In my experience, network performance is largely dependent on resources (both client and server), routing/switching methodology (backbone networking), ISP (provider, speed, etc), and network availability.
I highly doubt NRS is at a lack for resources in their data centers and they can also leverage Microsoft and Sony's almost endless array of server farms to help offset performance load but it's worth mentioning anyway. If there aren't enough hardware resources to support the millions of gamers that play online everyday then it goes without saying that there will be performance issues experiences frequently.
You also have to take into account whether or not you are in a multi tenant or dedicated connection setup. While NRS undoubtedly has many clustered nodes dedicated to MKX, you, the consumer, almost certainly do not unless you are very wealthy.
The most common internet connections used today are still broadband Internet (Comcast Cable Based Internet or Verizon FIOS fiber based Internet). These are multi-tenant setups.
Like it or not, you are sharing your overall connection with every Harry, Tom, and Kathy in your direct vicinity. That is because your CE, or customer equipment (modem most likely), connects via coax or fiber converted Ethernet back to the ISP's equipment and then out to the abyss known as the Internet, leveraging not only ISP routers, but outsourced routers (Cogent, Level 3 normally own these) shared with millions upon millions of other users.
Yes, no matter which ISP you use, eventually it all goes to the same place unless you have a VPN or MPLS dedicated connection to another node for example. However, although the routing paths are similar, you seperate yourself by how much you pay for the ISP to allocate bandwidth to your network segment. So it then becomes a matter of how fast you traverse the endless abyss of internet routers ro reach your ultimate destination. This is where geographic location becomes a large factor in network performance.
This is also why you see much less lag when playing someone who lives in the same town, county, or state, let alone the same country.
Then there is a matter of the infamous "netcode" itself. Assuming the fact that from a network later perspective, NRS has their shit in order, we move to layers 4-7 of the OSI model. Killer Instinct not withstanding, fighting games are notorious for their lag online. MKX undoubtedly has a bigger following than KI (if I'm wrong there I apologize) so more people alone gives way for more chances at lag but that doesn't excuse NRS developers from not writing shitty netcode.
Unfortunately without seeing the code itself though (and know wtf we are looking at), we are all victims of popular belief that "my connection is great so it just be the netcode"
Could be true, could not be true. We'll never know for sure. Personally I think the online in this game is shit and I would love it if NRS could debug their code and find out where and what they can correct to properly leverage the network and hardware resources that they are given. I'm just not as quick to blame from being in the network industry and facing performance scrutiny.
In a perfect world we would all have dedicated 10Gbps Ethernet lines with our ISP's and would likely experience almost zero lag for every game on earth but until that happens it's tough to predict a single point of failure bc there are likely several.
That's why I hope someone at NRS that is much smarter than I am has an "ah-ha" moment, fixes our online issues, and subsequently gets promoted to senior network consultant
(So you know I didn't produce this from my ass, I am a Sr. Network Engineer by trade so hopefully this came off as a somewhat educated explanation lol).
Sorry for the book.
But it did indeed show the possibilities of the game tested.
