Can other players cause lag?

[Ayrilana]

Yeah I was busy writing my reply and looking up what the guy said before I posted. Funny that some people refer to excerpts online about a topic and assume they know everything. Here we have a dev that has first-hand knowledge which has a little more weight than some website (Wikipedia of all places).

[Orcish]

Yeah I was busy writing my reply and looking up what the guy said before I posted. Funny that some people refer to excerpts online about a topic and assume they know everything. Here we have a dev that has first-hand knowledge which has a little more weight than some website (Wikipedia of all places).

I just threw in the wiki for an interesting read, it's rather insightfull.

[bronislav84]

Your perceived "lag" is determined by both your ping and your frame rate.

• Your ping, or latency, is the round trip time for a data from the client to the server and back is what we call ping, measured in milliseconds. A ping of 150 means that it takes 150 milliseconds to send a message to the server and get one back. A slow ping will mean it takes longer for you to see the result of your action initiated on the client.
• Your frame rate is determined by the speed of your hardware, both processor and graphics. Technically, more players could lower your frame rate because we have to draw more, and the other players would be casting spells which could lead to a lot of graphical effects on screen, but it's really negligible (since we're really adding one more character to 20 characters already on screen). A slow frame rate means the world updates fewer times per second (chugs).

The best situation is a low ping and a fast frame rate. It's possible (and normal) to have a low ping and a low frame rate, or a high ping and a fast frame rate.

Bottom line is, you can't affect their lag and they can't really affect yours.

-ALS

Uh, sorry to disagree assomers, but not only have I had times when I lag and others didn't (As quoted below), but I have had numerous games where when all five people use skills all at the same time at least two of us including myself had complained about lag. Others did affect the amount of lag I was having. I'm sure this was framerate lag and not server communication lag, but it has happened to me and I consider it a form of lag too.

Also I have also had huge ping spikes when certain people joined games, particularly if I was the host. Doesn't happen with every single person joining, but it has happened. That's definitely others causing me to lag.

I seriously doubt the server requires constant communication with each player. The lag is on your end, not the server's. I've been in numerous games where people are lagging constantly yet I'm fine. No lag spikes or anything.

Same here, and both ways. Often when I complain of lag others are not laging, and when others lag most times I don't lag same time. It's weird and inconsistent.