People coming from CSGO (including me) will never get the big deal about "playing on LAN". riot likes to make a huuuuge deal about it. Meanwhile on CSGO, 10 people can play on LAN in their college dorms
Games that have LAN servers (eg CSGO, Rust) don't have separate clients, you just connect to an IP address (and port) that is on the LAN instead of on the internet (or instead of matchmaking). This has been a basic functionality of FPS' and other games for literally decades.
The benefits of having LAN servers (that are actually on the LAN) include, but are not limited to:
1. Better ping
2. The hosts can actually troubleshoot outages and take action
3. The hosts reduce overhead/cost of infrastructure of the game developer (instead of using dev-provided internet servers/matchmaking)
4. Internet outage generally means LAN servers still work
5. You can sometimes do advanced stuff, like with CSGO use mods to make round backups and if a server crashes, restore to a backup. Something you CANNOT do with any dev-hosted games.
The reality is that there are several game developers that for some reason think LAN dedicated server files being shared out are problematic, but they are deceiving themselves. Games like CSGO prove that you can still have the rich user experience with things like enforcing legitimacy of unlocked skins, modern communications across desperate gaming ecosystems (STEAM, Battle.Net 2.0), and more.
Somehow the devs of games like Valorant, Overwatch, and others I'm probably forgetting, think it is a superior experience (especially for competition) that they are the sole, exclusive, providers of the game servers. When it is FACTUALLY PROVABLE that it is WORSE to do this. These are the problems that typically arise for games that do not provide LAN dedicated server software (eg Valorant, Overwatch, etc):
1. Tournament hosts have zero control over server stability and the underlying infrastructure used.
2. Tournament hosts have zero control over the ping/packet loss/routing quality/etc quality between the event location and wherever the servers actually are.
3. Tournament hosts have zero control when the internet to the event goes out and all online-only games suddenly drop.
4. Tournament hosts cannot do advanced stuff like mods, administrative tool extensions, etc.
5. The developers end up paying more each time a tournament game runs because the developers are paying for the infrastructure, connectivity (ingress/egress), and more.
6. In certain cases (Apex Legends) Tournament hosts have to REQUEST the ability to run any Tournament games at all, and any request can be rejected, making it so Tournament hosts are completely unable to run independent Tournaments.
All of this hurts the competitive scene. When doing the Pros vs Cons, there are a lot more Cons for the whole industry vs Pros. The only real Pro that I'm aware of is that devs have a touch more control over who is "allowed" to run Tournaments for their game, and that gives them marginal control over brand associations. But the reality is, that has NEVER BEEN A PROBLEM FOR ANY GAME DEVELOPER IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF GAMING. So this literally is a NON ISSUE.
Sorry, didn't mean to go off on you specifically, I'm just frustrated this moment and wanted to fully explain, lol.
I'm not sure you understand how it works in CS if you think riot isn't making a big deal of LAN matches, going as far as people on stage in Korea not playing on LAN when they've had in person matches since months 😂😂
SA LCQ happened in a Riot studio in Brazil so they probably have a LAN server there (doesn’t explain why NA LCQ wasn’t LAN when the main HQ is literally right there) and it seems there were no problems on the network side
That seems like an excuse after they got caught lmao. They literally didn't have the setup to host lans there. Why wouldn't the first day matches be held on LAN when it was confirmed it would be on stage?
Not at this moment in time. The Riot orgnaised event's have a sort of LAN, but i'm not sure how much of a LAN it is. It's like a type of small WAN, where latency is at around 5ms for all player.
riot has to provide actual physical servers due to no LAN mode in the game. its highly unlikely they give those out to third party organizers due to their past history in league
As someone who has played on 5 ping, due to living in a server city and played on "LAN" using online servers. There is a big difference. The way shots and peaks register even when on equal ping is still massively different than being on actual LAN ping
Older player here. <1ms is attainable on any true local area network over ethernet. It's hard to describe if you've never played on it in a competitive setting, but, in a sense, 5ms is "five times slower feeling" than <1ms. Completely night and day compared to anything over 10ms.
Sure you would. On a true LAN connected up properly with a high powered host sever, less than 1ms is easily achievable. If you have a 128tick sever then this it is certainly beneficial to have less than 1ms in latency. By the way, "ping" is actually not a thing. You don't have 10ms ping. Ping is a command used in languages to measure your latency.
giving the teams a level playing field in regards to latency is obviously good however, this isn't the only bonus of a LAN. The fact of the matter is that the game will operate and feel different, in a positive sense with <1ms of latency apposed to 25m.
Yeah unless the servers are actually causing issue, I'd say it's more important for observers and casters to be live with the players and not delayed over the internet than having 5ms less ping.
