Guerrilla cuts Killzone pad lag

By Richard Leadbetter Published 17 July, 2010

Accel, dead zone, latency improvement.

Guerrilla Games is promising tighter, more responsive controls for the forthcoming Killzone 3.

Writing on the official Killzone site, Guerrilla Game Director Mathijs de Jonge described the difficult decisions the team took in addressing this highly contentious issue. On the one hand, the response from the controls was the subject of much criticism from many gamers. On the other, the sensation of weight and inertia was one of the defining features of the game's primary handshake with the player.

"Our first priority when we started working on the controls for Killzone 3 was to listen closely to Killzone 2's players - what they liked, what they disliked, and how they felt things could be improved," Mathijs wrote. "Accuracy and responsiveness consistently came up as the top issues. At the same time, a lot of players were saying they loved the weighty feel."

Back in February, Digital Foundry took possession of a DualShock 3 controller adapted by legendary modsmith Benjamin Heckendorn. Connected to an LED monitor board, it allowed us to measure the latency between button press and on-screen action, the so-called input or controller lag.

Our result? The simple act of firing a pistol (something you wouldn't expect to have much heft or inertia) took 150ms from button press to muzzle-flash on-screen. In more challenging scenes, with the game dropping frames, latency was even higher. In comparison, most other first-person shooters running at 30FPS tend to weigh in around 100ms to 133ms max, while 60FPS titles like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare can achieve a very respectable 66ms response in optimum conditions.

The official Killzone site talks about the team "going back to the drawing board" in improving controller response.

"Right now it's still a work in progress," Mathijs explained. "But we're definitely getting there. We've recalibrated the dead zone to be more responsive and significantly reduced the input lag, resulting in far better accuracy. Best of all, we've managed to retain that sense of weight that set Killzone 2 apart from other shooters. I can't wait for people to try it out."

We played the E3 demo of Killzone 3 at the event and while clearly a proper analysis wasn't possible within the confines of SCEE's press lounge, there was definitely a sense of an additional crispness to the controls. However, in the pre-alpha demo there was still a somewhat variable frame-rate - definitely one of the significant contributory factors in adding to Killzone 2's controller lag.

Overall impressions were very positive though, and bearing in mind how little has been shown of the full game thus far, we can't wait to see more.

Picture of Richard.

About Richard Leadbetter

Rich has been a games journalist since the days of 16-bit and specialises in technical analysis. Commonly known around Eurogamer as the Blacksmith of the Future.

Read more articles from Richard by visiting the Richard Leadbetter archive page.

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Comments (48) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • davisorle #1 2 years ago

    I hope they do but I also didnt like the heavy feeling of the character. That was havier than MasterChief himself for no reason :p . Anyhow. Controls were bad so this is an improvement no matter. I hope they get it all right at once with controls instead of waiting for KZ4 for it to be perfected.

  • FuzzyDuck #2 2 years ago

    Hmm, i actually liked the sensation of inertia that the latency produced, but i suppose this is a definite case of Marmite.

    My biggest bugbear was the shoehorning of Sixaxis controls into the game with planting charges and i hope this is removed from KZ3.
    Edited by 1 at 17/07/10 @ 18:40

  • bdc #3 2 years ago

    I just don't understand those who liked the lag in the second game. Why on earth would you find a deliberate delay between input and output appealing? Even in its diminished form, it was still sluggish and totally inappropriate for multiplayer.

  • lockload #4 2 years ago

    About time at least theve admitted it was a problem

    If only thye use their dev time getting the game running at 60fps instead of halving the frame rate to do 3d

  • bdc #5 2 years ago

    There's nothing realistic about it at all though Sparkplug. I've been on a few firearms ranges and I have to say, even my grandma could turn a rifle quicker than these midgets in KZ2 :) Trying to convey realism by delaying output is both a silly and a poor excuse, and a very cackhanded attempt at thus. Professionals have to aim and take fire on the drop of a dime!

    Either way, you don't appear to be 'winning' this debate (if you can even call it one), because the developers have clearly seen the error of their ways and are rectifying it.

  • Collymilad #6 2 years ago

    Great so the little whining MW bitches got their way, and we'll have another shooter with no feeling to the movement at all.

