Well discussing is not deciding. And at the same time it lurks others people in the discussion. I don't think we're doing a disservice to console racers here, at least it was not my intent for sure.
Discussion on separate console/PC leaderboards for Buckyball race events.
- Thread starter Alec Turner
- Start date
Well discussing is not deciding. And at the same time it lurks others people in the discussion. I don't think we're doing a disservice to console racers here, at least it was not my intent for sure.
My bad (slightly) - I just realised I haven't alerted folks over on the separate Xbox and PS4 forums to this thread. Doing so now.
They have different divisions for Top Fuel and Stock Car racing because of performance differences, so I think separate leaderboards are not only justified, but sensible.
I can tune the frell out of a PC and hit extreme performance levels.
What can you do with a console? Swap the HDD for an SDD? Put it on top of a bag of dry ice?
How could that hope to compete with a liquid-ammonia cooled, over-clocked, SLI-GPU PC running ESX as a base OS as a Windows VM host where even my hard drive is virtualized - absolutely no moving parts involved. It just can't.
So why try? Just split them, and let more people have more fun.
I can tune the frell out of a PC and hit extreme performance levels.
What can you do with a console? Swap the HDD for an SDD? Put it on top of a bag of dry ice?
How could that hope to compete with a liquid-ammonia cooled, over-clocked, SLI-GPU PC running ESX as a base OS as a Windows VM host where even my hard drive is virtualized - absolutely no moving parts involved. It just can't.
So why try? Just split them, and let more people have more fun.
You know we're racing imaginary spaceships, not frame rates, right?
Several of our top racers have what could generously be called old pieces of junk, or they have in the past.
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Is EDSM possible for console players to use? Are people comfortable granting it permissions? Will it make submitting races easier or harder? Will it limit races to standardized checkpoints?
I do, but framerates can make a universe of difference. Better frame rates, better system response times. Better system response times, faster data loading. Faster data loading, faster completion times.
I humbly submit from my experience the difference this makes once you achieve baseline 30fps is so vanishingly small that it's heavily outweighed by skill, otherwise I would more seriously consider upgrading my 5 year old midrange desktop.
Everything's okay and your ideas sound like something exciting and appealing to look at. In my opinion, the leaderboard in this form is very interesting in itself. I would spend a lot of time comparing who, how and with or without FAoff was involved.....
It was just strange to see such confident judgments from some PC pilots about it. Just put that proposal aside.
Talk about uniting is good. But this is not the case in the game, forum, or elite tools/apps. We are all separate, and statements such as I do not see any difference or problem from the PC player sounds like disregard. Of course, you can't see that, have you tried to play?
But in any case, at least the fact that we are talking about this is good. We have opportunity to change the current situation, even if it is just a simple paragraph in RACE SUBMISSION FORM - Platform you are playing on?
To be really honest i'm having a real hard time trying to understand your argument mate. I read "disregard" "confident judgment from some PC pilots" and so on, i can only guess you are thinking that some "group" feels "superior" and stuff like that. This is not my case. Case closed.
That sounds good!
I think we should wait for opinions from racing Commanders that can play both platforms, like Raiko
Otherwise, having platform noted (PC/Console) would be a start
And eventually, later on, separate leaderboards if enough consolers get into racing AND the platform is proved to matter in the results.
Edit: until then i plan to take a courier to Colonia and try that race too, but for the moment i'm watching the current II
Otherwise, having platform noted (PC/Console) would be a start
And eventually, later on, separate leaderboards if enough consolers get into racing AND the platform is proved to matter in the results.
Edit: until then i plan to take a courier to Colonia and try that race too, but for the moment i'm watching the current II
Sounds like a solid hypothesis to base some actual testing on to me. Is there a difference between a solid 30 FPS rig vs. a solid 60 FPS rig running the same course?
Of course, there is something else the PC can enjoy that the console cannot: Macros.
I can set up a macro that will never miss engaging a frameshift jump at the exact second the cooldown completes. You might not think much of a single, full second, but multiply that by, say 600 jumps, and you get a notable difference in times.
