I guess I don’t really play any games where that tiny difference in ping time matters THAT much…That’s less time than most people can even measure without tools
Would matter in pretty much any game where one player’s actions can affect the other player and position is important.
SA:MP back in the day had such shit netcode you had to shoot a significant distance ahead of a running player or nothing would happen to them. It was the shot receicing player’s client that had to detect the shot. In games where the server determines what happened to you, 100ms means there’s 100 milliseconds where you don’t even know you’re dead. That said, unless you’re playing competitive, 100ms is still borderline okay. Near 200 it’s horrible already.
Now something like a game of Civ? You could have an entire second and be OK.
To human perception a 0.1 seconds isn’t much different than 0.03 seconds
You are making the mistake of thinking about reaction times. What matters much more in shooters is that our brain adjusts for the ping. That affects:
aiming with a lead of a few pixels. And in a fast moving environment, with skilled players, aiming for a lead of 30ms is absolutely a few pixels that can be targeted intentionally
the time between triggering a shot (nerve signal to the trigger finger) and the last chance that the target has to dodge / change direction -> in such games, players are rarely running in a straight line, and more often running preemptive zigzag / evasive maneuvers even when not getting shot at. 30ms more ping means that on every shot taken, you lose 30ms from the window in which your target still moves in the direction you thought it was moving. Even if the target only changes direction only once per second, that’s 3% lost from the time window in which you can predict where to shoot. Actually more, because you have reaction time after a direction change, before you can even consider aiming.
furthermore, when a player with low ping gets hit by non-instant-kill ammo, they will dodge within their reaction time. Assuming the attacker chain-fires, they lose 30ms of ammo missing the target before they can adjust aim or stop firing
I don’t believe you. An fps with ping as massive as over 1000 would be straight up unplayable
That’s over a full second of delay! In an fps I routinely do split second maneuvers and reactions. If someone I was shooting at wouldn’t be able to react to what I was doing for at least a full second, I would easily dominate them every single time
Halo CE didn’t have lag compensation, so with 2 seconds of latency you would have to lead your target by 2 seconds. Shooting anyone who wasn’t standing still would be a complete guessing game - I think you too would also classify that as unplayable (source).
Halo 2 seems to not be well documented - it looks like it’s using some form of rudimentary rollback, which can deal with higher latency but you’d need it very stable to avoid opponents teleporting constantly. It’s also unclear if it would handle 2s of latency, as that would increase both CPU and memory utilization of servers. If you’re getting a variance of 700ms as you claimed this most certainly wouldn’t be playable. High ping being stable is also hard to believe, naturally the higher the latency the higher the absolute variance.
Halo 3 uses synchronous lockstep networking with a ~300ms window (source). If you’re not in that window your actions are rejected, so quite literally unplayable at 2s. I think this is more evidence that bungie would’ve had a <2s maximum latency in their earlier title.
My best guess is you’ve either misremembered the latency (130-200ms is about what I’d expect from rural internet at that time), or you were playing peer-to-peer with your friends and so internet latency didn’t matter. I myself have played plenty of multiplayer games at over 100 ping and while it can be annoying I’d certainly call it playable, but not 10x that.
oh wait, halo 1 on original Xbox didn’t have Xbox live, right?
my friends and I would use a shared internet connection over our local PC with dual nics. software was running that would basically create a flat network VPN that would show us all as-if we on a LAN. think of it like xlink-kai before it was a thing. I can’t remember the software name but we would use it for pc games like diablo, c&c, aoe, unreal, etc.
it was my idea to use it for Xbox with the network connection sharing on windows.
latency was a problem, but we still could play and it was enjoyable enough we’d do it weekly.
Sounds like great fun! We did the same thing to play battlefield 2 over LAN (If you played on LAN you could bypass the online DRM, as we only had one copy).
Yea Halo Combat Evolved (Halo 1) only had internet multiplayer on the PC version, but the Xbox version could do peer-to-peer multiplayer. One person would have zero ping as the host and the rest would go over the vpn. Any kind of latency would have been annoying due to Halo CE’s lack of lag compensation :D
As an amateur, in a fast paced shooter, vs. an equally skilled player, it went from a fair match with equal pings to one player dominating the other with 100 vs. 70 ping.
Yes, that little of a difference absolutely matters, proven by the observation that it went both ways. I could become the clear winner, or my opponent, based on who had the lower ping, whereas in equal ping settings the games were much more balanced. It’s easy to tell when you regularly play against the same people.
That’s how fast paced shooters work. Don’t think about the crap that people sell as “shooters” nowadays which is adjusted to playstation controllers or similar BS.
