internet latency & effects on hit registration

[readtext]

maybe the packets are too small and are collected somewhere on a server, where they can get mixed up. We could try to add additional overhead to prevent it

[Chief Blur Buster]

but why they punish low latency ? i am missing something the last years in online gaming ?
was it not like this = stable low latency = better = faster = advantage...in most online shooters ?

You're confusing things a little -- We're talking only about network latency, NOT equipment latency.

Games generally don't penalize low equipment latency.

Right now, we're talking about a surgical latency problem: network latency.

It's been done for years in some games -- for something like 20 years, some games try to equalize Internet latency between all gamers in an attempt to balance out the playing field. A lot of the talk in Battle(non)sense YouTube channel talks about this too as well.

Terminologically, it is called network latency compensation, and I'm just calling it handicap algorithm sometimes -- since most latency compensation algorithms are well-tuned to, say the average latency of a game server. Players who are lower latency than others on the same server tend to get more latency handicapped than players who are higher latency than others on the same server. It's been going on for two decades.

The sweet spot is approximately 30ms latency or thereabouts to most game servers.

Now, imagine, thereupon, a game server in city X of a big soup of bad ISPs (DSL connections, cable connections, dialup connections, FTTH connections), your FTTH will play crappily with this game server because of the latency compensation algorithm. Painful game, not fun.

I've seen some people play better on LTE than FTTH, so don't neglect ISP lottery. Three forum members here said they've done better on LTE for example -- yes, this is weird for network latency-behavior newbies to this but better routing / slightly more latency / autoconnect to "servers that are less latency zoo" / etc -- make all the difference in gaming fun. There are many mudane reasons from routing to sweet-spot network latency for latency compensation algorithms.

But if you VPN to a different city where you have a well-connected players (few DSL, almost everyone on FTTH over there), then your game will be WAY more fun, even if the VPN adds about 10ms latency. Much, much more fun!

The Name of The Fun Game

1. Lower your lag jitter as much as you can. Jitter is BAD for headshots! Even 4ms jitter is bad! (FTTH helps)
2. Connect to game servers where all players have almost all the same lag of each other (FTTH can skew lag comp algo's)
3. Adjust your network latency to be roughly equal to the average latency of that game server
4. Win, win.

Also, sometimes you have to pony up $$$ and PLAY the Internet lottery!

- VPNs / Routing (try several - $$$)
- ISPs (try several - $$$)
- Better router (try a couple -- $$$)
- Separate Internet connection for esports (FTTH for game, FTTH for streaming/netflix/faimly)
- Network conditioning (add/remove lag, stabilize jitter, etc)
- Careful game server selection for games that let you select servers (do NOT join a latency zoo)
etc.

Most gamers don't bother, but you can get a leg up. Most pay $1000 on a RTX card and don't bother to spend $10 to test a gaming VPN lottery. Maybe 2 VPNs worsens your game, but 3 others may improve your game. It is a bit crapshoot.

There are other reasons why online gaming can be bad (e.g. cheaters, etc), but if you're getting the same experience in all games, despite great hardware, then you need to begin looking at shaking the network variables hard.

We have an old article with Battle(non)sense guest writing about latency compensation -- www.blurbusters.com/network-lag -- now you know! You kinda have to kowtow the Internet connection to the game. So control your network jitter, adjust your network lag to sweet spot, make sure you don't have too many terrible-lag/high-lag/jitter players on the same server (since the lag compensation algorithm means playing field may tilt randomly creating whacko hitreg for everyone -- where hitreg feels delayed or accelerated at randomly different times). Play with low jitter, consistent moderate network lag, and against other players with consistent lag -- and your hitreg improves WAY UP in many games.

Do you understand better? This is old science around here... nothing new. Smart online gamers have been talking about this for years, including many YouTubers. Nothing "new and scandalous", you've probably just been in the dark about optimizing network. You NEED to decrease latency everywhere else, but network is special...

This has been going on for 20 years...

