In a twitch based, real-time game like VO, having a good connection is very important. In races, or in chases, where shorter load times get you get one up on your opponent/competition, this is particularly apparent. Of course, racing skill and choice of ship matters. But load times have a pretty big effect as well.

Due to distances from the VO server, it is not possible for players from Australia or India or even Europe to have as fast a load time as a player from the US, even with a similar internet speed. This difference might be pretty minor in combat, but mounts up in chases/races. Obviously, moving the VO servers doesn't make sense. You're just giving the load time advantage to someone somewhere else, and of course it's expensive or whatever. You also can't move the players (there's really no need to explain this). Hence, to bridge the gap:

Force load times. You might be able to load the sector instantly, but you are forced to wait maybe 2 seconds mid jump. Applicable to everyone. If your load time itself extends beyond that, well, you can't be helped. But 2 seconds would be, IMHO, a decent compromise time.

Removes most of the advantage proximity to the server or a better internet connection would give you. Obviously beyond a point this still applies, but when two racers with similar connection are competing, one shouldn't have an advantage over the other simply because of where they live. We're one single universe. Let's try to not make real-life location matter as far as possible.

+1

Not sure about 2 seconds though, feels way too long. Somewhere below 1s, which could accommodate most RTT. Too long and it becomes a pain to travel anywhere.

-1

Pretty sure latency is the least of the factors affecting your sector load speed, and slowing everybody's travel times in the game down for an event that only few participate in seems a bit over the top.

Latency and hardware both influence the load times, and both should not be grounds for an advantage/disadvantage in in-game activities. They do have an influence in other stuff as well, particularly PvP. This aspect is just one which I think could be "fixed".

If traveling is going to become such an issue with a second or two added to each jump, maybe this could be applied specifically during CSR? It would have to be applied throughout the CSR route though, since the hunters should suffer the same handicap as the racers during the event. This of course does not solve the problem in pursuit situations, where someone with a faster load time gets a second or two of preparation time before their pursuer/pursued jumps in.

Pretty sure latency is the least of the factors affecting your sector load speed

I have a pretty fast PC and internet, but I have a higher latency due to location. My load times are not good compared to other racers. I don't run any plugins either. I'm not sure what other factors could be affecting it, but latency could definitely be one of them.

If it's possible to slow down load times for racers, I'd be fine with that.

> If traveling is going to become such an issue with a second or two added to each jump, maybe this could be applied specifically during CSR? It would have to be applied throughout the CSR route though,

I'd be fine with applying it to everyone in game during those times, I just think it's overkill outside of that

> I have a pretty fast PC and internet, but I have a higher latency due to location. My load times are not good compared to other racers. I don't run any plugins either. I'm not sure what other factors could be affecting it, but latency could definitely be one of them.

Dunno, at 150ms latency my jumps are instant. But if you don't run plugins then you'll automatically jump slower than anyone running some plugin to automatically jump them. your reaction time can never be as fast as the code.

My latency is typically in the range of 230-350 ms, depending on factors like where I am (within the same city), how many devices I'm running on my mobile hotspot and how many clients I am running. Even with Preload All Resources on Startup turned on, it takes me ~1 second to jump. More in high load sectors like levi, unrat dent or Unknown system. This gap may not mean much when traveling, bit in a race it mounts up to 20-30 seconds depending on ion storms or vectoring.

There already is a forced load time for races. I'll try to dig up the previous suggestions thread and news post. This is the reason why races now will never beat the race times before the update.

edit:

https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/37133
and
Add a small delay to even out load times.

VO 1.8.544 includes:
During the operation of the Corporate Sector Run (game event), all systems that are part of the race-course will have a minimum of a two-second jump time for all players (sectors and wormholes).

A bit off topic, but the current best race times are better than the best race times from before the update afaik. Regardless, in the context of racing a forced load time makes sense, where it is already implemented. Everywhere else the goal as stated by Incarnate in the above linked post is to make differences in loadtime irrelevant, so a forced loadtime for normal gameplay isn't needed.

