Protection prayers in PvP and PvM

[Uim elon]

Ok initially I didn't care which way it went but then I realized that to make this happen it'd no longer be possible to use your XP drops to see what you hit (before the actual hit marker) and therefore I'm not a huge fan actually

Melee animation to hitsplat is too short for this to matter.

It’ll mainly matter with range and magic from a distance (which is rarely used to stack people out)

[Raj]

Melee animation to hitsplat is too short for this to matter.

It’ll mainly matter with range and magic from a distance (which is rarely used to stack people out)

Spoiler: show

[Mike]

The main thing I have deducted in the comments so far is, basically, prayer and hit calculations work fine on PkHonor but when you have a high ping it can lead to issues because you cannot pray in time.

Many Europeans probably have a ping of about 100 - 200ms since our server is located in North America. As a European, I once tried to play League of Legends on a North America server and my ping was about 200ms, making the game much harder to play for me, despite otherwise having a stable connection. In OSRS and in RSPS, it's far less noticeable, because 200ms is a third of a game tick (600ms). That also means European players on an American server will barely notice this delay.

However, it can indeed be an issue for switching prayers in time. If you have a 200ms ping and you see an animation being performed by an NPC, that actually means the animation was already being performed 200ms earlier. Then even if you immediately click to activate your prayer, it'll take another 200ms before that prayer activation reaches the server. In other words, because of the slowness of the animation visual to reach you and the prayer activation to reach the server, that 200ms ping just caused your prayer activation to arrive 400ms later, or close to a full game tick later than it would for a North American player.
Either way, except for Jad, if you see the enemy perform an animation, it's already too late to pray against it.

If our server does indeed work correctly in terms of timing and when damage is calculated, I believe the best solution might be to add a slight delay (for example 1 game tick) between starting the attack animation and doing the calculation of the damage. This means that XP drops will be delayed by 1 tick, but also give the defender 1 extra game tick to switch prayers in time for an incoming hit.

Do you think this approach would solve the issues, or is there more to this? Or might this lead to issues, for example North American players being able to pray against an attack that they should not have been allowed to pray against in the first place?

[Scrap iron]

The main thing I have deducted in the comments so far is, basically, prayer and hit calculations work fine on PkHonor but when you have a high ping it can lead to issues because you cannot pray in time.

Many Europeans probably have a ping of about 100 - 200ms since our server is located in North America. As a European, I once tried to play League of Legends on a North America server and my ping was about 200ms, making the game much harder to play for me, despite otherwise having a stable connection. In OSRS and in RSPS, it's far less noticeable, because 200ms is a third of a game tick (600ms). That also means European players on an American server will barely notice this delay.

However, it can indeed be an issue for switching prayers in time. If you have a 200ms ping and you see an animation being performed by an NPC, that actually means the animation was already being performed 200ms earlier. Then even if you immediately click to activate your prayer, it'll take another 200ms before that prayer activation reaches the server. In other words, because of the slowness of the animation visual to reach you and the prayer activation to reach the server, that 200ms ping just caused your prayer activation to arrive 400ms later, or close to a full game tick later than it would for a North American player.
Either way, except for Jad, if you see the enemy perform an animation, it's already too late to pray against it.

If our server does indeed work correctly in terms of timing and when damage is calculated, I believe the best solution might be to add a slight delay (for example 1 game tick) between starting the attack animation and doing the calculation of the damage. This means that XP drops will be delayed by 1 tick, but at the same time allow the defender to switch prayers in time for an incoming hit.

Do you think this approach would solve the issues, or is there more to this?

I haven't played runescape since I think right when osrs became a thing again, and I swear I remembered that if you had the correct prayer on before the projectile hit you it was blocked. I was watching a video and I guess I was mistaken.

Video Here w/ saved time stamp 14:30

https://youtu.be/zOPiWzdCUdY?t=870

Can see he is flicking the prayers before or as the attack animation is happening. As for any delay added I think we should maybe test it for a a couple days before making it a thing.

