Are lopsided games the norm on Stadia?

[bigtfromaz]

I tried Stadia hoping that it would render a better PvP experience in Destiny 2 than the Xbox.  I figured if everyone was on the same server than perhaps some of the widespread network manipulation we see on the Xbox would be mitigated.  Sorry to say I played several PvP games today and it was no joy. 

Teams routinely had players who went 20+ and 0.  On at least 10 occasions, I died before the opponent would even appear on my screen. e.g. dead from a short rage auto rifle, no controller vibration, no sound, just dead and 1/3 of a second later the opponents appears. All game noise was out of sync with the action.  This occurred with opposing Titans, Warlocks and Hunters.  Radar routinely shows the wrong enemy location.  It was the worst PvP experience of my entire gaming life, which goes all the way back to the first day of the original Xbox.

it's obvious that opposing players were seeing me before I see them due to latency on the video feed.  Don't even think about using a scout or sniper rifle.  It's pull the trigger, 1/2 second later...bang.  Of course the opponent has already killed you by then.  Pathetic.

I am thinking that there are so few Destiny players that I am being assigned to servers in Europe or somewhere very far away.  Maybe Google doesn't have a data center in Phoenix. It's a shame because the concept sounds great but the implementation is not working for me.

I hope they are not just running Xbox knock-offs in the cloud and remotely rendering video and input.  It feels like the typical issues magnified by remotely rendering video.

[ARGAH]

I'd be interested to see footage of what you say happen, in my experience there's no lag, no hacks and no excuses, some lop sided matches may be down to not enough players for sbmm to kick in and find balanced matches.

[Matt1]

Sounds like you have pretty crappy internet in Phoenix. Personally never had a problem on Stadia, and if other players are killing you before you even see them then it suggest you have the problem and others don’t...

[Streamer]

@bigtfromaz 

Regarding the lopsided games, as you're aware, D2 is new on Stadia. And while it might not take long for players to reach a high power level due to PvE activities, most new players in PvP are facing off against old D2 players coming from other platforms with cross-save enabled, so the difference in skills is often understandable.

Regarding the other issues you've mentioned, personally, I have not encountered any of them and I have been playing a lot of Crucible to get better at it. So yeah, if you could somehow record a game and share it with us, that'd be great. 

[ARGAH]

I'd even be interested to see a video of someone using an auto rifle

On a more serious note there are many annoying one hit kill PVP weapons like Jotuun, maybe that's what's happening.

[bigtfromaz]

@Streamer 

I have been playing PVP since Unreal Championship. Including all versions of Halo, Destiny 1 all three years, and Destiny 2 all seasons so far. While I'm not the best player in the world, I hold my own. I'm not going to record the video because it just shows what I explained in English.

I am also somewhat of a networking expert in my career. And it's very clear that what I am seeing is caused by latency. My internet connection is very clean, no packet loss, less than 1% jitter, very consistent and very fast. The problem appears to be latency between me and the shared servers. My guess is that this weekend I got placed onto a server outside the US because there weren't enough players near me playing competitive PVP on Stadia.  My average ping times to Europe are almost 300 milliseconds. So until enough players begin using Stadia so we can see reasonable player selection, I'll have remain on the Xbox.

[Streamer]

@bigtfromaz 

Hey, I am not doubting anything you said, but your issue seemed like a recurring one, while I and others have not experienced what you described, even though most of us have been in similar situations as you. I asked for a video because if this is an isolated issue, it can probably help Support get to the heart of it. However, if your attitude is "well, I am a networking expert and I know 100% what the problem is", then nothing we can do in that case. Take care. 

[bigtfromaz]

@Streamer 

That's not my attitude but I really don't have time to diagnose issues for Google.  I do know this. My network here is fine as is any traffic that stays in the valley. My latency issues only occur when routing out of Arizona.

To be clear, I have issues with the Xbox here as well; e.g. 20 point drop in Halo rank after moving to AZ.  However, when Europe and the east coast are in bed, I can get good games. When playing games composed with players predominately in the West US, it gets fun.  In addition, 90% of the Destiny 2 community is on Xbox or PS2 so Bungie has more options available when selecting players for games. On Stadia it's not unusual to start Strikes without a full team or to join into a games in progress.

To overcome their late entry into this market, Google needed to do something special.  I am just not seeing it here.  I don't know their topology but there is no reason why their gaming network couldn't deliver round trip packets to their game servers at well under 100 ms.  To do that, they would have to bypass ISP routing and that would be expensive.

