Input Lag/Unresponsiveness

Weirdly, my connection felt much better online and offline from Monday-Wednesday this week, and not just limited to late night. Sure enough, Thursday felt awful like usual. Hip hip hooray for false hope! It's absolute torture to get a taste of vaguely normal gameplay. 

The last couple weeks, I've also been getting stop/start speed up lag, with my ping shooting up to 800+ along with minor packet loss. But only on NHL, and I'm hardwired. Even with my year of horrible issues with this game, I've never had this before. Just adds to the flavor. Funnily enough, the few days where my connection felt normal, I still got the occasional stop/speed up lag, so they don't seem related. 

We are the exact same person. Pretty much exactly the same experience including the gameplay earlier this week along with a couple instances of speed up lag that I have never had before. I really don’t understand what is going on with this game but it’s awful. It’s not just bad because the responsiveness is delayed, but it literally fluctuates between varying degrees of bad WHILE I’m playing. I have different elite controller profiles and I’ll literally be switching between them after whistles because every shift my player is turning and skating different. I’m going insane. How does it seem like nobody else is experiencing this yet then there’s you who basically describes my exact problems to a tee. 

I have heard people speculate that it’s potentially a routing issue? Back in NHL 15 there was a “captain lag” bug causing certain players ISPs to connect to EU servers leading to input delay, even though their ping displayed as normal. I ran a Wireshark test and I am connecting to a few different Ireland IPs upon launching NHL every time but I have no idea if this is normal or not. Who tf knows at this point. 

I also feel that somehow it is related to the bug where extra controllers appear 

Connection quality is completely random for me as well. Had days where I won everything and next day I lose 3-4 games in a row with fat-man lag in every game so I have to stop playing online. Recently, i played a game against a guy where I was down 0:5 and I quit, met him next day again and he quit in the second period after me going up 7:2.

Consistently bad is Rivals for me and I am stuck in Div 2 and basically given up going to Div 1. I don't even mind when players go for wraparounds all game long against those "top" players, but I want to be able to defend them and with fat man lag, there is simply no chance. And then you have all those bad connection "glitches", yesterday, I quit a game after going down 0-5 against a guy who was .500 after my TOTY Makar actually lifted his stick just before intercepting a puck and my opponent scored on an basically empty net. I have about 20 videos of "phantom pokes" where players either lose the puck or miss the net / shot but I think everybody knows that the game is broken online. I mean, even guys like Sleeveless Gaming are complaining on Youtube about the game so I guess that's a good sign, maybe their opinion has a higher impact than ours. 

Did some tests as well when I was visiting relatives last Christmas and played my HUT Champs on PS5 on a dedicated 1 Gbit Router / Internet Connection. I had exactly the same record as I had at home and the same problems with certain games.

When I got home, I created a Mesh network with WIFI APs and when I tested my wifi connection quality to my LG C1 TV and PS5, it even said that my connection is not good. I played HUT Champs anyway, gameplay was choppy but I still managed the EXACT same record (13 Wins) as the dedicated 1 Gbit LAN connection...

BTW, EASHL is basically the same, connection is very often unplayable. And I actually bought the Xbox One Series X edition of NHL 23 on a discount because some good friends wanted me to play with them, I still haven't played one game where the Xbox team doesn't have a disadvantage on Crossplay against a PS5 team.

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@9up3dprurovj wrote:

We are the exact same person. Pretty much exactly the same experience including the gameplay earlier this week along with a couple instances of speed up lag that I have never had before. I really don’t understand what is going on with this game but it’s awful. It’s not just bad because the responsiveness is delayed, but it literally fluctuates between varying degrees of bad WHILE I’m playing. I have different elite controller profiles and I’ll literally be switching between them after whistles because every shift my player is turning and skating different. I’m going insane. How does it seem like nobody else is experiencing this yet then there’s you who basically describes my exact problems to a tee. 

