Ping is not King 😢

[local_celebrity]

For two blissful years I played Cold War and had zero issues.

I never even had to look at my Netduma. Just set the Geofilter to Europe (I’m based in London), the ping assist to 50ms, and I was good to go.

Everything worked perfectly and gunfights felt fair.

Now with MWII, the nightmare begins once more. Despite having a full fibre connection, I’m getting obliterated in games where I have the lowest ping. I’m talking about games where my ping is sub 20ms according to the in-game telemetry.

In theory, I should have the advantage. Ping is king, right?

But nothing could be further from the actual, lived experience. I just consistently lose all the one-to-ones. Every 50/50 encounter, every coin flip goes my opponent’s way.  In a way that simply doesn’t happen when I’m playing on exactly the same servers with Cold War. 

So now I’ve resorted to using a VPN in Spain and playing on their dedicated server, and initial impressions so far are that gunfights feel “fair” again. Not that I’m stomping the opposition. Far from it. This is still a bloody tough game. Especially when you're constantly being battered by SBMM. But at least I'm starting to win one-to-ones again.

My hunch is that the lag compensation model by Infinity Ward favours the higher lagging player. I think there are probably limits to this. Once you get to 100ms+, you'll be noticeably a step behind other players, and the server will start favouring the lower ping players again.

50 - 70ms is probably the sweet spot. I'll experiment with different servers and try to find out.

Be interested to hear what other VPN users from England have to say on the matter. I see Alex.Devine swears by Spain and Italy. In fact, one of the first things I noticed when playing on the Spanish server is how many Brits are playing on there!

[alex.devine]

+1 on this, for me a ping of 70 plays perfect, 50 not so great on the VPN.

[Cajun72]

Yep I feel a few of us are experiencing the same. Thanks to the duma community sharing their experiences I am experiencing fairer games, not using vpn though, but forcing servers in Italy and Spain around the 50/60 ping mark and throttling my connection and it feels a total new ball game compared to using same filters you did with low ping with much and unfair gunfights

[K0NSPIRACY]

1 hour ago, Cajun72 said:

Yep I feel a few of us are experiencing the same. Thanks to the duma community sharing their experiences I am experiencing fairer games, not using vpn though, but forcing servers in Italy and Spain around the 50/60 ping mark and throttling my connection and it feels a total new ball game compared to using same filters you did with low ping with much and unfair gunfights

How are you throttling your connection and how low are you going? I’ve used QoS sliders and didn’t notice any difference.

[gaeku]

Hello, I have exactly the same problem. I can't win 1v1 in some mw2 multiplayer games because the enemies see me in advance. I was looking to buy an RX1000, but I want to be sure that the geofiltration will solve my problem. It really doesn't work anymore? thank you

[Cajun72]

On 11/9/2022 at 7:03 PM, K0NSPIRACY said:

How are you throttling your connection and how low are you going? I’ve used QoS sliders and didn’t notice any difference.

20 mb down and 5 up. I'm also using the MTU o 750 as well. Games not always perfect but much better than 'ping is king' settings

[K0NSPIRACY]

10 hours ago, Cajun72 said:

20 mb down and 5 up. I'm also using the MTU o 750 as well. Games not always perfect but much better than 'ping is king' settings

Is that with the QoS sliders or bandwidth allocation?

I’m playing on XSX and changing MTU to 750 on R2 doesn’t do anything and the change isn’t recognised on the console.

[local_celebrity]

On 11/11/2022 at 4:50 PM, gaeku said:

Hello, I have exactly the same problem. I can't win 1v1 in some mw2 multiplayer games because the enemies see me in advance. I was looking to buy an RX1000, but I want to be sure that the geofiltration will solve my problem. It really doesn't work anymore? thank you

All I can say is geofiltration works for me. Without it, the game automatically puts me in servers where I am at a disadvantage.

If like me, you need to get away from the servers that are closest to you, I would also recommend investing in a VPN to relocate yourself to the desired region.

Otherwise, matchmaking will take a long time. Without a VPN, the game detects where you're based and will attempt to put you into local servers. Your geofilter may say 'no', but the game will continually try to connect to them.

[Cajun72]

On 11/12/2022 at 7:01 AM, K0NSPIRACY said:

Is that with the QoS sliders or bandwidth allocation?

I’m playing on XSX and changing MTU to 750 on R2 doesn’t do anything and the change isn’t recognised on the console.

That is for the QoS sliders. I changed MTU to 750 but I'm unsure now it is actually doing anything

 

[kinel]

On 11/7/2022 at 10:42 PM, alex.devine said:

+1 on this, for me a ping of 70 plays perfect, 50 not so great on the VPN.

Is 60 70 70 ms ingame ping or ping shown on dumar

[gaeku]

16 hours ago, local_celebrity said:

All I can say is geofiltration works for me. Without it, the game automatically puts me in servers where I am at a disadvantage.

If like me, you need to get away from the servers that are closest to you, I would also recommend investing in a VPN to relocate yourself to the desired region.

Otherwise, matchmaking will take a long time. Without a VPN, the game detects where you're based and will attempt to put you into local servers. Your geofilter may say 'no', but the game will continually try to connect to them.

I took cyberghost for 2$ per month , 50 70ms Ping serveurs are perfect , and all 1v1 are now fair ! Thank you  

[local_celebrity]

On 11/7/2022 at 6:46 PM, local_celebrity said:

50 - 70ms is probably the sweet spot. I'll experiment with different servers and try to find out.

UPDATE: had some amazing games with 30ms and 40ms ping (in-game telemetry) on French and German servers/peer connections.

Hit registration felt spot on. So maybe the thing to do is not fixate on a particular ping number or range, but how the game plays on a particular server/region.

Despite having the lowest ping (4ms according to Netduma; sub 20ms on in-game telemetry), my nearest dedicated server - in London - plays like garbage. It's pure misery.

Mainland European servers and peer connections are far better. The difference is night and day.