Why Do Most Players have Poor Connections?

Okay, so just about every time I try to play a game on LIVE, the other players have like one or two slots (pings) on their connection status, but I always have a full bar. This gets really frustrating, because what should be a fun and enjoyable game is made into a sloth-fest where the lag's presence becomes so great that you could probably get up from the television, walk over to the refrigerator and make a sandwich (and possibly even eat it) till players creep up on you in a deathmatch or the enemy comes along in co-op.

Why do so many players have crappy connections, and is my own bar accurate or does everyone else seem to have full bars but run into other people with low ones? I have DSL, I am really not sure what kind of connections these other people must have, and how many different gadgets they have hooked up to it.

Is it possible I am running into a lot of people who have several different devices hooked up to their internet, or people with dial-up? Because they show bars in the red and yellow, like one or two bars...I mean how come it shows such sloppy connections for some of these people but a perfect one for me? And I have seen other people with full and near-full bars before, and it seems like commercial games generally have better LIVE than arcade games. I am mainly talking about Arcade games if that helps.

It's probably on your side. Their ping is in relation to how long it takes to transfer data to you. I rarely see people with bad ping unless they are from another country.Chopmo81

Okay, so just about every time I try to play a game on LIVE, the other players have like one or two slots (pings) on their connection status, but I always have a full bar. This gets really frustrating, because what should be a fun and enjoyable game is made into a sloth-fest where the lag's presence becomes so great that you could probably get up from the television, walk over to the refrigerator and make a sandwich (and possibly even eat it) till players creep up on you in a deathmatch or the enemy comes along in co-op.

Why do so many players have crappy connections, and is my own bar accurate or does everyone else seem to have full bars but run into other people with low ones? I have DSL, I am really not sure what kind of connections these other people must have, and how many different gadgets they have hooked up to it.

Ovirew

Is it possible I am running into a lot of people who have several different devices hooked up to their internet, or people with dial-up?

Ovirew

The number of devices someone is running shouldn't affect Live too much. Every monday night I go over my friends house and a bunch of us go 5 wide on Live with Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. We'll have 5 HDTV's/PC monitors going with 5 360's all running through a router on his cable internet connection. We don't have lag on our end and never get people saying it's laggy on theirs.

I used to have DSL a while back and always had trouble on Live. Since I went to cable it's been great.

Most people have fine connections for playing xbox live. What the connection bar shows is merely the ping which has very little to do with their connection speeds.

If you have two people in one game, both from opposite sides of the world playing together, someone is going to have a terrible ping and the other will not if the host lives near either of them.

No matter what your connection speed, there will be considerable lag when playing someone on the other side of the planet. It's a simple law of physics... electricity and light is simply not fast enough for this to happen. Add that delay to the frog leaping between servers of multiple countries and its no wonder people lag.

I take it you live in america where most of the xbox live population resides. Since most of the players live very close to you, you will experience little lag except for when someone from far away host.

YOu shouldn't complain, because for those few people on the opposite side of the planet we have to go through leaps and bounds to find people living near us.

Okay, so just about every time I try to play a game on LIVE, the other players have like one or two slots (pings) on their connection status, but I always have a full bar. This gets really frustrating, because what should be a fun and enjoyable game is made into a sloth-fest where the lag's presence becomes so great that you could probably get up from the television, walk over to the refrigerator and make a sandwich (and possibly even eat it) till players creep up on you in a deathmatch or the enemy comes along in co-op.

Why do so many players have crappy connections, and is my own bar accurate or does everyone else seem to have full bars but run into other people with low ones? I have DSL, I am really not sure what kind of connections these other people must have, and how many different gadgets they have hooked up to it.

Ovirew

NEVER choose quick play or quick search. I know its fastest way to start playing, but choose or create a match using your own preferences like kits and locked servers. Best way to enjoy the live experience is to find 20-25 people who play that game alot nightly, then add them under a category and name it ghost recon or whatever then when you play you never have the lag because they are dedicated players thatflow with your connection. You said you have dsl, but what level? Sorry,dsl pro wont cut it. You need fios or DSL elite, cable is okay i guess.