» Thu Nov 11, 2010 3:38 pm
Dedicated servers, as of right now, are completely and utterly broken in this game. I would even go as far as to say that the P2P connection present on the console version of the game is better than the dedicated servers.
First and foremost, zero latency compensation. Someone with ~20 ping will absolutely dominate anyone with above 50 ping.
Secondly, hit registration can't handle weapons with high rate of fire. Depending on ping, nearly half of your bullets will go unregistered if the weapon has a very high rate of fire (Feline, SCARAB). This is less prominent with lower pings and the problem is not present on P2P connections (as far as I have seen, anyway).
Thirdly, there's a very serious issue regarding lag spikes. Lost packets are very awfully handled, as far as I can make out. So, if you were to have a lag spike, there's a chance you can become stuck on someone's perspective for the time being. Completely motionless. So, while you think you might be running around on the map, in actuality, you could be being shot at by an enemy on the other side of the map. To make matters worse, if this enemy hits you enough times, you will die multiple times and they will get a multi-kill from you, respectively.
So, basically, the dedicated servers for this game are very, very poorly made. This screams of the developer having no intention of properly supporting the platform. So, likely, they will not be making any significant modifications to the networking. The fact that hackers are able to use hacks such as teleportation of targets, unlimited energy hacks, no-clip hacks and XP boosts so easily speaks for itself. The developers are either amateurs that do not possess the necessary skillsets required for making decent networking systems, or they simply lack the will to do so.
Either way, the PC version of the multiplayer part of this game clearly is nowhere near the priorities list of the developer. This is further supported by the fact that games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops have far superior networking capabilities on the PC than this game. You can make your own conclusions from that.