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.