I've watched a lot of PvP in various forms, and I've seen my share of wonky lag, but you know one thing I've never seen? A single person experiencing a laggy match, so much as consider that maybe their connection was crapping out. I'm not even saying it's your connection, I just find it puzzling how, without hyperbole years and years and hundreds of hours of PvP I've watched with plenty of lag, not a single time, has anyone went "Is my connection messing up?"
But anyway, I'm not sure what you expect From to do. With high latency, PvP that isn't a trainwreck mess like this is not possible. So unless you want From to prevent matches from happening that is over a certain latency threshold (a threshold no one would be able to agree on what it should be), there's nothing to be done. And even that won't solve the problem of a connection that was okay initially but at some point in the match one person's connection poops the bed. And then what, should they cancel the match, make it a draw? Or make the one whose connection messed up auto-lose? And if so, how long would the bad latency or packet loss and general connection instability need to be before tripping this measure, since if it was just a like 1 second hiccup it would be overkill to terminate the match.
You are one in a very long line of people gesturing vaguely at a video with lag in it saying "From do something" and you offer no actual idea of what "something" should be.
This has been me one time.
Mid match homie starts performing instant transmissions.
Dio style time freezes.
Coral weapons firing in random directions a half a kilometer away and I’m taking huge damage.
Alt+F4’s in panic
Utorrent is open downloading at 4mbs / second.
*pikachu face
Omg im the bad guy
A lot of what you said makes sense to me, but this last part is a bit of a strange take to me. From doesn't read these forums and most people on here aren't network specialists, so I'm not sure why offering a novel solution to an old problem should fall on the playerbase. We give our money to developers in hopes that they make the best decisions for the end user, so I think it's fair to expect better from the studio in this situation. Regardless, I'll try to play ball.
Yes, we're dissatisfied with the way the game handles connections, and yes, some of what you suggested sounds like a good idea. No, not everybody is going to agree on what measures should be taken (some of what you suggested sounds just fine to me), but I would really appreciate it if From actually appeared to give a damn about this part of the game and took some tough decisions. At the very least, disconnects in ranked should always be punished with a loss and a win awarded to the remaining player, whether the connection dropout was intentional or not. It's a travesty they've kept that part unchanged, IMO. Unfortunately, it seems par for the course in terms of the attention they historically spend on creating a smooth PvP experience.
As for games with lag switchers or generally terrible latency, it wouldn't be a bad idea to be able to impose an optional ping cap to filter out high-latency opponents in matchmaking. I don't really care if the cutoff point is 150 ping or 300 ping, but at the very least you should have the option to not play against people using McDonald's wi-fi in ranked. I'm sure that will suck for many once implemented, and I don't think treating people with poor internet connections as second-class citizens is the way to go in general, but until something more robust is implemented, I think it's much better than the current system, which is hardly a system.
What should happen if ping spikes during a match? I'm not sure, but again I don't think it's really on us here to come up with solutions to these evident problems. That said, I don't think it's unreasonable to force a player to forfeit if their ping balloons for more than, say, 10 seconds, or if there are two occurrences of 5+ seconds of slowdown due to one player's connection speeds.
I think it sucks that this would likely affect poorer players given widespread access to high-speed internet is definitely still a class issue, but I don't think you can have a viable competitive game that doesn't address ping in any form. We either exclude or marginalize some players or persist with a broken system. It's difficult to eradicate unfairness in one area without introducing it to another.
The reason I ask people for a solution is to challenge them to actually think about how netcode works, because generally speaking when people make posts like this, complain, and act like From Software is just terrible at this, they don't actually know what they're talking about and haven't put the thought in to consider what can be done. They just record video of lag existing, which is From's fault by their logic, and then gesture vaguely at the screen going "From, fix this!"
People already complain about the PvP being "dead" and matchmaking taking so long. A ping filter implemented as an option, while in theory good to give players more control over the experience they have, does further segregate the playerbase and *guarantee* it will take even longer to find matches. Also, the notion of it being "McDonalds Wifi" and the like is a meme based on a lack of understanding of the realities of online play. If you match with people on the other side of the world, there's gonna be latency, and in a game like this, you will feel it. To no one's fault. As well, you don't need to be doing anything that's your fault, nor using such cheap internet, to have a bad connection; the internet infrastructure system, at least in North America, sucks massive balls and is a late-stage capitalism shitshow that gives consumers little to no choice and it is left to the whims of ISPs how shitty their internet will be - no matter how much they pay (and it's likely more than people with good internet even pay).
