Online Q&A

EA_WilsonVenhola · 04-02-2009, 05:22 PM

Hi Everybody,

I'm one of the online engineers that worked on FIFA 09.

I'd like to start a little Q&A session here on the forums to answer some of the more technical questions you may have about the online portion of our titles. I am guessing that since you're reading this forum you are exactly the audience who might have an interest in asking me some questions.

A couple disclaimers:
1. I'm not a designer. :-)
2. I can't talk about anything going on for FIFA 10.

Let me start by listing some of the frequent questions I see on this forum.
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Q: Sometimes when I match up to someone ( In a head to head game type.. i.e. Quick ranked, unranked, FIWC, online league, Interactive league, etc ) the screen shows both sides as my favourite team, and I'm only able to change the team if I'm on the home side. Eventually, the session ends and I'm booted from the session. Why does this happen?
------------------

A: When you match up with someone through our centralized server, you then establish a direct peer to peer connection with your opponent. This p2p connection establishment process needs to navigate any firewalls, routers, and other network devices between you and the opponent. This process is difficult and is highly dependant on the type of routers used by both parties, and how they have configured their port forwarding and routers. The best solution to this problem is to make sure you have a UPnP capable/Xbox live compatible router, and that you open the right ports to your ps3 or xbox. I believe there is a sticky about how to do this properly. If not, I'll see if we can get one up.

Side note: You may have noticed that this is much more frequent in head to head matches than it is in online team play or clubs matches. This is because online team play and club matches connect to an EA hosted game server, and do not need any type of port demangling or other fancy process to establish a connection. ( Since the server is on a dedicated public internet ip address (no NAT) and the right ports are opened on the server side. )
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Q: How does the ranking system work?
------------------

A: It's based on Elo, which is a system originally designed for ranking chess players but was adapted for many many different games and video games alike.

Elo rating system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's modified slightly in FIFA, so that, the teams used change the weighting of the outcome. All else equal, a user playing with a one star team will gain more points if they win than if they were playing with a 5 star team. How much of a difference does it make? Well you could say that the difference between a .5 star team and a 5 star team is roughly equivalent to about a 3000-4000 ranking point difference. So someone who is ranked 3500 points above their opponent can even the expected outcome ( and hence potential point winnings and/or losses ) by selecting a .5 star team if their opponent selects a 5 star team.
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Q: My opponent quit the game, and I didn't get a win. What in the world is going on?
------------------

A: There are a couple possible explanations.

Let me first start by explaining how the game reporting works.

1. You play until the game ends.
2. When the game ends, both users submit a game report to the server which contains information about what the result of that game was.
3. The server evaluates the contents of the report, verifies consistency, and determines the result based on the report information.

Ok, and on to some explanations of why you might not have gotten the win:
1. Your opponent didn't rage quit or anything suspicious, but rather the peer to peer connection between you and your opponent was disrupted. Sometimes a peer to peer connection fails, the internet is not 100% reliable, and your ISP may not put a priority on your p2p traffic. If the p2p connection failed but both users maintained their connection to the EA servers, then both users will submit a game report indicating they lost connection to their opponent. The server will recieve a report from both users saying they lost connection to their opponent. The game will not count.
2. You did get the win, but just not yet. In this case, your opponent lost connection to the EA server. You submitted a report at the of the game, and when you went back to your career view you didn't see a win. In this case, the server is waiting for the other user to time-out on sending the game report. If the report doesn't arrive, then the server will assign you the win. It might take a minute or two, so if you wait before going to career view, you will see your win recorded.
3. It was an unranked game. These games don't count.

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Q: Son of a gun this online game is laggy. Why is it so laggy?
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A: This is a tough one to anser definitively. Lag is very subjective. Some people refer to lag as network jitter. Some people refer to lag as network latency. Some people use it to mean both. Some people are more sensitive to lag than others, and some people don't really notice it. I think of lag as online gameplay conditions that make it difficult to attempt maneouvers that you would normally feel comfortable doing in the offline game.

Anyways, there are a ton of things that can affect online performance, and I'll attempt to explain what the major causes of lag are for FIFA.

I'd feel I was misrepresenting the FIFA game if I now failed to mention that major work was done in the last couple of years to preserve the online gameplay experience during adverse network conditions. If you had played FIFA RTWC 06, and subsequent years you have hopefully noticed the dramatic leaps we've made in online gameplay quality. Alright, shameless self promotion over....

