Battle Servers and Europe

My point is, Europe is not in the middle of nowhere.

I just want the same level of control I had in COH1 when I got matched with other europeans in 1v1's. The latency at the moment is just too high...

doesn't change the fact that australia is pretty much the edge of the world.
You will pretty much always have lags, in any online game, because wherever servers would be, it would be far.

And the coh1 level of control was provided to you by P2P connections, you know, the ones we had before battle servers that were absolutely horrible.

doesn't change the fact that australia is pretty much the edge of the world.
You will pretty much always have lags, in any online game, because wherever servers would be, it would be far.

And the coh1 level of control was provided to you by P2P connections, you know, the ones we had before battle servers that were absolutely horrible.

Yes, you will always have latency in online games. But at the moment, the latency in COH2 for european players is 3 times as high as it is for other RTS games. In SC2 or DOTA the latency to the server is 50 ms. For COH2, as the server is placed in the US, the latency is 140 ms, and it's simply too much.

No doubt p2p gave problems in COH1, but if you did get paired in an 1v1 against an another european, and if the connection was stable, you would have a nice low latency game. That's simply not possible now in COH2, and I really think it's too bad.

Look, the only reason I'm petitioning for this is because I want COH2 to be a viable competitive game for europeans. I get it that for casual play latency doesn't matter as much, but I don't see the reason to take a contrarian position on this.

+1
I agree completely with OP. If you know the feeling of online play with SC2 you know it is possible to have better responsiveness with online gaming. Battleservers are great but I think the connection could be better. (eu player)

When dodging nades your models must be moving instantly when clicking. Now it is not.

+1
I agree completely with OP. If you know the feeling of online play with SC2 you know it is possible to have better responsiveness with online gaming. Battleservers are great but I think the connection could be better. (eu player)

Well, with the kind of money blizzard has they can allow themselves to put cluster servers basically wherever they want as well as cut the huge playerbase in regions.

Everyone says "blizzard this, starcraft that", but remind me of any other RTS game made by another company who was going as smooth as SC or WC3.

When dodging nades your models must be moving instantly when clicking. Now it is not.

Only matter of awareness. If you expect to dodge nades when they are on their way, have fun.
But we have something like nade warnings the moment the animation for them starts to compensate for little latency.

Well, with the kind of money blizzard has they can allow themselves to put cluster servers basically wherever they want as well as cut the huge playerbase in regions.

Everyone says "blizzard this, starcraft that", but remind me of any other RTS game made by another company who was going as smooth as SC or WC3.

Only matter of awareness. If you expect to dodge nades when they are on their way, have fun.
But we have something like nade warnings the moment the animation for them starts to compensate for little latency.

Back in the good old COH1 days, in a game with a stable connection, you could order your models to move as soon as you could see your opponents throw animation start. Now, with the current latency, even if you anticipate the grenade throw because of the animation, your models won't start moving until the grenade is on the ground. It just feels very frustrating.

Please don't hold me at fault for having high hopes and ambitions for Relic. I just love COH, and I'm giving this suggestion as something that would improve competitive play.

Setting up a battle server is a scalable task. Basically they just rent server space from Amazon, which they route game traffic through. It's not something that requires expensive investments. So even if the player base is not as big as in Blizzard games, it is certainly not something that would unfeasible.

Back in the good old COH1 days, in a game with a stable connection, you could order your models to move as soon as you could see your opponents throw animation start. Now, with the current latency, even if you anticipate the grenade throw because of the animation, your models won't start moving until the grenade is on the ground. It just feels very frustrating.

Please don't hold me at fault for having high hopes and ambitions for Relic. I just love COH, and I'm giving this suggestion as something that would improve competitive play.

Setting up a battle server is a scalable task. Basically they just rent server space from Amazon, which they route game traffic through. It's not something that requires expensive investments. So even if the player base is not as big as in Blizzard games, it is certainly not something that would unfeasible.

If I were you, I wouldn't take him serious.

Back in the good old COH1 days, in a game with a stable connection, you could order your models to move as soon as you could see your opponents throw animation start. Now, with the current latency, even if you anticipate the grenade throw because of the animation, your models won't start moving until the grenade is on the ground. It just feels very frustrating.