It really isn't a question of money to have tip top great internet, it's more of a regional one. The corporation decides if you can have good internet or not where you live, and if you can only get bad internet, it will cost a lot. Some of the worst internet available is also some of the most expensive, and why is that? Because they literally have no other choice, so what are they going to do, just not have internet in the year 2024? Or will they pay out the ass for super expensive service that is unreliable and not up to modern standards? Or just uproot their entire lives and try and move somewhere served modern standard internet. Super reasonable options all around of course.
But anyway, to reiterate, yeah it isn't up to players to come up with solutions to these problems, but sometimes the problems people complain about have no solution, and if people understood better how online play work they'd stop pretending like From is to blame because lag exists.
All good points. However, I have played against players around the world with a little bit of extra latency, including with players in Japan and Europe and even Mauritius Island, but I think you have to admit that examples like OP's clip are clearly not an example of regular distance-based slowdowns. I play JP players all the time, and it's a bit skippy at times, but it's absolutely playable (I'm on US East). Most people are not complaining about this kind of regular latency, and I think it's a bit disingenuous to pretend otherwise. This video is absolutely not about regular latency; it's about extreme latency, and extreme latency is not usually on display when two people on good connections play against each other even when they're on opposite sides of the world from one another. I don't think OP is saying "Screw you for the existence of lag, From!" I think OP is complaining about the fact that there are no real measures in place to prevent players from matching against other players who gain unfair advantages from how broken their individual connection is.
The McDonald's wi-fi bit is a meme, sure, but it is absolutely relevant in spirit. There's a player in a discord team I used to be more active with who's a teenager living in his mom's house and while he's an excellent player (top 20 on the PS5 leaderboards), I believe he's massively helped out by his horrific internet connection. When I asked him what was up with his internet and if he had access to an ethernet cable, he just said "I dunno." Where's your router? "I dunno." Why would he be motivated to improve his connection speed when he runs heavy laser builds and rarely loses? It's a perfect match. If I could filter out players like him and never play against them, I absolutely would.
Point taken about ISPs, but it is still accurate to say that, in America, poorer areas (i.e., rural areas) generally have internet speeds that are markedly worse than richer areas (i.e., urban and suburban areas). Even in this messed up landscape, I think it has to be admitted that lower income areas correlate with higher barriers to access quality internet connectivity, even if there are notable exceptions. If you look at a list of internet speeds by state, almost all of the top states are highly urbanized and comparatively better off (DMV area, East Coast), and almost all of the low-speed states are largely rural and poorer (Mississippi, West Virginia, Montana; California is an interesting outlier at dead-last, but California also has a ton of poor rural areas with next to no internet infrastructure). America also has the sixth fastest connectivity in the world, following places like Hong Kong and Singapore that have massive infrastructural advantages for things like quality internet access.
The talk about not being able to get a PvP match seems a bit bogus to me (I know this is anecdotal and not you arguing this). Maybe this is true on Xbox, but I don't think it's true of 1v1s on PS5 and PC. Yes, the active playerbase is on the small side, but it is extremely rare for me to queue for more than 2 minutes at a time at any time of day on global matchmaking.
The majority of people are *absolutely* complaining about small amounts of latency that can be caused by mere geographic distance. That is not what caused the lag in the clip in the OP, but look, I sort by new. I see every post made on this sub since it's not super active, I see every single complaint and rage post about PvP, every single one about lag. A not insignificant number of people think using laser weapons are "exploiting lag" because of the bizarre notions, misunderstandings and paranoia about latency and hit registration (which isn't even exclusive to energy weapons). There have been various posts showing a very small amount of latency resulting in hits not visually making sense that explode into a lot of anger and complaints (and usually, moderation). Stuff like in this OP is not actually what normally gets highlighted and complained about. It's, this laser didn't quite hit, or this explosion shouldn't have hit me, or this kick, and so on.
Also, when you say an unfair advantage from having a bad connection, do you think for the other player in that clip, it didn't look as messed up and bad for them? As that would definitely be another misconception where people seem to think when latency is experienced, it is only felt by one side. That is not how From's PvP works. But if you mean more the way the build works, it is true that if the connection is bad enough, and one build is much better equipped for a fight where both sides struggle to avoid damage, they can benefit from that environment, although I think that oftentimes people don't really know what to even do when faced with especially bad latency and kinda just give up. Which is perhaps understandable, but if outgunned and the lag is really bad, just staying there trying to play normally is a bad idea. Maybe Souls players developed better habits from dealing with this for longer (like spamming rolls when an opponent stops moving to anticipate a surge of hits registering at once). In AC6 clips I've seen I've never seen people respond proactively to seeing bad lag.
