This mostly applies to PC, but I guess it could apply to consoles as well (although I think console requirements are universal).
Most games with multiplayer have bandwidth requirements listed somewhere, and for the people who live in the parts of the world that don’t have access to more than 1mbps it helps a lot when deciding whether to purchase a game. I’ve always checked the bandwidth requirements but unfortunately could not find any for this game. I have never had trouble with any multiplayer games in the past due to connection speed so I figured Brink would not be different, but apparently I was wrong because I have yet to play a decent online game that did not lag.
Please slap some bandwidth/network requirements on this game, it’s the least you could do.
How about some bandwidth requirements?
Brink would be affected more by the quality of connection between you and the server, more than the bandwidth available.
Servers have default cap of 16000 bytes/sec to each client (see net_serverMaxClientRate). Server admins can of course change this.
That is at most, even with overhead 160 kbps. So any broadband connection would do from the client perspective.
Lag may come from the server as well, it’s easy to see that if you reserve 160kbps for each connected client 16 clients would take that to 2560 kbps. For both upload and download. But this is theoretical maximum. The server also needs to have enough available CPU. Some dedicated servers are running more than 1 instance of the game or are running other stuff as well.
Last but not least remember anyone can run a dedicated server, so not all of them are going to be of the same quality. Someone may decide to run a server on their line with 256kbps upload.
Note: This post assumes you meet the rest of the system requirements.
Clients cannot adjust their rate value it seems like its determined by the server meaning those with low download speeds could be forced to download much higher rate than their connection can handle f a server admin sets it higher than default since net_clientmaxrate is "readonly and set to “0” (zero)
So is there anything I can do on my end? I guess I could look more carefully for some good servers but I’ve honestly tried a lot and have failed to find one that had a good connection. Upgrading to a better ISP is currently not an option for me, although it should be in the future. Hopefully.
Once the linux servers are released, more servers should appear. And most likely their environment will be more fit for the task.