Xbox online lobbies rife with rumours

Monday 23 Jul 2007 22:24

OK, you're in a lobby waiting for an online game to start and suddenly you hear some pearls of wisdom from others about how online games work, how other players are cheating and why some people get kicked out the lobby rooms. I heard some real corkers tonight that I've just got to share with anyone with 5 minutes to read them.

First of all, relating to lag, where a player with a poor network connection lags behind and often jumps around and is difficult to shoot because they are not where you think they are. Other players somehow seem to believe that this imbues the lagging player with some unnatural magical power to play the game better. While it may be annoying to try and shoot someone who's lagging I can assure you that lagging goes both ways, and they cannot see your player position properly too. Anyhow relating to lag I heard this absolute corker.

Yeah right, to lag right, you just downloaded lots of music...

this is actually correct if you have PC on your network and generate lost of traffic by downloading (or better uploading), but then came this...

and then you play all the music at once and you lag!

err ... not really

OK, me and my mate, we got two XBoxes right next to each other, and if we both try and join the same game, the ping is so strong it won't work, cos they're together right, and it makes the ping too strong. But if I host the game, then he can join, we just can't join someone elses game.

Completely wrong. This is more likely a NAT problem where because both Xboxes are on the same router the game host cannot distinguish their IPs as two separate Xboxes. The reason one person hosting the game might work is that this changes the configuration so that now only one of them is joining a game (the other is now hosting). Ping strength is a complete misunderstanding - ping is all about speed not strength - its the time taken for one machine to contact another (usually on the Internet).

When people get kicked out the lobby its because someone already in the lobby is lagging, and that lags it out that's why other people get kicked out.

More than likely lobby problems are due to a network problem between those people trying to connect and the server itself. The idea that one person can somehow affect the whole lobby room, especially through lag is stupid, as lag would be less traffic (as opposed to more traffic like a denial of service attack) and how would less traffic affect the server for other players?

Come on dudes (and dudettes), keep quiet unless you really know what's happening. These comments border on superstition in the face of lack of knowledge. I'll be the first to say I haven't got the answers, but I can spot the downright preposterous and unreasonable.

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Comments(1)

captcha
24 Jul 2007 03:47 by President of the Internet
Heheh, oh man. "The ping is to strong, cap'n!"