MagLuster
Casual Member
TLDR:
8 years of borderline unplayable online gaming with no apparent connection problems. Desync, the feeling of being behind the server, impossible enemy reaction times and movement mechanics, terrible hit reg regardless of the skill level of the enemy. There seem to be discrepancies in every game I play, making them quite literally competitively unplayable, outside the realms of regular lag compensation and latency issues. Multiple ISPs all through some sort of Openreach equipment, want to know if switching to virgin media could resolve these issues
Long version:
Somewhere around 2016, I started to experience problems with online gaming that have stuck with me since. It seemed to start instantly, an overnight thing, all of a sudden the games I enjoyed just became completely unenjoyable and borderline unplayable. Games played, all with the same experience. CS:GO, CS:2, CS:S, CS:1.6, BF3, BF4, BFV, BF2042, Valorant, R6:S, EFT among others, and I even went back to try the old games that introduced me to PC gaming back on dial-up and ISDN just to find that they now have the same issues....namely, the UT series which I never had a problem with even on ancient connections were now unplayable.
The problems I have are more visual and feel related. The general responsiveness feels like I'm a couple hundred ms behind the server regardless of ping and which game I play. There isn't enough time in an encounter to react to an enemy before dying regardless of having quick (130-150ms) reaction times. Everyone seems to have sub-100ms reaction times or the ability to kill me before I can see them even when I have the advantageous position. Hit reg feels terrible, as If I'm shooting at ghosts/the enemy isn't actually where I'm shooting. Timings for everything feel off....high time to kill vs low time to die, enemy movements are outside of possible game mechanics, and mechanics like tagging appear muted or don't seem to work at all. Players spectating me will say I stared at someone for 2 seconds doing nothing while on my screen I was dead the instant I saw a pixel of him, probably less than 100ms of visibility, let alone 2 whole seconds. Enemy movements seem out of sync with what I'm seeing causing impossible movement mechanics such as running while transitioning into a crouch that should slow you down massively the instant you crouch, the ability to be completely accurate, and hit consecutive shots while running full speed. It's as if the enemy on the server has peeked, stopped, shot, and killed me in the correct order but on my screen, the instant I see just a small part of the enemy he starts shooting, kills me, then stops. Feels like everything is in the wrong order. When I hit a shot, the shot registers snappily, it feels good.....but anything incoming from the server that happens over time, such as player movement feels like it's completely out of sync with possible game mechanics and outside of the realm of being explained away by general latency and lag compensation. I've played thousands of hours of some of these games before the problem started and know how things should feel but now they just feel wrong.
I've been with multiple ISPs over the years and built multiple PCs but the problem remains. The only common variable is that at some point, my service has gone through open-reach equipment. First was BT Infinity VDSL2, Openreach/ECI cabinet, and of course Openreach backhaul. Next was Plusnet VDSL2 so same cabinet and backhaul as BT Infinity. Then I switched to Talk-Talk.... the same cabinet but now different routing as Talk-Talk has its own backhaul....to be honest gaming on here did feel a bit better but the problems remained, just a little bit less extreme/higher frequency of good days vs bad days, but still low.
Just over a year ago, full fiber got installed in my street and I was thinking finally, maybe I will be able to get away from these problems and enjoy gaming again, but it made absolutely no difference other than my ping being lower. I went for Giganet which uses Openreach street furniture and Zens backhaul, so Openreach is still there at some point.
I've thoroughly tested each connection I've had and seen no problems at all. Always low/1ms jitter, no packet loss, no out-of-order packets, no ping spikes, buffer bloat eradicated with QoS, A+ buffer bloat rating, etc.
So, Virgin Media has become available in my area now and my question is has anyone else experienced such issues and made the switch to VM and noticed any improvement?
8 years of borderline unplayable online gaming with no apparent connection problems. Desync, the feeling of being behind the server, impossible enemy reaction times and movement mechanics, terrible hit reg regardless of the skill level of the enemy. There seem to be discrepancies in every game I play, making them quite literally competitively unplayable, outside the realms of regular lag compensation and latency issues. Multiple ISPs all through some sort of Openreach equipment, want to know if switching to virgin media could resolve these issues
Long version:
Somewhere around 2016, I started to experience problems with online gaming that have stuck with me since. It seemed to start instantly, an overnight thing, all of a sudden the games I enjoyed just became completely unenjoyable and borderline unplayable. Games played, all with the same experience. CS:GO, CS:2, CS:S, CS:1.6, BF3, BF4, BFV, BF2042, Valorant, R6:S, EFT among others, and I even went back to try the old games that introduced me to PC gaming back on dial-up and ISDN just to find that they now have the same issues....namely, the UT series which I never had a problem with even on ancient connections were now unplayable.
The problems I have are more visual and feel related. The general responsiveness feels like I'm a couple hundred ms behind the server regardless of ping and which game I play. There isn't enough time in an encounter to react to an enemy before dying regardless of having quick (130-150ms) reaction times. Everyone seems to have sub-100ms reaction times or the ability to kill me before I can see them even when I have the advantageous position. Hit reg feels terrible, as If I'm shooting at ghosts/the enemy isn't actually where I'm shooting. Timings for everything feel off....high time to kill vs low time to die, enemy movements are outside of possible game mechanics, and mechanics like tagging appear muted or don't seem to work at all. Players spectating me will say I stared at someone for 2 seconds doing nothing while on my screen I was dead the instant I saw a pixel of him, probably less than 100ms of visibility, let alone 2 whole seconds. Enemy movements seem out of sync with what I'm seeing causing impossible movement mechanics such as running while transitioning into a crouch that should slow you down massively the instant you crouch, the ability to be completely accurate, and hit consecutive shots while running full speed. It's as if the enemy on the server has peeked, stopped, shot, and killed me in the correct order but on my screen, the instant I see just a small part of the enemy he starts shooting, kills me, then stops. Feels like everything is in the wrong order. When I hit a shot, the shot registers snappily, it feels good.....but anything incoming from the server that happens over time, such as player movement feels like it's completely out of sync with possible game mechanics and outside of the realm of being explained away by general latency and lag compensation. I've played thousands of hours of some of these games before the problem started and know how things should feel but now they just feel wrong.
I've been with multiple ISPs over the years and built multiple PCs but the problem remains. The only common variable is that at some point, my service has gone through open-reach equipment. First was BT Infinity VDSL2, Openreach/ECI cabinet, and of course Openreach backhaul. Next was Plusnet VDSL2 so same cabinet and backhaul as BT Infinity. Then I switched to Talk-Talk.... the same cabinet but now different routing as Talk-Talk has its own backhaul....to be honest gaming on here did feel a bit better but the problems remained, just a little bit less extreme/higher frequency of good days vs bad days, but still low.
Just over a year ago, full fiber got installed in my street and I was thinking finally, maybe I will be able to get away from these problems and enjoy gaming again, but it made absolutely no difference other than my ping being lower. I went for Giganet which uses Openreach street furniture and Zens backhaul, so Openreach is still there at some point.
I've thoroughly tested each connection I've had and seen no problems at all. Always low/1ms jitter, no packet loss, no out-of-order packets, no ping spikes, buffer bloat eradicated with QoS, A+ buffer bloat rating, etc.
So, Virgin Media has become available in my area now and my question is has anyone else experienced such issues and made the switch to VM and noticed any improvement?























