L - Latency

Why is it that over the past 10 years many things have changed, but latency still plays such a large role in the success of most online games. Those with lower pings consistently do better and find themselves at a huge advantage. In several more modern games they are even more unbalanced (because they are hosting the game) and make it impossible to have any sort of real competition via the game.

I thought surely programmers and providers could get past this sort of barrier and allow the game to compensate better (like games did almost 15 years ago) or the servers and providers could hammer out some of the issues to even out pings. The difference between 160 and 60 are insane. The difference between 30 and 60 is pretty big, too. It has been a problem for a long time, but with so many people on high speed internet the gap has closed a little, but not by enough.

Development left behind the thought of packet smoothing, apparently. Years ago, the original FPS games that helped kick off this revolution, had very good ping adjustments. Things updated more quickly. Everyone now and then you'd get some jumpiness, but everything evened out pretty well and the hitboxes worked like a charm. Somehow we have made countless jumps in power and design, but failed to fix this issue? Why? LPBs and HPBs are a thing of the past, yet latency is even more important today. It's sad.

It must have something to do with console gamers, because a lot of the games today are ports. Consoles must handle the packets differently or something, I'm not quite sure. All I know is I am looking forward to a day when everything is so fast that we don't even sweat a ping and everyone is in single-digits.

C - Comcast spells monopoly.

For those of you looking for a high speed gaming connection you have pretty limited options, especially where I am. I have Comcast. AT&T will offer me a slow service for a little less, but just can't compete. Comcast is blazing fast and doesn't seem too keen on letting anyone else in the area where I live.

I'd love to have Charter or even Time Warner. I'd love to have an option. I have recently switched to a package where I use TWO modems and stream most of my TV via a standard (15 mb down / 3 mb up) Comcast cable connection. I use the other connection (50 mb down / 10 mb up) for gaming. I no longer have a need for bloated HD cable TV, because the internet gives me everything I need. However, in the world of gaming... every single megabyte counts. Ping is very important as is the stability of your connection. While I had plenty of spotty service with Comcast in the past, since paying so much for the premium service... not so much as a hiccup.

I don't know why or what keeps other services from coming in, but I have to imagine it is the grip that Comcast already holds. People like my in-laws and my parents will refuse to live without cable, because they don't know how. All the knew is the TV and that remote. Trying to explain how to use Netflix on the Wii is almost exhausting (not to mention the Wii can't show HD with Netflix). We need to push forward and show the cable company that all we need some them is bandwidth now. I think we send two messages by doing that. One, that we know how valuable the internet is and we know how cheap bandwidth is. Second, we are willing to go to another provider for a service that is just as good. Getting a service in that didn't carry broadcasting would be much easier than one that did.

I am stuck with Comcast and it is what I use. It is pretty fast with this fancy new connection, but I think it is just a luxury now. I have a decent job and can afford it, but I am not sure that for the average consumer the pricepoint is there yet.

It's not my router, Comcast.

Tonight, like many other nights I had to call Comcast. I have called Comcast hundreds of times since they took over for @Home internet and eventually became the default service provider for cable TV in the area where I live. I have called about cable TV, about digital TV, high def channels, the internet, the wires being down and hanging in the road, and who even knows what else. I've covered many, many, MANY bases of the "reason why I called" universe with these guys. Tonight, I almost snapped.

I had someone come out back in January, because my internet was in and our so sporadically that it just didn't make sense. The guy came out, looked around, checked some random levels and didn't find anything. He talked about the new conversion and the new system that they put in place for super fast tiered internet and the upcoming changes to digital. That all sounded cool, but I didn't give a fuck. My internet either worked right or didn't, that's all I care about. Period.

My problems cleared up a bit, but never really went away entirely. My brother moved in for a month back in March/April. We had another guy come out, he brought out a fancy new modem and hooked everything up. I explained my weird disconnects and he told me it was because I had an old modem and the guy from back in January should have given me a new modem. Okay, whatever. Will the internet work? Still wasn't sure. He did tell me that he wasn't allowed to touch my router or set up anything. I'd have to do all of the router work and plugging in to the PC. He had to set it up to run on this one particular laptop and that was it. Uhh, alright.

Time marches on and so do my disconnects. Let's move on to two weeks ago. I got so sick of these random disconnects, which have become more and more close together, that I finally called. I called up Comcast, got almost directly to a rep and told them that I was having problems. He said there was an outage and people were working on it, it just hadn't been updated so that I heard about it when I called in. He gave me a 20 dollar credit. I was kind of please. 20 bucks off AND maybe someone was fixing an issue. OMG, YES!

OMG, NO. The outages still come. The modem resets itself. It goes from online to restarted, instantly. I tried different plugs, I made sure it was plugged in well, I moved it, I unplugged it from the router. I went through it all since then. On the Linux PC beside me I get the same result, which is obvious BECAUSE THE FUCKING ROUTER IS RESTARTING, the computer has nothing to do with that.

So, I call them up tonight. I deal with the stupid fucking automated mess. I speak English, having issues with the internet, my phone number is blah, yes I have tried x, y, z, r, q, and w, then it tells me my balance. Then it asks me to pay my balance. WAIT! I don't have service, I'm calling to complain about poor service and you're still trying to suck money out of me. Are you fucking serious? I select the option to speak to a rep, after it tells me all about my balance. That takes me back to the first menu, I get to go through it all again. Hell yes I wanna do the callback survey. They still haven't called.

I get on the phone with a person and it's awful. I go slow, because most of the time they want to know a bunch of stupid shit before we can get started. Hi, yeah, my service is on for now but it has been going in and out for the past two weeks and I just wanted to call and report the issue. Yeah, I will give you the number again, even though I had to enter it twice before I talked to you and the automated system was able to tell me how much money I owed, but no... I'll say it to you, now. It's in my brother's name. Yeah, I got the last 4 of his social. I explain the issue. I explain that I had people out and I go on a fairly long-winded explanation, so hopefully she will understand what I want.

Nope. IT'S NOT MY ROUTER! That is basically what she comes up with. I tell her that my modem is losing connection and resetting and she tells me that I should check my router.... WHAT? Where do you find these retarded fucking monkeys that you hire to fill these jobs? Why can't I get one of these jobs, I'll act like a fucking idiot. GAH! I tell her that I don't want someone to come out. It isn't my problem, it has nothing to do with me, it is THEIR problem. Something is wrong with THEM. They need to check their lines. No credit this time, but at least I have a notation that I called. I plan to call everytime it does this from now on. I will eventually annoy them enough to fix it or to block my calls.

Fuck you, Comcast. It's not my router, fix your shit.