EADevs: EASHL - Home Team Captain Lag is Back?

dannovision

I'll start off by saying I live in Vancouver, BC, and I've been playing EASHL since it started in 09. I've played through the days of Visitor Team Lag (NHL 11), Home Team Lag (NHL 12 & 13), and the notorious Home Team Captain Lag (NHL 16). I'm pretty sensitive to lag and there's definitely something wrong with this game right now.

In NHL 17 I'm either playing on West Servers (10-16ms) or East Servers (44-50ms). The strange thing is, sometimes I get playable games on East Servers, and sometimes they are AWFUL and they're ALWAYS (44-50ms). The same goes for West Servers. Even though they're always 10-16ms, most of the time I get really smooth games but sometimes I'll get games that lag hard just like the Home Team Captain Lag situation from last year.

The interesting thing is that it's not just the home team captain that's affected this year. It seems to be random (maybe because the Captain in the dressing room remains the Captain in the player build screen this year rather than the captain being selected between screens based on connection).

I'd love for an EADev to chime in on this because this is really ruining the game for me. And please don't say it's my connection because it 100% is not.

Thanks in advance for any response.

cogsx86

interesting, havent had this issue, if anything the connection is much better for me

dannovision

It may be related to playing with people from east and west in the same club. My club has one guy from the east (Toronto) and every time we play it defaults to east servers. Very annoying considering 5 of our 6 players live in the west.

Something is definitely wrong with it and it is way too frustrating for me to play with my team especially now that we're in Div1 where the need for quick decisions and movement is essential.

This is definitely a game breaker for me. I just can't play anymore until it is fixed. I really hope EA can fix this and give us the option to choose to play on East or West servers.

Thanks. Hope you guys are listening.

GiveMeDaPuck

yup same thing happening for our club. Connection is way too inconsistent and we haven't been able to find a cause or cure for it yet.

deadman9999

Be better if you guys also put what console your playing on also what internet company you are with

sgiz1

One thing is for certain, home captain lag or not, EA NHL every single year is plagued by input delay/lag online. Even with their connection quality tracker, you can have a good ping, good connection and the game can still feel delayed/sluggish.

OSupahstarO

Generally you will experience more delay if you are playing with and against players that have bad connections/ping times. It sounds like this might be your problem. From some of the discussions in the past, even though you are connecting to EA servers, data still needs to be relayed to and from other players in the game. If you are playing with players with bad connections, you will experience a bad connection yourself, as the game has to update for all players before actions can occur, unlike other online games such as call of duty.

The games in which you don't have this problem is more likely to indicate that no one in the game has a bad connection and that your connection is also fine. It's been like that for years.

Socair

OSupahstarO wrote: »

Generally you will experience more delay if you are playing with and against players that have bad connections/ping times. It sounds like this might be your problem. From some of the discussions in the past, even though you are connecting to EA servers, data still needs to be relayed to and from other players in the game. If you are playing with players with bad connections, you will experience a bad connection yourself, as the game has to update for all players before actions can occur, unlike other online games such as call of duty.

The games in which you don't have this problem is more likely to indicate that no one in the game has a bad connection and that your connection is also fine. It's been like that for years.

This. I recall one of the devs saying that you're only as good as the weakest connection in EASHL during last years Q and A.

sleepyT

deadman9999 wrote: »

Be better if you guys also put what console your playing on also what internet company you are with

Yes give the devs as many things to blame as possible. If you tell everyone to switch consoles, switch internet providers, change a million settings, etc... by the time they do all of it, it's NHL18 time! No need to fix real problem!

dannovision

Ya, just like last year. EA was silent for months while the whole community complained about the Home Team Captain Lag situation. There were even guys posting fixes to block certain IP's/servers to prevent excessive hops. Then, MONTHS later when everyone had given up EA puts out a fix. Unbelievable how long it took them to figure it out. But alas it did fix it and it was fun to play again.
Now I feel like we're back to square one again. You're right, the games are way too inconsistent. I want them to look into this, but in the meantime at least give us the option of choosing east or west.

hot-rivit

Have not had this issue, nor do I know anyone who has either.

dannovision

Do you play with a mix of east and west players? Cause that's definitely one of the underlying issues. There may be some other weird stuff going on with the servers too similar to NHL 16's first few months.

dannovision

Would love to hear from the devs or anyone else about this.

dannovision

EADevs?

CrushNHL

I had no lag whatsoever in Beta or the first couple of weeks in Drop In/EASHL but now it's every second or third game I play I get the input delay again.

j0rtsu67

sgiz1 wrote: »

One thing is for certain, home captain lag or not, EA NHL every single year is plagued by input delay/lag online. Even with their connection quality tracker, you can have a good ping, good connection and the game can still feel delayed/sluggish.

I agree.

RSall14

sgiz1 wrote: »

One thing is for certain, home captain lag or not, EA NHL every single year is plagued by input delay/lag online. Even with their connection quality tracker, you can have a good ping, good connection and the game can still feel delayed/sluggish.

Yup, showed I had 10-15ms yet my guy was skating in mud.

Last Gen > Current Gen

RSall14

Assisted_6 wrote: »

Same here. 14 ms yet feel like I'm playing on dial up. Was super smooth to start 17 and each passing week it's becoming more and more unplayable.

Feel the exact same way.

megadeth_600

Assisted_6 wrote: »

Same here. 14 ms yet feel like I'm playing on dial up. Was super smooth to start 17 and each passing week it's becoming more and more unplayable.

Funny thing, last night I decided to load up NHL 15 on the PS3 just for old times sake. Holy Moly. I played as goalie and guess what? 0 input delay. Goalie has never felt so crisp in my life. Post to post play was putting 17 to shame hands down. I didn't even have to cheat cross creasers by not hugging my posts. I could hug the post and yet still react to cross creasers which never worked before.

My only logical guess is that there aren't many active player anymore so maybe it alleviates alot of stress on the servers. Was still getting 6 vs 6 relatively easily, but the average of users appears to hover around 650 users.

BoboFloggins

megadeth_600 wrote: »

Assisted_6 wrote: »

Same here. 14 ms yet feel like I'm playing on dial up. Was super smooth to start 17 and each passing week it's becoming more and more unplayable.

Funny thing, last night I decided to load up NHL 15 on the PS3 just for old times sake. Holy Moly. I played as goalie and guess what? 0 input delay. Goalie has never felt so crisp in my life. Post to post play was putting 17 to shame hands down. I didn't even have to cheat cross creasers by not hugging my posts. I could hug the post and yet still react to cross creasers which never worked before.

My only logical guess is that there aren't many active player anymore so maybe it alleviates alot of stress on the servers. Was still getting 6 vs 6 relatively easily, but the average of users appears to hover around 650 users.

solid guess.

so, i think there is something that is missed around here a lot:

when you have 12 people connecting to a game... there has to be a "flow control" mechanism in order for everyone to "sync" and stay that way. you cannot "improve" someone else's round trip delay times to the central location (i.e. a game server). so if you have 11 people hitting the server at 13 ms and one person hitting it at 50, there is good chance that in order to "sync" everyone the "flow control" mechanism could be that the game itself settles on a "game delay" of 50 ms. by slowing the "game" response rate to the lowest speed, everyone has a similar experience.

just throwing this out there as a possibility for the inconsistencies people see.