How can I report lag switchers?

[freefall]

My last 3 games were with lag switchers. I was lucky enough to win my matches anyway, but it's really ruining the experience.

At first I thought it's just normal lag, and blamed my own inexperience with online play, but I notice the game only lags when I'm frame neutral or at advantage. My opponent's shimmy with Sakura becomes frame skipping teleports. If I get hit, their combos come out smoothly, then the game returns to frame skipping as soon as I'm back on frame neutral.

I was only really convinced I was dealing with lag switchers when I noticed even a jump-in from a Cruch Counter sweep still allowed my opponent to dash under me and counter (on replay it simply looked like I jumped in too late). And every time I combo into a V-Trigger II activation using Guile (something that I have already committed to muscle memory and can do instinctively), the game starts lagging up and I lose my charge. In the worst case scenario, my 2-in-1 charge combos either come out delayed and don't combo, or I lose charge when inputting the Flash Kick/Sonic Boom and nothing registers. I only won my matches because I switched to Guile's target combos where my cancel window is a big enough that lag switching can't disrupt it.

The problem is, I don't record my games using third party recorders because I'm worried about lagging up my game, and the replays don't show the lag. Otherwise, about the best I can do now is just to blacklist these scrubs.

[mrobson83]

Have you noticed if they happen to come from specific countries? If so, use peerblock and just block those countries. I’ve done that with Brazil, Mexico, North Korea, Russia, and a few others. Worked out fine for me. But I know what you’re talking about though. They seem to land everything they try whereas you have to put in like 200% more effort to win. Especially in those moments where it looks like you’ve landed a crush counter, with the hit animation and sounds playing, only for it to get rolled back into a whiffed attack that they somehow managed to block, then they punish you for it.

But to answer your initial question, you can’t report people like that.....yet. There is currently no fool-proof way to tell if someone is deliberately lag switching or has sh1tternet.

[freefall]

Originally posted by mrobson83:

Have you noticed if they happen to come from specific countries? If so, use peerblock and just block those countries. I’ve done that with Brazil, Mexico, North Korea, Russia, and a few others. Worked out fine for me. But I know what you’re talking about though. They seem to land everything they try whereas you have to put in like 200% more effort to win. Especially in those moments where it looks like you’ve landed a crush counter, with the hit animation and sounds playing, only for it to get rolled back into a whiffed attack that they somehow managed to block, then they punish you for it.

I'm from Malaysia, and I notice I only get smooth games with Japanese players and get very few matches from elsewhere. If I peer block Japan altogether I'm not going to be able to find any matches. The game's netcode is so bad that my friend who plays on PS4 and lives like 10 minutes drive away is a 1-bar connection and completely unplayable.

The games where I was experiencing lag switching were technically 5-bar connections. I was lucky that today's opponents were quite bad and I managed to beat them anyway. But even good players do this, and I've lost my share of matches. It's much easier to detect lag switchers now that I'm using Guile, because I lose charges during the lag spikes. If it was just normal lag, I could still launch my special move during the lag, or if I chose to delay it, my charge would still be retained.

[Nalverus]

its not actually lag switching. its just the netcode an its rollback crap. if a person's net is unstable then you're gonna see rollback.

[Rambo Hayabusa]

Originally posted by mrobson83:

Have you noticed if they happen to come from specific countries? If so, use peerblock and just block those countries. I’ve done that with Brazil, Mexico, North Korea, Russia, and a few others. Worked out fine for me. But I know what you’re talking about though. They seem to land everything they try whereas you have to put in like 200% more effort to win. Especially in those moments where it looks like you’ve landed a crush counter, with the hit animation and sounds playing, only for it to get rolled back into a whiffed attack that they somehow managed to block, then they punish you for it.

But to answer your initial question, you can’t report people like that.....yet. There is currently no fool-proof way to tell if someone is deliberately lag switching or has sh1tternet.

Nobody in North Korea other than Kim Jong-Un is playing you in any video game.


@freefall

Yeah, they made a trash game with horrible netcode. I've heard every excuse from the fanboys...Wifi (nope that won't do it), you name it.

I've seen matches, where the first round is very good. No obvious major network delay. Enough that if I use the most advanced character, I know their execution will come out. First round is sound and then at the beginning of the second round, SOMETHING occurs and at times I can see some weird frame rate skip.

I appears to me, as a pattern, as though the ROLLBACK, if there is any, switches. Usually that means I get shafted. Blocking...nah, don't even bother, because the game is so slow then it doesn't even register me as blocking basic moves.

Worst connections imaginable with my friend locally. We live within 7km of each other. In Australia. It's pathetic.

