An Unexpected Consequence of A New Generation of Gaming Hardware.
" If your current modem has something wrong with it, is very old and can no longer support the standards your ISP uses or can no longer be updated by your ISP, then... maybe getting a new one will improve your gameplay experience. If you think a modem improves overall game performance... you're not really thinking about this correctly. A good, new, bright and shiny modem that is in full compliance with all the latest standards that your ISP fully supports is always a good idea if you're troubleshooting things that modem is responsible for dealing with. PoE is a very "talky" game. It loves reaching out and touching the servers as much as possible. For... just about everything. Does opening a chest lag you out? The game's trying to verify that the contents of that "drop" are legit and you're not cheating... "Flame Dash" causing rubber-banding issues? The game's trying to verify your character's position. Giant explosions and graphical shiny things all over the place? The modem doesn't care about any of that... Well, other than where you are when it happens. You PC players have PoE's "predictive pathing" for a reason and it's entirely due to how GGG updates your local character's position because it talky-talky-lots with their servers. (This game is nuts, considering it's mostly a "single-player" experience with multiplayer options.. I guess they don't want haxxx destroying the "economy" and, because of how fanatical it is in checking with the servers, I can only think that they wanted to try to monetize that at one time.) If your modem is already hampered in some way or your ISP no longer supports it (They're the ones that flash its bios and have to deal with it on their end) then you "might" notice some improvements in certain things. If your old modem was working fine and there were no issues with it? You probably won't notice much improvement at all. (Connection quality is all-important.) Electronics can and do just wear out, things get a bit degraded, ISPs drop support, etc... So, there's a case to be made in favor of making sure all your associated devices are in good order, including your modem. But, it's not going to be some miracle solution for PoE gaming. A note on ISP-Supplied Modems - The worst issue here has to do with refurbished modems. Otherwise, ISPs want to try to give you the best modem that they can afford. They do not want to spend money for on-location service calls or have repeated discussions with you on the phone related to bad performance. Obviously, they want the best choice between performance and costs. All ISPs use "remanufactured" modems as well and those can have lifetime issues/wear other than the reason they were originally sent back to the manufacturer to fix. (Most users have been on the receiving end of a crapped up used-modem from their ISP at one time or another. Service techs generally try to hide one "brand new in the box" modem in their truck if they can get their hands on one. :)) A note on user-supplied modems - If you wish to use your own modem, you must check with your ISP to see what manufacturers and models they support. This is usually very easy and your ISP will have a webpage, somewhere, with the list on it. Your ISP will generally be the one that services your BIOS updates instead of you flashing them yourself. (In the US.) If your ISP does not support your modem, you'll have to manually flash BIOS yourself, which is a non-trivial thing to do for a modem, and you may still have issues that are no longer responsibility of your ISP to fix... because you're not using approved hardware. |
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