Question about latency

If I'm matchmaking always getting 150ms showing on my screen before queuing.

I heard that it's peer to peer connection right? so my opponent should be getting the same latency?

If not then a player who has higher latency will always have a disadvantage.

Because whenever, I watch a stream the reaction of the units to the players command is instant. Whereas mine, like they have problems moving their feet LOL.

There are different latencies at different points in the path. Network latency (the 150ms) is just 1 part of the equation. The game as a whole is only able to move at the speed of the slowest player. Otherwise you would have armies sitting around without commands.

I always thought you'd connect to a server?

Players can have different latencies in the game though. If you run on WIFI, check your WIFI setup. Otherwise you probably need to complain to your ISP about issues with your internet. I don't think there are many more options. If those don't work, you're probably out of luck.

The game is not Peer to Peer as far as I can tell. All players connect to the Relic server in the US (Or Canada?). So you have a basic latency that is due to the physical distance (EU-US or Asia-US or US-US). Next up is the fact that the package goes from your computer, over the router and then hops along to the ISP, which redirects it through many routers all the way to the US server. You can use cmd command "tracert" to check all the hops a package makes before it arrives to it's destination. It's similar to -ping but it also shows each and every address it visits along the way.

Then you've also got the general server stability. I have also noticed that when I play with eastern Asians (China, SKorea, Japan) I get a much higher ping than when I play with fellow Europeans (NL, Germany, Russia, etc...).

So all that leads to the overall ping for a match. With Asians my latency is about 1 second on a good day, and 3s on a bad day (due to bad server status).
With Europeans, it's about 100-300 ms or 0.1 to 0.3s on a good day and about 1.5s on a bad one. I have a stopwatch near me so I can measure the time it takes for the server to register my command so I measure whenever I feel there is a delay.

Point is, except for taking a new and better ISP or router, there is nothing you can do. Getting a new router is the best course of action. Old ones can drop packages and whatnot.

Hope this helps.

Thank you so much, guys. That clears up every question I have. I didn't know relic has servers. Their servers are not very good then. =(

So I just confirmed, matched with a streamer with around 50ms to server vs 170+ms

gives you ALOT of disadvantages.

It's been a long time I'm wondering my opponents are quick to react and my ATs are like dumb AI who won't fire.

Seems like the command registers are also delay when you have high latency on the server versus low latency opponents to the server.



I'm in Japan being matched to EU player.

Well you got me thinking, because I'm trying to understand how latency would manifest in this game. We all know about ghost actions in fps. I have noticed some behaviors in some games where a squad is extremely late in reacting, on the order of like 1 or 2 full seconds, which is more than enough time to get wrecked by a grenade.

I've only seen it with infantry squads though. No problems with vehicles, except for that weird thing where they will suddenly stop, instantly reverse about 3 feet, reset their max speed to 0, then begin to accelerate forward at their normal rate again. This can get you hit by 1 or 2 at gun hits depending on how cursed you are.

Well you got me thinking, because I'm trying to understand how latency would manifest in this game. We all know about ghost actions in fps. I have noticed some behaviors in some games where a squad is extremely late in reacting, on the order of like 1 or 2 full seconds, which is more than enough time to get wrecked by a grenade.

I've only seen it with infantry squads though. No problems with vehicles, except for that weird thing where they will suddenly stop, instantly reverse about 3 feet, reset their max speed to 0, then begin to accelerate forward at their normal rate again. This can get you hit by 1 or 2 at gun hits depending on how cursed you are.

This is actually true. I played 1000+ games from being a noob, watching Top players, and improving game sense.

It's not just the grenade. Do you wonder why your squad is sometimes losing unbelievable health while moving and engaging the squad with the same positioning green cover.

Your screen shows that your opponent squad is just going to the green cover just like you but in servers computation or data being thrown the server, they're already positioned to the green cover it's not just RNG.

Their server damage tick for small arms skirmishes is like FPS.

My match yesterday proved it, this is the reason why AT is not firing even the tank is already on his range on your screen but the truth is it's not.

And I don't think the bouncing tank is just a game problem it's called rubberbanding at some point where a tank goes back to its original position and accelerates slowly again.

Relic has the opportunity to implement cloud-based shards of on-demand servers that spin up to accommodate players' physical location and then start matchmaking them from there. e.g. AWS regions for those who want to do more reading.

