Did you check the MSInfo for the errors I was asking about? I feel there are unexplored hardware reasons this could be happening.
I’m not sure this will do much good. As I mentioned earlier, the only spikes we saw in the tests were on nodes late in the route to the server. Those are outside your home and likely even your city.
If you figure this out, I’m interested in what’s causing the issue for you. However, I can only advise on hardware reports and the connection tests you’ve already done. The delays can be explained by a hardware issue, too.
The Spectrum technician was not helpful.
Nothing in MSInfo looks relevant. There are no performance issue with my PC.
For example, very rarely I get windows of time, maybe 30 seconds, where everything plays correctly and my ping drops 5ms and the orange icons disappear, and then they return and game performs terribly.
For years, I could play Overwatch at my house on 22-24ms and now it’s 26-32ms+ garbage. Every QP/DM server is 5ms+ higher than it was in 2019.
The in-game network monitor and ping tests show no packet loss. It’s just insane jitter. The jitter causes huge interpolation spikes which explains why everything warps around. Every few seconds my PNG is 2-3x the typical value.
I’ve tested a completely different machine on another Spectrum account from 3 miles from my location and it suffers from the same problems. There is an absurd about of jitter going through Spectrum to Overwatch.
No one at Spectrum seems to be able to help resolve my issue. Every phone person I spoken with, no matter how many people I go through, has been outrageously incompetent.
I have no choice of internet provider at my location. Spectrum is the only option.
Here are some plots of pings over time:
https://i.imgur.com/iScecKd.png
https://i.imgur.com/HGbKy4b.png
https://i.imgur.com/sdfCIra.png
This is with no network activity on my connection, just Overwatch.
2 Likes
Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s much else that I can help you with. It sounds like Spectrum changed their route and is having tiny intermittent problems you’re noticing specifically in Overwatch. Connection troubleshooting isn’t covered by their user terms, but they do it as a courtesy. Sometimes it means they aren’t going to be able to solve everything that comes up.
I love this reply. Here I can translate: “We know Overwatch has gotten worse since we released this global server Crossplay update but there’s absolutely n o t h i n g we can do. Get rekt and thanks for playing.”
I don’t work for Blizzard, but connection troubleshooting has always just been something they do as a courtesy. They don’t control the internet, only their game client and their own servers.
I have no idea why on earth you would be doing this without being employed or paid by Blizzard, but if that’s your choice whatever…
That being said even if they don’t “control” the whole internet, it’s very strange that a lot of latency issues seem to happen when they sneak this global server change in the crossplay update. Was there a point of doing this if they couldn’t actually pull it off? Are queue times for higher ranks any better if they have someone who is lagged on their team?
I’m literally connected to the same server I’ve always have been and my MS ping has tripled since the crossplay update came out. I love when they throw gasoline onto the trashfire that is this game. Really helps put out he flames…
Any change, large or small, is consistently blamed for any connection troubles that occur around the same time. Raffy is experiencing a unique issue, and I’ve provided all the help I can across a forum to resolve it.
I’m in the opposite situation. My ping has decreased recently, but I don’t think it has anything to do with Blizzard. The servers are still located in the same places you’ve always connected to. Console players were already using the same servers, you just couldn’t see them in your games because it’s another platform.
I don’t understand the poster above or why they’ve co-opted my thread.
I was able to get my IP address changed and it did not fix the issue.
However, I have been taking notes on which servers I’ve been joining. I’ve found a few DM servers where my ping is 8ms LESS than the typical server, which gives credence to the idea that this is the result of horrible routing.
Unfortunately, I can’t tell the IP address of the server because the Quick Play floater blocks the address:
https://i.imgur.com/5zRhBPZ.png
24.105.14.247?
There are only the LAX and ORD locations for North America. Each has an IP range assigned to them, but the range is only an internal location and won’t have bearing on the route itself.
| Region |
IP Address |
| US West aka LAX |
137.221.105.2 |
| US Central aka ORD |
24.105.62.129 |
I am aware of those locations but it doesn’t match my experience where once in a blue moon, I’ll be at 22ms for the entire game and then resort back to 27-32ms jitter city when I leave the game.
I’m about to get a DSL line installed to try a different connection. Is there a way I can tell Battle.net or Overwatch (via command line args) to bind to a specific NIC on Windows 10?
Not to my knowledge, I think you could disable the one easily in Network settings and move to the other for testing.
Hm. Is it that maybe opening up cross platform doubled the traffic of these already existing servers that we’ve been playing on? In other words, were some of the IP addresses from consoles re-routed to another server, increasing it’s traffic, when cross-plat opened up?
