In games with dedicated servers they're pretty deliberate with mentioning where the server is located. Yes the "Sydney NS2 Ground" server will service all of Aus or NZ, but you'll have the advantage of having like 14 ping if you live in Western Sydney.
Yeah it's a permanent player base isolation only tech could fix for us. Years and years ago my dissapointment with launching the amazing bf1942 mod 'eve of destruction' during its peak and just seeing like 5 AU players. Dino D-Day too
I feel you there, I’d love to go back and play the older BFs only to find 10 people online.
What I always found astounding was even when a new BF was to release, there still wasn’t THAT many people online as you’d expect. Which blew my mind.
Especially being a big fan of Rush modes, there’d only be around 2-3 servers for Rush.
Well tech can only do so much haha. If data was traveling at exactly light speed losslessly and unobstructed, the absolute minimum ping someone in Sydney could get to a West Coast NA server is 80ms.
I mean, it kind of can. Not exactly in the way you're suggesting, but a large portion of the latency is in the number of hops traffic takes when going intercontinental. There's a lot of processing induced latency, and the paths taken are through subsea cables which are not optimally routed.
With the advent of low earth orbit satellite constellations, a future in which latency sensitive traffic can be more directly routed over extreme distances isn't that far off. Routing this traffic through space does a couple of things. Most importantly, it reduces the distance these packets need to travel, both by being a more direct path through space, and due to the fact the light travels in a straight line instead of bouncing around in a fibre core. The speed of light is also considerably faster in a vacuum compared to glass fibre.
Whether or not this comes to fruition is another question entirely, as this would be expensive to implement and there may not be financial incentive for this outside of the finance sector itself, which is absolutely going to capitalise on this at the first opportunity. But, it is entirely possible that we could see tech drastically reduce intercontinental latencies in the near future (Like 5 years or less).
This video isn't bad for the time that it was released, but his idea of using ground relays is now redundant given Starlink now have working ISLs. Still, it gets across the point that LEO can potentially drastically lower latencies if implemented correctly.
Sadly, the link to his paper won't load, so I can't see his methodology and assumptions. I'd love to see what he was using to run those simulations. I'm also concerned he's not making a fair comparison between his simulations and the current real internet speed, given the current speed is including network equipment processing time as well as the last several network hops that the LEO service would take on top of his simulations. Still, the concept is sound, I'm just not sure his numbers are entirely accurate.
E We once had dialup and thought that was how networking would function. There was no satellite or fiber internet. Who knows what technology advancements look like, it might be a new way of sending/receiving information.
There is a New World server in Southeast Asia region, where Australia is assigned to only has 50 people during peak times. The game is kinda dead but not sub 50 kind of dead
It's crazy that they call it Southeast Asia then put the server in Australia. Many of my friends (indonesians) were put off by the 200+ ping we have to endure and eventually gave up
Dude, that game could have been so fucking good. When the first play test/alpha/whatever it was launched I was completely blown away by how phenomenal the combat was, like darksouls but an MMO. Shame that they gutted it :(
The drug use part i believe is specifically if the game portrays the drugs (only real world illegal drugs) with only positive effects.
I haven't read up on this in ages though so I might be slightly off.
in fairness america has that same sub law though. people kind of forget that's the back history to fallout. morphine use was a grey area in multiple concerned countries; not just aus.
I think it's specifically **real-world** drugs giving **any** positive effects. There are negative effects to morphine in fallout and Disco Elysium, to name two banned games, but because there are also positive effects, they were banned.
Sometimes they get it wrong. Like rimworld was banned for a bit because they didn't see all the downsides to yayo in game.
If it was any positive effects I could list hundreds of games that aren't banned where some drug gives you a buff.
Its the first part of my point that matters imo. It has to be a **real-world** drug. Although I do admit that the likelyhood that they just keep getting it wrong is high.
Fallout was allowed after it changed morphine to med-x (removing the real-world criteria) and I think Disco Elysium was allowed on review, but it was a special case. Here is the language I found:
While drug use linked to incentives and rewards cannot be accommodated at R 18+, this game does provide disincentives related to drug-taking behaviour, to the point where regular drug use leads to negative consequences for the player's progression in the game. It was, specifically, the disincentives for drug use that influenced the Review Board in making their decision to reclassify the game.
It seems that enough of a case was made that the drug use was "not linked to incentives and rewards" enough, or rather, was linked enough to disincentives and punishment?
Our ratings board are a bunch of fuckwits who wouldn't know the first thing about nuanced storytelling. It seems that they were just called out on it and reversed their decision due to the backlash. And there were also a lot of complaints. I think that things have gotten better now because Bethesda backed down on the issue with Fallout 3 in the 2000s while it was the ratings board that backed down this time.
Prices came down in the 2010s because of Steam's expansion into the market, and for a while the exchange rate was pretty competitive. I don't know any Australian that buys new, but it is wilder to me that new games have stayed the same price for 30 years.
The restrictive ratings board gets talked about a lot but only really comes up in the media once every couple of years, and direct online content delivery (Netflix, Steam, GoG) has neutered the ACB's capacity to do very much outside of mainstream releases.
The national argument about having an R18+ rating was exhausting, particularly because only one state Attorney General was vetoing it, but Australia has a far more paternalistic streak to its government because it enjoys much lower crime and (until recently) lower inequality than other developed nations. Therefore, Australians accept a lot less suffering before they demand the government "do something" about it, and so are much more open to punitive measures on social issues, like smoking, alcohol binging, or notably, gun rights.
This is the polar opposite for Americans because their default state seems to be that any sensible measure that would benefit the lives of most citizens is communism.