    BS.

    If you didn't like the game, go play something else. It was as the devs intended it to be and they are only changing it to ensure more sales. Sad really.
    Edited by 1 at 17/07/10 @ 19:49

  • Goodfella #7 2 years ago

    @ Collymilad

    I don't agree, as bdc says when holding a weapon (say a rifle) in real life you just don't get the kind of sensation represented in Killzone 2.

    They are fairly light (especially for a soldier) and quite easy to quickly move and aim, they have to be!

    Anyway, I enjoyed Killzone 2 but wasn't keen on the feel of weapon lag. I haven't campaigned for CoD style controls either but from reading the article it sounds like Guerilla have settled on a happy medium.

  • CaptainQuint #8 2 years ago

    Here's hoping they fix the medieval level design too.

  • X3Entente #9 2 years ago

    @collymilad
    if you want realism play operation flashpoint, oh and whats this bullshit about mw2 players getting there way. did mw2 invent responsive controls now, as well as games in a modern setting, like all the retards that have never heard of ghost recon or soldier of fortune think??!! Control lag is never a good thing and is not the same as movement speed or sway

  • Goodfella #10 2 years ago

    @ CaptainQuint

    Funny, it didn't look like I was in the middle ages when I played the game.

  • M4RV #11 2 years ago

    ^ ^ ^ ^

    I believe he actually meant the rather archaic feeling comprising the level design, which was definately the case.

    - - - -

    Also, some people definately need to check the difference between input lag and actual weight.

  • coolbritannia #12 2 years ago

    Admission of guilt

  • Zaiz #13 2 years ago

    They should have put inertia into movement with heavy weapons and not little ones. Input lag was honestly the worst way to go about it, especially when it dropped with the framerate.

  • DoctorFraud #14 2 years ago

    Good stuff, the controls in kz2 were awful. Level design needs major improvement too, and get rid of respawning enemies.

  • Zanuah #15 2 years ago

    KZ2 controlled fine for me. Granted I don't play too many 1st person shooters so Im not used to a specific method for control or how according to a lot of people an fps should control.

  • TaniumZX #16 2 years ago

    The games controller lag (coupled with HDTV input lag) made even navigating the maps hard work, shooting was just spray and pray, no accuracy in the aiming, a lot of my kills were down to luck...and was it just me, or was the main character only about 5 foot tall?

    Nice to look at (in a blurry muddy way) and atmospheric. Just not that enjoyable.
    Edited by 1 at 18/07/10 @ 01:01

  • Eraysor #17 2 years ago

    I really liked the old style to be honest...

  • Negotiator #18 2 years ago

    The unresponsive controls of KZ2 spoiled that game, you always felt like you were fighting against the controls. Also the boss fights were terrible, overall the game just wasn't that good, it had its moment's but a FPS lives and dies by it's controls and KZ2 died along time ago.

  • Miths #19 2 years ago

    "I can't wait to try it with Move."

    Same here. I pre-ordered a Move starter pack + Navigation Controller the other day, and one of the genres I'm most looking forward to trying it out with is definitely shooters - both singleplayer and online.

    I have no idea what to expect - I've never had the opportunity to try a Wii (and it's probably been a couple of decades since the last time I tried a light gun shooter in an arcade) - but I'm hoping it will improve the experience.
    I'm less concerned with how competitive you might be with Move versus a DS3 - I'm rarely above the middle of match scoreboards in online shooters anyway, so having to relearn a new input method doesn't exactly worry me if it means an overall more entertaining experience.

  • Alkeno #20 2 years ago

    It seems some people don't know the difference between "lag" and "sensation of weight and inertia". They are things apart, have nothing in common and shouldn't be confused:

    Killzone 2 had excessive lag (response time), that is a technical issue that should be corrected. This is a fact, it was felt by most players and was demonstrated by Digital Foundry thanks to their lovely LED-enabled pads and some frame counting. Lag can never be regarded as a feature, it subtracts from the experience, separates the player from the game and is a pain in the ass made worse if the framerate isn't rock solid.