Here are the major causes of lag in no particular order:

Reason 1. Poor Quality of service (QoS) with your ISP
=======

Having a high bandwidth connection is great, and generally a sign that your ISP connection will be high quality but it is not a gaurantee of lag free games. Latency, and the variance on your latency is actually more important when it comes to real-time online gaming.

Here's a good link describing how latency is very important when sending small bits of information frequently. Please forgive the condescending title... I think the author was a little frustrated when they wrote it.

It's the Latency, Stupid

My point is that you should first verify the quality of service you are getting on your internet connection. You should also note that sharing your online connection has a significant impact on it's performance. If someone is using a lot of download bandwidth while you are playing it will affect the QoS FIFA is getting on its internet connection. This is even more important when considering upstream bandwidth, since most ISP's don't provide as much upstream bandwidth as they do downstream. Bittorrent, Skype, Heavy IRC use, File sharing, or any other application that makes intensive use of the network can affect your gaming experience.

You can test your QoS by going to this link.

MySpeed VoIP quality test, test VoIP connection quality

This VoIP test is great for measuring network jitter and assigning it a rating. Choose a location near you and run the test. If you are in the red for network jitter or packet loss, then you're connection is not performing well.

If your connection is performing well skip to reason #2 for laggy online gameplay.

So you're QoS may not be optimal...

Before I go straight to your options, I'd like to talk about whether you are or are not experiencing lag in other online games ( such as COD4, or GoW, or Halo, etc. ) All games have different performance requirements when it comes to online.

FIFA and most sports games, are less dependant on high bandwidth connections, and more dependant on reliable, high QoS connections. First person shooters, in general, are more forgiving than most sports games when it comes to late packets. If a player update is lost and isn't updated one frame, the movement logic can blend between the previous update and the latest update without too much of a hiccup. Many Fps titles are always blending between the last two updates recieved from the server. ( e.g. Look at the entity interpolation here: Source Multiplayer Networking - Valve Developer Community ) In the source engine, the player is always viewing the state of the game 100 ms behind the latest state they could be showing. This smooths out movement at the cost of extra latency. Fortunately for fps's, the latency of firing a gun can be compensated for fairly easily. The source multiplayer networking wiki has a great section explaining how their lag compensation works.

A sports title is less forgiving when it comes to missing updates and compensating for lag. In an fps, when someone with lag shoots you, the worst that happens is that the effects of a hit are delayed on your screen. ( e.g. You strafed behind the wall, and then died from getting shot. Your opponent actually did shoot you while you were in view on their screen. ).

In a sports title, this would be roughly equivalent to having your keeper dive to the side and appear to block a shot only to have the game teleport the ball into the back of the net! ( Which is why we don't that type of lag compensation ) Your opponent had actually taken the shot much earlier than it looked like on your screen. This is not to say that lag compensation is impossible in online sports games, but just different and more limited in its effectiveness. For instance, the power meter in FIFA 09 was updated to be lag-free (there is no latency powering-up the meter, and the process is not affected by network jitter) but I haven't seen any comments about it on the forum so I'm guessing it's probably not that effective at compensating for lag.

Ok, I just wanted to say that comparing FPS's and FIFA is a bit like comparing apples to oranges.

Moving on for now... (I could write for hours on this subject).

What do you do with bad QoS? Disable all the applications sharing your network, and re-test. Still got bad QoS? Contact your ISP, and tell them of your problem. I have had bad QoS many times before with my ISP provider, and I've called them to complain. It was usually because they needed to upgrade the equipment in my area due to growth of their client base. In a week or two, they usually had the problem resolved.

Reason 2. Opponent's network connection is bad.
=======

Are you playing a head to head game (H2H) such as quick ranked, Interactive League, Online league, FIWC, Gilette sponsored event, etc?
These game modes are all p2p based, and as such the quality of connection your opponent has will limit the quality of your game experience. In a more concrete sense, In H2H, the game performance is limited by the worst connection of the two players involved.

If some FIFA H2H games are 'laggy', but others are fine then it's likely that you're matching up against someone with a bad connection. Play close attention to the quality of the connection in the first 3 minutes of gameplay ( game minutes, not real minutes ) and if it's intolerable, leave the match. After 3 minutes, if you quit, then you will get a DNF increase. After 5 minutes you will get a DNF increase and a full loss.

