Time Nudge (TN) issue Megathread

I've  monitored the framerate, it's usually somewhere around 80 CPU and 100-120 GPU.

Framerate isn't the issue for me, my frames are perfectly fine in custom lobbies with zero TN. It's that when the CPU frames duck below a certain point instead of the game just dropping frames for a second I get tremendous TN and the game looks and feels like I'm rubberbanding hard. 

Interestingly, I have a friend with worse hardware and worse internet than me and he has zero issues. 

Another album. First two are with frames capped to 90, and dynamic resolution set to 90. When set to 80 I didn't notice any issues, then when I went to 90 it got less stable.

Then I tried with uncapped frames, no dynamic resolution. Was fine on Mirak Valley breakthrough, also mostly fine on Sobek City breakthrough with some hiccups at the end. Then went to Mirak Valley escalation and it returned (last two images). I took all these screenshots from clips I recorded, and in none of them did I see my frames in the top right change dramatically (if at all) before getting the TN issues.

It wasn't as bad today, but there are still times where I'm suddenly "underwater" with TN.

Idk why framerate would be an issue, I get framerate drops too when I try to screenshot in game stuff due to microsoft’s screenshot app starting up. It’s uncorrelated to the problem.

What about those TN values I see in his screenshots? Those are about what I get when playing. His TN values are consistently in the hundreds of ms. TN: 500 ms. TN: 900 ms. Just looking at a few. 

I always play multiplayer with the performance bar on, so I’m constantly monitoring those values. My latency is never above 40 ms, but time nudge (TN) can get very high, varying between 500 and 1500 ms. I can tell it’s the TN value that is the culprit because my game only gets super rubber-bandy when TN gets high.

Interesting note: Through repeated testing on live servers, I have found that at the start of matches my TN value is reasonable (~20 ms) but later increases. I did some more digging and found that while I was running around in spawn waiting for vehicles, my TN was also consistently low. It was only when I brought those vehicles to the front line that I experienced a massive TN increase, upwards of 1000 ms. Getting out of the vehicles did not help. I found while playing on foot that being near teammates did not affect the TN value that much, but as soon as I encountered an enemy, the TN value would skyrocket, and I found myself unable to hit the enemy with any consistency. Most often I’d be riddled with bullets before I even saw an enemy was there.

This led me to conclude the following: Time Nudge increases in proximity to enemy combatants. Stay away from combat, less TN. Unfortunately, if you engage in long-range combat, i.e, sniping, TN issues still crop up. So the only way to keep TN low is to stay in spawn, out of sight—if you can’t see the enemy and they can’t see you, the game runs smoothly.

Obviously that’s not a very fun game to play. So, I have exploited the Time Nudge bug to my advantage. See, I don’t have to see or engage an enemy to have TN effects. I just need to be near them. And that means I know when enemies are near just by looking at my network performance bar, even when they haven’t been spotted. That’s super useful in a lot of maps, especially since most current maps are close-quarters. I can run up to a wall or closed door of a building we can’t see inside for one reason or another, and check my TN for a response. If there’s none, its probably clear, if there’s an increase, there’s unseen enemies laying in ambush. I’ve used this to get the jump on players inside buildings many times. It’s essentially legal wall hacks that I get just by playing the game.

Now, is this fair to other players? Absolutely not. It’s completely unfair to the vast majority of the playerbase which does not have this issue. For the 10% that do, however, our burden gives us an unlikely advantage. It means we can get the drop on most every player we come across. And since this issue affects so few, it’s unlikely we’ll ever lose our sixth sense wall hacks, because not enough people have this issue for DICE to bother fixing it. But I sincerely hope they do.

P.S.: If you’re wondering how I can get TN increases and still get the jump on players without being lagged into oblivion, it’s because I cap my framerate to 30 FPS. This causes TN spikes to be restrained to ~100 ms at most and leaves it around ~30 ms for most of the match. Since I have good latency that means I’m never above 150 ms when playing, which is a very tolerable amount of lag. Effectively inconsequential. In short, I can reduce the magnitude of TN spikes, but I can still see when they happen. Best of both worlds.