I once had really bad lattency issues and ended up resetting the modem and router and it fixed it.
They were already playing on the same servers, just different queue pools due to the platform difference.
Same here, my latency has tripled which has not happened in any other game, service, or connectivity test. The issue is simply at Blizzard’s side. This, of course, will never get acknowledged as they’d rather have you gruel through all the inane rituals to “fix” your connection rather than admit difficulties on their side as we’ve seen in the issues past. Don’t really care about it anymore though, I’d just like to know when will this get resolved.
1 Like
Hey all,
Let’s let Raffy have their own thread, please. This is an old issue for them and is exceedingly uncommon, primarily due to the fact that their connection is at a ridiculously low latency. I would wager that any issues you’re having are completely unrelated to the OP’s problem.
Raffy,
The reason we haven’t been able to identify much else here is that there really isn’t much of anything wrong with your connection itself. The behavior you’re running into honestly feels like your connection is so far ahead that things like prediction are behaving strangely for you, and what you see is not what you get. I watched your video several times but unfortunately because what happened here was right next to a pillar, I can’t be sure if the issue was just that they decided to move around you and because you didn’t kill them, they were able to hide out of your vision. If you could post a couple more clips of the behavior when you have jitter issues it may help, but you may be right that this is an artifact of some different design choices the dev team has made regarding things like hit detection. Synopsis on the netcode system is here. I’d wager you’ve seen this already, but on the off chance you haven’t, it may be somewhat enlightening and may help you understand why things like fast moving characters or those using abilities that are considered mitigation may be performing oddly on your end.
To be completely transparent, I cannot guarantee that we can find the problem for you because noregs like this are pretty uncommon and usually end up being something that needs to go into Bug Report , but if you want to send a few more video clips of odd periods of behavior, point out the places where the behavior is odd in each clip, and reply back, I’m happy to at least check them out.
Finally, sorry for missing your reply previously. As Nicole mentioned, I didn’t catch your update. Glad you started the thread back up.
1 Like
I installed Overwatch on a gaming laptop to confirm that the issue is not with my PC or network setup. It showed the same problem.
I got a 6mbit DSL line setup today and my latency has returned to the expected ~20ms latency (actually 1-2ms better) that my Spectrum cable used to supply pre-COVID. Zero orange icons during normal gameplay. Flat netgraphs.
I guess Spectrum has just over-subscribed the cable supplied to my neighborhood or they’re using some kind of QoS that causes lots of jitter.
@Drakuloth – Thanks for the interest in my issue.
When my Spectrum connection is goofy (ping is 27-32ms instead of 22ms), I see the following:
1.) orange icons (sometimes both) are up almost constantly, but flicker on and off. The packet loss icon appears even though netgraph shows flat line with 0%.
2.) IND (interpolation delay) frequently jumps quickly from 20 to 21ms then back again.
3.) very frequent vertical spikes in LAT (not hearing from server?)
What I experience in game is:
1.) warping of players, stutter steps, moving much faster than normal.
2.) position corrections when damage is applied, like shatter or death events causing the position of the unit to adjust a few feet.
3.) shooting at near death characters, that 100% no-reg, but then show the death animation
4.) getting stuck on map geometry or inside other units (walking on their head, inside their body, etc.)
5.) complete inability to dodge AoE ults like Doomfist, with huge differences between my death and replay animations.
6.) events with no audio
I just need to look for a good solution for the routing. At the moment, I’m just toggling between two NICs on my PC, but I’d like to either have Overwatch (for Win 10) bind to a specific NIC (possibly there exists a command-line argument?) and/or use a single NIC but route the OW servers (eg. 24.105.*/16) through a 2nd WAN interface on my router.
Can confirm Spectrum is not great in my location either.
Glad your connection is better!
1 Like
I actually don’t think it’s any better now that I’m playing in the evening. Servers that were 18-20ms are now 27ms+ and the orange icons are back.
Is there a reason why these Blizz servers are periodically spiking when responding to ICMP?
Blizz1: https://i.imgur.com/U7gBhnT.png
Blizz2: https://i.imgur.com/3BZBwVP.png
vs
Cloudflare: https://i.imgur.com/hWtsucm.png
My DSL => My Cable: https://i.imgur.com/cBvYdoM.png
Just wanted to poke a note for clarity here. I also witnessed substantially poor net stats in game tonight as well, constant orange icons, Ind fluctuations, double my usual ping, etc.
Was it just tonight that your network troubles proved unresolved, or were there other nights in this last week or so while playing in the evenings too?