Keep in mind that the quality of your connection to an opponent is not entirely based on the lowest QoS between your two ISP's, but also the distance between you and your opponent, and the route that the network traffic takes. Bad routing or long distances can incur some extra delays, and make the game very laggy.

Ok, so you say you're playing a friend, you both have high QoS ISP connections, you have great low latency routes between the consoles, and the H2H game is still laggy? Please post the details of how you created the game, and the names of both accounts used so we can take a look into the server logs to see if there's anything standing out.

Not playing H2H game modes? On to reason 3.

Reason 3. Connection to Game Server is bad.
=======

Ok so you're getting lag in online team play or clubs games despite having a good QoS on your ISP connection. The first step would be to record the details of the match so we can look at it in the server logs to see if our game servers were under unusual load at that time. We need times of the game, and as many of the users you could record. Some basic information about the game would also be useful, such as, were you using a headset? were your teammates using headsets, and were your opponents using headsets? Was the lag constant or did it come and go? Anything in particular stand out? Was the lag on headers? Corners? and as always, include which platform it was on ( xbox 360, or ps3 )
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Q: The online game feels like it has changed recently, yet no patch was released.
------------------

A: I assure you there were no changes to online gameplay if there was no corresponding patch released. Online gameplay is driven by the client code, and cannot be changed on the server. We do fix important issues on the server from time to time, but they do not affect gameplay.
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Q: In the middle of the game, I just started lagging. Is my opponent causing the lag? and will he/she gain an advantage out of it?
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A: It's possible they are shaping their network traffic, either with a crude lag switch or with more advanced network emulation tools. It's more likely that someone started another application that is using network bandwidth on one end of the connection. Regardless, they will not gain an advantage out of it. In H2H, there is no official server and no official client ( and they definitely don't switch at half ;-) ) so users cannot lag their opponent without lagging themselves. In OTP, it's not even possible to affect your opponent's lag ( I suppose someone could DOS attack their opponent if they knew their Ip address, but since you're connected through a game server you don't have access to their Ip. )
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Q: How are clubs ranked?
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A: Clubs re-uses the same Elo ranking system as is used in H2H. Except, the team weighting is replaced by a player count weighting. The more players you have playing the less likely we expect you to win ( and therefore you win more points when you win, and lose less points when you lose ).

The reasoning is two fold:
- It encourages clubs to play with more players
- It is harder to co-ordinate larger teams and play good football.
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Feel free to ask more questions. I will do my best to answer them if it's possible.

Cheers,
Wilson

Wepeeler · 04-02-2009, 05:23 PM

Nice. I'm gonna sticky this bad boy...

DOA KappaTango · 04-02-2009, 05:32 PM

Thanks for this input Wilson. I am sure there are many questions that will be directed at you

Nice selection of FAQ's to start, so will get my thinking cap on and see what we can come up with.

Kappa

gcooley · 04-02-2009, 05:36 PM

Thank you Wilson.

gmjosund · 04-02-2009, 05:45 PM

Great post, just great, even if i knew most of that from my work and experience, but im sure it will be helpfully for most people here.

Heightz · 04-02-2009, 05:53 PM

sorry I no you hve specifically stated online questions an so feel free not to aswer my question but i was wondering if you could tell me the reason why I cannot start another mm after quiting my previous one. it always stops at 57%

DOA KappaTango · 04-02-2009, 05:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Heightz

sorry I no you hve specifically stated online questions an so feel free not to aswer my question but i was wondering if you could tell me the reason why I cannot start another mm after quiting my previous one. it always stops at 57%

Not sure this is the place for that question. Try deleting your game save.

alhawawy · 04-02-2009, 06:00 PM

Thanks

mcpop72 · 04-02-2009, 06:02 PM

Thanks for the Info.

All I can say is that when I first got the game in December I didn't have any lag problems other than users with noticeably bad internet connections (which you can understand coming across from time to time)

Nowadays I frequently get sluggish, non-responsive games: underpowered passing, chip shots that no longer go over the goal line, balls bouncing off players etc etc

So, logically, you would assume something has changed between when I got the game and now?

I'm going to endeavour to keep a log of games where these problems exist and post them on to you. Notepad next to PS3

cbcruz · 04-02-2009, 06:54 PM

"You may have noticed that this is much more frequent in head to head matches than it is in online team play or clubs matches. This is because online team play and club matches connect to an EA hosted game server"

I guess this answers why there's so much delay in club mode.

