Unplayable Latency

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Nerokin wrote:

If I was having packet loss in general, wouldn't it show up elsewhere as well? This issue is specific to this game and one other, and I'm seeing no issues anywhere else. Several different speed tests show that I'm not having any kind of latency issues.

Packet loss affects PoE slightly different than "other things".

You need to be more clear what you mean when you ask if it would show up elsewhere.

Most "internet based" software takes packet loss into consideration and attempts to mitigate this through various means. In the case of internet video or streaming media as an example, it uses "buffering" to make up for lost packets or network delays. You generally won't see any interruption in these services from some missing packets unless it is in the high packet loss range. 2% won't affect much for these.

In the case of other online games, they also attempt to make up for it by being more relaxed about their prediction and what the client is allowed to do. IE: your client will continue to play for a while completely disconnected, and when the connection is re-established, you don't generally see an issue until you've gone beyond their threshold or again, "buffer".

With PoE being a freshly developed indie game, they didn't leverage the same capabilities as a lot of billion/million dollar publishers/developers. In addition to that, the PoE engine doesn't really allow for it, which is what makes desync in PoE also worse than other games. In PoE, they have mechanics that need to be calculated on the server-side in a simulation to be successful before the client can report it (like hit/miss). Other games lack a mechanic to "miss" an attack.

Most of this information can be found in the Developer Manifesto on Client/Server Synchronization.

Suffice it to say, you could be losing 5 to 10% of your packets, and might not notice it in "other things". PoE is much more sensitive to this. Regardless, if you're losing packets, that's a problem that needs to be investigated by the ISP in most cases, unless you have faulty internal network hardware... but based on the trace you posted, you're only losing packets starting at hop 2, so the loss is between hop 1 and hop 2 (and all after meaning it's an ACTUAL loss and not a mitigation dropped packet). This usually indicates either an issue with the modem itself (or needing to be restarted), or an issue with the ISP gateway or line going from your house to their junction box.

Post more traces capturing more "bad latency" and we can see if it is consistent. Consistency in reproduction usually means an issue that can be reported and escalated to the appropriate place, and hopefully a satisfactory resolution.

can you run a trace to Google and poe at the same time for comparable results? if you got bad latency to poe while that Google trace was running, your issue is likely something else... not necessarily network related.