Is PC faster? - IPad vs PC videos

Nemek
Nemek Posts: 1,511
edited January 2014 in MPQ General Discussion
So with all of the supposed ruckus going on with people who seem suspicious, I thought about it a bit and I'm pretty much completely changing my view on it.

I wondered about how fast one could REALLY complete fights in, both from a tablet (I use an IPad) and the Steam version. So, I recorded a couple of different games and interfaces.

So here is me on my IPad (3rd generation IPad):
http://youtu.be/KRiPqasix2E

The fight starts at 15 seconds (and waits for boosts, but w/e) and then everybody dies at 55 seconds. The fight isn't SUPER typical, since it's against Xforce, Spidey, and Cap. Spidey looks to be around level 100 or more, though. I'd say most PvP battles are over in another 30 seconds or so.

Also, the video looks choppy, but that's how it actually played out on the IPad - some of the stutter is from that bug going around and some of it is semi-normal.

Since I didn't bother to join the steam beta (ugh, still regret this), I also took video of some really low-level fight on PC.

That PC video is here:
http://youtu.be/CAkk8K0oYzg

The fight length isn't what I'm really concerned about, but it's just everything else. Everything is much quicker from skipping opponents, starting games, ending games, queueing up skills, even cascades look a little quicker (though that might not actually be true.)

I can definitely see somebody averaging about 90 seconds or so on PC, but 2 minutes or more on phone/tablet.

Soooo...I don't think thereck/jacobpc are cheating.

This, by the way...is also my "I really do think GSBW is better than Thorverine" video.

Also, let me know if I somehow messed up the youtube upload, I've never done it before.

Comments

  • DirigiblePilot
    DirigiblePilot Posts: 392 Mover and Shaker
    I think you do have a point. I am a Steam player, and everything's really smooth and quick, so when I watch a friend play on iPhone, it's kind of astonishing to see the difference in performance.

    However, I do not think this makes as much of a difference as you are suggesting. Also, some rounds are bad- it's just bad luck. Some rounds are good, but the board is unfavorable at first. Heroes need to be healed. The AI gets cascades. Etc., etc., etc. There are too many other factors than a slight increase in speed to take into account in this kind of instance, I think.
  • I'm sure the timing does matter. When you're fully boosted most of the time you're limited by just how fast your animation is, and if your device is just flat out slower (iPad), that'd be a very considerable disadvantage in speed. However I don't think this is easily solvable. I don't have MPQ on my solid state drive and I can see the game slow down when it needs to get my regular hard drive so whatever it's doing, it's using up a decent chunk of resources. I actually thought about reinstalling the game on my solid state drive but I'm not sure how well the game file backup works so I decided not to risk it. I do notice less slowdowns after a recent patch.
  • Adding my two cents to the matter:

    I'm going to side with Nemek here on tangential evidence of my own.

    Both myself and my other half play MPQ.

    I play on a top-of-the-line LG G2, she plays on a three year old EVO 3D. The difference in game performance is very striking. I can zip along very quickly in matches on my G2, her phone struggles mightily with a single match on the board, let alone animations. I can easily clear 3-4 rounds in the time she takes to clear a single round. So, horsepower is definitely a factor here. Given that PCs are still leaps and bounds ahead of top-of-the-line phones in processing power, I can definitely see an advantage for PCs here.

    Another major issue is latency. Nemek demonstrates this quite well when skipping opponents. I can definitely say that the game runs faster on my G2 when I play over Wi-Fi, than on my 4g cell connection. If a ground based PC player is operating at sub 5ms latency over broadband, there is a clear tactical advantage here over mobile, with latencies averaging 90-100ms in the U.S.

    So, bottom line, IMHO, PC has a clear advantage in speed for both processing power and in bandwidth for playing MPQ.
  • Clintman
    Clintman Posts: 757 Critical Contributor
    I play on both the PC and mobile, the speed at which these 2 are winning is too fast. You cannot find the same opponent that fast let alone beat them that fast. I would not spend so much time trying to defend them, so many in the community talking about the same 2 dudes... there might just be something to it.
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    Honestly, I don't really notice that big a difference in the actual animations between my 5s and PC
  • Please don't try to defend the 2 blatant cheaters - in all the time I've played since November, do you know how many times I've been able to reliably find the same player and smack them, and retaliations weren't involved? Once. During the end of the more recent Double Shot tournament, just after the patch came through to make it so you could hit players of any rating above your own. I hit someone's tank team (I think it was Spoit?) 4-5 times for 50 points a pop, helping me get that green X-force Wolverine reward I wanted so badly. Spoit and another player I could repeatedly see - even after hitting them. this ended within a few attacks though.

    When you're floating around in the same rating as several other persons though, against very high-health teams? You can't just obliterate them that many times in such a short span. I have a sneaking suspicion that they've got multiple clients running, it records the data of who you have able to attack, and they effectively get 5 matches going at once on the same target. They end them all roughly around the same time (get one Hero down to near-death, then focus on the next client), and blam - multiple wins in a short time.

    Call it a tinfoil-on-head theory but it doesn't exactly seem far-fetched. The time difference you're showing is minor quality of life things, the game runs pretty darn fast (or it did before the recent animation bug) on my Galaxy Note 2.
  • To overcome a huge amount of hp's, you need to rely heavily on abilities. The abilities all have animations that take some time. I find it difficult to believe that an enemy team with a collective HP total of 10-15k can be overcome in 30-60 seconds, if you factor in the animation delays alone. Not to mention the delays from any cascades.

    Every time I've run into thereck (for a few months now), he has hit me in succession two or three times (within a few minutes of time). There is no other player that has done that.
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    Toxicadam wrote:
    To overcome a huge amount of hp's, you need to rely heavily on abilities. The abilities all have animations that take some time. I find it difficult to believe that a team with a collective HP total of 10-15k can be overcome in 30-60 seconds, if you factor in the animation delays alone. Not to mention the delays from cascades.
    And again, someone was saying he was doing the 30 second runs with spidey, hulk, IM40 with the 6 cost-red only recharge. The boosts+recharge would be enough to get one red ability off, which can maaaaybe kill one person, but I can't imagine he gets enough AP to cast anything else worthwhile in under 30 seconds.
  • Nemek
    Nemek Posts: 1,511
    Yeah...I think I'm just forcing it...*sigh*
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    Yeah, I dunno, I just tried the PC on the off chance the HP for the +3 all boost hadn't propagated yet, and it seemed like the animations were actually slower than on my 5s