I am specifically referring to that moment where you've watched your enemy for the past 10 seconds while getting into position to open fire for the kill. Then, all of a sudden, seemingly as your first and second shot hits the player, they start lagging quite conveniently ALL OVER THE PLACE. Happens with infantry battles. Happens in air battles most notably. I believe it to be lag switching, which is an exploit I abhor. Im always hesitant to call a player out on this behaviour, or report them, as it may be just lucky for them on network latency front, but with some it seems so blatant. Its blatant when you have observed them being completely unlaggy for quite a while, and suddenly they start lagging when they take the first hit. Other instances of lagswitching I think comes when for instance I'm running for cover and make it to cover, and then about 5 seconds after concealing myself against all enemies, I die. I think when they hit their lag switch on their end, your character just maintains his pre-lagswitched-vector, so on the lagswitchers screen it looks like you never turned the corner to take cover, resulting in easy shots. Once they've made enough shots into your exposed ***, they turn off the lagswitch and you drop down dead wherever you are, as their damage registers to the server. Im just looking for confirmation from other players that they think this is a "thing", because Im not sure whether I'm just seeing things, as I have not heard anyone else mention lagswitching as a performance enhancing exploit before on this forum. Also Im hoping that maybe SOE could measure lag spikes on players perhaps, and see if there is a correlation between the enemy alpha strike first damage hit and the lag spike. That way we would know it is definately player induced.
It's a thing, but it might very well be caused by the predictor code. Your client assumes that the player will do more or less the same thing he's doing right now in the half-second or so it takes for you to see what he's doing on HIS client. He gets hit, jerks and does something unexpected, and when your client gets that update, it looks like he starts warping, while it's actually just what you see on your screen trying to catch up to what he sees on his. Of course there ARE people out there with lag switches and other cheats. But probably not very many.
I dont think its possible to use a lag switch as you have to be the host of the server for it to have any effect from what i recall. Thats the main reason why console users use a lag switch as theres no dedicated servers for most of the console games. And no hacks for consoles as theres no way of modifying the game in a closed system.
Thr server attempts to predict where a player will be. This is why ADAD was a huge problem in Planetside 1, and seemingly one still in Planetside 2.
You don't have to be the host for lag switching to work. You just have to temporarily limit your bandwidth, which causes either the person you're shooting at to stop moving, or your own character to act sporadically, depending on whether you limit your upstream or downstream bandwidth. I do think that it's "a thing", but I'm not so sure that as many people do it intentionally as OP perceives. I think a big part of it is that SOE really needs to invest in a few more servers...
I've noticed that on some players as well. All is well when you're setting yourself up to ambush them, especially in the air.. then after the first hit.. oh look, warping all over the place... Later.. I'm AAing targets... He's coming in all smooth like getting kills in the area easy as pie... I wait my chance for h im to commit too much, and I open both barrels... Oh he's not getting away now, no time. Do your best extended burster mags! Oh look! Suddenly he's all warpy again! The low health must have suddenly corrupted the connection between him and I!... oh look suddenly he's 1km away in a blink!!! This dude did this like 3 times, so I reported him. Its also observed on some folks (the ones I'm already suspicious of, go figure), that are smooth as butter when ambushing your ***, and when you get the jump on them. oh look they're blinking all over the place...
Dieing after getting behind cover isn't a lag switch issue. You can thank the client side hitreg for that. I've seen the same, mainly with pilots. The second they start taking damage, they begin warping like crazy. It also doesn't help that there is no ping cap for servers. Trying to hit some dude from Russia while he sprints, ADAD all over the place can be quite annoying.
I see this all of the time. At least once per play session I have the jump on somebody and 3 second later im dead and I just cant figure out what happened. I have a super fast PC and a 75/35 internet connection, it just shouldn't happen. On my screen I am shooting right at them, but they appear to be shooting behind me (where I just was) and somehow they are hitting me and I die.
