Whether it is ping or FPS, lag is a huge killer in Agar.io. As a victim of consistently occurring lag, I have come up with a list of effective strategies that have enabled me to combat it. The list below is ordered from smallest sacrifices to the largest, meaning the last few are actions you will take only if you are extremely desperate. However, the first few are the least effective at reducing lag while the last are most.
- Play on your continents' server.
- In the game menu, go to settings (the blue cog button located to the left of play) and turn off skins. You may also turn off names, however the effect won't be as noticeable as skins. Also, names are an important aspect of Agar as they allow you to differentiate between similarly coloured cells. Skins are merely decorative.
- Close all other tabs. And restart browser. Browsers of nowadays have too much trash in their cache, which is collects while you open new tabs.
- Try out different web browsers. High-security browsers such as Tor do not handle Agar well. Firefox is alright, but tends to freeze up at the worst of times. Safari is slow and jittery. Chrome is my browser of choice; however, browser compatibility will vary between people due to different platforms and connection speeds.
- Restart your modem. Don't do this if there are people on your network using the internet at the time.
- Close all other programs. The less multitasking your computer has to perform, the better. But the best is to restart your PC at all: while the system is working it is collects useless trash in cache the same way as browsers do.
- If there are other people on the same Wi-Fi network as you using the internet at the same time, consider playing at a different time from them so you can take full advantage of the available bandwidth. Activities that require a large amount of data transfer (e.g: downloading files, intense gaming) will definitely have an impact on your connection speed.
- There are times when Agar is laggy purely because of all the people playing it, meaning you won't be able to do much about lag. If this is the case, make note of the time and try to avoid playing during peak hours.
- Change screen resolution of your monitor to minimal. You also can try to minimize colour quality but I don't know how strong this step will effect on a play or whether it will effect at all.
- Click on the advertisements. They will help the developers earn money to get new servers.
If you have any other tips and strategies to reduce lag, you are most welcome to add them to the list. Lag is quite a beast to battle, and so these strategies won't always work.