Internet Speeds and EFU

[The Machinist]

Hello
 
I'm about to buy a new house and because its in the countryside a bit the internet connection is pretty slow, going to be about 1-3 Meg. I run at about 20-25 Meg now.
 
Will 1-3 Meg still work for EFU? What do you guys have internet speed wise and how do you find that?
 
Ta

[Paha]

1-3 meg connection is going to be varying in quality and speed a lot. It's unlikely to be very solid for playing, but it's usable, definitely. It shouldn't be a big issue but who knows. Faster connection sure helps, but it shouldn't be any problem. I played fps games back in the day with 1-2 meg connections and latencies were just fine, as long as the quality of the line is solid.

Currently I have optical fiber connection for 100 megs, and it's pretty much solid 75 at minimum all the time and up to 100 (I auto reserve bandwidth for my ip tv)

[The Machinist]

Paha you taunt me with your mega fast speeds.
 
Line should be fine, so at least thats not too bad news then.

[PlayaCharacter]

Right before I fixed the problem I was having the other day (it's in the sticky in the big reports section) my internet was running at 3.19Mbps. The speed wasn't what was killing my ability to play, it was packet loss. Aside from packet loss, I was able to play NWN just fine with no lag at all.

Previous to that, I have played NWN on a netbook tethered to an Android phone while driving down Interstate 40. No issues there.

Back when NWN first came out, there were a few occasions when my only option was dial-up. I was able to play NWN multiplayer just fine on dial-up.

In short, you should have no problems whatsoever.

[Doc-Holiday]

[holy crap you played NWN while driving down the 40?!?!]

As most of y'all know I suffer from some serious periods of lag, I live in the countryside and rely on internet piped in through radio waves which are affected by things such as weather, changes in the security measures of the nearby naval base (air) and of course the number of motor homes parked between my receiver and the local emitter.

It is possible to play NWN with a slow and even horribad connection, it's possible to play EFU with such a connection. Depending on the regularity and severity of the connection you may have to adjust your character concepts to maximize your utility and fun while playing... smashy smashy characters simply won't work in my particular situation, nor will characters dependent on highly coordinated and timed attacks/ efforts.

My current, longest living character is Doctor Mikael Galeno... I ease my connection issues by spending most of my time standing still and talking to people. When I adventure... I don't fight.. I stay back, heal... and occasionally... run around willy nilly screaming for help. (PvP scares me since I could easily be dead long before I knew anything was happening, but so far most players have been very gracious about it.)

You are the best person to evaluate your connections reliability, from there you will be able to determine what sort of character types will best fit within the limitations imposed by your connection.

[gravekeeper]

Trust me.... I play EFU in a connection that can drop bellow the 56kbps of the dial-up. You just need to focus and not put your computer busy with other tasks. As you go with 1 to 3Mpbs, you'll be just fine. Do not keep the computer busy sharing the connection with several stuff at the same time and you won't see any difference at all.

And do not hear Doc. I can PvP just fine and everyone knows that. Right?

[HerDarkMajesties]

I've played on a rural 1 meg line in the past and didn't have any real issues. So long as the connection itself is solid and reliable, you don't need that much bandwidth to play NWN. If it's an unreliable and spotty connection though (like Doc) then you're dealing with lots of packet loss, which can be a game killer.

[Nuclear Catastrophe]

I DMed on a mobile phone dongle.

It can be done.

(and yeah there was a bit of loss but it wasn't actually that bad!)

[johanmaxon]

Lol yes, sure you can GK.. But OnT: I know people playing with their phones as hotspots, that 3G isn't top fast, is it? If that works I guess even a weak line should?

[johanmaxon]

Damn, second on the ball by Nuke.

[Gippy]

Got a PC to level 10 while living in africa and playing off a wi-max connection. As stated consistency is the biggest thing.

[xXCrystal_Rose]

I play on a connection that is 1 meg at best, usually a little less. EFU runs fine. Or rather it is playable. I just have 2-6 second lag spikes with great frequency. Especially when a fresh combat starts or something emerges from stealth or invisibility.

[Corrigo]

I played EFU on 1.5 Mb/s as well - no problem whatsoever.

Don't forget that 1-3 Mb/s still comes down to 125-375 KB/s. If you can dedicate all that bandwith to NWN that's certainly way more than it needs. Area data is a few dozen KB at the most and is generally preloaded. Even the most complex of custom scripts don't tend to go over a few KB. You probably don't even receive most of the data being sent around through the module, at most a few integers which your own program interprets for rendering purposes.

The NWN multiplayer protocol just isn't that complex that you need a fast connection to run it properly.

[Caddies]

I played from Australia on a 1MB connection with 350-400 ping for my whole EFU experience and managed to do okay. I wouldn't worry too much - if it is slow, you will learn to adjust.

[TroublesomeTree]

As long as you're not doing anything else on the internet at the same time, you should be fine. I had the same sort of internet for a few years and was able to play online FPSes, other PWs, and such just fine, so Neverwinter Nights should be A-OK. I had better stuff by the time I started on EFU, though, so I can't give you anything useful there.