Lagency

[BX3]

I like how they straight-up admit that it's pedantic as all hell. Part of the reason I love this webcomic so much, a pretty huge sense of self-awareness you tend not to find very often in this medium/subculture.

Funny comic, last panel is goin' down as one of my favorites.

 

[medv4380]

A boot to the head joke? Someone's been listening to Doctor Demento of late.

I've never understood it when people try and claim that low fps causes network latency. I've even heard this logic extended to encompass 120fps gives you an unfair advantage by somehow magically reducing the lag.

You could always find a mouse, or keyboard with a better poll rate, but the catch is that most games only sample the inputs at about 15 samples/frames per second. Sampling faster is insane unless your trying to utilize a mouse with insane sensitivity. If you were to actually take advantage of every possible sample frame you'd have a minimum of 900 apm, and much higher if you do two actions per sample frame on SC2. Human reaction time just isn't fast enough to take advantage much beyond that very slow poll rate.

Heck, unless the game is coded by monkeys even reduced frames per second shouldn't impact input latency on multicore machines. Unfortunately if the fps drops you probably wont notice what you pressed x for, and will assume it was input latency when in reality your inputs were just fine.

Now, Boot to the Head.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Ubisoft has to spend the next 3 week in intensive care, and get skin grafts from that burn.

 

[Whoracle]

Wow, ya'll sure are mad that people are using a word to mean a thing.

Nah, I'm mad at people correcting other people being wrong about said correction. Correctception!

Sadly, this is wrong. You're talking about a certain type of lag, namely network lag. What low FPS introduces is input lag (or, to be pedantic, "input in relation to onscreen action lag").

Is that a big deal? Sometimes, but more often than not it's not the framerate that causes it.
Is the term nontheless correct for both? Yes, it is, since both are "lag".

Well, no.
Low FPS produces input lag, but it's not lag by itself.
This discussion is an equivalent to the question "is water wet?".

To be completely precise, both low FPS and input lag are symptoms of not enough optimization. People tend to associate the latter with the former because they don't know better. Either way, the correction in the comic is as wrong as the original claim of "Low FPS = lag!", just in another way.

 

[immortalfrieza]

:/ Hmmm.... I'm assuming that's not one of those "Persona" guns....

Erin: "Per...So...NA!"

Judging by her messed up brain I'm guessing Erin's Persona would be some bizarre anagram of a bunch of video game characters or something. It would also be completely insane and go around destroying stuff while spouting random video game quotes.

OT: Semantics is all this is about here. If a online game is lagging it's generally due to problems both on the server side and the computer's ability to process it, either way lag is a good enough general term for when unusual slowdown happens for a game that was otherwise working fine without it.

 

[Caiphus]

Well, if we're putting our pedantic pants on, I'd like to point out that it should probably be "A Ubisoft game", rather than "An Ubisoft game".

Brb, drinking bleach.

 

[Adultratedhydra]

Ubisoft makes new games? I thought they just released a Pay to download patch for Assassins creed 2 every year.

 

[SoulChaserJ]

Erin should put the gun down and aim it at the right people.

 

[The Wooster]

Well, if we're putting our pedantic pants on, I'd like to point out that it should probably be "A Ubisoft game", rather than "An Ubisoft game".

Brb, drinking bleach.

You're right, actually. In my accent, I tend to default to ooobi rather than you-bi.

EDIT: I HAVE FIXED THE COMIC FOR YOU, FELLOW PEDANT.

Note: You're missing a comma before, "A Ubisoft game," and your second comma should be inside the quotation.

Spoiler

 

[irishda]

All I know is how pissed the gaming community gets when you lag. "How bout you control your fucking internet!" or "Buy Google Fiber fucking broke ass ************!"

Because one should be able to control an internet connection through sheer force of will or just buy a ridiculously expensive option that's not available in all areas.

 

[Dalisclock]

Ubisoft makes new games? I thought they just released a Pay to download patch for Assassins creed 2 every year.

Nah, they're also re-releasing Far cry 3 now too.

At least Valiant Hearts was original(and to the best of my knowledge, was actually made by Ubisoft, rather then merely published by them).

