“League of Legends” mid-season Ping value controversy

《League of legends“The 2022 Mid-Season Invitational Tournament uses a ping value of 35ms due to the RNG online competition. It is hoped that the on-site team and the online team will compete in the name of the same network conditions. Tiandu felt that the delay exceeded the official announcement of 35ms. After careful analysis by Riot, it was found that the delay shown in the log file (Log) of the first three days was indeed different from the experience in the Busan match. Therefore, the official decision was made on the fourth day of the match. , Change the on-site network environment configuration, and because of the unexpected delays between the two sides in the game that RNG participated in, Riot announced that the RNG game must be rematched in the first three days, and this rematch requirement has already made many Chinese Players are quite dissatisfied.

On the last day of the group match, player Zeus broadcasted his personal screen during the match between T1 and SGB. The sharp-eyed players found that the Ping value was not 35ms, but 22ms. After the game, many Chinese players went to the official Twitter to question whether this was the case. Not fair, even calling for a rematch.

• T1 (Photo credit: Riot Games)

In the face of players’ doubts about the ping value, Riot published a long article today to explain their handling of the ping value from a technical point of view. The natural delay of the server is about 35ms, and the natural delay of the ten teams in the Busan competition venue is about 15ms. They want to let all participating teams compete under equal competitive conditions, so they decided to introduce an artificial delay method and set a target value such as 35ms. Let everyone maintain the same network environment.

Riot explained that the network delays between Busan and Shanghai were different on the first three days of the group match. They used a delay service tool to adjust the ping value of all contestants to the 35ms range, but this tool had an error, which made the players at the Busan match in the 35ms range. There will be an extra delay during the game, making the actual delay higher than the 35ms displayed on the stadium computer screen. Therefore, when the live team in Busan played against RNG online, the players in China played in the 35ms ping value range, but the players in Busan had a higher ping value. The root cause was a code bug that incorrectly calculated the delay, resulting in This value is also wrong in Log, so they decided to rematch RNG three times and modify the configuration to solve this vulnerability.

However, Riot pointed out that after modifying the configuration on May 13th, although the actual Ping value has been corrected to ensure that it is equivalent to Shanghai, the value displayed on the screen of the player in Busan is wrong, resulting in a lower value when the player screen is broadcast live. Ping value, their team failed to communicate this error to everyone immediately, making the audience mistakenly believe that the players in Busan were playing with a Ping value lower than their actual value.

Riot explained that the main reason for solving the delay service vulnerability was to add the compensation offset value to the configuration. This method would have side effects on the screen display value, resulting in the correct Ping value displayed on the screen of the players in Shanghai, and the correct value of the Ping value displayed on the screen of the players in Busan. The displayed value of the players in the game will be 13 ms lower than the actual value, mainly because when Shanghai uses the delay tool, because their Ping value is originally about 35ms, the tool will not add compensation, and the reason why the number displayed on the Busan screen is incorrect is because The engine has imported a delay configuration offset to allow the actual delay to reach 35ms, but this will make the Log and Ping values ​​appear to be offset by about 13ms.

• Zeus’s picture shows 22ms, but in fact the live ping value is 35ms (Photo credit: Riot Games)

Riot emphasized that the technical team has always given the highest priority to creating the same competitive environment for professional players, and also hopes to make every effort to uphold the fairness of the competition and create a better viewing experience for fans around the world. In this incident, they failed to discover the loophole affecting the game in time, and their communication about the problem of incorrect Ping value display was not timely and transparent.

Riot stressed that they are conducting additional testing and validation to ensure smooth playoffs and knockout stages. They would also like to thank the team and players for their tenacity during this time, and for providing valuable advice to them in addressing these issues despite the many obstacles. While they can’t say that there will never be any problems that could affect the game in the future, they promise to learn from this incident, communicate more immediately with teams and fans, and continue to contribute to a good game environment. Supervision and self-improvement.