XR500 and CoD WW2: My findings

[redwing497]

Hi all.  I wanted to share with everyone my experience playing WW2 with the XR.  First a little about my setup:

• Verizon FiOS 100/100 in New Jersey
• Wired connection
• In game, I ping to the nearest dedicated server in NJ between 3-6 MS (!)
• anti-bufferbloat set (although my bandwidth is NEVER stressed)
• Prioritized traffic
• Classified games enabled

I have everything set up properly according to all the research I've done.  My conclusion is this, using the GEO filter to guarantee you the best connection just does not work well with this game because players far away with a worse PING can still connect to that same server/host (possibly because of skill-based matchmaking, not location based).

 

The beauty of the geo filter is that you can see who is connecting to that game and from where and here's what I've experienced.  If the players in my lobby are all on the eastern part of the U.S. with fairly good PING times to the server, the game runs properly as it should.  When you start having players scattered across the country with hugely varying PING times, the game tries (and fails) to compensate to make it fair for everyone.

 

I guess it would be unfair to give a player like me a HUGE advantage because of my low ping times.  Theoretically, I should be sending/receiving game information faster than anybody.  But that's not how it works with this game.  During my gaming session last night, I was monitoring the geo filter and for basically the entire night, I was getting scattered connections.  This resulted in my typical problems with new CoDs where I would get killed instantly, no time to react, and getting loads of hit markers. This is because, you see a player model on your screen and you shoot at him, but in reality his hitbox according to the game server is in a different spot.  The result is, you don't get that kill.

 

I don't consider myself a great player, but I've been playing CoD for a long time.  When I had connections in a game that were in the eastern half of the country, I would go my typical 20-6, 25-10, 18-4.  It felt like I had a chance to win gunfights and when I lost, it was because I just got beat.  When the other players are scattered, totally screwing up my connection, I can't even break even and in a lot of instances I finish rounds with scores like 8-15.  It's extremely frustrating and basically unfair.

 

I have no doubt this router would be good for other games that handle PING times differently, but for CoD is extremely frustrating to the point where I'm probably just going to stop playing it.  Back in the old games (Cod4 and MW2) where it would put you in lobbies with players as close as possible, the game ran flawlessly for me.  The way matchmaking works now makes that impossible.

 

I MAY try to experiment with the GEO filter to force a server say in the midwest to see if there's a difference, but I'm not expecting much.  Anyway, sorry for the long post.  I just wanted to share my thoughts with everyone.  The GEO filter was a valuable tool for figuring out why things run the way they do.  All anyone can do is keep trying to find a lobby where ALL players are as close as possible to the host.

[FlexJ]

On cod WW2 i have noticed it connects you to people who have got the DLC maps. so if you have installed DLC maps you will not get connected to nearest lobby it will put you into all the player (sweats) who also have the DLC installed. i have done a test on this and this is true!!

 

Im master Prestige 220 on the PS4 and every lobby i got into where all skilled based matches with DLC. so i deleted the entire game and re-downloaded it without the DLC and guess what lobbies i get into now? the best COD lobbies ever! max prestige ive gone up against is 5. 

 

maybe give this ago? 

[Netduma Fraser]

Hi Redwing, the XR500 is definitely getting you the best connection possible with that 3-6ms ping! The low ping is a big advantage, everyone connects to the server so that should be the only thing that matters. If you're saying that games with eastern players is better for you then force the Geo-Filter to put you on servers in that area. The beauty of the router is that it allows you to take control of your connection and set it up how it best works for you. 

[redwing497]

Hi Redwing, the XR500 is definitely getting you the best connection possible with that 3-6ms ping! The low ping is a big advantage, everyone connects to the server so that should be the only thing that matters. If you're saying that games with eastern players is better for you then force the Geo-Filter to put you on servers in that area. The beauty of the router is that it allows you to take control of your connection and set it up how it best works for you. 

 

Fraser, that's exactly what I'm doing, but that doesn't stop players from OUTSIDE my geo range from connecting to the same game.  Theoretically speaking, I could be the only player connected to the NJ dedicated server while the other 11 players in the lobby can be from California.  My point is, when something like that happens, you DON'T want to have the best ping.  BTW, I'm not blaming any of this on the router.  It works EXACTLY as advertised and I love it, but forcing the best connection in CoD with the lowest PING time is just not advantageous.

[redwing497]

On cod WW2 i have noticed it connects you to people who have got the DLC maps. so if you have installed DLC maps you will not get connected to nearest lobby it will put you into all the player (sweats) who also have the DLC installed. i have done a test on this and this is true!!

