So the example they used is pretty much USA connections only, maybe including south America/Mexico.
Now, I don’t have 343’s data, but I’m going to take an educated guess that 70%+ of Infinite’s total concurrent population is from America, such that the matchmaking system has a much larger pool of potential players to balance teams with - meaning, you’re more likely to get multiple people from the US in the game then other regions or locally. Which in turn will select one of the many US servers as the “optimal server”.
This is actually what it looks like. I can’t speak for EU as I’m not sure what kind of pings they get to American servers. There examples showed no regions cross-continent.
Region A = USEAST
Region B = USWEST
Region C = AUS
Region D = SEA
Player Location | Expected Ping to Server B | Actual Ping to GEO region C
Region A 60ms 230ms
Region A 62ms 232ms
Region B 30ms 160ms
Region A 57ms 220ms
Region B 24ms 160ms
Region C 160ms 20ms
Region C 190ms 50ms
Region D 220ms 120ms
Now yes, I agree - geofiltering is bad for the broader population - but not if everyone did it. (nudge nudge, region select)
If we look at the cross-continent example above, the players from region C and D are going to be screwed every time, and because its more of a low-population region the chances the matchmaking system is going to queue us with the largest population (USA) is High.
The issue with lower-population regions is it requires us to search longer for games to have the adequate number of players in the queue for the SBMM to do it’s thing, meaning we sometimes have to wait for current on-going matches (especially in higher ranks) to conclude. Waiting for these games can take up to 10 minutes, but before that can happen we’ll be whipped away cross-continent for 10-15 minutes of joyous lagfest against players with <50ms.
The only thing 343i has achieved, is ruining the experience for everyone outside of the largest regions.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’d rather wait 10 minutes for a game on my local servers, then play a frustrating experience on cross-continent pings.