To be honest I did actually read through that thread and tracked down your posts before my first response here in spite of the fact that you had no avatar at the time which made it a bit tedious (had to use search over and over) and they were spread across several pages.  When I saw you say "/thread" and genreally just act dismissive I decided to just make fun of you, as anyone who says that in earnest deserves it.

That being said, the part about 10 billion people in America made it all worth while.

Well, lets try to build a common ground.

1) We all accept that less ping is better.

2) Pings that we can see in the lobby are not the only cause of lag. Sim is also important. Upload limits are important. etc...

4) Sometimes the game crashes or start to behave strange, got desync, lags, freezes and such.

So, what i think people should consider is this "Fact":

In all games that I played and some of other people in this tread played with pings under 350 we experienced in an empirical way that the difference between games with pings under 350 is unnoticeable.

Games can lag sometimes but they lag with pings ~350 as much as they do with pings ~150.

This is what we noticed.

Regardless this thread has potential to be decent so I'll stop with the derailing.  I said what I wanted to say about your presentation of your opinions, I'm content to discuss the opinions themselves or leave the thread to people who will better than I can.

i´ve played many games where simspeed and even the pings where fine (below 100 for the pings and above 5 for the sims), but still lagged like hell.

i guess there is always atleast one bastard in the game who causes trouble..

I have a suspicion that one of the biggest issues is bad proxies/connections between individual players who say nothing about it pre-game.  What was an eye-opener for me was a week long period in which, for some reason, I got bad proxies over over.  The majority of the time when I was proxied to another player I would have about 600 ping to them, and it was definitely reflected in-game, it wasn't a display error on the ping.

I quickly learned that if I had a bad connection I needed to rejoin until I got the right proxies, and if there were multiple people in a game to whom I was going to have to establish a proxy connection it wasn't worth it. The problem though is that the majority of the time the other person to whom I had that poor connection would say nothing, which meant I had to explain to thehost who was egging me on to hit ready that I needed to rejoin a few more times.

What I've seen a few times since then is that a player will call out another player for having a high ping when I'll be well under 200 to both of them.  One time both were under 150 to me and they clearly just had a bad connection to each other, which sounds very similar to my temporary proxy issue.  

I suspect a lot of connection issues could be prevented if there were a way for the host to know if players have those high pings in the lobby, as they don't seem to understand that if the have an 80 ping to the host and 700 ping to another guy the hose isn'tgoing to be able to see that. The deference to the host's ping preference/judgement becomes part of the problem.

As for the statements about kicking people who have 200 ping because 'hey, why not if you have other people to take their place,' the problem is that the playerbase for this game really isn't so large that making it harder on people trying to find games is good in the long run.  

Ping does not matter, as long as it is under 350. Even with all pings under 100 the game can lag.

Spooky is correct.

PING doesn't matter as long as it is under 350 ms. There is NO difference from a technical view between 50 or 300 ping. NONE. 

The engine autocompensates for all computers to have a 350 ms lag, always. Now what you would most likely experience is that ingame the ping is higher than in the lobby, meaning that it can cross the 350 ms barrier.

Also sly, I would argue you would need both a networking class and a physics class. The biggest distance possible between two players is a little more than 41000 km here on earth. Practically you will deal with much shorter distances, and lets take the america-aussieland example:http://www03.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+sydney+new+york, 15000km. With C being 299 792 458 m / s your ping would be 50 ms(I think, atleast its super small).

The Speed of light has nothing to do with it, rather it has to do with the number of "hops"it has to make via "relay stations". Now this can be linked to distance, but the speed of light has nothing do  do with it.

I have to agree, a 350ms ping has a higher probability to lag than a 150ms. Bc a minimal spike will cause the game to lag, while the 150ms ping needs a higher spike to cause the game to lag.

But...

I'm not saying this statement will cause a small spike to cause lag when ppl have lower ping (150ms). Well, what I can say is that every game I have played, almost 200, since the last patch that improved the connections I wasn't the cause of the game to lag, and my ping canot be lower than 240ms with anyone that plays the game, US, EU, AU. That what I can say about pings under 350ms. I will quote myself

If this is something that happens consistently, pings near to 350 not lagging the game, whats the reason to not accept ppl with pings 280-350 to play a game u hosted?

I even managed to play games with 450 pings, 3x3, but lets not extrapolate.

I appreciate this; it's a decent way of thinking about it.  Also, not not only are the spikes more significant but are more likely to occur...