It doesn't matter if were 3v3 or 10v10, delay is always presence.

Q: Are you guys planning on upgrading the servers?

Sure, we can play some beatiful football, but in most situation it's based on pure luck. Mainly because of the delay. Head-to-Head games as you called it, feels like playing offline compared to clubs, and to be fairly honest, this needs to be looked at.

MusePT · 04-02-2009, 07:07 PM

Hi... great topic here...

I have two questions that I don't know if you can reply to:

1- When will the advantage rule be fixed? it was supposed to be fixed on the latest update but still 9 times out of 10 the ref will stop the match when he should let it play on

2- The Squad update due to release friday will only have the transfers from the january market or will it have more things like review stats for players, apperances, etc?

Thanks

cG_Zen · 04-02-2009, 07:40 PM

Cheers for posting the topic, it's appreciated. One thing though you need to elaborate on, how do clubs get into certain divisions? If you could answer that then everything will be spiffy. Thanks.

SeNSaTIoN9 · 04-02-2009, 07:41 PM

I have one question which please will you add the answer too, when will FIWC leaderboards have cheats taken off?

EAUK_Adroit · 04-02-2009, 07:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cG_Zen

Cheers for posting the topic, it's appreciated. One thing though you need to elaborate on, how do clubs get into certain divisions? If you could answer that then everything will be spiffy. Thanks.

It's based on the number of "points" each time has, in a similar way to being ranked in 1v1 games.

Sumo · 04-02-2009, 08:20 PM

Hey Wilson

I have a couple of questions:

1. It is currently impossible for our players to get a serious injury online and be forced to be taken off. Will you be looking to include serious injuries in any upcoming patches?

2. Will the Interactive League problems (games not counting etc) be fixed in an upcoming patch?

Thanks

Carl---xD · 04-02-2009, 08:20 PM

I find it despicable that you expect kids to be able to know how to open ports on there router

We want to play others online why can't you of made it easy for us to do that

cbcruz · 04-02-2009, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carl---xD

I find it despicable that you expect kids to be able to know how to open ports on there router

We want to play others online why can't you of made it easy for us to do that

Internet isn't easy.

I can understand kids not being able to do this, but I'm sure most can get help from parents or friends. There is also customer support (Where you get your internet) that can help you with this.

DOA KappaTango · 04-02-2009, 08:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cbcruz

Internet isn't easy.

And why did they have to make it so hard to build a car! I want a Ferrari now! And I want to build it with my hammer, and hammer only!

I think this thread deserves respect. Lets all try to work together to keep it on topic and not turn it into the usual flame fest, eh?

cbcruz · 04-02-2009, 09:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DOA KappaTango

I think this thread deserves respect. Lets all try to work together to keep it on topic and turn it into the usual flame fest, eh?

You're right, sorry. I edited the post.

Carl---xD · 04-02-2009, 09:13 PM

I don't mean to be angry or anything it's just i want to play my mates online and all this port stuff isn't easy i checked through my router settings and stuff but i just don't have a clue.

Kellog_G8 · 04-02-2009, 11:04 PM

Excellent post, very useful stuff Wilson. Thanks

savillbros · 04-02-2009, 11:27 PM

Thanks, I have a question?

My club were winning 2-1 in the 90th minute, they decided to make a "substitution", and the game froze, we went to the dressing room, to find that no result what so ever had been recorded, this happened 3 days ago.
This incident happened again and we were recorded a loss, then again when we were winning and no result was recorded.

When will this get sorted, as I believe me & my club are being cheated out of wins, our record is:
Wins - 3
Ties -1
Losses - 1
It should be:
Wins -7
Ties - 1
Losses - 0

Sumo · 05-02-2009, 12:26 AM

Another question...

Would it be possible to add a "goals scored" stat to the Online Clubs information?

EA_DavidRutter · 05-02-2009, 01:01 AM

Thanks Wilson. You're a star

Njazz · 05-02-2009, 01:12 AM

I think the "if u leave within 3m u dont get a DNF increase" is kinda unfair. Most of the time 3m is not enough to see if the game is laggy or not, specially if u play as the away team...cant u guys remove that rule and stick to the one for the 5m?

