Hey guys.&nbsp; There&#039;s a couple issues here and I think I can address both of them.<br /><br />[size=20pt]Server Choice[/size]<br /><br />The IDL board debated this issue specifically, and we decided on the current system (TT only) for the following reasons:<br /><br />[list]<br />[li]The IDL site currently requires server logs, and it is much easier for Ladna to get them when only dealing with TT[/li]<br />[li]Mediating server disagreements is tiring[/li]<br />[/list]<br /><br />I don&#039;t speak for the board, but I&#039;m open to other ideas as long as they keep the above in mind.&nbsp; I do intend to have the site support client logs at some point, but really the bigger issue is server disagreements.&nbsp; We can barely schedule games!&nbsp; And does anyone remember WAD vs. TCM last season?<br /><br />[size=20pt]Server Quality[/size]<br /><br />The only way I know to address this issue is point by point, so here goes.<br /><br />[size=15pt]Your connection sucks[/size]<br /><br />The internet isn&#039;t perfect, but if we&#039;re looking at relative connection quality, 99.999999999% of the problems occur in the 1st mile between a user and their uplink.&nbsp; To put it in specific terms, it&#039;s an absolute miracle your shitty $10 Taiwanese modem and the shitty copper buried in the acidic ground (or god forbid in the open air) don&#039;t drop packets left and right; and if we&#039;re comparing the quality between that setup and 100s of $1000s worth of fiber equipment, I&#039;d say your setup is going to lose.&nbsp; Combined with our testing and our host&#039;s testing of the network, it&#039;s safe to say that TT&#039;s network is almost never the problem.&nbsp; If it IS the problem it&#039;s not intermittent, i.e., it will keep you from connecting to the zserv, not make you whiff a few shots here and there.&nbsp; Furthermore, our host is very good about telling us when there are network problems that were either scheduled or not, so we&#039;re always aware of any problems that occur.&nbsp; Thus, whenever we hear complaints, we know whether there&#039;s current network problems.<br /><br />[size=15pt]Then why are some servers better than others?[/size]<br /><br />OK, so it&#039;s safe to say you don&#039;t live within a mile of any ZDaemon server, and because the previous point pretty much applies to all servers, why aren&#039;t they all equally bad/good?<br /><br />The answer is that the Internet isn&#039;t perfect.&nbsp; Normal web traffic (like BitTorrent &amp; HTTP) uses the TCP protocol, which is very chatty.&nbsp; Peers talk back and forth and make sure that all sent packets are received properly and in order.&nbsp; This is why webpages can seem like they take forever and ever to load... but eventually load.&nbsp; On the other hand, ZDaemon uses the UDP protocol, which basically just blasts packets back and forth and doesn&#039;t give a shit whether the receiver actually got them or not.&nbsp; Even if it checked, by the time it realized a packet was missed, anywhere between 20 and 200 milliseconds (or even worse) could have elapsed; can you imagine instantly adding 50ms to your ping?&nbsp; Yikes!&nbsp; All networked games use UDP, and they all deal with the associated problems... which manifest themselves as &quot;lag&quot; and &quot;pl&quot; or &quot;jitter&quot; etc. etc.<br /><br />[size=15pt]But I ping it just fine![/size]<br /><br />There are different &quot;layers&quot; to networking.&nbsp; I won&#039;t get into the details here, but suffice it to say you&#039;re using UDP on top of IP when you&#039;re playing ZDaemon.&nbsp; When you ping, you&#039;re using ICMP, which is on the same level as IP.&nbsp; So when you ping a server, you&#039;re testing a completely different kind of connection than the one you&#039;re using when you connect using ZDaemon.&nbsp; Ping is a good tool for testing latency and plain old ability to reach a server, but past that it&#039;s useless.<br /><br />[size=20pt]Even if all networking conditions were perfect, ZDaemon still sucks[/size]<br /><br />Don&#039;t get me wrong, I&#039;ve got a lot of respect for the ZDaemon dev team, but I&#039;ve played plenty of wired, gigabit LAN games on ZDaemon, and whiffed plenty of shots.&nbsp; I&#039;ve played on almost every ZDaemon server set, from the old doom2.net and DUI San Francisco to Fraghappy &amp; Rampage, and I&#039;ve whiffed on all of them.&nbsp; The fact is that ZDaemon doesn&#039;t register every shot, and your connection or our network has nothing to do with it.