Death Lag: Guessing how many bullets are enough.

[vbl]

This is going to be confusing for a lot of folks so I'll try to explain this phenomenon as best I can. First, a tiny bit of background.

I only play on servers where my ping is less than 75, and I usually play on ones where my ping is ~50. I do not see any skipping or other symptoms of lag/packet loss during normal gameplay, and my machine is quite up the task of running BF2 - and I keep everything on "almost low" anyway. I have a very good cable connection.

Scenario:
I round a corner and find 2 enemies standing very close, about 15m away from me, with their backs to me. I start firing at the one on the left and it seems to take way too long for him to die, even with solid hits and a hit indicator. I blow through half of my AK-101 clip before I see him fall, and then I work on the remaining guy who, after all of the noise and firing and time spent dropping the first guy, is now looking right at me and has the edge. What happens next isn't important... the problem is with the first bloke.

I've noticed that there's is a huge, noticeable span of time between firing/hitting/damaging and me seeing the death animation. So I started an experiment, and this is where I found the problem.

I rounded the same corner and found the same two guys at the same range. I start firing at the first one, and make a judgment call about when I think I've shot enough for him to die. I stop shooting at him and start shooting at the second guy. Lo and behold, about 1 second after I stop shooting and change targets, the first guy finally falls to the ground.

Please look into this on your own - get into a CQC firefight and stop shooting when you "feel" like the other guy ought to be dead. You should see a weird delay between the time you stop shooting and the time he actually falls down.

Having discovered this for myself, I made adjustments that make me a lot more efficient against groups of enemies. While using the DAO-12, for example, I'll plop 3 rounds at someone and even if he's not dead yet, I'll move onto the next target in the line. Sure enough, he falls shortly thereafter. I don't waste any ammunition needlessly, and I can deal with extra targets more quickly instead of repeatedly shooting someone who (as far as the server is concerned) is already technically registered as dead.

Try it and let me know. Hopefully it'll help everyone out next time you have a few targets to shoot and you feel like you're wasting forever on one.

(PS: It's important to note that the extremely close ranges rule out the "bullet travel time" factor that many of you may be considering. At longer ranges I've definitely seen this effect, but at <20m it should be a non-factor. )

[Hu.Z_of_PLA]

Re: Death Lag: Guessing how many bullets are enough.

word: server lag

I live on university campus and I have fiber optics connection in dorms, my ping is usually around 3. (it's a full 100mb connection), yet i still experience this in bad servers, albeit a lot less frequent.

[glaucoma]

Re: Death Lag: Guessing how many bullets are enough.

I have experienced this maybe twice, and in both cases the server health wasn't so rosy.
It becomes even more obvious if you snipe someone in the face from up close, because then you don't have to guesstimate when he should be falling.

[glaucoma]

Re: Death Lag: Guessing how many bullets are enough.

No, all out sorry. But we got a few spare "Lolz!!" and "N00b!" laying around, if you want..

[iambanana]

Re: Death Lag: Guessing how many bullets are enough.

I found my old "lma0!!!!11" laying around in the attic. I'm not using it any more, so you can have it if you like.

[HABO3]

Re: Death Lag: Guessing how many bullets are enough.

That death delay does happen from time to time but I wouldn't say it's a constant. I was able to notice it alot more when I was trying to learn how to 1 shot headshot with the rifles and sometimes I would fire a round into someones head and the shot dust would impact at the spot I aimed and like half a second later their body would flip around and all that. Sometimes it seems like having extremely low ping isn't always a good thing...I have servers bookmarked that get me 7-30 ms and that death delay happens in those servers more than in ones where my ping is level with everyone else.