In raid mechanics where everyone has to react together at a set moment, one lagging player’s late reaction fails the whole party.
Why Group mechanics such as “everyone spread out at once” or “one player presses the button” → Effect The lagging player sees the telegraph late, and their input also arrives late → On screen One player causes a wipe, and the rest of the party feels it happened “because of the laggy player”
Primary owner Game team (Server development) · Also Game team (Client development)
Game team action items
Server: give mechanic timing windows slack for ping, send telegraphs ahead with server time, design mechanics so one player’s failure doesn’t wipe the party. Client: play received telegraphs in step with server time.
On the graph
Outliers only · RTT of each player who caused a mechanic failure
Where to look
Server mechanic log with the player who caused the failure, their input arrival time, the timing window, and their RTT and loss
Confirmed if
Most of the inputs that caused wipes come from the same one player, whose RTT is clearly higher than the party average and whose inputs arrive just after the timing window
Ruled out if
Failures are spread evenly across party members: the window itself is too short (“Short timing windows eaten up by ping”). The lagging player’s input arrived inside the window and still failed: the server’s window-checking code