Input lag

@EA_Aljo 

@Fredbooger has a really good point here. 

I don't like the idea of attacking the community manager for items out of their control, however it's not like the various complaints and pushback here are unwarranted.

This thread has been live and listed as "solved for visibility" for a month now. 

All you've had to offer are basic troubleshooting ideas, and after those weren't found to be the case, had nothing to say but "we'll provide an update if we find anything" and "not enough players experience this issue."

It's very, very hard to believe that this is actually being taken seriously on the consumer's end when EA is having 0 transparency on this issue. No open conversation or working with customers, just empty responses.

Now I understand that these problems aren't solved overnight and that investigation can take time, but @Fredbooger raises a really good point - how long do we have to wait to get a response with some substance? We've passed 10% of this game's lifetime, so it's hard not to ponder if this will get fixed and if it does how long we will have a working game for before the 22 season is up.

I think if you want level heads on your forum and more patience and supportive contributors on this page, you'll need to provide details on this investigation and have some constructive conversation with consumers. So far all we've seen is an "investigation" that's being hidden from us and several claims that not enough people experience this issue despite countless anecdotes and (now) empirical sample evidence proving the prevalence of this issue.

So I would ask you, what can WE as consumers do to have this issue be solved faster?

Is it to stop commenting on this forum and leave it in your hands and trust that it will be fixed and we will be updated upon a timely solution?

Is that safe to assume? I think the people here are willing to do whatever to fix this issue (as you've witnessed) but it's hard to believe that anything is even being done right now.

I honestly believe even if you just updated on this forum what the team was looking into each day (don't even have to report any premature findings) that would be enough to satisfy people that something is being done and you wouldn't see all these complaints. You may see the odd suggestion by a professional (which may actually be quite beneficial), but I think that transparency would serve both EA's support team and the NHL community well.

If this issue is actually being investigated by the team, please consider updating these passionate members of the NHL fanbase and paying customers with occasional insights to the investigation's status so that we aren't left in the dark wondering if anything is even being done or if we can trust that this issue won't simply die if we don't actively keep the conversation alive.

@Fredbooger 

I have said previously that no issues were found and that we are constantly monitoring for anything on our end affecting connections. However, nobody believes this. Again, we don't have the ability to test every possible connection type from every ISP using every modem/router combination available and from every possible region. There's a ton of different combinations.

We absolutely take reports of lag seriously. We want you all to be able to play without the frustration of a less than ideal connection, but there's also only so much we can do to help make that happen. Again, when the vast majority of people are not complaining about this, and we can't find any issues on our end, it points to an ISP, regional problem or equipment issue. I'm not saying we're never at fault, but when an issue arises, it's handled. When specific people have the same lag year after year, that's a lot more difficult to track down since it's not reflecting the community as a whole.

@EA_Aljo 

Are you saying that EA are not activly looking into this specific problem, but instead monitoring lag reports in general?

There is no point for us to make the same remarks continuously, if you cant solve our problem and refuse to dig deeper. Like most people have said here, we would like to help, but if we cant make any progress, its time for for us to make a change.

Can you also explain my may pairing of opponents is so bad? ( see my previous post )?

@mturesson 

We are continually monitoring our servers for issues. If we suddenly receive a very high amount of reports, those are always investigated. Your issue with matchmaking will need to be discussed in a different thread so we don't get off-topic here.

Matchmaking could be the sole reason why we have this problem.

@99manfrottin66 you live in sweden and have a good connection, same as me. If we play a friendly game online in hut mode, will it be via hut server or p2p? Anyone knows? would be interesting to know how this game would feel.

I am PS5 so will not work, but this would be worthwhile to test… narrow down the problem, as this is not static problem, but a frequent one.

@EA_Aljo @Fredbooger 

Just curious for your input on this suggestion left on a post of mine? 

How/why would audio affect in game delay? Any ideas or has the team looked into this?

Edit: Removed screenshot due to the profanity in it. -CM

@Chaseinator5 

I have no idea why audio would affect lag. That's not something I've heard of happening before, but you're all welcome to test it of course.

@mturesson 

Well i played hut vs match against my friend. We live in Finland and tere's 100 km. between us. He has 50/5 or 100/10 conmection, played over wifi and has different ISP than me. I have 300/300 fibre, played wired and have tried to set best settings for my connection etc. My friend didn't have any kind of lag and i had that typical unplayable lag. I asked about it.

He had not have any kind of problems with hut challenges or squad battles either, smooth gameplay. We both have PS5. He has standard disc ps5 version and i have digital x factor edition.

@EA_Aljo 

It seems suspicious to me and I have no clue why it would affect lag. The lag compensation theory makes more sense to me.

Sorry I didn't realize he swore in that blurb. Here is it re-uploaded with that covered:

@Chaseinator5 

Thanks for editing the image. If you experiment with the audio suggestion, let me know how it goes.

This is definitely interesting. Would love to know what can be done for those that don't have speakers if this does truly fix the issue.

Unfortunately I no longer have a monitor since it broke while moving and haven't had the funds to purchase a new one. So I'm plugged into a TV so there are those speakers but most of the time I am using my headset since I mostly play 6v6. The only time I use my TV speakers is if I'm in drop ins or HUT since there is no need to communicate. I know for myself I have most of the audio turned off. Music, goal horns, commentary etc. The only audio that runs is the crowd, sound effects, and I believe coach calls or something like that and I was experiencing the issue. So I am assuming it doesn't directly relate to the actual audio the game produces but the audio output they were mentioning. I haven't been on as of yet to see if the issue is still gone like it was last night. I know some people were experiencing lag input due to plugging headphones into the controller for audio and I have as well at one point but even through TV speakers and my USB headset I was still experiencing the issue. Hopefully someone figures out the work around so everyone can have a pleasant experience playing.

They will never fix it, it would take much more work than they're willing to do. The only hope is if they ever decide to actually build the game from scratch without any legacy code. Regarding lag comp, I would try throttling your own connection or have something downloading while playing online.

Well I was finally able to get on a few games tonight and I noticed input lag though when I used my headset it seemed slightly worse. Who knows I could be trippin but it seemed like it was. So I just turned my headset off and used my TV speakers to hear the guys on my team but unfortunately when doing that I cannot talk to my team so it is kinda counter productive. I played games without being in a party as well still experiencing the same issue. Not as bad without the headset but still a present issue. Game chat is just atrocious in this game much like any year so no point in using that as a work around hear players and from what I can tell being in a party has no effect on the lag. Just thinking of things I have experienced that may or may not be related to the issue but every game I experience and actual connection lag though my ping stays solid and there are no spikes or packet loss so why my game and other players games randomly decide to almost freeze then play catch up at a million miles an hour beats me. Maybe that's a syncing thing due to cross gen and has been addressed elsewhere I don't know.

It's 1:45 am here on the east coast and still an absolute dumpster fire of a connection with input delay and slow gameplay

The game is all-time low now. I can´t play a single game online, it is so delayed it´s scary.