Is it possible that Steam is restricting its users?

Everything about latency. Tips, testing methods, mouse lag, display lag, game engine lag, network lag, whole input lag chain, VSYNC OFF vs VSYNC ON, and more! Input Lag Articles on Blur Busters.
WelcomeInNewWorld
Posts: 40
Joined: 01 Jan 2022, 03:36

Re: Is it possible that Steam is restricting its users?

Post by WelcomeInNewWorld » 03 Jan 2022, 09:37

That electricity is an assumption in this whole mess is harsh.
It reminds me of the longest topic on this forum in this section where a member of this forum shared a Youtube link of an audiophile in Japan who had his own power pole built in front of his house. its electric pole that says shit to others in the street :lol: :lol: :lol:
Or an article on the site of the famous Dignitas structure that talked about the "heavy car" feeling in Rocket League with solutions that are actually not, and not once electricity is mentioned :lol:

I suspect the player KennyS to have this problem of input lag the so few times or I saw his streams it seems desynchroniser, on the other hand there is a player who has blow on no problem on all the sides so much his play is pure, fluid, the recording of its hits are perfect it is the young player Monesy


it's a real mystery this story :'(

WelcomeInNewWorld
Posts: 40
Joined: 01 Jan 2022, 03:36

Re: Is it possible that Steam is restricting its users?

Post by WelcomeInNewWorld » 03 Jan 2022, 09:50

Also while I think about it in the game console there are always errors : red sentences, files, templates or whatever that don't load. When the anti-cheat of Faceit is launched the same way many errors. how not to be confused? :(

WelcomeInNewWorld
Posts: 40
Joined: 01 Jan 2022, 03:36

Re: Is it possible that Steam is restricting its users?

Post by WelcomeInNewWorld » 03 Jan 2022, 10:27

The fact that the FPS is not stable is also confusing. Is it possible to facilitate a lead on the fact that you can never stabilize your FPS in the game?
Let me explain in 2015 you were playing this game with an i5 and a GTX 960 you knew you were never but never below 300 FPS, you would freeze at 300 FPS and the game was top. Today with an I7 8700K and a GTX 2070 I am totally unable to stabilize my FPS and it doesn't matter how many. If I block at 300 FPS I will have drops below 240 FPS which is not the goal with a 240 Hz screen..... And depending on the context I've resigned myself to it, I can easily drop below 240 FPS, that's why I switched back to 144 Hz. What a waste to play in 144 Hz on a 240 Hz screen xD
So fps_max 300 on 144 Hz, and I refuse to block the game at 200 FPS because my morale would take a hit when I would see that my FPS number is too close to 144 FPS which is the refresh rate with the money I spent
You'll notice that Faceit's anti-cheat is really very very greedy... With my configuration in full match on this platform so CSGO + anti-cheat on a map like Inferno I have about 220 FPS in full combat of course, because in the spawn without combat I am between 300 and 400 FPS depending on the optimization of my PC. While on a deathmatch server without Faceit anti-cheat I have much more consistent FPS. Same thing on the FPS_Benchmark workshop card I lose almost 100 FPS on average with anti-cheat, it's just insane. How is it possible that in this damn game you can lose 40 FPS out of 300 on average just because you shoot an enemy that is running at you? lmao

User avatar
Chief Blur Buster
Site Admin
Posts: 11647
Joined: 05 Dec 2013, 15:44
Location: Toronto / Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Contact:

Re: Is it possible that Steam is restricting its users?

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 03 Jan 2022, 15:28

WelcomeInNewWorld wrote:
03 Jan 2022, 09:37
That electricity is an assumption in this whole mess is harsh.
It reminds me of the longest topic on this forum in this section where a member of this forum shared a Youtube link of an audiophile in Japan who had his own power pole built in front of his house. its electric pole that says shit to others in the street :lol: :lol: :lol:
Or an article on the site of the famous Dignitas structure that talked about the "heavy car" feeling in Rocket League with solutions that are actually not, and not once electricity is mentioned :lol:
Sorry for bluntness -- but here is my longer "sorry not sorry" technical explanation...

While electrical issues are possible, it was never found the culprit when it comes to comparing the latency of two different Steam accounts. It was often traced to something mudane -- even one account having more registry bloat, or configuration file bloat, or simply more disk-seeking (Because of more fragmented savegame files), or other weird issue. Even how your account is siloed to a different (laggier) game server.

There is literally millions of tiny weird issues that has historically often explained performance differences between two Steam accounts, and troubleshooting this is often crapshoot. But it was never traced to an electrical issue for this specific type of issue (even though electrical issues are legit).

