Rivals Match Play Frustratingly Sluggish

Just played another rivals match that was almost as sluggish. Thinking about just giving up on playing tonight. This just isn’t fun.

It's likely just the servers struggling under load. Happens every day at peak.

SAME! it’s unplayable for me! Slow heavy delayed slug fest… it literally doesn’t matter what time I turn it on the games unplayable.. every other game I play is absolutely fine 

I hear you. I’m not experiencing EVERY time, but as I get better I’m noticing it more (so maybe it’s been there more or less all along). While I’m sure server congestion contributes (as one respondent suggested), I don’t see how that would lead to one player having such an advantage. Rather, if it were merely server congestion then wouldn’t both players experiencing slow/sluggish play?

The match I just finished (in Champions Finals) was started around 1:40am PST, when most of North (and South) America are asleep  so there’s really shouldn’t be much of an issue of network congestion with my ISP or with EA servers. And yet my opponent was FAR, FAR quicker and every button I pushed or movement I made seemed to take just a half beat too long to occur on screen. At times I felt like I was playing an omniscient AI!

All of these leads me to conclude that either (a) there’s a differential in the speed of the respective machines (my XBOX v their $$$ PC), OR (more likely) (b) EA assigned me a match with someone who is playing at a significant distance away from me but who happened to be sitting closer to the host server. I’m not techie in the least, but that’s my best guess based n my rudimentary understanding of how all this works. Regardless, it sucks pretty bad as a gaming experience when you’re not only trying to overcome a worthy opponent but also a slow/sluggish game. Would love for someone at EA to speak up if I’m unfairly maligning the game or (better yet) if there is something I can do to avoid this happening.

If it’s server you would both be experiencing it. If you want ea to look at it they are going over connections  and videos here. 

If you want to really test it in game turn on the online input overlay. This will show you two controllers on screen. One is your local connection and one is the server. Count the seconds between button presses you see on screen. If there is delay on your side you would see say 4 seconds between the two controllers on screen. 

If you want ea to go over your connection they are giving answers below. 

https://forums.ea.com/discussions/fc-25-technical-issues-en/fix-the-servers/12107456

I've explained to you several times, that this is not how it works.

The link you posted does not provide any answers at all. As usual, they stopped replying as soon as the usual "ISP is at fault" script didn't work, they ran off. It happens every time.

He already went over your connection twice after you said he won’t reply. You have high packet loss which is causing your issues. You got an answer you actually got it twice. You should say you got an answer you don’t like if you want to be accurate.  He even said if you have more evidence like a video he would go over it too. 

what do EA deem as ‘high packet loss’ because if it’s 0.0 anything they’re lying quite frankly. If the packet loss was 3-5% for example then fair enough but the EA reps on here are mocking us saying such low amounts of packet loss cause the lag. It’s 100% something on EA’s end and always has been. 

That would be a great question for ea. You should ask that with a screen shot of your connection or a video. Thats why those threads are so important. Ea is transparent and communicates with the community and it lets everyone know why it’s happening.  You might not like the answer but at least ea explains it. 

I’ll check this other thread, but as for “transparent” I’m not sure I’ve seen enough evidence to support that claim. As least as far as matchmaking goes, I definitely sense some “reindeer games” going on. For example, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone through the matchmaking process for a rivals match only for the timer to expire and an “opponent left the match” message to show up. The thing is, when this happens five times in a row (which happens to me a lot) it becomes increasingly clear that there never was an opponent and EA is just blowing smoke in order to obfuscate the fact that they don’t have enough active users at that point in time to paint me with anyone. Why they don’t just cop to the fact is beyond me, but it damages trust when you feel like the company who’s taking your money isn’t being entirely straight with you.

More generally, when I post in these forums I’d say I get a reply from an EA rep maybe 5-10% of the time. Most often it’s members of the community (like yourself) replying, but almost never is it EA responding with direct, transparent info. So, although I post my questions/concerns in here because I always want to give EA an opportunity to back up their product with useful customer service, my experience is (frustratingly) that I usually get crickets.

As for this issue, I’m going to take a look at this other thread, but just based on what I’ve read n the exchange here I would very much like to hear what EA has to say in response toTrueHonestJohn​. His seems like I reasonable question/point regarding packet loss.