Infinite Warfare Lag: The Secret Weapon To Improving Your Gameplay
Call of Duty has released new games consistently for years, but some of those games have been more memorable than others.
While Infinite Warfare has had its share of controversy and criticism, it still maintains a strong and dedicated player base who prefer its gameplay to newer entries in the Call of Duty series.
If you’re like us and still enjoying Infinite Warfare, or if you’re looking for help with another Call of Duty or action shooter game, this guide is for you.
Today, we’re talking about the common enemy we all face: lag. As gamers, we know how frustrating it is, but we don’t always know how to combat it! One of the worst parts about lag is how much it can make you feel like you have no control to fix it.
At WTFast, we say enough is enough. Find your secret weapon and finish the fight for good. Today, we’ll introduce you to WTFast’s GPN technology, a twist on VPN tech that will make your online gaming experience infinitely (pun intended) better.
How To Diagnose Your Issue
While our GPN is equipped to optimize your online gaming with just the push of a button, it’s still helpful to become familiar with the types of lag you may be experiencing and why.
Types of Lag: Rubberbanding, Stutter, Packet Loss, and Microstutter
The most extreme and well-known form of lag is rubberbanding. If you’ve never seen it, you can probably guess what it looks like based on the name. Rubberbanding causes your character, or some other game actor, to bounce back and forth between two points. This strange, sometimes-hilarious lag is the easiest to detect but the most detrimental.
For obvious reasons, rubberbanding renders a match more or less unplayable. If you can’t reliably move, you can’t avoid danger or stage an effective offensive push. Consistent rubberbanding can end a game session, while random and spontaneous rubberbanding can feel even worse, turning a potential win into a loss that you could have avoided.
Things become less extreme but still problematic when talking about stutter and packet loss. As two sides of the same coin, these types of lag typically manifest as visual, audio, or input delays. These delays leave your game out of sync and potentially force errors you wouldn’t have made otherwise.
Stutter can occur thanks to your hardware or your network, while packet loss deals only with data traveling to or from an online server. That means if you’re exclusively playing offline campaigns, packet loss won’t affect you.
Lastly, microstutter deserves a mention. It’s much more subtle but can disrupt your visuals. This can detract from the experience, even if you don’t notice at first. Microstutter is a sporadic minor drop in your FPS, but it’s an annoying one.
Causes of Lag and Common Solutions
You may have noticed we’ve mentioned that some lag comes from your hardware, while other kinds come from your network. The origin of your lag is where troubleshooting begins.
Hardware
You won’t always need to check your hardware, but the occasional peak around is good practice to combat frequent lag.
Step one is to ensure your device and drivers are up to spec and up to date. Compare your systems capabilities to the requirements and recommendations for any game you play. If there’s a backwards discrepancy (meaning your device is below the standard), you’ll almost certainly experience lag.
Infinite Warfare’s minimum requirements are just that, a minimum. Running max settings on your graphics that greatly exceed these minimums will likely bring lag as well, potentially making the game unplayable. You may need to update your graphics driver to keep up.
Lastly, each time you launch the game, close other apps before doing so. Your device does limit what it can do. Even if you aren’t actively using an app, it may be taking up valuable space in the background.
You can still use Discord or other voice chat apps, although switching your voice chat to a mobile device is an option if you need to free up some extra RAM.
If you’re experiencing lag in any single-player, offline modes, these steps should comprise your troubleshooting process. If lag persists, it may be time to do a deeper evaluation of your system and look for other problems.
Network
Your network connection is most likely responsible for any lag you face in online play.
If you’re using a wireless connection, ditch it if possible. Wired connections have shown to be vastly more stable and speedy in almost all cases.
You need a connection with low ping (the time it takes data to travel from your device to the game server) that doesn’t have random, unpredictable lag spikes or disconnections.
Another common cause of lag is insufficient bandwidth. The solution isn’t necessarily to shell out for increased bandwidth. This may not solve the problem since bandwidth issues stem from how much activity is going on around your network.
If you’ve got a half dozen devices downloading, streaming, web browsing, video calling, and everything in-between, your bandwidth will be too clogged up to run anything smoothly. Adding bandwidth may just encourage more activity and leave you with the same problem.
How Can I Improve My Gaming Network Connection?
A GPN, or Gamer’s Private Network, is a specially designed system similar to a VPN — in some ways. It can help optimize your network connection for an improved gaming experience.
Like a VPN, a GPN simulates a direct connection between a private and public network. There are some key differences that set the two apart. These differences make VPNs suboptimal for gaming and GPNs the perfect option.
How a GPN Is Different From a VPN
VPNs often host a large amount of traffic. This traffic, just like a busy interstate for a car, will slow your data down.
For low ping and smooth gameplay, your data needs to ride without traffic on the fastest route possible. That’s where WTFast’s traceroute technology comes in. We find the optimal route for you and send your data on its merry way.
Unless you want greater control, we take care of the behind-the-scenes work. Not only do we find a fast path for your data, but we also filter it to send only the most important game session data. In other words, no extra nonsense will slow down your gameplay.
With our GPN, your connection won’t just be faster; it will be smoother, too. Reduced spikes, flux, and disconnects mean reduced losses or fewer wasted matches.
Nothing’s worse than reaching the high rounds in a match of zombies only to disconnect or die because of lag. Likewise, avoidable losses in online matches can ruin your fun and your win rate. With a stable, speedy connection, you can finally leave these things behind.
Lastly, there’s the matter of privacy and security. A primary draw of most VPNs is the privacy offered as your activity is masked. Unfortunately, VPNs are commonly used to enable hacking, fraud, or botting. Some games or game distributors may ban your account if you connect with a VPN.
That’s why GPNs don’t mask your IP address or change your network settings. To the server, you’re just another normal connection, but to you, it’s the fastest and smoothest you’ve ever tried.
Wrapping Up
Never thought it would be this easy? Well, it is! Get your secret weapon today by signing up for our WTFast GPN. Lag-free gaming is right at your fingertips.
Sources:
What is Packet Loss? | Techopedia
Wired vs Wireless Networking | IT Best Practices | University of Nebraska-Lincoln
