Please seriously prioritize adding region select

If they allowed this, there be servers "empty" or regions not being used.

Having a region select option would be beneficial to avoid playing on high ping instances due to poor traffic routing by the game via distant connection nodes.

@Nekoless8591 Last time I checked, Rare and MS in their infinite wisdom decided to only have ONE server location per region.

The East Coast server is in VA and the West Coast one is in CA with no Central US location available, since I'm located in East EU I get bounced between EU Amsterdam North (70ms) and the US East Coast one (120ms).

Since you are switching to a Seattle location via VPN then you must be connecting to the CA servers but without the VPN you're essentially getting bounced between East and West Coasts.

I honestly doubt it's your ISP causing this as it's more likely the game just throwing you in whatever session it has available, just shoddy matchmaking.

I can offer examples of other MS games that have this same issue if you are interested in knowing more.

@BurnBacon There will never be any empty servers, period, you either get merged or the server instance you are playing on closes if you leave, and no other players are left.

@nekoless8591 tbf there was nothing wrong before your provider made a change. Sounds like a them issue, not Rare.

Quicktip, just for a little help to ease maybe a little of the ping. Once you start your session, are loaded into your ship, turn off your VPN. It will disconnect you from the game as if your router went out for a second, then it'll offer you to rejoin your session. This will put you on your preferred server, but without the added ping from the VPN. Just make sure your pockets are empty.

You can use a free VPN to switch region but yeah it would be nice as an in game option.

@nekoless8591 You mentioned a "routing change" happening at some point. Was this something that was communicated to you by your ISP or did you just use a packet sniffer to see through what nodes you were getting routed?

Perhaps you can call your ISP's support line and present the situation to them, routing is done automatically by their infrastructure and they won't change this for one user but you could request a static IP if you are currently on dynamic or request a new static IP and hope you get routed via a less saturated node.

Keep in mind that the above is speculation since a routing change could have happened upstream and NOT within your ISP's network.

ISPs don't generally care about what ping you get while connecting to a particular server as long as the service you contracted them for is within spec.

@Tesiccl Why do you think this is something happening on the ISP side? Please explain your reasoning.

@nekoless8591 said in Please seriously prioritize adding region select:

.....these issues can be solved by just adding region select.

Haha you should try playing in Oceania. Rubber banding isn't fun for anyone, frequent problem here at certain times of day. But playing against people I can't meaningfully communicate with, is about as predictable as you can guess.

@smuntface said in Please seriously prioritize adding region select:

@nekoless8591 said in Please seriously prioritize adding region select:

.....these issues can be solved by just adding region select.

Haha you should try playing in Oceania. Rubber banding isn't fun for anyone, frequent problem here at certain times of day. But playing against people I can't meaningfully communicate with, is about as predictable as you can guess.
Hi there, what ping do you usually get when you load in? I never bothered to see if this game had an APAC server location.

@rvb1101 ”No, I don’t think I will”

@tesiccl Then why engage on this topic by posting here? I'm not trying to be funny or confrontational, I'm genuinely curious why you think the ISP is to blame here.

@nekoless8591 Most likely a compounding issue as you mentioned, the fact that SoT only has a limited selection of server locations and it has no server region settings in-game coupled with the area you are based in makes it difficult for you to be always placed in the lower ping servers.

This is why it's important to have some sort of options to help us regarding this.

Halo MCC has an options screen that allows you to choose the servers you plan to use for matchmaking where it lists the server ping, Halo Infinite has a similar option implemented although not as good as it only allows a player to choose from "local" and "expanded" server locations but doesn't allow you a more granular approach like MCC.

You could give your ISP a ring and have them do a check to see if everything is within spec on their side and then take an Ookla speed test making sure to select one of your ISP's servers in order to validate.

The method that @abjectarity posted regarding VPN usage is the way to go in order to make sure you land on the server of your choice.

Good luck.

@nekoless8591 there are currently 4 data centers in NA, try your VPN to each one individually and see how the connection feels. Locations are currently in Virginia, Illinois, Texas, and California. They change datacenters randomly, add or remove certain locations. At one time there was one in Washington state, but that is no longer current. So that actually could be why your ping changed, if WA one was your best, but they removed it.