Excellent results from fibre broadband and XR500; Questions Remaining

[plaidtripod]

Hi all,

Since release, I was struggling to understand why I'd tanked from a decent K/D on MW19 (around 1.3) to struggling to break even on most games in MW2. This sent me down a rabbit hole to understand why I was experiencing such severe 'bullet sponging' and inconsistent hit reg (conscious that the internet is littered with reports of the same over the last couple of weeks, so I knew I wasn't alone).

Post release, I've upgraded both my internet from FTTC to FTTP @ 150meg, and also my BT Home Hub to a XR500 with Geo Fence and QoS enabled. I've noticed a real improvement in my hit detection and connection quality in the last 10 days especially. I'm currently sitting at a c. 1.6 recent KD using SMG's.

It really feels like day and night vs. before. When I lose a gunfight and watch it back, I can tell it was my own aim that caused me to die, rather than my bullets not having the desired affect. I'm also surprised how quickly I'm melting people at the moment, although I will add that I've made a point of doing a full warm-up routine on Aim-Lab every time I game, focusing on tracking fast moving targets, so this is also having a big impact.

I'll also note that I did follow this guide to optimize my local NIC settings: Steam Community :: Guide :: A Better Online Gaming Experience

It's difficult to ascertain whether this is IW/Activision cleaning up their backend, or my local upgrades taking effect; given people continue to experience issues across reddit/twitter, I'm assuming it's my new kit that is helping.

It brings me to my question; one thing I noticed in the geo-fence section under server type, it lists 'peer' for my connections. I hadn't looked at this before so was surprised when I saw it; I assumed all modern games used dedicated servers.

So my questions:

• Is MW2 on dedicated servers, peer to peer, or a combination of both?
• If it's both, am I being put on peer-to-peer due to my settings being too restrictive (in central England, geo-fence set to 750km with ping assist at 30)
• Would peer-to-peer lobbies be giving me any inherent unintended benefit that would mean I'm playing against inferior players that would justify my increased performance (i.e speculating, but could players on peer-to-peer be for any reason inferior to those on dedicated?)
• The last thing I want from any of this is an unfair advantage; the intent was never to 'pubstomp', only to have optimal conditions for me to play with my own skill

I’m sure when we’ve all played, we’ve come up against those specific players in matches that seem to consistent outgun you, even when you get the drop on them - to the point that you recognise their player model run across your screen, you think ‘i’m about to get beamed’. That’s exactly how I feel at the moment - my shots are just landing every single time, and I’m winning almost all of my 1-2-1 gunfights. I wonder if all these people I’ve come across over the years that were winning every gunfight are actually just the small minority with good routers, good connections and manually adjusted MTU’s  

Thanks and look forward to any light being shed on this peer vs dedicated question.

[Netduma Fraser]

It's a dedicated server game so very likely any peers you're seeing on the map are actually misclassified servers - it won't affect you, it's more of a visual thing.