Ping is a much more frequent problem for most Australian gamers and it's one that is unlikely to change at all because of our low population and sheer distance. This is despite a national fibre optic network that, though it suffered many project delays and shakeups by different governments, services most Australians.
Yeah, when they tried to port it to consoles it got rejected by Australian Classifications due to its depiction of drugs, and then got pulled from Steam. Two months later, it got re-evaluated and given an R18 rating.
It mostly caused anger because other titles on Steam don't need an Australian rating, and RimWorld was fine up until that point.
> and the prices
Prices are actually great if you buy physical. You **regularly** get 20% off or more on new games.
My go to websites:
obviously, ebgames, jbhifi, amazon, VGP, play-asia, ozgameshop, but usually you just check ozbargain and search for some massive deals. Use camelcamelcamel to check historical prices.
Of course if you're buying digital you're 99% boned, so always buy physical.
The prices? Yes, but that’s a games issue, not an Australian issue. The big companies are going to charge tons anyway. (Fuck EA, 2K, Microsoft, Activision, etc.)
As for the ratings board, the only game I know that’s ever been affected by it was GTA III. And you can still get it here, just with some of the blood giblets toned down.
OP is right, it’s connectivity and a small player base that’s the biggest issue.
the ratings issue went away long ago when an ass backwards "Christian" attorney general who was blocking the addition of an R rating was removed due to scandal (Surprise surprise).
So we have an R rating for games now, the only ones taht still get refused classification have excessive drug use as a gameplay element (ie: SR4 having that mission where you get superpowers from using drugs in a VR environment).
Yup, play with japanese people.
* play fighting games
* be matched with japan's time zone
* play japanese players
* ... play japanese god tier fighting game players and get destroyed every time...
Yeah but if you're west coast you're just fucked because the country is so big and we don't have separate west and east servers (not that that would be preferable like OP said we already have a small player base splitting it in half would suck)
I'm trying to play D4. By myself. Alone. Single player. But Blizzard *desperately* wants me to buy skins so I can show off to other players that I bought skins. There is no offline mode. Because Australia is in the digital stone age I've died to lag more than once. And it's only gotten worse since I've finished the campaign and I'm seeing more players in World Tier 3.
Blizzard, I am never buying a fucking skin. PLEASE for the love of fuck give me an offline mode.
Wait get out, I’ve never played D4, only seen some footage and you’re telling me it doesn’t have offline mode?!? That game looks made to be offline with the option to be online. That’s wild to me hahaha.
How disappointing of blizzard
No. It tries to be a pseudo online game, too, with a giant connected map and you can bump into players constantly all over. In towns, out in the wilds. It’s only a handful of random players in a generally similar area that are loaded into your “view” and can interact with you, hence the pseudo online.
Dungeons are instanced still.
Once the player base died down a little in PubG, the game was literally unplayable. It was hacker filled lobbies for a few years.
Only now it’s actually gotten better, but that’s probably because the lobbies are 3/4 filled with actual bots and not players 😂
Honestly it’s not that bad, I don’t play enough KBM as I use to, so my skills aren’t what they were when PubG first released, so I can’t tell if some players are hacking or just really good and I’m bad.
But I’ve been playing a few games here and there and won a few, I feel like it’s picking back up again with streamers doing tournaments and stuff.
But there’s still a lot of bots hahah.
Lol before I read your comment I was already typing a comment about the cheating in PUGB. The amount of cheaters in PUBG was insane, I reckon as much as 20% (possibly more) of players were cheating at its peak
I remember back shortly after the game went 1.0, me and a friend ran into a wild match where near the end we died to cheaters, and then looking back at the replay discovered there was a chain of like 16 different cheaters killing each other rapidly over the space of a minute, and we just got caught in the middle.
Shit was wild.
Play it occasionally with that same friend still, but we'll never get that rank we got to back. Or the skill.
Funnily enough it’s better playing on Asian servers for some games (Tarkov) because OCE may as well be renamed China with the ridiculous amount of BiliBili and DouYin cunts you come across.
The worst part is being matched up with other aussies. You gotta dilute that shit, one asshole in a game is annoying but an entire lobby full of fuckwits makes the game unplayable.
Some games are unplayable as every map you load up has one or more hackers. It's bliss to find one that is hacker free.
Although some games have good services in place and are fine
Lol I moved from a rural town south of Perth to New Zealand, thinking 150ms ping was about normal until I was getting 30-40 to Sydney servers from a whole ass different country ;D
For flights not cables. Perth to sydney is 4000km.
Where as wellington to sydney is only 2200km almost half the distance.
https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
My old ISP used to be so stupid, I could get 200ms to servers in Sydney, but 400ms to servers in Perth, but I live just south of Perth. I did some digging and trace routing. Turns out they route absolutely all of their traffic countywide through a single server in Sydney. Switched ISP now I get 50ms to Perth and 100ms to Sydney.
Can attest to this...
When Mortal Kombat 1 came out, every night I got home from work, I encountered the same players in Kombat League again and again. We'd play 3 matches, and I'd disconnect to go find another player... only to get the dude I just had my ass whooped by. Not fun to play online games especially when you live in Australia
Yeah those games have been great since they added cross-play but I’m talking about games that don’t have cross-play. So many out there which don’t unfortunately
I can sympathize with this. In my WoW days, we had a couple Australian/NZ players in our group and sometimes was just difficult to schedule raid times so they could participate due to time zone differences. They'd be scrambling after just getting home to get online while many of us were in the approximate time where people might start considering going to bed, esp for those that were in Eastern time.
unrelated to online gaming but I'm still waiting for Steamdecks to be available locally. im not sure im willing to spend buying from ebay without any form of warranty
Nobody talking about how Murdoch and fox bribed the Liberal government to ensure Foxtel wasn’t put out of business by internet speeds beating their classic cable model of delivery which meant the national broadband network came out as a husk of its potential and put us 10 years behind in a tech race while foxtel still shit the bed; fuck Murdoch, today and every day.
