Had fun but must leave
After 2 years of absence of playing NHL (skipped 22 and 23), I must leave again due to inconsistent latency. Speaking of difference between this year NHL and previous NHLs, I gotta say this year was...
Forum Discussion
EA_Aljo
Community Manager
Community ManagerI'm not seeing a bunch of negativity on that modem. It looks pretty barebones though. Still, seems like it should work. Since you've had this same issue with other equipment, it points to the ISP or their wiring/equipment in your area.
At this point, I'm out of ideas other than trying a different location to see if the same thing happens. Somewhere outside of your immediate neighborhood so you don't potentially run into the same issue.
It's amazing the hoops that EA will jump through to deflect server related issues onto literally anything and everything else.
For 6s, servers are generally fine, especially because you aren't player switching.
For 1v1, the servers are horrific and almost everyone experiences input delay, yet it can never be the servers... it's everyone's modem, or ISP, or router, or HDMI cord, or ethernet cable, or tv, or monitor. That game mode was significantly better when it was P2P, and with old gen hopefully going away, EA should honestly go back to it since the MTU and pause glitching shouldn't be an issue anymore.
Anyone who plays online vs knows that you can play someone on the other side of the world on 120 ping but if it's flatline, it literally feels less delayed than 30 on their servers, and it's never close.
- EA_Aljo
P2P was not fine for everyone. Especially with it being easier to IP boot.
I'm not trying to deflect anything. When we have issues with our servers, we announce it. They are constantly monitored and when there's a even a slight, sudden change, we're on it very quickly. As it normally is though, the vast majority of people are playing without issue. This is why I try to put so much effort into getting individual connection issues resolved. There's only so much that can be done though. A stable, fast connection is made up of a huge amount of variables that we have no control over.
- @EA_Aljo I played probably 1000 games online between NHL 18 and 19 and can count on one hand the number of times I was IP booted, even including near Christmas in 19 when the pause glitch booting got bad.
If I play 20 champs games in a weekend, I can count on more than one hand the number of games that feel sluggish, heavy and very delayed on the servers. I can use the exact same setup and jump into online vs off those servers and I feel none of the above. It's the servers.
Playing without issue also doesn't mean that people aren't playing suboptimally. I would say that I play "without issue" if you define issue in a the sense of I don't DC from the servers ever and my ping is straightlined nearly always... that said, those are still suboptimal because there is visible input delay.
Your attempts to help people are honestly great as that's all you can do, but they are bad, and a lot of the gameplay and matchmaking issues in 1v1 HUT stem from the game not being p2p. - @EA_Aljo Remote location, no, not at all... far from the closest dedicated server, very much so... which is the issue with dedicated servers for 1v1 play.
Pre-servers, I could play people on the opposite coast of the US p2p and have no issues whatsoever, which obviously was great for matchmaking and variety in matchups. Post, there is one server that I get reasonable ping to and it shrinks that matchmaking pool down quite a bit and you play the same people all of the time. - EA_Aljo
Your distance from the closest server is going to be an issue of course. Also, keep in mind that while the game chooses the best server based on your ping, the routing your connection takes is determined by your ISP and may not be optimal.
Switching to dedicated servers improved connections for the majority of players, but not all. Especially those that are far from a dedicated server.
- @EA_Aljo I appreciate the information but it's not an ISP issue... I have a hard time buying that dedicated servers improved connections though... in the old setup of p2p, connections were always even - my ping was your ping and vice versa, so I'm not sure how a model where one player is at a ping disadvantage in almost 100 percent of the games is now better.
I would say that stability is more improved in a small sense, but gameplay suffers as a result.
@Jbats41 wrote:
@EA_AljoI appreciate the information but it's not an ISP issue... I have a hard time buying that dedicated servers improved connections though... in the old setup of p2p, connections were always even - my ping was your ping and vice versa, so I'm not sure how a model where one player is at a ping disadvantage in almost 100 percent of the games is now better.
I would say that stability is more improved in a small sense, but gameplay suffers as a result.In a p2p environment, connections aren't 'even'. There will always be a host and a client. The host will always have an advantage in latency as they are the reference point for the game state, which then needs to be communicated to the client. This means the host's actions register quicker with the game state than the client, which means the host gets a reaction advantage, which is HUGE in a game like NHL. This is why it's not entirely clear who the 'host' is in an OVP game. I don't know if EA has officially commented on this either as if it were confirmed that the home team was always the host, you'd see people begin quitting games that they're not the home team. I think you see this to an extent now, but I'm of the belief that EA may be randomizing the host in such a way that you can't determine if it's the home team or the visiting team. Of course, running your console through Wireshark would likely give us the answer to that.
The reason why dedicated servers improve connections is because the servers themselves are the reference point for the game state, which is then communicated at the exact same time to each client. The only discrepancy in the time it takes to transfer the data (ms) is the clients' connection to the dedicated server meaning; if your connection to the dedicated server has a higher latency than your opponent's connection to the dedicated server, your opponent will have a reaction advantage.
That said, the impact of the host-bias in a p2p connection can be mitigated by the developer. EA hasn't really ever divulged if they use lag compensation or peer prediction to improve p2p outcomes to be more equal, but I'd be very curious to know.
I believe since the transition to Frostbite, the usage of Rollback Netcode has gone down as, anecdotally, I haven't seen this happen (de-sync back to last faceoff) at all.
EA could also use bandwidth optimization by way of reducing the size of the data transmitted between users.
