Factorio Forums

I was hoping this would be an easy upgrade, but when you list multiplayer servers, you can sort by the number of players, but it would be nice to be able to sort by ping also.
Many time I find a potential game, but the ping is very high so I need to choose another.

Many more want this. Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=32968&hilit=ping Collection of Of Ideas around Multiplayer: Lobby-Features, Joining, Mod&Game-Loading, ...

TL;DR

Server browser filter on ping

What ?

I'd like to filter out servers that take longer to return a ping than it takes me to let the dog outside.

Why ?

Because slow ping servers and warping sucks. It's factorio not star trek.

Looks like this is a long-standing request -

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20960 (restrict/prevent high ping connections; join game ``timeout)
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=27186 (ping column on server browser)
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=33178 (restrict/prevent high ping connections)
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=42321 (sort by ping)
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=52232 (sort by ping)
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=60386 (filter by ping)

Plus admin-side specific -
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28378 (show player's ping in-game / admin command)

Being in Australia, I have no easy way of finding servers I have a decent ping to, unless they put some kind of geographic reference in the server name. Worse still, I have no way of knowing if I'm going to DOS a server by 'trying' to join, only to later find out it's unplayable, unless I remember to check that ping value after I've selected the server, but before I join it.

Sort-by-ping is a basic multiplayer game attribute for players, which seems to be known given a ping value is shown when selecting a server. The payload for a ping is not large, so I'm not seeing any reason why the server list can't include a ping value, per server.

While a single user may send out a lot of pings initially (and even dialup can handle the packet sizes we are talking about here), that's only for the very first time they download the full list of servers that are currently up and running. After that it can be an occassional refresh, backing off to even more rare if the return-value is consistent with prior ping results. Servers that never respond to ping (whether due to offline / firewall rules / beyond timeout limit) are simply marked as ∞ and not pinged again, unless the user requests a full refresh (which should take 2-3 clicks and a popup to do, to prevent mashing).

Subsequent server lists should be imported as a delta to the user's existing server list (since it already has ping values for most of the servers). Attributes / users-olnine / mods / tag details overwrites older details.

What the title says. This would allow people to sort out servers that they would never be able to play anyway because of an incredibly high ping. It would also put unreachable servers at the bottom of the list so that they wouldn't clog up the list.

TL;DR

The possibility of filter the games in public servers, even by Players, Name, PlayTime, but also, by Ping of the Servers

What/Why ???

Right now, we have like... and its fine, it works very well for most of things...

but, as your can see, the quality of internet country for outside servers is not that good, and even players from here, put global names of servers, so, its hard to find some servers at low ping for play.
at the very start game, its fine, but after the first like 80 hours bases, and ping even around 200, the avatar cant even move. so, need to find other server, or wait reset the server, or the alternative, would be have a already from the country server to play (*-*) yay (Btw i am from Brazil, thats why its soo lag a couple of times)

i know that should the load screen for the servers may take longer for ping all servers, so, the suggestion would be, have a option checkbox in menu, to show/enable that option.

[Koub] Merged into older thread with the same suggestion.
See also :
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=89221

Koub wrote: ↑Fri Jan 22, 2021 8:35 pm [Koub] Merged into older thread with the same suggestion.
See also :
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=89221

Thx for that...

junhinhow wrote: ↑Fri Jan 22, 2021 6:33 pm

TL;DR

The possibility of filter the games in public servers, even by Players, Name, PlayTime, but also, by Ping of the Servers

[...]

Bump!

-1


it doesn't even ping the server until you select it from the list - it would need to ping literally every server in the list.

have to say i don't agree this is needed, it's not important to Factorio. multiplayer lobbies aren't really a thing like in CS:GO.

junhinhow wrote: ↑Fri Jan 22, 2021 6:33 pm

TL;DR

The possibility of filter the games in public servers, even by Players, Name, PlayTime, but also, by Ping of the Servers

What/Why ???

Right now, we have like...