I have my answer to the question I posed.  It's "yes there are lopsided games on Stadia, but not everywhere."  Not everyone is getting the same experience, which makes it no better than the incumbents (in my case worse) and a non-starter for me.

[Sho]

@bigtfromaz that sucks I am in USA as well and play with tons of UK players without issue. I agree with @ARGAH i'd like to see footage of what u r talking about.

Because aside from the actual game sucking (and no it's not a bad game just not my kinda game) I've never had any "technical" issues when I would play destiny 2. N take note whenever I do play this game (which is rare one of those in a blue moon kinda things) it's always pvp and I have never had any issues (lag wise hack wise etc) with playing pvp matches. 

Def hope u can find out what's up tho. Maybe try firewalls ( like removing if not already) or allowing access idk I know some people if using a router have better success on 5ghz rather than 2ghz so idk if any of that will help or make a difference just wanted to say as a fellow USAer who has tons of UK mates on my friends list and whenever I play with them or just vs people over in the UK. My games still run flawless 

[ARGAH]

Yeah @Sho I play with mostly US players and I'm UK and don't want to tell someone it's the exact same in terms of lag every time, it's a bold claim to say there's no difference so didn't but sure feels like it to me.

[Sho]

@ARGAH I hear you I'm same way I def don't want to make such a high claim (just go based on what I experience as well. Since I know some of my friends are in fact from UK and I have played with them, this is all I can personally base my experience on) I can just say that on Stadia when u compare to PC or any other platform (in terms of playing with someone from another location) Stadia has by far been the smoothest experience I have had.

It's still one of the things that blows my mind away when I do hop on Stadia. Just how can I play with people miles away kinda thing and it's this smooth. I def can't say it's always been that way when I would play via PC (I can't comment on console as I have never owned a console since mega drive lol) I just know with PC play sometimes it'd be a f*cken nightmare to try and play with people from other countries (not always of course) I just personally have not encountered this yet. I do ghost recon with a couple of my buds from the UK area and honestly it feels like we're playing on like a lan Cafe or just in other rooms system linked style. It's that smooth sometimes we forget we're so far away from each other lol.

So idk obv every def has different experiences but that's why I'd def like to see some footage from the OP as well just to see what they are personally experiencing cause some of it sounds like it sucks to be going through. 

Just hope u get better experiences mate!

[Nilas]

As others, i'd like a video for this. We're playing on a stadia server, not a peer to peer server. I believe it can't happen, other than your own stream lags.

[qpham504]

Agreed, video or 

/thread

[codesplice]

@bigtfromaz Do you have serious lag issues like you described while playing campaigns or other non-PvP events? As others have suggested, it sounds like there might be something going on with your connection and we'd love to help you investigate and ultimately resolve the problem. 

I get my butt kicked pretty regularly in Destiny but that's purely down to player ability.

[bigtfromaz]

@codesplic 

My ISP, Cox, is sub-optimal. When I moved to Phoenix from New Jersey, my sniper rank in Halo PVP dropped from 50 to 30. But that is nothing like what I experienced on Stadia.  My skills are fine but you can't kill an enemy when you can't see.

As far as my connection is concerned, it's clean. No packet loss, <1 percent jitter and speed test runs 320 down 32 up to local servers.

Cox provides excellent quality when conversing with local servers in AZ but does a bad job when routing traffic outside the valley. Ping times are 54 ms to Southern California, 200 to NYC, 250 to Europe and above 300 to Australia. When I bought into Stadia, I was hoping we would enter the game on a local POP and jump to a private network designed for the low levels of latency needed for gaming. That's obviously not the way it's set up.  It's either that, or there's a problem in Phoenix.

A few years ago Google announced they were going to offer fiber here in Phoenix but they never followed through and we all still suffer with substandard internet. Stadia is just the latest letdown.

In any event, my experience has been poor in both PVP and cooperative play.  I have tried on my PC to monitor, PC to TV, and Chromecast Ultra to TV. TV is the worst but it's very poor all the time. 

For those of you who play PVP with high kill ratios, before you pat yourself on the back, check your network performance.  It's easy to confuse network advantage with skill.  I have watched many streamers and can tell you this.  With the rendering they are getting, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.  Try playing when the other player gets 1/2 clip into you before you are even aware he's in front of you.  I thought Stadia might level the playing field and it doesn't.

There is no reason to capture video.  I cancelled my subscription and will keep playing on the Xbox.  Stadia may be working for you but for me, the Xbox experience is an order of magnitude better.