Customized Ping Ranges for Matchmaking

nerf to hitting?

Hitting with truculence used to give some aim assist/speed boost which resulted in your player locking onto the person they were trying to hit. Since this week's update hitting is not effective. Maybe it was a little overpowered before but now it is too far the other way. These problems are more noticeable with a ping disadvantage. That is what this post is meant to be about. Allowing players to match with others of similar ping. Even if that means a longer search time.

@EA_Aljo 

There are lot of people complaining about the lack of a proper ping based search feature in HUT. Is this not the proper venue for me to ask this question?

On reddit there are dozens of posts on this. Can the team at EA comment on why we can't match with people closer to our ping for the sake of fair play and competition?

Thank you,

@Thunderclap83 

It's fine to ask that here. No worries. The best location option was removed while we investigate the long wait times for drop-ins people have been experiencing. So, that's contributing to the ping issues currently. As far as setting a custom ping goes, I don't have any details on that. I know it would be great for getting matches with a better ping, but at the same, it's going to mean a far smaller pool for matchmaking which will introduce longer wait times. We'll just have to wait and see what happens in the future.

Ive settled on using a geolocking router for these exact issues. 

Most nighthawk routers allow you geofence the area you search for servers, which you allow and the ping you accept from your competition. 

I lock onto 900 KM radius from my home (GTA). No quebec servers here, no games over 20 ping. 

The routing functionality via the game is horrible. As someone who plays at night, getting sent to servers in Saskatchewan instead of Eastern USA because of search time is not a great experience. 

Thanks for the response. I think for EASHL and World of Chel it could stay as is. 12 people around the same ping is impossible. 

My question and everyone's irritation is in HUT. For HUT it would be an incredibly easy implementation to allow the option to wait longer in your 1 v 1 search for say +/- 5 or 10 ms.

Impatient people could just open it up to any ping and play almost immediately as is the case now. With any ping and 250 skill point difference the average search is only seconds.

With thousands of HUT users I think the option of +/- 5 or 10 pingwould work well, even if it meant waiting an extra 2 or 3 minutes for a search. Or even divide the player base between 0 to 20ms and 21+ ms. 

It would be great if the developers could take a look at this topic on Reddit to understand the level of frustration people experience playing 30 to 40 ms ping versus 2 to 10ms ping. It is the biggest issue the game has right now.

Thanks a bunch,

I’ve been saying this since I returned to HUT this year after not playing it since NHL18. I’ve always played in LG (EASHL 6’s) and the ping disparity sucks sometimes but it’s manageable. In HUT it is impossible. In EASHL it obviously wouldn’t work but for single player online modes I feel like it would be pretty easy to implement. I’m in Calgary and hover around 18-25 ms depending on if I pull the Sask or Portland server. It sucks being literally half a second behind. If I play against other Calgary/Edmonton teams it feels like I get rewarded for proper play, if I play sask or bc teams I legit can’t do anything if buddy doesn’t have cement thumbs, especially with the nerf to hitting. Offensively the game feels great but defensively I am at the mercy of what server I pull, and it shouldn’t be that way.