When the time you have to react is short, as with dodges, parries, and guards, ping eats up that time and some attacks become impossible to avoid.
Why Short timing windows, such as a 0.5 s boss attack telegraph or a 0.2 s parry window → Effect You see the telegraph late (downstream latency + interpolation), and your input also arrives late (upstream latency + tick wait) → On screen You get hit even though you clearly dodged, parries don’t go off
Primary owner Game team (Server development) · Also Game team (Client development), Infra team (Server infrastructure)
Game team action items
Server: schedule attack telegraphs at a server time and send them in advance, widen the timing window by the player’s ping (lag compensation). Client: play received telegraphs at their scheduled server time.
Infra team action items
Put servers close to regions with many players (regional servers) to cut ping itself.
Ballpark numbers
At 150 ms ping and 100 ms interpolation, the telegraph takes about 0.18 s to appear on your screen and your input takes about 0.1 s to reach the server. Add 0.25 s of human reaction time, and a 0.5 s telegraph is nearly impossible.
On the graph
Outliers only · Dodge/parry failure rate (by ping bracket)
Where to look
Server log of the timing window’s start and end times, when the player’s input reached the server, and that player’s RTT, with failure rate broken down by ping bracket (e.g., 50 ms steps)
Confirmed if
Failure rate is clearly higher in higher ping brackets, and failed inputs arrive shortly after the window closes (within RTT plus interpolation time)
Ruled out if
Failure rate is similar across ping brackets: the pattern is just hard. Inputs arrive inside the window but still count as failures: check the window-checking code or server validation