Input Lag/Unresponsiveness
New game, same issue. Since last January. Not my first rodeo posting here! To get the jump on the response: Xbox Series X, 1ms monitor, all hardware has been swapped multiple times (including my sys...
Forum Discussion
Figured I'd give this my weekly bump. The gameplay remains heavy, sluggish, and unresponsive in both offline and online modes at all times. It seems even worse somehow. Other games by other developers play normally, online and offline, at all times. That can't be hardware; that can't be Internet; there is something native to THIS game on THIS engine. How else can you explain it?
While this middleman routine helps keep the mob at bay *wink wink* and concerns voiced only indirectly without any follow-up, I'm still waiting for an answer from the developers how this problem makes a lick of sense. After months, there's not even a whiff of an explanation from them? Hell, I'd settle for a hint of curiosity from higher ups about this issue. A back and forth. If it confuses me to the point of insanity, you'd think a developer would be equally curious in squaring this circle. Something stinks on ice with how this is being handled.
@DeliveryForKiki wrote:Figured I'd give this my weekly bump. The gameplay remains heavy, sluggish, and unresponsive in both offline and online modes at all times. It seems even worse somehow. Other games by other developers play normally, online and offline, at all times. That can't be hardware; that can't be Internet; there is something native to THIS game on THIS engine. How else can you explain it?
While this middleman routine helps keep the mob at bay *wink wink* and concerns voiced only indirectly without any follow-up, I'm still waiting for an answer from the developers how this problem makes a lick of sense. After months, there's not even a whiff of an explanation from them? Hell, I'd settle for a hint of curiosity from higher ups about this issue. A back and forth. If it confuses me to the point of insanity, you'd think a developer would be equally curious in squaring this circle. Something stinks on ice with how this is being handled.
Seems a simple enough request for the developer to posit even the foggiest notion of how this makes sense. I thought this information was passed along to someone with more expertise than a forum manager with a troubleshooting check list?
Anyway, I was googling and stumbled upon this thread for Apex, and all you can do is have a massive chuckle. It's like deja vu.
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Input-Lag-Xbox-Series-X/td-p/11829864
@DeliveryForKikihttps://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/FIFA-23-slow-and-unresponsive-gameplay/m-p/12070382#M29601
Cant confirm this but it matches your assumption regarding the cause of the problemhttps://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Fifa-23-slow-motion-after-update/m-p/12055454/page/3
Here he brings more Detail on the conversation with ea support
- @DaWebio I don't even know how he got EA Support to help at all, that's the biggest mystery. Besides the circuitous unhelpful blather here, I went to EA contact just now and saw that both of my recent cases were closed with zero response. It's farting into the wind with these people.
Unbearable heaviness and delay -- it sounds no different for FIFA. Or as EA would evasively tell you: it's not a common complaint. Something is intrinsically wrong with this game (the EA titles in general), whether it's the cache (I reset mine daily) or a coding error or whatever, and I'll never know why I won this lottery. It cannot be coincidence it coincided with Frostbite for NHL22. It is ONLY these titles for me, between different Xboxs, different accounts, offline and online. - EA_Aljo
Community Manager
It's a common complaint. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that it makes it difficult to troubleshoot this when it's not being experienced by the majority of the players. Also, we have people all over the world on different connections with different ISPs and different equipment. This makes for a virtually unlimited amount of possibilities of what could be causing games to feel heavy. All we can do is make sure there are no issues on our end and we haven't found any yet that would be causing this.
@EA_Aljo wrote:It's a common complaint. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that it makes it difficult to troubleshoot this when it's not being experienced by the majority of the players. Also, we have people all over the world on different connections with different ISPs and different equipment. This makes for a virtually unlimited amount of possibilities of what could be causing games to feel heavy. All we can do is make sure there are no issues on our end and we haven't found any yet that would be causing this.
This is reasonable enough, and I get it to some degree. But it's a 2-way street, and there's a sense of circuitousness and dismissal about what I'm detailing too. I read people post about input delay that might just be server related and not necessarily what I'm trying to address. Even on my best days, before this, I'd gripe about the game feeling laggy some nights. But that's not what I'm here about.
I'm not asking for a magic bullet, and I'm aware you're a forum liaison. But if every piece of hardware has been replaced, and if every other non-EA game does not have this input delay, how could NHL22/23 have massive gamebreaking delay offline and online without it being something inherent to the game? There's too many things that don't add up that I've described. I just want to feel like I'm having a conversation about this with the people who make the game -- not shouting into the void.
