Forum Discussion

Re: Ping Based Matchmaking

@Babbediboopi 

You talk the up most amount of balls. I have videos of people lagging hard, shooting round walls, extremely hard to hit etc. Then when I have a look at their profile, they are from a foreign country. Obviously you testing with a VPN on different servers with a high ping is going to give you the advantage and you wouldn't see it.

20 Replies

  • @SmallZzy @KUSHD 

    The difference between you and me is that you assume a hypothesis to be true only because you think its common sense, because you "feel it in your gut" whereas I actually test my hypothesis before I make up my mind. I have also seen players lagging on my screen, and Ive also experienced noregs hits....Doest that mean that immediately can draw the concussion that this happens because that enemy player has high ping? NO...

    What you dont seem to realize is that the only reason why we did these tests was because we had the theory, just like you, that it was high ping that caused all these problems, but after we tested it, we came to the conclusion that that wasnt the case.

    Like I said, "shooting around corner" (and getting shot around corners) is a thing when playing with high ping due to the client sided hit detection but its NOT harder to hit a player with 200 ping and his movement wont stutter on your screen. That being said, it can ofc be SOMETHING ELSE on the enemy client side that causes this, something that may often be linked to high ping players, like unstable connections  or fluctuating ping etc. It can ofc also be a combination of many factors (enemy ping, your ping, lagging server etc) but JUST playing with stable 200 ping wont make a player with 20 ping have a hard time hitting you or affect how your movement appears on his screen. That is all am saying.

    And just to be clear, we didnt just play squad with VPN against other squads, we played AGAINST each other, both in the firing range, and also a couple of games when we got into the same server and dropped far away and fought each other with different pings.. 

  • KUSHD's avatar
    KUSHD
    6 years ago

    @Babbediboopi So basically you teamed online (cheating) to find out something you couldn’t possibly get correct results from... You don’t know what you are talking about I suggest you do some real research pal. I’ve played on teams where one player has high ping and we can see them teleporting, that is because the server doesn’t know where they are... How do you not get this....? 

  • SmallZzy's avatar
    SmallZzy
    6 years ago

    @Babbediboopi 

    You talk the biggest amount of non-sense. Everyone knows that High Ping Players cause lag. It has been this way for a very long time, across all online games. You basically cheated to get results anyway. Like I said before, you obviously didn't see any difference because you used the means of cheating. Also, firing range runs off of your own connection not the server, so that can not be included in the tests. I suggest you go back and do more research because you are literally just using big paragraphs and big words so you don't sound as stupid as you actually are. Anyone with common sense and knowledge of online gaming will be able to see through your bullcrap. Also, the only people who argue that high ping doesn't affect gameplay are usually the ones that do use it for an unfair advantage. If you do more research, search up games that kick you if you go over a certain amount of ping because long behold, it causes problems.

  • TheJumpingJawa's avatar
    TheJumpingJawa
    Seasoned Ace
    6 years ago

    Unreliable/sporadic latency is the bigger problem, and is the cause of warping.

    It tends to occur on connections with high hop counts, and that travel over highly congested/over subscribed links.

    It can of course be artificially induced, though I doubt anyone would go to the trouble of doing it for competitive advantage.

    It's kind of ironic that my 1st thought upon reading the title was "what a daft idea".

    However I then thought back to my days of playing Quake 2 & 3 over a 56k modem, and the stark difference between LPBs (40-100ms) and HPBs.(150-250ms).

    Back then a "fair" match-up was one between players of equal ping; nobody had even considered matching equally skilled players together.

    For good reason too; if you stop and think about it, matchmaking by skill is an absurd idea, as all things being equal, such match-ups can only be decided by luck.

    Of course game design that puts 'luck' front & foremost is EA's modus operandi, so it's no wonder it's found its way into Apex.

    Next feature; Premium Currency to bypass SBMM.

    "Pay to have worse opponents" isn't "Pay to Win"..... righhhht? 👿

  • SmallZzy's avatar
    SmallZzy
    6 years ago

    @TheJumpingJawa 

    You obviously don't have a clue about Ping Based Matchmaking too. You literally only seen what you wanted to and rambled on about the biggest load of balls. You need to re-read the whole conversation and then come back to us.

  • TheJumpingJawa's avatar
    TheJumpingJawa
    Seasoned Ace
    6 years ago

    @SmallZzy wrote:

    @TheJumpingJawa 

    You obviously don't have a clue about Ping Based Matchmaking too. You literally only seen what you wanted to and rambled on about the biggest load of balls. You need to re-read the whole conversation and then come back to us.


