When a squad is spread across different cities or even countries, picking a server region is always a mess: someone says "just pick my region, it's got the most players," and two other people spend the whole match lagging and disconnecting. The problem isn't bad luck — it's that "picking a server" was never using the right criteria to begin with.
Why "one person's latency" doesn't represent the whole squad
Most people pick a region by finding whoever has "the best connection" in the group, having them run a quick ping test, and going with whatever number looks low. The problem: that low number belongs to one person, not the squad. If even one teammate has bad latency to that region, someone's going to lag every game.
The right question isn't "which region is fastest overall" — it's "which region is still playable for the slowest person in the group." Those are two completely different ways to rank regions, and picking the wrong one means your test was pointless.
The right approach: rank by the slowest teammate, not the fastest
Test every candidate region for everyone in the squad, record each person's median latency, then:
- Find the highest latency in the group for each region — that's the slowest teammate for that region.
- Rank regions by this "slowest teammate" number — lower is better.
- If two regions are close on that number (say, within 10ms), break the tie using average latency across the group and worst packet loss.
The logic here is simple: a region that's amazing for most people but terrible for one or two teammates still ruins the session for everyone — because the goal was never "fastest on average," it was "everyone can actually play."
Step-by-step: get a full squad ranking with PartyPing
No need to make everyone install separate ping tools and compare screenshots. PartyPing turns this ranking logic into a free, no-install, no-signup web tool.
Step 1: Host creates a room Hit the button at the end of this article to create a room — no account needed.
Step 2: Share the invite link with your squad Once the room is created, there's a "Copy invite link" button — just drop it in your Discord/group chat. Each teammate opens the link, enters a nickname, and joins — no account required.
Step 3: Everyone clicks "Start testing" Once everyone's in, each person clicks "Start testing," and the browser tests latency and packet loss to each region in turn — entirely in the browser, nothing to download. If you switch away mid-test, the test pauses and picks up where it left off when you come back.
Step 4: Check the ranking and pick your region Once everyone's done, the page automatically recalculates and shows the full region ranking sorted by "lowest slowest-teammate latency." Click into any region to see each teammate's individual latency and packet loss — so you can immediately see who'd struggle where.
The ranking updates live — if some teammates haven't finished testing yet, the ones who are done can see results already, and the ranking recalculates automatically as more people finish, syncing to everyone's page.
Stop guessing before your next squad session — send a link, let everyone test in 5 minutes, and go with whichever region wins on fairness, not just speed.