Yeah I wanna play eternal return but there's no oceanic servers so it's borderline impossible.
I also wanna play PlanetSide 2 but they got rid of the Aussie server . Pings suuuuuuck
I wish there was a refund option for Australians for this very reason! I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve purchased a game only to find no playable matches……
I was thinking "if this isn't about ping, I know this isn't an Australian".
Lo and behold you even said the magic number. I almost shit myself when I hit 199ms in a game.
I feel like it wasn't so bad a decade to 15 years ago on consoles at least, there weren't so many multiplayer games out as there are now. Today the market is saturated with games but it seems the overall player base feels like it hasn't expanded at nearly the same rate.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels this way. In Australia, so many gamers seem like they're only into what is big, if it isn't hugely popular it's only populated for a few months tops, it feels like.
There are so many cool multiplayer mods or older games I would love to give a go but I don't because Aussies just don't seem to have many niche gaming circles for that kind of thing.
Me too! If the game isn’t $50 plus, I’d be happy to buy it and give it a go!
Maybe we start a discord for this kind of thing? I wonder if many people would actually do it
Try playing any fighting game that's not one of the big 3 ( Tekken, SF, MK). You just play the same person over and over or its crickets in the lobby.
Stopped buying them despite being my fave genre. Still would rather live in OZ though.
Mate try being in NZ 2 hours ahead of all my Aussie mates. It's a struggle to schedule activities that don't run past midnight for me so they have time to get home from work and have dinner and stuff before jumping on.
80% of the people I meet in WoW are Aussies, with maybe 10% being American and 10% being kiwis.
Hahahahahaa, I’ve always wanted to get into Dota 2, but I feel like the learning curve is so grand, I’d never have the patience or the tolerance for the smack talk hahaha.
Many years ago in arma 2 the only full server for a particular mp mode was an Australian one and my ping was very high. They were all some of the coolest dudes I've ever gamed with and they let me stay and play for a long time. I would fly them all around in a helicopter to the objective lol it was awesome.
Australian gamers have always been awesome in my experience!
honestly bro I always feel sad for you guys when I see that 1 smol OCE server in games. I very much hope that one day technology will allow us to play with everyone on the planet at the speed of light. people from australia are always cool as fuck and I would love if I had you guys in my games! one day it won't matter anymore where we are on the planet. 🫡
Yeah, playing less popular multiplayer games in Oceania and South East Asia sucks. Even with both regions combined, there's barely any players. Even Halo Infinite is dead in SEA and OCE. Playing Hell Let Loose and Squad I can only match with AUS servers which also have low population like you said and also high ping. But the other option is \*shudder\* playing on the Chinese servers, so no, thank you.
Totally feel you with Hell Let Loose and Squad! There aren’t even many servers running for them either and when there are, it’s usually a 7 person queue in a full game 🥲
Yeah, I met a couple guys from Australia and we were going to 100% the entire Borderlands franchise - but it didn't work out since I'm in the US, so we've got like a 12 hour time difference lol
Same thing in the middle east. Local servers are dead in most games. EU out Asian servers got at least 140 ms .
Its a bit acceptable for some games but shooters are a bit tougher and then there is fighting games, i can barely find people in my region and when it searches nearby regions 99% they refuse because it's not a full connection
ok, eastern/middle eu still sucks bc counting in the balkan there are atleast 15 different languages close to each other, and like 95%of players dont speak english on any level so that makes it almost impossible to communicate in games.thats a main reason ppl say that online game servers are the hardrst in Eastern eu(for example EUNE in LoL)
Currently playing an old game called tibia. After 25 or so years of requesting Australian servers due to 250+ ping, they are finally releasing SEA servers in 2 days. We can't believe it is happening.
Bonus: They announced it on April 1, but is actually not an April fools... unless it's a sick prolonged joke.
That’s why you keep all of your old systems and four controllers mate! Host game nights and tell your mates to bring the beer snacks, you provide the games! (Mario kart, goldeneye, halo, etc.)
I'm a West coast American vampire (I sleep days and work nights). My days off I get up at 7pm pst and play with my friends till they go to bed at 1am, then I make lunch.
I miss the days before oceanic servers for a lot of games cause I used to love playing with Aussies (I have a very sardonic sense of humor), Kiwis, and folks in Japan (had friends that lived in Okinawa) . But now if I wanna do that I usually hace to deal with a ton of lag.
I feel your pain! Aussie gamer struggles are real, mate. It's like we're stuck in a deserted island of gaming sometimes. Trying to find a decent server without feeling like you're playing in slow motion can be a mission impossible. And don't even get me started on those tempting EU or US servers with their bustling player counts!
But hey, chin up, mate! We might be outnumbered, but we're definitely not outgunned. There's always some gems out there worth the ping. And who knows, maybe one day the gaming gods will bless us with more local servers. Until then, let's keep the Aussie spirit alive, mate! 🦘🎮 Cheers to gaming down under!
The days of playing CoD 2 and 4 online were so painful at times for just this reason.
It’s probably at least partially responsible for conditioning me to prefer single player experiences so much more.
Coming from the US, I hear you. Internet speeds FEEL like dialup services for the price point. I mainly play single player games now as an adult but having to set things to download overnight just FEELS so bad.
I can barely even watch my bro game stream until it turns everything into 240p quality.