[Alpha]

but why they punish low latency ? i am missing something the last years in online gaming ?
was it not like this = stable low latency = better = faster = advantage...in most online shooters ?

You're confusing things a little -- We're talking only about network latency, NOT equipment latency.

Games generally don't penalize low equipment latency.

Right now, we're talking about a surgical latency problem: network latency.

It's been done for years in some games -- for something like 20 years, some games try to equalize Internet latency between all gamers in an attempt to balance out the playing field. A lot of the talk in Battle(non)sense YouTube channel talks about this too as well.

Terminologically, it is called network latency compensation, and I'm just calling it handicap algorithm sometimes -- since most latency compensation algorithms are well-tuned to, say the average latency of a game server. Players who are lower latency than others on the same server tend to get more latency handicapped than players who are higher latency than others on the same server. It's been going on for two decades.

The sweet spot is approximately 30ms latency or thereabouts to most game servers.

Now, imagine, thereupon, a game server in city X of a big soup of bad ISPs (DSL connections, cable connections, dialup connections, FTTH connections), your FTTH will play crappily with this game server because of the latency compensation algorithm. Painful game, not fun.

I've seen some people play better on LTE than FTTH, so don't neglect ISP lottery. Three forum members here said they've done better on LTE for example -- yes, this is weird for network latency-behavior newbies to this but better routing / slightly more latency / autoconnect to "servers that are less latency zoo" / etc -- make all the difference in gaming fun. There are many mudane reasons from routing to sweet-spot network latency for latency compensation algorithms.

But if you VPN to a different city where you have a well-connected players (few DSL, almost everyone on FTTH over there), then your game will be WAY more fun, even if the VPN adds about 10ms latency. Much, much more fun!

The Name of The Fun Game

1. Lower your lag jitter as much as you can. Jitter is BAD for headshots! Even 4ms jitter is bad! (FTTH helps)
2. Connect to game servers where all players have almost all the same lag of each other (FTTH can skew lag comp algo's)
3. Adjust your network latency to be roughly equal to the average latency of that game server
4. Win, win.

Also, sometimes you have to pony up $$$ and PLAY the Internet lottery!

- VPNs / Routing (try several - $$$)
- ISPs (try several - $$$)
- Better router (try a couple -- $$$)
- Separate Internet connection for esports (FTTH for game, FTTH for streaming/netflix/faimly)
- Network conditioning (add/remove lag, stabilize jitter, etc)
- Careful game server selection for games that let you select servers (do NOT join a latency zoo)
etc.

Most gamers don't bother, but you can get a leg up. Most pay $1000 on a RTX card and don't bother to spend $10 to test a gaming VPN lottery. Maybe 2 VPNs worsens your game, but 3 others may improve your game. It is a bit crapshoot.

There are other reasons why online gaming can be bad (e.g. cheaters, etc), but if you're getting the same experience in all games, despite great hardware, then you need to begin looking at shaking the network variables hard.

We have an old article with Battle(non)sense guest writing about latency compensation -- www.blurbusters.com/network-lag -- now you know! You kinda have to kowtow the Internet connection to the game. So control your network jitter, adjust your network lag to sweet spot, make sure you don't have too many terrible-lag/high-lag/jitter players on the same server (since the lag compensation algorithm means playing field may tilt randomly creating whacko hitreg for everyone -- where hitreg feels delayed or accelerated at randomly different times). Play with low jitter, consistent moderate network lag, and against other players with consistent lag -- and your hitreg improves WAY UP in many games.

Do you understand better? This is old science around here... nothing new. Smart online gamers have been talking about this for years, including many YouTubers. Nothing "new and scandalous", you've probably just been in the dark about optimizing network. You NEED to decrease latency everywhere else, but network is special...

This has been going on for 20 years...

