I found a way to stop dropping/desyncing with success

General Discussion
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Alright guys, after dropping 20 games from lag/desync 100% of the times vs Euro players, I’ve finally figured out what it was. I had to go through one setting at a time and test it over several games but I finally figured out how to stop dropping and Desyncing while on either Reforged or classic. It also makes sense why different groups of people drop while others don’t! We all know that WC 3 is an old game and it’s patent and engine has always been modified to try and keep up to date with the servers. We also know that when graphics, configurations and sometimes latency mis-align, it causes a drop. I finally figured out what was causing me the problem, and I no longer desync or drop when I vs. European players. However, the 500 ping lag is still there. So what I’ve basically done is stop the drop and get to see the game out where if I didn’t drop, but with 500 ping. However, I believe the ping issues is related to either DDOS or curfew ISPs at this stage though when vsing Europeans.

To fix the problem, it’s located in NVDIA control panel. It’s under Antaliasing - FXAA. If it’s on, then make sure you turn it off and that it’s off while making sure WC 3 Reforged’s own Antialising is on. I haven’t tried it the other way around and used the FXAA settings from Nvdia with the Reforged off, but at this stage I’m just happy I’m not dropping against European players. If you read the text under the Nvdia Antaliasing, it pretty much says how it works in conjuction with other Antialising. So you got the Reforged Antialising going on while the Nvdia’s antiliasing is going on at the same time. Basically it’s saying those 2 will try to work together, but it’s open for small misalignments which leads to drops/desyncs, and it only seems to apply for WC 3 since it’s an old engine that doesn’t like newer 3rd party configurations or augments.

IF it is one of the problems, some ways Blizzard could fix it is to block off any settings that Nvdia does with Antiliasing or vice-versa, or fix the bridges between those 2 antialising. In theory, you’d only need one of them on, but there’s alot of people out there that will continue playing without knowing it. Perhaps they can talk to a Nvdia director and ask them what they can add or not add to their configurations when it comes to Reforged etc.

If there are any settings that’s cross-setting with WC 3, it’s best to turn it off and isolate the configuration to WC 3 and test it from there. Whether it’s AMD or Ryzen, they should have descriptions how it mentions that it will work along side configuration etc. Or if it’s got Vsync while Reforged has Vsync on it’s own, turn it off. WC 3 is a special case where it seems to work best without other configurations outside of its patents. If it happens to be the source and you’re confident you won’t drop, then turn off the WC reforged settings and try with your Nvdia panel by itself.

Hopefully this will help players that are mysteriously desyncing alot. Again, I’m not a fan of placebo and I could be the only guy in the world that’s affected by this and get to play against Europeans with my settings, but if this could help alot of people or find a cure for cancer, then I’d share it. On an even brighter news, WC 3 Reforged seems so much responsive that I can micro my heroes and Necros and units at the same time and efficiently!

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nVidia and AMD control panels are know as some of the most buggy controls out there.
They are a constant source of FPS drops so I wouldn’t be surprised if one of their options also cause desync.

What I am surprised is that people haven’t turned it off entirely from the get go or put them to minimal settings (if off is not an option) in the Nvidia Control Panel.

Games handle all these settings themselves, then you have Nvidia/AMD put another layer of these settings on top/below (who knows which program goes first). It’s just a recipe for conflicts galore.

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Yep I agree. For example, Last year I was playing Heroes of the Storm with Gsync on and I had Nvdia Vsync off as well as the HOTS ingame Vsync off (and maybe Nvidia’s antialising off without knowing it). I went on a winning spree at that point and made it to Plat easy. Infact I was close to making my win/loss statistics all green because of the wins. For some reason though, Windows update resetted my Ndvidia control panels and I forgot that little thing where you had to turn off Vsync, but I had Gsync and Vsync both on because I thought that’s how I remembered it, and obviously thought at that time that it was the best settings for it. That’s when I started losing, and couldn’t figure out why I had slight internal lag and slight choppiness which could almost pass off as smooth. As soon as I remember about the settings like last week, I turned off all Vsync for Nvdia and ingame Heroes of the Storm and used Gsync for gaming only. The internal lag and choppiness disappeared and I could insta-cast and play like a HGC pro again. The only minor problem I face now is trying to find a match quicker on the aussie server and get my platinum back easy. Because of all this, I’ll make sure all antialising is off from Nvdia and make sure Heroes of the Storm’s antialising is only on. That might remove the final bit that makes it feel a bit off. I reckon I’ll hit masters easy if I find games quick enough.

