Ping

[dmoe33]

Soooo will we ever see improvements on ping? My ping is terrible and i literally cant even pvp decently with it which honestly is very very bad cause its basically ping2win, most of all the top players good ping which is a big part on why they are up there( not taking anything away from them they are very good players but still its true) It kinda feels weird that the only reason why u cant do something effectively is because where ur connecting from. Now u may say "oh mines fine git gud" which if ur gonna say that i encourage u not too and judging by a majority of complaints lots of people seem to be having ping issues in arena. So will there be any fixes do u think? or will nc just completely ignore it again with T-shirts

[ViolenceUndone]

Honestly...I doubt it.  I've shown repeatedly that it's an internal NCSoft issue in multiple threads and it continues to be completely ignored by the mods.  I've been dealing with their tech support since yesterday, going through 8 emails back and forth via 3 different support people who were all just copy/pasting their standard diagnostics crap, before one of them had me run PingPlotter to an ncsoft server (64.25.39.1) that showed an average 34ms ping (which is the same as my open-world ping on NA Poharan), and I took a screenshot of that running next to my resource monitor while in the arena lobby that showed I had a constant 240ms ping in the arena.  However, out of 726 traces done over 30 minutes, THREE packets were lost.  THREE.  That's 0.4% packet loss.  And then they tried to blame my ISP for it because three whole packets were dropped in 30 minutes.  I've now requested for them to escalate my ticket to somebody who actually knows WTF they're talking about and we'll see if they'll ever actually admit it's a problem on their end that they need to fix.  If they refuse to admit that it's an issue with their arena servers and that they need to fix it...I'm done.  I've given them the benefit of the doubt and the chance to do decent work and not just throw garbage hotfixes together, but they won't even admit that it's their problem at this point, and THAT is what is really pissing me off as a software engineer.  You have to have integrity and accountability, or you're no better than the botters that are ruining the game (that they're also still failing to fix).

[dmoe33]

44 minutes ago, ViolenceUndone said:

Honestly...I doubt it.  I've shown repeatedly that it's an internal NCSoft issue in multiple threads and it continues to be completely ignored by the mods.  I've been dealing with their tech support since yesterday, going through 8 emails back and forth via 3 different support people who were all just copy/pasting their standard diagnostics crap, before one of them had me run PingPlotter to an ncsoft server (64.25.39.1) that showed an average 34ms ping (which is the same as my open-world ping on NA Poharan), and I took a screenshot of that running next to my resource monitor while in the arena lobby that showed I had a constant 240ms ping in the arena.  However, out of 726 traces done over 30 minutes, THREE packets were lost.  THREE.  That's 0.4% packet loss.  And then they tried to blame my ISP for it because three whole packets were dropped in 30 minutes.  I've now requested for them to escalate my ticket to somebody who actually knows WTF they're talking about and we'll see if they'll ever actually admit it's a problem on their end that they need to fix.  If they refuse to admit that it's an issue with their arena servers and that they need to fix it...I'm done.  I've given them the benefit of the doubt and the chance to do decent work and not just throw garbage hotfixes together, but they won't even admit that it's their problem at this point, and THAT is what is really pissing me off as a software engineer.  You have to have integrity and accountability, or you're no better than the botters that are ruining the game (that they're also still failing to fix).

I got most of what ur saying but not really TOO savy on it but yea its bad enough that its their problem and we are suffering for it but its even worse because they arnt acknowledging it or seem to not even be fixing it and it is a very big issue and it ruins a big part of the game even the entire game for some. I haven't bothered to contact support cause of all the krap replies ive been hearing about and even so i dont think ill get a fix and it sucks cause i really wanna pvp and i cant do it effectively because of my ping is stupidly high which isnt my fault. U have any other suggestions in the meantime as a temp fix?

[ViolenceUndone]

Here's the most recent emails from the support thread showing their support team's uselessness.

 

• Marlon Today at 03:17

  Hello there,
  
  The concerns you have regarding this issue are very common but the best way I can explain this is with a highway analogy.
  
  Your house is your PC, your car is the data and your destination is our game server. Now, the goal here is to reach the destination in the shortest amount of time possible but how you accomplish that really depends on several factors. Traffic, road conditions, time of day... etc etc. Depending on what route you take to reach your destination, your arrival time will likely be affected by these factors. For example, if you take the city streets instead of the highway, you will reach your destination much latter than if you had simply taken the highway from the start.
  
