List Country of Residence by Default

[Daemon White]

I get it, people want to keep profiles private, but when I'm matched up against someone in PvP, it would greatly help if I could estimate how much latency I'm playing against. Even if it was at least listing a Continent if people are worried about potential Doxxing by country alone, I need some gauge of what I'm playing against.

[Cathulhu]

Up to the developer to implement that.
Nothing to do with Steam itself.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Wouldn't it help to post their actual ping instead of just their country?

[Supafly]

To start, no, if I want my Country listed I'd write myself.....Posted it in threads but I still do not want everyone to know what country I'm from.

Some people in other Countries could have a lower ping than someone in yours. So listing Country wouldn't always = what you want.

There is also the fact not everyone has the same type of connection. Someone next door on a weaker internet connection could have a higher ping.

Years ago friends 2 doors down were on dialup and had 300+ pings. I had a 1/2 mb connection and got 70. People in various parts of Europe frequently had pings under 100ms.

Check the games settings as some offer a MAX accepted ping. That should help prevent getting grouped with higher ping players.

[Yzal]

I hail from the country of Not Your Business.

[Mad Scientist]

Anyone is allowed to play any game if they're not being punished within it and aren't banned from it.

Some people in other countries could easily have better latency than you, and some servers in your country could have bad latency whereas others not in it have better latency. What you seem to hint at does not equate to reality.

I'm fine with players not being listed as to where they're from, it's no ones business.

Originally posted by Lazy Dog:

I hail from the country of Not Your Business.

Indeed.

[Mikoto]

Hard no to this. This will only cause more targeted hatred for those deems to be from problem regions.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by Kai:

Hard no to this. This will only cause more targeted hatred for those deems to be from problem regions.

Yeah, we already got a problem of people ragging on each other for being from whatever country or other geography. At least right now we can say that the field is self-reported and thus no accuracy is warranted, and people can also not put a thing. (Though, is it possible to remove one's country designation on one's profile after adding it? I feel like I've heard it's not possible...)

If the point of this is to estimate ping, getting the actual ping data is (1) more accurate, and (2) less personally-identifying.

[Satoru]

I can have better ping with a person in Japan on a fibre connection, than a person next door to me using a satellite ISP

Where you are located is only slightly related to yoru ping, but it tells you almost nothing useful

[[N]ebsun]

Originally posted by Daemon White:

it would greatly help if I could estimate how much latency I'm playing against

Why not just get the game / server to display the actual, real latency ? - then you wouldn't need to estimate. It seems a really round about method to display the location to estimate latency.

Also, in many networked games, there may be interpolation and lag compensation - things do not always happen in real time or at the same time.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_Networking