I forgot to mention -- about PPS -- most modern high-speed connections can handle a 30 PPS 8-player Descent game just fine, but there are a few players stuck in rural areas with very old connections, who can't. I'm guessing -- from the 8kB/s limit he set for himself -- that the author's audience sees a similar distribution.
The thing is, you don't have to make those connections symmetric. One of the features I'm working on for the next Descent Retro release is allowing players to set a PPS limit for themselves, based on their own available bandwidth, that will both reduce their PPS upstream, and request that their opponents reduce the rate of the incoming packets.
This means people with fast connections can have high-quality 30 PPS game interactions, and people with slow connections can still play with them. They have to put up with 8 PPS (or whatever), but it's preferable to not playing. :)
The thing is, you don't have to make those connections symmetric. One of the features I'm working on for the next Descent Retro release is allowing players to set a PPS limit for themselves, based on their own available bandwidth, that will both reduce their PPS upstream, and request that their opponents reduce the rate of the incoming packets.
This means people with fast connections can have high-quality 30 PPS game interactions, and people with slow connections can still play with them. They have to put up with 8 PPS (or whatever), but it's preferable to not playing. :)