by InCom » 21 Apr 2013, 19:25
The best possible way would be to do a connection stress test along with ping.
Realistically I see 4 possible problems a connection can have in terms of FA gameplay. Unfortunately all of these present themself in the same manner ingame: Lag
1) High latency of some other player to you
This is the thing we see in the lobby now
2) High latency to someone else
If someone had ping 50 to you but ping 650 to someone else in the lobby its a no-go and it will lag just as bad as if he had ping 650 to you.
We don't see this directly in the lobby nowadays. But someone in the lobby can always see it and if hes reasonable he will tell others.
3) Limited total bandwidth (either downstream or upstream)
FA uses a lot of bandwidth compared to most other RTS games I have seen. Also, bigger games result in more bandwidth requirements.
We do not see this in lobby as the lobby is not as bandwidth intensive as the game itself. However there could possibly be a stress test implemented that would gauge this.
4) Poor stability of the connection itself
a) It could be ISPs fault, which presents itself as fluctuations of the actually available bandwidth on your modem or poor connectivity of the ISPs backend, which usually results in ping spikes or unusually high latencies between people who are otherwise geographically close to each other.
b) It could also be due to connection being shared by several people in your household. This presents as sudden pingspikes, when other people load a webpage for example.