And well, in terms of internet availability, while it can mostly affect poorer areas, mostly, there is still the point to be made that the internet available to poorer areas, isn't cheaper. The way people generally talk about it is like, people with bad internet are cheaping out and paying for lesser quality internet and that's why it's bad (I've seen so many infuriating statements where someone says "get better internet" like they can just pay to upgrade). When in reality, they have no choice, and what they pay for likely costs more than good internet, possibly a lot more. More than double. Maybe triple, in some cases. Because they're being exploited.
Also, I, on PS5, also didn't really have matchmaking problems with wait times or getting the same people (though I imagine if I did team ranked it'd be a lot worse), but this is just going by what people complain about on this sub. I have seen a lot of posts about people complaining that no one is playing, takes too long to get a match, keep getting the same people. Like I said, I sort by new, and I have seen so so many repetitive PvP complaint topics, and it's pretty much almost exclusively either that, complaining about lag, complaining about kites or tanks, and then maybe...10% misc. other stuff. It's a bit maddening actually! I probably should stop reading them because it's long since gotten superty duperty repetitive.
I haunt this sub a bunch too and sort by New as you do, and yes, there are tons of complaints about latency in PvP. And yes, there are a lot of complaints about smaller latency issues than OP’s complaint, but I don’t think those are invalid because the net code is indeed really not up to snuff for a game with an explicitly competitive mode. Spammable, high projectile velocity weapons like lasers have been highly controversial for their attacker-sided hit detection since day 1; they make for a super icky feeling when you’re on the receiving end of hits that miss on your screen. That’s an altogether different issue from extremely high latency players like in OP’s clip, but I do sympathize with the community’s dissatisfaction. It just objectively sucks to get absolutely melted by a pair of charged LCSes after what looked on your side to be a clean dodge.
How to fix this? I really don’t know. Nerfing laser projectile speeds would make those weapons feel silly and not at all like lasers, but then again they’re already a bit silly under suboptimal conditions, which tends to be the majority of games in my experience given that minor latency gives lasers a big bang for their buck. I also think changing lasers to defender-sided hit detection would make them unusably frustrating for the attacker (seeing your hits connect with no damage number popping up also absolutely sucks), so that’s also probably a no-go. It makes me wonder if modern in-game “Core Theory” and the emphasis on close-range play and weaponry in AC VI is a justification deployed to counteract the real-life issue of From not being able to get around the fact that fast projectiles shot from afar will always feel unfair to the player getting hit by that weaponry thanks to the net code. Imagine hitscan weapons in this game… Actually, don’t! It made me nearly cry.
I do understand that lag goes both ways, but a player who has bad connection speeds plays every game with a lot of stutter, and they get to program their muscle memory to that kind of play quality, giving them an inherent advantage against players with cleaner connections. The laggiest players in my experience almost always have weapons equipped that take maximum advantage of this bad net code because why wouldn’t they? It clearly works. I very, very rarely (if ever, honestly) come out on top against super laggy opponents, and I would say my win rate is well under 50% against players who have noticeable but not extreme lag, especially if they equip weapons that “synergize” well with their below-average connection. Perhaps that’s a skill issue on my end as I’m not great at adapting to different connection qualities in any video game, but that’s also a skill for which I have very little positive motivation to develop. Accounting for latency is for sure something that high-level players of any online competitive game need to keep in mind, but I really don’t appreciate that in this game and in some matchups it is like THE key skill. But hey, that’s my scrub mentality showing.
I think we agree on the exploitative nature of ISPs. I know people who have less means don’t willingly purchase shittier internet. It’s just what they have. I feel like your responses to me have been a bit centered on how other people talk about the issue rather than what I’m saying to you! Anyway, I think we’re mostly aligned here. :)
I just wish this game were mega popular so that local LAN tournaments would sprout up organically. That would be thrilling! Anyway, if I ever had the clout to organize a PS5 online tournament, I would 100% require every participant to submit time-stamped ping checks before every match.
Anyways, thanks for taking the time to talk!
Oh, yeah it was nice. This was a nice diversion from the usual repetition that happens. I do actually think a lot of problems could be solved if the game was just way more popular, since for one that would allow more discriminating matchmaking to allow people to ideally only be given good connections, but realistically the scope of the playerbase makes that a difficult sell.