If possible we should test whether the forced load time during CSR is actually working (meaning is the 2-second delay enough or do players in distant areas still suffer due to their location). I will record a video of myself during the next CSR and post it here. If possible, someone with a good connection and location near the server, please do so as well.

Where’s the line drawn? 2 seconds is already significant when it comes to waiting - it is immediately noticeable during the race vs out of it. I imagine it was chosen because it’s the average load time. Anything less would only allow those with best connections to benefit, and any more would essentially slow the whole game down for the sake of those with significantly worse connections.

I really don’t want to just disparage you, but you yourself say you’re far from the game server, on a mobile hotspot, moving around your city. None of these on their own is ideal. But all three apply to you, and there’s no avoiding it: It really seems like this suggestion is for a very small minority and not the game. The number of those negatively affected would greatly outnumber those positively affected.

What’s more, every time you add a delay you reduce the amount that vectoring helps in the race. With the exception of really big increases, it would become advantageous to simply make direct jumps no matter what.

And finally, I see you’re suggesting adding it across the board. The current 2 second delay already adds about a minute to my times that I achieve when practicing out of the race. You add that to every single jump in the game, and adding more than two seconds, and you’re actually adding hours of waiting to people’s playtimes very quickly when you add it up.

-1

I'm not moving around the city *while* racing. My distance from the server can't really be helped seeing as I'm almost diametrically opposite to New York.
While it does have an effect even on normal gameplay, the effect is particularly noticeable in races. Only implementing in races would also work. I only want to test *how much* of a difference the distance from the server makes during CSR.
Players from outside the USA are not a minority in the game. There are many players from Europe, India, Australia, and Indonesia. All of whom are affected by the delay, to different extents. If the load times really are having such a major affect, wouldn't it be better to increase the forced delay and reduce the effect of real-world factors? Only during CSR.

If latency was really responsible for 2s or longer delays on a sector load then the game badly needed optimizing. How many request/response pairs do you need for a sector load when all assets are local and the server only needs to notify once it finished transferring you from one node to another?! Information about other dynamic objects in sector you are constantly receiving, anyway, so that's not even sector change related.

So I'm still not buying it. It's not about distance. A bad connection with lots of packet loss - sure, that would do it. And slow asset loading on your device for whatever reason will most likely be the main factor.

You are saying yourself that running multiple clients increases your ping dramatically so you are slowing yourself down. Why hold other players accountable for that by slowing them down as well?

All that said, it would however be interesting if the devs published actual avg. load times of the racers. Maybe even consider removing the artificial delay but normalize final race time based on the load times, if that's acceptable to the racers (it's not very transparent so probably not).

I'm not running multiple clients *during* CSR. When I run it at other times my ping goes up. I try to keep my device as clean as possible during CSR. No downloads, no other tabs. And still it takes a higher load time for jumps.

If the load times really are having such a major affect, wouldn't it be better to increase the forced delay and reduce the effect of real-world factors? Only during CSR.

It's already been stated that your request from the OP, of a 2-second minimum load-time floor for CSR participants, already exists. I would think that's what you want..

If someone finds that the delay isn't working, for some reason, they can report that as a Bug. But, we did test it, and as far as I'm aware, it is working. I don't see any reason to increase it, and we did choose 2 seconds based on measurements of overseas players at the time.

There are other techniques and factors in load-time, which also include the specific device hardware limitations and the time to load assets from "disk" into memory, as well as flying technique and timing, and so on. We have phones with super-fast flash, and others that have rather slow flash, and then some people use terrible SD-cards that are insanely slow. Be sure you fully explore all of that, before pointing at the existing delays as being flawed or broken.

Wasn't aware of the existing delay, probably why I felt load times were slow since I was online during a race. No need to add an artificial delay for everyone else then.

Could a metric be added to track load times? Or maybe doable with the SECTOR_CHANGED/SECTOR_LOADING/SECTOR_LOADED etc for those more familiar with these events