Screenshot_18.png

and its fine, it works very well for most of things...

but, as your can see, the quality of internet country for outside servers is not that good, and even players from here, put global names of servers, so, its hard to find some servers at low ping for play.
at the very start game, its fine, but after the first like 80 hours bases, and ping even around 200, the avatar cant even move. so, need to find other server, or wait reset the server, or the alternative, would be have a already from the country server to play (*-*) yay (Btw i am from Brazil, thats why its soo lag a couple of times)

i know that should the load screen for the servers may take longer for ping all servers, so, the suggestion would be, have a option checkbox in menu, to show/enable that option.

sad.... this will even ever gonna happen???

its sad see some others "less important" ideas coming alive and this simple one, yet good, doesn't!!!

pls... take some time to write this 3 lines of codes and make this works... pls pls pls devs...

As many other things, this is not just 3 lines of code. To avoid getting the game to hanging the ping stats needs to be done in background in another thread.

And questionable results. A server can just block the pings. Ping can also return back from the router before the server. Ping to measure "speed" of an application is not very useful measurement, it's like if you want to measure the length of a pipe with a laser, but you cannot build pipes in straight lines, when you want water for your shower.

ssilk wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 10:36 am And questionable results. A server can just block the pings. Ping can also return back from the router before the server. Ping to measure "speed" of an application is not very useful measurement, it's like if you want to measure the length of a pipe with a laser, but you cannot build pipes in straight lines, when you want water for your shower.

A ‘can connect’ or ‘not able to connect’ would be nice to.

I am often unable to connect to half of the hosted games (even if the ping is reasonable) because they are either hosted from wifi or in China/Russia.

Questionable results are fine too: I just want to be able to see the playable servers near the top of the list, not an exact order.

Checking if able to connect means trying to connect, then hanging up.
This produces a significant load on the server, especially when dozens (hundreds? Thousands?) of players try to connect every minute to see statistics in their game browsers.

As admin I would turn that off or try to filter out such connections.

ssilk wrote: ↑Tue Sep 14, 2021 10:36 am As many other things, this is not just 3 lines of code. To avoid getting the game to hanging the ping stats needs to be done in background in another thread.

And questionable results. A server can just block the pings. Ping can also return back from the router before the server. Ping to measure "speed" of an application is not very useful measurement, it's like if you want to measure the length of a pipe with a laser, but you cannot build pipes in straight lines, when you want water for your shower.

i follow the idea of, if there i s already a ping/alive signal/whatever for the server be listed on the multiplayer servers list, why not make this same thread or a thread that extends that one, make the ping for the server? exactly like CS long time ago on internet games....

In counterstrike the ping was quite important, 10 ms less could mean success or death. In Factorio 10 milliseconds is nothing, which a player needs to account for. Well, it’s not comfortable to play with 200 ms lag, but still possible, while counterstrike is not possible to play with such a lag (successfully).

I mean: what counts much more in Factorio is not the server ping - that could be really low and suggests, that it is a good server - but the true lag the current game will have on your computer. The ping is only a part of that measurement. And it’s commonly used, because it’s easy to measure.

What counts for me much more is
- the download speed of the map
- is my little computer able to keep up with the server?
- how much time does it take until a command gets to the server and I see the true response?

And for this last one, the ping plays a more or less big rule.

ssilk wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 6:07 am In counterstrike the ping was quite important, 10 ms less could mean success or death. In Factorio 10 milliseconds is nothing, which a player needs to account for. Well, it’s not comfortable to play with 200 ms lag, but still possible, while counterstrike is not possible to play with such a lag (successfully).

I mean: what counts much more in Factorio is not the server ping - that could be really low and suggests, that it is a good server - but the true lag the current game will have on your computer. The ping is only a part of that measurement. And it’s commonly used, because it’s easy to measure.

What counts for me much more is
- the download speed of the map
- is my little computer able to keep up with the server?
- how much time does it take until a command gets to the server and I see the true response?

And for this last one, the ping plays a more or less big rule.

on that note it would make sense for servers to tell the matchmaking list what their current update time / UPS are.

Also not saying much, IMHO. Admins could run the factory slower, so that everybody can keep up.

But it brought me to the idea we need also to include the number of entities/items (updated unit per tick = UUPT) that is updated every tick. So if we divide the UPS through UUPT and add the ping with some correction factor, I think we would have a much better measurement, than ping only.