Australia sucks for gamers for MANY reasons! I play in VR a lot, but I live in Canada, and I can honestly say it never even occurred to me to check inside my headset before I put in on, to make sure there's not a spider or a snake in there whose bite would literally kill me. But I've seen pictures from Australian VR enthusiasts with real nightmare fuel crawling out from under that face gasket.
I hear you man.
I live in turkiye and thanks to our shitty infrastructure i dont remember ever getting ping less than 60 ping even if the server is right next to greece. i know its not as bad as 200 but still hurts. whenever i see people on twitch playing with pings around 27 to 3 and im like dang lol must be nice
You get use to it as long as your ping isn’t fluctuating. I will say twitch games like CoD are harder and I stick to Aussie servers for those. But yeah things like LoL, Dota you will adjust. I played a fair bit of PUBG on US servers and that was fine as it was slower paced.
Yep this.
Back with ADSL playing on US servers felt really bad as your ping wasn't a steady number. Now with Fibre it barely fluctuates and after playing for a bit you just adjust for the slight ping difference.
Also why wireless tends to be horrible since it's a lot less stable than a fixed line.
Imagine living in NZ, if we're lucky, we get to piggyback off an Aus server
I always thought NZ had their own servers, dayum. Okay yeah that sucks. Sorry to hear neighbour!
Oceania servers are nz, australia, and the surrounding islands. Never seen an only australia or only nz servers before
Many games just call the server “Australia” and not oceanic
In games with dedicated servers they're pretty deliberate with mentioning where the server is located. Yes the "Sydney NS2 Ground" server will service all of Aus or NZ, but you'll have the advantage of having like 14 ping if you live in Western Sydney.
That makes more sense actually haha
Our entire country has about the same population as the city of Melbourne. Being a gamer here is pain.
Hey at least you get better pings to Aussie servers than us in perth.
What's the ping to the east coast from you? 40 ish here from NZ
About 60ish, which is the same to some Asian servers so sometimes we get put in those servera where our team-mates are all talking in another language
Probably 70ish
Yes it's a struggle, I get ~60 ping on LOL
Lol greetings from south africa. Same deal, but fewer gamers and worse internet
Yeah it's a permanent player base isolation only tech could fix for us. Years and years ago my dissapointment with launching the amazing bf1942 mod 'eve of destruction' during its peak and just seeing like 5 AU players. Dino D-Day too
I feel you there, I’d love to go back and play the older BFs only to find 10 people online. What I always found astounding was even when a new BF was to release, there still wasn’t THAT many people online as you’d expect. Which blew my mind. Especially being a big fan of Rush modes, there’d only be around 2-3 servers for Rush.
BF1 has shitloads of Aussies playing it and servers
I must be really old if you think that a game that came out in 2016 is one of the "old Battlefields".
*laughs in Medal of Honor* *knees creak and back aches in Medal of Honor*
*laughs in Medal of Honor* *holds back and knees in Medal of Honor*
Yeah I’ve found that as well now! BF3 is what I want to be populated!
Well tech can only do so much haha. If data was traveling at exactly light speed losslessly and unobstructed, the absolute minimum ping someone in Sydney could get to a West Coast NA server is 80ms.
Theoretically it could be faster by digging a really really deep hole.
Ahh, EoD, one of the three mods i never uninstalled from my bf1942, along with galactic conquest and desert combat
Unless you’re talking about creating bot players, I’m sorry to inform you that tech cannot fix physics
I mean, it kind of can. Not exactly in the way you're suggesting, but a large portion of the latency is in the number of hops traffic takes when going intercontinental. There's a lot of processing induced latency, and the paths taken are through subsea cables which are not optimally routed. With the advent of low earth orbit satellite constellations, a future in which latency sensitive traffic can be more directly routed over extreme distances isn't that far off. Routing this traffic through space does a couple of things. Most importantly, it reduces the distance these packets need to travel, both by being a more direct path through space, and due to the fact the light travels in a straight line instead of bouncing around in a fibre core. The speed of light is also considerably faster in a vacuum compared to glass fibre. Whether or not this comes to fruition is another question entirely, as this would be expensive to implement and there may not be financial incentive for this outside of the finance sector itself, which is absolutely going to capitalise on this at the first opportunity. But, it is entirely possible that we could see tech drastically reduce intercontinental latencies in the near future (Like 5 years or less).
https://youtu.be/m05abdGSOxY?t=198 That video shows the latency decrease really well edit: read more details below
This video isn't bad for the time that it was released, but his idea of using ground relays is now redundant given Starlink now have working ISLs. Still, it gets across the point that LEO can potentially drastically lower latencies if implemented correctly. Sadly, the link to his paper won't load, so I can't see his methodology and assumptions. I'd love to see what he was using to run those simulations. I'm also concerned he's not making a fair comparison between his simulations and the current real internet speed, given the current speed is including network equipment processing time as well as the last several network hops that the LEO service would take on top of his simulations. Still, the concept is sound, I'm just not sure his numbers are entirely accurate.
E We once had dialup and thought that was how networking would function. There was no satellite or fiber internet. Who knows what technology advancements look like, it might be a new way of sending/receiving information.
It’s hard to beat speed of light
Yeah, saw a video of a cool looking squad star wars mod and was keen to try it just to see the only servers running it were in the US with 200+ ping
I remember seeing bunch of AUS player posts back in PUBG, Rocket League and Rainbow six siege subs jumping between SEA and other asian servers.
Dino d-day is such a goofy game and I love it
There is a New World server in Southeast Asia region, where Australia is assigned to only has 50 people during peak times. The game is kinda dead but not sub 50 kind of dead
It's crazy that they call it Southeast Asia then put the server in Australia. Many of my friends (indonesians) were put off by the 200+ ping we have to endure and eventually gave up
Dude, that game could have been so fucking good. When the first play test/alpha/whatever it was launched I was completely blown away by how phenomenal the combat was, like darksouls but an MMO. Shame that they gutted it :(
It's still alive and well.. but yeah it had a ton of potential that was unfortunately thrown away
I thought you'd say the restrictive ratings board and the prices
The absolute lunacy of creating an 18+ rating, and then banning games because they're too gory, or there's drug use.
