Question / Help Internet Speeds?? Help!?

[K1LLINGSPARTAN]

Hello All,

I have been wanting to stream League of Legends for a while now. I set everything up and have small problem:
My internet upload speed is 6551 kbps, which according to the OBS estimator is fine for 720 -1080p streaming. But when I start streaming and get into a game of League, my ping shoots from 62ms to 75ms+. It never settles. The moment I turn OBS off my ping goes back to 62-70 and settles. Is this an upload or download speed problem with OBS? Does this even have anything to do with OBS? Can I fix this so that I can stream?

If download speed matters mine is 50874 kbps.
Any suggestions would be great!

 

[FerretBomb]

League is well-known for being a pig when it comes to network throughput, and jacking up ping massively while streaming. This isn't an OBS issue, it happens no matter WHAT else is using the network. It's a League thing.

Only thing you can do is turn down your bitrate to use less of the network, and hope. And learn to play with the higher lag.

What bitrate are you using? 720p@30fps, 2000kbps is the recommended max for non-partnered streamers on Twitch, but you could probably get away with still keeping decent quality if you drop to 1500kbps, since League is a pretty low-motion game.

 

[K1LLINGSPARTAN]

Sweet thanks for the tips. I was running at high quality so max bitrate capped at 30 which I now realize is stupid. Does the fps really affect my ping that much? I will try setting lower quality. Thank you so much!

 

[FerretBomb]

Not sure what you mean by 'high quality'. 30 what? 30mbps? That'd way exceed your upload limit.

Image quality is determined by your bitrate, divided by your resolution times your framerate. Essentially, the more bitrate you can devote to each frame, the better it will look (up to a point). So running at 60fps will halve that amount as compared to 30fps, and as a result look much worse. (It's not exactly halved due to how the encoder works on per-frame changes and keyframing, but halved is good enough for a basic explanation)

Think of bitrate kind of like paint. You have a set amount to paint a wall. Too big a wall, and it'll be patchy as the paint will be too thin, or even not cover it at all. A smaller wall will look better with the same amount of paint, as it will overall be thicker.


This is kind of where the analogy falls down though, because gaming network throughput doesn't run on paint and I can't think of something that eats paint and throws a temper tantrum any time anything else uses paint. Other than small children. So League in this case is like a small, spoiled bratty child that throws a tantrum any time it sees anyone else using "its" paint.

 

[K1LLINGSPARTAN]

League is well-known for being a pig when it comes to network throughput, and jacking up ping massively while streaming. This isn't an OBS issue, it happens no matter WHAT else is using the network. It's a League thing.

Only thing you can do is turn down your bitrate to use less of the network, and hope. And learn to play with the higher lag.

What bitrate are you using? 720p@30fps, 2000kbps is the recommended max for non-partnered streamers on Twitch, but you could probably get away with still keeping decent quality if you drop to 1500kbps, since League is a pretty low-motion game.

 

[K1LLINGSPARTAN]

I was running originally at 3000 kbps and thank you for the analogy. I have changed my settings to what you recommended and have now had more success. The lag is less frequent and I can actually play. Would getting a faster internet help with soothing league's tantrums?

 

[FerretBomb]

It could, but there's really no guarantee. If you're on Classic, have you tried turning on the 'minimize network impact' option? It's under Broadcast Settings, and is meant to help reduce ping problems for some games. It can result in greater total overhead, but can help reduce some of the ping issues. Worth a shot as it's just a checkbox away.

When I still played League, I just learned to deal with the ping; I didn't do any testing on ways around it, so I'm not exactly sure where the problem comes from.
If you have multiple NICs (network cards), you might try connecting both to the switch, setting one as the primary, and having OBS bind to the secondary. That way if it's the on-system stack, it should go away entirely. trying to think of ways to test this without having two NICs available, but I can't think of any.
If your NIC has any software config tool, you might try prioritizing LoL on its quality-of-service function if present.

 

[K1LLINGSPARTAN]

I am not sure on how to bind those. I guess I could do more research on it. However I ticked that box and now I play with a solid 73 ping! Here are the current settings: 1500 kbps, 60 FPS Cap in game and then the ticked box. Didn't realize how big of a difference that made.

 

[FerretBomb]

It's mostly a matter of going to the Advanced section of settings, and using the dropdown to select the secondary NIC. Not many people have multiple network cards though, so it's probably moot.

Sounds like an improvement? I'm assuming 720p@30fps, 1500kbps? Did you mean 73ms ping, or is it exceeding the 60fps in-game cap?