31 réponses à ce sujet

[enbeh]

Just joined a PUG platinum game in progress. After my first wave, one of the other players, uhm, politely asked me to leave because I was slowing down their game.

According to the players' posts on the forum, they are from Down Under, I live in Europe. This made me wonder. I used to think that any player's lag depends on their connection with the host [1]. Or does lag also depend on OTHER players' connection with the host so that their lag was affected when I joined?

[1]  Lag was actually quite tolerable on my side.


 

[capn233]

Yes to some extent it does.

[andy_3_913]

I don't know what's going on, but every game is lagging this last couple of days.

 

Used to get more good games than laggy ones.

 

Not any more, it seems. 

[Deerber]

Yeah, it is.

[PHOEN1XK1NG]

It's because Australia is a black hole in the internet universe.

[capn233]

^That's because they have to invert all the data so it is readable on their screens.

[RustyBuckets02]

Surprised by the answers in this thread, as I was under the impression it was only affected by the host- so an Aussie in the lobby wouldn't affect the other players unless he was hosting.

[capn233]

This is from my recollection of a different conversation in the old bug tracking team, if some of the guys like Caratinoid, Mindframe, Cyonan or dunvi are around maybe they could give a better answer:

 

You aren't causing the ping to increase for other clients to the host, so it isn't network latency in that sense.  The host has to wait for some updates from all the clients, and if one client has high latency then that slows the game.

 

Somewhat related, if the host has low framerate and clients with high framerate are connected even with fast network latency / low pings then it will appear laggy because the host is sending out position updates less frequently.

[Marksmad is waving goodbye]

This is from my recollection of a different conversation in the old bug tracking team, if some of the guys like Caratinoid, Mindframe, Cyonan or dunvi are around maybe they could give a better answer:

 

You aren't causing the ping to increase for other clients to the host, so it isn't network latency in that sense.  The host has to wait for some updates from all the clients, and if one client has high latency then that slows the game.

 

Somewhat related, if the host has low framerate and clients with high framerate are connected even with fast network latency / low pings then it will appear laggy because the host is sending out position updates less frequently.

 

That is essentially correct, except that the game's netcode can compensate for a significant amount of ping time. Lag-free games across the globe are quite common.

 

What the game cannot compensate for so easily is variation in ping time, which is a much more frequent cause of lag, and more annoying because it intrudes suddenly on the game's flow.

 

We all experience it very noticeably when someone joins mid-wave.

 

The biggest cause of latency variation is endpoint wireless connections. Use cable all the way, or make sure you are VERY close to your wireless router.

[capn233]

Netcode...

 

It is impossible for there to be lag free games across the globe.  Now of course everyone has a different perception of lag, and it also will depend on what the host's base framerate is.  Xbox and PS3 should be more resistant since they send out fewer updates per second since basically every update cycle in ME3 is framerate dependent.

 

Joining mid-wave is an example of this, but it is not because of a change in client pings necessarily, it is because the host is waiting for data from the new client and it can drop the host framerate.  When the host sends out updates with variable frequency or lower frequency then things appear jumpy for the clients which looks like network latency, but it isn't really a problem with the network.

 

Rubber banding, for instance, can occur from packet loss and the host receiving the position updates out of order (even though they have timestamps apparently the implementation was bugged), or if there is a mismatch between host and client framerate where client has higher framerate than host.

 

If you are on PC and host a game with friends that have decent pings, then lock your framerate at something low like 20 or below they are going to complain about lag.

[OniGanon]

By necessity, us Australians have to learn to deal with a  lot of lag in online games. It's just an unfortunate side effect of living in the middle of frack nowhere.

 

If you aren't the host, I doubt you're going to make enough difference that an Australian wouldn't be able to handle it.

 

Tell them to Harden The F Up.

[Marksmad is waving goodbye]

 

It is impossible for there to be lag free games across the globe.  

 

 

If it were PvP, that would be practically true with existing switching technology.

 

But no, what you wrote isn't correct.

[akots1]

The slowest ping is a good approximation of lag whether you are hosting or not as game needs to update all positions. Also, sometimes packets are lost but chance of that does not strongly depend on ping. If ping is good, and it feels like there is a lag, that means that the host is running at low fps (20 or below). If ping is good, everything works well but you die too frequently and enemies have abnormal accuracy, the host is probably running at fps over 75. Happens quite frequently these days.

 

Clear example was yesterdays' game on Krondor / cerberus that I hosted. There were 3 ppl in the lobby, US, US, and Canada with good ping (20-40 msec) and we started. Then, mid- wave fourth player tries to join from China with 300 msec ping. I die right away. another player complains of lag and leaves, Chinese player dies but stays and the game becomes quite laggy. Then, fourth player tried to join, cannot connect, I die twice in the process. Then, another player with good ping finally can connect (I die again) but the game is still very laggy even for me as host. Somebody complains about the lag. Eventually, two players leave (I die twice) and when other two players try to join, I die again, run out of medigel, and quit in frustration. Don't know what happened after that, there might be still some people left in the game who were trying to join. I run always exactly at 60 - 62 fps.

[RustyBuckets02]

Can someone explain the in game effect as if you're talking to a very thick person (i.e me) as I'm a bit lost with technical jargon.

