Tried everything, please help me: Massive ping spikes! (Update: june 16)

Only in 3v3, 4v4 and 5v5 games.

By Ghost on May 18, 2009 11:04:15 PM from

(23 may updates in replies #11 and #12)

(27 may update in Reply #18)

(16 june update in Reply #88)

I have this problem with my ping since when i bought the game. I've tried everything i know to solve or pinpoint the cause.

Problem:

I can't play any 3v3, 4v4 or 5v5 games because i get very, very big ping spikes (<1500). It gets worse as the game gets bigger (in a 3v3 match the spikes appear at intervals of 5-15 minutes, in a 4v4 match they appear at intervals of 5-15 seconds and in 5v5 matches it's almost constant at 1000-1500 ping). I can connect to everyone, no problems here, and in the lobby i have good ping to everyone (max 200, green). But as soon as the game starts, the ping spikes at 700-1500, affecting everyone in the game.

I must say that i can play any 1v1 or 2v2 matches, no problem here: it doesn't matter where the players are located, it doesn't spikes at all. I've tried on Gameranger so i can see the players location, and i've played fine with people from Asia, Australia, US, Europe, it makes no difference, no spikes from me.

My PC specs and internet connection:

Intel Core 2 E6400, 4 GB ram, 8800 GT, Asus P5B (motherboard), Creative X-FI. Played in 1360x760 on 16:9 TV screen. No FPS or sim speed problems.
My connection is 4Mb download, 1Mb upload (on paper). Direct cable modem connection. No router, no wireless.

What i have tried:

On my Vista x64, i have no firewall, my antivirus is disabled, no other programs left to run in the background (any kind of downloader)
All my drivers are up to date (including the network card on my motherboard).
Just to be sure it's not a software problem, i've tried Demigod on a clean Windows install (Win 7), just Demigod and drivers, and it didn't changed the situation.

Next, i will show you 3 recorded games, first one is a 3v3 match, the second is 4v4 match and last is a 5v5 match.

I used CamStudio to record and BitMeter to show the network usage in real time (with average upload and downlod). Please note that BitMeter shows the speed of the connection in kB (kiloBYTES). All videos are HD, so you can clearly see the numbers.

3v3 game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSPpRUm1e8I

You can see that the spikes appear for a short duration, and only from time to time. The average upload and download speed is around 13-14 kilobytes/sec (that's 104-112 kilobits). Note that as soon as the ping spike comes, the maximum upload and downlod speed grows a little bit, from 15-17 kB/sec(~128kilobits/s) peak, to 23-24 kB/sec (~184 kilobits/s) peak. Still in my connection limits (4096 kilobits/s download / 1024 kilobits/s upload).

4v4 game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hyoYIVN7P8

Here you can see the pings i have in the lobby with all players (all green and maximum ping is 133). Then, as soon as the game starts, the spikes go as high as 1400, with only a few seconds of normality, then again to 1400 and so on. Much smaller intervals than in 3v3 matches. Note that the maximum download and upload speeds have rised to 34 kB/sec (272 kilobits/s) for upload peak, and 41 kB/sec (328 kilobits/s) for download peak, still in my connection limits (4096 kilobits/s download / 1024 kilobits/s upload).

5v5 game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQPQkoNMGqA

This is the most extreme, i get constant ping spikes of 700-1500, freezing the game for everybody. You can still see the pings in the lobby are normal. In the game, the maximum download and upload speeds are a bit higher than in the 4v4 game, but not by much: ~46 kB/sec (~368 kilobits/s) for upload and download peaks. Still in my connection limits (4096 kilobits/s download / 1024 kilobits/s upload).

As i've said, i'm connected directly to my cable modem, no wireless, no router.

I've tested my connection on speedtest.net, on a couple of servers from around the world, so i can show it to you. Note that i'm located in Europe!

First picture is from servers located in Europe:

EUROPE

The second picture is from US servers (note the distances from me, as i've said, i'm from Europe):

US servers

The last picture is from servers from the rest of the world (Asia, Australia, etc), located at great distances:

As you can see, i don't think my connection is too slow. At least in Europe i have great pings and upload speed. I've tried 4v4 matches on Gameranger and i've made sure all the players were from Europe, but i still get ping spikes. It doesn't matter with who i play and from where.

So if it's not my PC, and it's not my connection setup from home, than it must be either the ISP or the software (Demigod). The only way i know an ISP could cause this problem, is by throttling the p2p bandwidth. I've tried some torrents and they worked fine. More, i've done this P2P test, to see if my P2P connection is throttled. It's not! See the result below:

P2P

So this is it, i don't know what else to do. If someone can help me pinpoint the cause, i would be grateful. I would appreciate if someone from Stardock (or GPG) would look over this.

