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
When a game is running, it goes in periods of time called “ticks” that keep everything synchronized. In single player games, the ticks are often 60 or 30 times a second, to match frame rates on screen. In multiplayer games though, the ticks have to be further apart.
Messages take time to travel, because even though they seem instant, signals can’t go faster than the speed of light. If you and I are playing multiplayer in the same room, the time for the signal to reach you is so tiny that it is faster than the 60 or 30 ticks per second. If you were on the other side of the country though, the signal would take too long to reach you and the game would lag or desync. So games use longer ticks to give enough time.
The problem is, if you are playing a fast game, like a shooter or Dota, movement matters in small increments, so you can’t put the ticks too far apart. Some games cheat a little bit by predicting where you are headed and displaying that instead. This way everything keeps moving, and the game checks later to make sure it was right. If a signal takes a long time to get through though, it may mean that the game showed you in one place when you were really in another.
Games that need to be fast and accurate will limit you to servers in regions, so that the signal time is kept close to or below the tick time.
Games that are slow or have pre-calculated outcomes don’t need to worry about that, so regions don’t matter as much. Anyone can play with anyone else. Most mobile games have turn limit timers or ready periods that can be synced over long distances. This works much better than fast reactions and ticks.
Kinda long for an eli5, but not really a super concise way to explain in plain english. Hope this works.
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