I propose the following though:
That the powers who manage these races establish two separate leaderboards, track the results of both over the course of several events, compare the two, and potentially publish only one leaderboard, forged from a merger of the two separate boards. If the times between the two remain both consistent and comparable, it would be safe to say that there is a negligible difference between platforms, and they can proceed with a standardized, unified Leaderboard.
If, however, there is a significant difference between the two, then it would serve the community best to keep the leaderboards separated by platform.
The three actual differences I've recognized are copy-paste, macros, and loading times.
Copypaste is almost entirely solved by bookmarks excepted in the case of Sag A.
Macros like you mentioned above, I don't know of or know how they would work, since hyperjump loading times on PC are not entirely stable.
Macros that select new pads are very nice, but mostly only useful in docking-intense races, and if outlawed I wouldn't miss them very much, they're unreliable at best.
Loading times I would like to see proof.
Thank you for your kind and helpful suggestion!
What will you consider a "negligible difference"? The spread in times is already huge, in many races last place is double the time of first place, and with such a small sample size and variation in times and skill, I think statistical sampling would be largely meaningless. This is why people have been asking for video comparisons of supercruise, hyperjump, or menu loading times because that would be provable fact rather than vague conjecture.
Otherwise, it's possible that racers with years of experience or preternatural cookiebot abilities will do very well on PC, and consoles will cry foul because they aren't as good yet. As far as I know, no-one optimizes supercruise approaches except buckyballers, and it's a weird skill to master.
Another issue I see is that the console leaderboards will be largely empty, because 75-90% of players are on PC (from Fuel Rats and DW2 statistics), and our leaderboards will look rather divided and pathetic with only 2-5 people on them. Trust me, I ran an overly complex race with only 4 entrants and it made me feel not so great and a bit silly, in spite of the excellent efforts those 4 commanders put in.[/QUOTE]
Wrong guess. I agree it's not your case. I haven't seen anything "superior" from you, just the opposite. Polite and pleasant conversation, great fresh ideas. I wanted to say this with a last message, but it didn't seem like it turned out right again.
Shall we try again?
It's nice to meet you, you have great ideas and suggestions and I'm pleasantly surprised at your position on this issue. Because before that, some people(not many) had been highly conservative about this topic.
I'm starting a stream comparing PC and my PS4 Pro. I'll be running the Pareco race again with Regulation Vipers. I want to see what sort of difference there will be.
Buckyball testing, PC vs PS4 Pro. For science!
Source: https://www.twitch.tv/brother_sabathius
Buckyball testing, PC vs PS4 Pro. For science!
There are potential issues with this as Bruski attempted to describe. I actually wrote a very long post myself with all sorts of interesting statistics from the last race but, having written it, then promptly deleted it all because I realised its central premise was something rather presumptious - namely that the regular Buckyball racers (who are predominantly, if not exclusively PC) are simply better than the average console based Buckyball participant. While it might be true (we have been doing this a very long time), given that people like Captain-MD can just turn up out of the blue to their first ever Buckyball Race and drop straight into 4th place (and initially 1st), I'm wary of just assuming this.
So, while we wait for the console contingent to come and state their case, I do think we already have one fairly obvious takeaway from all this. We should ask people taking part in future races to tell us what platform they're using and use this information to gather more information over our next few races.
Note: for this to work you console guys NEED to take part! I mean here's the thing that gets me ... I've been doing Buckyball Races for 5 years and for the first two I was WAY down the bottom of the leaderboards. I didn't care - there's no prizes (usually) and these are bloody good fun. So where the hell are all the enthuasiastic (if potentially disadvantged) console players?
Hey saw the ping
i'm somewhat irregular on both the forums and playing ED lately (the September update didn't help), but have done a number of console Buckyball races in the past, so might as well chip in my 2 pence. This is a long 2p, tl;dr at the bottom First up some context: I am also a PC ED player (well technically OSX at first, 1200 hours), and then moved to PS4 primarily (5400 hours, although multi-hundreds must be sat in Wollheim Vision waiting for Fuel Rat clients).