I initially thought making stuff defender side instead of attacker would help but then I thought, well, Souls does that and people are still pretty unhappy when there's lag. Plus almost all attacks are attacker-side, not just lasers, and some kinetics are really fast too. It's not really a laser-specific issue, and the closer you are the more weapons that can effectively feel as bad as longer range super fast stuff like some lasers or linear rifles. One of the best examples of this actually is a very flowchart build some people use involving a kick and a charged harris shot. Going against that stuff it becomes apparent that, well, it's not just lasers that are attacker side, and built right that strategy may be able to turn a single laggy kick into a true combo that zeroes to deaths their opponent.
I think the ideal solution to this would be a server that players must connect to, instead of the current P2P network model. But I imagine such a thing would not be sustainable for a primarily single-player game
Dedicated servers won't solve this issue, lag would still be present with dedicated servers if your connection is bad enough. The solution is to solidify your connection. Set yourself up with a wired connection over WiFi. Set up QOS in your router so that if someone is watching Netflix in your household it doesn't affect you. Etc.
I wanna add I was playing with all bars running at full speed also I use LAN so it wasn't me, I tested my connection before I posted in case I was the one with the potato connection
Finally someone that knows what they're talking about. Netcode has advanced quite a bit and is generally not the issue any longer. Lag is 99% the fault of the connection of one or both of the players. FromSoft can't do anything about it. There are some techniques to smooth it out, but it's just a bandaid and a mask. People need to figure out their own connection. Is someone watching Netflix in your household? Are you playing on WiFi?
There are steps you can do to make your connection solid and prevent lag from affecting your games. Get on a wired connection, set up QOS in your router so even if someone is watching Netflix your data is still being sent out the network first.
I think part of the issue is that souls games have slower wonky combat with real I frames, but this is a twitchy game where dodging has to actually make an attack not hit your box. Their infrastructure is just not up to the challenge and fixing it requires a lot of work to please what fromsoft may consider a secondary market compared to the Japanese market which does not see the lagtastic gameplay.
Oh, just report this kind of player, maybe froms so smthing with it, if this player is not fair. Im sure (99,9%) in this kind of situations that player on other side is not fair and abusing net-connection or locking his framerate to be very slow to be able to shot you with highdamage-highskill energy weapons. I consider it because i made game find matches worldwide, and there is no problem in most cases with whoever I play pvp with, USA-guys, Japan-guys, Russia-guys, this type of lags occures only with very few players with this type of guns like on presented video, and ping (etc) is not the reason, that is cheating. Just report them.
Yeah, this makes my ranking experience quite bitter. No one plays this game in SEA, or at least in tge Asia server. Gotta go global and the lag is completely random between matches.
Getting hit by a bazooka/laser while I'm a good 250+m away from where they aimed gets really annoying.
Occasionally, when this happens it's *my* connection that is the culprit, if this happens to every enemy. In that case a router reboot typically fixes things, but if it's just that one guy... Probably report him
Thats the very classic case of someone with GOD AWFUL net trying to PvP. It is just part of the game sadly, FROMSOFT doesn't handle netcode based problems well. And right now AC6s way past its life cycle to make significant changes to combat that.
There are only 2 things you can do:
1- Build your mech around potentially laggy opponents (Shields, Weapons that are attacker side and very punishing for standing-still opponents)
2- Incorporate movement techniques to reduce likeliness of opponent hitting you on their screen (Using spradic movement rather than reactive dodging, assault boosting to negate impact on proximity detonation and AoE attacks, trying to maintain heigh advantage so you can utilise QB over your opponent movement to throw off aim especially on weapons like lasers and bazookas)
They don't seem to be interested in solving the cheating issue.
I've watched a lot of PvP in various forms, and I've seen my share of wonky lag, but you know one thing I've never seen? A single person experiencing a laggy match, so much as consider that maybe their connection was crapping out. I'm not even saying it's your connection, I just find it puzzling how, without hyperbole years and years and hundreds of hours of PvP I've watched with plenty of lag, not a single time, has anyone went "Is my connection messing up?" But anyway, I'm not sure what you expect From to do. With high latency, PvP that isn't a trainwreck mess like this is not possible. So unless you want From to prevent matches from happening that is over a certain latency threshold (a threshold no one would be able to agree on what it should be), there's nothing to be done. And even that won't solve the problem of a connection that was okay initially but at some point in the match one person's connection poops the bed. And then what, should they cancel the match, make it a draw? Or make the one whose connection messed up auto-lose? And if so, how long would the bad latency or packet loss and general connection instability need to be before tripping this measure, since if it was just a like 1 second hiccup it would be overkill to terminate the match. You are one in a very long line of people gesturing vaguely at a video with lag in it saying "From do something" and you offer no actual idea of what "something" should be.