The fact that Blur Busters has confirmed (with evidence) electrical lag issues is a real thing.... Does not deny the fact that I am familiar with "Steam accounts feels different" factor, and the reasons has never been definitively (evidence) traced to electrical wiring issues for this specific issue. Of course, unless you consider network-based (DSL/Cable) interference issues as electrical: fair game. So, I'm micdropping this debate with a wall of text of much more common/obvious causes of performance differences between account logins. Read on.

Without naming specific games.... the code of modern online games themselves are so complex with millions of lines of codes connecting to thousands of different servers, so even being automatically siloed to a slower-network-category vs faster-network-category. Your system was hidden-benchmarked by the game upon game startup, and statistics A,B,C,D can vary between benchmark runs or historical scores data (e.g. ELO data, frag data, level-up datam, etC), which can -configure the settings very differently for different online games.

Data variable A may be your levelup data.
Data variable B may be your network performance data
Data variable C may be your computer performance data
Data variable D may be what machine you are playing on (console, mobile, PC, AMD, NVIDIA, etc)
Data variable E may be your "are you a bot" AI likelihood percentage threshold (if server unsure)
Data F may be who knows...
....Some games may only use a few. Other game may have hundreds of variables going far beyond (F,G,H,I,J,K,L,etc,etc,etc) stretching out to hundred other math variables (Fine granularity like your game detail setting and/or whether you chose gamepad or mouse) that decides how difficult/easy you are and how lag-handicapped you become (artificial game-engine-intentional lag added to you to match the latency of your competitors). In statistic modelling, game developers discover that "Detail setting X" make players perform 3.5% better, and decide that variable X now needs to be part of the playing-field-leveling algorithm. So the algorithms is continually changing and "improving", to try to improve the levelness of the playing field. Even the AI likelihood percentages may group you onto a honeypot server that tries to push all of them harder to more easily separates the AI bots from the superhumans (one undisclosed game is rumored to do this at least temporarily in an experiment whether it was easier to catch AI bots this way). It's real crazy the arms race going on to keep improving the fairness algorithms.

These server-matching algorithms are really voodoo. Historically good gaming might mean you get connected to more difficult servers, while a brand new account will connect you to easier servers. Some variables do age-out (e.g. benchmark at the original account--creation time) but not all variables do (e.g. your skills/level-up data). Even things like creating an account offpeak versus creating an account at peak, might cause you to be semi-permanently siloed into a specific class of sever-autoconnect groups or whatever, or other auto-handicap-balancing algorithms to try to level the playing field (in a very imperfect and flawed way). And all this information is hidden-proprietary in many of these damn game engines.

If there is more evidence that electrical issues dominoe-effect to modifying one of these variables, perhaps post with good hard scientific data. In this case, it would be a very brute Rube Goldberg machine literally (e.g. benchmarks going down a huge % enough to affect a variable more than other things). But one would have to spill true evidence of this, and all the algorithms I've seen and heard of is incapable of accidentally including electrical issues (except for noise on DSL/cable line, or a crash-history counter, or such -- such superficial connections and terminology-stretching to what is being described as "electrical issues" here).

One game may (unfairly) bias too much on computer benchmarks, while another game might (unfairly) bias too much on previous skills playing the same game, and hook you to much harder servers just because you had a great spell of gaming sometime in the last few years on that game -- the algorithms tend to never forget your historic performance, alas. Or a different game might keep its algorithm much simpler, but it's full of cheat/bot players because its algorithm was too simple to discover. Or whatever. There's a lot of pick-poison effects going on behind the scenes.

Some of these gamematching/autoconfiguration/servermatching/whatever proprietary algorithms almost more voodoo than Facebook's feed-generator algorithm (that makes you addicted to social media). But that's what a lot of this has historically been traced to, unlike electrical issues. It's just an unceremonious duhobviousman micdrop here, as I am a software developer that talk to many game developers (and even helped some game developers with high-Hz development advice) in the past too. So this is far beyond just watercooler talk.

It's scary all the bleep that's in some of the code that creates these accidental unfairrness (simply because you launched and connected at a bad time, or created a new account on a faster-computer-faster-internet vs slower-computer-slower-internet. In a world of matching iPad-vs-PC-vs-Mac-vs-60Hz-vs-120Hz, these crossplay engines auto-handicap various variables in your account on a per-game basis (by the game developer that links server-side permanent memories/profiles per steam account) to try to level the playing field. The glass half full says it means it all is tolerably playable, and the glass half empty says it's patently unfair. Take your pick.

I have more than 30 years of computer programming experience. Do you have a few years of computer programming? If you do, then you understand how unfair it can sometimes be... You can subscribe to channels such as Battle(non)sense and other people that covers a tiny subset of this stuff -- it's only scratches the surface.