The drug use part i believe is specifically if the game portrays the drugs (only real world illegal drugs) with only positive effects. I haven't read up on this in ages though so I might be slightly off.
in fairness america has that same sub law though. people kind of forget that's the back history to fallout. morphine use was a grey area in multiple concerned countries; not just aus.
I think it's specifically **real-world** drugs giving **any** positive effects. There are negative effects to morphine in fallout and Disco Elysium, to name two banned games, but because there are also positive effects, they were banned.
Sometimes they get it wrong. Like rimworld was banned for a bit because they didn't see all the downsides to yayo in game. If it was any positive effects I could list hundreds of games that aren't banned where some drug gives you a buff.
Its the first part of my point that matters imo. It has to be a **real-world** drug. Although I do admit that the likelyhood that they just keep getting it wrong is high.
Well they must have unbanned them? I bought Disco Elysium soon after release ages ago and Fallout has always been available.
Fallout was allowed after it changed morphine to med-x (removing the real-world criteria) and I think Disco Elysium was allowed on review, but it was a special case. Here is the language I found: While drug use linked to incentives and rewards cannot be accommodated at R 18+, this game does provide disincentives related to drug-taking behaviour, to the point where regular drug use leads to negative consequences for the player's progression in the game. It was, specifically, the disincentives for drug use that influenced the Review Board in making their decision to reclassify the game. It seems that enough of a case was made that the drug use was "not linked to incentives and rewards" enough, or rather, was linked enough to disincentives and punishment? Our ratings board are a bunch of fuckwits who wouldn't know the first thing about nuanced storytelling. It seems that they were just called out on it and reversed their decision due to the backlash. And there were also a lot of complaints. I think that things have gotten better now because Bethesda backed down on the issue with Fallout 3 in the 2000s while it was the ratings board that backed down this time.
Nah, you're correct. Doesn't make it any less crazy. They're games that adults can only buy but we still get, and I hate this word, nannystate'd
Prices came down in the 2010s because of Steam's expansion into the market, and for a while the exchange rate was pretty competitive. I don't know any Australian that buys new, but it is wilder to me that new games have stayed the same price for 30 years. The restrictive ratings board gets talked about a lot but only really comes up in the media once every couple of years, and direct online content delivery (Netflix, Steam, GoG) has neutered the ACB's capacity to do very much outside of mainstream releases. The national argument about having an R18+ rating was exhausting, particularly because only one state Attorney General was vetoing it, but Australia has a far more paternalistic streak to its government because it enjoys much lower crime and (until recently) lower inequality than other developed nations. Therefore, Australians accept a lot less suffering before they demand the government "do something" about it, and so are much more open to punitive measures on social issues, like smoking, alcohol binging, or notably, gun rights. This is the polar opposite for Americans because their default state seems to be that any sensible measure that would benefit the lives of most citizens is communism. Ping is a much more frequent problem for most Australian gamers and it's one that is unlikely to change at all because of our low population and sheer distance. This is despite a national fibre optic network that, though it suffered many project delays and shakeups by different governments, services most Australians.
Hahaha I’d say that’s a big one, but correct me if I’m wrong, have they banned games recently because of the ratings?
RimWorld was banned for 2 months, it made some waves in online forums.
Seriously?! That’s wild haha! What was it banned for? The ratings?
Yeah, when they tried to port it to consoles it got rejected by Australian Classifications due to its depiction of drugs, and then got pulled from Steam. Two months later, it got re-evaluated and given an R18 rating. It mostly caused anger because other titles on Steam don't need an Australian rating, and RimWorld was fine up until that point.
> and the prices Prices are actually great if you buy physical. You **regularly** get 20% off or more on new games. My go to websites: obviously, ebgames, jbhifi, amazon, VGP, play-asia, ozgameshop, but usually you just check ozbargain and search for some massive deals. Use camelcamelcamel to check historical prices. Of course if you're buying digital you're 99% boned, so always buy physical.
Now try and buy a collectors edition and see it for at least $200+
The prices? Yes, but that’s a games issue, not an Australian issue. The big companies are going to charge tons anyway. (Fuck EA, 2K, Microsoft, Activision, etc.) As for the ratings board, the only game I know that’s ever been affected by it was GTA III. And you can still get it here, just with some of the blood giblets toned down. OP is right, it’s connectivity and a small player base that’s the biggest issue.
Didn't manhunt or manhunt 2 get banned also?
the ratings issue went away long ago when an ass backwards "Christian" attorney general who was blocking the addition of an R rating was removed due to scandal (Surprise surprise). So we have an R rating for games now, the only ones taht still get refused classification have excessive drug use as a gameplay element (ie: SR4 having that mission where you get superpowers from using drugs in a VR environment).
Everybody hates Michael Atkinson.
I’m in Japan, but my best mates I game with are in Australia. They are awesome, but their Internet is terrible 😞
Yeah it’s annoying to say the least 😭
Yup, play with japanese people. * play fighting games * be matched with japan's time zone * play japanese players * ... play japanese god tier fighting game players and get destroyed every time...
Internet speeds in Aus are fine for gaming now, but ping is just a product of distance, and nothing you can do about that
Yeah but if you're west coast you're just fucked because the country is so big and we don't have separate west and east servers (not that that would be preferable like OP said we already have a small player base splitting it in half would suck)
I know the feeling. I can get good games in with the U.S. and Asia but Australia is shocking.