+13 Karma | 168 Replies

I tried, renamed them both (post #11), but no change, still spikes. The only difference was that the Impulse overlay (chat, friends, etc) was missing.

Yes, I have since retried it. Same issue.

same as dead ghost for me...

I have the exact same problem. It was prevelant post .8x patches for me

ISP: www.glwb.net

router: netgear WNR3500

PC: AMD phenom 2 955 BE

8800GT

MSI 790FX GD70 (nics Dual Realtek PCI-E GbLAN controller)

OCZ DDR3 1600 ram 4GB

Windows XP Pro SP3

Same problem here but people i played with have noticed it happens when i start fighting against another player and when i justy stand there it works fine which gets me extremely annoyed. Today was the first day i actually started playing online since i got the game this past monday. Strangely i have never had a problem with any other game while playing online even when playing wow and using vent my pings were about 89-100ms and 110-150 during 25 man raids but i guess that don't matter here? well here are my specs for my laptop

Gateway M-6862

ati radeon mobility 2600

intel core duo 2.0ghz

4gb of ram

Oh yea i also use a wireless connection and i always have had and never had any problems playing online and if it is my router what can i do to fix this issue

router is a D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router

speedtest results

[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][/URL]

I'm in the same boat. I haven't played in... probably two weeks, and things were great then. But I tried to play last night, against a friend who lives about 1/4 mile from me and on the same ISP (Comcast), and we ran into ping spikes of doom.

Completely uplayable. We tried rebooting, taking turns hosting, using the proxies, etc. Nothing but fail. Our next effort will be to try over hamachi. Perhaps that will isolate us from any issues on the stardock infrastructure.

Data:

ISP: Comcast

Location: Northern Virginia, near DC.

P2P Throttling: None as per glasnost

-m

Sigh. This issue persists through 1.01. Somewhere out there, my mind is wandering away. Methinks I lost it.

Same here. Still spikes. And my BitMeter is showing the same bandwidth usage as before (in 4v4 matches). I'm getting tired of this....

Quoting TheBird,

reply 19

it is NOT an ISP problem at all! you have to keep in mind that the game ran for both (Dead Ghost and me) fine before the update. we could play 3on3s without a problem until the update came out and we jad to deal with the newly lag spiking problem...

in the journal forum they said this:

Q: You say Demigod’s online play is fine now but I have a problem.

A: For that I say go to http://www.speedtest.net/ and check your upload speed. Demigod requires a broadband connection defined as at least 256 kilobit upload and download to reliably play a 5 on 5 game. A 3 on 3 game requires about 120 kilobit (about twice what an old phone modem does). v1.01 should reduce this well below the threshold of low end connections. But if you get a speedtest rating of less than 256 kilobit, you should stay with 3 on 3 games max unless you know how to make sure you’ve turned off other sources of uploading.

For example, it seems like everytime I run into someone whose complaining about “high in game ping even though it was fine in the lobby” it turns out to be someone with a DSL line that has 128 kilobit upload who also has a torrent seeder going on. Don’t do that.

Also, we have not given up on “edge” cases. The team at Stardock and GPG keep coming up with clever ideas to help more and more people.

first of all i think its rediculous that i can play every online game without problems but demigod is so powerful that i need a new ISP... never heard of that before... now you have to write on every box they sell: oh and you need at least 256 kilobit upload or you cannot play 5on5s. for 3on3s you need at least 120 kilobit... i dont know if they wrote this on the box since i have bought the digital copy (never read any information about this traffic usage). so if you have bought a demigod box please look at it and tell us if they wrote that MUST-HAVE information there so only people will buy their game who are actually able to play it...

overall i am still hoping that v1.01 will fix our problem, because we are practically still "banned" from online gaming...

and as you can see below my bandwidth is ready for 3on3s... BUT you may have guessed WE CAN NOT PLAY !

hell i cant even play 2on2s with that connection... the lag spiking is less of course but definatly far away from smooth... basically unplayable!

the game fooled me!

Demigod requires a broadband connection defined as at least 256 kilobit upload and download to reliably play a 5 on 5

And your screen CAP of the Speedtest shows .18 Mbs or 180 Kilobits so you are simply not cutting it.

Wireless network lag fix.

If you are experiencing lag spikes and run a wifi network at home your problem my lie with a local windows service called "Wireless Zero Configuration" and not with your connection to Funcom's server over the internet.

This service will ping the access point every 60 seconds so that you always have the best wireless connection. Which is great for general use but ruins online gaming.

If you download and run WinMTR you will see that every 60 seconds or so your ping will jump too 1000+ for a couple of seconds. At the same time your wireless adapter may also make a series of very quiet clicking noises as it renegotiates the connection with the access point.