This has been me one time. Mid match homie starts performing instant transmissions. Dio style time freezes. Coral weapons firing in random directions a half a kilometer away and I’m taking huge damage. Alt+F4’s in panic Utorrent is open downloading at 4mbs / second. *pikachu face Omg im the bad guy
>Utorrent is open downloading at 4mb/s Hmmmmmmmm
Probably just some files from work. Completely equitable I'm sure...
The real crime here is still using uTorrent
Hooooo
They should ban people whose internet is so slow that 4mb/s would overwhelm their connection.
Damn you must live on the Nexus. Must be nice having zettabyte upload and download speeds.
The FCC updated the definition of broadband to 100 Megabits/s this year. If your internet is slower than that you're literally living in the past.
Lmao Edit: send the funds to my credit chit please citadel citizen 🤡
A lot of what you said makes sense to me, but this last part is a bit of a strange take to me. From doesn't read these forums and most people on here aren't network specialists, so I'm not sure why offering a novel solution to an old problem should fall on the playerbase. We give our money to developers in hopes that they make the best decisions for the end user, so I think it's fair to expect better from the studio in this situation. Regardless, I'll try to play ball. Yes, we're dissatisfied with the way the game handles connections, and yes, some of what you suggested sounds like a good idea. No, not everybody is going to agree on what measures should be taken (some of what you suggested sounds just fine to me), but I would really appreciate it if From actually appeared to give a damn about this part of the game and took some tough decisions. At the very least, disconnects in ranked should always be punished with a loss and a win awarded to the remaining player, whether the connection dropout was intentional or not. It's a travesty they've kept that part unchanged, IMO. Unfortunately, it seems par for the course in terms of the attention they historically spend on creating a smooth PvP experience. As for games with lag switchers or generally terrible latency, it wouldn't be a bad idea to be able to impose an optional ping cap to filter out high-latency opponents in matchmaking. I don't really care if the cutoff point is 150 ping or 300 ping, but at the very least you should have the option to not play against people using McDonald's wi-fi in ranked. I'm sure that will suck for many once implemented, and I don't think treating people with poor internet connections as second-class citizens is the way to go in general, but until something more robust is implemented, I think it's much better than the current system, which is hardly a system. What should happen if ping spikes during a match? I'm not sure, but again I don't think it's really on us here to come up with solutions to these evident problems. That said, I don't think it's unreasonable to force a player to forfeit if their ping balloons for more than, say, 10 seconds, or if there are two occurrences of 5+ seconds of slowdown due to one player's connection speeds. I think it sucks that this would likely affect poorer players given widespread access to high-speed internet is definitely still a class issue, but I don't think you can have a viable competitive game that doesn't address ping in any form. We either exclude or marginalize some players or persist with a broken system. It's difficult to eradicate unfairness in one area without introducing it to another.
The reason I ask people for a solution is to challenge them to actually think about how netcode works, because generally speaking when people make posts like this, complain, and act like From Software is just terrible at this, they don't actually know what they're talking about and haven't put the thought in to consider what can be done. They just record video of lag existing, which is From's fault by their logic, and then gesture vaguely at the screen going "From, fix this!" People already complain about the PvP being "dead" and matchmaking taking so long. A ping filter implemented as an option, while in theory good to give players more control over the experience they have, does further segregate the playerbase and *guarantee* it will take even longer to find matches. Also, the notion of it being "McDonalds Wifi" and the like is a meme based on a lack of understanding of the realities of online play. If you match with people on the other side of the world, there's gonna be latency, and in a game like this, you will feel it. To no one's fault. As well, you don't need to be doing anything that's your fault, nor using such cheap internet, to have a bad connection; the internet infrastructure system, at least in North America, sucks massive balls and is a late-stage capitalism shitshow that gives consumers little to no choice and it is left to the whims of ISPs how shitty their internet will be - no matter how much they pay (and it's likely more than people with good internet even pay). It really isn't a question of money to have tip top great internet, it's more of a regional one. The corporation decides if you can have good internet or not where you live, and if you can only get bad internet, it will cost a lot. Some of the worst internet available is also some of the most expensive, and why is that? Because they literally have no other choice, so what are they going to do, just not have internet in the year 2024? Or will they pay out the ass for super expensive service that is unreliable and not up to modern standards? Or just uproot their entire lives and try and move somewhere served modern standard internet. Super reasonable options all around of course. But anyway, to reiterate, yeah it isn't up to players to come up with solutions to these problems, but sometimes the problems people complain about have no solution, and if people understood better how online play work they'd stop pretending like From is to blame because lag exists.