If they don't do this, then we're all still royally fukd when coh3 comes out.

Will Relic embrace modern day cloud networking and matchmaking for coh3? doubtful, because they're using the same coh2 engine and I saw a vid where a dev proudly said 'we started coh3 immediately using the coh2 engine' - and I thought, that's a big FU to your international players already.

Let's see if they do a big dev reveal post about their networking tech. Absence of that says it all.

Relic has the opportunity to implement cloud-based shards of on-demand servers that spin up to accommodate players' physical location and then start matchmaking them from there. e.g. AWS regions for those who want to do more reading.

If they don't do this, then we're all still royally fukd when coh3 comes out.

Will Relic embrace modern day cloud networking and matchmaking for coh3? doubtful, because they're using the same coh2 engine and I saw a vid where a dev proudly said 'we started coh3 immediately using the coh2 engine' - and I thought, that's a big FU to your international players already.

Let's see if they do a big dev reveal post about their networking tech. Absence of that says it all.

Of course they will use COH2 engine. It's a well developed engine truth be told. If they iron it out and optimize it, I don't see why not. Also, the network part of the engine can be rewritten. Usually for these parts of the game, you implement different methods and strategies so that adding sh** to it is easier (similar to factory in Java, etc.).
I highly doubt everyone will connect to one server like in COH2. I'm pretty sure they will implement something new.

Of course they will use COH2 engine. It's a well developed engine truth be told. If they iron it out and optimize it, I don't see why not. Also, the network part of the engine can be rewritten. Usually for these parts of the game, you implement different methods and strategies so that adding sh** to it is easier (similar to factory in Java, etc.).
I highly doubt everyone will connect to one server like in COH2. I'm pretty sure they will implement something new.

Hope so. I've lost more units to lag than inattention - the lag lasts longer than a grenade fuse.

The ability to match with geographically close players is very high on my wish list.

Lots of us in Australia/Asia have been suffering from 200++ ping since day one. AND I have a shitty ISP.

Also, the few times I've matched with South Americans the lag has been pretty much unplayable.

I just hope that COH3 will take advantage of today's cloud technology.

I'm so jealous whenever I watch streamers with below 50ms getting instant reactions from their units.

Not to take away from Top players who have faster mechanics and better game sense 95% of the time.

I just hope that COH3 will take advantage of today's cloud technology.

I'm so jealous whenever I watch streamers with below 50ms getting instant reactions from their units.

Not to take away from Top players who have faster mechanics and better game sense 95% of the time.

You do realize that "Cloud" is not a magic button to increase latency?
The game will still run either on servers in data centers or on home PCs via P2P. No "Cloud" is going to solve a shitty connection at home. The streamers invest into fast internet and are mostly based in regions with a lot of players.

You do realize that "Cloud" is not a magic button to increase latency?
The game will still run either on servers in data centers or on home PCs via P2P. No "Cloud" is going to solve a shitty connection at home. The streamers invest in fast internet and are mostly based in regions with a lot of players.

Let me just mention my profession in real life. I'm an enterprise L3 network engineer and playing using Hikari Plan which gives me 1-2ms 1gbps SLA speed is about 70-80% which gives me DL/UL speed of about 700-800mbps Japan NTT fiber which is connected/routed and optimized directly
to several giant DataCenter/DNS of AWS, Rakuten, Microsoft, Cisco, Cloudflare and ISP/Cloud providers, etc.

make sense?

Are you familiar with PUBG and how that game lost so many players because of server-side issues?

If COH3 is focused only to cater US-EU players then that's fine. If you are fine with that small competition between TOP players, that's fine.

That's why I asked if COH2 is using peer to peer and guys here clarified that it uses a server for Matchmaking.

When I was young I'm competitive in Starcraft, CS, Dota 1, Dota 2, etc. Every advantage you can take counts like latency, framerate, latency of your hardware peripherals counts if you are competing in a tournament.

So it would be great to grow its player base and make it an e-sport and continue developing and patching it for balances. I just love the game it gives me the most realistic RTS but it has too much RNG to become an e-sport. =D

I just want to play it until I'm in 70-80s lol. But too much delay and RNG can kill you early due to high blood pressure.