    On the other hand the team seemed to make the player movement in the game different from other shooters: Slower, with a greater sense of weight and inertia. That was a gameplay design decision, and I consider it to be a pretty good one. That is a feature from the game that should be respected and kept for the sequel, as it gives identity to the game. It's how the game feels.

    So let's take the racing example: Forza 3 is locked at 60fps. That means that the game is reading your input every 16,67ms. It has a great engine that provides reliable feedback with a 4 frames delay (66ms). That is the technological foundation of the game! The task of making each car feel different and unique is up to the game designers and programmers. A game with constant lag is a treasure, because all things in the game behave the way they were designed to behave.

    So, Killzone fans rejoice: Reducing the lag and making it more consistent is never going to hurt the weighty feel of the game, it's just going to make that weighty feel respond better to the player inputs.

    Hope it helped to clarify the topic...
    Edited by 1 at 18/07/10 @ 01:29

  • dsmx #21 2 years ago

    Fixing the lag is a good thing but I do hope they make it so the bigger the gun the slower you turn, aiming with a pistol should be faster than with a rocket launcher.

  • 3william56 #22 2 years ago

    Um, how about you go out to your local gun range, try a real gun, and have a look at the latency in that? I'm sick of this idiotic arcade feel to shooters. Even a small pistol can't be accelerated, waved about and stopped on a pixel without inertia, let along a rocket launcher. Guns are mechanical things, and pulling a trigger half an inch, then letting the levers and springs do their bang thing takes time - which is why shooting a gun of any description, let alone at a moving target, takes *skill*. Why not take the skidding and braking out of Gran Turismo, and the stalls out of flight sims to satisfy the lames whilst your at it?

    The games are being idiotified just to let twitchers think they can play, and to present ever more unrealistic gameplay. Too easy to hit something means you need stupid game mechanics like health bars, magic first aid kits and recharging health and shields to compensate. I wish someone had the balls to make a game where (a) it's hard to hit someone, and (b) they die when you do!

    At least for KZ3 I hope they leave the meaty KZ2 controls as an option for the non twitchers.

  • WizenWolfBain #23 2 years ago

    Thank god. I wanted to like Killzone 2. I really did. But the latency made me want to pull my hair out, and ultimately ruined my experience of the entire game. BFBC2 (on the other hand) manages to give you a feeling of "intertia" and "weight" without being mind numbingly frustrating.

    It's like trying to play Halo or COD on my really old LG LCD with such a terrible response time. Not something i enjoy... Not one bit.

    The multiplayer felt as though it could never be competitive with the latency either.

    Edited by 2 at 18/07/10 @ 05:32

  • ukgamer #24 2 years ago

    I need a demo or I'm 100% not going to buy it.

  • drumbaby #25 2 years ago

    My friend hates the 'lag' whereas I don't see it as lag and enjoy the 'weight' of the combat model.

    So I guess something inbetween is needed, because I don't want it feeling like Quake, and my friend doesn't want to be running through custard :)

  • Kenshin001 #26 2 years ago

    As long as the sense of weight is still there I don't mind if they changed it but games like MW2 feel weak after playing KZ2. The average assault rifle weighs 3-4 kilograms, it's not some stick you can just wave around.

    Edited by 1 at 18/07/10 @ 12:09

  • Stomp224 #27 2 years ago

    Hmm. I enjoyed KillZone 2 because of its controls. You had to be GOOD to get kills. I remember being shocked that the spray tactics Id used in most xbox fps titles was useless, I actually had to aim! :o

    Which incidentally, proved im not crap at FPS multiplayer games, only ones where auto aim is ramped up to 11 by default!

    On a different note, I hope they keep the objective based missions for MP, and maybe expand the scope a bit? Kinda hoping for MAG lite, which reminded me a lot of KZ2s multi for my first couple of hours

  • HisDudness #28 2 years ago

    I really like KZ2, controls and single player campaign included. Its multiplayer is where it really shines though. I hope that we get some details soon.

    I also hope that whatever adjustments they are making to the control scheme will silence all the whiners. While some have made valid complaints about the measured latency, I feel a lot of people just weren't very good at the game and needed an excuse. The controls have definitely not been an issue preventing a lot of players from becoming really good at this game, but you wouldn't know that unless you actually play the game online.

