Lag won't drop your FPS though. And as far as I can see, won't affect the number of bars you get.
I play on a pretty solid gaming computer, and never drop below 60. Even if both spiders and 8 players have fun knocking every pillars around. And yet when I join some crappy hosted boats I still get 1-2 bars.
Like many in the thread, I usually host and people get 3-5 bars, depending. I am from Montreal, so I think that explains most 3 bars even though my connection is pretty solid. But I ask after every run I host, and people, even at 3 bars, say that there was no lag.
I've been to a conference last winter (at
CUSEC, should someone care :p )on Army of Two's Peer to Peer architecture, and if Vindictus works about the same way, traffic should look something like :
- The host acts as the Dungeon's authority. It's the host that "knows" where the mobs really are, how many hp they have left, do you get hit by a trap or not. The traffic between other players and the host is about that exchange of information.
The EA tech specified two ways of doing this, depending on what amount of traffic/precision you want : Either everyone communicates everything they do to the host which then computes the next "state" and communicate it back, or everyone pre-calculates the change of state, communicate it with the host that checks for discrepancies, corrects and sends back. Vindictus seems to be doing the latter, because in case of lags you rubberband, instead of the game being highly unresponsive. You calculate your "delta", but the packet loss or processing time of the host means you don't receive a confirmation, or receive it late, so you jump back.
In both cases, the speed between players and host matters, but so does processing speed of the information the host has to check/produce then send back. On games like Army of Two this is assumed ok since everyone plays on the same console, and the performances are already known to the developers. Not the case with computers :p
- The Nexon servers act as the game authority. It's the server that decides map layout if there is more than one choice for a dungeon. The loot table is with the server too. The host has more traffic with the game server than the other players, probably for security's sake. The server checks for unusual "deltas", that could be speedhacks for example.
So the lag at the end of the dungeon when loot is given and AP is given, etc, that's probably Nexon having trouble. But during the fight, assuming you keep 60 FPS all the time, or can clearly discern what is FPS drop and what is lag, the amount of traffic between players and host is much more important than server-players.
Blame the host :p