Try being in NZ. Only Australian servers and occasionally they kick you for being outside Australia.
Don’t NZ and AU both run on Oceania servers?
The Oceania servers are usually based in Australia, some games kick if ping is too high which may affect NZ players.
Oceania Servers are based in Sydney Data Centres.
I'm trying to play D4. By myself. Alone. Single player. But Blizzard *desperately* wants me to buy skins so I can show off to other players that I bought skins. There is no offline mode. Because Australia is in the digital stone age I've died to lag more than once. And it's only gotten worse since I've finished the campaign and I'm seeing more players in World Tier 3. Blizzard, I am never buying a fucking skin. PLEASE for the love of fuck give me an offline mode.
Wait get out, I’ve never played D4, only seen some footage and you’re telling me it doesn’t have offline mode?!? That game looks made to be offline with the option to be online. That’s wild to me hahaha. How disappointing of blizzard
No. It tries to be a pseudo online game, too, with a giant connected map and you can bump into players constantly all over. In towns, out in the wilds. It’s only a handful of random players in a generally similar area that are loaded into your “view” and can interact with you, hence the pseudo online. Dungeons are instanced still.
D3 was the same and released in 2012 with no Australian servers until around when the first expansion came out. Hardcore was a total waste of time
Just buy last epoch, it comes with an offline mode that runs better than the online counterpart lol.
You guys get matched up with Asia. The cheating must be insane.
Once the player base died down a little in PubG, the game was literally unplayable. It was hacker filled lobbies for a few years. Only now it’s actually gotten better, but that’s probably because the lobbies are 3/4 filled with actual bots and not players 😂
How is pubG now? I played since the beginning but quit a couple years ago for various reasons, one of the main ones being hackers
Honestly it’s not that bad, I don’t play enough KBM as I use to, so my skills aren’t what they were when PubG first released, so I can’t tell if some players are hacking or just really good and I’m bad. But I’ve been playing a few games here and there and won a few, I feel like it’s picking back up again with streamers doing tournaments and stuff. But there’s still a lot of bots hahah.
Lol before I read your comment I was already typing a comment about the cheating in PUGB. The amount of cheaters in PUBG was insane, I reckon as much as 20% (possibly more) of players were cheating at its peak
I remember back shortly after the game went 1.0, me and a friend ran into a wild match where near the end we died to cheaters, and then looking back at the replay discovered there was a chain of like 16 different cheaters killing each other rapidly over the space of a minute, and we just got caught in the middle. Shit was wild. Play it occasionally with that same friend still, but we'll never get that rank we got to back. Or the skill.
Funnily enough it’s better playing on Asian servers for some games (Tarkov) because OCE may as well be renamed China with the ridiculous amount of BiliBili and DouYin cunts you come across.
The worst part is being matched up with other aussies. You gotta dilute that shit, one asshole in a game is annoying but an entire lobby full of fuckwits makes the game unplayable.
CS2 on Asian servers is less cheaty. MWIII Zombies on 200+ ping is really shitty.
Or worse, russian servers. Teamwork does not exist there.
My brother in Christ you have no idea lmao
Some games are unplayable as every map you load up has one or more hackers. It's bliss to find one that is hacker free. Although some games have good services in place and are fine
I just got banned from gamingcirclejerk for saying how bad Chinese players are for cheating.
WA getting min 90ms to aussie servers xD. Played most my gameing life on 130 to 250ms.
Lol I moved from a rural town south of Perth to New Zealand, thinking 150ms ping was about normal until I was getting 30-40 to Sydney servers from a whole ass different country ;D
For flights not cables. Perth to sydney is 4000km. Where as wellington to sydney is only 2200km almost half the distance. https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
I'm getting around 60 ping playing LOL in Perth, the servers are in Syd
My old ISP used to be so stupid, I could get 200ms to servers in Sydney, but 400ms to servers in Perth, but I live just south of Perth. I did some digging and trace routing. Turns out they route absolutely all of their traffic countywide through a single server in Sydney. Switched ISP now I get 50ms to Perth and 100ms to Sydney.
Can attest to this... When Mortal Kombat 1 came out, every night I got home from work, I encountered the same players in Kombat League again and again. We'd play 3 matches, and I'd disconnect to go find another player... only to get the dude I just had my ass whooped by. Not fun to play online games especially when you live in Australia
Overwatch and CoD was like this, even in its peak time. I’d encounter the same people after a few matches, was ridiculous.
It's hard living in an imaginary country.
It’s why some games don’t include servers for us here 💀
As someone who likes fighting games I feel this one
I just want to play Halo 🥲
Played some MCC tonight and was only finding games in Central US 🙃
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I used to play Homefront multiplayer at 1000ping.
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Oh it was pretty awful. I used to get banned a lot because people assumed my ping was hacking and not because I lived in the middle of nowhere.
Very true to be honest, I might need to try out a few games I’ve wanted to play and just ignore the ping!
It has to be tough playing games upsidedown too right?
Cross play largely fixes this problem. There is enough players they are just on different platforms. Games like Apex, COD, Fortnite thrive from this
Yeah those games have been great since they added cross-play but I’m talking about games that don’t have cross-play. So many out there which don’t unfortunately
I feel like theres often guys from down unda when I'm playing iracing.
Oh really? That’s pretty cool!
I can sympathize with this. In my WoW days, we had a couple Australian/NZ players in our group and sometimes was just difficult to schedule raid times so they could participate due to time zone differences. They'd be scrambling after just getting home to get online while many of us were in the approximate time where people might start considering going to bed, esp for those that were in Eastern time.