Let me just mention my profession in real life. I'm an enterprise L3 network engineer and playing using Hikari Plan which gives me 1-2ms 1gbps SLA speed is about 70-80% which gives me DL/UL speed of about 700-800mbps Japan NTT fiber which is connected/routed and optimized directly
to several giant DataCenter/DNS of AWS, Rakuten, Microsoft, Cisco, Cloudflare and ISP/Cloud providers, etc.

make sense?

Are you familiar with PUBG and how that game lost so many players because of server-side issues?

If COH3 is focused only to cater US-EU players then that's fine. If you are fine with that small competition between TOP players, that's fine.

That's why I asked if COH2 is using peer to peer and guys here clarified that it uses a server for Matchmaking.

When I was young I'm competitive in Starcraft, CS, Dota 1, Dota 2, etc. Every advantage you can take counts like latency, framerate, latency of your hardware peripherals counts if you are competing in a tournament.

So it would be great to grow its player base and make it an e-sport and continue developing and patching it for balances. I just love the game it gives me the most realistic RTS but it has too much RNG to become an e-sport. =D

I just want to play it until I'm in 70-80s lol. But too much delay and RNG can kill you early due to high blood pressure.

None of this changes the fact that "The Cloud" isnt a magical button that fixes latency issues, and that you're not going to be able to get very low pings if you're playing in Japan vs someone in western Europe.

None of this changes the fact that "The Cloud" isn't a magical button that fixes latency issues, and that you're not going to be able to get very low pings if you're playing in Japan vs someone in western Europe.

I wasn't talking about Asia finding match versus Western Europe. I'm merely suggesting that they also have players in Asia. And they should also put servers in ASIA for COH3 and expand their player base in Asia of course there will be some management that will look at the numbers if it's worth putting a server in ASIA.


The latency between continents can be reduced if engineers know how to optimized routes between servers of at least 20-30ms max in RTS that's a huge boost.

I just want to play it until I'm in 70-80s lol. But too much delay and RNG can kill you early due to high blood pressure.

Too late for me bro, my lifespan got cut by 50 years already from playing coh2

None of this changes the fact that "The Cloud" isnt a magical button that fixes latency issues, and that you're not going to be able to get very low pings if you're playing in Japan vs someone in western Europe.

you are taking this way out of the intended context.

Think about this for a sec. Players expect this game to be available long term. Years. So the online system needs to be maintained, so it keeps working. How much does this cost? How does it get implemented without bankrupting Relic/Sega? Who pays for it? how much does it cost?

Originally, this game started out Peer to peer. We all complained a ton, until eventually Relic caved and introduced a dedicated server model.

How many servers are there? Where are they located? I don't think that was ever communicated to us.

We have a drop-down with some regions, but that doesn't tell you the whole story and they are broad regions.

The cost for relic to build 3 data centers around the world for this game is pretty great, don't you think? Who's gonna pay for this stuff?

This is why OP is bringing cloud into the discussion. This is a scenario that the cloud industry is extremely well suited to handle. A company like aws has many data centers all over the world with heavy processing and storing capability. They are secure. They have quick access to internet backbones.

The best part is that anyone can use them for a fraction of what it would cost to build and maintain datacenters solely used by 1 company, such as relic. In addition, a lot of the headache of managing hardware is completely gone, which is a huge expense for a company.

So the way you taunting the OP about cloud not being a magic button is very rude. It is the most sensible option for relic to create the best experience for coh2 and coh3, by leasing resources from a cloud provider which would easily allow relic to have presence around the world for their games.

Why do 2000 players in asia need to establish connections in Europe to game? As you have mentioned in your comments, cloud doesn't change the fact that these people are so far from europe. In this case, cloud is the magic button. Spin up vm of the dedicated server in Asia datacenter and now all these Asians do not need to communicate out of asia to game and their communication trips are now much lower, making a more responsive game experience. Why you feel the need to argue with a network engineer over a subject within his domain of expertise, I don't know, but it's not getting anywhere.


TLDR - stop being rude

Vaz and operator09 know what they're talking about

Cost though: Aws wouldn't be cheap and relic would need some way to bring steady income in to sustain all availability zones. Might be dlc, subs, etc.

I'd be fine with it if it meant localised match making