The FIFA11 patch that was released yesterday may have resolved a lot of issues we had with FIFA11 but one issue still remains…  The “lag” in FIFA Pro Clubs on Xbox 360.

[Edit: a potential solution for lag has been discovered since.  Read about it here!]

EA_FLT wrote in a post on the Official EA Forums:

Button delay in Pro Club is not addressed yet I am afraid. We have narrowed it down to UK rebroadcasters, xbox-only, peak-time only. But no fix deployed at this point
.
He did go on to say later in the thread that this was still being looked at.

 

Randy Bareback has a really interesting theory about the button delay on FIFA11 Pro Clubs not being “lag” as such but rather the game is being played “out of sync”.

 

The following has been taken from his posts on the EA Forums  If you only read one quote, make sure you read the third one.  It makes a lot of sense:

 

If You Suffer From Lag…..  This May Be The Reason

“At least this is my theory.  It’s pretty clear that there are massive numbers of people who suffer from what they think is lag.  I myself have had it for about 6 months but its been made clear to me that actually this is a problem that dates right back to december 2008.  Yip almost 2 years.  Only my theory is that actually its not lag, i think the game is playing ‘out of sync’ with your opponents. I’ve pulled these quotes from other threads I’ve contributed in >>>

xbox.Randy Bareback wrote:
most people have this problem but we all just assume its lag but its not. read this from a post i made yesterday >>>

some call it lag, some call it button delay, some call it being * at the game but something ive realised about this game is that when we feel all the afore mentioned symptoms is that the game is actually playing out of sync. or in other words what we are doing is trying to play a game of football with other people whilst on there screen the game is at a different point in the game. not massive amounts of time but maybe 200 – 500 ms. why or how its doing this i dont know but whatever system EA have employed to keep the game ‘in sync’ is not working as well as it should.

sure, again we are going to get people saying its your connection but have you ever wondered why you can play other games lag free but fifa just plays slow and unresponsive? you are probably playing the game out of sync with your opponent. how many times have you tried to pass the ball, or perform a skill move, or tackle an opponent and nothing happens? chances are nothing happens is because again, its out of sync and you are trying to do these things when the opportunity has been lost because your game is slightly behind real in game time. its happened a few times to me now on clubs when someone on my team sighs as we miss a chance and the defender makes a miraculous clearance only for it to happen on my screen a split second later.

thinking about this i also think its possible the 5 second delay on clubs is linked to this aswell and also when the game gets so out of sync and the game no longer knows what to do or cant catch up, it crashes the xbox.

i know for a fact EA use some sort of system to keep the game in sync with all the players both on clubs and on 1v1 but my theory is that its not working 100% accurately.
just played a few 1v1 and everytime the game is stopped via a pause or halftime the game restarts and you can feel it slipped out of sync. even to the point that everytime there is a stop in the gameplay, a animation kicks in and it feels different, feels similar to lag but its not. really noticeable straight after a pause in the gameplay.

would love EA to have a look at this.

 

xbox.Randy Bareback wrote:
lag is an interesting point as some people associate lag with poor connection, but thats not always the correct answer, although is the easiest explaination. it can be as a result of a number of reasons, ping time, poor upload/download speeds, jitter, port blocking, traffic shaping, some isp block p2p and we all know 1v1 is p2p but what happens when there is no obvious problem? still blame lag?

next time you are playing clubs and someone suffers from the 5 second delay ask them to describe exactly whats on there screen. i will say no more about this but just see if they are in sync with your game.

have you ever played 1v1 and felt like your player is running in mud, no ability to do anything, wont shoot, pass tackle when you ask? the game is playing out of sync. you are asking your players to do something when in fact its too late as you are playing behind real time.

gcooley said the following >>> There is a sort of blending that tries to over come lag and at least make it consistent. The reason it feels “out of sync” is because everything is deferred to make each press consistent. This shows as “button” lag. <<<

that is the exact thing im saying, its not working the way it should. other games use a similar system to mask ‘lag’ and it sort of guesses what you want to do for want of a better description but on fifa its not working the way its designed. it was also a problem last year. it should make the game between both players almost syncronous as best it can but when it goes wrong we are left with this feeling of ‘lag’ when in fact its not our connections but the game is out of sync.

