Slow Internet Connections and You
It’s funny isn’t it? How slow internet speeds can really piss you off. Should your internet connection suddenly disappear (generally because of power cuts or whatever), you get a little angry about it, but then you calm down and move on. There is nothing you can do, so you get over your losses and move on. But slow internet connections? They are one of the most rage-inducing things in existence, alongside things like stubbing your toe and stepping on LEGO pieces. The opportunity to get things done, to watch your video or view a gif of a kitten falling over are stolen away from you by a shoddy connection.
Shoddy connections are the bane of every internet user in existence. Sure, most of us are passed the days of dial up and your connection literally being screeched down the phone line, but few people have the luxury of consistent internet speeds.
Loading gifs and Youtube videos are one thing, but video games are another. Living or dying can depend on how quickly your computer sends and receives data from both other players and game servers. A hiccup can be the death of you. A hint of lag could determine whether that bullet penetrates your skull or not. A hint of lag could also determine whether your bullet penetrates the skull of an enemy player.
In Team Fortress 2, lag is the worst thing ever. Mainly when it comes to melee. TF2’s hit detection is already fucking awful, so throw in a wonky connection to a server and some high ping and you’re already asking for a bad time. On top of melee having nigh infinite range at times, the much higher base chance of crits and minicrits can really jarate on your parade. Spies, a collection of normally harmless players in Valve servers, become hectic living nightmares with as much range and instant killing power as a professional sniper. Because the server tends to favor the attacker, it seems that there’s no escape should your ping go over 200.
I am thankful that these days I can find servers with less than 150 ping, because for a long time, that simply wasn’t the case.
Warframe luckily doesn’t have it too bad. Rather than having central servers, missions are hosted using peer to peer. Basically, the player who starts the mission hosts the mission, and everyone else connects to that player. You are connected to an official server as well, that monitors rewards and things like that, but your mission’s status is at the mercy of whichever player is hosting.
On the plus side, this is great because the game tries to get everyone to connect to the person with the best connection. But if the host has shitty internet? Well… Things get weird.
First thing you’ll notice is that doors don’t open. Sometimes they never open. Luckily, activating Operator Mode will often fix this as it forces the game to re-evaluate where you are. You may also notice that loot takes forever to be picked up, and, in the strangest of cases, enemies stop seeing you, enabling you to get stealth kills. Using abilities and transitioning also becomes difficult too.
Other games become scary when you lag. Counter-Strike turns from a stressful gun game to hell on earth, with every bullet having your name on it.
Funnily enough, Minecraft also gets pretty scary. Not because of other players or anything, but because of moving blocks. When Minecraft lags, the game stops updating properly, meaning those blocks you just dug out might suddenly reappear, suffocating you to death. Creepers can also pop out of nowhere and skeleton arrows could come from anywhere.
So yeah, lag sucks.
Especially when your favourite SPUF-y website seems to not be loading properly. Or maybe I did that intentionally to piss you all off.
Happy April Fools’ Day, everyone.
And happy birthday to me! ^^