  This is the same for data across the Internet. As your game changes, so does your destination. Depending on where that game server is located, you could be driving to the local corner store or half way around the world. This is why one game can have no issues connecting and playing without "lag" and another game can. Just like on the highway, sometimes there is traffic and sometimes the route is clear. To get around that traffic, you have to change your course. That is what needs to happen here.
  
  Your data's "course" is going through a series of "hops" which are negatively affecting your overall connection. At each "hop" you are losing more and more data until when you finally reach your destination, you don't have enough data to complete whatever task you were attempting to accomplish. In keeping with the car analogy, think of driving a car without any nuts and bolts. As you drive to your destination, bits and pieces of the car are falling off, resulting in less and less of the car making it to the destination. By the time you reach your destination, your car is only a shell of it's former self.
  
  Now, normally this would simply mean you are disconnected because not enough data was received. However, due to security concerns, client / server based applications like Guild Wars put the server ahead of the client. Meaning that if there is a dispute between where your character is located in the world, the server always wins. So when you drop this massive amount of data en route to the server, it has to guess in order to fill in the missing data. This causes your character to warp around the screen as it is trying to sync with the server. If the data was reaching the server intact, this wouldn't happen and your character's movement and actions would be fluid.
  
  In the end, you will need to contact your ISP directly to have them resolve this issue. This is simply because they are the ones that control the route your data takes. NCSoft has no control over your data until it reaches our servers and as such, we need to get your ISP involved.
  
  Regards,

  Marlon
  NCSOFT Support Team

• 
  [me] Today at 08:59

  Well, since you're going to talk down to me and speak in analogies after I already said that I'm a software engineer and fully understand how this works already, it's time for me to do the same. Forget that I ever mentioned packet loss, as you're clearly using THREE WHOLE DROPPED PACKETS (completely trivial and wouldn't even be noticed on the client) as an excuse to avoid responsibility for the problem. Let's just focus on the ping problems, since 250+ms ping is UNPLAYABLE in a game that requires fast reactions.

  My house's address is my IP, and your building's address is your IP. The port number is like a gate number outside that lets the car know which door to go in. Now, as I have shown REPEATEDLY, I am connecting to the same exact IP and port whether I am playing in an open-world map or an arena match. This means that either way, my car is traveling to the exact same building, and is going to take the exact same route to get there. If the highways are clear for one, then they're clear for the other as well.

  However, once my car gets to your building, there's different parking lots where it will need to go before ending at its final destination. Let's call the Poharan server "Lot A" and the cross-server arena "Lot B". When I'm going to Lot A, it's a very short drive past the gate and there's nobody in my way so I get there almost instantly, and that is why my total trip time is roughly the same as the time it takes to get to the gate. (In-game ping while on Poharan open-world maps is the same ~30ms as I get while pinging the external IP directly). Now, when I switch over to Lot B, there's a ton of people also trying to get to Lot B, there's more gates to go through that can't handle all of those people, and it's also a longer and way more complicated drive to get there that takes 8 times as long as just driving up to the front gate. This is why when I switch to the arena my ping jumps from 30ms to 230+ms. It is entirely INTERNAL to NCSoft and the inability for the infrastructure to efficiently get everybody to Lot B.

  I'm attaching screenshots showing simultaneous pings to the external game server IP (64.25.37.235:10100). One is coming from PsPing sent over TCP (which just hits the external IP address) and one is coming from the game's connection as shown in the Resource Monitor. In the open world, both PsPing and the Resource Monitor are showing between 30-40ms. As soon as I go into the arena, my in-game ping shoots up to 230ms, but my PsPing is still in the 30s. This means my route is FINE. The difference in the overall trip time is happening BEHIND the external route for which my ISP is responsible.

  Once again, please escalate this ticket as you have done nothing but show condescension while providing no real information or help.

I'm going to keep climbing their support chain until I finally get somebody who admits that it's their issue and gets it to their dev/infrastructure teams.  If they refuse to admit their problem, I'm leaving the game.  Simple as that.

[dmoe33]

38 minutes ago, ViolenceUndone said:

Here's the most recent emails from the support thread showing their support team's uselessness.

 

• Marlon Today at 03:17

  Hello there,
  
  The concerns you have regarding this issue are very common but the best way I can explain this is with a highway analogy.
  