 

xbox.Randy Bareback wrote:
i see exactly what you are saying about lag but the game we see on our screens doesnt suggest lag. how many dropped frames do you see on your screen? i dont get any at all. lag would show up some jerking on the screen.

like this >>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=066bOT5ts7E <<<

now that is not what we see and i dont think you do either. just for a moment jump onto my side of the fence. when a game is playing in sync it would be something like this.

all is well, no dropped frames and the game plays fine. now imagine that one of the games slipped out of sync for whatever reason. one game has to be ahead of the other. >>>

when this happens all the information you see on your screen is out of date. you are sometimes reacting to situations that have already happened. if you are on the recieving end your players become slower to react. for instance, imagine there is a 50/50 ball in the middle of two opposing players. at the point of impact you press tackle but he doesnt and you lose the ball, because the opposing player pressed tackle before you as he is slightly ahead. then the ball ricochets to another part of the pitch, again the opponent reacts quicker than yours or thats what it looks like but actually he didnt react quicker but was ahead of you in the game. its the same when trying to sprint for a ball but you cant and easily get out muscled, again because you press the sprint button but your opponent has already turned and sprinting back with the defender. you cant win the ball or the race because you reacted after it actually happened. what about when trying to defend a throughball and the striker is looking to get onto it. you try to turn with your player but cant because he decides he needs to turn like a ship. its alraedy happened in real time, the striker will get onto the ball as the information you see is out of date. ever wondered why offline plays well? no sync issues to deal with.

now, onto the lag. as above there is a video of actual lag, caused by either high latency or dropped packets, but ultimately because frame rates cant be generated quick enough and so hence we see this>>>

both pretty similar circumstances but are clearly seperate issues and very different although they give similar results. you get the feeling of lag but it isnt. i see that david ruter also tried to assist in getting to the root of this but the problem wasnt with anything there end (i dont think). whatever is used on our game discs to keep our games in sync is corrupt. this could have happened via a patch or game update. it should be keeping the game in sync as closely as possible, but i think the game is constantly slipping backwards and forwards by small amounts. from my experience this is what i see. sometimes its bad and sometimes its ok and from the last few days ive noticed that this happens especially after a pause in the game.

making a substitution or tactical change wouldnt have that greater impact on the demands of our connection. for the brief moment that we make the change it will have a small increase in activity but once its made thats it. the change to high pressure tactics again doesnt really have any creditable argument as the game is only processing information and it doesnt know thats its high pressure tactics. it takes the user input, processes it, outputs the new information and we see that on our screen. the game performs the same process whether its high pressure tactics, counter attack tactics, ultra defensive tactics etc. it does nothing different apart from process different user inputs. why it would make a difference asking a player to pressure rather than stand off is beyond me.

anyway, i really hope you take time to think about what im trying to get across here.

Now I’m pretty sure that lag isn’t the issue here but, as above, the game is ‘out of sync.  Next time you play just bear in mind what I’ve written here and see if you think.  Is it lag or the has the game slipped.”

Does this make sense to you or do you have any other ideas?  Let me know!

14 Comments
  1. jake December 8, 2010 at 1:46 am

    its not lag.. its your team. in the beginning you have a terrible team. trust me i know. you just need to win a couple times and at a moment it will say that you ve been promoted to a 1 star club

    • COLE UK December 8, 2010 at 8:01 am

      Thanks for the comment Jake. We were about 4000 points at the time of writing and still getting delay. I appreciate that the AI players are poor versus pro players but if you look at all the comments in the EA forum thread you’ll see it was more than that.

      I must admit though, it does seem an awful lot better in recent weeks. Still a bit sluggish at times and the odd disconnection but no major delay.

  2. xX-_XaVi_-Xx December 10, 2010 at 9:13 pm

    i have terrible lag or sync in 1V1
    i got disconnected 25% and lost 50% due to lag (counters) today my theory is that the game cant process detailed control and quick play since i get lots of delay playing fast it is also noticable that i always play at home in 1V1 (quick game) and the oponent always seem to skip intro video last i also change tactic a lot i will now try to change all this and giv u update if it works

    • COLE UK December 11, 2010 at 11:49 am

      Hey XaVi, cheers for the comment. I must admit, I’m finding Pro Clubs much better recently. Still feels unresposive at times and the some disconnections when there’s loads of players on but haven’t had 3 second delays for a while.

