475 replies to this topic

[Jon Cunningham]

Especially for people who have experienced the game at different pings, at what point do you start noticing ping is having an affect on your gameplay?

1-50 ms
50-90 ms
90-140 ms
140-180ms
180-220ms
220-260ms
260-300ms
300-350ms
350-400ms
400+ ms


I have a lot of data from internal tests but I am looking for your experiences. Of course remember that jitter and packet loss fps and many other factors also impact gameplay; I'm just looking for what your subjective experiences are at each range of those pings.

[Insidious Johnson]

I replied hours ago! Forum lag I guess (j/k- FIRST!). My ping is pretty stable from 50-100ms range. It is the difference in ping, between myself and the target, that seems to have the most effect. It seems as if HSR has a cut off time or just drops some data after a certain point. I can blast at a slideshow stepping light with Mongolian smoke signal ISP ping and get no hit reg. I can nail anything +/- 75ms of my own ping usually with no problem. The main hit reg problem is in matches on events when there are so many missiles and projectiles that the engine just chugs data and "glosses over" anything that it wants just to keep things moving at a cost of quality.

Edited by Insidious Johnson, 12 March 2015 - 03:33 PM.

[Kalteh]

Usually I am at 110-130 ms. At least I have been for the last 2,5 years. Lately my ping suddenly jumps up to 180ms for some games. At that point hitreg becomes just crazy and I stop playing for a few hours...

[ThrashInc]

Even at 70ms, I notice definite errors in hit reg, especially with clan ballistics.

[Aresye]

The first thing I notice is a lag when activating my zoom, which usually becomes noticeable starting at 160ms, although often whenever I experience the zoom lag and check my ping, it's hovering around 180-185 nearly every time. Hit reg is also delayed by the same amount of time as the zoom responsiveness.

My usual ping is between 100-110.

[Jagermanjen]

I usually play from 90-110 and it affects my gameplay at around 140

[KODIAK-AU]

Being from Australia (the land of high ping) I mainly have a ping of 290-350ms, i just have to lead my targets a little bit, and I seem to have a lot of shots not registering, and the occasional rubber banding. other than that it seems fine.

[Darklord]

I normally have a ping about 30-35 and it seems to me anyone with a ping 100+ over me I have hit registration issues

Edited by Darklord, 12 March 2015 - 07:19 PM.

[Zolaz]

My ping is around 60-90ms so I dont normally notice any lag unless there is bad weather or it is server side. I did see some guys in CW running around with 250-300ms ping and still one shotting people. Guess ping isnt an issue or some shenanigans was going on.

[Alakan]

My ideal ping for my location will always be between 90 and 110 ms. Game is smooth when it is at this amount.

At 150 ms or so I get a noticeable delay when I lock or change targets, and considerable delay when I zoom in and out. I also get a huge delay when I activate/deactivate NV or thermal.

Closer to 200 ms, when I die, I get stuck in death cam circling my mech without the option to switch to spectate mode.

Above 200 ms, it takes fairly long to get into the match lobby, and once the match has started, I get rubber banding and major HSR issues.

All issues stack together as the ping goes closer to 200 ms, making the match unplayable or almost unplayable, depending on the map.

Edited by Alakan, 12 March 2015 - 03:57 PM.

[N0MAD]

Im an Aussie gamer going back over 20 years, lag is something we live with and adjust to quite easily.
Most games i play on US servers i get 250-260 ping, Euro servers 150-180, Russian servers 200. MWO servers anything from 300 to 400 depending if its US prime time. Do a trace and i notice a significant increase of 100+ when i hit the OVH network, and having looked at a lot of traces from friends and others in threads here its the same as in significant increase as soon as it hits OVH.
Ping isnt the great evil that people make it out to be, but the seriously bad hit detection i find in only MWO is..
Hit detection is seriously bad in game so is packet loss, you see this when firing alphas vs firing single.. ohh and the god like Firestarters well ya just a joke..
Just look at as many traces as you like and notice the % increase in ping once it hits OVH, its a joke..
But we have told you guys this in many threads here but all we get is "its telstra, its your ISP, its this its that"
just really just BS.

Edited by N0MAD, 12 March 2015 - 04:23 PM.

[stjobe]

EU player here, my ping has always been rock-solid in the 110-120 range, so I don't have much to compare with.

I've more problems with FPS stutter, which can bring my regular 90-100 FPS down to as low as 30-40 before picking up again a fraction of a second later. Gives much stuttering and is really annoying. It's especially noticeable on Canyon Network, so I suspect it's a map issue?

