Satellite → HughesNet Satellite > [Networking] Online Gaming on HughesNet

Re: [Networking] Online Gaming on HughesNet

Not to beat a dead horse but did you look into millinicom. They have a 20 GB per month plan off the verizon towers for $60 a month and a 50 GB a month plan off the sprint towers for $70 a month with no contract on either. As far as WOW go's you can try switching to a less crowded server but in reality it works for some and not for others depending on how crowded the beam you are on is. I wish you luck.
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HughesNet elite plan/.74 dish w/1watt trans. / 9000 modem / 3 computers on a linksy's wired network

Two new games.
Edit: And a third.
Second Edit: And a fourth, fifth, and an update on two other games.

- World of Tanks (Unplayable) -- Can't log in. Period. Thus, can't play.
- Champions Online (Mostly Playable) -- There's a funny bit of rubber-band lag on occasion, but it doesn't seem to throw you back to where you were. Actually, the game seems to try and catch up to where you are, rather! There's also a bit of oddness in executing attacks, as you seem to do it twice, but the second time is the actual attack. Otherwise? Runs about as well as City of Heroes.
- La Tale (Unplayable) -- Some games will use a bit of "chat-back" to figure out where you are and what you're doing. La Tale does not. It uses "remote-only" netcode, rather than "local vs. remote" netcode. Thus, if you press forward, you don't move until the remote server says you did. This makes the game largely unplayable, since most people aren't going to want to sit there and get destroyed by Purings because they can't attack or even run away before they get hit. MapleStory is a much better choice, for this type of MMORPG on Hughesnet.
- Rumble Fighter (Unplayable) -- Not much has changed since I last reported in on this one. Rather than not connecting during the patching process, however, the game fails to connect after loading and the program closes quietly and without an error message.
- GunBound (Fully Playable) -- Nothing new to report here. It still runs perfectly.
- ShellShock Live (Fully Playable) -- Much like GunBound, ShellShock Live (a Flash spiritual successor to Scorched Earth) runs perfectly! It may fail to connect if your connection is occupied with something else, but this is fairly rare and easily fixable by reconnecting.
- Zone4 (Mostly Unplayable) -- While you can play this one, it's not advised, since it -- like many other free-to-play games -- uses remote-side netcode. However, it's surprisingly reactive in some cases. I was almost able to PvP against someone during my testing. Still, it does get tiresome after a while... So, not recommended.
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ISP: HughesNet Satellite Internet
Modem Model: HN9000
Service Plan: Grandfathered ProPlus -- 425MB + 50MB/day, 1.6 Mbps DL; 250 Kbps UL)

Got another one.

- Spiral Knights (Mostly Playable) -- There is a lot of rubber band-lag in this game, but it's not entirely unplayable. You just have to be patient and really make sure you're aiming where you're attacking. Except to take a lot of damage in rooms with hurt-floors.

More for the money.

- Sanctum (Mostly Unplayable) -- As expected from the first-person shooter genre, there's way too much rubber-band lag to make for a completely positive gaming experience. However, much like with Borderlands, if you really must, it's doable with some amount of patience and maybe a bit of lucky...
- Terraria (Mostly Playable?) -- I'm not completely confident in my rating on this one... I joined a couple of different servers earlier tonight, and while I couldn't mine anything and had a door explode on me when I tried to close it, I could run around and fight mobs just fine. So... I'd say "Mostly Playable" works.
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ISP: HughesNet Satellite Internet
Modem Model: HN9000
Service Plan: Grandfathered ProPlus -- 425MB + 50MB/day, 1.6 Mbps DL; 250 Kbps UL)

- War Inc. (Unplayable?) -- After joining a random server, everything seemed to be going alright. I logged in just fine, could move freely, fire at thing, etc. However, everyone moved very, very jerkily around, their positions updating about once per second. No one seemed to be targeting me either and, despite unloading a full clip into a random soldier, they did not fall, or even turn around. I'm going to say this one's unplayable.
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ISP: HughesNet Satellite Internet
Modem Model: HN9000
Service Plan: Grandfathered ProPlus -- 425MB + 50MB/day, 1.6 Mbps DL; 250 Kbps UL)

awsome post.

hehe thats alot of games

Eeyup. And I have a lot of time. X3

Does anybody know if playing guild wars 2 will be viable with HughesNet?

Should work just fine, if it runs like Guild Wars or World of Warcraft does.

