DarkBridge
Smash Rookie
When you are playing online, if you are encountering a delay on your inputs, this is normal.
This is the result of packets of data traveling through the internet and taking time to be sorted through different routers to the correct destination.
The time the signal takes to reach its destination, usually measured in milliseconds (ms) is "latency". There is practically nothing you can do to lower your latency to a given server, besides switch ISPs (which I wouldn't recommend if you're happy with your current provider).
1. The United States is a pretty large country for us to be playing online games across. If you try to play a game from the East coast with someone from the West, you will generally notice substantial lag.
Edited for accuracy, thanks to Nytejade.
2. Packets usually have to go through many, many different routers to get to their destination, since the internet is so vast. It's usually never a straight path to the recipient.
3. The path these packets have to take changes daily due to maintenance of servers, phone lines being down, etc.
Distance is not always the best indicator of how playable your connection will be - instead, it will be dependent on how far the packets have to travel to get to your opponent (for example, if you're playing from Virginia, against someone in Florida, your packets might stop by in Texas and Oklahoma first, degrading your connection speed).
This should only be a consideration if your Wii and your wireless router are separated by multiple walls and/or appliances operating in the 2.4GHZ frequency range.
When you are setting up your Wii's wireless connection, if you are connecting to a router with three green bars in your connection quality column, you don't have anything to worry about.
So why don't we notice this input lag in other online games?
Other online games, primarily shooters, minimize the effects of lag by only displaying the actions that the server has last received from a player; this avoids input delay for players, and imposes it upon the server instead. For example, if you duck behind a corner to avoid enemy fire, only to be killed a second after you were protected, it is because the server was displaying your character as it was a split second earlier, still in the enemy's sights. The server received the other player's packets from him firing on you before it received the packets that told it you were ducking.
Some games will also use prediction to always try to present an accurate position of a player. If a player is running in one direction, the client might display a few milliseconds of that character moving in the same direction before it receives the packets that would say otherwise - this can result in a player's model skipping or flashing in and out of different spots on your screen, as well as the phenomenon of all players running straight ahead if you disconnect from the server.
Needless to say, these methods would not work well for a fighting game. If Nintendo had used methods similar to these to get rid of input lag, our characters would be struck by hits we didn't see, we would never be able to hit our opponents, or characters would be popping in and out of different places on the screen, completely ruining the experience; delaying input on both sides is the only way to account for high latencies on this game.
Well, that sucks! So there's nothing I can do?
I totally agree. Do not despair, though. Hopefully, Nintendo will increase the performance of its servers, which may help some of us in the United States, or release patches that could change the way the game communicates and improve the experience.
The only thing you can do is make sure your connection isn't busy when you're playing online, and hope you're lucky enough to get into a game with someone who isn't many packet hops from your ISP.
This topic is open to discussion and corrections, especially since I'm not a networking specialist, and some of the descriptions of communications could be wrong.
EDIT: Check Nytejade's post on page 2 for some clarification and corrections to my post. My post has been altered a bit to fix some inaccuracies and include information Nytejade provided.
This is the result of packets of data traveling through the internet and taking time to be sorted through different routers to the correct destination.
The time the signal takes to reach its destination, usually measured in milliseconds (ms) is "latency". There is practically nothing you can do to lower your latency to a given server, besides switch ISPs (which I wouldn't recommend if you're happy with your current provider).
Some reasons for this latency could be thus:
1. The United States is a pretty large country for us to be playing online games across. If you try to play a game from the East coast with someone from the West, you will generally notice substantial lag.
Edited for accuracy, thanks to Nytejade.
2. Packets usually have to go through many, many different routers to get to their destination, since the internet is so vast. It's usually never a straight path to the recipient.
3. The path these packets have to take changes daily due to maintenance of servers, phone lines being down, etc.
Distance is not always the best indicator of how playable your connection will be - instead, it will be dependent on how far the packets have to travel to get to your opponent (for example, if you're playing from Virginia, against someone in Florida, your packets might stop by in Texas and Oklahoma first, degrading your connection speed).
Purchasing a LAN adapter for the Wii will not solve the latency problem.
This should only be a consideration if your Wii and your wireless router are separated by multiple walls and/or appliances operating in the 2.4GHZ frequency range.
When you are setting up your Wii's wireless connection, if you are connecting to a router with three green bars in your connection quality column, you don't have anything to worry about.
So why don't we notice this input lag in other online games?
Other online games, primarily shooters, minimize the effects of lag by only displaying the actions that the server has last received from a player; this avoids input delay for players, and imposes it upon the server instead. For example, if you duck behind a corner to avoid enemy fire, only to be killed a second after you were protected, it is because the server was displaying your character as it was a split second earlier, still in the enemy's sights. The server received the other player's packets from him firing on you before it received the packets that told it you were ducking.
Some games will also use prediction to always try to present an accurate position of a player. If a player is running in one direction, the client might display a few milliseconds of that character moving in the same direction before it receives the packets that would say otherwise - this can result in a player's model skipping or flashing in and out of different spots on your screen, as well as the phenomenon of all players running straight ahead if you disconnect from the server.
Needless to say, these methods would not work well for a fighting game. If Nintendo had used methods similar to these to get rid of input lag, our characters would be struck by hits we didn't see, we would never be able to hit our opponents, or characters would be popping in and out of different places on the screen, completely ruining the experience; delaying input on both sides is the only way to account for high latencies on this game.
Well, that sucks! So there's nothing I can do?
I totally agree. Do not despair, though. Hopefully, Nintendo will increase the performance of its servers, which may help some of us in the United States, or release patches that could change the way the game communicates and improve the experience.
The only thing you can do is make sure your connection isn't busy when you're playing online, and hope you're lucky enough to get into a game with someone who isn't many packet hops from your ISP.
This topic is open to discussion and corrections, especially since I'm not a networking specialist, and some of the descriptions of communications could be wrong.
EDIT: Check Nytejade's post on page 2 for some clarification and corrections to my post. My post has been altered a bit to fix some inaccuracies and include information Nytejade provided.
