Busting the low ping myth

Literally can�t kill anything, in any game on the PlayStation. Spent years telling players that they are only as good as their bad connection, but it always fell on deaf ears (until recently, Toady probably being the only exception).

So yesterday, while the rest of the family were away for the day, I decided to experiment. I�ve always been plugged into the router with a 9 or 10 ms ping. Instead, I stole the home plug from upstairs and plugged it in the same room, in the socket behind the sofa. The experiment consisted of three stages:

Stage 1 - homeplug behind the sofa
Stage 2 - homelplug behind the sofa with a cushion on top of it
Stage 3 - homeplug behind the sofa with two cushions on top of it

Results:

Stage 1 - dramatic reduction in the frequency of insta-death encounters
Stage 2 - BANG ON!!!
Stage 3 - noticeably increased judder in game

Video Evidence

Note from the video that there are still aim assist issues and bullet sponges, but take my word for it, insta-death has been dramatically reduced.

Moral of the story - don�t fall for the �fast fibre connection for gaming� marketing. It�s only relevant on privately managed servers. Anything else is at the mercy of the game�s developers; or more pertinently perhaps, the publisher.

Edited by mrnelster (Wed 27-Dec-17 18:22:06)

Having the best connection for games went out the window when they added lag compensation a fair few years ago.

The video you've done there is pretty much what I see every game no matter what ping etc I have whether it's at a mates house and a higher ping or at mine with 15 or so.
I don't even call any of the guys in that video bullet sponges, They've taken more than they should but every few hours or so there will be someone with a ping well in the hundreds and they will literally take over a clip to kill even when I'm getting constant hit markers those are now bullet sponges to me.

Most games insta-deaths are caused by the game not refreshing fast enough and then a number of bullets register at once, Until this years COD game their tick rates were only 20Hz which for a FPS was shocking and caused a lot of issues with insta-deaths as the info wasn't updating quick enough and then 3 bullets etc would all hit at the same time which made it annoying as hell.

Obviously with what you are saying the way you were getting insta-deaths was different (as the above insta-deaths could only be fixed by faster Hz) so it's interesting to see how you've got rid of the insta-deaths you were getting.

So to enjoy gaming all you've got to do is get everyone out of the house plug in a home plug and have a spare cushion, Seems easy enough LOL.

Glad you have kinda sorted it.

My KD was fluctuating between 1.12 and 1.75 whilst connected to the home plug. Went on last night hard wired again, and enjoyed a five game average KD of 0.04. That�s 1-25......

I think in the end, it all comes down to matchmaking and modern games are horrible at it. Lag compensation isn�t a terrible idea, as long as you�ve got a reasonable balance of connections in the first place. Unfortunately, COD developers have openly stated in the past that they would rather you were in any game, than waiting for too long in a lobby for it to populate.

If you can get you�re latency into the average - whatever that is - you�ll have an average experience as I did in my video. There are many things outside of your control with external routing, so some people�s low latency measurements are a red herring.

Will try it out on battlefield next, as that�s the game I really want to get rid of the insta-deaths on. On the extremely rare occasion that I got into a decent lobby, I loved the gameplay.

So I�m goimg to pick up an extra set of home plugs at the weekend, and won�t have to wait for everyone to go out to use them. Of course the bigger question then will be.......faux fur or velvet?

Try and get the fastest plugs (AV2000) - whilst the speed you get will be nowhere near that, it should work at the best speed possible.

Network gaming is probably one of the least developed areas of gaming, unfortunately (along with 3D clipping). It could be said it's because it's not really worth it - after all, once a game is released, along comes a new one which many people start salivating over...

My KD for BF3 ended up around 1.75 and was around 0.6 for BF4 (but then I didn't rank as high in that as in BF3 before I left).

Choice of servers should really be UK, EU and only after that if you're feeling particularly masochistic, then US.

As for the last question : Can't beat velvet, especially blue...

I see your problem. You're playing a [censored] game against 12 year olds
Get yourself a proper game like BF1


That game really does look rubbish. Typical callofduty [censored]. Not even a tiny bit of realism. The Thompson sounds like it's on speed


The word censoring in this forum is pathetic.

Edited by deleted (Thu 28-Dec-17 12:33:11)

I don't think ping makes as much difference as it used to.
Our BF1 American mates moan about joining europe servers as it makes their pings too high. So we join their US ones and get the top scores

Trouble is, thats just cheating...