04-02-2009, 05:22 PM	#1 (permalink)
EA_WilsonVenhola EA - FIFA Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada Posts: 135	Online Q&A Hi Everybody, I'm one of the online engineers that worked on FIFA 09. I'd like to start a little Q&A session here on the forums to answer some of the more technical questions you may have about the online portion of our titles. I am guessing that since you're reading this forum you are exactly the audience who might have an interest in asking me some questions. A couple disclaimers: 1. I'm not a designer. :-) 2. I can't talk about anything going on for FIFA 10. Let me start by listing some of the frequent questions I see on this forum. ------------------ Q: Sometimes when I match up to someone ( In a head to head game type.. i.e. Quick ranked, unranked, FIWC, online league, Interactive league, etc ) the screen shows both sides as my favourite team, and I'm only able to change the team if I'm on the home side. Eventually, the session ends and I'm booted from the session. Why does this happen? ------------------ A: When you match up with someone through our centralized server, you then establish a direct peer to peer connection with your opponent. This p2p connection establishment process needs to navigate any firewalls, routers, and other network devices between you and the opponent. This process is difficult and is highly dependant on the type of routers used by both parties, and how they have configured their port forwarding and routers. The best solution to this problem is to make sure you have a UPnP capable/Xbox live compatible router, and that you open the right ports to your ps3 or xbox. I believe there is a sticky about how to do this properly. If not, I'll see if we can get one up. Side note: You may have noticed that this is much more frequent in head to head matches than it is in online team play or clubs matches. This is because online team play and club matches connect to an EA hosted game server, and do not need any type of port demangling or other fancy process to establish a connection. ( Since the server is on a dedicated public internet ip address (no NAT) and the right ports are opened on the server side. ) ------------------ Q: How does the ranking system work? ------------------ A: It's based on Elo, which is a system originally designed for ranking chess players but was adapted for many many different games and video games alike. Elo rating system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia It's modified slightly in FIFA, so that, the teams used change the weighting of the outcome. All else equal, a user playing with a one star team will gain more points if they win than if they were playing with a 5 star team. How much of a difference does it make? Well you could say that the difference between a .5 star team and a 5 star team is roughly equivalent to about a 3000-4000 ranking point difference. So someone who is ranked 3500 points above their opponent can even the expected outcome ( and hence potential point winnings and/or losses ) by selecting a .5 star team if their opponent selects a 5 star team. ------------------ Q: My opponent quit the game, and I didn't get a win. What in the world is going on? ------------------ A: There are a couple possible explanations. Let me first start by explaining how the game reporting works. 1. You play until the game ends. 2. When the game ends, both users submit a game report to the server which contains information about what the result of that game was. 3. The server evaluates the contents of the report, verifies consistency, and determines the result based on the report information. Ok, and on to some explanations of why you might not have gotten the win: 1. Your opponent didn't rage quit or anything suspicious, but rather the peer to peer connection between you and your opponent was disrupted. Sometimes a peer to peer connection fails, the internet is not 100% reliable, and your ISP may not put a priority on your p2p traffic. If the p2p connection failed but both users maintained their connection to the EA servers, then both users will submit a game report indicating they lost connection to their opponent. The server will recieve a report from both users saying they lost connection to their opponent. The game will not count. 2. You did get the win, but just not yet. In this case, your opponent lost connection to the EA server. You submitted a report at the of the game, and when you went back to your career view you didn't see a win. In this case, the server is waiting for the other user to time-out on sending the game report. If the report doesn't arrive, then the server will assign you the win. It might take a minute or two, so if you wait before going to career view, you will see your win recorded. 3. It was an unranked game. These games don't count. ------------------ Q: Son of a gun this online game is laggy. Why is it so laggy? ------------------ A: This is a tough one to anser definitively. Lag is very subjective. Some people refer to lag as network jitter. Some people refer to lag as network latency. Some people use it to mean both. Some people are more sensitive to lag than others, and some people don't really notice it. I think of lag as online gameplay conditions that make it difficult to attempt maneouvers that you would normally feel comfortable doing in the offline game. Anyways, there are a ton of things that can affect online performance, and I'll attempt to explain what the major causes of lag are for FIFA. I'd feel I was misrepresenting the FIFA game if I now failed to mention that major work was done in the last couple of years to preserve the online gameplay experience during adverse network conditions. If you had played FIFA RTWC 06, and subsequent years you have hopefully noticed the dramatic leaps we've made in online gameplay quality. Alright, shameless self promotion over.... Here are the major causes of lag in no particular order: Reason 1. Poor Quality of service (QoS) with your ISP ======= Having a high bandwidth connection is great, and generally a sign that your ISP connection will be high quality but it is not a gaurantee of lag free games. Latency, and the variance on your latency is actually more important when it comes to real-time online gaming. Here's a good link describing how latency is very important when sending small bits of information frequently. Please forgive the condescending title... I think the author was a little frustrated when they wrote it. It's the Latency, Stupid My point is that you should first verify the quality of service you are getting on your internet connection. You should also note that sharing your online connection has a significant impact on it's performance. If someone is using a lot of download bandwidth while you are playing it will affect the QoS FIFA is getting on its internet connection. This is even more important when considering upstream bandwidth, since most ISP's don't provide as much upstream bandwidth as they do downstream. Bittorrent, Skype, Heavy IRC use, File sharing, or any other application that makes intensive use of the network can affect your gaming experience. You can test your QoS by going to this link. MySpeed VoIP quality test, test VoIP connection quality This VoIP test is great for measuring network jitter and assigning it a rating. Choose a location near you