I have heard people speculate that it’s potentially a routing issue? Back in NHL 15 there was a “captain lag” bug causing certain players ISPs to connect to EU servers leading to input delay, even though their ping displayed as normal. I ran a Wireshark test and I am connecting to a few different Ireland IPs upon launching NHL every time but I have no idea if this is normal or not. Who tf knows at this point. 

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I'm pretty sure we're not even in the same country, so it's definitely VERY weird how mirrored our issues are. When I have zero issues with any other game, and have tested everything possible on my end, I'm not gullible enough to believe it's not directly related to EA. Something is corrupted with how my game transfers its data, and I won't believe otherwise. How little the EA team cares about resolving or even just explaining this tells me that they know the exact issue, and it's just too much of a bother. 

I tried to play HUT Champs today. Had to quit. Two first games completely rubbish, normally 1-2 first games are playable, but not this time. I'm getting to the point of qivin up here.

@HarlEem1985 

Can you give me some more details? Are you on a wired or wireless connection? Have you done any troubleshooting? Are your players feeling sluggish or is there noticeable lag?

I bought the PS5 just to play FIFA, my favorite game and the prize I get for that is EA not caring about our desperate reports about the same problem. I'm really frustrated and disappointed, because it was great before the last update. I don't know what else to do, I've even changed my internet provider and I'm one step away from deleting forever any possibility of spending money with this company again. It's sad, but I feel frustrated and helpless. I did everything you can imagine, several technicians have already tried to interfere in the network, in the modem and even in the data transmission route. It can only be with EA itself, but it doesn't want to know about solving it.

Still awful. Today I tested a drop in and everyone in the game seems to be experiencing the same delayed clunky gameplay. Yet the D man on my team is absolutely flying. Full sprinting, fast LTs and twitchy movements, tucking everything and picking up pucks near him. It’s literally a completely different game for some   

@Skorpyon13 

Nothing in the patch would have affected the connection for you. What troubleshooting steps have you tried so far?

@9up3dprurovj 

We're not aware of any issues currently that would cause sluggish play. We'll keep monitoring our servers for issues.

1 - DNS, I changed a lot of times, and it does not worked.
2 - Fixed IP, and it does not worked.
3 - I changed all the cables to Cat8 - before it was Cat5
4 - I am using another internet provider, more quickly, but it does not worked too
5 - QoS - I changed putting PS5 with priority
6 - Adjust controller to cable connection, not Bluetooth


My Download: ~600mb
My Upload: ~400mb
Ping: ~8/12ms

@Skorpyon13 

Are you actually playing FIFA 23 and not NHL 23? If so, I'd like you to run the Connection Quality Report and get me a screenshot of the overall score as well as the match history. You can find the button for that on the left side of the screen. Thanks!

Tried playing Fifa and the gameplay was ok but "choppy" in one of the last games I played but to my surprise, the connection test gave me an excellent score, even better than the average. Games were 22ms Ping and Jitter always below 0.50ms.

Would be great to have this for NHL because my last game in HUT Champions this weekend was extreme, terrible connect, somehow managed to get two goals in the first period but the connection got even worse as the game went on, fat man lag was terrible, lost by more than ten, my Husso didn't even move at times as you can see in the video: https://youtu.be/26i8Yz295cQ

Just had a similar game against a Div 1 player in Rivals who managed 20 Minutes TOA against me because I couldn't attack him behind the net.

The game remains unplayable online for a large part...

@prospero99c 

That's a great score. You really shouldn't have any lag issues. So, if your issue is that players just feel heavy, that's really not something we can help with or diagnose. What feels heavy to you, might feel normal to someone else. We need to actually see lag happening. When people say it feels fine in one game, but bad in the next, is that just because they won the first game and lost the next one? Seeing the game lag actually shows there's an issue where a feeling isn't something we can really diagnose.

Can you point out in your video where you're seeing this reflected?

No offence, but do you even play the game online?

This is clearly not a network latency issue, as the topic itself is even labeled input lag / unresponsiveness.

"When people say it feels fine in one game, but bad in the next, is that just because they won the first game and lost the next one?"

