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
I'm just going to re-post this from 2 weeks ago to see if it ever gets acknowledged........
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I decided to test things out before bed. It worked normally at first in loadout free skate. You can see me doing a lot of zig zag moves, just to feel the snappiness of the inputs. And it looks snappy; I have gold elite edges. I'm mixing in some right stick movements, LTs, etc.
https://i.imgur.com/E488s61.mp4
https://i.imgur.com/mnQ21jT.mp4
Now, minutes later within the same session, I recorded the exact moment things begin to get screwy. You can see I do the tight zig zag. But halfway through, as I'm skating back up out of the d-zone, I suddenly have my stops whenever trying to turn. I'm doing the same zig zags, but now I look like an idiot. My player gets stiff, locked up, no fluidity in animations like you just saw previously, despite the same inputs on my end. Without any stoppages, I get my delay in a non-server mode, and this is how the game generally plays online. Something happens within the game, and it's inarguable.
https://i.imgur.com/4fTjWY9.mp4
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Developer doesn't have any interest in explaining this?
All I know is my issue manifests offline and online, and they're always connected. If offline feels perfect, so will online. And vice versa. While every other game has zero issue in any mode.
Testing a few times very late at night over the last few weeks, it has resolved around the same time, online and offline. Like the fog is lifted. Now, that they're connected likely means that the issue is present right upon loading -- programming, cloud, storage, I don't know. And I don't know what's special about 3:30-4am affecting only this game offline and online (or possibly EA titles). I remain convinced as ever we're not getting the real story.
@DeliveryForKiki The worst part about it for me is that it always seems to get worse between games too. The first game is always good although a few minutes into it it starts to feel sluggish and i
can pinpoint the exact moment it starts. But then each game after this the delay gets worse and worse until after 2-3 it’s barely playable
@9up3dprurovjThat's why I tried to include a clip of the same game mode showing the delay after 5 minutes or whatever. The immediate moment it happens. A non-server game mode yet. It was WoC Free Skate, but it's no different in Offline Free Skate. You'd think the crack team over at EA, after a year, could hazard a guess of an explanation.
It's probably some nightmarish code so deeply entrenched in networking protocol by someone who left the company ages ago, and noone wants to touch it. The support has been instructed to keep insulting the clients' intelligence, by telling them to check their bandwidth and latency until they give up
- EA_Aljo
Community Manager
@Dadaruklija wrote:
It's probably some nightmarish code so deeply entrenched in networking protocol by someone who left the company ages ago, and noone wants to touch it. The support has been instructed to keep insulting the clients' intelligence, by telling them to check their bandwidth and latency until they give up
The reason we suggest troubleshooting is because this is reported by a very small portion of the community. The vast majority are playing without issue. If there were code causing this, chances are good it would be happening with everyone. Due to the very wide range of variables, this issue is not easy to track down.
- @EA_Aljo not reporting the problem doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Given EA’s track record on fixings bugs, why should anyone even bother to report anymore? The vast majority that I play with NHL has this problem, all of them to be exact and I’m the only one that has even bothered to come to these forums. EA should be a bit more proactive on testing the game on different situations, not just waiting that certain threshold is crossed on bug reports and then act. Even that doesn’t seem to guarantee that the bugs and other woes are fixed in reasonable time frame, like broken stick lift this year.
- EA_Aljo
When there is a widespread issue, we definitely hear about it. We would have a far higher number of reports. Just like we did a few years ago with the home captain input lag in EASHL. We had a ton of reports about it and tracked down the issue. Unfortunately, that's not the case this time. It would also be a lot easier if there wasn't basically an infinite amount of possible causes. We don't have the ability to test every piece of equipment, each ISP, bandwidth, etc. I know it's very easy to assume this is on our end. We haven't been without the occasional issue as well so I'm not saying it's impossible that it's on us. However, when there is a network issue stemming from our game/servers, we'd have much higher numbers of reports. We have looked into this and haven't found any issues so far.