Please don't hold me at fault for having high hopes and ambitions for Relic. I just love COH, and I'm giving this suggestion as something that would improve competitive play.

Setting up a battle server is a scalable task. Basically they just rent server space from Amazon, which they route game traffic through. It's not something that requires expensive investments. So even if the player base is not as big as in Blizzard games, it is certainly not something that would unfeasible.

Maybe if the expansion boosts player numbers Relic can be convinced to shell out some more cash - then just create an algorithm to determine the best server for any given game -

However, playing with a ping of 140 is just not good. Play any other game COH1, SC2, DOTA2, whatever, and you have perfect response due to low latency.

"Starcraft 2 includes a built-in command buffer that also adds input latency to smooth out and jittering or higher ping players - no amount of tweaking will reduce or alter that."

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=117158

It's at about 120-150ms

CoH1 it all depended who you were playing. Against a Chinese player or west coast north american the game was atrocious. Even some Europeans that had I had bad routing to would be a horrible experience. Although the CoH2 battle servers don't give you offline smoothness it's a lot more consistent and enjoyable than it used to be.

Dota2 has localised servers because the player base can support it, at a peak of about 5k players the CoH2 player base can definitely NOT support localised servers. If the player base grows exponentially then it may be worth investing in localised servers, until then I am quite content with their networking solution.

"Starcraft 2 includes a built-in command buffer that also adds input latency to smooth out and jittering or higher ping players - no amount of tweaking will reduce or alter that."

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=117158

It's at about 120-150ms

This post goes into more detail about the command buffer:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/tech-support/267518-things-about-latency

Basically, you're right that there is a built-in buffer, but it's added on top of your ping to the server. It's reasonable to assume that the same goes for COH2. So the fact that the COH2 server is placed in the US should give significant additional latency for european players. And the latency difference between SC2 and COH2 is very noticeable, so there's that. At least, microing in SC2 simply feels much more responsive.

CoH1 it all depended who you were playing. Against a Chinese player or west coast north american the game was atrocious. Even some Europeans that had I had bad routing to would be a horrible experience. Although the CoH2 battle servers don't give you offline smoothness it's a lot more consistent and enjoyable than it used to be.

Yes, COH1 definitely had more variation, and it was far from good. Again, as I've repeated a bunch of times, the battle servers are an improvement. My point was simply referring to a best case scenario where you played against another local player. In COH1, the best case was simply better than it now. My point is that having a local server in EU would allow the best of both solutions.

Dota2 has localised servers because the player base can support it, at a peak of about 5k players the CoH2 player base can definitely NOT support localised servers. If the player base grows exponentially then it may be worth investing in localised servers, until then I am quite content with their networking solution.

As I stated in my last post, for the battle server Relic simply rents space on an Amazon server. It's a highly scalable problem and it's not something that requires expensive investments. It should be perfectly feasible for a game with a player base like COH2 to have a server in Europe. With the expansion being marketed as a multiplayer only game, I think this is something european players should care about.

My opinion is that it will automatically bring more players when a game becomes better. And this latency improvement is part of it. Especially on a competitive level it is a step forwards.

But who knows this eu battle server is the real solution. Im wondering if 2 people playing that are close to the servers really do have more responsiveness or that this is just a theory.

My opinion is that it will automatically bring more players when a game becomes better. And this latency improvement is part of it. Especially on a competitive level it is a step forwards.

But who knows this eu battle server is the real solution. Im wondering if 2 people playing that are close to the servers really do have more responsiveness or that this is just a theory.

Well I'm up for recording a video demonstrating the problem. I'd like to see someone from the US record a similar video then, to compare the command latency. I could compare the latency to other games such as COH1, DOW2 or SC2. But I'm quite confident that COH2 won't come out favourably.

It's really too bad considering all the other effort Relic spent reducing command latency in the game engine unrelated to server distance, that we still have to put up with it in Europe.

Alright some I did some testing to hopefully alleviate some of the scepticism around here.

I recorded a video of commanding around a squad in CoH2 on the battle servers, where I counted the frames from the command was given until the squad starts moving. I did this at 30 fps.

I did the same for Starcraft 2 with a marine.

In COH2, it takes 17 frames from the command is given until the squad moves. This gives a command latency of 17/30*1000 = 567 ms.