&nbsp; I&#039;m not trying to make the (ridiculous) argument that all servers suck equally, I&#039;m saying that there&#039;s a limit to how well a server will &quot;perform&quot;.<br /><br />[size=15pt]But DUI NJ feels so smooth![/size]<br /><br />You probably live on the east coast or close to it.&nbsp; Networking on the east coast (especially around the DC/Philly/New York area) is great, some of the best in the world, and odds are you have a very expensive, high-quality path to DUI NJ.&nbsp; This is also probably the reason so many players liked Red Nexus; it was an east coast server and a lot of ZDaemon players are on the east coast.<br /><br />Unfortunately, with that connection quality comes a higher price.&nbsp; Comparable servers (to TT) on the east coast are over twice as expensive as TT.&nbsp; Additionally, they&#039;re not as smooth for players who don&#039;t live on the east coast.&nbsp; In fact, because the networking in other regions is not as good as east coast networking, east coast players get 2 advantages on those servers: better networking in general and a better path to the server.&nbsp; Or you can say that players from other regions get 2 disadvantages on those servers.&nbsp; Either way it&#039;s unfair.<br /><br />[size=15pt]But Doomed Earth was pretty good too[/size]<br /><br />Well which one, Doomed Earth Chicago or Doomed Earth Dallas?&nbsp; I know a good many players that were unhappy with the Dallas server&#039;s performance, but I don&#039;t really remember too many complaints about Chicago... and that&#039;s due also to the &quot;east coast&quot; phenomenon discussed above.&nbsp; Chicago&#039;s probably the 2nd or 3rd largest Internet hub, so again, the odds are that you have a great connection to all things Chicago.&nbsp; This is especially true for Canadian players; Chicago servers could potentially be even better than a New York server for them, depending upon where in Canada they live.&nbsp; Of course, Chicago shares the cost downside with east coast servers as well.<br /><br />[size=20pt]Some things change, some things remain the same[/size]<br /><br />[size=15pt]The various incarnations of TotalTrash[/size]<br /><br />This is actually the 3rd incarnation of TotalTrash.&nbsp; The first was 1 server and was strictly for ZDaemon.&nbsp; Then Nostar and I went insane and started to host Odamex and Skulltag servers on it, which I consider the 2nd incarnation.&nbsp; We observed some weirdness in terms of server response and couldn&#039;t really pin it down, but we suspect that there&#039;s some strange interaction between Skulltag and ZDaemon servers running on the same machine.&nbsp; Shutting down the Skulltag servers alleviated the problem, so while I don&#039;t understand how such a thing could happen, in our experience there does seem to be some sort of issue.<br /><br />Finally we decided the situation was unacceptable, so we split the Skulltag &amp; Odamex servers off onto their own server, and dedicated a server strictly for ZDaemon use.&nbsp; This is the 3rd and current incarnation.<br /><br />Of course, it&#039;s been quite a while since TT first went up, over a year if I remember correctly.&nbsp; In that time several players have switched ISPs, in some cases more than once; players have gone to college or graduated or made other changes.&nbsp; In any case, the point is that relative to those changes, TT&#039;s network has remained the same -- It&#039;s hosted behind the exact same gateway (I actually checked after the switch because it&#039;s good to be sure) as the 1st and 2nd incarnations.&nbsp; My point is that it&#039;s reasonable to consider that these changes in ISP are responsible for players feeling like TotalTrash quality has declined.&nbsp; And besides, any recent changes made to TT have improved quality, at least IMO compared to when ST &amp; Oda servers were also running on it.<br /><br />[size=15pt]Weather[/size]<br /><br />You&#039;d be surprised how severe weather can impact Internet performance.&nbsp; If anyone remembers late Season 3 when St. Louis was flooding, TT was a mess then.&nbsp; Usually when it&#039;s incredibly cold, rainy or windy here my connection is horrible, sometimes I can&#039;t even load webpages.&nbsp; At the bottom of it, fiber&#039;s laid in the ground and it&#039;s subject to Mother Nature.&nbsp; When you&#039;re talking about sensitive, realtime applications like online gaming (where players can &quot;feel&quot; 20ms... which by itself is doubtful), things like this can be significant.