Ping - Explained

[Blazerboy | Noah]

i remember some old dudes telling me that my slightly shet ping gave me an advantage, and i think a lot of players have the same thing. their ability to tp around only a little bit makes it near-impossible to hit them, and they get hits by adjusting their aim to hit where the player will be going, not where it is, since it takes longer to get the hit.

 

[Zado]

i remember some old dudes telling me that my slightly shet ping gave me an advantage, and i think a lot of players have the same thing. their ability to tp around only a little bit makes it near-impossible to hit them, and they get hits by adjusting their aim to hit where the player will be going, not where it is, since it takes longer to get the hit.

kinda like darkrai back when au was hosted in singapore? xD at least thats what i heard ._. darkai202

 

[darkai202]

kinda like darkrai back when au was hosted in singapore? xD at least thats what i heard ._. darkai202

was basically sword god because of bad ping l0l

 

[BitoBain]

This post was taken from my post on another forum account, on another website. I've altered it slightly to fit within MCSG, and explain a few things. Explanations are in italics and underlined.
I felt like perhaps this might benefit someone, and hopefully explain a bit further than what some other people may have been told, which is why I decided to post it here.

Ahh, heheheheh... *rubs hands together*


Ping. Latency. Internet connection. Similar terms.
Ping is measured in milliseconds - based off of that, your first assumption may be - 100 milliseconds? What difference is that when it comes to people PvPing?

Well, allow me to give you an example. (Numbers taken from [SNIP]'s /ping command - A different server, not MCGamer. Unfortunately, MCGamer has a less accurate ping command at this time.)
I was PvPing an acquaintance earlier today, and he had roughly 68-87 ping. I checked our ping constantly, even in the middle of matches when I could get the opportunity.
While he had ping below 90, my ping was varying from ~160 to ~214. (I'm used to around 80-90 ping on other servers)
He was easily killing me with 5+ hearts left sometimes. I was slightly frustrated, I will admit. I then found out that my internet cord had been unplugged, and promptly went to resolve that. After a few seconds, my ping went to around 108, and more or less steady. After that, I quickly 3-0'ed him twice in a row. (ranked 1v1's - The other server with the ping command is a 1v1 server, first one to 3 kills is victorious in the match.)

Now, I'm not one to blame ping most of the time, but when it gets to the point that my opponent is teleporting around slightly and I'm randomly getting killed after having 5 hearts just a second ago, it's sort of disadvantageous.
A ping difference of 50-100 can make the difference between being able to land your hits, and not. A slightly smaller ping difference could be a deciding factor between who gets the first hit, and thus the first knockback - rendering the second person with higher ping literally unable to land a hit, because they're knocked back before they can even say "Boo!" to the first fellow's armor. (In other words, they are knocked back before they come into range.)

Ping is the time that it takes for data to go between your computer and the server, and back to your computer. In other words, take your ping and split it in half to find the time it takes for the server to receive a signal from your computer.
If you were to click 25 milliseconds before your opponent did, but your opponent had 50 less ping than you, they would still hit you first. The larger the difference, the more forgiving it is for them to make mistakes - they have a larger margin of error in which it can still work out for them. Considering some of us are able to click once or more every 1/10th of a second (100 milliseconds, I believe?) that can actually be quite a difference.

Back before (OP) ping really became a common term, we just called it "reach hacks".
BitoBain I heard you had some sort of dispute involving ping, I'm not sure what exactly it was, but hopefully this helps.

Thanks for this awesome explanation! It really cleared up a lot. I have often blamed ping for a lot of my PvP incapabilities, but I have had a sort of internal dispute as to whether it matters as much as some say. If you don't know, I get between 150 and 180 normally, unless someone else is browsing the internet in my house (which they usually are) then it can skyrocket anywhere from 200 to 1,000. That being said, I have learned to work around it a little and I can win games if there aren't too many good pvpers around. I am still confused about a lot of things related to connection though.

How can having a certain type of router decrease your ping? A router only deals with outputting incoming information, so why does it affect the amount of time it takes to send and receive information? You would think ping would be more dependent on the cables connecting your house to the server. Does ping have to do with the download and upload speed of your router? I have also heard of people upgrading from copper cables (slow) to optic fiber cables. (which transfer information at the speed of light) Does anyone know how big of a difference that upgrade makes? (I have heard optic fiber cables are phenomenal.) Finally, what is packet loss and does it affect PvP? It would be greatly appreciated if someone could answer those questions. I have seen people with 150 ping PvP on Youtube, and it still feels like they interact with the game with much more ease than I do, so I am hesitant to say that ping is all that matters.

Thanks for pointing out the difference that ping can make in a fight, as it is often people with better internet that claim that internet does not matter, ironically. I don't think there are any situations in which having high ping actually helps, not even sword fights. Some say that if you lag yourself into someone you can get big combos, but from my experience having high ping lessens your reach, and increases the reach of others in an indirect way. Here's some math to show what I mean.