and run the test. If you are in the red for network jitter or packet loss, then you're connection is not performing well. If your connection is performing well skip to reason #2 for laggy online gameplay. So you're QoS may not be optimal... Before I go straight to your options, I'd like to talk about whether you are or are not experiencing lag in other online games ( such as COD4, or GoW, or Halo, etc. ) All games have different performance requirements when it comes to online. FIFA and most sports games, are less dependant on high bandwidth connections, and more dependant on reliable, high QoS connections. First person shooters, in general, are more forgiving than most sports games when it comes to late packets. If a player update is lost and isn't updated one frame, the movement logic can blend between the previous update and the latest update without too much of a hiccup. Many Fps titles are always blending between the last two updates recieved from the server. ( e.g. Look at the entity interpolation here: Source Multiplayer Networking - Valve Developer Community ) In the source engine, the player is always viewing the state of the game 100 ms behind the latest state they could be showing. This smooths out movement at the cost of extra latency. Fortunately for fps's, the latency of firing a gun can be compensated for fairly easily. The source multiplayer networking wiki has a great section explaining how their lag compensation works. A sports title is less forgiving when it comes to missing updates and compensating for lag. In an fps, when someone with lag shoots you, the worst that happens is that the effects of a hit are delayed on your screen. ( e.g. You strafed behind the wall, and then died from getting shot. Your opponent actually did shoot you while you were in view on their screen. ). In a sports title, this would be roughly equivalent to having your keeper dive to the side and appear to block a shot only to have the game teleport the ball into the back of the net! ( Which is why we don't that type of lag compensation ) Your opponent had actually taken the shot much earlier than it looked like on your screen. This is not to say that lag compensation is impossible in online sports games, but just different and more limited in its effectiveness. For instance, the power meter in FIFA 09 was updated to be lag-free (there is no latency powering-up the meter, and the process is not affected by network jitter) but I haven't seen any comments about it on the forum so I'm guessing it's probably not that effective at compensating for lag. Ok, I just wanted to say that comparing FPS's and FIFA is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. Moving on for now... (I could write for hours on this subject). What do you do with bad QoS? Disable all the applications sharing your network, and re-test. Still got bad QoS? Contact your ISP, and tell them of your problem. I have had bad QoS many times before with my ISP provider, and I've called them to complain. It was usually because they needed to upgrade the equipment in my area due to growth of their client base. In a week or two, they usually had the problem resolved. Reason 2. Opponent's network connection is bad. ======= Are you playing a head to head game (H2H) such as quick ranked, Interactive League, Online league, FIWC, Gilette sponsored event, etc? These game modes are all p2p based, and as such the quality of connection your opponent has will limit the quality of your game experience. In a more concrete sense, In H2H, the game performance is limited by the worst connection of the two players involved. If some FIFA H2H games are 'laggy', but others are fine then it's likely that you're matching up against someone with a bad connection. Play close attention to the quality of the connection in the first 3 minutes of gameplay ( game minutes, not real minutes ) and if it's intolerable, leave the match. After 3 minutes, if you quit, then you will get a DNF increase. After 5 minutes you will get a DNF increase and a full loss. Keep in mind that the quality of your connection to an opponent is not entirely based on the lowest QoS between your two ISP's, but also the distance between you and your opponent, and the route that the network traffic takes. Bad routing or long distances can incur some extra delays, and make the game very laggy. Ok, so you say you're playing a friend, you both have high QoS ISP connections, you have great low latency routes between the consoles, and the H2H game is still laggy? Please post the details of how you created the game, and the names of both accounts used so we can take a look into the server logs to see if there's anything standing out. Not playing H2H game modes? On to reason 3. Reason 3. Connection to Game Server is bad. ======= Ok so you're getting lag in online team play or clubs games despite having a good QoS on your ISP connection. The first step would be to record the details of the match so we can look at it in the server logs to see if our game servers were under unusual load at that time. We need times of the game, and as many of the users you could record. Some basic information about the game would also be useful, such as, were you using a headset? were your teammates using headsets, and were your opponents using headsets? Was the lag constant or did it come and go? Anything in particular stand out? Was the lag on headers? Corners? and as always, include which platform it was on ( xbox 360, or ps3 ) ------------------ Q: The online game feels like it has changed recently, yet no patch was released. ------------------ A: I assure you there were no changes to online gameplay if there was no corresponding patch released. Online gameplay is driven by the client code, and cannot be changed on the server. We do fix important issues on the server from time to time, but they do not affect gameplay. ------------------ Q: In the middle of the game, I just started lagging. Is my opponent causing the lag? and will he/she gain an advantage out of it? ------------------ A: It's possible they are shaping their network traffic, either with a crude lag switch or with more advanced network emulation tools. It's more likely that someone started another application that is using network bandwidth on one end of the connection. Regardless, they will not gain an advantage out of it. In H2H, there is no official server and no official client ( and they definitely don't switch at half ;-) ) so users cannot lag their opponent without lagging themselves. In OTP, it's not even possible to affect your opponent's lag ( I suppose someone could DOS attack their opponent if they knew their Ip address, but since you're connected through a game server you don't have access to their Ip. ) ------------------ Q: How are clubs ranked? ------------------ A: Clubs re-uses the same Elo ranking system as is used in H2H. Except, the team weighting is replaced by a player count weighting. The more players you have playing the less likely we expect you to win ( and therefore you win more points when you win, and lose less points when you lose ). The reasoning is two fold: - It encourages clubs to play with more players - It is harder to co-ordinate larger teams and play good football. ------------------ Feel free to ask more questions. I will do my best to answer them if it's possible. Cheers, Wilson