Ping isn't quite as important, true, especially if all players have a similar speed, and the game has decent aim-assistance (for you console peasants), movement prediction and various other bits. What does cause problems , of course, is how the network is connected : If it's wireless then there are going to be more problems for everyone than wired. Likewise for an unbalanced internet speed and/or computer system that cant run a game at a decent speed.

I still think using a local server is best, if only because you know at least someone will be able to type (or talk) is at least decipherable English...

Edited by deleted (Thu 28-Dec-17 15:44:30)

In reply to a post by MrTAToad2:

Trouble is, thats just cheating...

Not cheating as our pings are 150 ish compared to their 25 ish
They should be blasting us. I remember a massive difference going from dial up to broadband but nowadays ping doesn't seem to make much difference

I could be regarded as cheating as our pings would affect collision detection. Mind you, it could be regarded as pay-back for all the times they've wrecked movies...

In reply to a post by Lt_Swan:

In reply to a post by MrTAToad2:

Trouble is, thats just cheating...

Not cheating as our pings are 150 ish compared to their 25 ish
They should be blasting us. I remember a massive difference going from dial up to broadband but nowadays ping doesn't seem to make much difference

But that�s exactly how a lag switch works mate, and the whole point of matchmaking.

150ish is probably perfect. Not enough to look like you�re juddering all over the place to your 25ms opponent, but also probably not enough to invoke a noticeable lag compensation response. So you get to see the enemy a tenth of a second before he sees you. For players with any sort of first person shooter ability, that�s an eternity!

With the green bar system on consoles, you can be playing people with a 300ms latency discrepancy. Why do you think they use them instead of the actual numbers? On PC, any private server owner would boot you clean out of the door Lieutenant...

Killing Floor 2 has the best matchmaking that I�ve ever experienced, even though it�s not PvP. In most mainstream AAA titles, you regularly experience delays in score counts etc, where the server environment is obviously being rewound (lag compensation) in the co-op parts of the game. With KF2 every single bullet feels like it counts, in 90% of the matches. Maybe a proper PC developers matchmaking ethos, not the publishers�.

I�m going to try BF1 later and see how that plays now.

I still think using a local server is best, if only because you know at least someone will be able to type (or talk) is at least decipherable English...

That�s how you know the matchmaking is useless. There must be 50,000+ kids in the UK playing COD online this Christmas, yet my lobby is always populated with mainly �El_Dingus� or �MuchoS_Gaseous�.

No logic there.

I agree about COD mate. I only buy it for the zombie maps.

But it has proved useful in fiddling with my latency, as nothing else has such a fast turnaround time between kills and deaths.

But I can assure you that other than the distance you�re required to travel to get back into the action, BF has always played the same way for me in 90% of lobbies....repeated insta-death and terrible hit registration. I can remember only two or three games with you and Marko where it played nice, but literally only two or three. The other 200 were [censored].

Hopefully, this is going to fix that for me, and I�ll be able to experience all that Battlefield goodnss you keep on about.

Edited by mrnelster (Fri 29-Dec-17 11:28:57)

Can't beat velvet, especially blue...

I had you down as more of a brown gingham man Toady...

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

Literally can�t kill anything, in any game on the PlayStation. Spent years telling players that they are only as good as their bad connection, but it always fell on deaf ears (until recently, Toady probably being the only exception).

So yesterday, while the rest of the family were away for the day, I decided to experiment. I�ve always been plugged into the router with a 9 or 10 ms ping. Instead, I stole the home plug from upstairs and plugged it in the same room, in the socket behind the sofa. The experiment consisted of three stages:

Stage 1 - homeplug behind the sofa
Stage 2 - homelplug behind the sofa with a cushion on top of it
Stage 3 - homeplug behind the sofa with two cushions on top of it

Results:

Stage 1 - dramatic reduction in the frequency of insta-death encounters
Stage 2 - BANG ON!!!
Stage 3 - noticeably increased judder in game

Video Evidence

Note from the video that there are still aim assist issues and bullet sponges, but take my word for it, insta-death has been dramatically reduced.

Moral of the story - don�t fall for the �fast fibre connection for gaming� marketing. It�s only relevant on privately managed servers. Anything else is at the mercy of the game�s developers; or more pertinently perhaps, the publisher.

Since MW3 you have been actively penalised for having a low ping when playing COD, its all in the name of balance and fairness folks.

