lATENCY in europe/australia - 343 please read

Games Other Halo
1

If you are not aware, since even the beginning of halo 2 people outside of America/Canada are receiving connection latency issues. Since the majority of players are in America/Canada this means a lot of latency for people out side of these countries. Particularly bad for people in Europe, Australia and surrounding areas. This is due to high ping latency.

Before I go into detail about a idea for a fix for latency, let me explain in detail what latency actually is for those who do not know. Latency is the time it takes for information to go from your x box to the host x box. A host x box is selected by the server and host is given to one of the players in your matches.
when you shoot someone, that piece of information travels to the host x box and the host x box registers the shot,beat down,granade etc . IT IS NOT LAG. With Lag it is the missing information packet and you will see the player glitch on screen. This is because data has not been received at the right time by your x box.

With latency it is more difficult to resolve. Think of it like this. Imagine a truck, this is your internet connection and it carries your information from point A to B. (A) Meaning your country x box and (B) the host country x box. Having a 1MB connection or 100 MB connection speed doesn’t change the SPEED your information sends to the host x box, it only changes the AMOUNT of information the lorry can carry at one particular time. The speed of the lorry is STILL THE SAME. This is why you may receive ‘Warning’ on upstream bandwidth even though you have a good connection. Why does it do it? In my theory, (if you’re outside of US and Canada) Your information is taking longer to reach the host US and Canadian x box. So it thinks your internet connection is slow, even though it is fine and does not effect play or frame rates.

One way to tell if you’re having latency issues is to throw a granade. Does it come out your hand slower? The slower it is, the more latency you’re getting. Latency will effect you in many ways in Halo. If you go for a beat down and even though you swear you should of killed the guy, the other player kills you with a beat down right afterwards. This is a practical example. Your information is taking slower to reach the host x box, his beat down registers before yours and he takes the victory. In some cases, it also effects headshot registering and lunges with the sword.

If you’re new to Halo or inexperienced, Latency isn’t really a issue since the skill gap between each player is larger. However, when you’re in intense MLG games, latency will play a bigger part since the skill gap between each player is smaller and the little things will count towards a victory. Latency effects you more and more with the better players you play against.

Bungie has tried to rectify this issue in Halo 3. They did it so if both of you went for a beat down, the computer registers you both dead so there is no victor. This was a interesting idea however, IT IS ONLY PUTTING A CRUMPLED BAND AID ON THE ISSUE.

Currently Bungie gave us the option to select by ‘Good connection’ and ‘Language’ however it hasn’t rectified the issue. Europe is still being pooled in with Americans/Canadians which means high ping gaming. This means reactions are slower and quality of fair gaming is severely affected.

What needs to be done is continent separation in matchmaking. So European players play with Europeans, Canadians/US players play with only US/CANADIAN players. This can easily be done by having each player select their continent They are in then grouped seperatey into different pools of matchmaking (just like when you select find players by skill level and the result would be = No more latency issues!

Problems: This would mean smaller matchmaking however, The majority of players are in Canada and America so they would not be affected. the games would be latency free for europeans and Australians and surrounding host countries and a complete fix.

Another idea is dedicated servers however this would cost 343 money to maintain so the NO COST FIX of separating people by countries would be the best option. This would leave your European customers more satisfied as they get to play the game fairly. So many of my friends have quit Halo because of this issue. There has been COUNTLESS petitions by gamers for this simple fix! Bungie were focused on other things and they completely forgot their european/australian customer base. This issue is large and the fix is simple!

Let me take you back in time for a moment, When the plan to develop the next halo was announced (thought to be H4, before the name reach was introduced) the H3 forums were FULL of posts from gamers begging for continent seperation to be included. The threads rose agin during the beta, and hopes grew when bungie stated they were doing special ‘netcode’ tests. However, we were ignored by Bungie.

343 could you PLEASE introduce continent selection in matchmaking so games can be latency free for your European customers and anyone outside of America/Canada. This is a BIG ISSUE in Europe and people are leaving the game because its simply unfair. Battlefield 2 for example have implemented this in server selection. Halo Reach wouldn’t need extra servers but a simple option of CONTINENT SELECTION in matchmaking.

I would like to hear the thoughts on this by other people and fellow europeans and also for 343 to take into serious consideration.

