Performance rating needs fixing
MoFo
Join Date: 2013-09-09 Member: 188047Members
So am I alone in thinking that the incorrect performance rating is causing a problem in NS2?
Servers with downright horrible performance (often dropping below 10%) are populated 24/7/365.. Some of these server owners are even adding more unstable servers...
I think changing the performance to be an average over time, instead of an instant reading, would help immensely as it would help players (especially new ones) to see which servers they should not join. Plus it would help filter active players onto more stable servers. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been frustrated when the only populated server in an acceptable ping range is one with horrible performance.
When I was new I thought the performance rating was the coolest feature I'd ever seen in a browser. Unfortunately I quickly realized that It was worthless. I'd join servers at 100% only to experience some of the most unstable gameplay I'd ever seen. I almost quit early on due to the frustrating lag and warping issues, but I stuck it out because Alien was so fun to play. (at the time)
Now of course I've learned to click on details and watch it for a few minutes to get an accurate reading, but players shouldn't have to go through these steps. It seems like this would be such a simple change for them to implement, so I'm making this thread as a plea to UWE. Hopefully if enough people agree they will take notice and do something.
Servers with downright horrible performance (often dropping below 10%) are populated 24/7/365.. Some of these server owners are even adding more unstable servers...
I think changing the performance to be an average over time, instead of an instant reading, would help immensely as it would help players (especially new ones) to see which servers they should not join. Plus it would help filter active players onto more stable servers. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been frustrated when the only populated server in an acceptable ping range is one with horrible performance.
When I was new I thought the performance rating was the coolest feature I'd ever seen in a browser. Unfortunately I quickly realized that It was worthless. I'd join servers at 100% only to experience some of the most unstable gameplay I'd ever seen. I almost quit early on due to the frustrating lag and warping issues, but I stuck it out because Alien was so fun to play. (at the time)
Now of course I've learned to click on details and watch it for a few minutes to get an accurate reading, but players shouldn't have to go through these steps. It seems like this would be such a simple change for them to implement, so I'm making this thread as a plea to UWE. Hopefully if enough people agree they will take notice and do something.
Comments
This could be averted by letting players report servers to blacklist if they see them cheating.
NS2 already has a reputation for high system requirements, and many new players playing on these (most) servers, may just confuse poor server performance with poor game performance.
listen here mr 800 mb upload, make it happen
Why not just sample tickrate for like 5 seconds and accumulate the intensity of the drops squared and then SQRT it, kind of how RMS-averaging works, which would work like a rating system for performance. 0 would be best, sqrt(30^2 * 30 * 5) = 367 would e.g. be worst, meaning it is convertible to a 0-100% display. Larger tickrate drops would weigh more than smaller ones. Instead of completely resetting the performance rating to 100% after the update time, it has already calculated the new performance.
It is more accurate than the current system since it provides a useful weighted-average rating over time, also without having to save all samples.
Unfortunately this has become increasingly rare recently.
@Ghosthree3 This isnt a image bourd. So remember the spoiler tags when posting images please.
It may be ugly, but it does everything described so far. It's just a toy though and not exposed in any meaningful way (but you can easily check it on the "server variables" tab on servers here, but it's not frequently updated... nor does it run on any servers with bad performance) such as the server browser... This can't be done by modding, UWE would of course have to implement something like that in the engine. As a mod (or anywhere near Lua) it's trivial for servers to cheat.
It picks the longest frame (lowest FPS) every 100 ms, makes slow frames weight more (25 out of 30 FPS is just 83.3%, but from a playability perspective it's more like 50%) and retains a memory of past longest frame which it presents as a "performance" value between 0 and 100.