My ping often jumps to the 100-200 range in Battlefield but I don't notice any problems, if it didn't have the annoying network warning things flash up on screen I probably wouldn't know. A good/normal ping for me is 30 odd.

Be interesting to see what difference there is when we eventually get FTTP enabled here.

Edited by astateoftrance (Sat 30-Dec-17 20:48:18)

Yes, I have heard CoD matchmaking isn't good. MW3 was okay when I played it many years okay, but when people started to move onto other things, all you had left was the dodgy players...

The last one I played was Advanced Warfare. It was okay for a while, but eventually it just grew tiresome and was promptly deleted from my Steam account and license list, never to darken my account again.

Edited by deleted (Sat 30-Dec-17 22:26:56)

Yes, KF2 is good for that. Just a shame than all zombie spawning is in set positions...

Na. I'm the embodiment of Adonis...

Since MW3 you have been actively penalised for having a low ping when playing COD, its all in the name of balance and fairness folks.

Except it�s not just COD. Everybody�s darling Battlefield is just as bad. They nerfed the auto rotation a bit in the summer, but it doesn�t make any difference to those who don�t get any in the first place. It�s clearly a connection based issue, but is it ISP based, or the developer�s fault?

Watch this video

Some here experience similar aim assist, but a pound to a pinch they won�t admit it.

Now watch this video

That is my experience for 99% of every game. Usually no rotation at all, or it locks on in front of, or behind the player. It takes 2 ridiculous hours of play to get from level 12 to level 13.

Boring.

You should change your hit marker colours so that you can see where you're hitting them.
I occasionally get the aim assist dragging the gun around but mostly it's down to me to hit the target


Your aim is way off
Accuracy 8.437%
http://bf1stats.com/ps4/nelster

Switch to support and try the Lewis Gun Suppressive

Your scout class is very accurate
SMLE MKIII Marksman 76.47%

Edited by deleted (Sun 31-Dec-17 18:28:16)

Your aim is way off
Accuracy 8.437%

Don�t be that guy Swanny.

Practice makes perfect young man. If I don't play for a week or so I'm more rubbish than usual

I know you don�t believe it Swanny, and that�s why so many gamers get so frustrated. Because it doesn�t effect them, other users blame their fellow gamers.

Go back to my clip and watch the head and neck show at 0:50

The people that I play COD with also play BF1. They came round yesterday (to start work on a killer hangover ) said they�d never experienced anything like it. The odd bullet sponge yes, but not every encounter, and certainly not head and neck shots not doing damage. So we played rallycross on PC2 instead.

I�ve got a video of you and I playing BF1 on Sinai, and after a firmware update, it for some reason automatically set the capture to record voice too. I�ve never uploaded it because I don�t want my [or your] voice broadcast on YouTube, but suffice to say you were getting insta-killed and doing your [censored] nut big time!!

Nobody in the party told you you couldn�t aim. What you need to remember is, that some players experience that nine out of ten games, not the one out of ten games that you do. It�s not a cockfight. It doesn�t matter at all whose the greatest player in the party. It�s simply about quality of experience. I�ve nerfed my connection in COD and now I get as many good games as bad. I�m happy with that. I can�t get Battlefield sorted though. I play with a high turn speed, but for BF1 I�ve had to turn it right down to 20% because there is no slow down at all. Everybody has at least slight snap to target, you just don�t realise it.

The auto rotation videos I posted, show what happens when your ISP connection is at odds with the developers linear interpolation settings. There is obviously an opposite end to that spectrum too. Altering your LERP settings is generally seen as hacking in the PC community. When those settings are out of your control, it�s as good as an ISP supplied aimbot. If you actually watched the video, you would realise that that foreign poster believed it was the same for everybody, but that not everybody knew how to switch it on. It�s actually enabled by default. It simply doesn�t work the same on every connection and that�s beyond his comprehension.

I�ve got pages of community support from developers trying to understand players� issues, and concluding that it�s always the ISP that seems to be the problem. But I doubt you�d bother reading it if I posted it for you. Halo players getting advice (and helping with patches) from 343 developers support forums. If you believe the facile nonsense of high KD players, you�d believe that XBox live is some sort of gamng Utopia and that Halo is the sport of fps kings. The developers support forums prove that it�s really not.

In the meantime I�ll keep experimenting with my latency to try to get on the right side of the net code. The fact is, that works, but it doesn�t make for the smoothest gameplay. What I have deduced so far, is that:

A) a high ping helps, but doesn�t make for the smoothest gameplay experience.