 

Im master Prestige 220 on the PS4 and every lobby i got into where all skilled based matches with DLC. so i deleted the entire game and re-downloaded it without the DLC and guess what lobbies i get into now? the best COD lobbies ever! max prestige ive gone up against is 5. 

 

 

 Thanks, John.  But I'm on XB1 and we don't even have the DLC as of yet.

[Locraptor]

Well this just shuts down my theory on permanent ban on servers. Which we could expand our radius of geofilter. I thought we'd get a better advantage. But didn't know if lag compensation would ruin it. I guess it does. Fyi I believe you need to set your settings to strick mode. I never get players outside of strick mode.

[redwing497]

I do have it set at strict mode, but that doesn't prevent other players from connecting to the same dedicated server.  As a quick experiment, yesterday I messed with the GEO filter to get me onto midwest servers.  In this case, it was somewhere in Texas.  I was pinging about 40 ms.  My very first game I went 27-1.  Enemies were dropping if I even looked at them the wrong way. 

[Pete]

I have came to the same conclusion about the geo filter. It probably helps certain people with certain games and certainly gives anyone more control but with WWII I have noticed no benefit to using the geo filter.

 

Just curious if you have experimented with the nat filtering setting under settings -> setup -> WAN setup -> NAT filtering, it may be a placebo effect but I noticed slightly better hit detection when I set it to open rather than the default secured. There are many articles online that say it interferes with certain applications such as certain games. Of course it comes at the cost of reduced security but I personally will take that risk for better hit markers.

[Netduma Fraser]

I have came to the same conclusion about the geo filter. It probably helps certain people with certain games and certainly gives anyone more control but with WWII I have noticed no benefit to using the geo filter.

 

Just curious if you have experimented with the nat filtering setting under settings -> setup -> WAN setup -> NAT filtering, it may be a placebo effect but I noticed slightly better hit detection when I set it to open rather than the default secured. There are many articles online that say it interferes with certain applications such as certain games. Of course it comes at the cost of reduced security but I personally will take that risk for better hit markers.

 

Hi Pete, what ping are you seeing when using the Geo-Filter? Are you saying that the Geo-Filter is not achieving it's purpose in getting you the lowest ping possible or that you do not feel that with WW2 specifically that your hit detection is any better despite a low ping achieved using the XR500?

[redwing497]

Hi Fraser. Yes, that's basically what he's saying. The router is doing it's job beautifully. But for CoD, very low ping is actually worse for the player. I have my filter set to the Eastern half of the United States, which covers a few dedicated servers to play on. When I get on the NJ server (where I live) I get wrecked even tho my ping to the server is the best.

 

 

When I got placed on the Miami server or another one in Georgia with a higher ping, the game ran MUCH better. I could actually last in gunfights and not be killed the instant someone comes around a corner. Again, this is all the game's fault.

 

Whats so cool about the router is, I know I had a great experience on that Georgia server, so I can just place the Geo filter on that location to force that server every time. It's great

[Direink144]

Agreed..a 24 ping dedi I constantly ban is trash but a further away 55 ping fellow enables me to melt opponents. Thank goodness for netduma but permanent bans on dedis as an option soon please.

[Netduma Admin]

Hi Fraser. Yes, that's basically what he's saying. The router is doing it's job beautifully. But for CoD, very low ping is actually worse for the player. I have my filter set to the Eastern half of the United States, which covers a few dedicated servers to play on. When I get on the NJ server (where I live) I get wrecked even tho my ping to the server is the best.

 

 

When I got placed on the Miami server or another one in Georgia with a higher ping, the game ran MUCH better. I could actually last in gunfights and not be killed the instant someone comes around a corner. Again, this is all the game's fault.

 

Whats so cool about the router is, I know I had a great experience on that Georgia server, so I can just place the Geo filter on that location to force that server every time. It's great

 

That's what DumaOS is all about, tailoring your settings for your perfect setup. Happy to hear you're enjoying it

 

Agreed..a 24 ping dedi I constantly ban is trash but a further away 55 ping fellow enables me to melt opponents. Thank goodness for netduma but permanent bans on dedis as an option soon please.

 

Noted!

[bigtuna69]

I've been playing online gaming for a long time, back the days where online gaming were all about fastest connection or so called best connection wins. 

 

now days are all about ping, ping, ping. 99% of online gaming are now creating for a fair fight. best connection and bad connection is a fair fight. really ??? 

