After my last thread I took a break from Overwatch because I just couldn’t play it due to having sudden lag spikes.
I’ve come back to get some skins and focused my games purely on quickplay. In my spawn point I would randomly get 150 ping which would then spike to 300, then quickly drop down again to 30-40.
This would also happen whenever I would use an ability such as Orisa’s shield or Hammonds hook. The lag spike would be so quick that unless you were actively looking for lag spikes and had your ping activated, it would look as if you simply missed or a simple FPS drop. This sudden lag spike would always happen as I got close to the enemy team, more so if I was approaching them.
What was strange and made me suspect there was something potentially malicious was after a few games of losing, everything seemed fine, however, once I started winning things went back to being a problem, even if I joined another server.
The only time it seemed to go away was when in my last game of the night where it started off the same as “normal” and then the moment I said “Wtf why am I suddenly getting 300 ping?!” and this was before the game actually started, as if by magic, the lag went throughout the entire game.
Summary - TL:DR
I believe that a new form of the Nuke hack has come back in Overwatch or there’s something wrong with the servers when it comes to connecting from my internet to your server.
Considering the nuke hack would be based around causing extreme amounts of lag at the spawn point and with abilities and I’m getting these issues at the exact same places, it appears to match up with it all perfectly. It’s certainly not as bad as nuke hacks were in 2017, I feel if this was a hack it’s something that is made to make the player believe there is a problem their end or with Overwatch’s servers by making it that you get those sudden ping increases. It makes me doubt that it is a hack but because I always seem to get the same amoung of ping numbers, it always seems to happen on things that would help the enemy and not something random.
If it is the Overwatch servers, considering Overwatch 2 will be out next year, it certainly makes me reconsidering on whether I should buy the game or just hold off to see if the company can sort out it’s servers.
Finally, I’m not having these issues with any other online game. WoW seems to be fine regarding ping even when I’m in big maps with tons of other players, same goes for games like Guild Wars 2, same with streaming or downloading. The problem is only happening here.