Joining games on a stable 300 ping for literally no reason

Since I have moved to university, I have began to have a new issue with Overwatch that I have not had before. It doesn’t do this with any other game, and my typical ping is/should be around 30-40ms, so it isn’t a poor connection issue either.

Sometimes when I load into a game, I will be shot all the way up to a steady 300ms that does not move below 300 or above 304. However, it isn’t at all consistent, it feels like it is RnG based at this point despite that literally not being possible. I know this because when this isn’t happening, I will be back to my usual 30ms, and I have no issues whatsoever. This is confirmed by the fact that when I have 300 ping, leaving and re-joining the game has the possibility to bring me back to 300ms, but it doesn’t always do this. I have been suspended from competitive before for leaving and re-joining too many times due to just wanting to play on my normal ping, and seeing as its not my fault (or at least I don’t think it is), it isn’t really fair.

I have tried deleting and redownloading the game, but that has not done anything thus far. I am assuming it has something to do with the change of Wi-Fi provider and general internet connection that has occurred with moving out to University, but I don’t know enough about computers and internet connections to be certain. I have just tried updating my drivers, and if that works, I’ll remove the post, but if the post stays up, it’s safe to assume it didn’t work.

If anyone knows literally anything at all, please let me know! It is insanely painful being either locked on 300ms or being suspended as a result of wanting to play on my own ping. I appreciate literally any advice anyone has!! Thank you!!

A lot of universities throttle gaming traffic, especially higher tick rate games. You may want to speak with the university’s network admin about Overwatch specifically.

I mean that makes sense, but I live in student halls 15 minutes away from the University, I should hope that they don’t have control over my Wi-Fi provider because my accommodation is provided by a different company.

Hard to say since I don’t know your specific situation, but it’s probably the same network. Here in the US, most networks aren’t allowed to operate so close to each other, especially near a college.

Let me try and reword things , sorry for the confusion.

Essentially, I moved house and started having this issue out of the blue, and my ms on other games is completely fine, I just don’t know what would cause it to sometimes feel like I am connected to an Oceania server when I’m connected to a UK based server. If it was constantly 300ms, I would blame the provider solely, but its only on some instances, and others its completely fine.

I feel like this is an unheard of issue, because I’ve looked everywhere and I haven’t seen anyone else reporting an issue like this anywhere, so if you don’t have a fix, it’s okay, thank you for your time anyway!!

It could just be occasional packet loss on the ISP that is different from the one you have at home. Do you see the orange icons popping up on the top left of the screen?

No, there aren’t any symbols that indicate that I’m having any connection issues. The only ways I can tell are when I notice input/hit registration delay or when I join a game, I connect on 200ms and quickly work my way up to 300ms during hero selection.

If you open the netgraph in the game, what is the server code?

It should be 3 letters before the long string of numbers.

if its the letters in the square brackets, then its [ams1] and that is when I am currently sat in the training arena with my normal ping. Next time my ping is at 300ms, I will bring the netgraph up again and see if it has altered from [ams1].

You’ll want to skip using the training range to test your ping because those servers are deprioritized and don’t have a lot of players at a time.

I am in a game right now with 300 ping and the code is still [ams1]

Okay, run a few connection tests (like WinMTR or PingPlotter) to the Google Datacenter in Amsterdam. It’s not cleared for me to post IPs for these servers myself, but they’re easy to Google.

On PingPlotter to the Google Datacenter in Amsterdam, I am getting an average latency of 24ms, and on just the google internet speed test I am getting a latency of 18ms.

Do you have that data to share?

I can give any information I need to in order to try and get this fixed

Ok… I’m asking for the connection test data.

On pingplotter, my average ping is 23.7, my average minimum is 23.0 and my average current is 23.5.

Not sure if you’re trolling me, but that’s not what I’m asking at all. I’m asking for the entire test, not a couple of quick data points — those mean nothing without the rest of the context.

i honestly dont know how to give you the entire test, thats why i havent. please tell me how to do so, so i can give it to you

Take a screenshot, upload to Imgur, share the link.

If you don’t have link access in the forum, highlight, then click </> on post editor.