How do some games like Monster Hunter, or even mobile games like Underlords, allow for players all over the globe to play together seamlessly but other games like Dota has horrible lag and ping when you play outside your region?

Question

How do some games like Monster Hunter, or even mobile games like Underlords, allow for players all over the globe to play together seamlessly but other games like Dota has horrible lag and ping when you play outside your region?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Because some have good netcode and some have bad netcode. End of.

There is not now nor ever going to be a good ELI5 for netcode – 90% consists of shit that human intuition screams should not work, but does, and the other 10% consists of stuff that doesn’t even attach to human intuition at any level. Conceptual white noise. It’s black magic.

But, if you can tell your intuition to shut up and appreciate the static, it can be a fascinating subject.

Just, not a condensable one. In a very real way, it’s advanced acausal physics, which is a problem, because all real physics is causal.