ShogunRonin.

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+1 to this. Ive always felt really sorry for my Aus and NZ bros.

XBL is way way too america centric.

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If, in the worst case scenario, dedicated servers are not implemented then a continent search filter would help.

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I only need to select good connection. That’s it. I’m always matched against other Australians. That’s good considering the majority of developers don’t even consider putting it in. I have only played a few games of Space Marine, out of luck of getting an Australian host.

The only way this can be exploited is when some tryhard US player goes to the trouble of creating a new account listed under Australia and have him act as the party leader with the Good Connection setting on. His party is matched against Aussies and they’re made host.

5

As a West Australian I can’t get matches in a timely manner or get them at all in most playlists with prefer good connection on.

Team Slayer and Big Team Battle are the only playlists I can really search with prefer good connection on and only during peak Australian hours.

Prefer good connection pairs me up with terrible Japanese hosts often and California players often, if the latency net is that huge I’d imagine it’s possible for Americans to be matched with Europeans even when searching with prefer good connection.

Reach seems to classify anything under 300ms with little packet loss as greenbar, I prefer Hlo 3’s latency system because it was a more accurate representation of lag and I can tell when I’m playing on a dodgy Eurotrash host and should just quit out to save myself the time and frustration.

There are far less Aussies currently playing Reach than at the same point in Halo 3’s lifecycle because the game is bad.

6

Man, I’ve been asking for this for months;)
A geographic zone filter could save the game for many of us, hope it’s taken into account.
And for the players pop, there’s no problem since it’s an option to pick.
By the way, a DLC filter could be good too.
A lot of Halo problems could be solved with research filters.
Thanks for pointing this.

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This is something I made to try to improve the situation:
European players
But this is still recent, few people on it (hopefully more people are joining), and it still does nothing for AUS/NZ players.

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> its just not the same as when their was lots of players running around on both halo 3 and reach from all over the world, now a majority of them players have gone and we need more assistance to get paired with are local halo mates :smiley:

Those days are gone, Halo is a dying franchise thanks to Reach.

Even when there were heaps of Aussies (myself included) searching with prefer good connection I’d get Japanese and California hosts often.

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what do you expect when the information has to travel through old wires under the seabed …

anyway, even though i’m from the UK and suffer from this is dis-agree with it, i don’t like the idea of being restricted to a certain area of people i can play with and most my XBL friends are either canadian, mexican or american so this poses issues for me.

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You have CHOICE in these options for continent selection. If you wish to stay on American host, up to you.

IMPORTANT NOTICE

I set my XBOX language to FRENCH and LOCAL France. You can do this via system in xbox dashboard. I set the matchmaking to language selection and good connection only. I appear to be matched with French hosts and players meaning no more latency. However, sometimes i get connected with french people in america but so far latency has been reduced, try it.

Its no cure by no means but it does mean a increase in no latency games. Aussies try setting your language to the nearest foreign speaking country.

12

Halo 4 better have regional servers.

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> Halo 4 better have regional servers.

It won’t, adds too much cost and complexity.

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I too am experiencing this problem but in reverse. Im here in the states and during the a.m. hours eastern standard time its heavily unbalanced,and I’m seeing warrant officers with .4 bprs that have won a whopping 5 of 40 games and never go positive go 25+ kills with 1 or 2 deaths against stacked teams on a 15 game streak like their on god mode. I’ve seen horrible latency issues and few laggy players, mostly laggy ones have rubbish internet connections or old xbox’s and live in the middle of nowhere, but latency is killing this game for everyone it seems. I wholeheartedly agree that there should be a native region selection choice added even if we have to wait till h4, better sooner than later though. This has gotten bad enough that a great deal of my friends jumped ship for greener pastures so I get to spend quality time with more bloody randoms than I would care to. I hope this helps as it seems more global than regional at this point, and if 343 and microsoft hope to keep their flagship title afloat, damage control is most certainly in order.

15

I’m not sure there is a problem Reach’s networking because I haven’t played it much in many months.

From the few games I have played of Reach’s TU Beta playlist in the past 2 months latency has been abysmal and despite its lousy netcode I’ve found Halo 3’s Social Slayer playlist much better for host selection and latency.