I have the same issue on mainly locker servers even though have a fast connection, many have been experiencing the same thing, weird thing is that not everyone seems to experience it at the same time on the same server
Just noticed that when it gets laggy for me, it does not report packet loss. Weird
You actually do not need at all all that amazing download/upload speed to play the BF game. Too high a net speed is often even antagonistic to obtaining a perfect line quality which you need for good gaming experience. First sign is exactly the constant rise of retransmissions of data packages, which then in next stage will result in package loss when saturation happens on either end.
For the BF4 game you only need around max 3-4 Mb/s download and around 750kb/s in upload. Anything faster than that is not even used. As the ISP is often focusing on bragging with their high speeds, the compromise is on the line quality. And that means everything for your gameplay. Bette to turn down the speed a bit while then recovering the ability to consistently having a perfect line quality for your FPS gaming. So having a fast or a super fast line brings you absolutely nothing to your gaming here in this game.
Even on the server you list with heavy package loss you have a latency of 160ms to that server.
That would normally not be any problem at all, though one could argue it should ideally be lower. Anything below 180ms appear to be the magic border for still working ok for the game and experience. Above 200ms it starts to become noticeable bad.
But the extreme package loss is of course a total game stopper!
Even just a small level of package loss like just 0.1-0.3% is bad for your gaming experience.
To find out where the problem is then please use the TraceRoute tool that EA promotes on the Help screen for connection issues. Here you see the route your data packages needs to travel from your game platform to the BF4 game server. And the response from each node along the travel will be listed in that report. This will tell you then if the issue is on your end, at a certain node along the travel, or if it is at the server hosting destination. Depending on the result of the findings, you know then where to go next for fixing the issue.
I got my own line speed reduced by 50Mb/s, and after this I now almost never have any 'you lost connection to the EA server' situations, while before it was like several times during one evening. You only need like 25 Mb/s to watch a live 4k Ultra HD movie on Netflix, so think about what is really the key priority here, as more of something is not always better.
@bishtop ,
Your observation is actually very classic. And the lag you experience is not caused by you/your own apparently good line connection. The root cause is actually the many other players that are on the server where some obviously have poor line quality and package loss. Your local game platform is quick to send/receive all needed updates to your screen and the game server, but it halts as its still waiting for updates from the server that is pausing to wait for the updates coming in from those high latency/high package loss players also on the server. We have done some tech testing and identified that even just 1-3 of such players (aka latency above 1200ms and 0.2% package loss) on a 64 player server can bring it down to its knees. And everybody else on the server are troubled with the constant lagging and rubberbanding. The servers even crash in the end as result if sustained load from those high latency/high package loss players!
Funny also that you observe this especially on a Locker server you mention. Because we have also identified this specific problem for the servers to keep up with high-latency players on board is especially challenged when many players are in close proximity on the map (you may be aware as well about how the visionary field and game mechanics are more detailed and more frequent calculated, when in near space versus far space between soldiers). And it is especially the flares and smoke grenades that appear to be the most demanding for calculating/updating the screens/game mechanics for everybody. Probably because every single particle in those weapon types generates a broad specter of changes for each and every single soldier in the game. We have tested and found especially the Locker and the Metro maps being the maps where this is most extreme and measurable.
Sanitation to avoid this is unfortunately that the server admins needs to kick off such players with poor line quality and/or very high latency.
Doing this however, makes the game play and experience great for all the 64 players that do come onto the server then and you also avoid all the server crashes that we otherwise observe so many are suffering from. Hope this info was of some help to you.
@CyberDyme wrote:You actually do not need at all all that amazing download/upload speed to play the BF game. Too high a net speed is often even antagonistic to obtaining a perfect line quality which you need for good gaming experience. First sign is exactly the constant rise of retransmissions of data packages, which then in next stage will result in package loss when saturation happens on either end.
For the BF4 game you only need around max 3-4 Mb/s download and around 750kb/s in upload. Anything faster than that is not even used. As the ISP is often focusing on bragging with their high speeds, the compromise is on the line quality. And that means everything for your gameplay. Bette to turn down the speed a bit while then recovering the ability to consistently having a perfect line quality for your FPS gaming. So having a fast or a super fast line brings you absolutely nothing to your gaming here in this game.
Even on the server you list with heavy package loss you have a latency of 160ms to that server.
That would normally not be any problem at all, though one could argue it should ideally be lower. Anything below 180ms appear to be the magic border for still working ok for the game and experience. Above 200ms it starts to become noticeable bad.