- **Update** Terraria (Mostly Playable) -- The problems I was having with this game before were purely because of the server I tried playing on. Playing on servers with lower populations and much less load will yield a far better result, but there's still going to be some position lag with enemy mobs as well as mined/destroyed resources popping up after a couple seconds or so. Also, I don't suggest fighting multiple Eaters of Worlds back-to-back. The massive amount of mobs seems to lag the crap out of me, generally ending up throwing me completely out of synch with the server and forcing me to re-login.
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ISP: HughesNet Satellite Internet
Modem Model: HN9000
Service Plan: Grandfathered ProPlus -- 425MB + 50MB/day, 1.6 Mbps DL; 250 Kbps UL)

I have an oldie, but a goodie, to add to the list.

- Heroes of Might and Magic III (through GameRanger) (Fully Playable) -- I can honestly say this one runs perfectly on Hughesnet. However! I was largely unable to get it to work through normal means or through Hamachi, but it worked perfectly -- far better than I'd expected, in fact! -- through GameRanger! Cross-platform, as well. (Me on Windows XP 32-bit and a friend on Windows Vista 64-bit.)
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ISP: HughesNet Satellite Internet
Modem Model: HN9000
Service Plan: Grandfathered ProPlus -- 425MB + 50MB/day, 1.6 Mbps DL; 250 Kbps UL)

Ugh... Much to my chagrin, I have another game to add to the ever-growing pile of "can't play" games...

- CosmicBreak (Unplayable) -- I can play offline mode just fine and the tutorial worked perfectly, but directly after selecting my union and any time after, entering the lobby makes my frame rate drop to FAR below 1 frame-per-second. What's more, Windows reports the game as "Not Responding" between frames and there is not a single other person in the lobby with me, no matter which channel I hop on. Admittedly, I can navigate the menus with a lot of patience, but I really don't think this is supposed to happen. It seems like something is snagging with the connection. Or something like that.

I've sent the above paragraph to tech support in hopes of an answer, but I don't really expect anything helpful.

Edit: Hooray for 100 posts to this topic! I couldn't have done it without your guys' interest.
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ISP: HughesNet Satellite Internet
Modem Model: HN9000
Service Plan: Grandfathered ProPlus -- 425MB + 50MB/day, 1.6 Mbps DL; 250 Kbps UL)

- Vindictus (Mixed Results) -- This one is a weird one. Interacting with people in town works just fine and forming a party to play by yourself works perfectly. However, playing in someone else's party is quite impossible... You can't move when in someone else's party at all. Similarly, someone else in your party will be just as immobile. But... the game is relatively simple, so playing by yourself shouldn't be that big of an issue. You just can't do raid missions.
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ISP: HughesNet Satellite Internet
Modem Model: HN9000
Service Plan: Grandfathered ProPlus -- 425MB + 50MB/day, 1.6 Mbps DL; 250 Kbps UL)

- Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall (Mostly Playable, Uses Mass Bandwidth) -- I can't explain why this game uses anywhere near as much bandwidth as it does, but in a half-hour time frame, I went from 460-some MB available to 225 MB. And this was just in the tutorial area! Otherwise, it seems to play alright enough. You can interact with people, enemies, NPCs... You take a lot of damage when you shouldn't, though, since the game views where you are on their end instead of where you are on your end. I highly suggest waiting until the free period to play this.

- Facebook - Farmville (Fully Playable, Uses a Lot of Bandwidth) -- Another game I can't explain the bandwidth usage for. Otherwise, perfectly playable.

- Rusty Hearts (Fully Playable) -- I haven't run across any problems playing solo yet, but I haven't tested being in a party. Chances are, it may work similar to how Vindictus does, but don't quote me on that.
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ISP: HughesNet Satellite Internet
Modem Model: HN9000
Service Plan: Grandfathered ProPlus -- 425MB + 100MB/day, 1.6 Mbps DL; 250 Kbps UL)

I would like to clarify further about how WoW works on Hughesnet. I have the $80 plan and the HN7000S. My upload speeds tend to be slower than dialup and I average around 1200ms latency. I never get below 800ms (and if it ever gets that low it is very early in the morning when hardly anyone is online).

In addition to a delay in actions uploading, I have noticed that there is graphical lag in terms of positions of moving npcs, mobs, and players. On my screen these aforementioned things can appear to be right in front of me (or rather, I can have my character practically inside of them) but the game will report them as being too far away. Despite any speed enhancements on my mount or for my character, I always run/fly/move slower than other players and keeping up can be quite difficult at times.

Even more annoying is the fact that detrimental effects such as stun, fear, daze, blind, etc always last longer than they should. There is a delay in them wearing off-- sometimes up to 10 seconds longer than they should be in effect.

PvP is nearly impossible on my connection unless the people I'm against are lazy or just really suck at pvp. Other players can literally run 20 circles around me before I can so much as get my character to move.

This holds true for any computer I use-- my framerate is consistently 60 to 50fps.

