What does the ping in games depend on?

[adison024]

I play a game called Paladins. While playing, I keep Resource Monitor open in the background to see if any other program is taking my bandwidth. Even if all the bandwidth is taken by the game, I get variable ping from 90 to 300. Variable in the sense that I'll get 90-95 ping in one match, 250-260 in other or 300-310 in some other match. In a single match the ping pretty much stays constant.

What is the cause of this variation? What can i do to ensure my all matches stay in 90-95 category ping? Is there anything in my hand to reduce the ping further?

I'd like to know what ping depends on to understand these. I don't know what 'Latency' is. Any help is appreciated.

 

[ksham]

I've never played that game, but ping is to the host (or server). So like in Dark Souls PvP, the host can be you (if invaded) or the enemy (if invading). Nothing you can really do if your connection to one host is not as good as to another. The other player's internet connection speed in this game can also impact this. In some games, connection to the server box is the issue.

 

[bill001g]

Ping in general is a measurement of distance. If your game uses the same central server the latency should more or less stay the same. If you use using a game that is peer to peer then the distance will be different for each person who is hosting the game.

Now unfortunately game ping times are not always actual "ping" commands but something else. You would need to test with a actual ping command to eliminate the game client itself. Even then if it put huge load spikes on the machine it will even affect a background cmd window.

Actual network delays are caused by many things many which you can not fix. You can not do much if the ISP has a bottleneck in their network. The most common one people see in their house is caused by using wireless to play games. Wireless try to recover damaged data which takes time and increases the ping/latnecy. This is why it is recommended to never play games on wireless.

 

[adison024]

Thank you for your answers. for some reasons i did not get the notification.

The game runs on servers maintained by the developers. They have on server for South East Asia. So from what i could understand, if there are 10 people in the match, the person living closest to the server will get less ping than the others. Am I right?

 

[bill001g]

That is correct but games normally have special features to prevent the difference in ping from giving one player an advantage. Some introduce artificial delays slowing everyone down to the slowest which causes issues at times but is simplistic to implement compared to some other methods games use

 

[ksham]

Thank you for your answers. for some reasons i did not get the notification.

The game runs on servers maintained by the developers. They have on server for South East Asia. So from what i could understand, if there are 10 people in the match, the person living closest to the server will get less ping than the others. Am I right?

If all else is equal, yes. If the one living closer is using a much slower speed, then someone slightly further away can have less ping. Or if the closer target has more traffic on their network, then he/she may not have the lowest ping. Distance has the biggest impact on latency.

 

[adison024]

@ksham @bill001g

Alright thanks again. Last question. In Paladins the match is 5v5. So total 10 players.

If my speed is say 50Kbps and I get 90 ping in a match. In the very next match, the speed is same, my distance to the server is same, still i can get 300 ping.

This can be because
1. someone among the 10 is having 300 ping and hence mine is lowered by the game.
2. disturbance in the connection. (does disturbance in the net reflect in the speed. If speed is same i can assume no disturbance? Y or N)
3. server to me connection has more loops in case of 300 ping than the 90 ping scenario.

Am. I. Right?

 

[abhishekpallipparagopakumar]

@ksham @bill001g

Alright thanks again. Last question. In Paladins the match is 5v5. So total 10 players.

If my speed is say 50Kbps and I get 90 ping in a match. In the very next match, the speed is same, my distance to the server is same, still i can get 300 ping.

This can be because
1. someone among the 10 is having 300 ping and hence mine is lowered by the game.
2. disturbance in the connection. (does disturbance in the net reflect in the speed. If speed is same i can assume no disturbance? Y or N)
3. server to me connection has more loops in case of 300 ping than the 90 ping scenario.

Am. I. Right?

 

[androbourne]

I also wanted to mention here. That ping does not indicate QUALITY of the traffic. Just because you have "decent" ping, doesn't mean you actually have a good quality connection to said end point device\server.

This is where jitter and other factors come into play. You can have a great 50ms ping to a server. But if the connection to the host is bad, you will have a lot of jitter which could cause packet losses or other issues that would effect your production workload to that system. (such as traffic packet size limitations)

You run into these types of problems with VOIP phone systems. But it happens all the time with any internet based connection to an endpoint. Everyone tends to judge it all based on ping. Which is incorrect method of determining quality of the connection. Ping is just a simple command that tells you he avg time it takes to reach an endpoint on the internet. Problem with ping, is that it don't calculate for packet size in most cases. Sometimes with increased packet sizes, connection to the endpoint is also effected, and in most cases, that won't reflect in ping tests.