Battle(non)sense - Apex Legends Netcode Needs A Lot Of Work

[spam musubi]

Please be aware that this is a technical thread and comments about how this doesn't matter to you aren't relevant to the topic at hand.



A very detailed look into the game's tick rate, both server side and client side. The game uses dedicated servers. Seems like the game sends updates to the server at almost 60hz pretty consistently, but the server responds at a tick rate of 20, but earlier in a match there's so much data to be sent that those 20hz ticks are broken up into multiple packets, so early on it looks like the server is sending packets at a faster rate even though updates are generated at 20hz.

The game uses a lot more bandwidth compared to comparable BR games. As such there's a lot more player-to-player latency compared to other games.

As a result, this gives a massive advantage to players with higher ping, which is demonstrated later in the video.

Note that I think the game is great, and this is only to encourage Respawn to improve it. Overall I think it's a great achievement and feels great to play, but since it's so fast paced, there are moments where the netcode makes the game feel unfair as the player-to-player lag is so high and the compensation can make it feel unfair.

 

[Deleted member 45765]

There's that word again.

 

[Saucycarpdog]

I love playing the game but admittedly there have been times where I swear my bullets are landing right on an enemy but not registering.

 

[Spinluck]

Love the game

Totally agree.

 

[spam musubi]

There's that word again.

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Maybe instead of drive-by posting you watched the video, you'd gain a better understanding of the concept and the effort put into the video.

 

[BDS]

Is this why the game is sometimes really laggy during the first couple minutes of a match?

 

[Deleted member 45765]

Maybe instead of drive-by posting you watched the video, you'd gain a better understanding of the concept and the effort put into the video.

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Thank you for the scolding.

 

[SweetNicole]

Is this why the game is sometimes really laggy during the first couple minutes of a match?

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Yes.

 

[tyfon]

Strange when the source engine should have pretty good netcode.
But I guess it's a whole different beast when you do 64 players at once.

I see CS:GO sits at the bottom of that list in regards to latency.

 

[spam musubi]

Strange when the source engine should have pretty good netcode.
But I guess it's a whole different beast when you do 64 players at once.

I see CS:GO sits at the bottom of that list in regards to latency.

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I'd say straining an engine built to handle small contained maps with a small amount of players is probably a way to make it perform worse.

It's really interesting to see how Valve handled this exact issue (ignore the title):

 

[tyfon]

I'd say straining an engine built to handle small contained maps with a small amount of players is probably a way to make it perform worse.

It's really interesting to see how Valve handled this exact issue (ignore the title):

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That's very fascinating.
So many tricks and workarounds, it must have taken a lot of dev work.

Respawn must have done lots of magic to get apex to work at all with the source engine!

 

[Deleted member 5596]

I love playing the game but admittedly there have been times where I swear my bullets are landing right on an enemy but not registering.

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I had the same feeling, multiple times. When shooting shotguns at short range I swear that a lot of time I'm hitting the target and not registering.

 

[SirFritz]

I'd say straining an engine built to handle small contained maps with a small amount of players is probably a way to make it perform worse.

It's really interesting to see how Valve handled this exact issue (ignore the title):

Click to shrink...

Does anyone know if titanfall/apex legends still uses BSP trees? It would be amazing if it did.

 

[Jaded Alyx]

I love playing the game but admittedly there have been times where I swear my bullets are landing right on an enemy but not registering.

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This.

I had the same feeling, multiple times. When shooting shotguns at short range I swear that a lot of time I'm hitting the target and not registering.

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And this.

 

[spam musubi]

That's very fascinating.
So many tricks and workarounds, it must have taken a lot of dev work.

Respawn must have done lots of magic to get apex to work at all with the source engine!

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Yeah! It would be really interesting to see the difference in approach as to how different devs made the same engine solve this challenge. Netcode issues aside, Apex's approach is clearly better, but maybe they shot too high and there's a reason why valve chose the approach they did.

Does anyone know if titanfall/apex legends still uses BSP trees? It would be amazing if it did.

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No idea, but probably? They had to do some sort of partitioning/culling. But because of this and what I said above, it would be super interesting to watch a GDC talk on this.

 

[Sanox]

I guess that lag is also what causes some of the gun sounds to be so messed up sometimes

 

[spam musubi]

I guess that lag is also what causes some of the gun sounds to be so messed up sometimes

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I haven't heard of this, do you have an example? That doesn't make sense.

 

[Heid]

Okay, real question here.

What is the last FPS game with +50 players that didn't have some at least sorta little fucked up netcode thing going on. I'm starting to suspect we're just not there technologically and in terms of average internet speeds.

 

[TheRulingRing]

Okay, real question here.

What is the last FPS game with +50 players that didn't have some at least sorta little fucked up netcode thing going on. I'm starting to suspect we're just not there technologically and in terms of average internet speeds.

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Well it's in the chart. Fortnite doesn't have anywhere near as much lag. Battlefield 1 doesn't either (although BF5 does have something weird going on).

 

[AaronMT]

I do wonder if it's their Frankenstein version of Source engine partly to blame here.

 

[Crushed]

I feel like I have had more moments compared to other BRs where I wonder where the hell my shot went.

 

[Sanox]

I haven't heard of this, do you have an example? That doesn't make sense.

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For some reason sometimes gun sounds just get cut off or play delayed. On ps4 so maybe performance related

 

[Prelude]

As someone that only played extensively Overwatch, enemies very often look laggy/stuttery in Apex. So much so that I pretty much stopped trying to headshot from close range in a 1v1.

 

[Mubrik_]

Don't think I've encountered issues with shots not registering much if at all.
I can pretty much tell when I'm missing my shots.

Although I do notice some lag right at the start of most match after dropping in. Might be related

 

[Sheepinator]

Interesting video.

 

[Gingerbread Man]

Agree with the post. Got 8 ping- Fibre connection and feels like I using too many bullets to kill just one player.

 

[YawZah]

Look how far PUBG has come, better than Fortnite and close to BFV.
Apex will surely make progress as well. It'll just take time.