      Keep me posted on how you get on with head to head matey. Hopefully it’ll pick up for you.

  3. Hennerz December 15, 2010 at 7:04 pm

    I have found that the “Delay” has got a lot worse in recent weeks. For me, this only seems to happen when it’s just me and somebody else. This problem never seems to happen for me when i’m on with multiple people. I’d say that about 99% of the time recently i have had a delay on Pro club Championship with one other person and the only “cure” for this problem seems to turn my router off and on again, but this only works for about one game. This is really getting frustrating as before this problem my club had won more games than we’d lost, now we’ve lost about 5-6 more than we’ve won!

    • COLE UK December 15, 2010 at 7:49 pm

      Hennerz, I really sympathise with you mate! My old team had to split up because we lagged every time we played. I’m thinking that maybe it’s linked to certain people’s connections because with other players I’ve been much better. Have you tried playing with different people to see if it still happens?

  4. Hennerz December 16, 2010 at 5:53 pm

    It happens for often with some people than others yes. And as i said before i don’t normally get a delay with a group of people.

  5. Jorge January 1, 2011 at 6:46 pm

    You know, it is happening to me only on club matches, on 1 vs 1 everything is fine. I hate this because I got sent off of a team, and got deleted as a friend of someone just because of that. He was an idiot, even if I explained to him what happens about the out of sync thing he did it.

  6. James January 3, 2011 at 5:14 am

    i have this same problem. in 1v1 and in pro ranked matches, my connection is great, but as soon as i go with friends to play pro clubs, its usually 50/50. 50 percent chance i have no lag, 50 percent i have 2-5 second delays. its so bad i have to leave the game because im so useless to my teammates. it really sucks because i like my team and i might get booted off if this out of sync thing continues.

  7. Jason February 27, 2011 at 12:42 am

    We play FIFA on two xboxs in the same room, side by side on the same internet connection and one of us gets the delayed player. Sometimes it catches up sometimes not, we also notice that on free kicks, one screen sometimes takes the free kick slightly before the other! Whatever it is, it still occurs and is very annoying wen its one pro, 9 rubbish AI players and one pro that you cant control

    We also find that when playing 2v2, neither side playing as any, our defense is so poor, that when dominating the oppsition, there defense is pretty tough, while ours cant string more than two passes, gives the ball away and gifts goals with ease.

  8. Jonny May 19, 2011 at 9:31 pm

    I have played a lot of pro club over the past 2 fifas and ive found this problem all the time in fifa 11. I have also noticed that this ‘lag’ seems to, for want of a better word, target people each time me and my friends play. What i mean by this is that everyone experiences it but each night normally just one or two people are affected.

    One last thing that i have found is that this ‘lag’ occurs in another form. It is much better to play with but still very annoying. Basically it is the exact same symptoms of the game being behind everyone else’s but only takes place 2 or 3 times each match for about 5-10 game minutes each time it happens.
    Does anyone else experience this?

  9. tomgibby September 3, 2011 at 2:02 am

    ive notice the delay alot. i play goalkeeper on fifa pro clubs, luckly i do alright during lag (i don’t know how but i do.) its not just fifa though, i play call of duty and when the other team got a 5 bar connection and i got a 3 bar connection i get killed alot. I know why, say if i was turning a corner iwould see a enemy i would shoot and get a hitmarker when i watch the killcam apparently he saw me shoot and just before i died i shoot. which on my screen wasn’t the case i shoot him first.
    this proves to of my points
    1) all games should have dedicated servers.
    2) lag kills online gaming.

    peer to peer conection is a really bad idea!

    • Craig Cole September 5, 2011 at 8:10 am

      That explains my K/D ratio then Lol.

      Seriously though I agree that peer to peer isn’t ideal – you’re only going to be a strong as the weakest connection.

      I know EA have done a shed load of work behind the scenes this year to make online gaming much, much better so fingers crossed. (As always though, the proof will be in the pudding. ;))

  10. nicklas November 15, 2011 at 1:27 am

    i think i have the concluse about ,,lag,, because the GMT everybody talks about real time is true i think the lag is simply because theres a different GMT other places and i dont know why 2vs2 altso lagging lol:)

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