    I don't engage in the typical petty back & forth "you're wrong" type arguments that most denizens of this forum are so fond of.

    As such I'm neither supporting nor opposing your suggestion, just giving my anecdotal perspective as a gamer who's been playing competitive first person shooters over the internet for more than 20 years.

    All I can suggest is that you reread my post.

    (fyi the "pay to not SBMM" tangent is tongue in cheek).

  • @BabbediboopiI don’t really thing its entirely server ping, but also a mix of a players internet speed or hardware

    For instance I used to play on satelite Internet on roblox and a few other games when I was little and well 900-1200 constant ping was the best I could get no matter what game I chose... and anywheres between 1.5-3k+ ms ping on games that required a huge map to load, so you could imagine players with faster mbps will not lag as bad as players with lower mbps this depends on their subscription with their internet provider  or what is available in their area , also sometimes outdated hardware can cause your game to lag and your character to barely move with incorrect video settings for instance settings higher than you are able to run so you can expect them to appear laggy as hell on any other players screens as well

    I do think sbmm and the servers are another factor to this issue though, usually at night I get teammates speaking spanish, japenese, thai or something Russian etc, and I live in eastern us... i dont think much about the spanish as its common for mexicans to be in my area but All of the other languages I expect to be overseas

  • EA_Atic's avatar
    EA_Atic
    Icon for DICE Team rankDICE Team
    6 years ago

    Hey everyone,

    lets keep it to the topic, so far everyone is on topic and lets keep it like that. 

    Ping Based Matchmaking not something I heard before per say, games normally have that you get MM the best ping and servers for a better experience. Apex and SWBF2 does this if you don't choose what server you want to be on as example.

    /Atic

  • KUSHD's avatar
    KUSHD
    6 years ago

    @TheJumpingJawa We are NOT discussing SBMM we are discussing Ping based matchmaking PBM. These are two different types of matchmaking. One is based off of the players skill, the other is based off of the players connection.

    Ping often gets used synonymously and interchanged with latency, but while it is related, this is not correct. The term has its roots in active sonar, with a ping being the pulse of sound sent out, followed by listening for its reflection to come back. Ping in computers actually refers to the signal sent out across the network to another computer, and this other computer then sends its own signal back, which is another ping. The measurement of this round trip then gets referred to as latency.

  • @EA_Atic 

    1. Apex may pick the best server based on your location but it is not 100% accurate all the time. I live in Ireland & theres multiple times where I have started the game up & its auto selected me to be put in Australia, New York, Sao Paulo etc.

    2. Apex will auto select the server on start. But its extremely easy to pick another server & a lot of people do this to get an unfair advantage.

    3. All in all after all of the arguing in this post with others, I still come to the conclusion that Ping Based Matchmaking needs to come to the game.

  • @SmallZzy I remember someone saying that they used some script to see the apex legends servers IP addresses and then they banned that IP address from their network when it was a server they lagged in really badly or had a high ping in, this could possibly be a solution for when it matches you in servers that you don’t want but im not sure how to do it, I either saw the post on here or a video on yt I honestly don’t know where or If its even allowed so use this advice at your own risk
  • TheJumpingJawa's avatar
    TheJumpingJawa
    Seasoned Ace
    6 years ago

    @KUSHD wrote:

    @TheJumpingJawa We are NOT discussing SBMM we are discussing Ping based matchmaking PBM. These are two different types of matchmaking. One is based off of the players skill, the other is based off of the players connection.

    Ping often gets used synonymously and interchanged with latency, but while it is related, this is not correct. The term has its roots in active sonar, with a ping being the pulse of sound sent out, followed by listening for its reflection to come back. Ping in computers actually refers to the signal sent out across the network to another computer, and this other computer then sends its own signal back, which is another ping. The measurement of this round trip then gets referred to as latency.


    Yes. And?

    At no point did I confuse the matchmaking paradigms or my use of terminology.

    My initial post attempted to contrast how matchmaking expectations have changed over the years, and how these changes have altered our perception of fairness.

    As to server selection, it's still unclear how Apex's backend handles locating lobbies when mixed location parties & potentially sparse player populations are involved.

  • Honestly a better in my opinion idea would be to remove the ability to change servers on the client side. Dedicate some resources to better understanding the server errors in play now and get a stable server farm that actually functions. I play in the midwest US, and sometimes play with friends in England and France. We collectively stay on our own servers and I don't see them nor do they see me rubberbanding across the  screen. Yet I play with someone in Oregon and sometimes I swear it is like watching an infinite wraith portal they move erraticly and somethings just seem off.