• Two people sprinting and jumping in a chase at 6.5 blocks/second
• Person A in front
• Person A has 150 ping
• Person B has 50 ping
• Server says that they are three blocks apart, and reach is 2.5 blocks with NCP
  
• Person A is therefore one block behind the server because of ping
  
• Person B is therefore one third of a block behind the server because of ping
  
• Person A sees person B as being almost four blocks behind them (3 blocks + almost 1 block of lag)
  
• Person B sees person A as being two blocks in front of them
• Person B how has one extra block of range on person A, and can hit them. (2 blocks is close enough to hit.)

Not only does ping affect reach, it may cause an "enderman" effect, in which players teleport instead of run. This makes using the bow and fns difficult. Another thing that many players do not realize is that bad ping causes individuals to "lose" at corn. I often click on armor and though I clicked it first, the .17 second delay caused me to lose the armor. It takes a while to open a chest if you have bad ping. I have also had dozens of deaths due to grabbing a stone sword from corn, or weapon from a first chest, and hitting others when my weapon was ghosted, then losing a fight to someone with my twin weapon. Ping also causes a serious fishing rod delay, which may be made worse if you have a bad scroll wheel. Anyways, bad ping is never an advantage from my experience.

 

[Mooclan]

Thanks for this awesome explanation! It really cleared up a lot. I have often blamed ping for a lot of my PvP incapabilities, but I have had a sort of internal dispute as to whether it matters as much as some say. If you don't know, I get between 150 and 180 normally, unless someone else is browsing the internet in my house (which they usually are) then it can skyrocket anywhere from 200 to 1,000. That being said, I have learned to work around it a little and I can win games if there aren't too many good pvpers around. I am still confused about a lot of things related to connection though.

How can having a certain type of router decrease your ping? A router only deals with outputting incoming information, so why does it affect the amount of time it takes to send and receive information? You would think ping would be more dependent on the cables connecting your house to the server. Does ping have to do with the download and upload speed of your router? I have also heard of people upgrading from copper cables (slow) to optic fiber cables. (which transfer information at the speed of light) Does anyone know how big of a difference that upgrade makes? (I have heard optic fiber cables are phenomenal.) Finally, what is packet loss and does it affect PvP? It would be greatly appreciated if someone could answer those questions. I have seen people with 150 ping PvP on Youtube, and it still feels like they interact with the game with much more ease than I do, so I am hesitant to say that ping is all that matters.

Thanks for pointing out the difference that ping can make in a fight, as it is often people with better internet that claim that internet does not matter, ironically. I don't think there are any situations in which having high ping actually helps, not even sword fights. Some say that if you lag yourself into someone you can get big combos, but from my experience having high ping lessens your reach, and increases the reach of others in an indirect way. Here's some math to show what I mean.

• Two people sprinting and jumping in a chase at 6.5 blocks/second
• Person A in front
• Person A has 150 ping
• Person B has 50 ping
• Server says that they are three blocks apart, and reach is 2.5 blocks with NCP
  
• Person A is therefore one block behind the server because of ping
  
• Person B is therefore one third of a block behind the server because of ping
  
• Person A sees person B as being almost four blocks behind them (3 blocks + almost 1 block of lag)
  
• Person B sees person A as being two blocks in front of them
• Person B how has one extra block of range on person A, and can hit them. (2 blocks is close enough to hit.)

Not only does ping affect reach, it may cause an "enderman" effect, in which players teleport instead of run. This makes using the bow and fns difficult. Another thing that many players do not realize is that bad ping causes individuals to "lose" at corn. I often click on armor and though I clicked it first, the .17 second delay caused me to lose the armor. It takes a while to open a chest if you have bad ping. I have also had dozens of deaths due to grabbing a stone sword from corn, or weapon from a first chest, and hitting others when my weapon was ghosted, then losing a fight to someone with my twin weapon. Ping also causes a serious fishing rod delay, which may be made worse if you have a bad scroll wheel. Anyways, bad ping is never an advantage from my experience.

I liked, unliked, then liked this post again to show my enthusiasm.

Well, uh, yeah. I'm at a loss for words ._. No idea how to respond to this, but basically... uh... yeah. *derp*

 

[Twee]

Beautiful.

 

[Alpha]

Ping! ... ... ... ... ... ... Pong!

 

[Wyz]

Ping! ... ... ... ... ... ... Pong!

Hahah x)

 

[le quack]

i play with 200 ms all the time. I get REALLY annoyed

 

[ZeNoS]

I get 1000+ frames, but I have like 400 ping to US servers I live in Canada, so I barely have any connection to ny of the servers, so it's impossible. PvPing with bad ping is terrible, I never get any double hits.

 

[Mooclan]

I get 1000+ frames, but I have like 400 ping to US servers I live in Canada, so I barely have any connection to ny of the servers, so it's impossible. PvPing with bad ping is terrible, I never get any double hits.

o___o that's a god-computer.

 

[ZeNoS]

o___o that's a god-computer.

It's a toaster with 0.3 gb of ram I'll post my PC specs in another thread soon