[Stale fish1]

The main thing I have deducted in the comments so far is, basically, prayer and hit calculations work fine on PkHonor but when you have a high ping it can lead to issues because you cannot pray in time.

Many Europeans probably have a ping of about 100 - 200ms since our server is located in North America. As a European, I once tried to play League of Legends on a North America server and my ping was about 200ms, making the game much harder to play for me, despite otherwise having a stable connection. In OSRS and in RSPS, it's far less noticeable, because 200ms is a third of a game tick (600ms). That also means European players on an American server will barely notice this delay.

However, it can indeed be an issue for switching prayers in time. If you have a 200ms ping and you see an animation being performed by an NPC, that actually means the animation was already being performed 200ms earlier. Then even if you immediately click to activate your prayer, it'll take another 200ms before that prayer activation reaches the server. In other words, because of the slowness of the animation visual to reach you and the prayer activation to reach the server, that 200ms ping just caused your prayer activation to arrive 400ms later, or close to a full game tick later than it would for a North American player.
Either way, except for Jad, if you see the enemy perform an animation, it's already too late to pray against it.

If our server does indeed work correctly in terms of timing and when damage is calculated, I believe the best solution might be to add a slight delay (for example 1 game tick) between starting the attack animation and doing the calculation of the damage. This means that XP drops will be delayed by 1 tick, but also give the defender 1 extra game tick to switch prayers in time for an incoming hit.

Do you think this approach would solve the issues, or is there more to this? Or might this lead to issues, for example North American players being able to pray against an attack that they should not have been allowed to pray against in the first place?

I have a constant 300 ping (from australia) which I'm completely fine with, I think if you where to implement such a change in PvP it would create an unfair playing field for those with better ping.

I don't think server mechanics should be changed to adapt for us with a higher ping, atleast in a PvP circumstance, however I am interested to see what the outcome of the inferno will be as I'm about 75% sure that even if get decent with the mechanics that'll be unable to complete it as I know there are a few waves that require a lot of precision.

May I suggest possibly making these changes on a test server and letting a few people on to see what these changes may entail?

[Respire1337]

@Stale fish1 of course we will have a separate test server. With changes so critical to the way PvM and PvP works, some problems with appear, so thorough testing needs to be the priority.

@Mike on the subject of adding 1 tick delay to the damage calculation, I am personally in favour of this. I have noticed at least a 1 tick delay for the past 4 years, even though the servers got moved to USA only a few years back? The delay has always been there, but some players were affected less than others. I would love to have a test server with people from across the world so we can have the full spectrum of pings, in order to better identify and fix the problems ( like Adam, Me, Pkh Takeover, etc ). Looking forward to it. While you're there, you could also throw in the ( if finished ) weapons remembering the last attack style used, so we can test that too.

[Scrap iron]

While you're there, you could also throw in the ( if finished ) weapons remembering the last attack style used, so we can test that too.

lol yea this

[Ross]

The main thing I have deducted in the comments so far is, basically, prayer and hit calculations work fine on PkHonor but when you have a high ping it can lead to issues because you cannot pray in time.

Many Europeans probably have a ping of about 100 - 200ms since our server is located in North America. As a European, I once tried to play League of Legends on a North America server and my ping was about 200ms, making the game much harder to play for me, despite otherwise having a stable connection. In OSRS and in RSPS, it's far less noticeable, because 200ms is a third of a game tick (600ms). That also means European players on an American server will barely notice this delay.

However, it can indeed be an issue for switching prayers in time. If you have a 200ms ping and you see an animation being performed by an NPC, that actually means the animation was already being performed 200ms earlier. Then even if you immediately click to activate your prayer, it'll take another 200ms before that prayer activation reaches the server. In other words, because of the slowness of the animation visual to reach you and the prayer activation to reach the server, that 200ms ping just caused your prayer activation to arrive 400ms later, or close to a full game tick later than it would for a North American player.
Either way, except for Jad, if you see the enemy perform an animation, it's already too late to pray against it.