<br /><br />[size=20pt]Specifics[/size]<br /><br />[quote author=Mantis-X link=topic=68.msg583#msg583 date=1232595251]<br />This year in the IDL is gonna be determined by who is fortunate enough to live right in the central US and get a very good ping.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I&#039;m not really sure about this, HumanBones for instance doesn&#039;t live in the Central US and he&#039;s one of the season&#039;s biggest fraggers so far.&nbsp; On the other hand I am midwestern and I suck... but a lot of that is just me ;) .&nbsp; If I had to generalize like this, I&#039;d say that records are more indicative of team preparation, not connection quality.<br /><br />[quote author=Mantis-X link=topic=68.msg583#msg583 date=1232595251]<br />When they first came around, they felt good but slowly degraded over time.... I can&#039;t figure out as to why.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />To be honest, neither can we.&nbsp; For us it&#039;s not happening, so that rules out the server... because if it was the server it would be happening to everyone.&nbsp; Of course, not everyone will take the same network route to TT, but that&#039;s hardly within our control.<br /><br />[quote author=Mantis-X link=topic=68.msg583#msg583 date=1232595251]<br />Also... This idea that a central server is more fair... How so? It just means everyone living in the central US is now gonna get a super low ping and have an advantage over everyone else. As far as server location... They could be on the west coast for all I care as long as the server is STABLE. People seem to forget that ping is only a small part of it and the QUALITY is far more important. I gurantee you that you&#039;ll play far better on a 130-ping solid Euro server than a 70 ping jittery US server.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />This part confuses me, on one hand you&#039;re talking about how a low ping is [b]great[/b], and I agree... but on the other hand you&#039;re talking about &quot;server stability&quot; and how that&#039;s more important than ping....<br /><br />The way I think of it is this, there&#039;s this vague thing that we call &quot;stability&quot; or &quot;quality&quot; &quot;performance&quot; or whatever, but there&#039;s tons of factors that go into it.&nbsp; I&#039;m trying to assert that the factors that we can control, server resources, network connection quality, etc. are all running as well as they can.&nbsp; Short of moving the server to Chicago or the east coast, I&#039;m not sure what else we could do.<br /><br />Red Nexus is a good example of a server that obviously did everything right; east coast players loved it.&nbsp; I, on the other hand, played like garbage on it because my connection to it sucked (I think I went through Virginia or something dumb... but cheap for the network provider I&#039;m sure) and I never wanted to play there.&nbsp; So while I&#039;m sympathetic, I don&#039;t know what you want us to do exactly.&nbsp; I feel like the current situation is the reality of networks and ZDaemon.<br /><br />And with regards to fairness, it&#039;s more fair to non-east coast players because they&#039;re not playing against players while dealing with 2 connection disadvantages (connection quality and server proximity).<br /><br />[quote author=Mantis-X link=topic=68.msg583#msg583 date=1232595251]<br />In the end, I really wish we could get more variety.. Niv has servers in Dallas... DUI still has NJ servers... I&#039;m sure they have one spot to add an IDL server and give some variety. Are there still any California servers? Until we get more variety, it more or less seems like only a couple of teams have a realistic chance this year. I&#039;d love to be proven wrong, but if the first couple of games is any indication... It&#039;s playing out exactly how I figured.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I actually talked to Unfy about hosting IDL servers before we decided on the &quot;1 Server Set&quot; policy, and he was more than happy to oblige.&nbsp; I expect most admins would be except for Domains, I hear he won&#039;t run unadvertised servers unless it&#039;s for DUI purposes, a category IDL doesn&#039;t fall under.&nbsp; However, the problems listed under &quot;Server Choice&quot; above still exist.