Do you even read the comments in the thread?

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@mgbc85 wrote:

No offence, but do you even play the game online?

This is clearly not a network latency issue, as the topic itself is even labeled input lag / unresponsiveness.

"When people say it feels fine in one game, but bad in the next, is that just because they won the first game and lost the next one?"

Do you even read the comments in the thread?

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I play this game almost every day online. I've done that for the better part of the last 14 years.

Yes, I read the comments. They are the same comments we get for FIFA. It's something people have been complaining about for years and they will probably never stop. I really can't tell you why so many don't feel players being sluggish while so many others do. It's not something we're currently able to test for. When I had connection issues, replacing my equipment took care of them for me. I did a lot of research and found a good, gaming router along with a good modem. This made a huge difference. There are also those that have fantastic equipment and still feel like their players are heavy. There's only so much we can do since our servers are just one piece of the puzzle that make up a quick, snappy connection and they are always monitored for issues.

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@EA_Aljo wrote:

@prospero99c 

We need to actually see lag happening. 

Can you point out in your video where you're seeing this reflected?

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It's gaslighting at this point, and I won't let you get away with it. I've provided so much video evidence already, and your response was, "Can't replicate it, oh well! Never getting fixed." It's downright insulting to ask someone else to provide video, so they can get the same non-reply, even if they did. 

Want to see lag happening? Here you go! Again.

NORMAL CONNECTION, OFFLINE:

https://i.imgur.com/E488s61.mp4

NORMAL, THEN THE EXACT MOMENT THE INPUT DELAY OCCURS:

https://i.imgur.com/4fTjWY9.mp4

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NORMAL, OFFLINE:

MINUTES LATER WITH THE DELAY/UNRESPONSIVENESS:

I'm forced to play on this disaster of a game -- 13 months now -- with this unending input delay that is even worse online to the point it feels like packet loss. I've given you all the information, all the video, all the ideas, all the inconsistencies. It's one thing to give me the runaround, but I cannot sit silently watching you pretend it never happened while talking to another poster. "We need to actually see lag happening." You already have, so stop feigning ignorance. 

@DeliveryForKiki 

I have said multiple times that your video was submitted. It would help to see more though. So far, we have not been able to find out what is causing this for you.

@DeliveryForKiki @EA_Aljo it’s the same exact free skate issue with me. And online it just becomes beyond awful. How can I have this exact problem at like 4 different locations? 

@9up3dprurovj 

Can you get a video of it? Having more will only help with our investigation.

@DeliveryForKiki @EA_Aljo I still think it has something to do with the extra controller bug that is occurring. Even when I delete the game data and play completely offline, this bug still occurs and the feel of the skating completely fluctuates still, literally as I’m playing in an offline free skate 

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@dlf0c8lj0f5w wrote:

@DeliveryForKiki @EA_Aljo I still think it has something to do with the extra controller bug that is occurring. Even when I delete the game data and play completely offline, this bug still occurs and the feel of the skating completely fluctuates still, literally as I’m playing in an offline free skate 

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I get that bug too, where it defaults to blue (even green sometimes) but I think that's pretty common. I believe it affects vibration (which I don't normally play with), but I can turn my controller off/on and switch it to the red main controller. It doesn't change anything. I wish it were that easy. 

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@EA_Aljo wrote:

@DeliveryForKiki 

I have said multiple times that your video was submitted. It would help to see more though. So far, we have not been able to find out what is causing this for you.

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Now you want to see more, after you told me the other month that you can't magically replicate it and admitted there's nothing that can be done. What would more do? I've given you half a dozen clips/gifs that very clearly show the issue, with hundreds of words explaining, with other posters pointing their fingers and saying, "Just like me!" 

"Submitted" is an empty word. It's not a competition for best poem. Submitting has led to a one-way dead end conversation, with the real goal in mind of getting me to stop posting here. I'll be an octogenarian before I get an actually helpful reply from a developer. I didn't say a solution -- I said a reply that makes me feel my experience is valued.