So I have been wondering why over the last couple of weeks, Gears 4 has taken a massive nosedive when it comes to ALL matches having major Lag & Sponging Issues.
At first I thought, it must be me right? I mean matches that were all 20-40ms shouldn’t experience any issues?
Yet here I was, lagging, my shots weren’t doing anything and I was being killed so easily!
For example;
I was shooting point blanks, I can see pellets hitting players, I was also right next to them only for them to turn around and one shot me and my shot was only registered as 70% …
This was happening time and time again, point blanking and nothing, pumping clips into people and still only getting 60 - 70 - 83%
I just didn’t feel right.
But it cant be me, I have stress tested my connection and there are no issues.
I am hard wired in directly to the router via a 1m Ethernet cable - my PC is on a longer cable anyway.
Also:
So these were done a few minutes ago, peak times, during a Saturday and Afternoon time too.
So my connection is as good as one could get for gaming, no Packet Loss & Very Low Ping.
So it can’t be my connection.
So what can it be?
Well, I noticed something yesterday when playing Blitz on Social.
I joined a game with 20ms ping. All players were around 26-45ms - perfectly reasonable but there it was again, so much sponging, my shots not doing anything - at one point, someone was in cover and I hard aimed at them and my bullets landed BEHIND them on cover!!!
They were static, not moving and yet my bullets went past them to hit the cover, the player then jumped off cover and one shot killed me
Now, several matches of me going insane thinking why cant I kill anyone!
It eventually emptied and it was on me and the bots.
So my ping dropped slightly to a ROCK SOLID 16ms -very rarely did I see it go up to a max of 20ms.
So it was very consistent and guess what?
ALL MY SHOTS WORKED !!!
So agaisnt the bots, with my ping at a steady 16ms and no other human players, it all worked so perfectly!
The same way I was wall bouncing, the same way I was pop shotting, the same way I was hard aiming, everything, the same way I was blind firing - it all just worked!
Now, I had 2 full matches of just bots where I just tried to replicate any issues I found with players and NONE. Not one issue.
Now, the 3rd match, players loaded back in.
Guess what?
Problems came back!
Ping went up again once the players were in but again, it found its level and stayed there.
I did notice other players pings fluctuated more. I saw players 22 - 28ms and their ping would spike to 80+ before coming back down to 22-28ms
What was happening?
This is exactly when I noticed my player on screen would jerk forward and backward - get stuck or just lag back - split second lag or maybe for a second or two.
I also noticed this spike in ALL players when intense shooting / fighting was happening - so on gridlock when players where sitting in towers and all lancering and some were having shotgun battles, for 1 - 6 seconds pings would spike and cause lag / sponginess and then go back down normal.
So - is it the players with jittery connections causing Lag Comp to constantly fluctate the delays and so players appear to “sponge” shots?
Or is it the servers that for some reason lately cannot keep up with all 10 players moving and shooting together?
It has to be on of these things?
Why would my ping be rock solid in two matches filled with bots, with no issues whatsoever, no lag, no teleporting, no nothing!
Then, as soon as players join, pings spike continuesly, maybe every 1-5 minutes or sometimes even every 30-45 seconds?
I noticed it could be some players going from low pings to 80 - 90 - 120+ for seconds and then coming down.
Or the game could at once show that everyones pings spiked massively - even mine I saw go from 18ms to 88ms a long with everyone elses and then come back down to 45ms and then settle steadily back to original 18ms.
I never noticed this before until the bot only match proved it can’t be me and has to be other players maybe on Wi-Fi or maybe on Shared connections causing ping spikes and thus the game spikes all players possibly due to Lag Comp or whatever.
Or its the servers that can’t handle that much information and thus you see a spike.
Can TC please investigate?
Funny thing is, I did a private match with a few friends and they did shotgun battles while I watched their ping levels and they did not change by more 5ms. They were at a stable 20-30ms range the whole game.
I then joined in and did not get the BS of Social / Ranked games.
They too confirmed that some players felt “unkillable” that they were landing clear cut shots on them but were getting one shot killed / down even after 2, 3, 4 or even full clip going into someone.
Hopefully this gets sorted!