City of Heroes is a game that is completely unplayable on Hughesnet. I couldn't even get logged in at all.

SecondLife did not work. I got in but when I tried to move nothing happened and then I would suddenly fly across the room and hit a wall. This went on for about 30 minutes before I just gave up.

Wizards101 was playable because it is turn based.

Mafia Wars 2 is not really playable as it takes far too long to load and drains far too much bandwidth.

Farmville was playable until recently. In the last couple of weeks I have not been able to get it to load. It also takes more bandwidth to download.

Zombie Lane used to be playable but lately has not been playable at all as it won't load.

Ravenwood and Ravensky load eventually but suck bandwidth away and cause all sorts of errors with "excessive LAN traffic" and "uplink queuing".

EverQuest has a lot of rubberbanding and takes forever to login. Nine times out of ten I get kicked to login screen while trying to login and it takes in excess of five minutes every single time I zone- that is if I don't get disconnected while zoning. I can spend up to 3 hours trying to get back in.

When I played BioShock 2 it wouldn't let me save my game because it required a windows live login, but it timed out every time I tried to login.

In short, Hughesnet sucks and I am desperately seeking a real broadband ISP.

Edit: I forgot to mention that Dungeons & Dragons Online is playable if you don't mind hiccups where you suddenly stop moving and then can start moving again.

Lord of the Rings Online is playable but there is quite a lot of rubberbanding. It makes time sensitive quests rather difficult because you can jump over a hurdle or pass a certain area and suddenly you are popped back behind and have to do it again. Sometimes you may have to jump over a hurdle/wall/etc 5 times before it stops rubberbanding you.

Terraria -- I've found Terraria too discouraging to play. It works sometimes, but yet the lag is just enough to make you die all the time from enemies that aren't actually where they appear.

Minecraft -- I can't play at all during the day. It plays reliably from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m, and I can sometimes get it to play as early as Midnight.

Steam -- I can't connect to Steam most of the day, but isn't that the same with just about everything? I can't even connect to IRC or use Google during a good portion of the day until 11 P.M. I am looking for a fix.

Second Life works pretty well, except during peak hours. SL during peak hours has gotten significantly worse recently, to the point where I'm wondering what's up; I'm chalking it up to higher usage over Thanksgiving week, and hoping it calms down soon, because it's nigh unusable from 5 to 11 PM lately.

Like everything else, really.

What about Roblox? Does it work?

Same problem here, and not only with Second Life. From 6pm until 11pm CST, latency can cause up to 3 min lag in local chat. Download speeds can drop to CMDA 1x or below dialup speed, even many txt chat clients cease to work. This mostly happens Sunday through Thursday evenings and has become the norm for the past 3 or 4 months. During this nightly lagfest, if I can log on to Second Life, about all I can do is chat via direct instant messages. Moving becomes impossible, and if I try to sit, my avatar will appear in some off world area of the sim, like 0, 0, -45. In case anyone is wondering, Second Life is not a bandwidth hogging game. Unless you constantly visit simulators not stored in viewer cache and stream high bandwidth audio, it is possible to be logged on all day and not use more than 5% of your daily allowance.
I hope Hughes launches the new satellite soon, because I really have no other option besides dialup. Politicians have been talking about expanding broadband to rural customers for years, but this never happens. Cable, DSL, and cellular companies don't care how long rural America stays in the dark ages of internet.

Modem Model: HN9000

Three minutes isn't bad! Seven or more is the norm for me, if I can even log in.

It's true that Second Life is not bandwidth intensive if you know what to do. From what I understand, the reason it performs so poorly during congested hours is because there's constant communication between Linden Labs' severs and end users, even when it seems idle enough; which makes sense, since the world is kind of "streaming" anyway. Normal satellite latency isn't a problem for this, but it gets all zany and broken during congested hours.

Unfortunately, my "congested hours" are creeping in earlier and lasting later. Sigh. I have the same experience with other things during the 4 to 11 PM trainwreck, and logging into webmail or instant messengers can be as much of a challenge as logging into Second Life. Even basic web browsing is severely affected, and it's not uncommon for websites to load only in a "skeletal" text only appearance, or just time out, during the overcongested hours. It's very frustrating and disappointing.

- Super Monday Night Combat (Plays Poorly) -- As with the original Monday Night Combat, the netcode for this incarnation of the game works in a way which makes players with jittery connections zip around the arena. Even if you tap a directional button, you move at least, if not more than twice as far as you intended to. However, you can fire at and hit whatever you're aiming at most of the time, so... kind of a coin toss.
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ISP: HughesNet Satellite Internet
Modem Model: HN9000
Service Plan: Grandfathered ProPlus -- 425 MB + 100 MB/day, 1050 MB total, 1.6 Mbps DL; 250 Kbps UL)

Final Fantasy XI and XIV both very playable on HN.