But the extreme package loss is of course a total game stopper!
Even just a small level of package loss like just 0.1-0.3% is bad for your gaming experience.
To find out where the problem is then please use the TraceRoute tool that EA promotes on the Help screen for connection issues. Here you see the route your data packages needs to travel from your game platform to the BF4 game server. And the response from each node along the travel will be listed in that report. This will tell you then if the issue is on your end, at a certain node along the travel, or if it is at the server hosting destination. Depending on the result of the findings, you know then where to go next for fixing the issue.
I got my own line speed reduced by 50Mb/s, and after this I now almost never have any 'you lost connection to the EA server' situations, while before it was like several times during one evening. You only need like 25 Mb/s to watch a live 4k Ultra HD movie on Netflix, so think about what is really the key priority here, as more of something is not always better.
@bishtop ,
Your observation is actually very classic. And the lag you experience is not caused by you/your own apparently good line connection. The root cause is actually the many other players that are on the server where some obviously have poor line quality and package loss. Your local game platform is quick to send/receive all needed updates to your screen and the game server, but it halts as its still waiting for updates from the server that is pausing to wait for the updates coming in from those high latency/high package loss players also on the server. We have done some tech testing and identified that even just 1-3 of such players (aka latency above 1200ms and 0.2% package loss) on a 64 player server can bring it down to its knees. And everybody else on the server are troubled with the constant lagging and rubberbanding. The servers even crash in the end as result if sustained load from those high latency/high package loss players!
Funny also that you observe this especially on a Locker server you mention. Because we have also identified this specific problem for the servers to keep up with high-latency players on board is especially challenged when many players are in close proximity on the map (you may be aware as well about how the visionary field and game mechanics are more detailed and more frequent calculated, when in near space versus far space between soldiers). And it is especially the flares and smoke grenades that appear to be the most demanding for calculating/updating the screens/game mechanics for everybody. Probably because every single particle in those weapon types generates a broad specter of changes for each and every single soldier in the game. We have tested and found especially the Locker and the Metro maps being the maps where this is most extreme and measurable.
Sanitation to avoid this is unfortunately that the server admins needs to kick off such players with poor line quality and/or very high latency.
Doing this however, makes the game play and experience great for all the 64 players that do come onto the server then and you also avoid all the server crashes that we otherwise observe so many are suffering from. Hope this info was of some help to you.
@CyberDyme Thank you, i had an idea of it being somewhere along them lines and am glad you've confirmed it. I also remember a few times one of the servers crashing a couple of times.
Had a few games tonight where i had shot players at close range with a shotgun twice with the first shot being when they had not noticed me and yet they still managed to to kill me straight away. No packet loss is shown
@sk1lld wrote:Have you tried a tracert from the command prompt to see if its one of the hops to the server?
In the run box type "CMD" without the quotes, right click and run as administrator, at the command prompt type "tracert google.com" without quotes and let it run. If you see no packets lost, it may be the servers you are playing on. When the servers are stressed I have noticed they will start dropping packets depending on how many people are playing and what map "A close map like locker for example" you are playing.
Type exit to exit command prompt.
Thank you, here are the results, i dont think it shows anything classed as sensitive regarding my IP :D
Tracing route to google.co.uk [142.250.180.3]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 2 ms 2 ms 1 ms 172.16.16.208
3 * 6 ms 7 ms 31.55.186.177
4 7 ms 7 ms 7 ms 31.55.186.176
5 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms core4-hu0-11-0-3.faraday.ukcore.bt.net [213.121.192.70]
6 8 ms 7 ms 8 ms peer3-et7-0-7.redbus.ukcore.bt.net [194.72.16.94]
7 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms 109.159.253.3
8 9 ms 9 ms 8 ms 72.14.232.76
9 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms 142.251.54.31
10 8 ms 7 ms 7 ms lhr25s32-in-f3.1e100.net [142.250.180.3]
Trace complete.
@sk1lld wrote:
Trace looks good. Possibly a server problem then.
Thank you for your help, What i will end up doing is recording the network connection info in battlefield to see if theirs any sudden deviations in any of the stats.
Another question which you might know about is, i have the following settings disabled for my network adapter, flow control and all checksums and offloads and transmit and receive are set to highest, could it be possible that my NIC could be either be the issue due to either overloading itself with data being received and causing occassional corrupt packets or could be passing data from the NIC to my proccessor and causing issues on that side.
Its been years since id read up on Offloading so struggle to remember if Offloading being disabled means its the NIC or Cpu that processes it all