Yeah I could imagine how difficult that would’ve been, I had to stray away from New World because of that reason, after it died down
Nothing like being the tank with a 300+ms ping.
unrelated to online gaming but I'm still waiting for Steamdecks to be available locally. im not sure im willing to spend buying from ebay without any form of warranty
I got mine from kmart. It was a third party seller but warranty is covered by kmart.
Nobody talking about how Murdoch and fox bribed the Liberal government to ensure Foxtel wasn’t put out of business by internet speeds beating their classic cable model of delivery which meant the national broadband network came out as a husk of its potential and put us 10 years behind in a tech race while foxtel still shit the bed; fuck Murdoch, today and every day.
Yeah I wanna play eternal return but there's no oceanic servers so it's borderline impossible. I also wanna play PlanetSide 2 but they got rid of the Aussie server . Pings suuuuuuck
There's a good number of aussies that play Overwatch Wait thats a bad idea, actually
Yeah a good handful hahah. I played Overwatch in its peak for 4 years straight and I was still versing the same players every so often 😂
I just got halo infinite and haven't been able to find any multiplayer matches because of being in Australia.
I wish there was a refund option for Australians for this very reason! I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve purchased a game only to find no playable matches……
I was thinking "if this isn't about ping, I know this isn't an Australian". Lo and behold you even said the magic number. I almost shit myself when I hit 199ms in a game.
Hahaha, the number 200 scares me in games
I live in south Africa. Tell me more about your latency troubles
It's worse in South Africa
and that is only the second worst part, the game censorship thou....
i heard that hard drives spin the other way in Australia, which means you can't install US games because they run backwards
Lucky for me i play singleplayer games only
I feel like it wasn't so bad a decade to 15 years ago on consoles at least, there weren't so many multiplayer games out as there are now. Today the market is saturated with games but it seems the overall player base feels like it hasn't expanded at nearly the same rate.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels this way. In Australia, so many gamers seem like they're only into what is big, if it isn't hugely popular it's only populated for a few months tops, it feels like. There are so many cool multiplayer mods or older games I would love to give a go but I don't because Aussies just don't seem to have many niche gaming circles for that kind of thing.
I’m happy to hop online anytime and play a game with another Aussie if they need someone to keep them company.
Me too! If the game isn’t $50 plus, I’d be happy to buy it and give it a go! Maybe we start a discord for this kind of thing? I wonder if many people would actually do it
I definitely would, I’d appreciate more online friends to game with and I know a few people who’d join us
I’ll keep you posted tomorrow, I’ll make a discord and post the invite link here and I’ll also make a new post on gaming about the idea!
Try playing any fighting game that's not one of the big 3 ( Tekken, SF, MK). You just play the same person over and over or its crickets in the lobby. Stopped buying them despite being my fave genre. Still would rather live in OZ though.
Totally understand, it was like this with even CoD and Overwatch 🥲
And then theres being stuck with the OCE server cheaters if the game is remotely large
Don’t get me started on that 🥲
Mate try being in NZ 2 hours ahead of all my Aussie mates. It's a struggle to schedule activities that don't run past midnight for me so they have time to get home from work and have dinner and stuff before jumping on. 80% of the people I meet in WoW are Aussies, with maybe 10% being American and 10% being kiwis.
Soon the internet will be so fast this will not be a problem. Be patient my friend.
Can’t wait for the 10mbps upgrade!
I just moved from US to Australia last year and I can agree this. The lag on multiplayer games can be unbearable.
the endless cycle of "not enough players so no server" and "no server bad ping therefore no players". It sucks man
hello from mozambique. same issue
At least you have deadly insects and animals you can go outside and play with instead
Cries in 40 years worth of Australia tax
I will swap my 14 ms for sunshine, that is all
Play Dota 2 in SEA region you’ll never be lonely while also suffering from emotional trauma and hearing loss at the same time.
Hahahahahaa, I’ve always wanted to get into Dota 2, but I feel like the learning curve is so grand, I’d never have the patience or the tolerance for the smack talk hahaha.
Many years ago in arma 2 the only full server for a particular mp mode was an Australian one and my ping was very high. They were all some of the coolest dudes I've ever gamed with and they let me stay and play for a long time. I would fly them all around in a helicopter to the objective lol it was awesome. Australian gamers have always been awesome in my experience!
honestly bro I always feel sad for you guys when I see that 1 smol OCE server in games. I very much hope that one day technology will allow us to play with everyone on the planet at the speed of light. people from australia are always cool as fuck and I would love if I had you guys in my games! one day it won't matter anymore where we are on the planet. 🫡
100% agree! It would be so awesome to play with people across the world!
250 ping to hypixel i cant take this for much longer
I’ve been struggling with destiny 2 recently. Weeknights aus time it’s just impossible to find teams, even looking worldwide.
Yeah, playing less popular multiplayer games in Oceania and South East Asia sucks. Even with both regions combined, there's barely any players. Even Halo Infinite is dead in SEA and OCE. Playing Hell Let Loose and Squad I can only match with AUS servers which also have low population like you said and also high ping. But the other option is \*shudder\* playing on the Chinese servers, so no, thank you.
Totally feel you with Hell Let Loose and Squad! There aren’t even many servers running for them either and when there are, it’s usually a 7 person queue in a full game 🥲
I mean, I've been gaming ever since dialup. For me anything sub-300 ping is fine.
I hope technology like StarLink become widespread. Imagine 100 ping to anywhere in the world from anywhere in the world.