But that's pretty much the gamut and universe you should steer towards to, rather than electrical issues for this specific unique kind of well-known "one Steam account is faster than the other" issue that has never been definitively traced to electrical issues (except as how it pertains to how it slows down a poor DSL/cable connection, and interferes with the A,B,C,D,E,F,G,etc variables of a playing-field levelling algorithm) -- because one of those variables, indeed probably benchmarks your network connection quality (ping, speed, jitter) at the exact time you create the account and startup your game.

That is because the game engine is trying to avoid "always dead in 2 seconds" mismatches such as connecting same-skilled dial-up 60Hz users to the same server as fiber-optic 360Hz users, unless you're somehow incredibly skilled (let's say a superior variable "H" compensates for inferior variable "F"). Even just a minor performance blip (background software) might accidentally skew one of the varaibles upon a first-game-startup on a first-steam-account -- maybe it does, maybe it does not.

But it has happened with at least certain versions of certain game software that misbenchmarks on first-launch and doesn't fairly properly re-benchmark continuously if it is biasing more often to certain variables (in a flawed math computation of A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,etc -- it's a math formula invented by a bunch of game developers, essentially). As just a mere itty-bitty part of its first math algorithmic computation of the game code -- on how that specific game decides to server-match you against thousands of different servers containing groupings of slightly-differently-intentional-lag-balancing and slightly-different-game-skills and slightly-different-computer-configurations etc etc. But that's a per-game algorithm, not a Steam-wide algorithm, typically.

Sometimes these behaviours are intentional (e.g. Fortnite playing field levelling algorithms that tries to math out A,B,C,D,E,F,G,etc to server-match you correctly), and sometimes these behaviours are unintentional (e.g. Steam/registry bloat and increased HTML5 rendering slowdowns because of more Steam widgets and Achievement Awards for one steam account). Or some other mudane issue like all of this. It's all crapshoot to track this black box cesspool down.

You can isolate a few variables easily (e.g. higher skill = you get more consistently connected to servers containing only high-skilled players) but some variables are so goddamn opaque. They keep all this trade secret so cheat developers can't trick these algorithms as easily. Often, you don't even know that the server is intentionally handicapping you by a few milliseconds latency because it thinks your Internet connection is much faster than the other players on the same server, and then you wonder why it feels laggy (a flawed anti-LPB playing-field-leveling algorithm)...because it was the fallback server because it couldn't find you the low-lag server (i.e. it was full) of other low-lag players. So you might have cascaded to a server of higher-lag players, and ended up getting a lag-handicap assigned to your account and skill level for a specific game -- usually higher skills will often get slightly higher latency in a lopsided server match algorithm.

There are literally thousands or tens of thousands of game servers for many games. Sometimes you can force yourself into a different server-autoconnect grouping if you VPN to another part of the world or another Internet backbone (Where there are bigger numbers of low-lag players connected to a low-lag server) and you might find a specific game's "intentional lag handicap in order to match other players" suddenly disappears when you use a gaming-quality VPN. Because now your lag is identical to everyone else playing on the same sever. You might add a few ms of VPN lag but you save a lot more lag because the lag difference between you and other players now disappear, and now it plays more correct (no weird hitreg effects). But that only happens with some routings, and not for all. So your mileage will vary (YMMV) when you try to play the VPN roulette wheel (do try at least 3 VPN providers, minimum).

And it's not a fix-all for all situations -- this won't help if it's things like account-bloat related (e.g. old account with lots of bling, hundreds of games, lots of history, lots of friends, lots of Steam widgets & lots of Steam achievements, and the game has inefficient achivements-doublechecking source code, or simply background CPU spiking of Steam UI updating at a higher CPU% than the other account. Or other mudane thing) or local-game-settings related, instead of other algorithms. Steam bloat diifferences between two accounts creating accidental latency. So problems may not always be server-matching-algorithm related.

Server-matching algorithm quirks is one of the apparent reasons why I've seen some LTE players get lower lag than some FTTH users. It's crazy and nuts. What the mainstream sites tell you about playing-field-levelling algorithms for server-matching your account, multiply the behind-the-scenes complexity by 1000x, and you remotely get into the ballpark of faintly understanding what is going on, if you don't have 30 years of programming experience like me.

Other times, there are no performance differences between two Steam accounts for a specific game. Or it only affects 1 game you never play. In that case, you got lucky, or you chose a game that doesn't create performance differences (intentionally such as algorithm, or unintentionally such a bloat in one account).

Troubleshooting this bleep is hard. This ends my unceremonious micdrop.

Back to more cheerful things, hey, at least one of your steam accounts performs well in that game.
Head of Blur Busters - BlurBusters.com | TestUFO.com | Follow @BlurBusters on Twitter

Image
Forum Rules wrote:  1. Rule #1: Be Nice. This is published forum rule #1. Even To Newbies & People You Disagree With!
  2. Please report rule violations If you see a post that violates forum rules, then report the post.
  3. ALWAYS respect indie testers here. See how indies are bootstrapping Blur Busters research!

