Spiral Knights - Your opinion on laggy players

Your opinion on laggy players

14 replies [Last post]

Mon, 01/30/2012 - 19:02

Kurowolfe

I started this thread to seek out your opinions and hopefully come to a conclusion in the end.

I'm a player from Asia, and lag is something that I have to experience constantly while playing SK due to a lot of factors (let's not go into that). So much so that I have integrated the factor of lag into my gear selection, playing style, and adaptative strategies.

Even so, I wonder how would those playing without any significant slowdowns perceive those who had to deal with it often. So, I wanna ask the former group:

1) How does a laggy player look to you? Does (s)he stand there like a brick while standing on spikes or being crowded by a horde of wolvers? Or any other weird things?
2) Would you mind having laggy players in your party while adventuring? Your reasons?
3) Do laggy players inhibit/impede your experience in playing SK significantly? Do you tolerate these setbacks?
4) How can you differentiate between an 'honest-to-God' laggy player and one who uses 'I'm laggy' as an excuse for his/her lack of skills in playing SK?

I'm asking because I want to know if joining a random party is worth the possible inconveniences that the party might experience by having me in. FYI, I prefer playing alone to avoid this, and I have never attempted FSC apart from that one time where I die so much I look like a ragdoll on the floor.

Mon, 01/30/2012 - 19:12

Psychodestroyer

Uh.

I don't mind laggy players. At all.

I can't tell the difference between 'lag' and 'no-skill'. Although if the lag is really bad, I'll see them walking into obvious traps, like a darkfire block in plain sight for 2 seconds.

Though do DO dislike people who take it like:

-OMFG F*** LAG.
-This F*** lag is F***

Those sort of people I just take as having no skill but use lag as an excuse.

But people who take lag like:

-/sigh This lag is getting really annoying...
-Dammit, lagged into a status trap.
-laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag (This one can be a little annoying, but I can understand their frustration.

I assume they're actually lagging, and are trying to deal with it.

I can only tell if someone's lagging if they do really obviously laggy stuff, like walking into a wall for longer than 'normal'.

But otherwise, I don't mind laggers at all. SO long as there's only one lagger with me, I'd try my best to carry them through the stages even if they were complete strangers.

Mon, 01/30/2012 - 19:24

Asthix

Well

It will always be a gamble joining a random party, between those who who don't enjoy laggy players and those who don't mind.

I like to play with random T1 teams sometimes because I want new people to have a good time and come back, so I will put up with lag.

I have some EU friends, and we don't play together much anymore because of the lag issue between servers now. But, we are accepting of each others lag when we do. So my advice is to make more friends and play with them. You will find ones that you play well with, regardless of lag. Yes, you will find those you don't play well with, but just don't borrow anything to them and you will come away able to tell more readily who's who.

As for the technical bits, when you lag, if you were moving, you will continue to move in that direction until you regain control. To others, you will be running into a wall, or dead trying. If you were not moving at the time of cutoff, then you will be AFK, or Away from Keyboard as they say.

Mon, 01/30/2012 - 19:38

Myllakka

---

I have nothing but respect for laggy players who do just as well as I do in Clockworks. Before the EU servers, I had no idea, but now that I've ran a couple of times on those servers, I now know how freakin' annoying lag is. If someone lags a lot and dies a lot due to it, I'd be a bit annoyed, but it can't really be helped.

Mon, 01/30/2012 - 19:38

Fehzor

I get lag sometimes. I hate

I get lag sometimes. I hate it, because then people think I'm a terrible player, and I die.

Mon, 01/30/2012 - 21:44

Kurowolfe

Ok, got some responses

@Psychodestroyer - Yeah, even I find the ones who rages about lag annoying, but I guess it might be because they rarely lag, and they're not used to it when it happens.

@Asthix - Well, I do get friend requests from people, but I usually get the beggars, 'sudden traders', and basically just trolls, so I'm a little apprehensive about accepting them nowadays. About the cut off thing, I can only tell it is happening when the party and monsters darts/teleports around, run across walls or the monsters are suddenly not moving. The best I can do is shield till the lag wave reduces.

@Myllakka - Imagine having to face that everyday. It gets frustrating at times, but now I just take a deep breath, and say to myself "It can;'t be helped, I've tried my best." It does help.

@Fehzor - Everyone hates it, even me. I just tolerate it XD

Favourable responses so far, but looking forward for more feedback

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 01:03

Psychodestroyer

...

"Yeah, even I find the ones who rages about lag annoying, but I guess it might be because they rarely lag, and they're not used to it when it happens."

Not likely with the ones I know. I joined one who I had added as a friend, and thinking back, I have no-idea why I did.

He had higher grade equipment then me, he died more than me, he kept cursing about how bad his lag was, he bugged me to rev him while he was dead, and he threatened to kick me if I didn't get on the lift instead of reving a dead teammate.

Needless to say, I unadded him immediately after going up after that.

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 01:29

Metagenic

It boosts my ego

I also live in Asia, and have to deal with extreme lag spikes, especially in Firestorm Citadel. However, today I did the 4 depths of FSC (not counting Vanaduke) and only took 8 bars of damage in total, battling through intensely terrible framerates, floor hazards, and hordes of angry zombies. Therefore, I can state with concrete evidence that I have much more raw skill than almost every other person playing Spiral Knights, and am in a league of my own.