Blizzard need some strict regulations how Nvdia (or any other GPU configs for that matter) cross-configure that affects their platform, particular Warcraft 3. Not everyone knows, will know or will want to switch off Nvdia (or any GPU related configuration) as they think it’s the most optimal setting yet. Infact it might only be unique and apply for WC 3 since it’s the only game that I play that desyncs. They should have some of the rights to block off some of the cross-configurations if it’s causing Desyncing for the players. Infact they need to inform players somehow to rely on their ingame settings rather then their control panels.

I’m pretty techy savvy when it comes to settings, but even these eluded me and got me bottle-necking my skills while blaming hardware after hardware. Most people were blaming the game, which it does look like it by the way, but it could’ve been indirectly caused by their settings, ya’ mean?

Question is why only vs Europeans? Because I think that was the breaking point for the Configurations. It was so laggy that something mis-aligned and caused instant spike lags and DC’s. Whichever the speculation is, the fact is whatever setting I got now, where it’s isolated to WC 3, it’s made it alot more better and responsive! It’s more responsive than if I played on Classic graphics which is on top of the 180-400 ping I play with. I can feel a difference. :wink:

Edit: One more thing, I tried it with NVDIA FXAA antiliasing alone while having WC 3 antiliasing FXAA off, and it created a subtle choppy internal lag effect, that familiar feeling when I played with both Gsync and Vsync on at the same time and went on a losing spree on HOTS lol. When I switched back to WC 3 Antiliasing and turned off Nvdia’s antialising, the response was better. Perhaps it’s because the way the configurations are created, it could have been patented for WC 3 only. Upon switching back, I was able to micro better and insta-nuked better.

final edit: Yep, it’s made Heroes of the Storm game-play quality the same as last year I went on a winning spree. Better responses and removed the annoying bit of feeling that I couldn’t understand. I’m only gonna win now, coz that’s all I can ever do

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I’ve been wondering if it is something Windows specific as I’ve never de-synced under Linux.

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im running a full amd system and got desynced a ton back in the day. im running a high dpi monitor and i dont enable antialiasing.

i dont think a post-fx antialiasing like FXAA can actually cause a game desync, except for blizzard fooked up the coding of the integrated aa so bad, it hooks so deep into the game that it causes a possible “version mismatch”. id say thats quite unlikely to almost impossible actually, especially for 3rd party gpu implementations. its like saying “spilling coffee in the 3rd floor makes the toilet flush in the basement”. its both to do with liquids, but its not even remotely connected.

FXAA is basically a content sensitive blur filter applied by the gpu right before the fully rendered image gets put out to the monitor. its really one of the last operations the image gets before you see it. the literal next step for image manipulation is fiddling around with your monitor settings over the monitor OSD.

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Do you guys know if this will fix regular old disconnects that occur when your internet connection is cut out for a split second?

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Which is probably why you aren’t having any trouble, because you aren’t using antialising, which I believe is causing potential grief. Without any bias and for research purposes, maybe try turning on Gysync + Vsync in all panels and gaming options, as well as FXAA. With all those on, I’ve experienced this smooth yet choppy movements and poor quality of responses and poor timing to cast. For example, I play as Alarak on HOTS, and he’s a hard hero to play. I use him as a bench-mark. When I had the mentioned things above all on, I couldn’t land his combos or use his ults properely, but upon turning them off and leaving on the ingame’s one, I can instant-nuke heroes and delete them from the battle-field. There are some exceptions like Gsync though as that seems superior to Vsync which I’ll remain using, while Reforges and HOT’s Vsync ingame option is off. Again it could be a personal thing with my monitor, but it’s 100 % safe as it’s opting for Blizzard’s ingame configs.