- EA_Aljo
@Greyinsi wrote:
@EA_Aljo the home captain lag is kinda bad example here. It took what 3 years until it was even acknowledged that it might be issue on EA’s end. Sure it was easier to reproduce, it took way too much time to handle the issue.No. It was acknowledged shortly after it was discovered, but took a few months to resolve due to the complexity of it.
I'll just post this every day until I get a single reply:
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I decided to test things out before bed. It worked normally at first in loadout free skate. You can see me doing a lot of zig zag moves, just to feel the snappiness of the inputs. And it looks snappy; I have gold elite edges. I'm mixing in some right stick movements, LTs, etc.
https://i.imgur.com/E488s61.mp4
Now, minutes later within the same session, I recorded the exact moment things begin to get screwy. You can see I do the tight zig zag. But halfway through, as I'm skating back up out of the d-zone, I suddenly have my stops whenever trying to turn. I'm doing the same zig zags, but now I look like an idiot. My player gets stiff, locked up, no fluidity in animations like you just saw previously, despite the same inputs on my end. Without any stoppages, I get my delay in a non-server mode, and this is how the game generally plays online. Something happens within the game, and it's inarguable.
https://i.imgur.com/4fTjWY9.mp4
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3rd time's the charm?
EA Community Manager replies directly below my post begging for a response from the EA team for a 3rd time showing clear cut footage of the issue. Yawn.
- EA_Aljo
I haven't responded because there's no update for you. We have these clips and tried to reproduce this in free skate, but never could get the same results.
- @EA_Aljo the fact that it happens only when Xbox connected to the internet and improves at 3am points to it being networking issue.
What can you tell us about the game smoothing mechanics?
I have seen people in FIFA discuss this with you, but using capturing network traffic from my XBX while playing HUT games I see 10-22 percent packet loss/resends over the three games I captured.
Playing VS I captured less then 1 percent percent loss even though ping is significantly higher.
It is happening at the last hops in the network and I see that even AWS is getting their packets dropped sending it back to me.
My ISP blames AWS, AWS blames EA, what is the real answer here?
This questions has been asked 100s of times in FIFA and I haven't found a workaround or real answer besides try changing ISP (did that, same delay) or move closer to data center. @niccolo91ea There’s really 1% packet loss in VS compared to EASHL/HUT having 20?? That’s wild because i have always felt that VS mode felt so much more responsive and actually playable compared to EASHL which is trash for me. For a long time I have wondered why Vs mode feels like NHL 19/20 which were the most responsive and competitive eashl games for me
- I bought the disc version for the Series X yesterday. Disconnected the internet connection to the xbox and then put the CD in, downloaded the game completely offline. Registered with a different profile and started the game, unfortunately there was no difference to the hard drive version. Game still broken..but I know one thing, I no longer need to experiment with settings on the router, on the TV and other tricks and tips. What did I learn from this test? that I can't blame EA anymore, I'm the last one who would protect EA but in this case, in my opinion, the next-gen is to blame, which doesn't get along with the game. I don't want to think that the console is too weak for NHL and FIFA, because all other games work fine, NHL also worked fantastic for me for at least 100 hours of play. The console can't be too weak, so it must be an update or some setting that is incompatible with the game, I can't think of anything else..I also apologize to eaaljo if I was too emotional at times. Glad I did this test
- @9up3dprurovj Those numbers are what I saw in 1 game of VS compared to 3 games of HUT connecting to the VA server and the Montreal server.
Those numbers might not be the same for you and it wasn't a constant 22 percent packet resend but for several minutes during that game it got to almost 1/4 packets were resent.