  • FogHeart #29 2 years ago

    I was in the 'couldn't cope with the controls' camp. Although I persevered to the end - the rest of the game was OK.

    First, I can't imagine any gun exists that doesn't respond immediately when the trigger is pulled. That's something that has nothing to do with the strength of the wielder or the weight of the firearm. In any game, when you press fire on the controller you should not notice a delay before the action appears on screen.

    Second, I can understand the idea of weight and inertia but that's not what I didn't like. My idea of inertia is, it takes time to reach full running speed or turning speed when the stick is pushed, or to come to a stop when you release the stick. Fine. But there shouldn't be a noticeable delay between pushing the stick and your character starting to move, however slowly the game designers have decided that initial speed should be. This doesn't contribute to a feeling of intertia, just a feeling of disconnection between you and the game.

  • makeamazing #30 2 years ago

    I personally didnt mind the controls, though i do remember quite a lot of people complaining about it.

    I appreciate some people want realism, but stating about going to the shooting range... come on, this is a game about space marines fighting in the future.... lets not go down the "Ive fired a real weapon...and guns dont react like this"... its a GAME... if games mimic'd real life then games would be pretty boring on the whole.

    Ps I have fired a gun in real life (SA80)... before anyone says i should try it... and no i dont think it matters in the game.

  • Zaiz #31 2 years ago

    @3william65

    There's a difference between inertia and the game taking 2-3 million years to respond. In fact, tons of games have done the inertia thing, they just aren't as recognized for it because they make it feel right.

    Also, welcome to PC gaming, we've been doing the realism shtick for a while now. In fact, if your PC can play Half Life 2, I think there's a mod that does realistic gun combat? Forgot the name, but its pretty awesome, and really hard. The game punishes sprinting everywhere by making the amount of stamina you've got left harm your aiming, stuff like that. My favorite feature was probably getting hit by a headshot. The screen goes black instantly. Really wish I remembered the name, but I never played it much as the only Source multiplayer FPS I could play was Day of Defeat(which does have insanely lethal weapons) and TF2.

  • Widge #32 2 years ago

    Day Of Defeat is fantastic! I love the fact that you get hit by bullet = you die.

    KZ devs sound like they are reducing input lag but retaining weapon weight and inertia, which is good. I do like the fact the weapons don't make the game feel like you are playing The Secret Of Monkey Shooter. Click enemy to die him.

  • Rodchenko #33 2 years ago

    For me the real problem lay in the overly wide deadzone, or, more precisely, in the way the stick would only barely register for the first 2/3rds of a press ('lag' or 'heaviness') and then suddenly jump into full speed without any in-between. Reversely, when you came out of a turn, it would come to a full stop too abruptly without any 'after pull'. I think the acceleration curve just felt odd.

    This was especially tricky in terms of fine adjustment, when you were only a few degrees off your target (in terms of swivel). You then had to repeatedly jerk the stick to either side, until – often by chance – you would finally line up with it. So I am glad they address the dead zone and try to tighten it up.

  • effinjamie #34 2 years ago

    using iron sight's to aim, meant certain death in mp. Hence everyone running round firing from the hip, Hence me ditching the game rather rapidly

  • woodyrulesok #35 2 years ago

    @ Goodfella
    "They are fairly light"
    r.e. guns.
    I wouldn't say that. Even at 4-5kg it gets very tiring holding one.
    I use to shoot a .22 bolt action rifle at the Air Training Corps and it would ache my arms fairly quickly.
    Admittedly I'm no beefcake though.

  • tossum #36 2 years ago

    I came late to KZ2, as the ps3 was the last of the current gen consoles for me to aquire. I can say as someone who loves games, and without any bias to any system/dev, etc. that the control lag in this game is extreme, and really lowers the pleasure had from playing it. When you aim down the barrel, I keep end up overcompensating due to the delay and get really frustrated as the gun keeps jumping to the left then to the right of the target. This is NOT intentional weapon inertia- it is plain shit.
    Bring on the negs fanboys :)

  • Sir_TimAlot #37 2 years ago

    @ tossum

    couldn't agree with you more.