To confirm that it is your own computer causing the problem you will see that this problem effects the first hop which is your PC (It will be the name of your computer). Under ordinary conditions the ping to your own computer will be somewhere near 0ms.

For XP.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...fm/359624.html
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...fm/677463.html

PDF document showing exactly what to do here.

Vista.
http://www.vistax64.com/gaming/10507...g-problem.html

Please sticky.

Additionally if you are using a DSL provider you will have issues with the DSL modem dialing back in to the CO (central office) often to make sure you have the best connection.

Many DSL providers use WinPoet and other less than stellar software ROUTER emulation software to SIMULATE a router, and honestly it does a REALLY crappy job of it.

If you connect VIA DSL to the internet PLEASE get a store bought Router and uninstall that shabby software ASAP.

Quoting Lugh,

reply 10

Wireless network lag fix.

If you are experiencing lag spikes and run a wifi network at home your problem my lie with a local windows service called "Wireless Zero Configuration" and not with your connection to Funcom's server over the internet.

This service will ping the access point every 60 seconds so that you always have the best wireless connection. Which is great for general use but ruins online gaming.

If you download and run WinMTR you will see that every 60 seconds or so your ping will jump too 1000+ for a couple of seconds. At the same time your wireless adapter may also make a series of very quiet clicking noises as it renegotiates the connection with the access point.

To confirm that it is your own computer causing the problem you will see that this problem effects the first hop which is your PC (It will be the name of your computer). Under ordinary conditions the ping to your own computer will be somewhere near 0ms.

For XP.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...fm/359624.html
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...fm/677463.html

PDF document showing exactly what to do here.

Vista.
http://www.vistax64.com/gaming/10507...g-problem.html

Please sticky.

Mmm, interesting. I had a stable 0 ping to my own computer with 0% packet loss (I guess that's pretty durka-durr, eh?), though my pings to just about any site resulted in a ping above 800, vastly above my normal ping to anything. Any ideas?

The 1.01 patch seemed to smooth out my ping spikes in 3v3s, but not completely got bumped up to 600 once or twice.

I have yet to try 4v4

Lugh, none of those fixes describe my setup, I have more than enough bandwidth to play any size game, connected via wire directly to my router(have tried directly to modem), and I'm still seeing spikes.

I could at least reduce the spike hight with deactivating traffic shaping in my router config.

However, I don't know if this option is common to a wide range of routers or if this interferes in any way with e.g. ISP traffic shaping (Glasnost was negative for my ISP though). I couldn't prevent spiking with this - it's as common as it was before - but could reduce the hight from 1500er to 300er pings in 3vs3 games (2Mbit ADSL). However, the game stutters when I peak, as it did before - but it stutters shorter.

So perhaps that helps someone to reduce the symptoms, it's no cure though.

Patch 1.01 had no effect on spiking, neither on emergence nor on hight.

My ping does spike even when I don't give any commands but seems to spike more often right in a combat situation (although that could be in part due to a subjective shift in time perception or some freaky quantum wave sh*t ).

p.s.: the vulcan smiley is a mess, copy-pasted it gives this: [e digicons](\(\[/e]

Played a few games, still seeing spikes.

same for me... still no solution

Including in 3v3 matches? Did anyone from here tried any 3v3 matches after the 1.01 patch? I'm curious about something...

3v3s have been working fine since 1.01

4v4s suffer from lag spikes.

Quoting Dead Ghost,

reply 18

Including in 3v3 matches? Did anyone from here tried any 3v3 matches after the 1.01 patch? I'm curious about something...

Yeah, I've played 3 or 4 games. Still seeing spikes to around 1000 at best, 3000-4000 at worst. Here are some new speed test results, and glasnost reports no throttling.

Local:

West and East Coasts:

And across the pond:

Just tried a 2v2, spiked there as well.

Edit: 4v4 is worse.

Did you tried this p2p test? Maybe your ISP is doing something, as your speedtest results are more than enough.

I don't know what to say anymore. Two days ago, after the 1.01 patch, i was able to play 3 games in 3v3 mode without any ping spikes (one of them with US players). 4v4 and 5v5 still no go. I thought the reduction in DG bandwidth allow me to play 3v3 games , that's why i was asking here if the 1.01 patch did something for you in 3v3 matches. But today i've tried again a 3v3, and got spikes up to 1400, from minute to minute. I think something has to do with one of the players in the game, but i can't tell in the lobby, because i have great ping to all and green everywhere. But as soon as i get into the game...

Yeah, Glasnost reports my connection to be clean. I'll rerun and post results here in a sec. It's all kinds of dumbfounding to me, why it won't work.

Glasnost results:

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Tried everything, please help me: Massive ping spikes! (Update: june 16)

Only in 3v3, 4v4 and 5v5 games.