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 ManagerYour 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.
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.