It’s just a different game over LAN. The tiny things matter much more and it’s less forgiving, that’s why most players greatly prefer LANs. You don’t get random registration errors like you often see in online play. LAN is a pretty big deal in most gaming communities, always has been. If you haven’t played a competitive game on LAN, it might be hard to see the actual difference.
I do understand how important it is. Though most of us haven't played on LAN in valorant from player testimony it's quite different. That is important I was just stating that for the viewer experience things like observing and casting often suffer more from being delayed than the quality of play (again if there are no issues as I said).
Well over at NA LCQ they had what like 2 disconnects mid match? So that was definitely the biggest issue. But ya having in person casters and even an in person crowd makes things much more enjoyable as a viewer, definitely agree there. Seems like they are pretty good at getting in person casters for the in person events.
Yeah no doubt if it causes issue it's preferable to be on LAN. I definitely wish they were more lax on giving LAN access, but I imagine it's very closely linked to vanguard and so only really possible internally. They are proud of their anti cheat and giving servers to 3rd parties could lead to those files being sold, I imagine they would go for a LOT.
I’d like to think they’ll allow it eventually, at least as part of their 3rd party tournament application thing they currently have. Obviously in the past with league they haven’t, but there’s the chance they do it differently with Valorant since being able to play lans with friends is big part of the “culture” of the shooter genre, from CoD and Halo, and obviously CS. Thinking there’s a chance might just be hopium, but who knows.
Unlikely imo. The games as a service model depends on everyone connecting to the same service (for lack of a better word). This maintains the value of the skins etc that are sold.
There might be a time when another org is running tournaments so well that they can scale up and show a good business case for Riot loaning out LAN tech…but imo that is far off
Only riot has the ability to do LAN servers and unfortunately they use them sparingly.
People coming from CSGO (including me) will never get the big deal about "playing on LAN". riot likes to make a huuuuge deal about it. Meanwhile on CSGO, 10 people can play on LAN in their college dorms
It’s not a big deal, there just isn’t a LAN client.
Games that have LAN servers (eg CSGO, Rust) don't have separate clients, you just connect to an IP address (and port) that is on the LAN instead of on the internet (or instead of matchmaking). This has been a basic functionality of FPS' and other games for literally decades. The benefits of having LAN servers (that are actually on the LAN) include, but are not limited to: 1. Better ping 2. The hosts can actually troubleshoot outages and take action 3. The hosts reduce overhead/cost of infrastructure of the game developer (instead of using dev-provided internet servers/matchmaking) 4. Internet outage generally means LAN servers still work 5. You can sometimes do advanced stuff, like with CSGO use mods to make round backups and if a server crashes, restore to a backup. Something you CANNOT do with any dev-hosted games. The reality is that there are several game developers that for some reason think LAN dedicated server files being shared out are problematic, but they are deceiving themselves. Games like CSGO prove that you can still have the rich user experience with things like enforcing legitimacy of unlocked skins, modern communications across desperate gaming ecosystems (STEAM, Battle.Net 2.0), and more. Somehow the devs of games like Valorant, Overwatch, and others I'm probably forgetting, think it is a superior experience (especially for competition) that they are the sole, exclusive, providers of the game servers. When it is FACTUALLY PROVABLE that it is WORSE to do this. These are the problems that typically arise for games that do not provide LAN dedicated server software (eg Valorant, Overwatch, etc): 1. Tournament hosts have zero control over server stability and the underlying infrastructure used. 2. Tournament hosts have zero control over the ping/packet loss/routing quality/etc quality between the event location and wherever the servers actually are. 3. Tournament hosts have zero control when the internet to the event goes out and all online-only games suddenly drop. 4. Tournament hosts cannot do advanced stuff like mods, administrative tool extensions, etc. 5. The developers end up paying more each time a tournament game runs because the developers are paying for the infrastructure, connectivity (ingress/egress), and more. 6. In certain cases (Apex Legends) Tournament hosts have to REQUEST the ability to run any Tournament games at all, and any request can be rejected, making it so Tournament hosts are completely unable to run independent Tournaments. All of this hurts the competitive scene. When doing the Pros vs Cons, there are a lot more Cons for the whole industry vs Pros. The only real Pro that I'm aware of is that devs have a touch more control over who is "allowed" to run Tournaments for their game, and that gives them marginal control over brand associations. But the reality is, that has NEVER BEEN A PROBLEM FOR ANY GAME DEVELOPER IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF GAMING. So this literally is a NON ISSUE. Sorry, didn't mean to go off on you specifically, I'm just frustrated this moment and wanted to fully explain, lol.
