how much does a low ping affects gameplay?

[Krisiun]

Hi,

just got an offer from my ISP to reduce the ping to 5 ms (for a monthly fee of course), and now I ask myself if this really low ping would increase gameplay, because I read somewhere else that PS loads a lot of data from the local harddrive. So perhaps my question is: What traffic is there detailled between client and server? And what parts will be loaded from HD? Thanks!

P.S: Not really a technical problem... but I think this thread fits best here, else than newbie help...

[Moogie]

Most of the performance issues encountered by players of Planeshift are caused by inefficient coding on the clients\' part. There\'s relatively little information passed between client and server at such an early stage- character movements, rain/lightning synchronisation, crystal positions, time of day. All the rest is read from your HD. The slowdown or \'lag\' that alot of players complain of is related to the way the client handles things with it\'s current coding.

If your ISP is offering a good price for the low ping, I\'d say take it. It won\'t neccessarily affect the performance of PS though.

[tangerine]

Your ISP doesn\'t offer you to reduce pings to 5 ms to all servers, probably only to some internet backbone.
Ping time 5 ms could enhance gameplay of FPS games (it depends on what is your current ping, of course) but it will have no influence on Planeshift now, because your packets still need to travel far away to Singapore.