I know that there are a lot of people out there who want to be able to play with friends from around the world, and I totally respect that. I feel like this would be a happy medium that could possibly please everybody. It would be nice if we could get certain servers designated as "low ping" with a stricter lock in place. That would allow people to still play together on the vast majority of servers, but give a few areas with higher population density the opportunity to play together with less desync. The current limit is super high and basically allows people to jump into servers on the other side of the world. That's great if you're trying to play with your mates from overseas, but it kind of sucks for certain areas because the lowest ping servers are generally filled with either "problem children" or decent people with 149 ping. North American West Coast servers are particularly vulnerable. I shouldn't have to que into servers on the other side of the country specifically to avoid people from the rest of the world who que into California and Seattle.
It would be wonderful if BSG would lock one of those two servers to 80 ping or less so that the West Coast had an actual West Coast server. They could do the same thing in other areas of the world where there is enough server redundancy and population density to support it. Whenever I play on either of those two servers now I run into a lot of people who must have REALLY nice gaming chairs. I undoubtedly get an advantage by playing with higher ping when I play on East Coast servers, and that's not my intention. I don't play on higher ping servers to get an edge, I do it because the head/eyes fairy has left me unable to stand up straight. DouYu2817489 gave me that m80 inch dick one too many times. The difference between servers is measurable, I'm talking about +-20% survival rating over the course of a season. Right now I'm sitting at 65% survival and I've been playing exclusively on East Coast servers with 60-100 ping this wipe. That drops down to about 40-45% when I play on the West Coast servers with 15-20 ping. That means that I survive roughly 50% more raids when I play with higher ping. My server choice currently has a bigger impact on the outcome of my raids than my gear, gun, and ammo choices combined. There might be better players clustered into certain servers, there might be people playing on those servers seeking to get a ping advantage, there might be people playing on those servers so they have less competition with other cheaters than they would elsewhere, or it might be a combination of all three.
Keeping the current ping restrictions in place, or even loosening them a bit, while designating a handful of servers globally to be "low ping" would mean that people who want to play with friends from across the world could still do so while alleviating a lot of issues for the average player. This game is amazing, and it gets better all the time. One of the worst things about it currently is having to "server shop" for a place that is within the ping restrictions for me but outside of the ping restrictions for players that intentionally ruin the experience for everyone else. The only people that I could fathom who would be even slightly against this idea would be the ones who are currently going out of their way to either get a peekers advantage or prey on a community that consists of a greater percentage of legitimate players than wherever they are from. I get that this tactic wouldn't solve EVERY issue, and there are always going to be people in any given population who are willing to cheat to win. That's an unfortunate reality of PC gaming. Creating low ping sanctuaries would just be a step in the right direction. The current restrictions seem to be too strict to allow for a lot of friends to play together, while simultaneously being too loose to actually stop people from abusing the system. Either extreme is bad, and would hurt a lot of people's enjoyment of the game. Combining both extremes into a single system could actually please just about everybody.
You live in L.A. and want to play with your buddy from Toronto? Que into a high ping server together or let the game auto-select one for you. You live in L.A. and want to play with your friend from Arizona? Que into the low ping server, or just auto-select your servers and play wherever the game puts you. As of writing, the California server currently has a 15 second matching time. They could lock that server to 40 ping and it still wouldn't take more than a minute to fill a lobby. This seems like a no-brainer. There are currently 10 NA servers and 14 other servers that I can que into with the ping lock where it is. If BSG locked the three highest population density servers in NA to 80 ping that would still give me at least 7 other options from pretty much anywhere in the country.
