hi and thankyou firstly for taking the time for reading this and also for any help you may or may not be able to offer.
i think im right in saying that these forums are not the ideal place to talk about online gaming but for me all the other options available to me have come up with nothing. i have tried calling and emailing xbox support, posting on the EA sports website forums, also i have had a small amount of dialogue with david rutter who is the online producer for EA sports' FIFA franchise. in the last 12 months or so i have now had 3 different isp's and the problem has persisted with them all. the first 2 were o2 and fast but in a final attempt to 'fix' the problem i crossed over to virgins cable services on there 10mb package but again the same problem exists. i live 100 yards away from virgin head office in pennywell, sunderland so popped in there to ask if they could offer any help but they have assured me that my line is sound which on the face of it, i think it looks very decent also.
i would like to give you the details of the problem im having. it started about 18 months ago when for some reason my enjoyable online experience of FIFA changed dramatically for the worse when my gaming became very sluggish. it sort of feels like lag in the sense that everything i command my controller to do, it takes maybe a half second to actually respond. however not lag as we know it as the game ran smooth as you would like but everything just took more time than it used to. i dont want to bore you non-gamers with the details but when playing FIFA my players:
1/ were slower than my opponents despite the attributes clearly showing they should be quicker.
2/ were very weak unable to withstand any pressure or slightest tackle.
3/ felt unresponsive and sluggish almost like they were running in knee deep mud.
but in general my game looked as if it was playing not in sync with my opponents game but ever so slightly behind so i was basically trying to respond to something that had already happened and i think thats why it feels like lag.
i have tried 3 different routers as i thought this could be the problem. i have tried a speedtouch 580 and the netgear dg834gt neither of which showed any change. i am now currently using a dlink which was supplied by virgin and generally have had no issues with the connection i have had since day 1. im no whizz but far from it and the extent of my knowledge is that i know how to use the various speedtesters out there and also how to do ping tests and traceroutes (although i dont know what the results mean) but do these show all the nessacery details which are important to a good connection. i suppose i just want to gain advice from someone to make sure my line is as good as it should be, and if possible any advice on what the problem could be. i mentioned earlier about the various options i had taken to try and resolve this issue but everyone keeps telling me its contention, or traffic shaping, or latency etc. i have this problem 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. even during peak hours my stats look the same and basically stay the same no matter what time it is day or night. i have no computers running at the same time and i have tried connecting my xbox staright to the modem. i have tried ressetting my router/modem and my xbox. i also tried putting my xbox in the dmz in case it was a port issue but no change was apparent. here is the very latest tests ive done just now
having spoke to probably hundreds of other gamers on the EA forums, there are lots more suffering the same problem as me but also i have to say that are are just as many who do not. when i spoke to david rutter (online producer) i learned that this game is actually peer to peer and not run on servers but only at the end of every game our consoles send the results to a stat server. with this in mind it got me thinking if its peer to peer then it has to be a problem somewhere in my connection. but all the tests i carry out dont highlight any problems.
strangley this problem only affects FIFA and i play many other games. i dont know whether this is possibily a clue to the problem but i did play another EA sports title called battlefield bad company 2 but i had the exact same problem on that so i sold it and bought call of duty MW2 instead. again it just felt slow and unresponsive and the same sort of strange lag.
so this really is my last port of call and my final hope ( so no pressure guys ) and just whenever i have tried to get help here in the past you guyshave always been brilliant and tried to help so i thought i would give it a shot. can anyone assist me in trying to get to the bottom of this and trace exactly what the fault is and where it is? im at the stage now where i will try anything.
again, thanks for any help anyone can offer.