comfortable with this slow journey. Glad I have two jobs and a few pets to keep me busy along the way.

 

I think they did t hat because of performance not because it isn't working. seems like you aren't open to normal conversations though.

 

No, not everything is sunny.

But one thing is saying the system is not there.

Another is saying the system is there and by design/dev choice is not active in PVE.

It's a design decision (like me and rune_74 stated), not a technical shortcoming (as you implied).

 

Also I think of course we know we are testing out first iterations of things, but some seem to forget and think this is the end all forlorn thing. Feedback is so important and crucial for us to get the systems to be fun and interesting. Also I think tooltips that say might have a few popular questions like "why are my skills not raising, what am I doing wrong? and the answers to things like that. "How do I place a lot and house?" I know we have a wonderful 'FAQ' sheet on the home page that answers some things, but general things that are frustrating people. Perhaps someone will post a thread on it to get some of these questions all together. Another one might be "How do I get the NPC to answer my question or accept the iron blade I got for them?" Not necessarily where to find everything, but how to progress a conversation, or how to raise a skill when it seems stuck. A few details. Just a thought

 

I didn't imply, I listed it specifically as one of the shortcomings I am currently seeing. Now if the devs were going for the "late 90s, we don't have enough processing power to properly handle collisions" motif then, yes I'd agree with you, but I haven't seen a dev post to that effect. Very few players are going to see the Cerbearus for the first time and think "those devs made an interesting design decision" instead of "those devs were too lazy to implement collisions". The reason that players have some collision detection is that each client can be trusted to regulate the player's movement around other objects relieving pressure from the server, which has a significant drawback in the grand scheme of things.

 

So a little bit of SotA history here. In R5-R7 they tested different ways of handling these things, each had drawbacks on playability, no comments was made regarding performance/coding though.

Always colliding, was really annoying when running around in parties where you'd constantly be blocked by other players. Same thing with being blocked by every cat, cow, chicken, dog and sheep + NPCs etc in the early towns. Also coming to a full stop when running just because you hit a minor part of something was immersion breaking.
Never colliding, was really immersion breaking since it breaks with the illusion of the physical. Plus a huge exploit in combat.

Not satisfied with either solution they created a compromise in R8:
"NPC Collision: Being able to just walk through every NPC felt immersion breaking and wrong. However making the player actually collide with every NPC felt frustrating. So this release we are experimenting with a hybrid approach where running into NPCs will slow you to a walk but not stop you."
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/release-8-instructions.12969/#post-218178

The vast majority was happier with the compromise than either of the earlier trials.

If you think about it making a collision system that 'feels' right is too complex unless you employ a physics engine. For instance, should you be able to "push through" something, like an NPC crowd? Should you stumble over a cat, fall over a sheep and bounce off a bear?

Where I think that they should revisit their implementation is for combat. For PvP there was enough feedback so that stopping collisions was brought back. I think that something more heavy handed is also needed for PvE combat. So that 'hostiles' are slowing much more or even blocking. While 'friendlies/neutrals' are just slowing you down like now.

 

See the Cerbearus above, that's three bears overlapping. I don't have any specific issue with Player to NPC collisions, Player to Monster and Monster to Monster is where collisions are lacking. Monsters can clip straight through the player and vice versa (I've posted a wolf rider picture somewhere that exemplifies this). I can see that client is checking for obstructions when the player tries to move and regulating the requested movement accordingly, largely based on the amount of disconnects I've been experiencing due to my junky wifi. This simulates a collision system the same way as late 90s/early 2000s games simulated gravity physics by have objects accelerated downwards when released and make noise on impact

 

And you'd be wrong. QED.

Because, as I shown, when they added collisions, they limited them to PVP.

Spoon, as usual, datamined the context and the compromise they came to.

Maybe they will change it only for aggressive mobs, maybe not. Is this release the final one? Or it's just me who's seeing the large warning at every login?

If you start any argument with me with "the client can be trusted", please, stop there. I'm not interested in discussing it anymore.

Trusting the client is the #1 step to avoid in *ANY* multiplayer game. Only the server is authoritative on any aspect, ever.

Don't go there, really.

 

???
I don't get what you are hinting at there really. If you want a further response from me you'd probably have to ask a direct question since this seems to be more of what you have already said?

But regarding the tech, its different depending on the object you are colliding with. I know that they were sending the collision data on seperate ports for houses and deco. However some people found exploits for it when too many of those collisions was done client side. So some temporary changes were made to move some stuff back server side until they had time to fix those exploits and could put more client side again.
Maybe they simply haven't gotten around to that yet?

 

Then tell me what what would happen if the client lied about the player's movement right now concerning PVP? As Spoon points out, collision for houses have already been exploited and I would be willing to bet, based on the game's behavior in out-of-sync conditions that it is still trusting the client for NPC/PC and PC/PC interactions.

Easy peasy, why do you find this acceptable in a game releasing in 2016 (at best)?

 

"Lie"?

All the client does is relaying commands to the server. "I want to move left one meter" -> and the server acknowledges the movement in its internal state. If the client were to send a packet saying "I want to move left one hundred meters", the server will simply refuse to acknoledge that, being inconsistent with the state of the simulation. Simple as that.

That's why nobody should trust the client.

As you read, that specific excess of trust on the client was fixed by bringing back the logic where it belongs - in the server state simulation.

If they find more issues regarding too much trust in the client, I'm positive they will keep fixing them by doing what must be done.

Let me reiterate Spoon's question: maybe they simply haven't gotten around to that yet?

 

Que?
Whatever did that have to do with the tech part you quoted? And just repeating yourself adds nothing to the conversation.

Please note that if you wanted my view on things you already got that up-topic here:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...e-sky-is-not-falling.37081/page-2#post-421251

So as you can see that "easy peasy" dig is completely misidirected and only shows that you are not paying attention to what I've been saying. Repeating yourself over and over versus someone who not only have explained the dev decision history but also agreed that they need to revisit that decision regarding hostiles, is simply not making any sense. Are you confusing me with some other poster?