regarding retirement

[Jediluke]

I'm overdue an emotional retirement anyways right?

Here is my issue.

No offense to everyone else...but Mark and I are arguably the 2 best pilots on this ladder at the moment. Right?

Well, my goal is to out do him in every way. Beat him. Beat others more than he beats them...etc.

Competition.

I've never had a particularly great connection to Mark but lately it is intolerable. 60-230+ fluctuating. LoNi_'s connection is at least consistent.

The game I just had with mark even spawned extra primaries as if we were on a lossy dial-up connection from the kali era.

Jedi, you could have called it off. BLEH...the point is for the 2 of us to play each other and settle the argument as to who the best is...that is an ongoing argument that requires numerous matches on a regular basis.

Well, I'm sorry but I can not put up with my connection to Mark. I refuse to endure that. It is not fun and it also does not help clarify the argument as to who the best is. It's just BS.

I have fun competing against everyone on this ladder...sure. That's fun....it's challenging. It is. But I have no intention of being on a ladder where I'm going to avoid playing my strongest competition. I'm not interested in taking #1 and then sitting on it playing weaker competition all while avoiding the real challengers.

That is not how I roll.

So, until the Gods see it fit to give mark and I a better connection to one another I will respectfully step down from ladder competition.

_______________________

I won't pretend that I'm going to quit the game...we know I'm not good at that.

I will play for fun games.

[The@$$Man!]

See what happens when I get banned.. Everyone leaves.. Including the guy that pushed it! All in good fun

[organic io (formerly goldie)]

That really sucks. How far apart do you guys live? Surely there's got to be a way to make the connections better? In this day and age??? Somebody lay some fiber optic cable already!!!

[organic io (formerly goldie)]

I just had an idea at 5:00 am while eating honey nut cheerios...

So first I want to clarify: You're saying that games with LoNi_ are more playable, even though he has a higher ping, because at least his ping is consistent?

So what if there is some way to normalize the ping between you and Mark? Take the slowest common denominator ping of 230, and somehow make the connection between you buffer to 230ms. Is that possible to do with some kind of software? I don't know enough about programming or networking to know if it is. Maybe something has already been invented?

If not, my other idea is one or both of you try directing your connection through a proxy server. Maybe there is a hop somewhere between you and him that causes the weird ping fluctuations, and if you can somehow avoid it by proxying, then the connection will be smoothed out.

I've even drawn a "highly advanced" diagram of how the network topology would look



As you can see from the image, people are circled in yellow since they are neutral. Computers in between are rectangles. Red rectangles are bad, and green rectangles are good.

But that's just the random idea of some dude who has no idea what he's talking about. A possibility anyway?

[Jediluke]

assman, I didn't push for anything. When admin watched the demo....it pushed itself.

I suicide plenty also....but the difference is you can see the sheer effort I'm putting into it. I'm TRYING really hard to make something of those suicides. What you did, and it wasn't a 1st offense, flies in the face of what this ladder stands for and messes up skill ratings for everyone that is on it. Every kill matters. Play like it.

and for the record...I don't have a problem with you. I don't dislike you. I do question whether or not you take this ladder seriously or if you should just stick to 'fun' games to get what you want out it.

When you are ready to compete the way this ladder demands it...truly compete...we'll welcome you back.

[Jediluke]

goldie...thanks for the hard work you put into making such a detailed graph. Mark ran a traceroute to me and discovered some really bad hops that are nonresponsive. He will get this info to his ISP to have them check into it.

So, there is perhaps hope that a resolution can be found. I'm not saying that I WANT to be retired. I still intend to play games.

[Drakona]

Goldie, when a player has a bad connection, the problem is usually at their house or ISP. It's very rare for the problem to be further from them than that - when those routers have problems, it manifests as whole states or regions having bad internet, and is generally fixed in a matter of hours! There IS a bad computer between Mark and Jeds... unfortunately it is between Mark and everyone else, too. Can't go around it.

Adding an artificial delay to received packets to bring the ping up to some minimum for consistency's sake is doable in principle, though, and an interesting idea. I'm not sure it would be worthwhile in practice, though. These connections tend to be a bit lossy, too, so you really want to get the problem addressed. And I'm not sure trading the inconsistent ping for a stable high one would be as helpful as we imagine.

[organic io (formerly goldie)]

[The@$$Man!]

Jedi, it was a joke. Just pulling your leg. No hard feeling here at all and when I get back to playing you will be on my list. No worries.

Goldie, what Drakona said about a VPN is pretty much true. It is a hit and miss with the VPN nodes that you connect to. One time you could have the best tunneled connection to someone, but the next game you could have been moved to another node or the network is getting flooded and the next game is complete trash (jittery ping/packet loss.) I know this first hand and when it worked it was great but when it didn't it was better just to not play at all. I just had to change from a super jittery ISP that connected randomly to a bad node in Seattle that made things really bad. Now I connect in San Francisco and with that I get a little higher ping but its stable which much life much easier overall.

[Jediluke]

mark's ping was consistent 60 during the day. problem solved. no more putting up with the other kinda connection.

if the connect isn't good, we're calling it off.