The Reason Farmville on Facebook and other games like it are Bandwidth intensive is due to constant refreshing of the browser and Flash.So it is always updating ....Something that does help is to crank up the Flash cache.This allows a one time download and it stores it locally on your PC.

Second Life is unplayable.Tried many times finally quit.

Wow has started inconsistent drops and also has the "Rubberband Effect" if you lag and run across a room or area it will snap you back under the right conditions.It is still playable and I am waiting for MOP.

Dekaron and Runes Of Magic both Play.

Dekaron took over 2 Moons a while back.2 Moons was a revamped port of Dekaron and it never gained a lot of Popularity.2Moons and Dekaron are essentially the same game.And it goes without saying the latency is like WOW and so is the game play lag.

Runes Of Magic is similar to WOW in many aspects but suffers from Higher Latency.

They are playable just do not expect miracles.

With Hughesnet you MUST learn when the peak times are.There is a inherited "Mechanical Latency" with Satellites.Some Satellites are older then others.And as such when they get people hitting them with Requests it lags...this happens during peak times.

I can get 800 ms Religiously out of Peak Time.But At EXACTLY 3 PM EST (and lasts) till 10 PM EST its over 1200 ms or worse.Whether its a Throttle by Software or if its due to the Mechanical Lag I dunno.I do think that Hughes states in the Agreement we all sign that it has measures in place to ensure equal balance to all customers.

I am looking forward to the new Satellite called Jupiter though.Its gonna help a lot I hope.

- Mario Kart 7 (Nintendo 3DS) (Fully Playable*) -- As far as I can tell, the online aspects of the game work perfectly under Hughesnet! I've both won and lost races playing against random opponents and it wasn't due to lag by any means. Your opponent appears live on your screen and you appear live on theirs, from what I can tell, despite the 1200~ms latency and 600~ms jitter. This is especially exciting for me because several friends of mine have the ame now.

* However, there are occasional connection errors. Whether this is due to Hughesnet or due to the 3DS network itself, I honestly can't say. But when it works (which is more often than not), it works perfectly!
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ISP: HughesNet Satellite Internet
Modem Model: HN9000
Service Plan: Grandfathered ProPlus -- 425 MB + 100 MB/day, 1050 MB total, 1.6 Mbps DL; 250 Kbps UL)

for whatever reason, mario kart always worked well on hughesnet for me on the wii and ds. plus it doesn't even eat up that much bandwidth

Sherwood dungeon works maidmarian.com refresh needed
wild ones will work playdom.com turn based shooter i play alot :P perfectly except some refresh needed
fightmymonster will work fightmymonster.com (boring) but worth a try you can also try dark orbit (not sure if it works)

trying WOW now never tried before

mmorpg:Runescape also works i do have a 3 second lagg from when i click and the character moves but that doesnt bother me since i dont pvp that much, just gotta get the timing right when you go boss hunting.

Has anyone tried Half - Life 1 online? And Team Fortress Classic? Maybe even Counter Strike?

Ok I've decided that tonight I'll purchase TFC and CS and see how they do online. I played HL a while ago and didn't run great.

And for the first few tries, MK7 wouldn't connect to the server, but just now, it connected. So that's nice.

I will also be testing other games such as Blockland, Atmosphir, and maybe roblox if I feel like getting back into my old account.

None of the games you mentioned are really all that playable on HughesNet due to the fact there's a great deal of jitter on the connection. Even with pings of 1,000 MS+, the games would be playable. However, due to it being satellite-based, the connection likes to hiccup and jump around a lot (960ms -> 1271ms -> 1681ms -> 2250ms -> 984ms -> 1103ms, etc. etc.) creating random, unplayable conditions in which you rubber-band and warp around a lot. I will admit that two first-person shooters run fairly well under HughesNet: PlanetSide, due to how it handles connections, and Borderlands, which still plays less-than satisfactory, but you can actually run around and shoot things without a lot of bouncing around.

As mentioned above, Mario Kart 7 is pretty good on HughesNet! I will add that sometimes Red/Blue Shells take a couple seconds to hit their target and holding an item behind you may not always save you from being hit, and of course, depending on how close a race is, you may place one place, but get bumped down a place or two on the score screen. Otherwise, it works pretty darn well.

I haven't heard of two of the three last games you've mentioned, but I'm interested to know how they run on HughesNet.
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ISP: HughesNet Satellite Internet
Modem Model: HN9000
Service Plan: Grandfathered ProPlus -- 425 MB + 100 MB/day, 1050 MB total, 1.6 Mbps DL; 250 Kbps UL)

I have also played Crysis 2 online with little problems