 

I'm on xbox, and based in the UK. So I get a bit of lag on American hosts, and a lot from say an Australian host (as a rule). However, I've never been aware of any lag if the host is ok for me and someone from Oz or South America joins- there might be a particularly big delay as they drop in, and sometimes you can see that they are lagging badly because their character is moving oddly or rubber banding on my screen, but all my actions and powers are working fine.

 

Likewise if I'm hosting there might be an entry lag spike, and you can sometimes tell if someone's having really bad lag as above but it wouldn't affect me directly.

 

Am I missing something here? I'm not sure I like the idea that I might be causing say, a group of USA players lag.

[capn233]

If you are on a foreign host and you don't notice any serious lag, I would not worry about it too much.

[akots1]

I have had a lot of lag-free games with host in Ukraine or Lithuania or Pakistan or Peru or Brazil and all three non-host players from US. The ping to host was always reasonable, below 100 msec. I also had a nightmarish games with all 4 ppl in the US due to spikes in bad ping, lost packets (powers and weapons don't hit, teleporting), and host fps glitches. It is really impossible to predict just based on location. So, it is exactly as capn233 said.

[Marksmad is waving goodbye]

It is really impossible to predict just based on location. So, it is exactly as capn233 said.

 

I was saying, just as you stated above, that it's not primarily a problem of location. The capn233 was saying exactly the opposite.

[MaxCrushmore]

I demand ThuNerd Dome, where this can settled once and for all!

 

Only then will we know where lag comes from ..

[akots1]

Only then will we know where lag comes from ..

ME Pinger on PC gives a very clear idea about the origin of lag. There are no mysteries there.

[Marksmad is waving goodbye]

ME Pinger on PC gives a very clear idea about the origin of lag. There are no mysteries there.

 

No. You'd be surprised.

 

Ping time has an effect on the amount of lag you get in game. But you can have a low ping host with lag, and a higher ping host with less lag. The mean variation in ping time is what causes most lag effects in game. This is not normally a consequence of transit time, but of transmission delays because of a packet missing it's time slot.

 

It's hugely unfortunate that IP became so widespread before the understanding of the need for network QoS did.

 

I demand ThuNerd Dome, where this can settled once and for all!

 

Only then will we know where lag comes from ..

 

It is known. It's just that when people repeat the myths for long enough, they start believing them.

[Deerber]

No. You'd be surprised.

Ping time has an effect on the amount of lag you get in game. But you can have a low ping host with lag, and a higher ping host with less lag. The mean variation in ping time is what causes most lag effects in game. This is not normally a consequence of transit time, but of transmission delays because of a packet missing it's time slot.

It's hugely unfortunate that IP became so widespread before the understanding of the need for network QoS did.


It is known. It's just that when people repeat the myths for long enough, they start believing them.

Yeah, I can confirm that I've had games where MEpinger showed a very low ping lagging like hell. To the point that I uninstalled that thing, it wasn't worth the hassle.

[Clips7]

I'm glad somebody mentioned this....i'm not that savvy on internet connections and tech concerning the overall fundamentals of it, but i have noticed that when i have seen that communicating spinning symbol in the upper left hand corner right before the game lags badly and dis-connects? A teammate left the game while this was happening and as soon as he left (not the host) the game lag issues vanished. It was almost as if the game fixed itself, but now i'm assuming it had something to do with that other player leaving.

[Marksmad is waving goodbye]

Yeah, I can confirm that I've had games where MEpinger showed a very low ping lagging like hell. To the point that I uninstalled that thing, it wasn't worth the hassle.

 

I wish everyone on here would do this experiment:

 

1. Connect via wifi to home router. Run the test at ping-test.net

2. If possible, place computer right next to router. Repeat test.

3. Connect computer to router with ethernet cable. Repeat test.

 

The contribution of last-step connection to overall ping times will be very visible, and for many people it will dwarf the geographical contributions to ping.

 

If you have a Unix/Linux style shell you can also run "ping yahoo.au" (for example) with each connection type above and see the huge variation when connected via wifi.

 

But it won't happen, repeating the same old incorrect myths is better than actual testing, right?

[Marksmad is waving goodbye]

I'm glad somebody mentioned this....i'm not that savvy on internet connections and tech concerning the overall fundamentals of it, but i have noticed that when i have seen that communicating spinning symbol in the upper left hand corner right before the game lags badly and dis-connects? A teammate left the game while this was happening and as soon as he left (not the host) the game lag issues vanished. It was almost as if the game fixed itself, but now i'm assuming it had something to do with that other player leaving.

 

Yes it did, because that player had a large variation in packet travel time and the game synchronizer code couldn't deal with it.

[Jeremiah12LGeek]

Can someone explain the in game effect as if you're talking to a very thick person (i.e me) as I'm a bit lost with technical jargon.

 

Lag doesn't just refer to network latency - it refers to all influences on the time it takes an electronic signal to be sent from one location to another.

 

All electronics experience lag, even calculators. It's only an issue when it intrudes on human perception, which in the case of ME 3, happens a lot more than it should!

 

It's hard to simplify a definition of lag*, because it can be influenced by so much: latency, packet loss, background processes, even degradation of electronics can introduce a noticeable delay.

 

All I know for sure, is that lag is the enemy, and we have to get that bastard, no mattah whut!!!

 

*But here's Wikipedia's definition, which is pretty good.