How to Solve Latency Problems in Online Gaming
The competitive gaming and esports scene is growing at a rapid pace. Millions of players are starting to play more competitively and this has generated many high skilled players that play at the professional level in esports events.
If you are a competitive gamer, you know how it feels to "clutch" around or win the match because of your insane aiming skill. However, you also know how it feels when you are a skillful player but missed that headshot because you experienced a random jitter or stutter while you were about to take the shot. If you are familiar with the online gaming scene you already know this jittering or stuttering is called lag, and the most common source of it is high latency.
What is Latency?
Latency might be a new term for gamers new to competitive online gaming or gaming in general. In technical terms, latency is the time it takes for one packet of data to go from point A to point B then back to point A, where point A is your computer and point B is the game server.
Latency will always exist because as data moves from one part of this world to another, it is covering some distance, and the speed of that transfer can be only so fast. This transfer of data can never be instantaneous because that would mean that the speed of transfer is infinity.
What Are Latency Problems For Gaming
If latency is bound to exist and can’t be avoided, what seems to be all the fuss about? Why do people hate latency so much and how does it affect gaming? The thing is, latency itself is not a huge problem, the problem occurs when the latency is either too high or unstable. A latency that is stable and low enough is not even noticeable while playing games but when this delay becomes too high, or very unstable, you can either vary easily notice it in-game or you can feel your in-game performance degrading.
Here are some of the problems that gamers have to face because of bad latency.
Peeker’s Advantage
When you are playing a competitive online video game and an enemy decides to peek out from a corner that you are watching, this information of the enemy peeking your corner must reach your computer screen as soon as possible. If there is a large delay for this information to reach your screen, you will experience peeker's advantage. In other words, the enemy will peak your corner and shoot you on his screen and you won't even see him come out and die.
You didn't even see the enemy peek because the information didn't reach your computer in time and before the information could reach your computer the enemy already saw you and shot you. This happens because of high latency.
Hit Registration
High latency does not only cause the information of the enemy to reach your computer to take longer, but it also causes your information to reach longer to the game server. Sometimes you may have experienced this when you just shot an enemy to the head, and right after he got it on your screen he moved and, it took a second or two for him to die, or instead of dying he aimed at you and shot you instead. This happened because the information of you shooting the enemy took longer to reach the game server and between this time delay you are vulnerable to any incoming shots from enemies that have better ping than you.
In some cases, you might fire a complete mag at the enemy and, they still manage to turn around and shot you in the head. This is a severe case of high ping and is most commonly referred to as "Hit Reg" or a hit registration issue.
Rubber-banding and Stuttering
When your latency is usually low and randomly starts spiking to a high value of let's say 500ms, this is called ping spike. Ping spike or latency spike can call many issues that would make a game unplayable. Some of the most common issues are rubber banding and stuttering.
How to Lower Latency and Latency Spikes
To avoid all the problems related to latency, you need to either lower your latency or you need to make your latency stable. Some of the things that you can do to make your latency more stable and lower it are described below:
Close Background Applications and Updates: Applications and software that you are not using may use some of the bandwidth and cause high or unstable latency. An example of such software is your web browser. You must close all such software. Also, disable Windows from automatically updating while you are playing a game.
Switch to a Better Internet Connection: The internet connection you are using might be the culprit and you might see an improvement in your latency after switching to a new service provider or upgrading your package to higher bandwidth.
Get a Gaming Router: If you can't switch to a wired connection, you should consider investing in a gaming router. Routers designed for gaming are generally very good at keeping your latency low and stable.
Limit Connections: The more the users are connected to your internet connection, the more the chances of them taking up most of the bandwidth and causing your ping to spike.
Switch To Wired Connection: Wireless connections are not as stable and interruption-free as wired connections. Switching to a wired connection from your router to your computer will lower your ping and make it more stable.
WTFast - Low Latency For All
If there was a feature in your computer where you could get the lowest possible ping and, the most stable ping with just one click, wouldn't that be great? Well, WTFast is exactly that. Troubleshooting the source of high and unstable ping can be time-consuming and most of the solutions don't always work. WTFast is a Gamer's Private Network (GPN) that re-routes your internet connection to the most stable one to achieve the lowest latency possible.
