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[capnjosh]

Ping.  What is it and what do we actually experience?

 

I've pulled some data that should give us at least some reference point.  Figured I'd share.

 

The charts below come from logs on client-server ping times, in milliseconds.  This data can act as an indicator for the effect of things like different servers, changes to region design, internet routing, data center changes, DDoS mitigation services, etc.  They should be taken as fairly general indicators of *actual* performance.  They don't indicate "quality" of connection, however, so if you 're playing on a wireless network, there can be odd spikes in latency, out-of-order UDP packets, etc. that may not be represented.  Whatever the case, they're fun to look at, and I look at them to make sure changes we make to Hawken have a desireable effect.

 

Basically, we want more players to have lower latencies to the game servers, which in these charts looks like a really really steep and tall mountain.  A lower, wider mountain indicates there are more players playing with higher ping times.

 

In short, the region redesign seems to have had a sustained improvement in ping times.  There is an obvious increase in ping times around 4/21-4/24; that is likely due to some DDoS mitigation services some of the game server hosts were behind (I removed those hosts because the mitigation services were negatively impacting gameplay experience).  It seems that right now we're in a pretty good place, especially considering we had a very large influx of new players.  I suspect we can find some ways to further improve things, but that'll come with time.  Other than that, enjoy the surface charts :)