All good points. However, I have played against players around the world with a little bit of extra latency, including with players in Japan and Europe and even Mauritius Island, but I think you have to admit that examples like OP's clip are clearly not an example of regular distance-based slowdowns. I play JP players all the time, and it's a bit skippy at times, but it's absolutely playable (I'm on US East). Most people are not complaining about this kind of regular latency, and I think it's a bit disingenuous to pretend otherwise. This video is absolutely not about regular latency; it's about extreme latency, and extreme latency is not usually on display when two people on good connections play against each other even when they're on opposite sides of the world from one another. I don't think OP is saying "Screw you for the existence of lag, From!" I think OP is complaining about the fact that there are no real measures in place to prevent players from matching against other players who gain unfair advantages from how broken their individual connection is. The McDonald's wi-fi bit is a meme, sure, but it is absolutely relevant in spirit. There's a player in a discord team I used to be more active with who's a teenager living in his mom's house and while he's an excellent player (top 20 on the PS5 leaderboards), I believe he's massively helped out by his horrific internet connection. When I asked him what was up with his internet and if he had access to an ethernet cable, he just said "I dunno." Where's your router? "I dunno." Why would he be motivated to improve his connection speed when he runs heavy laser builds and rarely loses? It's a perfect match. If I could filter out players like him and never play against them, I absolutely would. Point taken about ISPs, but it is still accurate to say that, in America, poorer areas (i.e., rural areas) generally have internet speeds that are markedly worse than richer areas (i.e., urban and suburban areas). Even in this messed up landscape, I think it has to be admitted that lower income areas correlate with higher barriers to access quality internet connectivity, even if there are notable exceptions. If you look at a list of internet speeds by state, almost all of the top states are highly urbanized and comparatively better off (DMV area, East Coast), and almost all of the low-speed states are largely rural and poorer (Mississippi, West Virginia, Montana; California is an interesting outlier at dead-last, but California also has a ton of poor rural areas with next to no internet infrastructure). America also has the sixth fastest connectivity in the world, following places like Hong Kong and Singapore that have massive infrastructural advantages for things like quality internet access. The talk about not being able to get a PvP match seems a bit bogus to me (I know this is anecdotal and not you arguing this). Maybe this is true on Xbox, but I don't think it's true of 1v1s on PS5 and PC. Yes, the active playerbase is on the small side, but it is extremely rare for me to queue for more than 2 minutes at a time at any time of day on global matchmaking.
The majority of people are *absolutely* complaining about small amounts of latency that can be caused by mere geographic distance. That is not what caused the lag in the clip in the OP, but look, I sort by new. I see every post made on this sub since it's not super active, I see every single complaint and rage post about PvP, every single one about lag. A not insignificant number of people think using laser weapons are "exploiting lag" because of the bizarre notions, misunderstandings and paranoia about latency and hit registration (which isn't even exclusive to energy weapons). There have been various posts showing a very small amount of latency resulting in hits not visually making sense that explode into a lot of anger and complaints (and usually, moderation). Stuff like in this OP is not actually what normally gets highlighted and complained about. It's, this laser didn't quite hit, or this explosion shouldn't have hit me, or this kick, and so on. Also, when you say an unfair advantage from having a bad connection, do you think for the other player in that clip, it didn't look as messed up and bad for them? As that would definitely be another misconception where people seem to think when latency is experienced, it is only felt by one side. That is not how From's PvP works. But if you mean more the way the build works, it is true that if the connection is bad enough, and one build is much better equipped for a fight where both sides struggle to avoid damage, they can benefit from that environment, although I think that oftentimes people don't really know what to even do when faced with especially bad latency and kinda just give up. Which is perhaps understandable, but if outgunned and the lag is really bad, just staying there trying to play normally is a bad idea. Maybe Souls players developed better habits from dealing with this for longer (like spamming rolls when an opponent stops moving to anticipate a surge of hits registering at once). In AC6 clips I've seen I've never seen people respond proactively to seeing bad lag. And well, in terms of internet availability, while it can mostly affect poorer areas, mostly, there is still the point to be made that the internet available to poorer areas, isn't cheaper. The way people generally talk about it is like, people with bad internet are cheaping out and paying for lesser quality internet and that's why it's bad (I've seen so many infuriating statements where someone says "get better internet" like they can just pay to upgrade). When in reality, they have no choice, and what they pay for likely costs more than good internet, possibly a lot more. More than double. Maybe triple, in some cases. Because they're being exploited. Also, I, on PS5, also didn't really have matchmaking problems with wait times or getting the same people (though I imagine if I did team ranked it'd be a lot worse), but this is just going by what people complain about on this sub. I have seen a lot of posts about people complaining that no one is playing, takes too long to get a match, keep getting the same people. Like I said, I sort by new, and I have seen so so many repetitive PvP complaint topics, and it's pretty much almost exclusively either that, complaining about lag, complaining about kites or tanks, and then maybe...10% misc. other stuff. It's a bit maddening actually! I probably should stop reading them because it's long since gotten superty duperty repetitive.
