WARDOGS lag and high ping: causes and fixes

WARDOGS puts a hundred players in three teams on one destructible map, and you pick your server yourself. That makes its lag easier to fix than most: the right server is half of it. Here's how to choose one, and what to do about the lag that's left.

Servers you choose

WARDOGS has no matchmaking that sends you somewhere: it has a server browser. Since patch 0.11 there are two, one for official servers and one for community servers that players and groups host, many of them through BisectHosting. Each listing shows the server's region, how many are playing and your ping to it, before you join. Nothing locks you to a region, so it's easy to end up on a server far away.

The ping in the browser is the most useful number you'll see. Pick a server close to you with a low, steady ping and room for you, and you've done the biggest single thing against lag.

Find which kind of lag you have

• High ping on every server you try: the problem is close to you, on your line, your Wi-Fi or your provider.
• Good ping, then sudden rubberbanding: something on the way queues at times. What causes ping spikes shows how to find where.
• Everyone on the server lagging at once: the server itself, often a community server that's full or on modest hardware. Try another.
• Stutter when buildings come down with a calm connection: your frame rate. Windows settings for FPS helps there.

What helps

1. Choose by ping, then stay. A server that's steady at a slightly higher ping plays better than a low one that jumps.
2. Use a cable. With a hundred players and constant destruction, Wi-Fi's jitter shows up as players who warp. Wi-Fi or Ethernet explains.
3. Keep the line quiet: downloads and uploads in the home make your packets wait, and proximity voice needs a clean line too.
4. If you run a server, give it the hardware a hundred players need and host it where most of your players are.
5. Change the route when your ping to a server is much higher than its distance explains.

Where NoSpike fits

For a community server, NoSpike works the way it does for Minecraft: add the address of the server you play on in the app, and NoSpike measures your own route to it and the routes through its relays in Europe, and routes the game there only when a relay is faster.

The official servers are being mapped from what players' apps report, so for those NoSpike's WARDOGS entry is a beta and may not carry a match yet. While you play, the game's page in the app says what it carries, and on a server NoSpike doesn't route it shows your own ping and says "Match not routed". It never moves your connection in the middle of a match unless the route fails.