On PC I use a DualShock 4 controller + keyboard. When using PC VR I use a Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS 4 only. On PS4 I use a DualShock 4 generally.
Triple Elite on both accounts, most before the last couple of years which eroded the grind / significance.
I don't really feel the choice of control method disadvantages console players, until it comes to expanded inputs from keyboard / keypads, at least with the same potential disadvantages a PC player with KB&M does vs PC controller player. A HOTAS like a Warthog etc is clearly better (more inputs, accuracy) than the cheap T Flights.
Console (at least PS4) does has some disadvantages, which impact buckyballing to various degrees.
I mentioned some briefly in the Seven Sisters Speedway thread, but it was only in passing, so ones I can think of:
1/ hyperspace transition times
As a Fuel Rat (not for Buckyballing) I tested this when I moved to PS4, as the jump-to-jump times seemed noticeably longer. iirc it was something like 45s per jump on PC, vs 50s on PS4. Then after an update (I don't recall which one season 4 something?) they got worse again, with PS4 taking 55s per jump.
This is the time from say the announcing going "Friendship drive charging 4, 3, 2, 1" to the next "4, 3, 2, 1", with deep scooping per jump but engaging as soon as FSD cooldown finished (super cold DBX). I also tested the absolute time spent in the tunnel for Seven Sisters Speedway, which was again about 5s+ extra on PS4, ie start of "woosh!" to "zonk!" when you exit (not in star's gravity well).
2/ load times
Perhaps related to above, and why things take longer, but I actually suspect the data streaming is not the bottleneck, but rather the netcode and reinstancing.
I believe I've got a Western Digital 2TB in the PS4, SSD just didn't have the capacity / cost too much when I changed from the stock HDD.
Sure the option is there to potentially improve that, i'm guessing on balance a proper gaming-PC loads data faster than a PS4 Pro with an SSD still.
2b/ load times for Thargoid hyperdiction
The one thing where load times may given an advantage is Thargoid hyperdiction. I timed this on PS4, coming out at best 1:45 worse than a standard jump. PC iirc was faster by multiple seconds, as this is probably "unexpected" data loading.
3/ nav panel usage
Swapping and using the nav panel is slower on PS4. The actions are all manual presses or combinations of presses to use. So for me it's press-hold-square+left-d-pad to open the Nav panel, then shoulder buttons to swap tabs, then d-pad presses to say select docking.
I'm not sure on the exact timings, but even using the same DS4 on PC it's slower on PS4 by 1-2s at least.
4/ galaxy and system map usage
Definitely slower on console. Even more marked than the Nav Panel, there is a distinct laggy delay opening the galaxy map. Tabbing to bookmarks and selecting them is marginally slower than PC. Entering text is significantly slower: depending on how fast one can (touch)type on PC, but entering text via the PS4 on-screen keyboard is slow. Entering a system name, well you don't want to do it, and always have things pre-bookmarked. Even then (proper no timings) i'd guess 3-5s slower to manually select a bookmark for next destination.
Ditto the System map.
5/ macros
Obviously no macros on PS4, so any time advantage from shortening multiple key entry is a straight advantage to PC. I'm not sure what Buckyballers actually use, but requesting docking, selecting bookmarks, PiP reassignment are the usual ones I see in PC racers videos.
6/ voice attack
Related to above, but i'll add it separately as you get hands-free macros. I saw some videos from the Seven Sisters Race where people were using voice attack to select bookmarks, it looked pretty useful.
Anyone know how long it takes to use a macro / VA to select a bookmark? ie: total time from button press to complete.
7/ copy and pasting text
Even this is significantly slower on console. For the Kamikaze cup, pasting in "There's fast and then there's Buckballing" or whatever it was, wasn't so easy on PS4.
Compared to PC saving it in Notepad, and then ctrl-c to save for later, ctrl-v to paste, on PS4 you had to:
- open the in-game chat window, type in the text, find the special sub-menu with select text, then select to copy
This was now saved as your paste-object. Any quit to the main menu, say to get a drink, and you'd have to re-do the paste-object.