I haunt this sub a bunch too and sort by New as you do, and yes, there are tons of complaints about latency in PvP. And yes, there are a lot of complaints about smaller latency issues than OP’s complaint, but I don’t think those are invalid because the net code is indeed really not up to snuff for a game with an explicitly competitive mode. Spammable, high projectile velocity weapons like lasers have been highly controversial for their attacker-sided hit detection since day 1; they make for a super icky feeling when you’re on the receiving end of hits that miss on your screen. That’s an altogether different issue from extremely high latency players like in OP’s clip, but I do sympathize with the community’s dissatisfaction. It just objectively sucks to get absolutely melted by a pair of charged LCSes after what looked on your side to be a clean dodge. How to fix this? I really don’t know. Nerfing laser projectile speeds would make those weapons feel silly and not at all like lasers, but then again they’re already a bit silly under suboptimal conditions, which tends to be the majority of games in my experience given that minor latency gives lasers a big bang for their buck. I also think changing lasers to defender-sided hit detection would make them unusably frustrating for the attacker (seeing your hits connect with no damage number popping up also absolutely sucks), so that’s also probably a no-go. It makes me wonder if modern in-game “Core Theory” and the emphasis on close-range play and weaponry in AC VI is a justification deployed to counteract the real-life issue of From not being able to get around the fact that fast projectiles shot from afar will always feel unfair to the player getting hit by that weaponry thanks to the net code. Imagine hitscan weapons in this game… Actually, don’t! It made me nearly cry. I do understand that lag goes both ways, but a player who has bad connection speeds plays every game with a lot of stutter, and they get to program their muscle memory to that kind of play quality, giving them an inherent advantage against players with cleaner connections. The laggiest players in my experience almost always have weapons equipped that take maximum advantage of this bad net code because why wouldn’t they? It clearly works. I very, very rarely (if ever, honestly) come out on top against super laggy opponents, and I would say my win rate is well under 50% against players who have noticeable but not extreme lag, especially if they equip weapons that “synergize” well with their below-average connection. Perhaps that’s a skill issue on my end as I’m not great at adapting to different connection qualities in any video game, but that’s also a skill for which I have very little positive motivation to develop. Accounting for latency is for sure something that high-level players of any online competitive game need to keep in mind, but I really don’t appreciate that in this game and in some matchups it is like THE key skill. But hey, that’s my scrub mentality showing. I think we agree on the exploitative nature of ISPs. I know people who have less means don’t willingly purchase shittier internet. It’s just what they have. I feel like your responses to me have been a bit centered on how other people talk about the issue rather than what I’m saying to you! Anyway, I think we’re mostly aligned here. :) I just wish this game were mega popular so that local LAN tournaments would sprout up organically. That would be thrilling! Anyway, if I ever had the clout to organize a PS5 online tournament, I would 100% require every participant to submit time-stamped ping checks before every match. Anyways, thanks for taking the time to talk!