100 ping? you seriously can’t play with a tenth of a second ping time? Sounds like you’re a shitty gamer making excuses
In some games it is genuinely unplayable. This is coming from someone with on average 200+ ping with spikes up to 600 sometimes.
I guess I don’t really play any games where that tiny difference in ping time matters THAT much…That’s less time than most people can even measure without tools
Would matter in pretty much any game where one player’s actions can affect the other player and position is important.
SA:MP back in the day had such shit netcode you had to shoot a significant distance ahead of a running player or nothing would happen to them. It was the shot receicing player’s client that had to detect the shot. In games where the server determines what happened to you, 100ms means there’s 100 milliseconds where you don’t even know you’re dead. That said, unless you’re playing competitive, 100ms is still borderline okay. Near 200 it’s horrible already.
Now something like a game of Civ? You could have an entire second and be OK.
If the person shooting you has 30ms ping, I’d say it’s a significant advantage.
To human perception a 0.1 seconds isn’t much different than 0.03 seconds
I forgot if it was you I asked about this or not. But are you sure the one with slightly less ping time isn’t just cheating?
You are making the mistake of thinking about reaction times. What matters much more in shooters is that our brain adjusts for the ping. That affects:
if a person shooting me has a lower ping and I get upset about it with a 100 ping I need to touch grass.
back in my day I played Halo with a 1300-2000 ping and still whipped ass.
the lama’s ass?
I don’t believe you. An fps with ping as massive as over 1000 would be straight up unplayable
That’s over a full second of delay! In an fps I routinely do split second maneuvers and reactions. If someone I was shooting at wouldn’t be able to react to what I was doing for at least a full second, I would easily dominate them every single time
believe it or not. this was early 2000s, so everyone outside of major cities had shitty internet.
I had the fastest connection in my small shit town at 1.5mbps.
I also don’t believe you, and here’s why:
Halo CE didn’t have lag compensation, so with 2 seconds of latency you would have to lead your target by 2 seconds. Shooting anyone who wasn’t standing still would be a complete guessing game - I think you too would also classify that as unplayable (source).
Halo 2 seems to not be well documented - it looks like it’s using some form of rudimentary rollback, which can deal with higher latency but you’d need it very stable to avoid opponents teleporting constantly. It’s also unclear if it would handle 2s of latency, as that would increase both CPU and memory utilization of servers. If you’re getting a variance of 700ms as you claimed this most certainly wouldn’t be playable. High ping being stable is also hard to believe, naturally the higher the latency the higher the absolute variance.
Halo 3 uses synchronous lockstep networking with a ~300ms window (source). If you’re not in that window your actions are rejected, so quite literally unplayable at 2s. I think this is more evidence that bungie would’ve had a <2s maximum latency in their earlier title.
My best guess is you’ve either misremembered the latency (130-200ms is about what I’d expect from rural internet at that time), or you were playing peer-to-peer with your friends and so internet latency didn’t matter. I myself have played plenty of multiplayer games at over 100 ping and while it can be annoying I’d certainly call it playable, but not 10x that.
thanks for hyper analyzing.
it was Halo 1 on the original Xbox early 2000s.
oh wait, halo 1 on original Xbox didn’t have Xbox live, right?
my friends and I would use a shared internet connection over our local PC with dual nics. software was running that would basically create a flat network VPN that would show us all as-if we on a LAN. think of it like xlink-kai before it was a thing. I can’t remember the software name but we would use it for pc games like diablo, c&c, aoe, unreal, etc.
it was my idea to use it for Xbox with the network connection sharing on windows.
latency was a problem, but we still could play and it was enjoyable enough we’d do it weekly.
Sounds like great fun! We did the same thing to play battlefield 2 over LAN (If you played on LAN you could bypass the online DRM, as we only had one copy).
Yea Halo Combat Evolved (Halo 1) only had internet multiplayer on the PC version, but the Xbox version could do peer-to-peer multiplayer. One person would have zero ping as the host and the rest would go over the vpn. Any kind of latency would have been annoying due to Halo CE’s lack of lag compensation :D
As an amateur, in a fast paced shooter, vs. an equally skilled player, it went from a fair match with equal pings to one player dominating the other with 100 vs. 70 ping.
that little of a difference really matters? Are you sure that the one with a tiny bit less ping isn’t just cheating?
Yes, that little of a difference absolutely matters, proven by the observation that it went both ways. I could become the clear winner, or my opponent, based on who had the lower ping, whereas in equal ping settings the games were much more balanced. It’s easy to tell when you regularly play against the same people.
That’s how fast paced shooters work. Don’t think about the crap that people sell as “shooters” nowadays which is adjusted to playstation controllers or similar BS.
Think quake, unreal tournament, quake arena, openarena.