I have the exact problem as you. Literally every single thing you describe. Last night I played and with each passing game there was slightly more input delay until 4-5 games in was unplayable. This happens every time I play the game
@DeliveryForKiki have you tried starting with a new gamer tag and EA account? I feel like I have had the same super old EA account linked to my Xbox account forever and maybe changing it would help? No idea
- @ascandariato My EA Account is very old, too. It's from 2013, but I tried different PSN with different EA Account but on the same console with my Main Account sharing PS Plus - that didnt help
- @ascandariato New EA account? No. I'm not sure what that would do....
I have tried making a 2nd gamer tag, but it really hasn't helped. I do notice that if I delete all game data (under the manage game option from the home screen), sign out of my account, go into NHL23 not signed in, choose to not save data.......that offline feels pretty normal. I'm not sure it's anything with my particular Xbox account, but rather the signing in/save process. To summarize, EA sells defective game and either doesn't know how to fix it or it would be too costly.
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Gameplay-futchamps/td-p/10450321/page/2
this guy from fifa seemed to figure out the issue and why EA in game network performance monitor an UOtrace utility might not be accurate. I am not as network savvy as this guy but I think I am going to get a managed switch at Best Buy tomorrow and see if I can come to same conclusion.
Also this other guy did an experiment and went from winning 7-8 Champs games a week to going 18-2 depending on what city he was in. Spoiler: Montreal and Vancouver were the best cities and are closest to servers.
I just don’t understand how the responsiveness and feel of the skating can vary so much game to game. It even varies WITHIN each game itself. The happens to me in both EASHL and Versus games.
@DeliveryForKiki also I’m not sure if you were the one to say this before but I just had the exact same experience in an offline free skate where it starts out feeling incredibly responsive and then 1-2 minutes later the skating becomes mud. It is very easily testable by just doing a zig zag motion with the skater and seeing if he changes from fluid turning to this weird stopping/starting. And this is exactly what I experience when I play online as well. It always starts out great and then becomes awful a minute later. It’s clear as day and I have tested it multiple times in a row now
@ascandariato wrote:@DeliveryForKiki also I’m not sure if you were the one to say this before but I just had the exact same experience in an offline free skate where it starts out feeling incredibly responsive and then 1-2 minutes later the skating becomes mud. It is very easily testable by just doing a zig zag motion with the skater and seeing if he changes from fluid turning to this weird stopping/starting. And this is exactly what I experience when I play online as well. It always starts out great and then becomes awful a minute later. It’s clear as day and I have tested it multiple times in a row now
Not every time I would load into offline free skate and it would feel clean. But often enough where it starts normal for a few minutes -- and I'm testing offline free skate to dispel that it's a strictly online issue -- and it's uncanny how I can detect the instant something goes wrong. And I'm talking the instant, while I'm skating around it just slows down. From my original post, this is as concrete an example as it gets and it's my regular experience:
As you said: "It is very easily testable by just doing a zig zag motion with the skater and seeing if he changes from fluid turning to this weird stopping/starting." It's like you're at my Xbox writing that. I've still yet to hear ANYTHING from EA how this makes sense. Not a solution; just a plausible explanation. But I guess that admits there's something inherently wrong with the game.
Oddly enough, a handful of days ago, I reported some other issue with the game in order to get a direct chat line to EA Help instead of the normal 1-way street. First person was unhelpful. Second person was more understanding. They told me they'll look into it, someone would e-mail me (hasn't happened), etc.
The next day, lo and behold, my game is the smoothest it has been in a long time, like a fog lifted. I'm not going to say it's totally normal, but my player doesn't freeze stop on turns, it's less sluggish on inputs. It's at least playable. I've played EASHL online two nights and tested it for 5 minutes offline the other days; it's been consistent.
Someone here linked a FIFA post saying in an EA chat that they cleared something on their end -- https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Fifa-23-slow-motion-after-update/td-p/12055454/page/2 . While I nervously load it up each night expecting it to nosedive when I test it, I'm wondering if the same thing didn't happen to me -- just without telling me. For the better part of a year, I've had this issue, to varying degrees. NHL23 has been endlessly awful......until I talked to EA. It would have to be the mother of coincidences.
@DeliveryForKiki Where did you contact them? I have also had this problem to varying degrees since beginning of NHL 22 and it’s literally unplayable for me at this point.
Have you ever had a few days straight with no issues? I haven’t even had a stretch of 2 straight games where there isn’t an issue for what feels like an entire year
@ascandariato wrote:@DeliveryForKiki Where did you contact them? I have also had this problem to varying degrees since beginning of NHL 22 and it’s literally unplayable for me at this point.