A quad-core i5-3570K @ 3.4 GHz with 16GB RAM and a GTX 760 with 4 GB SDRAM really shouldn't have to have those FPS issues on a three-year old game.

[Primetimex]

My ping traditionally has been in the 280-285ms range Jon, it went down as low as 277ms but now it's back up in the usual range.

During the ping-a-geddon - it went all the way up to 350ms-400ms+ and that is definitely unplayable. Even now I believe without the exchange tweak (interleaving) that my ISP did to my exchange port - my usual ping should be up around 300-310ms.

Even though my ping's mostly stable except during server interruptions etc in which it can spike I definitely notice instances where my damage is far lower than it should be - no hitreg whatsoever and I've pretty much given up trying to hit lights and fast moving mechs - the new panthers and enforcers are the worst to try to hit lately - besides the usual firestarters and light mechs.

I observed that many Australians play with 300ms+ ping which is unacceptable - only a lucky few get to play around 250-260ms being on the East - if PGI really wants to improve gameplay experience beyond tweaking servers, add more servers please!

Edited by GetterRobo, 12 March 2015 - 04:34 PM.

[Kiiyor]

Wymodactyl, on 12 March 2015 - 03:38 PM, said:

Being from Australia (the land of high ping) I mainly have a ping of 290-350ms, i just have to lead my targets a little bit, and I seem to have a lot of shots not registering, and the occasional rubber banding. other than that it seems fine.

Same. Most of my issues are with lasers.

I'm in Australia, with around 235-260 ping. I have also played the game at around 150-180 ping. There are some differences.

I am able to successfully hit slower targets consistently, though the damage application on the ragdoll is often different to my observed point of impact. No biggie. When I compare what I have now to what I had pre HSR, it's miraculous. At lower ping however, I found myself more deadly, as my damage seemed to apply more consistently to the location I aimed at.

Fast lights however, if they are travelling perpendicular to my field of vision, are very difficult to hit, despite appearing to land hits in my client. The issues are intermittent. Sometimes, I can aim dead on, and score good hits. Other times with the same point of aim, not a thing. Other times, If I aim at the leading edge of their mech, I can sometimes get hits to register. Sometimes, If I lead by around 1/4 mech lengths or so, I can get hits to register. Sometimes again, I can wave lasers around like a fire hose, and get nothing. This is at around medium range; 250 - 400m or so.

If, however, I have just stopped moving, or if I have to move my torso at any speed approaching maximum twist, I have close to 0 chance to land a hit, despite what appears to be solid hits landing in my client. Hit reg in these circumstances was far more reliable with lower ping.

TLDR; hit reg is very, very spotty with faster targets at my current, higher ping, and was slightly more reliable with lower ping.

[Scyther]

I normally get pings in the 20-40 range. Occasionally it goes up to 70-80.

I haven't compared my ping to my targets, but I do know that lots of times I will be firing all weapons at close range against easy targets and the damage doesn't all seem to register.

Mostly this happens on lasers I think. For example I am running behind a MadDog in my TDR-5SS, 6 med pulse. I am slightly to his left and he isn't turning much. I pump 4 full alphas into roughly the same angle of his rear quarter, and on the 5th one I shut down so not sure how much damage it did.

My client shows all of this striking in roughly the same area, none missing. This is roughly 144 damage spread across either 1 rear side torso and center, or maybe an arm catching a bit of it (not counting the 5th alpha). Arm/Torso/Center were all still yellow.

Other examples like that (even firing on stationary targets and not getting the damage I am putting out to show) make me think that maybe my ping is TOO low... but I don't get long enough episodes of higher ping to really compare.

[Weaselball]

For me, I'd have to say around 140ms I start to notice a tiny bit of lag when I try and zoom, especially if I am trying to zoom in and out quickly.

[slide]

Most of the time my ping in rock solid at around 262 from home and about 250 from work even though the work connection has a much slower bandwidth (woeful actually).

The issues seem to revolve around HSR mostly. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but there doesn't seem to be a specific reason, ping wise for shots to be missing. It should not take upwards of 50 UAC5 rounds to kill a stationary Timber at around 200m (I am not that bad a shot) yet I will be cored out in my King Crab by 2-3 return alphas of 4CERML. Other times the TW will drop like a stone. It is completely unpredictable.