I spent a lot of time in the past playing FPS and third person shooters (Gears of War) online. I counted 2 definite lag switchers in COD and 1 in Halo. Thousands of matches, and just 3 definite lag switchers.

SFV - I've lost count of either absolutely horrendous online games OR what I suspect, are a lot of douchebags lag switching.

And the community, sadly, is so cheap and scrub takular, they'd do this just to get some lame LP and ranks.

Ranked makes things worse. Small player pool meaning, let's say PC has 10K players online during the week and PS4 has double that at 20K. That's 30,000 people online during the week.

Can you potentially play 30,000 people? No. But to MINIMISE LAG, which this type of game relies massively upon, you need to be matched with as many people as possible.

Instead, what I've found is that ranked (and the community is to blame for this nonsense), takes your 30,000 and divides them into player rank tiers. Which immediately limits the number of players you can find to just your rank. Now what if, your regions proportion of players is massively lower in your rank? Your rank may have lets say, 10% of the total player base at any time in it.

That number would be 3000 right! But good luck finding 3000 of those people CLOSE to you, which should minimise latency (ping) and potentially help with lag (but this games netcode helps very few players). That's theoretical...we should be matched based on REGION.

That maximises the potential lowest number of bad connections you have. Oh, yes, lets play ranked!! Nope. Makes it absolutely worse. It literally makes the number of GOOD connections, the LOWEST number possible. It's the DUMBEST idea I've ever heard of.

Plus, it's not a LAN or in person competition. You can only really improve if the connections are as close to that as possible. Case in point...I had a dude doing a near endless loop of attacks and cross-ups on me I could block, but not punish. Normall I can...but the connection prevented me. Super Bronze player. I've never seen the world's best Ryu's do that. But the connection quality allowed him to - I was being lag delayed massively

Dude I played some bloke in China a day ago - instantly put him on Block. Just...it leaves me asking why. Cheap nonsense in a laggy game. And China is closer to you than Japan!! Yet you get a better connection to Japan. I've had more stable matches to Japan from Australia than with some (not all) Aussies!!

I've had games where I can't even do a normal...simple hadouken. Won't work. 4-5 bar connection lobby. Heck, I've put the game to ASK and it's still dumped me in games I didn't approve. A lot of this mess is still broken and unfixed.

Blaming your opponent for internet - which the OP is not doing. It's not always them, or you. It's the games coding. It's just downright aweful. Meta game is fine to a degree. Straight up, if I wanted to win more, I'd do what you're doing and play Guile. He seems to work very well online...the problem is, the characteristics you expect to work EVERY match, can suddenly change. Now is that a lag switch or just a bad game?

[Rambo Hayabusa]

Originally posted by freefall:

I'm from Malaysia, and I notice I only get smooth games with Japanese players and get very few matches from elsewhere. If I peer block Japan altogether I'm not going to be able to find any matches. The game's netcode is so bad that my friend who plays on PS4 and lives like 10 minutes drive away is a 1-bar connection and completely unplayable.

The games where I was experiencing lag switching were technically 5-bar connections. I was lucky that today's opponents were quite bad and I managed to beat them anyway. But even good players do this, and I've lost my share of matches. It's much easier to detect lag switchers now that I'm using Guile, because I lose charges during the lag spikes. If it was just normal lag, I could still launch my special move during the lag, or if I chose to delay it, my charge would still be retained.

How can you solve this?

I go straight into their player profile post match...after I make them wait almost the full time before I decide not to rematch (we owe nobody a rematch if it's a poorly programmed laggy sack of crap), and I put them on the blacklist.

I have to use a BLACKLIST to prevent a future lagfest.

Why can't Capcom just program their game better? Why not put in dedicated servers? At least then, my lag would be CONSISTENT. And it would be FAR SUPERIOR to what it is. It can change every match. Meaning you adapt to the LAG which constantly fluctuates.

Some people, clearly, don't get much rollback for whatever reason. Capcom could fill us all in on how that's coded...but if they did, nobody would honestly play their games every again, that's how bad a job they've done.

Blacklisting actually is a bad idea, but for my sanity I do it. Why is it bad? It limits the total number of potentially close low ping games you get. Heck for all I know, lots of decent stable connections ARE available, but we're not RANKED at the same level.

I'll take the beating and potential to GROW over a lag fest where getting better is never going to really happen.

But the FGC like their ranked points and being online tough guys...so no, there is no fix. Ping in numbers would also be good too. But if Capcom showed that, people would refuse to play certain people and everyone would know how bad the input delay really is (it's abysmal). A lot of lag is hidden in the input delay. You get rollback, it's very, very obvious. Oh and the roll back, is not even or fair. It's very lopsided.

