What is considered 'bad ping'?

[Jngrbrdman]

I don't really know much about ping. How do you check your own and what is good, ok, and poor?

[Guest Krayt Tion]

It depends which game you are playing when checking your ping. By default many games allow you to check scores and ping at the same time by pressing TAB. Others use Tilde (~) or F1.

 

Jedi Knight used Tilde (~), Quake 3 used TAB and Elite Force by Raven used TAB as well. The good news is that you can set whatever key you wish to display pings and scores when you configure your controls.

 

Also, this thread is being moved to our off-topic forum here as this forum is only used for dicussion of JK2.

[Guest Krayt Tion]

I nearly forgot, what is a good ping for some is terrible for others, it usually depends on what people are used to.

 

For example, I used to have access to an OC3 connection and always got sub 20 pings, sometimes just under 10. It doesn't get much better than this unless you are playing on a LAN, I experienced no detectable lag at all. I lived on the East Coast and was invited to play on a server in Cali which gave me a 90-150 ping. At first I thought that ping was terrible and I refused to play there. I got used to it.

 

Now, if you'd ask me, I'd tell you a 90-150 ping is easily playable and I don't mind it at all. As someone who has FPS gamed on a 28.8, 56K, Cable, DSL, and OC3 I've experienced a wide range of pings. The truth is that most people just adapt to what they're given, but if you have a choice in the matter I'd say attempt to get a connection that gives you a 'good ping' of anything consistently under 150.

 

Also, once you go broadband it's hard to go back; for me, nearly impossible. I won't play any FPSes on a non- cable or dsl dialup modem.

 

[ September 24, 2001: Message edited by: Krayt Tion ]

[GonkH8er]

well for the past few years my gaming has been on a crappy 33.6. i consider 230 a good ping for me, and in jediknight ill play people with up to 600, but usually no more than that. i usually get about 350-500 to people on the zone...... but on CS ive been getting 200 to the server, and im fine with that. wwhile other people would be going 'damn a ping of 200...... whats with the lag?'... for the moment im happy with it.

 

i need to get cable

[OnlyOneCanoli]

As a lifelong 56k user, I'd say anything in the 200's is sweet. But I can guarantee you though that my scores could go up significantly if my ping was cut in half. I've proved this time and time again on friends' broadband connections, even with alien keyboard configs and mouse setups.

 

However, MSN lately has been having some server problems it seems. My ping has gone from 225-275 up to 350-600. And that is simply unplayable for me, although I can get a few frags in there.

 

So it really varies from user to user and taking their system setup and connection into account. But I generally think that if you have a sub 250 ping, you shouldn't be complaining.

 

edit: Damn, I need to learn how to spell.

 

[ September 24, 2001: Message edited by: OnlyOneCanoli ]

[Guest Kurgan]

Yeah, when I was playing JK/MotS on the 'net on DSL, 100-200 was "good" ping. "Bad" ping was anything over 500.. which started to get unplayable around the 600+ mark. I've met a few people with pings over 9,000. Needless to say I didn't play long.. heh

 

In client/server type games I try for pings as close to zero as possible. Usually under 100 is good. 250 in a game like Quake3 or UT is pretty bad.

 

In Rune and RuneHOV the pings generally start at 100, so good games are below 500, more like JK. I've seen some 10,000 pings there too.... yech

 

In a game like JK, some people talk about lag having "advantages" but I think in reality this has more to do with prediction. People who are used to playing at very high pings will have the timing down, so they may do better against people who use high speed connections or LAN play and are used to virtually lag-free games. But most people can adapt fairly quickly.

 

The laggier the game gets, the more the game becomes less realistic (people don't get hit, you can't move as well, things don't operate correctly, etc) so for me it becomes less fun, and I tend to avoid the laggier games.

 

Kurgan

 

[ September 24, 2001: Message edited by: Kurgan ]