As I understand it HSR allows you to shoot at a moving target, only having to allow for projectile speed, with HSR accounting for ping etc. Sometimes this works, other times I have to lead my target by up to a mech length or more for a fast movers to get confirmation of hits. Lasers which are hit scan still need to be led at times and laser hit reg is flaky at best. I get the best hit reg from projectile weapons (AC and PPC) yet when there is a lot of them (4uac5) hit reg starts to drop off.

There also seems to be an apparent advantage to players with a low ping v higher ping. It appears that at times they see us before we see them thus getting shots off earlier, however that is just the nature of this particular beast.

There are also times where server lag seems to become an issue, either that or the internet can't cope. We have on occasion,for laughs, had private matches where everyone can only bring mechs fitted with machine guns and flamers. Because this results on almost continuous fire from high numbers of these weapons the servers have heart failure and the game really starts to chug. The last time we did this it was literally 3-5 seconds before anything would happen on screen and it steadily get worse as the game progressed. In fact the game timer (must be local) had run out a good 2 mins before mechs and people had stopped firing.

I can only dream of playing with a sub 100 ping and would be ecstatic if we had a server here in Australia.

BTW I have also played with a 380 ping at times (wireless internet) and oddly HSR seems to work better but other issues like rubber banding, are a lot worse. Viewing other players in light mechs seems to result in a stop start jerky motion when they are running at high speed. It is so bad, that where possible, I swap to someone in a heavy or assault mech.

Above 500 it is almost unplayable with anything other than locked missiles.

I am all for random hit reg (lorewise), HSR or not, but it needs to be a lot more consistent so at least you know what you are doing up front. Having the rules change constantly throughout a match makes playing a lot harder.

Thanks for looking into this.

[N0MAD]

Kiiyor, on 12 March 2015 - 04:33 PM, said:

Same. Most of my issues are with lasers.

I'm in Australia, with around 235-260 ping. I have also played the game at around 150-180 ping. There are some differences.

I am able to successfully hit slower targets consistently, though the damage application on the ragdoll is often different to my observed point of impact. No biggie. When I compare what I have now to what I had pre HSR, it's miraculous. At lower ping however, I found myself more deadly, as my damage seemed to apply more consistently to the location I aimed at.

Fast lights however, if they are travelling perpendicular to my field of vision, are very difficult to hit, despite appearing to land hits in my client. The issues are intermittent. Sometimes, I can aim dead on, and score good hits. Other times with the same point of aim, not a thing. Other times, If I aim at the leading edge of their mech, I can sometimes get hits to register. Sometimes, If I lead by around 1/4 mech lengths or so, I can get hits to register. Sometimes again, I can wave lasers around like a fire hose, and get nothing. This is at around medium range; 250 - 400m or so.

If, however, I have just stopped moving, or if I have to move my torso at any speed approaching maximum twist, I have close to 0 chance to land a hit, despite what appears to be solid hits landing in my client. Hit reg in these circumstances was far more reliable with lower ping.

TLDR; hit reg is very, very spotty with faster targets at my current, higher ping, and was slightly more reliable with lower ping.

Yesterday around 1pm Aussie time, roughly US prime..pings around 300-320..
In a game on snow map (not alpine) Hellbringer ECM 2xLL think 5xSL 2x streak 4s, sneak a flank with a mate in another HB, im on counter.. peak around building spot a Firestarter and TW standing with back to me 220m, zoom in take aim at FS blast it with full laser alpha, full burn, let go of streaks, legs go yellow on it, FS starts to pivot round to face me, pilot confused i take it doesnt run, gives me front to target still not moving, Another full burn alpha into front fire streaks, C torso/Rtorso goes yellow, hes awake now starts to move, fire SL at it see full burn on him nada, fire streaks nada, LL come online burn into his back as he running nada...
obviously i cant shoot at a target thats not moving...
ohh btw.. TW turns on me fires 2x LPL 4xML crits left arm crits LT...lost weaps in arm.

Edited by N0MAD, 12 March 2015 - 05:41 PM.

[Oppi]

Quote

at what point do you start noticing ping is having an affect on your gameplay?

I think the "wow, I'm lagging" threshold is at about 180ms for me.

And it's "effect".

Edited by Oppi, 12 March 2015 - 05:37 PM.

[Lynx7725]

I normally have a ping of about 270ish, and it's still playable. Once I start to creep into the 300 region though, you see weird things... teleporting mechs, lack of map updates, etc. Usually I take it as a sign and just stop playing.