2014-01-05, 03:35 AM
hadriel Wrote:For example, this game is very client-server transaction intensive, even though the overall bandwidth is relatively small. Most actions require this, and is unavoidable, but this puts latency-high players at a major disadvantage -- a player with a latency will never win a player with very low latency in the New Year traditional game with the falling food thing even with the point stealing trick. It simply isn't data-efficient. Some other issues include the inability to pot when looting, just to name other small quibbles.
Actually, the main problem of the game is that it's not client-server communication intensive enough.
The client does a lot of work on its own, and then tells the server concisely what happened, and the server accepts it as gospel.
Over the years this has led to such things as teleport/fly hacks (because local map movement is done by the client), no-delay and full-map-attack hacks (because attacking is done by the client), vac hacks (because mob movement is handled by the clients), and so on. Nexon patches these on a case by case basis, adding checks that what the client says makes sense (which gives rise to hilarious inconsistencies like killing an enemy when your client shows you MISSing it, and failing to kill when you hit way over its HP), but there's always one more hole.
The game would be a lot less hackable if every keystroke and mouseclick were sent to the server, who would then decide what happens as a result of that action. The client would only handle the display.
Unfortunately, this would make the game impossible for anyone not at a Korean level of connectivity.