^ the last line was a joke, don't take it seriously

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 02:42

Psycho-Dani

Is silly at times

How annoying lag can be. Before EU servers (Am a brit :U) I'd Lag my little a-o off and eventually I learnt to play to it, be it I still found my way to the occasional trap, shadow fire was a bit of a pain, and the old slags turning on me made it impossible to get my shield up because it didn't register fast enough. Like Psycho said @#1, there are some that have lag, learnt to play to it, and gain skills that way. Those that do have that problem and ignore it are obvious, because they'll do something like make jokes of it, or just give the occsaional "Efff."

If I was running a party and had a lagger (Playing on EU servers so my american friends suffer like I did >:D), and I don't mind giving one a helping push, but when you're the only one in the party with a good ping it kinda takes the biscuit a bit.

Side note, one thing I do hate is when people mix up "Lag" and "Bad FPS", really grinds my gears.

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 05:58

Kalaina-Elderfall

I don't lag much, but on the

I don't lag much, but on the occasions when it drops to one bar for whatever reason, the game pretty much becomes unplayable to me. So people who have to deal with that kind of thing frequently have my sympathy. I don't usually mind bad players, and I don't mind laggy players either. As for the using lag as an excuse for poor play, I really don't care whether or not you have lag or you're just bad or what. If you're generally pleasant, I don't mind either way, and if you're generally unpleasant, it's going to bother me regardless of the reason for the poor play.

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 09:25

#10

Lukehandkooler

This game to me is a very

This game to me is a very relaxing escape from MMO's with intensive theorycrafting, progression, and fierce elitism. Being a "gunslinger priest" no not from the guild, but one who takes minimal damage and is usually well stocked in health, outside of FSC (which I havent even completed due to reasons of my own) I will gladly carry any player who is cordial and doesnt spam/enrage if I dont rez them promptly.

~Lucas

Thu, 02/02/2012 - 03:12

#11

Nergee

im a lagasaurus

i always lag, and i live in cali with some decent cable internet. its a constant 2 bars for me, sometimes 1. sometimes it'll say 3 bars when it feels like 1 bar though, not sure whats going on there. when its 3 bars and feels like 3 bars, its some damn good play time. i've never seen 4 bars except on other people's screen shots. D: i find it ridiculous considering that i used to play l4d2 a lot and never lagged on it.

i've seen people lag, but i dont know if people see me lagging. for instance i'll run far past the vitapod they told me to get and i have to loop back around to get it. i've seen people run into walls for a few seconds, its amusing when im not dead and they are the last ones standing :P. to counter lag i typically stand still and just shield. it seems that even if the game isnt exactly responding or showing me whats going on, sometimes orders can go through and so i just shield. occasionally i've noticed lag just spamming whatever i was doing last, doing annoying things like using my full pokey stick combos in pvp. with max asi this doesnt matter much in the clockworks as i swing DA around in FSC. i've learned to simply reposition myself in safer areas to attack, so even if theres a lag spike for 2 seconds i'll most likely remain unharmed. its helped me solo fsc multiple times despite my lag conditions.

with the last patch i would literally lag for a solid 10 seconds and see absolutely nothing except enemies walking straight through walls and bizarre happenings of that nature, and this happened a handful of times. it happened to no one else in the party, and was rather annoying because i was heating gear. OOO the last patches were great, but what happened with this most recent one?? i really hope i dont see that lag again...

Thu, 02/02/2012 - 19:37

#12

Kurowolfe

Hmm... a conclusion perhaps?

@Psychodestroyer: Yeah, that kinda sucked, doesn't it? Sometimes I wonder if this is how they actually behave in real life... disturbing, in a sense. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt though, and generally just try to tolerate them without saying anything about their uncouth behaviour.

@Metagenic: That's quite an achievement, I must say! I generally burned myself to death in there : p

@Psycho-Dani: Exactly what happened to me. I learned a lot while trying to adapt to the lag, and I inadvertently learned the shield cancelling technique without even knowing what it is until a guildmate pointed that out to me. I do wonder what will happen if an Asian server is set up, and you guys have to come here, since I remember seeing somewhere that distance is a significant factor that causes lag. xp

@Kalaina-Elderfall: *nods* Yeah, I actually prefer playing with someone who's laggy/bad but is affable than someone who plays beautifully but flaunts his skills and makes fun of the other. And thank you XD

@Lukehandkooler: I don't play a lot of games (and SK is only my second MMO, personal reasons) so I can't comment on that. And that's good~

@Nergee: It's funny, but after I've posted this, I actually encountered some others who actually lags more than me, and all the symptoms described so far had been observed. I also heard from a few others that they are experiencing more lags recently, but I can't really confirm that.

Well, not much, but I think I can come to a simple conclusion that most wouldn't mind having a laggy player in their party, and would even assist them as much as they can, given that the lagging person doesn't create a ruckus and curses the living daylights out of everyone. That's comforting to know, even if it might not be the general view of the whole Knights population in Haven. Welp, more random partying for me then X3

Thu, 02/02/2012 - 19:55

#13

Metagenic

@Kurowolfe

It wasn't really an achievement, as I was VERY nervous and holding my shield up all the time. Took me around 2.5 hours to do it.

Thu, 02/02/2012 - 20:24

#14

Radarblue

I should do a hop-in JK run to see how others react to my lag, actually. I've been solo-ing all the while and I wanna find out what weird things they see me doing.

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Your opinion on laggy players