I understand where something small like this won’t make sense for you, while it seems big for me. Try to imagine being in my shoes where the past few days I had like 20 games that incurred 100% Desync vs Europeans, to the point I turned off a configuration while adjusting another and not dropping anymore is a pretty big change/indicator for me, along with better quality of gaming. I even got up at midnight to play just to make sure it wasn’t luck or placebo, and I didn’t drop against any Euro players. The ping is amazingly high and higher then it ever was, but the biggest change is not dropping.

That’s the thing, even if Blizzard knows the exact problem inside the main coding, I don’t think they’ll ever touch it. Because it’s a very old game, anything they do in there could create unstable things, however, reducing things that can influence their platform is within their ability.

Err… if your internet cuts out, that’s usually a guaranteed and understandable disconnection man lol.

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Generally you don’t use GSync and VSync at the same time because they are trying to do the same things in different ways.

Then there is “real gsync”, vs “fake gsync”.

Real: actual gsync chip in a monitor
Fake: monitor that supports variable refresh rate

They you also have AMDs FreeSync (also variable refresh rate).

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Bingo, thanks for the confirmation. With some researching it becomes absolutely clear and it becomes so clear when you experience it first-hand and see the difference from both sides of the configs. This is something I did right last year and went on a winning spree, by turning off Vsync and having Gsync only on, but for some strange reason, forgot about it when Windows update ended up resetting it. The problem is, it’s a very huge problem for something that seems so normal. It’s potentially impacting gaming quality for players but they don’t know it. When you run Gsync only while Vsync is off with a few other adjustments, the grass is definitely greener on the other side.

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Technically gsync is largely just an implementation of variable refresh rate. The difference being an expensive proprietary chip and that the supported frequency range is always very good. Freesync can be as good as Gsync but does not make guarantees as the standard is much more lose.

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From General game purposes

GSync (chip) > VRR (gsync, FreeSync) > Vsync.

Now the main purpose of all these is to prevent tearing, so if you have more FPS than your monitors refresh rate you don’t actually need any of them turned on.

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I always knew Gsync would be #1

I’m pretty confident mines a chip since I can see a huge difference of a game-play, but just to double-check, how can I know if it’s chipped for Gsync? My Nvdia control panel’s got its own “turn on Gsync” while having it’s own category in the performance control panel.

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You’d have to look up your monitor specifications.

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I get dyscns after i finish watching replays or alt tab warcraft 3 too long anyone else getting this?

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Err no, never had that problem before, nor heard of desyncing from the replays part, but replays have been known to be a little buggy sometimes, from what I quickly read about.

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I’ve had this a few times. Gets disconnected after watching reps lmao

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still having trouble desyncing and dropping…and nvidia antaliasing-FXAA is off and has always been off, so no, that doesn’t fix it

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Might be a good time to point out that it is extremely likely the theory that anti-aliasing being the cause is nonsense. It has no influence on the synchronized game state.

However the indirect frame rate impact from it might. Some people have reported that various frame rate settings are more or less desync prone. In theory this should not matter for the same reason but Warcraft III might not have been built with the same interpolation system as StarCraft II and so maybe in some parts of the code it does make a difference.

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Pre-reforged, disconnecting for a split second would be fine. If your internet cut out for just 1 second, the game would freeze up, and then once your internet came back, everything that happened in the past second would play out in ultra-speed, but you would remain connected to the game.

In other words, there used to be disconnect protection built into Battle.net. Ever since reforged, that’s gone. If your internet cuts out for literally 1 second, you’re dropped.

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I turned off Vertical Sync and FXAA in NVIDA control panel. I’ve played 6 games of 4’s and haven’t dropped yet today since changing the settings. Still testing the settings, but looking positive for now? I was recently dropping 1 out of 5 4’s games I joined.

Update: I dropped out of two games when doing AT late last night. So perhaps there is another issue going on. I’m still going to keep the changed settings so there are no interference with the video settings.