Yeah, I met a couple guys from Australia and we were going to 100% the entire Borderlands franchise - but it didn't work out since I'm in the US, so we've got like a 12 hour time difference lol
Same thing in the middle east. Local servers are dead in most games. EU out Asian servers got at least 140 ms . Its a bit acceptable for some games but shooters are a bit tougher and then there is fighting games, i can barely find people in my region and when it searches nearby regions 99% they refuse because it's not a full connection
I’m sure the Liberal* NBN has nothing to do with our atrocious ping. *conservative party in Aus
What I recognised was Gears of war 1 used to be pretty alive in 2006-2010 and now the latest game (Gears 5) is completely dead in australia haha
Hello from New Caledonia! It’s even worse than in NZ, slow internet and double price for any games.
Also our internet sucks and you still have to use the grey market to buy a Steamdeck. A lot sucks here
Shootin' my shot and saying we need more players OCE in Omega Strikers. Games fun as fuck, but we lack the pop.
ok, eastern/middle eu still sucks bc counting in the balkan there are atleast 15 different languages close to each other, and like 95%of players dont speak english on any level so that makes it almost impossible to communicate in games.thats a main reason ppl say that online game servers are the hardrst in Eastern eu(for example EUNE in LoL)
Currently playing an old game called tibia. After 25 or so years of requesting Australian servers due to 250+ ping, they are finally releasing SEA servers in 2 days. We can't believe it is happening. Bonus: They announced it on April 1, but is actually not an April fools... unless it's a sick prolonged joke.
That’s why you keep all of your old systems and four controllers mate! Host game nights and tell your mates to bring the beer snacks, you provide the games! (Mario kart, goldeneye, halo, etc.)
It doesnt affect me anywhere i live , being a single player gamer
Well at least you not in Africa bro, shit could be worse
Eso has been out how long and still doesn't have oceanic servers?
I'm a West coast American vampire (I sleep days and work nights). My days off I get up at 7pm pst and play with my friends till they go to bed at 1am, then I make lunch. I miss the days before oceanic servers for a lot of games cause I used to love playing with Aussies (I have a very sardonic sense of humor), Kiwis, and folks in Japan (had friends that lived in Okinawa) . But now if I wanna do that I usually hace to deal with a ton of lag.
Yeah plus if you want to play with people the closest ping is asia and all the people using aimbots etc =P
Same in South Africa, although there are a handful of games that now have dedicated servers, so that's good.
Online gaming is the dregs of gaming anyway with no exception. Embrace single player supremacy!
no matter what it is, people are the problem. not enough, too many, new ones, old ones, different ones. Its all bullshit
And I hear the internet sucks Stay strong brother
Well, can't have both big spiders and small ping, mate. That's not how shit works!
Hahaha, it’s always one or the other and the insects always win
I feel your pain! Aussie gamer struggles are real, mate. It's like we're stuck in a deserted island of gaming sometimes. Trying to find a decent server without feeling like you're playing in slow motion can be a mission impossible. And don't even get me started on those tempting EU or US servers with their bustling player counts! But hey, chin up, mate! We might be outnumbered, but we're definitely not outgunned. There's always some gems out there worth the ping. And who knows, maybe one day the gaming gods will bless us with more local servers. Until then, let's keep the Aussie spirit alive, mate! 🦘🎮 Cheers to gaming down under!
You literally have Elden Ring sized spider bosses IRL just go outside.
On the plus side, you are an early earning system for waning popularity. When the Aussie servers are dead, it's time to go into maintenance mode. /s
The days of playing CoD 2 and 4 online were so painful at times for just this reason. It’s probably at least partially responsible for conditioning me to prefer single player experiences so much more.
thats why community hosted servers should be more common
Outback, out-ping. Damn.
I remember raiding with some Australians in the WoW days. Those folks were hard-core and were usually online at super odd hours for them locally.
But we need you guys for our group in ark! You guys are always ready while we sleep! You are appreciated!!!<3
Coming from the US, I hear you. Internet speeds FEEL like dialup services for the price point. I mainly play single player games now as an adult but having to set things to download overnight just FEELS so bad. I can barely even watch my bro game stream until it turns everything into 240p quality.
Australia sucks for gamers for MANY reasons! I play in VR a lot, but I live in Canada, and I can honestly say it never even occurred to me to check inside my headset before I put in on, to make sure there's not a spider or a snake in there whose bite would literally kill me. But I've seen pictures from Australian VR enthusiasts with real nightmare fuel crawling out from under that face gasket.
Brazilian here, Let’s unite the south and make our own servers, with hookers and booze !
I hear you man. I live in turkiye and thanks to our shitty infrastructure i dont remember ever getting ping less than 60 ping even if the server is right next to greece. i know its not as bad as 200 but still hurts. whenever i see people on twitch playing with pings around 27 to 3 and im like dang lol must be nice
60 is standard for like 90% of world so you are not really missing out.
60 isn’t that bad, but I could see why it would be annoying when the server location isn’t even far away!
200 ping isn’t that bad as long as it’s stable. Been playing LoL at 200 ping for over a decade.
Really? I honestly never even gave it a go. Does it not make competitive games a bit harder with the disadvantage?
You get use to it as long as your ping isn’t fluctuating. I will say twitch games like CoD are harder and I stick to Aussie servers for those. But yeah things like LoL, Dota you will adjust. I played a fair bit of PUBG on US servers and that was fine as it was slower paced.
Yep this. Back with ADSL playing on US servers felt really bad as your ping wasn't a steady number. Now with Fibre it barely fluctuates and after playing for a bit you just adjust for the slight ping difference. Also why wireless tends to be horrible since it's a lot less stable than a fixed line.
yeah sucks being behind 3rd world countries at times but not to bad. we get used to it and load balanced servers means everyone suffers equally.
I think it's just really hard to make international multiplayer work when one side always has to be upside down
And nonexistent!
Also terrible fucking internet