WelcomeInNewWorld
Posts: 40
Joined: 01 Jan 2022, 03:36

Re: Is it possible that Steam is restricting its users?

Post by WelcomeInNewWorld » 04 Jan 2022, 00:31

Thank you very much for your long answer Chief. I know I got a little lost talking about Steam account and further about electricity but I'm so confused and then your forum talks about it so much xD.

deama
Posts: 368
Joined: 07 Aug 2019, 12:00

Re: Is it possible that Steam is restricting its users?

Post by deama » 04 Jan 2022, 07:26

Wow, never expected such insane complexity out of the industry... I should have known...
Good to know, thanks for the info chief.


Palacko
Posts: 39
Joined: 04 Aug 2020, 15:48

Re: Is it possible that Steam is restricting its users?

Post by Palacko » 04 Jul 2022, 15:53

I know its an older post but i had now again a weird situation.
At my house in Austria i have a different Problem (its isp related or 1% electricity)
Now i am in Bosnia in a Gaming Cafe - Pro Players come here to play (fiber Internet) and i played yesterday with my Main Account - it was good for like 15 Mins and then it became to degrade.

Mouse out of control
Hitreg bad
Cant kill anybody
My friends confirmed it also

Today i went there again and i told i want a good Account from them.
Got the Account and played like 2hours - perfectly smooth. Wallbanged People - amazing Gameplay
What is happening to my Acc?
Is it maybe Steam Cloud? I have there configs stored somehow - i deleted them often.

But 0 chance to fix it.
At my home in austria i think its Isp problem - but this shit cant follow me to: dubai, monaco, bosnia, serbia. Finally i know also that my Account is cursed somehow.

Anonymous768119

Re: Is it possible that Steam is restricting its users?

Post by Anonymous768119 » 04 Jul 2022, 19:54

Palacko wrote:
04 Jul 2022, 15:53
I know its an older post but i had now again a weird situation.
At my house in Austria i have a different Problem (its isp related or 1% electricity)
Now i am in Bosnia in a Gaming Cafe - Pro Players come here to play (fiber Internet) and i played yesterday with my Main Account - it was good for like 15 Mins and then it became to degrade.

Mouse out of control
Hitreg bad
Cant kill anybody
My friends confirmed it also

Today i went there again and i told i want a good Account from them.
Got the Account and played like 2hours - perfectly smooth. Wallbanged People - amazing Gameplay
What is happening to my Acc?
Is it maybe Steam Cloud? I have there configs stored somehow - i deleted them often.

But 0 chance to fix it.
At my home in austria i think its Isp problem - but this shit cant follow me to: dubai, monaco, bosnia, serbia. Finally i know also that my Account is cursed somehow.
I can add something from my experience. I reinstalled CS:GO and removed everything related to it (configs and other folders). By coincidence I noticed that some settings were not on default for example cl_bobamt_lat and cl_bobamt_vert. Asked valve support about it but it was pointless for a known reason - they are useless. In steam cloud there are no any config files (at least to which I would have an access).

Palacko
Posts: 39
Joined: 04 Aug 2020, 15:48

Re: Is it possible that Steam is restricting its users?

Post by Palacko » 05 Jul 2022, 10:01

a_c_r_e_a_l wrote:
04 Jul 2022, 19:54
Palacko wrote:
04 Jul 2022, 15:53
I know its an older post but i had now again a weird situation.
At my house in Austria i have a different Problem (its isp related or 1% electricity)
Now i am in Bosnia in a Gaming Cafe - Pro Players come here to play (fiber Internet) and i played yesterday with my Main Account - it was good for like 15 Mins and then it became to degrade.

Mouse out of control
Hitreg bad
Cant kill anybody
My friends confirmed it also

Today i went there again and i told i want a good Account from them.
Got the Account and played like 2hours - perfectly smooth. Wallbanged People - amazing Gameplay
What is happening to my Acc?
Is it maybe Steam Cloud? I have there configs stored somehow - i deleted them often.

But 0 chance to fix it.
At my home in austria i think its Isp problem - but this shit cant follow me to: dubai, monaco, bosnia, serbia. Finally i know also that my Account is cursed somehow.
I can add something from my experience. I reinstalled CS:GO and removed everything related to it (configs and other folders). By coincidence I noticed that some settings were not on default for example cl_bobamt_lat and cl_bobamt_vert. Asked valve support about it but it was pointless for a known reason - they are useless. In steam cloud there are no any config files (at least to which I would have an access).

Thats true, i mean i have 2 problems 1 is Internet at my Home & 2nd is my Steam i guess. Thats why it followed me in different Countrys.
I thought maybe i am causing it - will still prove it and go again in a gaming cafe & play with their account

Post Reply