But yes VS mode is peer to peer, no dedicated server so it will feel more responsive, generally. Does anyone know how to get rid of the extra controller that randomly appears other than just hard resetting the Xbox? It always seems to coincide with the game playing like absolute poop
@EA_AljoI can't understand this response, truthfully. I don't care if YOU can't reproduce them because it is MY issue (along with some others). If you don't have this issue, why would you be able to magically reproduce it? That doesn't explain HOW this happens in a free skate mode. Not even a theory. I gave incontrovertible evidence of my issue, along with countless specificities and context, surely that's enough to theorize. I'm tired of this whisper down the non-existent lane stuff.
@Dadaruklija wrote:
I bought the disc version for the Series X yesterday. Disconnected the internet connection to the xbox and then put the CD in, downloaded the game completely offline. Registered with a different profile and started the game, unfortunately there was no difference to the hard drive version. Game still broken..but I know one thing, I no longer need to experiment with settings on the router, on the TV and other tricks and tips. What did I learn from this test? that I can't blame EA anymore, I'm the last one who would protect EA but in this case, in my opinion, the next-gen is to blame, which doesn't get along with the game. I don't want to think that the console is too weak for NHL and FIFA, because all other games work fine, NHL also worked fantastic for me for at least 100 hours of play. The console can't be too weak, so it must be an update or some setting that is incompatible with the game, I can't think of anything else..I also apologize to eaaljo if I was too emotional at times. Glad I did this testI bought the disc version for NHL22 (Series X/S) cheap in the summer. It did nothing. Too many players play the game normally for it to be outright incompatible. These are not exactly technological marvels of games requiring insane graphics and computing power. I had my Series X for NHL21 from May-September '21. Worked perfectly. I've had 3 Xbox X/S, all with the same NHL22/23 issues. Funny part? NHL21 works absolutely fine, and I just tested it as I'm typing this.
There has to be a specific explanation. I refuse to believe the new Frostbite engine is simply a coincidence with my issues manifesting. Did you wipe the other data before re-installing? I'm convinced between the shortcut start-ups to the game loading or the Cloud data that something sticks to the short term memory of these systems. I don't know why it clears up sometimes at 4am for offline and online; it's an inconsistency in a mess of them.
- @DeliveryForKiki I deleted everything that has to do with NHL, then I disconnected the internet connection from the console..registered another account and pushed the cd in, started the game offline without a new patch. Then I tried once without an account, then once with my account online and offline.. the unplayable game everywhere.
- @DeliveryForKiki everyone who has this horrible gameplay i advise to write to MS, i did it via console for feedback. The more reports, the greater the chances of changing something. I've been concentrating on the console or MS since my test.
@DeliveryForKiki this will sound ridiculous but try getting your controller to connect as the green one (player 3). This makes the skating approximately 500000x times more fluid and my player actually picks ups pucks when I do this. This obviously sounds ridiculous but give it a shot lol. I use an elite series 1 controller so maybe it will be different for you but i have had by far the best 2 nights playing with this. Not sure how you can get it connect like this but I have a keyboard that counts as player 1+2 and then I can connect as player 3. im in the conspiracy lunatic phase of things but I am 100% sure this makes a huge difference for me to the point where the game goes from unplayable to me being able to LT and puck protect at a high level. It seems to smooth things out and almost function as a lower sensitivity, as crazy as that sounds. Vibration also randomly was there last time I did this
New ISP in a new flat and still the same issue with input lag
- @DaWebio I wrote to you that it has nothing to do with the connection..and there is another one here who thinks he will have a good game with a different isp..he will be just as disappointed as you.
- EA_Aljo
@DeliveryForKiki wrote:
@EA_AljoI can't understand this response, truthfully. I don't care if YOU can't reproduce them because it is MY issue (along with some others). If you don't have this issue, why would you be able to magically reproduce it? That doesn't explain HOW this happens in a free skate mode. Not even a theory. I gave incontrovertible evidence of my issue, along with countless specificities and context, surely that's enough to theorize. I'm tired of this whisper down the non-existent lane stuff.
This has been investigated by the team here. I'm not involved in that other than relaying feedback on this issue. So far, it hasn't been reproduced. Without that, we can't work on a resolution.
