Hello.
I have a rather strange (probably) connection related issue while playing online games that I’d like to get help with. I’m basically experiencing a very noticeable (by the feel of it up to several hundreds of ms) lag while playing time-sensitive games - latest iterations of Call of Duty and Battlefield for example. The games have an unresponsive and off feel to them, enemy players see me way earlier on their screens than I see them and shots have a hard time registering – it is like playing half a second behind the server constantly. The feel of the game is rather similar to having major latency, packet loss and even framerate issues.
Now the real problem is, that none of this is clearly indicated by the game or any monitoring software I’ve tried so far. 99% of the time the games show a stable 40-50 ms ping and 0% packet loss with a rather high FPS value, regardless of whether I play in the middle of the night or at peak hours. I’ve been using PingPlotter for the past few days to try and identify any patterns that would explain what I experience ingame.
I used Call of Duty as the testgame, I played it in the morning and in the evening (at peak hours) for two consecutive days, constantly pinging all European CoD servers with UDP packets in the meantime. Despite having dedicated servers, many matches in CoD are still peer-to-peer, but I figured that pinging the servers would still give a general idea of what’s going on. I used Dumaos’ Ping Heatmap to gather server IPs. Matches were played on a high-end gaming PC maxed out for the lowest possible input lag with a fresh Windows 10 install.
I used two different ISP and router combinations on the two days with the test PC being the only device connected to them (via ethernet cable):
Day1: Gbit fiber with the ISP router in bridge + my own Netduma R2 router (port-forwarded)
Day2: Gbit cable with the ISP’s own router (on stock settings)
I’ll include the PingPlotter results (hope it’s not too much):
Server IP: 172.241.68.172
Day1 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/4gsFQf9MWuRDay1 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/Udst5JVA6KjDay2 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/EqTeM3fn3S1Day2 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/2xHooVXQxeyServer IP: 95.141.36.181
Day1 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/9sBzoh8gngWDay1 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/HaDPU95wxxYDay2 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/iFzUzHkuPH2Day2 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/TVpZYcdxusqServer IP: 185.136.157.109
Day1 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/FvL8xYA8rJYDay1 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/8tXWXMrjHqHDay2 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/bDePwv89tXRDay2 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/CEpdjbj4f9SServer IP: 173.199.113.12
Day1 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/JSGfwDHu2ADay1 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/TyKsTgWEasqDay2 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/PHvDsGEaPyaDay2 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/U5KsZJRL2w6Server IP: 88.150.137.7
Day1 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/cABoJLdGQcNDay1 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/aZve6cYu1p9Day2 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/DwsPSxXBtjoDay2 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/BPo3gtVS1BuServer IP: 24.105.53.188
Day1 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/ivvzyjfV4HxDay1 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/CxHnS6ir86LDay2 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/b8LpkFWGtktDay2 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/TnHRYNeKbPaServer IP: 24.105.54.20
Day1 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/g3HUYxKYs2b Day1 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/CHVg8SF3tsdDay2 morning
https://share.pingplotter.com/LHgfF4VBGw7 Day2 evening
https://share.pingplotter.com/RHChTAGK1qiWhile the data may show some differences depending on how and when it was captured, the feel of the game was EXACTLY the same in all scenarios, meaning it alternated between a bad experience and near unplayable among individual matches (even when PingPlotter showed the best results). I may not be an expert in evaluating PingPlotter data (hence the post), but I don’t think that even the worst measurements match up with my experience ingame.
I’ve probably had this issue for several years now, but I hadn’t been aware of (or irritated by) it until a few months ago when I started focusing again on fast-paced online games.
My primary questions are:
Does my data indicate some big problems I’m unaware of? Or should I make additonal tests with a different experimental design?
Also, is it possible to have connection issues without any monitoring software detecting anything?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.