[♱ TURBO LEÃO XIV ♱]

So this actually exists? I often play with people who strangely lags only when I'm wining or when I input something.
Sometimes the first round run butter smooth and I win flawlessly. Then the second and third rounds are the complete oposite. Lags everywhere and only when I'm pressing something. Sometimes The first round is smooth and I lose, second round also smooth, but I win. Then the third round is whole lotta lag. And again, only when I'm pressing buttons or trying to attack. And so on...

[Washing Machine]

Alot of the lag happens during stun or activation, since I think the game tends to chug if there's alot of inputs from someone. Get stunned, mash to try to get out of stun, lag ensues to the other guy. Same if you combo into trigger and they're mashing DP real hard hoping you drop it.

Only seen one 100% legit lagswitch, this Mika player in s1 was apparently straight proud of himself about it and showed it off for a rematch even. Whenever I landed anything at all, be it an anti air or a sweep or whatever, the game immediately froze up completely, and soon as the freeze ends it takes any inputs done during that freeze and nothing if you try to move when the game starts working again. So like, he would jump at me, game stops, and I can't anti air this obviously since the game froze. Meanwhile he does the inputs for a full combo off the jumpin. Repeat. Pretty sure it was a casual match to boot, making it even more ridiculous that he was showing this off like he's the best ever. S1 Mikas were pretty much utter filth tho, so nothing unusual.

[freefall]

I wished I could've recorded my game. It was pretty blatant. I've played laggy games and know what it looks like, and this isn't it. If your game is generally laggy, just about every one of your opponent's moves will have frame skips, and chances are, your opponent is experiencing the same thing and is going to play more cautiously.

When playing with lag switchers however, if I get hit by a combo string, the game is surprisingly smooth. Their movements overall will be smooth and it'll feel like a 5-bar match. But when I'm in a situation where I have obvious frame advantage, such as after a Crush Counter Sweep jump-in, I suddenly find the game lagging and eating an anti-air, which shouldn't even be possible.

Like I said, I only really started noticing this when I switched over to Guile, because normal lag doesn't cause you to lose charge. But if I try something like Guile's crouching HP > V-Trigger II > crouching MP > Flash Kick > EX Flash Kick, I'd experience a lag spike in between the crouching MP that causes the charge to disappear because rollback erases input buffering.

The reason I was able to win my matches in spite of this is because I switched my strategy towards doing stuff that wasn't worth a rollback, like mostly using jabs, a command kick or Sonic Boom raw, using normals to anti-air, and sticking with simple pokes and Target Combos. So essentially there's nothing so unsafe or damaging that it's worth my opponent rolling back for, and eventually the damage builds up. I save my meter for EX moves rather than a CA.

[Rambo Hayabusa]

Originally posted by The Doom Slayer:

So this actually exists? I often play with people who strangely lags only when I'm wining or when I input something.
Sometimes the first round run butter smooth and I win flawlessly. Then the second and third rounds are the complete oposite. Lags everywhere and only when I'm pressing something. Sometimes The first round is smooth and I lose, second round also smooth, but I win. Then the third round is whole lotta lag. And again, only when I'm pressing buttons or trying to attack. And so on...

Happens all the time.

Note, you suddenly look like you're helpless.

I had a Ryu character jump in on me as Karin. I tried anti-airing only AFTER me blocking them HIGH literally ended up evertime with me receiving a boot or fist to the face.

I can block. Rather well. I can't block if the game does not recognise me blocking because the packets of my data either are delayed or not registering. Note, they registered well enough for me to win the first round rather easily. Then it's a complete 180 degree reversal, like yours.

I've seen this happen locally, with a mate 7km away (almost 5 miles) and we had minimal lag in a battle lounge. Then...it got worse, as EVERY game progressed. I had zero option but to end it.

We should meet the very tiny upload and download requirements for playing online (they packets of data sent are tiny in online games...very small, we're not streaming video data!) and ping each other at a very LOW rate, maybe 20ms max, probably 10ms. That should not lag more than half a frame to 1 frame (16ms = 1 frame). But it does...massively. Like, literally the worst lag I've had in this game, was with the person CLOSEST to me.

[Stevie Wonder]

yo you guys writing a damn novel there? holy crap

[Washing Machine]

Originally posted by Stevie Wonder:

yo you guys writing a damn novel there? holy crap

Last reply was 5 rows at max, takes 40seconds maybe to read that, and you're calling that a novel?

Is this a joke about Stevie Wonder being blind?

[Wezilla]

Street Fighter V : Novel Edition

[freefall]

Originally posted by Stevie Wonder:

yo you guys writing a damn novel there? holy crap

Dude, if it's TL:DR, then don't read it, period. I need to be this descriptive so people know what to look out for against someone who's lag switching.