Introduction

The current COVID-19 pandemic has forced many people to retreat into the safety of their homes. This in turn gives them a lot of time—time they need to pass somehow. For many, video games are the best way to pass the time and take their mind off of world events.

Gaming is perhaps the best form of long-term entertainment someone can find in their daily life, especially during this pandemic. But with such a large influx of players both new and old, there are a few questions that must be answered; some gamers will ask how they can keep a stable connection and reduce their ping in-game.

3 Gaming Tips to Reduce Ping

This article will be going over 3 ways in which you can reduce your ping, stabilize your connection, and experience a high-quality gaming experience. These tips are simple, easy-to-configure, and cost almost nothing.

So, without further ado, let’s talk about how you can enhance your gaming experience.

1. Use a Physical Ethernet Cable 

Back in the day, you had no choice but to keep your device hooked up to a device, usually the router or modem. Wi-Fi was available in the late ’90s, of course, but many weren’t able to afford it.

Nowadays, most citizens have access to decent Wi-Fi. And while Wi-Fi connections allow for a more convenient experience, it’s not without its flaws. What are these flaws? Well, to put it simply: Wi-Fi is extremely unstable.

Signals can be lost, devices on the same bandwidth can conflict, and Wi-Fi overall fails to deliver a stable experience, especially when it comes to online games. Fortunately, ethernet exists.

Yes, hooking your computer or console up to your network through Ethernet isn’t as “convenient”, but it promises a stable experience. Upgrading to ethernet will also help improve your gaming skills because you will not have to deal with ping or server lag anymore.

2. Use an Encrypted Network

Internet service providers (ISPs) play their own games with their customers. Often do they throttle users’ bandwidths, put arbitrary limits on users’ data usage, or disregard proper user security. And gamers? They suffer from all of these faults, especially with bandwidth throttling, which can affect your downloads, streams, and in-game experience.

Fortunately, virtual private networks (VPNs) allow you to bypass these unfair practices altogether. The definition of a VPN is a piece of software that hides your IP address and encrypts your device’s data by routing it through the VPN’s server instead of your ISP’s server.

Doing this will help you avoid bandwidth throttling, and-depending on your preexisting connection—can even *enhance* your in-game connection.

3. Optimize Your Game Settings

One of the pros of PC gaming is that you have a plethora of options for how your game looks and runs; you’re only limited by your hardware, not by pre-configured settings that aren’t changeable like console games.

However, some of these settings may affect your in-game connection. Well…sort of. It’s rare for in-game graphics settings to cause actual connection issues. After all, graphics are handled by a completely different process than your connection. However, if you push your GPU or CPU too hard, you might experience stutters, frame-rate drops, and vice versa.

These may not affect your in-game connection outright, but some servers are configured to run at a certain refresh rate. For example, Battlefield games employ servers that expect a minimum of 60hz for everything to run optimally. Don’t meet this, and the game will warn you about possible connection issues.

That all said, make sure that your game runs well. If you set a game’s graphics to the lowest and it still runs poorly enough to affect your in-game experience, you may want to consider upgrading. Fortunately, NVIDIA recently announced their new GPUs!

Conclusion

Your ping determines whether or not your experience in-game will remain smooth or become a laggy, stuttery mess. Fortunately, fixing your connection issues is as simple as obtaining an Ethernet cable and going through some of your settings!