If our server does indeed work correctly in terms of timing and when damage is calculated, I believe the best solution might be to add a slight delay (for example 1 game tick) between starting the attack animation and doing the calculation of the damage. This means that XP drops will be delayed by 1 tick, but also give the defender 1 extra game tick to switch prayers in time for an incoming hit.

Do you think this approach would solve the issues, or is there more to this? Or might this lead to issues, for example North American players being able to pray against an attack that they should not have been allowed to pray against in the first place?

Adding delays and changes to combat in order to accommodate for user input lag is archaic, you can look at World of Warcraft "Leeway" and "Spell batching" for some examples, both very janky mechanics to deal with dial-up internet speeds back in the day.
Ultimately changes like this are going to benefit some players but any player whose ping is ok or any new players for that matter who are used to the "proper" way of flicking damage on the correct game ticks are going to be frustrated and confused, likely causing them to just chalk it up to lag regardless.

The only real solution is to leave the attack ticks as they are and introduce a European server to accommodate for the ping discrepancies. Obviously this is financially taxing and likely unreasonable so the true outcome is that players with a higher ping will just have to struggle or learn to deal with it.

[Iron adam]

If our server does indeed work correctly in terms of timing and when damage is calculated, I believe the best solution might be to add a slight delay (for example 1 game tick) between starting the attack animation and doing the calculation of the damage. This means that XP drops will be delayed by 1 tick, but also give the defender 1 extra game tick to switch prayers in time for an incoming hit.

Do you think this approach would solve the issues, or is there more to this? Or might this lead to issues, for example North American players being able to pray against an attack that they should not have been allowed to pray against in the first place?

I think this would create way more issues than it would fix. Players with low ping would be able to protect against all damage in most PvM situations, giving them an unfair advantage.

In pvp, from the perspective of a player with low ping, they would be hitting their opponent off prayer. But from the high ping opponent's perspective, prayers are on for all of the hits. The low ping player is now going to get frustrated that the high ping player has the advantage. From their perspective, the high ping player is able to block damage while not having the correct prayers up.

The other thing to consider is melee damage and range/mage from 1 square away. These attacks don't have travel time and hit instantaneously. Then a player with low ping would have to know to wait to change prayers until after the attack animation has started.

Things are perfect right now for players with low ping. The solution for players with high ping is simple in PvM: learn how early you need to have your prayer activated and anticipate the attacks. This is the same exact thing players with low ping do, just needs to be 200ms earlier. The only PvM situations where prayer flicking is relevant is ones where the NPCs attack in patterns, thus making it easy to predict. There really is no solution in PvP that wouldn't just shift the burden to the low ping players.

[Nazuths]

If our server does indeed work correctly in terms of timing and when damage is calculated, I believe the best solution might be to add a slight delay (for example 1 game tick) between starting the attack animation and doing the calculation of the damage. This means that XP drops will be delayed by 1 tick, but also give the defender 1 extra game tick to switch prayers in time for an incoming hit.

Do you think this approach would solve the issues, or is there more to this? Or might this lead to issues, for example North American players being able to pray against an attack that they should not have been allowed to pray against in the first place?

I think this would create way more issues than it would fix. Players with low ping would be able to protect against all damage in most PvM situations, giving them an unfair advantage.

In pvp, from the perspective of a player with low ping, they would be hitting their opponent off prayer. But from the high ping opponent's perspective, prayers are on for all of the hits. The low ping player is now going to get frustrated that the high ping player has the advantage. From their perspective, the high ping player is able to block damage while not having the correct prayers up.

The other thing to consider is melee damage and range/mage from 1 square away. These attacks don't have travel time and hit instantaneously. Then a player with low ping would have to know to wait to change prayers until after the attack animation has started.

Things are perfect right now for players with low ping. The solution for players with high ping is simple in PvM: learn how early you need to have your prayer activated and anticipate the attacks. This is the same exact thing players with low ping do, just needs to be 200ms earlier. The only PvM situations where prayer flicking is relevant is ones where the NPCs attack in patterns, thus making it easy to predict. There really is no solution in PvP that wouldn't just shift the burden to the low ping players.

Agreed!