Then when needed:
- open chat window with hold-press-square + up-d-pad
- wait for it to open
- use d-pad to highlight text entry field
- x to select
- navigate to submenu
- navigate to paste option
- select paste
- select Enter to actually send
When it worked it was 5-7s slower than PC, if you had to type it in using the pop-up keyboard, it would be 30s+.
This is ignoring the complete lack of ship control during this time, which is another whole time penalty. eg: on PC fly past the beacon and flick open the chat ctrl-v, job done. On PS4 you'd have to time things to come to a complete stop (or you'd overshoot), do the above to paste in the text, then speed off again.
8/ taking screenshots
A minor disadvantage, but even taking screen shots is slower. instead of F10 or F12 on PC, you need to press and hold the Share button (by default), during which you cannot control your ship, and have to wait approximately 3s for the action to take place.
it's small and you can learn to take screenshots during otherwise dead time (spooling FSD), but 7/ reminded me that in certain situations capturing evidence is a limitation too.
I enjoy having a go at Buckyball racing, although lack many of the basic skills (orbital breaking for example), but each race I add another tool to the kit. I think i'm a decent enough pilot, but racing has some skills you just don't learn from usual play - which is not a "console scrubs am bad" thing - PC pilots run out of fuel just as much as console pilots for example.
I have no expectations to be competitive; no aspirations to get anywhere but near the bottom. The leaderboard is not why I enter, as I'm only really racing myself. For me it's to complete against myself: to improve, experience different aspects to the game, have fun.
If there really are untapped racers, only holding back because they feel penalised, then I can totally see there a separate leaderboard helping. I doubt it's the case though, and personally would rather be a little fish in a big pond; than getting a podium finish, when there's only 3 of us in the console division.
Overall i'm completely fine with a single leaderboard, with no indication of what platform or control scheme one uses. It's kinda like Formula 1: sure there's some limitations, but the cars are not equal; the drivers have different skills and genetic advantages; and ultimately if you're the fastest, you are the fastest - one leaderboard.
tl;dr Meh. Race for fun, one leaderboard.
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First of all I have to say that I haven't participated in a race yet, but always liked the idea and will most probably sometime in the future (PS4 player here). So no offense taken if my input is not relevant due to this.
On the PS4 (Pro) I don't have significant performance problems or anything similar. The supercruise/hyperspace transition times are also fast for me, though I don't have a specific PC comparison. The Thrustmaster Hotas 4 is available for us. I heavily edited the control scheme for my DS4 (PS4 controller), which makes it much more competetive I guess.
Considering the above, I wouldn't say that seperate leaderbords are necessary. I also think it's a good argument, that the community shouldn't be divided artificially. Eventually you could think about adding a platform column to the leaderbords. So not dividing them, but just a info column that a player can see I'm the best on PS4/Xbox.
On the PS4 (Pro) I don't have significant performance problems or anything similar. The supercruise/hyperspace transition times are also fast for me, though I don't have a specific PC comparison. The Thrustmaster Hotas 4 is available for us. I heavily edited the control scheme for my DS4 (PS4 controller), which makes it much more competetive I guess.
Considering the above, I wouldn't say that seperate leaderbords are necessary. I also think it's a good argument, that the community shouldn't be divided artificially. Eventually you could think about adding a platform column to the leaderbords. So not dividing them, but just a info column that a player can see I'm the best on PS4/Xbox.
Times that are +/- a few seconds of each other would be negligible. Times greater than that would warrant separate leaderboards.
Depending on what you mean by "optimize super cruse approaches", I've been known to do this for things like:
1. Rescue Operations at Burning Stations
2. Short-range, high volume trade
3. Smuggling
4. Squeezing in one last missing before the mission timer lapses.
For me, this is a combination of just how quickly I can make the jump itself, and how precisely I can drop from super cruise to a destination - can I come in lined up with the mail slot of a station, boost, request docking, shoot through the slot and stick a landing all in one fluid motion? If so, it actually looks pretty spectacular, and it's fast as frell.
This poses the single largest problem to gathering viable data. If the console side of the data pool is that shallow, it will be almost impossible to get viable data.