    While in theory I do like the idea of ping matchmaking, when and where would the line be drawn? You hear now of people in diamond and predator lobbies in Australia not being able to get games. What happens to outlier countries and player bases when they are stuck playing against the same 60 or so players over and over. Just food for thought. I am not against it, just seeing the bigger picture of what I have seen in game and on the forums. 

    As far as testing high ping, I have tried changing servers a few times to high ping and no way would I say it is an advantage. Audio cues completely gone teammates and enemies teleporting around you. Not really an advantage in my book at all. If all 3 of your teammates went to high ping you would have no way to test it's effect unless there was an active kill cam so you could see what the enemy sees.

    Bottom line on ping is the fact that it is higher in this game than any other I play an has not come down since launch. I would say one of the best implements at this point for UI they could do was offer an in game hud of actual ping rate. Fortnite had/has this and it makes it easy when recording fights to see if ping was playing a part in why you lost a certain battle or not. 

    I can't speak for anyone else, but I am getting sick of hearing shots landing seeing the splash effect of a hit marker yet no damage numbers only to leave a game and see 3 out of 10 shots hit.

    All in all if this gets an implement in the future I hope they lock out the ability to change servers manually. Just saying.

  • SmallZzy's avatar
    SmallZzy
    6 years ago

    @mastiffslinger & @EA_Atic 

    The best thing to do, would be to look at how PUBG managed to take away Server Select & how they implemented Ping Based Matchmaking. 

    Also, I would not mind if I occasionally matched against people from other countries if the system of autoPing Based Matchmaking selected them to be there because there isn't enough players in that region. But constantly playing against people with 60+ Ping is a no go in my books.

    Another thing that should come with Ping Based Matchmaking is a report system to report people who use VPN's to get around the Ping Based Matchmaking System.

  • @SmallZzy 

    +60 Ping would be a no go?

    I live just outside of Minneapolis MN and my server is Iowa. I have excellent internet service and the best my ping rate is at launch of game is 38, more likely 56. The next region is 60-70. So having a cap at 60 would region lock me. And  I would assume it would region lock alot of people. 

    I stand by what I said earlier, the resources need to be allocated to fix the server issues and hit reg issues,(which I am sure are  server related in discrepancies in ping and what not).

    These ping rates we go by are what show up on the load in screen, so in game  I am going to assume the numbers are worse. Which is why it would be great to have an in game monitor hud display of real time ping. Judging by some of the characteristics of opponents I am going to say I see some serious spikes in ping throughout my games.

  • TheJumpingJawa's avatar
    TheJumpingJawa
    Seasoned Ace
    6 years ago

    @mastiffslinger wrote:

    @SmallZzy 

    +60 Ping would be a no go?

    These ping rates we go by are what show up on the load in screen, so in game  I am going to assume the numbers are worse. Which is why it would be great to have an in game monitor hud display of real time ping. Judging by some of the characteristics of opponents I am going to say I see some serious spikes in ping throughout my games.


    Much *much* worse if independent analysis is to be believed; latencies approaching 300ms are typical for those playing with a 50ms ping.

  • notCatnip's avatar
    notCatnip
    6 years ago

    IDK about 100ms being sensible; I have 7ms to frankfurt, 100-110ms to USA servers. I get hit through closed doors, lose peeks all the time (sometimes without even seeing people), get rekt by havoc even though I LoS it super fast... if I play on the 7ms servers... the moment I go on 100ms USA servers I am the one who wins the peek, chases down guys and PKs them through the gap as they close the door... or did they close it from their perspective already? 🙂

    Low latency should be something you want; even 40-50ms vs 10ms was a huge deal back in the day. If they do a ping cap, then they should also provide EA vpns, to raise your ping to the exact cap, that way at least we can get an even playing field for all.

  • @notCatnipIve been wrecking alot of players with havocs lately since they made it have a built in turbo and built in extended mag it’s actually better than R-99 sometimes early to mid game when everyones in whites/blues and it also has reduced recoil 

    It seems everytime I see a player thats really laggy with high ping they always end up as the kill leader in the end because nobody can hit them, there was a really laggy path earlier and I destroyed him with spitfire just because it had so many bullets to keep tracking him and he watched me for 5 mins thinking I was hacking or something but that was a good match for me though I was killing everyone between spitfire and wingman XD i had like 7 kills when I left the mirage boat area as a solo ._. I really wish we would get permanent solos already it seems like the only time I do great is when im alone but sometimes I mess up big time aswell when im alone because I speed around so fast and slide jump right on top of a full team

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