How to see the ping of the players always, and not only when it is above 500?
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As long as ping is below 500ms it's not a problem, as all commands take 500ms to register anyway.
The problem might be the stability of the connection, but that is not something that you can find out in the lobby. -
I would just like to see the ping all the time, is it possible to change some settings in the game files so that I see it all the time or a mod?
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@theneatdarklord press f11
Edit: you mean in lobby. There’s no way to do that afaik and it’s not necessary anyway
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It should be possible with a lobby mod. Regular game mods won't work of course because they don't load until the game launches.
I doubt anyone would make that mod.
There's no upside. If they make the mod and someone with 390 ping gets kicked from a few lobbies the mod-maker will never hear the end of it.
I don't endorse harassing people, I'm just saying, Mr. Astro was harassed to the point where he can't even use his name, just for making a POPULAR map that lots of people love, so if someone makes a mod that gets people with okay ping kicked from lobbies, they're probably not gonna enjoy being on FAF xD
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@i_forgorthescene said in How to see the ping of the players always, and not only when it is above 500?:
As long as ping is below 500ms it's not a problem, as all commands take 500ms to register anyway.
I know, the 500ms delay was a hackish solution for the technical problems back 15 years ago, but I would really like to see some improvement in this area one day.
I have tested via debug console 25ms delay in a single-player match and the whole experience was so pleasant and smooth, it felt absolutely nice to play. Everything was so on point and reactive to commands. Felt like a standard WC3 or Starcraft match. (If you try it in multiplayer, you will get kicked for lagging, so do not think about that)
25 ms are not something we can aim/hope for with Supreme Commander and its engine and P2P protocol and not anything for more than two players at the same time, - Unfortunately - but I would really like to see some experimenting in this area, if the dev team is able to find a better threshold that improves this game design from a thousand years ago.
500ms delay is exhausting and feels sluggish nowadays.
And I am not convinced that "it does not matter which ping, if under 500ms, because of the 500ms standard delay".
If I enable some network tool that gives me 500ms delay on all outgoing Supreme Commander Packets, it is u-n-p-l-a-y-a-b-l-e. Even just ~300ms ping is devastating, and I am sure, that those numbers just add up, like 500ms (standard delay) + latency_to_highest_ping_player = total_delay for the whole game.
When someone has a more technical insight into this matter, I would really like to get some TED talk about it, that ultimately answers the above statements.
To answer OP @TheNeatDarkLord - Tick this option. It opens a new ICE adapter window that shows you the latency to connected players:
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The only real solution to low latency games is region-locking. Transferring packages around the world just takes too much time. There is no technical solution, because the speed of light is the bottleneck here. And we don't really have the player base to be able to create multiple separated game servers like most other online games do
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This has been tested and experimented with and was ultimately decided to not be changed.
You can see the conversation here https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/3361
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@magge said in How to see the ping of the players always, and not only when it is above 500?:
just ~300ms ping is devastating, and I am sure, that those numbers just add up, like 500ms (standard delay) + latency_to_highest_ping_player = total_delay for the whole game.
They shouldn't add up.
It's like when you give a command, your game will immediately send it to everyone else, but it will only be executed in the tick 500ms in the future. So if your ping is <500ms then you will have received all inputs from other players and they will have received yours for the current tick, as these inputs were send 500ms ago. Once you have a player with more than 500ms delay, the game pauses and wait for that input to arrive.@magge said in How to see the ping of the players always, and not only when it is above 500?:
500ms delay is exhausting and feels sluggish nowadays.
I personally like the delay, as it makes the game less about microing single units.
The less delay you have the easier it gets to micro units. But this will just make good micro more important, so good microing will be as hard if not harder than before, while also being more stressful. -
@magge We have experimented with it earlier this year and we came to the conclusion that there are multiple issues:
- (1) It changes balance too much; suddenly you can easily evade bombers and you can mini-micro units to a degree that makes them really, really strong (like the Aurora / Mongoose / Rocket Bot being exceptionally good at kiting)
- (2) The ping that you end up playing varies per game, the idea of region locking that BlackYps proposes doesn't work with tournaments, for example
- (3) There are some performance considerations - previously (when playing alone) the delay was set to 0. But as a result, the game would stutter and lag a lot. We set the delay back to 500 and the issues were gone. We suspect due to how often a desync check happens.
If you combine (1) and (2) then the balance shifts each game, which isn't desirable. And if we include (3) then the performance shifts around too, where one game 'stutters' a lot and the next is smooth.
Long story short - there is no good remedy. We decided it wasn't worth pursuing.
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@magge said in How to see the ping of the players always, and not only when it is above 500?:
And I am not convinced that "it does not matter which ping, if under 500ms, because of the 500ms standard delay".
If I enable some network tool that gives me 500ms delay on all outgoing Supreme Commander Packets, it is u-n-p-l-a-y-a-b-l-e. Even just ~300ms ping is devastating, and I am sure, that those numbers just add up, like 500ms (standard delay) + latency_to_highest_ping_player = total_delay for the whole game.
When someone has a more technical insight into this matter, I would really like to get some TED talk about it, that ultimately answers the above statements.
It is extremely likely that you went about your testing in the wrong way. Even if you did only have 10ms latency, the game would still play like you HAD 500ms latency. The game should feel equally as sluggish for everybody up until the 500ms barrier is broken by a single connection between 2 players.
Once you break the barrier, the game start becoming unplayable because it will mirco-pause for every packet, if every packet is over 500ms. So setting a custom latency to 500ms will obviously make the game unplayable, because those 500 will are added the real latency, putting you over the barrier.
If 300ms caused problems, then most likely you had a latency higher than 200ms to some player, putting you over the barrier. Since some players use TURN server / have shitty routing, 200ms is easy to break.
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My friends and I play FAF regularly from South Africa . All of us have high speed fibre but due to the distance to Eurpoean or US players the ping is always around 300 when we play with other people. Everytime the game lags due to someone in the game having poor connections we get blamed because our ping is "too high". Whenever we try to explain that under 500 is fine they almost always say that "that is not how ping works". It gets tiring after a while so when people can start kicking us from lobbies for a reason that has no bearing on the game it will most likely drive many people from the game, not just South Africans but probably Australians as well.
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I get kinda the same thing if I try to play in the afternoon, lots of Russian players at that time.
The simple solution is tmm, and what's funny is there is no lag even when I'm playing Russians
