Given that the host’s inputs do not need to be sent and received to a remote server in order to be processed, they’re often able to respond much more quickly than other players. It’s for this reason that many gamers prefer to play on dedicated servers, though the higher cost of doing so often leads developers to go down the peer-to-peer route instead. Thankfully, some have at least tried to come up with ways to minimize the host’s advantage, as evidenced by a recently-published patent from EA.

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The patent describes a system that would see artificial input lag used to ensure that every player’s inputs take the same amount of time to process. The disclosure even goes as far as to reveal that this input processing delay would be 100 milliseconds, which, on a 60hz refresh rate display, equates to six whole frames. It also seems to suggest that this delay would be added to offline sessions too, in order to ensure that the gameplay experience remains the same regardless of whether players are connected to the internet or not.

Given that some gamers spend thousands of dollars on low latency displays with high refresh rates and expensive gaming mice to improve their reaction times, the idea of developers intentionally adding lag may seem like a strange one to some. It does arguably make things fairer, though, and competitive players can still gain an advantage from shelling out on better equipment as they’ll be getting their images faster once they’ve been processed and returned by the host.

It’s important to note that there is no evidence to suggest that EA is already implementing the system described in the patent, nor that other developers and publishers don’t have similar systems of their own already in use (as some have speculated is the case for years). Even so, the fact that EA has filed a patent built around the idea of adding artificial input processing delays to its video games would seem to suggest that it’s something that the publisher is considering, at the very least.

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