1.) How do you know what the game engine does?  Do you have access to source code we don't?  If so, please share so that we can hold this discussion on common ground.

2.) Autocompensation huh... Explain what this means and how you can "auto-compensate" for information you don't have.

The math is fine; it's your understanding of networking concepts that may be lacking.

True, 15000/30000 is 50... but, if you send a packet to someone and it takes 50ms for them to receive it (on propagation delay alone), how do you KNOW they received it?  Well, because they'll send a packet back to you (an acknowledgement).  That packet faces the same delay; here we're only talking about (direct) propagation delay.  Hence the ack takes 50ms too... 50ms + 50ms = 100ms... good times.

It's not what I mean... it's what ping means...

And since it is fairly safe to assume someone with a high ping is just as likely to lag the game for this reason as someone with a low ping, one can extrapolate that they are more likely to lag the game overall since they are also more likely to lag the for other reasons.

Sly,

Without being rude as you appear to be THE opposing viewpoint here, please factor this is in.  You pick a specific ping that you believe is great (150).  I suggest another lower ping based on your logic (70), which you agree would be even better or less likely to lag out.  As you seem fairly well reasoned out, you would also agree that other factors CAN cause lag outside of ping that have nothing to do with ping (bandwidth, sim speed etc).  So, you cannot logically say that a specific ping might be more likely to lag out based on ping alone and you can just argue that the lower the ping the better. 

Now, back to real life experience, which is what I believe the people getting kicked from games actually care about OUTSIDE of this argument.  In my experience, I do not believe I have ever experienced lag with anyone with 350-370 ping.  I don't feel any need to kick those people from my games.  I have had lag with 400 plus, so I typically do not even try to play with people in the range.  I'm not at all saying your argument is invalid (the one I didn't read, but is implied - the lower the ping, the less likely you'll get lag), I'm saying that a substantial amount of the community would be excluded if everyone kicked players with > 150 and it's not necessary to have a lag free game.  I'm pretty sure this thread was started because individuals are alienated for having a high ping when in reality, you could play with them without any lag.  A more fair statement on your part would be, yes, I can play with people with pings in the 350-370 range without any lag, but I'm less likely to have a game experience lag at lower pings.  Maybe give it a shot and report your results. 

Netlag is like a unicorn... it doesn't exist.  Go on; google it.  Here, I did it for you.  Looks like a term the marketing department of GPG made up to confuse you.

Pacov,

I'm a Ph.D student in computer science.  My research focus is delay and disruption tolerant networking (we are working with NASA in developing a more robust protocol than TCP/IP to deal with very high latency and high loss connections, such as deep space internetworking).  I quite honestly don't give a flip about if a bunch of people who don't even know what ping actually is disagree with my assertions.

Lower pings are better, but at some point you need to move from theoretical to practical and identify a relatively safe practical threshold.  For me, 150 is a good number, and the lower the better. 

Yes, I can. 

Let's say the probability of inducing lag BECAUSE OF UNRELATED ISSUES is X.
Let's say the probability of inducing lag AS CONNECTED TO PING is Y.
The probability of inducing lag PERIOD is thus X + Y.

Let A be a person with a low ping (30ms) and B be a person with a high ping (350ms).

X ( B ) = X ( A ), since there is no justifiable reason to conclude anyone is more likely to lag the game for reasons unrelated to ping than anyone else.
Y ( B ) > Y ( A ), since person B is more likely to cause lag due to latency-related issues than person A

Thus, the overall likelihood of inducing lag, X+Y, is greater for person B than person A.
i.e. [X ( B ) + Y ( B )] > [X ( A ) + Y ( A )], where X ( B ) = X ( A ) AND Y ( B ) > Y ( A )

Fairly logical, no?

As for the real life stuff, I don't care.. as I said a few isolated high ping games that do not lag are not sufficient to disprove my argument.  You need a large sample size or to point out a flaw in the theoretical reasoning.   I'm not saying kick high ping players; I am simply advising they are more likely to lag.

Thank you my good friend,

Well, his words, my words.

As for this:

Man, Phd or not, take it easy brother, there is life outside books. As phd is for I'm getting my own right now as well, not in this particular field, so I can't argue against u or not. I'm, yes, interested in real life, but if theoretical rationality > life experience, God forbid man to evolve and create new theories.

I know what ping is.   

If you don't believe in netlag, maybe ask a dev? 

P.S. lol at GPG marketing department.