 

[Caiphus]

Note: You're missing a comma before, "A Ubisoft game," and your second comma should be inside the quotation.

That'll teach me to be an asshole about grammar before learning how to use commas.

In all honesty, I just stick them in any which way but loose, and hope that nobody notices.

[sub] It's how I approach lots of things, actually[/sub]
[sub][sub][sub]Like vaginas[/sub][/sub][/sub]

[sub][sub][sub][sub][sub] lol i wish[/sub][/sub][/sub][/sub][/sub]

 

[shrekfan246]

Well, if we're putting our pedantic pants on, I'd like to point out that it should probably be "A Ubisoft game", rather than "An Ubisoft game".

Brb, drinking bleach.

You're right, actually. In my accent, I tend to default to ooobi rather than you-bi.

EDIT: I HAVE FIXED THE COMIC FOR YOU, FELLOW PEDANT.

Note: You're missing a comma before, "A Ubisoft game," and your second comma should be inside the quotation.

Spoiler

I thought it was just in the US that commas (among other punctuation marks) were commonly placed inside of quotation marks.

I grew up with punctuation placed inside of quotation marks and I still think it looks weird.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

I'll call whatever you want if you tell me how to make it stop happening when playing 5+ year old Steam games on my 1 year old PC.

 

[Neferius]

"Pedantry? Perhaps, but this shit has been boiling my piss for years."
Maybe you should see a doctor about that too. If you're lucky it's just the gout take some K2 vitamin, get well soon)

Also, i had no idea what this comic was about until i realized Grey has no idea how Networks work.
See, lag (the network kind, the one which actually affects everybody that's connected to the server and which is thus actively measured by the admin) occurs when your ISP is too ghetto and can't afford decent fiber-optics infrastructure or a satellite uplink. So you have a ton of routers along the path to the game-server, some adding up to 2ms Each! (if you want to see just how getto your ISP is, open-up a command-prompt and run the command [tracert www.google.com] then count the number of routers along the way which send back a response. Every one of those routers has a firewall and a CPU)
Frame-lag on the other hand happens when you run your new 60$ game on your ghetto PC on the EXTREME gfx settings...which were Specifically designed to work with ONLY the latest gfx card from the specific gfx-card Tribe which greased-up sponsored the game-devs (Look up the great battle of Fable plains won by clan Nvidia and the dissolution of clan ATI within the great house of AMD)
Consoles solve this problem in-part by having every-one buy a 300$ ghetto PC that you're not even allowed to upgrade with new components.
Consoles are for COMMUNISTS is the point i'm trying to make ^^

 

[Haru17]

Oh well? Chugging frame rates and lag are indistinguishable at times.

 

[Ender910_v1legacy]

Are this and the previous Critical Miss comic supposed to be satirical or is someone just talking out of their ass? I honestly can't tell.

 

[Ticklefist]

It's one of those things that drives me insane when trying to get to the root of why the person I'm playing with sucks so much.

 

[ZexionSephiroth]

Oh well? Chugging frame rates and lag are indistinguishable at times.

I'd think that most of the time they're indistunguishable, its cause you have both problems.

... Back during World of Warcraft before I gave it up... The framerate was terrible and everybody was Nightcrawler. Heck, I'm pretty sure there was one time I pulled off a Nightcrawler on myself.

I'm pretty sure that's cause I had technology that was very outdated back then... Not that what I have now is that impressive either.

 

[bloodycelt]

o.0

You could try to be pedantic and use "lag" in whatever "true" meaning you think, but honestly "lag" is too broad a term, it simply means slower than expected, and is often used outside of FPS and MMO games in a shout from the father to the out-of-shape family member huffing and sweating at the tail end of the hiking company.

So... honestly if you want to talk about latency... then say latency... specifically network latency; then people know what you are talking about; and you can move on instead of arguing over the meaning of "lag"; when you want to talk about low frame rates, say low frame rates.

You should only use lag when you have no idea why the game is lagging. Then someone can investigate and tell you why the game is lagging: latency || lfps || gremlins.