04-02-2009, 05:23 PM	#2 (permalink)
Wepeeler FIFA & EURO Moderator Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Bris-dull CT, USA Age: 28 Gender: Male Posts: 5,990	Nice. I'm gonna sticky this bad boy... __________________ FIFA 10 vs PES 2010 Comparison Double Post Mayhem Updated!!! FIFA 10 Demo Goals 2

04-02-2009, 05:36 PM	#4 (permalink)
gcooley Elite Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: away for the forseable future Age: 30 Gender: Male Posts: 6,131	Thank you Wilson. __________________ <me>www.glencooley.com</me> Twitter: glencooley

04-02-2009, 05:45 PM	#5 (permalink)
gmjosund Forum Guru Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Paris Age: 34 Gender: Male Posts: 1,088	Great post, just great, even if i knew most of that from my work and experience, but im sure it will be helpfully for most people here. __________________ “Show class, have pride, and display character. If you do, winning takes care of itself.”

04-02-2009, 06:00 PM	#8 (permalink)
alhawawy Forum Regular Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Saudi Arabia,Riyadh Age: 18 Gender: Male Posts: 672	Thanks __________________ cinco trofeos por el Barça y tenemos más Al-Hilal Saudi Club The Best Club In Asia

04-02-2009, 05:53 PM	#6 (permalink)
Heightz Rookie Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: WEST COAST Age: 17 Posts: 79	sorry I no you hve specifically stated online questions an so feel free not to aswer my question but i was wondering if you could tell me the reason why I cannot start another mm after quiting my previous one. it always stops at 57%

04-02-2009, 06:02 PM	#9 (permalink)
mcpop72 Rookie Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 167	Thanks for the Info. All I can say is that when I first got the game in December I didn't have any lag problems other than users with noticeably bad internet connections (which you can understand coming across from time to time) Nowadays I frequently get sluggish, non-responsive games: underpowered passing, chip shots that no longer go over the goal line, balls bouncing off players etc etc So, logically, you would assume something has changed between when I got the game and now? I'm going to endeavour to keep a log of games where these problems exist and post them on to you. Notepad next to PS3

