Battlefield 3 to Introduce Competitive "Matches" Feature

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Battlefield 3 to Introduce Competitive "Matches" Feature

Post by Dan @ 09:04am 06/07/12 | 5 Comments

A new entry in the official Battlefield Blog brings word that a new "Matches" feature is coming to Battlefield 3, with the intention of streamlining the coordination of competitive multiplayer games.

The feature will be offered on all three platforms, and the blog explains that it will require the coordinating player to be "actively renting a dedicated server" -- a noob-friendly way of saying that the player organising the match needs to have the rcon password for the intended game server.

The interface allows a host to pre-configure the match name, start time, game mode, team size and map rotations and all of the individual game variables (including unlocks) ahead of time. The match creator invites players to their team and nominates a team-leader for the opposition to populate the game.

A release date for the Matches feature has yet to be announced, but you can check out the blog feature for the complete overview.

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badfunkstripe
Posted 01:51pm 07/7/12

The problem is, that with the horrible netcode. The game can never be a game seriously played competitive.

This was only highlighted more so than ever in Close Quarters. It's modern warfare 3 bad or worse in latency.

Duck behind cover, a second later die.

In a fire fight, where you successively get to cover, around a corner. Die before you see the person.

For those that don't know, it has client side hit detection. Where the kill is calculated on peoples local machines from what they see.

So an example would be, you step out into a corridor, look and see no one at the other end. Head back to cover.

This happens on your machine. It's sent to the server. The server then sends it to the other players. If someone on the other end has a higher ping, the time between them being sent what happened from when you did it is increased.

So from their perspective, at the other end of the corridor. They could step out, while you're out. Aim and shoot you. Kill you. You just die from what happened on their end. Even though you're behind cover and there was no one at the end of the corridor when you were out there.

So it makes reacting in these circumstances impossible.

That's an extreme example. Most often it happens like, you're looking out the corridor. All of a sudden you're dead or being shot at. Due to the delay meaning they stepped out, saw you and started firing before their position got sent to you, for you to react.

So the pings, if you're moving or not. All changes who has advantage and so yeah.. can't be competitive.

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Pinky
Posted 02:21pm 07/7/12

It's not "horrible netcode" as anyone that has done anything with networking knows - it's simply the nature of the beast. Particularly when you start to incorporate a physics model, where you have to make some serious compromises about what calculations are done on the server, what on the client, and how results are interpolated on the server.

I really hate the term "horrible netcode" which you see flung around all the time by people that have no idea what they are talking about.

It simply demonstrates you have no understanding of TCP, UDP, multibody physics and collision integrated with a large timestep in a multiplayer environment and the massive amount of errors all of this introduces.

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infi
Posted 02:23pm 07/7/12

I think it works fine, I play heaps of clan matches on it. Sure you get a bit of lag but you are playing against people a thousand km's away from you.

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parabol
Posted 03:25pm 07/7/12

I really hate the term "horrible netcode" which you see flung around all the time by people that have no idea what they are talking about.

Nah, Battlefield's netcode is not that great. From what I can understand the client can decide who gets hit with what damage/weapon without the server doing much sanity checking to see if that makes any sense (e.g. knifing an F18 pilot from the ground from across the map). Fairly sure you couldn't do that if the hit detection was server-side only.

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