ATTN: Online Lag and how to fix

There will be a massive wave of newbies coming to Monster Hunter this year. This guide will explain how online works so everyone is aware.

The Host
The host is the person who first enters the area and catches the boss monster's attention. The host will have 0ms latency to that monster, meaning no lag. However, depending on how good the host's internet determines the lag for OTHERS.

How does being the HOST affect my online play and other's?
Let's say you are the host and you happen to have 300ms latency, (which is terrible, mind you) you will have 0ms latency because you are the host, but for other people online, this will greatly affect them. In their screen the monster will be warping around because of how terrible your internet is, but on your screen, everything is perfect because you are the host. Here are some things to be mindful of:

Attack and KO stunning
Let's say your friend has 300ms latency and he becomes the host of Rathian (a flying wyvern). You decide to hammer and he decides to use a bowgun. On your screen, Rathian may just be standing still, giving you the opportunity to triple pound its head for KO damage. However, on your friend's screen, Rathian may be attacking him somewhere else because of lag. You may have hit Rathian's head on your screen, but your attacks did not count. Only the attacks that appear on the host's screen count as true attacks. It is important that you let someone that doesn't have laggy internet host.

Projectiles such as bow and bowgun ammo, knives, tranq bombs, etc
Being a laggy host will severely affect bowgunners, bowers, and any sort of projectile attack. If you are a laggy host, they may be shooting somewhere else because on their screen, they are attacking the monster, but on yours, they are attacking thin air. If the monster is ready to be captured, they may throw tranq bombs the wrong way because the monster is warping around since your internet may be horrible. It's important to let gunners, bowers, hammers, and people with excellent internet become the host since they require minimal lag in order to be efficient.

How will the host change?
The host is the person who first enters the boss monster's room.
The 2nd person who enters will become the secondary host, 3rd will become tertiary, and 4th will become quaternary. If the host leave the area or dies, the host powers will transfer to whoever entered the area second, and if the 2nd person leaves or dies, it will go to the 3rd and so on.

Color Code and 1 room only maps
You decide to post a quest of Alatreon which is a 1 room only quest. You would ask, "who's gonna be the host if we all start in the same room?"
The answer is simple: color codes!. Before initiating a quest, people will have to join. The person who posts the quest will have the color code Red; the 2nd person who joins the quest will have the color code Blue, the 3rd is Yellow, and the 4th is Green. These color codes are very important. There is a way to change the host through the "trickle down" system. The system is red will be the primary host, blue will be secondary, yellow will be tertiary, and green will be quaternary. That means, if the host dies (being red since he gets primary host), the host powers will transfer to blue, and if blue dies, it will transfer to yellow. This system ONLY works in 1 room maps such as Alatreon's arena.

How am I supposed to fight the lag if a laggy person becomes host?
The only way to fight it is to tell the person their internet is not good and that they should stop being the host. Other than that, you must think ahead and perform moves early because lag will have an affect on you.

How do I find out if I have bad internet?
Use the fallowing link to see what your latency is:
http://www.speedtest.net/

Take the test. To find out what your latency is, you must look under the Ping category.
0-80ms is excellent internet
81-150 is alright
151-300 and beyond is terrible

I hope this guide helps your online experience.

This is good, is it not??
Latency Is good, but are my download speeds any good XD Don't know much of what's good or not...

download speed is excellent. doesn't matter. the only thing that matters is Ping

This may seem like quite acceptable speeds for a computer, but in england our internet is just appalling :|

Download speeds are a bit too slow I feel. /no/

it's pretty depressing.

My downspeed is horrid but my ping is 26 xD

Not half bad.

Here's the thing:
Lag = [Delay from your ISP] + [Delay from your teammate's ISP] + [Delay between ISPs]

For example, I get a 15ms ping rate to my ISP. I'm not far from Detroit, actually, just across the border in Ohio.

But if I check my ping rate against servers elsewhere in the world, it varies from 40ms (Chicago) to 300ms (Sydney). That gives me a rough idea of whether playing with someone not geographically close will be painful or not. For example, I've had a lot of connection issues with playing with Chileans (230ms) in Tri, to the point I've given up and will avoid Chilenos when hunting Diablos. Not to pick on Chileans, but within the NA region, they're about the farthest from me geographically.


These would be my recommendations:
Your ISP Lag < 40ms
Total Lag <150ms

Download speed - I think as long as you can stream internet radio, you should be fine.


For better performance:

• Switch ISPs. Fiber optic is tops (lucky Kansas City), Dialup is going to struggle.
• Wire your internet connection. Buy a LAN Adapter and don't use WiFi.
• When playing, don't use any other internet devices.
• Set up your router to port forward your WiiU (google your router model and port forwarding). When I set this up on my Wii, MH3 and Netflix stopped dropping. May not be an issue with WiiU - I haven't set it up yet, and haven't seen Netflix crash. Probably because WiiU's connection software is always on, rather than shutting down the connection constantly like the Wii.

there is a lan adapter for the wii u? i'll have to pick one up, i hate using wireless when i can use wires.

Tirith wrote:

there is a lan adapter for the wii u? i'll have to pick one up, i hate using wireless when i can use wires.

Same LAN adapter as the Wii.

Haven't noticed much lag with most Wiiu games on Nintendo servers or 3DS games in Nintendo servers. So the lag for 3U may not be as bad as you are making it sound at the moment. Like many other things, we'll have to wait until the game is actually released to see for sure.

But yea.. Mostly it depends on most people's on Internet service than anything.

OP should explain about distances (especially across hemispheres) and their effect on ping and subsequent lag issues.

Someone ~100KMs of myself



Someone ~4,000KMs of myself



Over ~8,000KMs of myself



Please remember this. It is extremely important that you try to play with people local to your geographic area if possible.

That is a good point Jadder.. a lot of times it has nothing to do with "hosting" servers sometimes the distance is just too great.

Spoiler:

Here is my results from a laptop that is up stair away from the router. the ping got higher as I place a different location as well. Let just hope wired connection will make a dramatic change to the chart is suggesting otherwise my net service will suck if I try to play with EU players.

You know..... I just realized..

NO ONE DID THESE TESTS OVER THE WIIU!!! So... Doesn't that kind of make most these a bit, uh I don't know , pointless as it also matters the speed and connection at which the device your playing on connects?

Just saying. So 1: need to take Nintendo servers into factor 2: distance and how it will affect the connection 3: the speed test needs to be done on the device you are actually using.

Well, running the Ping test over the WiiU isn't easy, since it's not running the latest version of Flash or Java. (The browser's good, but not that good)

What I could do was ping my WiiU from my PC (both over WiFi) - that was at most 4ms, and was usually 2ms. So at least for the ISP delay, running a pingtest for your ISP from your PC (assuming your PC is using the the same type of network connection) is going to be very close to what the WiiU gets.


These results are good approximations of what the WiiU will get. They aren't perfect, but just sometimes you have to live with approximations or models when real data is difficult to get.

^ I agree.. Mostly just pointing out that fact in a way. There are some site for speed tests on the WiiU. When I get a chance ill post some.

Thanks for this! I was wondering where my internet stood compared to others. I'm apparently at 43ms, best we can get in this smaller town.

dcj91x wrote:

You know..... I just realized..

NO ONE DID THESE TESTS OVER THE WIIU!!! So... Doesn't that kind of make most these a bit, uh I don't know , pointless as it also matters the speed and connection at which the device your playing on connects?

Just saying. So 1: need to take Nintendo servers into factor 2: distance and how it will affect the connection 3: the speed test needs to be done on the device you are actually using.

I just went onlne and played with Ark. It is confirmed, and this guide applies to MH3U