Multiplayer

The heart of ETT is multiplayer matches: over 1.4 million games of multiplayer have been played over the course of the game's existence as of May 2020. Multiplayer games also allow players to voice chat while playing. ETT's multiplayer is cross-platform.

## Creating a game

A multiplayer game is created when either another player accepts your challenge (which you can send either through the lobby or on their profile) or when someone has challenged you and you accept it by checking your notifications (which appear as a bell icon on the net at all times and in the main menu) and accepting through there.

Either option will send you to a room with your opponent. The challenger is host, and sets the environment, but players choose their own Appearance#Colour customisation.

## Modes of Play

### Free Hit

It's important to note that you do not need to select a game to play - simply closing the menu will allow you to hit freely with your partner, allowing no-pressure gameplay and training etc.

### Unranked

In games where one or more of the players do not want to play a competition game, ETT defaults to a game where ratings aren't adjusted with the result. The rules for these games are also more relaxed: several of the service rules are not enforced.

### Ranked

The majority of games in ETT are ranked. Ranked games allow players to be assigned a rating which is governed by a variant of the Elo Rating System originally devised for chess. Ranked games are governed by competition rules designed to be true to the ITTF competition rules.

## Lobby

Viewing the multiplayer lobby allows you to see the list of available players online listed in order of estimated distance from your location, and challenge them to a game. Each player's multiplayer rating is also listed.

The lobby will appear empty if you have chosen "only me" in visibility options (and you will not be visible to anyone else in the lobby). If you have chosen "only friends" the lobby will be restricted to only those on your friends list who are online, and you will only be visible to them in the lobby.

These options exist to allow players to not get spammed if they are not interested in playing multiplayer or only want to play with very specific people, but if you want to play multiplayer games against the general pool of players, the best idea is to select "everyone".

The "signal bars" corrospond to distances between players of these ranges:

* 5 bars: less than 300 kilometres (less than 186 miles)
* 4 bars: between 300 and 800 kilometres (between 186 and 497 miles)
* 3 bars: between 800 and 2500 kilometres (between 497 and 1553 miles)
* 2 bars: between 2500 and 7000 kilometres (between 1553 and 4349 miles)
* 1 bar: between 7000 and 13000 kilometres (between 4349 and 8078 miles)
* no bars: over 13000 kilometres (8078 miles)

## Connection

Unlike most other VR table tennis games, ETT attempts to create a peer-to-peer connection, only using servers as a fallback option. This significantly cuts down on latency and allows more distant players to have a satisfactory gameplay experience.

Port forwarding is enabled in ETT and may improve connectivity - use UDP external port 13497.

### Latency

As a game with necessity for careful timing, latency affects table tennis significantly compared with most other games and eSports. As such, the multiplayer lobby lists players by their estimated distance from you in an attempt to match you with players who will have the least latency.

Latency is increased by:

* Physical distance
* Either or both players using wi-fi instead of a wired connection
* ISP profile settings (some ISPs provide a gaming / low latency profile)
* Network activity (particularly bitTorrenting)

All other things being equal, low latency games will be more smooth, but more significant than the ping (which is displayed on the TV in multiplayer games) is whether the ping is stable. A game with significant stable ping will be much more enjoyable than a game with low unstable ping.

### Ping Compensation

Currently with ping, the ball may appear to pass your opponent and later teleport to their bat when the information of their hit is relayed to you, the effect of which increases with more ping. In addition, sometimes the ball will render as if it had bounced twice before your opponent has hit the ball, giving you the false impression you have won the point.

To compensate for that effect on the flow of the game, you can enable ping compensation. This has the effect of making your shots appear slower than they are hit, thus helping bridge the gap that causes the teleportation. As the needed slowdown for this effect can't be known beforehand, there will still be some degree of teleportation even with ping compensation. In multiplayer, the render time rate of your ball slows down based on your ping compensation settings. 20 = 20% slower. When your opponent returns the ball and that information is relayed to you, that ends ping compensation until your next shot and you see their shot at full speed.

Whether you choose to use ping compensation or not comes down to which you consider the bigger distraction - the fact that your own shots appear slowed down or the increased break to flow resulting from larger distances of teleportation and the possibility the ball may appear to bounce twice. It's important to note that whatever your choice, it makes no difference to what your opponent sees i.e. the fact that ping compensation makes your own shots appear slower doesn't mean that your opponent will see the same thing.

Ping compensation should not be used with low latency. The game should be relatively smooth already, and with ping compensation slowing your perception of your own shot, the reverse problem is likely to happen and the ball may teleport forwards.

There is a planned alternate form of ping compensation that would avoid the teleportation effect, adjusting so that the interruption does not occur at the same time.

## Social

As with so many multiplayer games, especially ones in VR, a very popular aspect of ETT is that you can hit against and chat with players from across the world.

### Voice chat

By default, you will be able to voice chat with your opponent. You can choose to mute your microphone and also to mute opponents via sound settings.

### Friends

If you wish to easily find players you've enjoyed playing before, you can add them as friends by accessing their profile. You can access a profile through the lobby, leaderboard or game history by clicking on their name, or you can search for players by name. Their names and online status will appear on the right hand panel of the user interface.

### Discord

The Eleven Table Tennis discord channel is a very active medium for players to communicate with each other, discuss the game, give suggestions to the developers (who are very active in reading comments and engaging with suggestions) and organise games, competitions and tournaments.

## Match History and User Search

These options very much do as you expect, allowing you to review your multiplayer history (scores, opponents, rating changes) and allowing you to search for users by name. They are often overlooked because they are somewhat obscured in the menu.