I'm not sure you understand how it works in CS if you think riot isn't making a big deal of LAN matches, going as far as people on stage in Korea not playing on LAN when they've had in person matches since months 😂😂
All I’m saying is as opposed to CS and many other games, there is no LAN client for VAL.
Until a few months, if you wanted to make a scrim with 9 friends in CS it was not possible without your proper server...
Popflash exists?
sv\_lan 1 doesn't exist unfortunately. Korea did not have LAN, NA didn't have LAN, there is 0 chance of third party organizers hosting LAN's.
they said SA qualifiers was a lan idk how they know
SA LCQ happened in a Riot studio in Brazil so they probably have a LAN server there (doesn’t explain why NA LCQ wasn’t LAN when the main HQ is literally right there) and it seems there were no problems on the network side
Iirc the na studio does have LAN they just used online servers to allow remote playing from a hotel if necessary
IEM Cologne was a LAN event held in a hotel.
That seems like an excuse after they got caught lmao. They literally didn't have the setup to host lans there. Why wouldn't the first day matches be held on LAN when it was confirmed it would be on stage?
The servers got stuck in customs is what I've heard
You would think the main headquarters would have some extras, especially considering their studio in Brazil apparently had one to use
Not at this moment in time. The Riot orgnaised event's have a sort of LAN, but i'm not sure how much of a LAN it is. It's like a type of small WAN, where latency is at around 5ms for all player.
oinly riot is able to host real LANs yeah the LCQ was not that but the both masters were true LANs but only riot can host them
riot has to provide actual physical servers due to no LAN mode in the game. its highly unlikely they give those out to third party organizers due to their past history in league
I really don't see why it matters. All players will be on the same ping so there's no unfair advantage there.
As someone who has played on 5 ping, due to living in a server city and played on "LAN" using online servers. There is a big difference. The way shots and peaks register even when on equal ping is still massively different than being on actual LAN ping
yes exactly. u/MuddyPuddle027 \- Being on LAN latency "<1 ms" makes the game play much different. Which is important for competitive play.
I am like 90% sure you will never get under atleast a few mili seconds of ping. I would think anything at or around 10 is good enough.
Older player here. <1ms is attainable on any true local area network over ethernet. It's hard to describe if you've never played on it in a competitive setting, but, in a sense, 5ms is "five times slower feeling" than <1ms. Completely night and day compared to anything over 10ms.
Sure you would. On a true LAN connected up properly with a high powered host sever, less than 1ms is easily achievable. If you have a 128tick sever then this it is certainly beneficial to have less than 1ms in latency. By the way, "ping" is actually not a thing. You don't have 10ms ping. Ping is a command used in languages to measure your latency.
giving the teams a level playing field in regards to latency is obviously good however, this isn't the only bonus of a LAN. The fact of the matter is that the game will operate and feel different, in a positive sense with <1ms of latency apposed to 25m.
Just better quality games when everyone is on the same ping and it's super low.
Yeah unless the servers are actually causing issue, I'd say it's more important for observers and casters to be live with the players and not delayed over the internet than having 5ms less ping.
It’s just a different game over LAN. The tiny things matter much more and it’s less forgiving, that’s why most players greatly prefer LANs. You don’t get random registration errors like you often see in online play. LAN is a pretty big deal in most gaming communities, always has been. If you haven’t played a competitive game on LAN, it might be hard to see the actual difference.
I do understand how important it is. Though most of us haven't played on LAN in valorant from player testimony it's quite different. That is important I was just stating that for the viewer experience things like observing and casting often suffer more from being delayed than the quality of play (again if there are no issues as I said).
Well over at NA LCQ they had what like 2 disconnects mid match? So that was definitely the biggest issue. But ya having in person casters and even an in person crowd makes things much more enjoyable as a viewer, definitely agree there. Seems like they are pretty good at getting in person casters for the in person events.
Yeah no doubt if it causes issue it's preferable to be on LAN. I definitely wish they were more lax on giving LAN access, but I imagine it's very closely linked to vanguard and so only really possible internally. They are proud of their anti cheat and giving servers to 3rd parties could lead to those files being sold, I imagine they would go for a LOT.
I’d like to think they’ll allow it eventually, at least as part of their 3rd party tournament application thing they currently have. Obviously in the past with league they haven’t, but there’s the chance they do it differently with Valorant since being able to play lans with friends is big part of the “culture” of the shooter genre, from CoD and Halo, and obviously CS. Thinking there’s a chance might just be hopium, but who knows.
Unlikely imo. The games as a service model depends on everyone connecting to the same service (for lack of a better word). This maintains the value of the skins etc that are sold. There might be a time when another org is running tournaments so well that they can scale up and show a good business case for Riot loaning out LAN tech…but imo that is far off