Dota 2 Gets New Lag Compensation Feature from Valve

Valve recently introduced a new lag compensation feature in Dota 2 that makes casting, turning, and attacking more consistent for players with relatively high latency. The feature, which has been implemented globally on all Dota 2 servers, has been online for the last four days. You are likely to have noticed this change while last hitting or turning if you have played a Dota 2 match recently. Jeff Hill, a Valve employee, provided a detailed explanation on Reddit about how this new feature is designed to let players with higher ping have an easier time while also asking for feedback from the community.

New lag compensation Dota 2 feature aimed to help players with high ping

This new lag compensation feature in Dota 2 helps players with three aspects - casting, turning, and attacking.

Players with higher pings can execute actions (like casting, turning, and attacking) in a relatively lesser amount of time with fast forwarding of other aspects of their hero like attack animations. Jeff Hill explained it through the concept of attacking (last hitting).

“If you right click as Drow on a creep here's what happens with 100ms of latency: Right click -> client sends order to server (100 ms pass) -> server gets order, Drow begins to shoot, arrow appears ~400ms later. Total time click to arrow appearing = 500ms.

This feels a lot different than if you play in hero demo mode locally with zero ping: Right click -> server gets order (instantly), Drow begins to shoot, arrow appears 400ms later. Total timetaken from click to arrow appearing = 400ms.

So what the lag compensation amount does is: Right click -> client sends order to server (100ms) -> server gets order, Drow begins to shoot and does up to 100ms of pre-shooting animation windup. Total time click to arrow appearing = 400ms, just like local.”

So, the fast-forwarding aspect here is the “pre-shooting animation windup” Drow Ranger does to execute the right click action in time. Due to this feature, you will always have consistent timing on your last hit regardless of how variable or high the ping is (up to a limit).

Will the Lag Compensation Feature actually reduce lag for players with higher pings?

Players with high pings usually experience delays when sending commands to cast spells or right click. Jeff responded to one of the community members who asked if this feature would be helpful for a friend with a 230ms ping.

Questions from the community regarding the Lag Compensation Feature

On the other hand, some members of the community have raised concerns about the potential disadvantage of this feature. With this feature, high ping players will have some "fast-forwarding" effects, decreasing the cast animation time or increasing the turn rate in order to keep up with the desired action. In such a case, players would be overwhelmed, for example, if enemies with high ping effectively cast Mirana's Arrow faster than usual because of a shorter cast time.

Jeff Hill responded to a comment that also had the same argument by saying they had “tuned the lag compensation window to be smaller (67ms from 100ms).” He explained that this smaller window helps remove problems like the ones mentioned above, and others which require the player to react quickly, such as Manta Dodging.

Valve is still testing this feature to find the best values, Jeff further mentioned.

This feature is new, so it will likely undergo changes in the near future. Those of you who have noticed these changes in your games and would like to share your feedback with Valve can respond to the aforementioned Reddit thread or contact Jeff Hill on Reddit.