  • RandomRash #38 2 years ago

    I liked the game but did not like the cover controls holding L2, should be snap in snap out, you could not zoom in with the sniper rifle while in cover, as your thumb was on the left analog to poke out of cover but you needed it to push up on the D-pad to magnify the zoom

  • mcwildcard #39 2 years ago

    I really hope they keep the use of the sixaxis for scoped snipers, I found that even more accurate than using a mouse.

  • lagoonalight #40 2 years ago

    Just to correct an issue, this game has dozens of servers up at all times that are full. Not exactly dead.

  • TheMitch #41 2 years ago

    People aren't complaining about weightiness and realism, very few people want it like COD.

    People are complaining about lag, responsiveness and balance.

    It's a completely different matter.

  • HisDudness #42 2 years ago

    I don't know sometimes. The complaints are very specific about things that just don't exist in the game to my knowledge. I really wonder how many actually play...

    Guerrilla made two changes to the controls post-release, one gave several alternative options to the button layout, including "Alternate 2" which is similar to the COD standard controls. The other was a high precision mode, which eliminated this so-called "dead zone". I just got off a server and specifically looked for both the dead zone and delay that so many are complaining about here, and to me it's honestly not an issue. The other shooter I play regularly is MAG, and I have no trouble moving between the two. However it is quite obvious that the feel of the controls are distinct between the two games.

  • lukaz #43 2 years ago

    @Alkeno
    Frame rate and input rate do not have to match. Forza could read your input at more than 60Hz.

  • Josh128 #44 2 years ago

    @Alkeno
    Frame rate and input rate do not have to match. Forza could read your input at more than 60Hz.
    Correct, I don't know the actual rate at which the various systems poll their controllers for button presses/state changes, but I guarantee they're capable of faster than 60 Hz.

  • Alkeno #45 2 years ago

    lukaz & Josh128 are absolutely right, framerate and input polling don't have to match. They usually do, tough (lazy programmers, not properly threading their games :-)

    I recall that in Forza 3 the graphic engine refreshes at 60Hz and the physics engine updates at 360Hz. However, I've never heard of the controller polling rate (in Forza, or any other game). It could be higher than 60Hz but I don't know if the XBox360 controller is even designed to be able to provide data that fast... Never thought of that until today.

  • FooAtari #46 2 years ago

    Wow, just wow.

    It's been proven that KZ2 suffers excessive lag. Yet people still argue the toss about it... Lag in a game is not the same as having an effect of weight and inertia. If you want to add weight and inertia to your controls it should be done with no extra lag.

    if I have a huge gun I might be slow to turn, but the time it takes for my brain to think about moving and my arm starting to move remains the same weather I'm carrying a rocket launcher or a pistol. Excessive lag is a bit like having a delay in this thought process.

  • billy323 #47 2 years ago

    @ Goodfella #8

    I work for The British M.O.D. and have had experience handling sa80's (http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/SA80) and they are anything but light. The weighty feel for killzone is to simulate the body Armour the characters are wearing and the large weaponry they use. You try turning and firing that quick if it were real. Mw just ruins all that by allowing you to turn sensitivity up to stupid levels where you spin like a moron.

  • Olemak #48 2 years ago

    Yeah, well, Killzone is not exactly a realistic combat simulator.

    Killzone 2 was fantastic to look at, but (in my opinion) not very fun to play. I am pretty bad at playing games, tho. I never got to finish the last fight, with Col. Radek. As a result, I am not all that psyched about the next in the series. Just me I guess.

    Personally, I did not like the sluggish controls, but at least it was not as bad as Army of Two 2, where the protagonists felt lethargic.

    Smart of them to go mainstream on the control scheme. It's like cars: nobody will accuse anyone of plagiarism for making the foot pedals behave pretty much the same way they do in other car. Making the middle pedal change radio stations instead of breaking would be homicidal.

    Adhering to established conventions is usually good, user-friendly design. Inventing a new and improved wheel very rarely works out.

    Killzone 3 will need to score at least 9 to tempt me, and even then I'll probably wait for the platinum.