Season 5: Severe Packet Loss, Performance Drop, and Server Congestion

Decided to just make my own thread since my problem could be a bit different from others posted. 

The problem:

This started the week before Season 5 kicked off - I started getting into matches where I would experience debilitating "lag" from packet loss. Symptoms - usually graphics become severely degraded. Sometimes, I'll have 100+ steady frames but player models will be skipping around very laggy. Other times, I'll get the server congestion icon along with prediction error and packet loss. When this happens, usually frames drop and the gameplay itself becomes more "laggy" with objects not responded (items not picking up etc.).

At first the problem only happened during peak play hours and during off hours the game played just fine. I figured it was just server-side congestion due to end of season/quarantine/maybe they took servers down for installing the new patch. However, over the past two weeks, the problem has increased to where I cannot play at all at any hour because the game has severe packet loss, prediction errors, and/or congestion. Lately, the problem has been worse and even in the menu - quality textures will fail to load, I'll get only 40fps or so (typically 100+), and there will be visible lag in menu animation. Going into Firing Range there are a couple scenarios that happen - 1. it will be perfectly fine, run high fps, and I will just have the packet loss icon in the corner or 2. It will be laggy, low quality models/textures and have a variety of connection icons that pop up. 

Another weird issue is that in some situations, the game will load perfectly fine, I'll be playing great, but then encounter another team will instantly trigger the symptom before where graphics degrade, severe packet loss incurs, and I die. Today, I was able to play some during early morning hours on EU albeit with fairly bad lag - yet still barely playable enough that I could get through most of a game and do basic functions - so the problem isn't consistent and time seems to be a common variable in worse performance. 

Fixes I've attempted: 

• Changing servers - server select gives me the same sorts of stats I normally got pre-problem
• Ran EA Connection Troubleshooter including: 
  • Flush DNS
  • Change DNS
  • Port Forwarding
  • Setting my local computer as DMZ
  • Restarting Router
  • Changing WiFi channel 
  • Buying ethernet cable and plugging directly into the router
• Investigated drivers for internet adapters and graphics card
• Ran dozens of speed tests, jitter tests, packet loss tests, tried playing at different times including early and very late
• Pinged and checked for packet loss against the EA server, google, and other servers 0 or very low packet loss found - I used UOTrace as well as CMD prompt and my router's software
• Verified that my connection is stable and normal even when experiencing the problem in-game
• Checked and verified that ports were open and listening 
• Changed game settings, graphic cards settings, reset to default settings, changing again
• Investigated my PC's power settings/profile
• Tried VPN and connecting to areas closer to various servers
• Ran Adw Malware Remover, virus scan, reset netwinsock, ipconfig/renew and release, reboots of router and pc again and again
• Checked for background processes and system performance - my PC isn't even close to 100% utilization of CPU, RAM, or GPU during these problems. 
• I've removed all other devices off the local network
• *EDIT* forgot to mention, I've tried repairing the game twice and checking again for updates. 

Anomalies: 

The server select menu seems to be not functioning properly. It will show me 0% or sometimes 2-4% packet loss under times of heavy loads. However, one time it showed me packet loss of 16-24% across the board - this seems to be more indicative of the type of performance I was receiving. Also, sometimes when I select a new server, I'm not connected to that server (when you hit escape later, it will show you your server and ping at the bottom of the page). 

The new Bahrain servers, while half the distance to me, are nearly double the ping of the EU servers I usually use.

Hypothesis:

I changed nothing on my PC and these problems happened. No matter what changes I make to my PC/network the problem does not change. Therefore, I don't think the problem is local to my private network or PC. The problem would go away and come back without me making any changes further points toward it being an external factor. 

My ISP is the next culprit. However, my bandwidth/packet loss to other servers is not affected. Playing at 1am local time I still have the same issue as well as playing at early morning, midday, and night - at first - playing off hours worked but then the problem grew increasingly worse. My UOtrace stats have not gotten worse, nor my bandwidth nor performance in other apps/games/streaming. 

This leaves me with my logical conclusion: the problem is outside of my PC/ISP, so it's either in the infrastructure of my connection to you or in the EA servers themselves. I would argue that the timing makes the EA servers especially suspicious. 

Why?

1. I'm not the only one with the problem, others are reporting severe packet loss, prediction errors, higher pings, and severe no-reg issues ( https://youtu.be/PLmQejneapE ). A quick search of these forums, reddit r/apexlegends will show you dozens of threads complaining of server lag, congestion, packet loss, prediction errors, and no-regs. These complaints come from different countries and even continents. If need be, I'll compile a list of all the complaints. 

2. It started the week before S5 - the game has had issues when introducing new patches/content in the past. During this time I imagine updates were being pushed to the servers and testing them for stability ramping up to S5. The team even recognizes that there have been no-reg errors (indicating problems with the net code) and the patch failed to fix it

3. Symptoms are worse during peak time for the servers I'm connecting to rather than peak times for my local internet (I'm several hours ahead)

Therefore, I think this must be a server-side netcode or network related problem exacerbated by increased traffic due to quarantine and the release of a new season. I most of all hope that I'm wrong and that I can just make some fix on my computer and solve the issue - but after trying dozens of fixes, I've given up hope that it's something I have control over. Also - I notice that when I poll the servers, the ping/packet loss seems consistent with character select but what happens in-game is totally a different story. This makes me think that it's specifically the netcode/connection from the software itself because if it were a network issue, even the ping/packet loss to the server would be affected. 

UOTrace Results:

(these results are normative of typical performance - I usually show 90-140ms to frankfurt1) 

Thanks in advance for reading and your help!