B) a low ping IS better, but only IF you have perfect throughput from your ISP

I�m going to start a process with my ISP about my ping spikes. I record an average 27ms in BF1, but somewhere on my ISP�s routing, buffer bloat pushes that to spikes of around 140+ ms. Pull up your in game network monitor, and watch how the net code applies all sorts of latency prediction, every step, and ever shot throughout the game. It�s clever [censored]. What it can�t do though, is correct for completely inconsistent latencies.

Why don�t you go into the advanced settings, turn off auto rotation and slow down aim assist, and see how much of your controller aim is actually down to you? Failing that, come up for a cup of tea and experience my connection for yourself? I don�t bite.

In reply to a post by astateoftrance:

My ping often jumps to the 100-200 range in Battlefield but I don't notice any problems, if it didn't have the annoying network warning things flash up on screen I probably wouldn't know. A good/normal ping for me is 30 odd.

Be interesting to see what difference there is when we eventually get FTTP enabled here.

Those warnings are to tell you to lead your shots because your connection is lagging. I only get them if I nerf my connection into the hundreds.

I believe that BF1 has better code than COD and that�s why I can�t nerf it successfully. Trying to has led me to some extremely interesting technical sources. They point to my ISP�s routing, although I don�t hold too much hope for being able to change that. If I can get through to the really smart guys there, that would be an interesting start.

What I have learnt, is that over the last couple of years, shooters have moved to skill based matchmaking. That being an admission that it�s more consistent when relying on players� stats, than on players� connections.

Because if you have a better connection, you�re going to have better stats, even if you�re slightly lesser in terms of ability of course.

If you were closer I would I think you should change the hit marker colours just to see what they are saying in relation to your sights.
I think I did turn off aim assist a while ago as I didn't like it tracking people I wasn't trying to aim at. I'll check later

Will have a look in a bit (when I can stand the light again...) and see where that is

Right the way I see it you took 58 health out of him with 12 ish bullets which isn't bad for an MP18 at that range. He is a level 98 player and has at least 700 kills with that BAR which is also much more deadly at that range. I can see the gun pulling around like you say.
The weapons in BF1 become more accurate if you keep firing, they start off spraying but will pull back on target. You can see that happening with your score. Initial hit then misses but then back on target
Try using the MP 18 Optical that has a better sight and is better at range.

Your accuracy has gone up a lot. Have a chocolate bar

Edited by deleted (Mon 01-Jan-18 21:10:54)

I really don�t know what your problem is Swanny.

In reply to a post by mrnelster:

I know you don�t believe it Swanny, and that�s why so many gamers get so frustrated. Because it doesn�t effect them, other users blame their fellow gamers.

Go back to my clip and watch the head and neck show at 0:50

The people that I play COD with also play BF1. They came round yesterday (to start work on a killer hangover ) said they�d never experienced anything like it. The odd bullet sponge yes, but not every encounter, and certainly not head and neck shots not doing damage.

I'm not disbelieving what you are saying and I'm not trying to say you're rubbish at gaming. I just commented on the clip that you posted as an outsider watching some game play and trying to make sense of it. I even slowed down the video even more. I'm trying to understand.
Consoles are (insert forbidden word) for FPS. It took me ages to learn how to play them. Even now I'm still not as good as I used to be on the PC

Are you using wi-fi or homeplugs? Have you tried both?

Yes you are.

I�ve posted you some (of the hundreds) of videos showing how aim assist is an aimbot on some connections.

Other people have an insta-death problem once in a blue moon (how it�s supposed t be).

So logically, there is another end to that scale, where a player can�t get any decent gameplay in at all, with almost incessant insta-death.

You definitely have aim assist, it�s a console. You just won�t realise how much that almost imperceivable �snap� counts, until it�s completely gone.

There are hundreds of easily available videos on YouTube showing the same net code issues.

DICE keep patching the code to prevent high pingers from beating low pingers. They know there are issues.

The lead your aim marker is meant to appear when your ping exceeds 150ms. My in game latency consistently hovers around 27ms, yet I get that sign almost all the time. That means there is a connection issue somewhere.

You tell me my accuracy is the problem, have a chocolate bar...

Aye, well aware of that having gamed for years on 56k but the point is I don't notice a problem or seem to need to lead my shots.