This is such a good read. Unfortunately things are really changing and it's not looking good. Even with exceptional routing (commercial equipment but ISP have to route too), low ping, virtually non existent jitter or buffer bloat it may not even matter. Look at Activision for example, they have multiple patents nerfing higher skilled players real time. The basis is, for every highly skilled player, they lose 6 casuals thus the SBMM. The have additional patents where if you buy a new skin, = easier lobbies and so on. They determine if you get rolled by player with new skin, you're likely to buy the skin. Everyone gets a trophy! Imagine, all things equal except skill, you can become slower, deal less damage, receive more damage, all for the sake of money. We are literally seeing that right now.

Was in a tournament last year in August and there was a lot of money on the line. Had a pretty neat play that went viral in a do or die situation (advance or not). When I was shown the clip I was like neat! Very cool. Then I watched it again. With open NAT, 15ms ping, literally A+ bufferbloat where I don't lose any packets regardless of size but even then, I have full TCP optimizations on the NIC, a dedicated Network where only my device lives (I literally had to invent a workflow that would allow me to play and stream in the way I do so that I wouldn't be capped due to not finding a single purchasable device that exist allowing my framerates), true 1gbps Fiber straight to commercial router with CAT 8 runs (overkill but who wants to do this again) my Fluke shows all pairs perfect... what I found after slowing down, zooming in shouldn't have been possible. The hit markers made it mathematically impossible that it took me as long as it did for the play. Even under the absolute worst case scenario it should have been done much faster. We scrapped by on damage but the time to kill would have had me put 1 more down 100% for easy advance. We didn't win the entire thing but made out well but what I seen was not possible due to tick rate considering one of the highest rate of fire SMG's, we know the damage profile, and duration of rounds and markers just don't add up. Throw it all out the window if the server was just trash that match of course (meaning not something we'd see from packet loss or ping). We can't control what is on the other clients end and I wonder if too much optimizations end up hurting vs helping as they reg where you don't if they are losing packets for example. Or was I being nerfed per the publishers patents. Who knows but there are billions of dollars to make on empowering players who make content pushing viewers right to the store for a skin or pack or whatever it may be.

Aside from patents where this actual scenario exist, why wouldn't you? Get a player who drops crazy whatever winning game running around with skin, making content everyone is looking for an advantage and you're essentially a sales person. You get rich off views, the Publisher gets rich off store sales. GG EZ.

[hsEnter]

i think i found the solution to this problem (at least in my case), the only thing i did was to reset my bios to default, i was overclocking my cpu ( nothing crazy, 4.7ghz all cores on i7 8700k ) and ram (xmp 3200mhz), now my fps is a little bit lower but my games feels more responsive (aiming feels really good) and i don't have any more wtf moments like enemies peeking at lighting speed or having inhuman reactions.

[Unixko]

i think i found the solution to this problem (at least in my case), the only thing i did was to reset my bios to default, i was overclocking my cpu ( nothing crazy, 4.7ghz all cores on i7 8700k ) and ram (xmp 3200mhz), now my fps is a little bit lower but my games feels more responsive (aiming feels really good) and i don't have any more wtf moments like enemies peeking at lighting speed or having inhuman reactions.

you found just temporaly fix not a final solution
less energy= less problem

[hsEnter]

i think i found the solution to this problem (at least in my case), the only thing i did was to reset my bios to default, i was overclocking my cpu ( nothing crazy, 4.7ghz all cores on i7 8700k ) and ram (xmp 3200mhz), now my fps is a little bit lower but my games feels more responsive (aiming feels really good) and i don't have any more wtf moments like enemies peeking at lighting speed or having inhuman reactions.

you found just temporaly fix not a final solution
less energy= less problem

i also switched from vdsl to ffth, that was the main offender, since i know that my internet is pretty much perfect now the only thing left was my hardware, after a week of testing i can say that for me the lag is fixed

[mello]

You may be hitting the unlevel playfield behaviors.
(A) Some games handicap low-latency connections, and;

I can attest & assure everyone that this is not it. People experience huge performance fluctuations without any changes to ping or packet loss. Also, i have seen and observed constant and perfect / near perfect internet performance from players with different ping times, ranging from ping ~5 to ~60 in CS 1.6. You can also observe it in Apex Legends where streamers from Australia play on US servers or US streamers play on Japanese or European servers. Despite their ping varying from ~120 to ~250, their internet performance does not change or suffer significantly and essentially the only penalty they experience is delay in reaction time. They still see correct enemy positions and are able to enjoy perfect / near perfect tracking and hit registration.