<br /><br />[quote author=Chain link=topic=68.msg584#msg584 date=1232601225]<br />I agree that there should be some server variety, and I could partly be to blame for the (perhaps temporary?) death of Doomed Earth, which would give a realistic chance to more players towards the south end of the map. However, I don&#039;t think you&#039;re entirely correct that only the midwest/central U.S. IDL players or teams have more of a chance than other teams.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I know this isn&#039;t the point you&#039;re making, but this is one of the reasons we chose St. Louis and not Chicago or Dallas -- they heavily favor a reasonably large group of people, or heavily disadvantage a reasonably large group of people.&nbsp; There&#039;s about... 4-5 players that live in the Chicago region (at least there were when we started TT) and probably 10-15 just 1-2 hops away... so that unfairly favors some players.&nbsp; On the other hand, Dallas was good for maybe 2-3 players (Kandy, Niv &amp; maybe Xenaero) as far as I know, and it was just worse than St. Louis for everyone else.&nbsp; St. Louis ended up being a good compromise between the two.<br /><br />[quote author=Chain link=topic=68.msg584#msg584 date=1232601225]<br />If you take a look at my week 1 and 2 POV demos, you will see that even with my sub 20ms ping, I get plenty of blank shots or people that skip past me. In some instances, I even have to shoot ahead (Skulltag-style or 100+ms ZD equivalent) in order to get some pellets to hit. I don&#039;t mean to exaggerate but it does end up happening. There ARE times when I click my fire button and I get the results I want...it&#039;s just the inconsistency that bugs me a little.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Actually it&#039;s really strange, I noticed a lot of players whiffing like crazy on ZDU30, more than I&#039;ve ever seen on TotalTrash.&nbsp; I watched players that are traditionally very good shots (like Doomguy and Fastidious) and they would definitely just shoot right through people.&nbsp; On the other hand, I&#039;ve been watching some MAP19 practices and the problem doesn&#039;t seem to be as bad... even though I know some players still say they&#039;re having problems.&nbsp; The only thing consistent about what people are telling me (at least what I&#039;m hearing) is that it&#039;s inconsistent.<br /><br />On the other hand, I watched some players that didn&#039;t have any problems whatsoever (watch Potent&#039;s demo, for example), so I&#039;m reluctant to say it&#039;s a server issue because not every player experiences it.<br /><br />[quote author=Nero link=topic=68.msg585#msg585 date=1232629597]<br />Yeah comparing TT to some other servers I have played 150+ on is very different, all my teammates feel the same in that the servers &#039;quality&#039; as Mantis says is very poor. And if it&#039;s hard for you guys imagine it for us&nbsp; :o I&#039;d be delighted to see another few servers available for use. What abour Rampage or Frag Happy?[/quote]<br /><br />What other servers are you talking about?&nbsp; I see a few euros on DUI NJ, but come on, that&#039;s 100s of miles closer to you guys and also benefits from the east coast effect.&nbsp; Plus, I can&#039;t imagine that European players are playing on other servers more than DUI NJ or TT (due to IDL &amp; PCTF).&nbsp; For instance, I&#039;d be interested about a prolonged test on Fraghappy, not just a couple games here &amp; there.&nbsp; I would also hypothesize that after a certain point (say 120ms or so) ping matters much less than packet loss, and more hops means more potential for loss, so server distance means much more for European players than it does for US players because you&#039;re all past the 120ms ping.<br /><br />[size=20pt]You can give us money![/size]<br /><br />While server resources (CPU, RAM, Disk I/O, network bandwidth) are not a problem for us... we certainly won&#039;t argue with you if you want to help us purchase and sustain bigger iron, or want to pay for a Chicago server and have us administrate it.&nbsp; I can&#039;t speak for IDL and whether or not we&#039;ll change the &quot;1 Server Set&quot; policy, but I&#039;m not gonna turn down your $$$ :D<br /><br />And finally, I hope no one thinks I&#039;m being hostile or argumentative.&nbsp; While to some degree it&#039;s frustrating to hear players endlessly shit on TT for reasons they obviously don&#039;t understand, I know they&#039;re just frustrated themselves.&nbsp; I&#039;m trying to explain our position and why things are the way they are.&nbsp; I&#039;m always happy to answer questions!<br /><br />EDIT: er, things != thinks