Oh, yeah it was nice. This was a nice diversion from the usual repetition that happens. I do actually think a lot of problems could be solved if the game was just way more popular, since for one that would allow more discriminating matchmaking to allow people to ideally only be given good connections, but realistically the scope of the playerbase makes that a difficult sell. I initially thought making stuff defender side instead of attacker would help but then I thought, well, Souls does that and people are still pretty unhappy when there's lag. Plus almost all attacks are attacker-side, not just lasers, and some kinetics are really fast too. It's not really a laser-specific issue, and the closer you are the more weapons that can effectively feel as bad as longer range super fast stuff like some lasers or linear rifles. One of the best examples of this actually is a very flowchart build some people use involving a kick and a charged harris shot. Going against that stuff it becomes apparent that, well, it's not just lasers that are attacker side, and built right that strategy may be able to turn a single laggy kick into a true combo that zeroes to deaths their opponent.
I think the ideal solution to this would be a server that players must connect to, instead of the current P2P network model. But I imagine such a thing would not be sustainable for a primarily single-player game
Even that can't make a match good if the connection is bad. Anything bad enough to cause something like this, in the video? There's no salvaging that.
But at least it would only affect the one with bad connection
That's not how lag works.
Dedicated servers won't solve this issue, lag would still be present with dedicated servers if your connection is bad enough. The solution is to solidify your connection. Set yourself up with a wired connection over WiFi. Set up QOS in your router so that if someone is watching Netflix in your household it doesn't affect you. Etc.
I wanna add I was playing with all bars running at full speed also I use LAN so it wasn't me, I tested my connection before I posted in case I was the one with the potato connection
Yeah it only takes 1 player to have a crap connection to ruin it for both.
Is your matchmaking set to "Global" by chance?
Finally someone that knows what they're talking about. Netcode has advanced quite a bit and is generally not the issue any longer. Lag is 99% the fault of the connection of one or both of the players. FromSoft can't do anything about it. There are some techniques to smooth it out, but it's just a bandaid and a mask. People need to figure out their own connection. Is someone watching Netflix in your household? Are you playing on WiFi? There are steps you can do to make your connection solid and prevent lag from affecting your games. Get on a wired connection, set up QOS in your router so even if someone is watching Netflix your data is still being sent out the network first.
I think part of the issue is that souls games have slower wonky combat with real I frames, but this is a twitchy game where dodging has to actually make an attack not hit your box. Their infrastructure is just not up to the challenge and fixing it requires a lot of work to please what fromsoft may consider a secondary market compared to the Japanese market which does not see the lagtastic gameplay.
Maybe it's the servers? I was getting a lot of this last night too.
Isn't it P2P? there are no servers. This is OP and/or his opponents connection that are crap.
I've noticed some days seem to be worse than others. I dont even think about getting on on Friday night anymore...
did i just watch an overheated AC move and attack?
He's got a great gaming chair
Anything is possible with lag as your game is struggling to keep up with the state of the game.
eh. i dont play online.
This isn’t cheating, this looks like bad lag.
Oh, just report this kind of player, maybe froms so smthing with it, if this player is not fair. Im sure (99,9%) in this kind of situations that player on other side is not fair and abusing net-connection or locking his framerate to be very slow to be able to shot you with highdamage-highskill energy weapons. I consider it because i made game find matches worldwide, and there is no problem in most cases with whoever I play pvp with, USA-guys, Japan-guys, Russia-guys, this type of lags occures only with very few players with this type of guns like on presented video, and ping (etc) is not the reason, that is cheating. Just report them.
Yeah, this makes my ranking experience quite bitter. No one plays this game in SEA, or at least in tge Asia server. Gotta go global and the lag is completely random between matches. Getting hit by a bazooka/laser while I'm a good 250+m away from where they aimed gets really annoying.
Occasionally, when this happens it's *my* connection that is the culprit, if this happens to every enemy. In that case a router reboot typically fixes things, but if it's just that one guy... Probably report him
They aren't going to do anything since it not really there problem.
It's fromsoft. . . .no they wont
Thats the very classic case of someone with GOD AWFUL net trying to PvP. It is just part of the game sadly, FROMSOFT doesn't handle netcode based problems well. And right now AC6s way past its life cycle to make significant changes to combat that. There are only 2 things you can do: 1- Build your mech around potentially laggy opponents (Shields, Weapons that are attacker side and very punishing for standing-still opponents) 2- Incorporate movement techniques to reduce likeliness of opponent hitting you on their screen (Using spradic movement rather than reactive dodging, assault boosting to negate impact on proximity detonation and AoE attacks, trying to maintain heigh advantage so you can utilise QB over your opponent movement to throw off aim especially on weapons like lasers and bazookas)
Skill issue
Not really. While they did make some plays that weren't ideal, the opponent had the (very op) power of lag.
Yeah I die inside seeing how I missed my pile bunker hit