I’ve now put a fair few hours into the multiplayer component of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare since its official release yesterday, and I’ve found myself having more fun with it than any CoD game in recent memory. However, it does suffer with some (at times) crippling lag issues due to Activision’s refusal to give the game dedicated servers, and many are finding this lag so unbearable that it is making the game nigh-on unplayable.
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The lag issues are due to the game still relying upon a peer-to-peer connection, and even if you happen to have a higher ping than your teammates/rivals the game enforces lag compensation, which will mean that you’ll often find yourself bested in one-on-one gunfights despite seemingly spraying your rival with bullets.
Check out an example of Advanced Warfare‘s lag compensation in the video below. You’ll notice how the player doing the shooting lands on a good 7/8 shots on his opponent, only for the opponent’s Killcam to reveal that only one of those shots registered:
While lag compensation is a thoroughly irritating issue for a first-person shooter to have, many NeoGAF users are reporting that the game’s netcode is completely ruining their enjoyment of the game, forcing them to unfairly lose gunfights and even causing other players to teleport around the maps.
GAF user Frillen wrote: “The netcode for me is absolutely horrible. I’m not going to continue playing this if it doesn’t improve, because right now I lose pretty much 95% of the one on one battles… This is the worst netcode I’ve ever experienced in a CoD. I basically have to camp now in order to have a decent chance at going 1.00 in a game. I still somehow have an overall K/D of 1.21 though, mostly because I camp.”
Fellow user Cajun added: “As pretty much everyone else is saying, the lag comp in this game is outright ridiculous. Not the worst I’ve ever played with in a game, but it’s definitely up there. Thinking you’re going to win a gunfight because you have the first 3 shots, only to be melted instantly instead is one of the most frustrating things that can happen in a fast paced game like this.”
Activision rolled out an odd hybrid of P2P/dedicated servers following the launch of Call of Duty: Ghosts, so maybe that will be the case here. However, given the popularity of these games and the ludicrous amount of money the publisher has made from them, it’s beyond annoying that they haven’t yet invested in dedicated servers. We hope this is something they’ll introduce post-launch, and we certainly hope that the future of the series will see these games launch with their own servers.