 

what i'm saying is that, there a lot of online games out there based with a higher ping over lowest ping for the best game plays. 

 

notes, let's say, I'm in a ww2 lobby or overwatch even rainbow six. your ping can be 10 to 20ms. everything is smooth for you, you run around the corner, you see him, fires your weapon. 

 

bang bang bang, he's not dead but you died, why? because that person was never there yet, he's delaying movement because of high ping. 

 

i think online gaming based all about ping is very stupid and causing all kind of problem. they should go back to be based by best/fastest connection.

 

i hope this help. 

[Netduma Jack]

I've been playing online gaming for a long time, back the days where online gaming were all about fastest connection or so called best connection wins. 

 

now days are all about ping, ping, ping. 99% of online gaming are now creating for a fair fight. best connection and bad connection is a fair fight. really ??? 

 

what i'm saying is that, there a lot of online games out there based with a higher ping over lowest ping for the best game plays. 

 

notes, let's say, I'm in a ww2 lobby or overwatch even rainbow six. your ping can be 10 to 20ms. everything is smooth for you, you run around the corner, you see him, fires your weapon. 

 

bang bang bang, he's not dead but you died, why? because that person was never there yet, he's delaying movement because of high ping. 

 

i think online gaming based all about ping is very stupid and causing all kind of problem. they should go back to be based by best/fastest connection.

 

i hope this help. 

 

Hi, welcome to the forum! It's true that gameplay does revolve around ping when you're playing online, though for the most part this is handled fairly. Negative effects (such as higher ping players seeming to have an advantage) are caused by how the game handles lag compensation. If the game has terrible lag compensation, there's bound to be issues which make it seem like ping is a fruitless battle.

 

Games will never steer away from ping though since it's impossible to avoid. Ping is just the time it takes for your data to reach the game and return, so it will always exist. The best thing you can do is get that time to be as low as possible so that when you press a button on your controller, you see a reaction immediately. A low ping for you means more fun since you won't feel sluggish in-game. It's how the ping of other players is handled by the game that causes the issues you see in WWII.

 

I hope this made sense. Thanks for letting us know your thoughts!

[Dan]

There is no way to control how a game decides who joins a lobby; SBMM does that, often terribly. For example, playing BO2 on PS3 will often fill the lobby with non-english chat audio even though I can see a lot of English connections looking for games.

 

In a poor lag comp game such as WW2 a low ping is not fun. You are a gold fish in a barrel. You are constantly behind in the game, time to react doesn't exist. There are only three possible routes to deal with this, hack the game (PS3 still full of them), throttle your line quality to force the lag comp algorithm to interpolate you as well or use geofilter to find a higher ping game.

 

None of these are great. Hackers should have consoles decommissioned. In practice, the latter two are never consistent because the dynamics of the lobby forever change either from player lag spikes or players leaving and new ones joining mid-game.

 

SBMM should be reconfigured to match pings to minimise poor lag comp code.

 

We are now a third of the way through the year of WW2 I doubt it will change. We can hope for better things from BI4. Maybe?

[Netduma Jack]

There is no way to control how a game decides who joins a lobby; SBMM does that, often terribly. For example, playing BO2 on PS3 will often fill the lobby with non-english chat audio even though I can see a lot of English connections looking for games.

 

In a poor lag comp game such as WW2 a low ping is not fun. You are a gold fish in a barrel. You are constantly behind in the game, time to react doesn't exist. There are only three possible routes to deal with this, hack the game (PS3 still full of them), throttle your line quality to force the lag comp algorithm to interpolate you as well or use geofilter to find a higher ping game.

 

None of these are great. Hackers should have consoles decommissioned. In practice, the latter two are never consistent because the dynamics of the lobby forever change either from player lag spikes or players leaving and new ones joining mid-game.

 

SBMM should be reconfigured to match pings to minimise poor lag comp code.

 

We are now a third of the way through the year of WW2 I doubt it will change. We can hope for better things from BI4. Maybe?

 

Thanks for letting us know your thoughts Dan. I agree - hackers and network manipulators should pay the price rather than other players. Since there are games out there with outstanding net-code though (looking at you Titanfall 2) there is definitely hope. I personally believe it's a matter of more deeply rooted game developers like Activision needing to update their systems rather than sticking with what has worked for years. Still, at least the Geo-Filter gives you control even despite the inconsistencies!

 

Let us know if you have any questions, we're happy to help

[Dan]

Agree it's the developers. MW2 had its issues but lag comp wasn't one of them. It was P2P and occasionally you got a bad lobby and host migration stepped in. Some games were tougher than others and forced a change in play style. Aggressive to defensive, short to mid range engagement. But you didn't join a game where the outcome of the game was decided before it started.