In SC2, it takes 9 frames from the command is given until the marine moves. This gives a command latency of 300 ms.

The result is that the command latency in COH2 is almost DOUBLE of what it is in SC2. That's a pretty amazing result. In an appalling way. I would say every european player should be up in arms about this, at least those who play at a competitive level.

In COH2, it takes 17 frames from the command is given until the squad moves. This gives a command latency of 17/30*1000 = 567 ms.

How much more responsive is it in an offline environment then?

out of curiosity where in Europe do you live and how many hops does it take for you to get to the battle servers when you perform a trace route.

I also live in Europe (United Kingdom) and personally I do not experience anywhere near 600ms of input latency.

How much more responsive is it in an offline environment then?

I'll test that as well, I'll also try out COH1 offline/online

out of curiosity where in Europe do you live and how many hops does it take for you to get to the battle servers when you perform a trace route.

I also live in Europe (United Kingdom) and personally I do not experience anywhere near 600ms of input latency.

Here's my trace route: (I'm from Denmark by the way)

traceroute to 54.209.64.161 (54.209.64.161), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 2.978 ms 0.891 ms 0.794 ms
2 89.150.184.1 (89.150.184.1) 21.128 ms 24.553 ms 22.362 ms
3 te1-1-0.mr1.fb.dk.ip.fullrate.dk (90.185.4.138) 20.422 ms 19.793 ms 21.837 ms
4 xe-3-0-0-0.boanqp7.dk.ip.tdc.net (195.215.109.229) 20.846 ms
xe-7-3-0-0.boanqp7.dk.ip.tdc.net (188.180.68.81) 20.433 ms
xe-3-0-0-0.boanqp7.dk.ip.tdc.net (195.215.109.229) 20.133 ms
5 as0-0.ashbnqp1.us.ip.tdc.net (83.88.31.141) 135.807 ms 136.418 ms 134.936 ms
6 * * *
7 205.251.245.5 (205.251.245.5) 141.979 ms 184.620 ms 139.315 ms
8 205.251.245.123 (205.251.245.123) 137.551 ms 136.632 ms 137.511 ms

As I said earlier, the latency is around 140 ms. This translates into something different in-game though, as seen from the results.

I am pretty sure if you were to record a movie and do the same analysis you would end up with a similar result.

Im from europe and there is around half a second lag for me in every game.. its not ideal but its okay in a game like coh.. its enough to dodge grenades which before battleservers I couldnt even dodge a satchel charge even if i moved when i saw the animation.

Im all for a europe server but i rather see them fixing animation bugs instead.

You should do the same test on coh1 btw, I'm pretty sure the latency there is a lot less.

Battle Servers have really smoothed the online experience in my humble opinion. Games are no longer unplayable because a player has a poor PC that can't run the game above 40 fps and I get around 120 ping from Paris which is acceptable for CoH 2. I don't feel like I'm playing handicapped.

SC2 has better latency because Blizzard has servers everywhere and the game engine itself is very simple and has an easier time with the netcode, the animations on SC2 are horrible it's all about reaction time, the animations in CoH 2 are top notch and thus add extra latency. It's like Comparing CoD and Battlefield netcodes, one is much more complex than the other.

However I'm all for Relic creating an European server cluster! Set it up in Luxembourg, Relic won't have to pay taxes, the country has good network infrastructure, and it's a pretty centralized location for Europe (I get 30-40 ping), Dota 2 and Netflix servers are already there.

If Relics vows to establish European Battle Servers on the condition of increased sales, I will buy every single bit of DLC and the expansion, that's about 150 euros! That would be a great marketing ploy now wouldn't it?

Cheers.

Wow, I actually just made a pretty interesting discovery.

I connected to korean SC2 server, to test out the command latency. Before I did it, I did a trace route to the korean server--I have a ping of around 250-280.

HOWEVER, my command lag was only 400 ms!

Recall that I had a command latency of nearly 600 ms in COH2 even though my ping was only 140 ms.

This leads me to believe that it's actually the COH2 net code that introduces the latency. This means that even american players should be affected by this!

Could someone from the US try and record a 30 fps video of issuing a command to a squad? That would be very informative.

I also tested single player, and the command latency was non-existing. So it's something in the net code that needs to be improved.