04-02-2009, 06:54 PM	#10 (permalink)
cbcruz Elite Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: at home Age: 20 Gender: Male Posts: 9,469	"You may have noticed that this is much more frequent in head to head matches than it is in online team play or clubs matches. This is because online team play and club matches connect to an EA hosted game server" I guess this answers why there's so much delay in club mode. It doesn't matter if were 3v3 or 10v10, delay is always presence. Q: Are you guys planning on upgrading the servers? Sure, we can play some beatiful football, but in most situation it's based on pure luck. Mainly because of the delay. Head-to-Head games as you called it, feels like playing offline compared to clubs, and to be fairly honest, this needs to be looked at. __________________ thanks sixtoo/kyro7 for sig/avatar!

04-02-2009, 07:07 PM	#11 (permalink)
MusePT Rookie Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Portugal Age: 33 Gender: Male Posts: 24	Hi... great topic here... I have two questions that I don't know if you can reply to: 1- When will the advantage rule be fixed? it was supposed to be fixed on the latest update but still 9 times out of 10 the ref will stop the match when he should let it play on 2- The Squad update due to release friday will only have the transfers from the january market or will it have more things like review stats for players, apperances, etc? Thanks

04-02-2009, 07:40 PM	#12 (permalink)
cG_Zen Rookie Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Coventry Gender: Male Posts: 212	Cheers for posting the topic, it's appreciated. One thing though you need to elaborate on, how do clubs get into certain divisions? If you could answer that then everything will be spiffy. Thanks.

04-02-2009, 07:41 PM	#13 (permalink)
SeNSaTIoN9 Rookie Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 478	I have one question which please will you add the answer too, when will FIWC leaderboards have cheats taken off? __________________ Visit The Imperial's Website at WWW.Imperial-esports.net

04-02-2009, 08:20 PM	#15 (permalink)
Sumo EA Veteran Join Date: Jun 2005 Gender: Private Posts: 17,535	Hey Wilson I have a couple of questions: 1. It is currently impossible for our players to get a serious injury online and be forced to be taken off. Will you be looking to include serious injuries in any upcoming patches? 2. Will the Interactive League problems (games not counting etc) be fixed in an upcoming patch? Thanks

04-02-2009, 08:20 PM	#16 (permalink)
Carl---xD Rookie Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 41	Stupid!!! I find it despicable that you expect kids to be able to know how to open ports on there router We want to play others online why can't you of made it easy for us to do that

04-02-2009, 09:13 PM	#20 (permalink)
Carl---xD Rookie Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 41	Sorry I don't mean to be angry or anything it's just i want to play my mates online and all this port stuff isn't easy i checked through my router settings and stuff but i just don't have a clue.

04-02-2009, 11:27 PM	#22 (permalink)
savillbros Elite Join Date: May 2008 Location: Isle Of Wight - Worst place on Earth. Age: 16 Gender: Male Posts: 5,096	Thanks, I have a question? My club were winning 2-1 in the 90th minute, they decided to make a "substitution", and the game froze, we went to the dressing room, to find that no result what so ever had been recorded, this happened 3 days ago. This incident happened again and we were recorded a loss, then again when we were winning and no result was recorded. When will this get sorted, as I believe me & my club are being cheated out of wins, our record is: Wins - 3 Ties -1 Losses - 1 It should be: Wins -7 Ties - 1 Losses - 0 __________________ VV_Iniesta_8 Played: 84 Scored: 53 Assists: 58

05-02-2009, 12:26 AM	#23 (permalink)
Sumo EA Veteran Join Date: Jun 2005 Gender: Private Posts: 17,535	Another question... Would it be possible to add a "goals scored" stat to the Online Clubs information?

05-02-2009, 01:01 AM	#24 (permalink)
EA_DavidRutter EA - FIFA Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 681	Thanks Wilson. You're a star

05-02-2009, 01:12 AM	#25 (permalink)
Njazz Rookie Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 12	I think the "if u leave within 3m u dont get a DNF increase" is kinda unfair. Most of the time 3m is not enough to see if the game is laggy or not, specially if u play as the away team...cant u guys remove that rule and stick to the one for the 5m?