(B) Latency jitter of other people can be wreaking havoc.

This most likely causes some additional issues, which i have observed in CS 1.6 for example. There are certain people on the server i play on (same happens on all others servers too) and their player model movement always appears to be erratic, jumpy, blurry and stuttery. This causes huge problems for everyone who has less than perfect internet connection, as you can't simply register clean hits on these players or you simply do not see the correct positions of their player models. They are simply harder to hit & kill in comparison to other players on the server, even if you aim perfectly on them. And this happens regardless of their movement and skills by the way. The movement of their model also causes problems when holding a position / corner / angle. The erratic / stuttery movement forces you to adjust & aim at the direction the model is moving and it looks like you have missed the opportunity to shoot when holding an angle. But in reality you didn't. It is just that model was not shown or drawn correctly (or at all) on your screen at the place where you were holding an angle and looking at the crosshair. This is a very bizarre behaviour and it looks like you are receiving both late & partial information about their movement & certain actions from the server.

But here is an interesting part. When the performance of your internet connection reachers a certain threshold, meaning that it randomly behaves noticebly much better at the time you happen to play (this also works when using certain VPN's), then what i just described above is only a minor incovnicnience, although these players still maintain some small benefit over other players. The huge problem occurs only when your internet connection performs below a certain & acceptable threshold (clearly visible hit reg & enemy model positioning issues). When that happens, it is almost impossible to do anything against these players, regardless of their skill & movement and to some outside observer it appears that they are just better than you. This is very frustrating, especially when you know that these players shouldn't even be able to shoot at you when a direct 1v1 confrontations happens on an equal ground & circumstances. These players are also tend to have best scores on the map & most kills, again regardless of their true skill & capabilities. The situation is so bad, that when comparing ten 1v1 confrontations, you will win 10/10 or 9/10 if the connection performs sufficiently good but you will lose 7-9 out of 10 when connection performs very poorly. The impact of good & bad internet performance is simply mind boggling and i'm 100% sure it affects pro gaming scene in a significant fashion. It simply makes some above average or really good players reaching the near top / pro level (or streamer fame & popularity), while some truly skilled & elite players appear to be only above average or really good and they have very hard time getting to the top. This also explains why some known streamers / elite / pro players appear to have god like skills on the internet, but they no longer perform anywhere close to that on LAN which gives an equal ground & performance to everyone involved.

Basically, the huge variance in internet performance between players makes competitive gaming a shit show. If you are lucky enough to have a perfect connection or the connection which reachers a certain threshold in performance, then sky is the limit. For everyone else, there is ZERO chance of reaching the top or even elite level of performance and the gaming tends to be more frustrating than enjoyable.

[djoni]

Mello is completely right in this thread and also the other one about all the nonsenses EMI/RFI. Sometimes the problems have really simple explanations and fixes, but sometimes it is just not up to us and everything is either ISP or server sided problem. And because you are mentioning pro players and why they do not complain or have such issues - simply because they have perfect connections and they don't use useless "tweaks" with no actual influence on the game or the gameplay at all.

[stefanbk]

that's true, I have this problem in Apex Legends. low ping, no packetloss but everything is broken.
Only max 30% of my shots register, recoil is completely broken, everyone kills me instantly(10x more dps), insane inputlag and broken game mechanics.
I go from the highest rank in the game(with very good aim) to a complete beginner and have problems to win against noobs. It's insane.

[Palacko]

Black where you from again? Add me on steam 491112313