  Your house is your PC, your car is the data and your destination is our game server. Now, the goal here is to reach the destination in the shortest amount of time possible but how you accomplish that really depends on several factors. Traffic, road conditions, time of day... etc etc. Depending on what route you take to reach your destination, your arrival time will likely be affected by these factors. For example, if you take the city streets instead of the highway, you will reach your destination much latter than if you had simply taken the highway from the start.
  
  This is the same for data across the Internet. As your game changes, so does your destination. Depending on where that game server is located, you could be driving to the local corner store or half way around the world. This is why one game can have no issues connecting and playing without "lag" and another game can. Just like on the highway, sometimes there is traffic and sometimes the route is clear. To get around that traffic, you have to change your course. That is what needs to happen here.
  
  Your data's "course" is going through a series of "hops" which are negatively affecting your overall connection. At each "hop" you are losing more and more data until when you finally reach your destination, you don't have enough data to complete whatever task you were attempting to accomplish. In keeping with the car analogy, think of driving a car without any nuts and bolts. As you drive to your destination, bits and pieces of the car are falling off, resulting in less and less of the car making it to the destination. By the time you reach your destination, your car is only a shell of it's former self.
  
  Now, normally this would simply mean you are disconnected because not enough data was received. However, due to security concerns, client / server based applications like Guild Wars put the server ahead of the client. Meaning that if there is a dispute between where your character is located in the world, the server always wins. So when you drop this massive amount of data en route to the server, it has to guess in order to fill in the missing data. This causes your character to warp around the screen as it is trying to sync with the server. If the data was reaching the server intact, this wouldn't happen and your character's movement and actions would be fluid.
  
  In the end, you will need to contact your ISP directly to have them resolve this issue. This is simply because they are the ones that control the route your data takes. NCSoft has no control over your data until it reaches our servers and as such, we need to get your ISP involved.
  
  Regards,

  Marlon
  NCSOFT Support Team

• 
  [me] Today at 08:59

  Well, since you're going to talk down to me and speak in analogies after I already said that I'm a software engineer and fully understand how this works already, it's time for me to do the same. Forget that I ever mentioned packet loss, as you're clearly using THREE WHOLE DROPPED PACKETS (completely trivial and wouldn't even be noticed on the client) as an excuse to avoid responsibility for the problem. Let's just focus on the ping problems, since 250+ms ping is UNPLAYABLE in a game that requires fast reactions.

  My house's address is my IP, and your building's address is your IP. The port number is like a gate number outside that lets the car know which door to go in. Now, as I have shown REPEATEDLY, I am connecting to the same exact IP and port whether I am playing in an open-world map or an arena match. This means that either way, my car is traveling to the exact same building, and is going to take the exact same route to get there. If the highways are clear for one, then they're clear for the other as well.

  However, once my car gets to your building, there's different parking lots where it will need to go before ending at its final destination. Let's call the Poharan server "Lot A" and the cross-server arena "Lot B". When I'm going to Lot A, it's a very short drive past the gate and there's nobody in my way so I get there almost instantly, and that is why my total trip time is roughly the same as the time it takes to get to the gate. (In-game ping while on Poharan open-world maps is the same ~30ms as I get while pinging the external IP directly). Now, when I switch over to Lot B, there's a ton of people also trying to get to Lot B, there's more gates to go through that can't handle all of those people, and it's also a longer and way more complicated drive to get there that takes 8 times as long as just driving up to the front gate. This is why when I switch to the arena my ping jumps from 30ms to 230+ms. It is entirely INTERNAL to NCSoft and the inability for the infrastructure to efficiently get everybody to Lot B.

  I'm attaching screenshots showing simultaneous pings to the external game server IP (64.25.37.235:10100). One is coming from PsPing sent over TCP (which just hits the external IP address) and one is coming from the game's connection as shown in the Resource Monitor. In the open world, both PsPing and the Resource Monitor are showing between 30-40ms. As soon as I go into the arena, my in-game ping shoots up to 230ms, but my PsPing is still in the 30s. This means my route is FINE. The difference in the overall trip time is happening BEHIND the external route for which my ISP is responsible.

  Once again, please escalate this ticket as you have done nothing but show condescension while providing no real information or help.

I'm going to keep climbing their support chain until I finally get somebody who admits that it's their issue and gets it to their dev/infrastructure teams.  If they refuse to admit their problem, I'm leaving the game.  Simple as that.

Hmmm at least it seems to be a human response although it is a pretty krap answer