 

Since then developers have tried to get clever but actually gone backwards.

 

Find a non hacked lobby on MW2 and it runs smoother than BO2 and WW2.

 

R1 helps on MW2 and Black Ops where you can weed out rogue P2P hosts.

 

It doesn't help on Dedis though. People ask to perm ban dedis which I understand has potential support issues from overuse. 10 minutes isn't long enough though. Play one game and it's back again; would rather 4 to 24hours.you can't rely on Geo as it may be one server in a cluster.

 

Also would rather a Temp Ban on a dedicated was immediate. Three mins makes sense on P2P to prevent abuse but blocking a dedi affects only me and often leaving a bad dedi will put me straight back in the same game. I could wait 3 mins and make a cuppa, but as mentioned above, it happens a lot and I don't drink tea!

[Netduma Jack]

Agree it's the developers. MW2 had its issues but lag comp wasn't one of them. It was P2P and occasionally you got a bad lobby and host migration stepped in. Some games were tougher than others and forced a change in play style. Aggressive to defensive, short to mid range engagement. But you didn't join a game where the outcome of the game was decided before it started.

 

Since then developers have tried to get clever but actually gone backwards.

 

Find a non hacked lobby on MW2 and it runs smoother than BO2 and WW2.

 

R1 helps on MW2 and Black Ops where you can weed out rogue P2P hosts.

 

It doesn't help on Dedis though. People ask to perm ban dedis which I understand has potential support issues from overuse. 10 minutes isn't long enough though. Play one game and it's back again; would rather 4 to 24hours.you can't rely on Geo as it may be one server in a cluster.

 

Also would rather a Temp Ban on a dedicated was immediate. Three mins makes sense on P2P to prevent abuse but blocking a dedi affects only me and often leaving a bad dedi will put me straight back in the same game. I could wait 3 mins and make a cuppa, but as mentioned above, it happens a lot and I don't drink tea!

 

Haha, a fair point. I don't think there's any way around the 3 minute wait after temp ban - we need to ensure DumaOS can't be used to cheat! It's great to hear lots of people want these kinds of features though so thank you for your feedback Dan Look out for future DumaOS updates!

[redwing497]

Jack, honest question here.  How would banning a dedicated server be considered cheating?  By banning the service aren't we merely saying "I don't want to play on this server anymore."  How does that affect others.  By setting a Geo range to capture only servers we want, aren't we effectively banning other dedicated servers?

[Netduma Fraser]

I think there was a misunderstanding and Jack was referring to the Anti-Cheat regarding denying players which if the delay wasn't there could be used to boot players. The only thing with permanently banning dedicated servers is that it could ruin your gaming experience e.g. if you banned too many.

[Dan]

To be clear, if I wasn't, it was only a request to immediately ban Dedis. the GUI is different for P2P. "Temp ban" could be immediate whilst "Update" takes three minutes.

 

Alternatively, making a Temp Ban last at least a few hours would make the world of difference.

 

Won't help much on WW2 though, "shred disc and mail back to sledgehammer" would be a desired tweak

[xlr8r]

ok so im now changing my view on this router.... 

 

Had it now for 3 days, setup as per all the recommended settings for COD WWii (pc)

 

i have played 100 TDM matches, and not a single one of them felt as though i was playing with a ping under 100ms !

 

At least on my old R7000 , 1 in 10 games got me into a match where id had a positive KD ratio where i felt I had a good ping.

 

This XR500 has more or less proved that it cannot sort out lag issues , if anything it has made things worse for me.

 

I'm seriously considering sending back and unboxing the R7000 to use instead...

[Netduma Fraser]

If that is the case then you have the router misconfigured. Can you send through screenshots of your QoS & Geo-Filter settings please. What is your average ping to the game as shown by the Geo-Filter?

[xlr8r]

If that is the case then you have the router misconfigured. Can you send through screenshots of your QoS & Geo-Filter settings please. What is your average ping to the game as shown by the Geo-Filter?

 

Hi Fraser

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Netduma Fraser]

Well you're getting a fantastic ping so the router is doing it's job by getting you a low ping. Change QoS to 'Always', you can also filter on CoD PC. Can you do a PingPlotter test by following this guide, one without QoS enabled and one with QoS enabled: http://forum.netduma.com/topic/23881-ping-plotter-quick-guide/also do one direct from your modem as well if possible.