Have you ever had a few days straight with no issues? I haven’t even had a stretch of 2 straight games where there isn’t an issue for what feels like an entire year
My guess is it was some change post-Frostbite. To be exact, I started having my issues right when 22 came out, after no prior problems. After a few weeks, it resolved and played normally until about January. Then it's been bad since. Occasional blips of better play. A few days? Absolutely not.
I contacted EA using https://help.ea.com/en/ . I just selected options until I chose one that actually contacted support directly, since most don't.
- @DeliveryForKiki Im quite sure the source lays in the frostbite engine. The servers and the engine are two things that FIFA and NHL have in common and the delay happens in both games.
Somewhere else I read that the people at EA who were used to work with frostbite quit the job and now you have people working at EA that cant really handle the engine since it's too complicated and not optimized.
I did a research and actually found job offers made by EA Vancouver adressing software engineers that would have to work with ... take a guess ... the frostbite engine. The fact that they search for new employees doesnt have to mean anything but it completed the picture in my heard of the Situation at EA.
Just take a look at the "game/controller settings Bug". It hasnt been fixed FOR MONTHS now. In my eyes that shows that they are not able to handle their own engine.
If you think back you will remember countless bugs/mistakes from the last years. E.g. packs/players were avaiable though they shouldnt have been. These are mistakes that must not happen when we talk about a company of that size. My theory is either they replaced every software employee by chimps or the human employees just cant handle this fragile frostbite engine.
If theres really an EA Account cache that creates the problem the solution can be simple "Clear Account Cache" button in your Account settings. @DeliveryForKiki not sure what you used to contact EA but I talked to some guy in EAs live text chat thing. I have no idea if it was a bot or real person but I mentioned the cache issue and they said the cache could only be cleared on my end, not theirs. But then I went on the game then next day and it felt better than probably ever on NHL23. I was actually able to track people’s movements on D and LT skate and do everything with decent responsiveness. However I felt like it was getting worse each game as usual.
- @3rhmq181pqdo That's what I used. I'm quite sure it wasn't a bot for me. Last night, while it still felt better, I started noticing some input inconsistencies that have plagued me. So, it likely might be getting worse.
This isn't exactly chemtrails level conspiracy stuff. It's something that's rooted on their end. I just don’t get why it doesn’t seem to affect everyone. I have plenty of friends who play the game competitively still and don’t seem to have issues. I was on the same level as all of them and since last year I cannot even play EASHL with them because the delay is so bad and inconsistent
@niccolo91ea schrieb:im pretty sure its this
https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Gameplay-futchamps/td-p/10450321/page/2
ok that's a good theory but why do other games run fine on the same connection and EA titles are horrible for me? if there is an issue then all games should run equally bad
The unclearable hurdle is that this weird input delay, heaviness, stop/start issue is not contained to online modes. It exists only on this EA title and offline as well. Something is going on at the grass roots level of the coding. Day 452 of no logical answer being provided.
I just don’t get how some people don’t seem to have any problems with it. I’m sure there are a ton who have it and just don’t notice. But how are there competitive players in LG/Esports that don’t notice this stuff and call it out. Not trying to gas myself up but I know every mechanic in NHL from years and years of no-lifing the game. Yet 75% of every online game for me is nearly unplayable levels of delay. Offline as well although I don’t play it. Ever since frostbite change it is beyond awful.
Playing NHL23 Online is really a great way to practice stoicism. Had a good connect in HUT Champions on Wedesney and Thursday, Friday, Saturday and especially today were terrible again. Tried the usual, resetting the router etc. nothing helped. I know it won't help but I started recording some videos again.
My opponents don't even have to do anything to get the puck (Clip 1 and 2), Clip 3 is Input Lag, Clip 4,5,6 are my own AI going offside, Clip 6 is getting stuck in the board, Clip 7 is not picking up the puck, Clip 8 is a weird loss of balance, Clip 9 is Tkachuk not shooting immediately (Input Lag), subsequent pass I move the stick to the left and try to shoot (controller overlay would prove this, why was this feature ever removed...), Jokinen makes an awkward backhand shot instead, Tkachuk reaches the puck first but his stick is stuck somehow and he loses the battle for the puck, Clip 10 is missing the net twice and Clip 11 is not picking up the puck again as in Clip 7.
Of course, I could have saved way more videos, for example what is not seen in the videos and pisses me off the most is when I connect with the poke check and the opposing player never loses the puck, he basically picks up the puck immediately again. It just so frustrating, anyway, I still regret buying this game and I still feel stupid for even playing it anymore.
