91 replies to this topic

[Kyle Polulak]

Please let us know your concerns regarding Russ' latest Command Chair update!

Russ Bullock, on 02 September 2014 - 11:43 AM, said:

Hello MechWarrior’s,

Many of you are aware of what has been referred to as the “Desync bug” where players experience screen freezing or watching other 'Mech’s walk in place. Recently Karl Berg put up this post to help explain our latest understanding of the issue at the time, which can be found here.

Our first order of attack was to improve the way we send some types of traffic from our servers. This change went live late last week; unfortunately the Desync issue remains a problem. There have been some reports that the problem is less frequent but there is no data yet to prove this, so for now we are working under the assumption that the issue remains at the same frequency as before.

Regardless of this result, we do feel the change we made was a positive one and does remove lots of messaging work from the servers and network and may make it easier for us to now identify the true problem.

This remains priority number one for our network engineers and a candidate for a future hot fix. As soon as we have more information on a possible fix we will let the community know our plan for testing and implementation.

In the meantime the only thing that you the players can do to help would be to provide reliable reproduction steps for this issue, something that so far has eluded us.

Thanks.

[Heffay]

Are they still testing the desync fix that was on the last test server (for the latter half of it at least)?

[Deathlike]

Personally, rigorously analyzing the reconnection system is probably the first thing that should be looked at about all else, as that is where/when these issues seemed to manifest.

[Bilbo]

So you still have no idea what is causing it?

[Jody Von Jedi]

I've experienced it most on Crimson Strait and Tourmaline. It usually occurs when there are a lot mechs in a small area usually around one of the bases.

[BlackBeltJones]

I suspect Premium Time is causing this issue. I advise all players to stop buying and using Premium Time until we can confirm it is in fact the culprit.

[SmurfOff]

^{In the meantime the only thing that you the players can do to help would be to provide reliable reproduction steps for this issue, something that so far has eluded us.}

Log in... Play game for 30 seconds.

[KamikazeRat]

The problem with giving you information on reproducing is lack of consistancy in its appearance.
Most reproduce reports are going to look like this:

Enter match (Fill in map location and battle type)....at (fill in timestamp) match goes sideways and everyone runs in place.....everyone comes out of it and half of them are dead.

Did i miss anything?

[Aluminumfoiled]

It's better for me now and fewer 0 pingers in matches. More like a brief stutter instead of a full on moon walk to my death. Thanks.

[kailii]

How about a bit of Brainstorming?

When there are no live updates for like 30 seconds i'd yell DISCONNECT.
But this can't be - the bug would be relatively easy to find.

Next idea: Interchanging Timers. I don't know if anyone but me uses this term, so lemme explain:
(Real life) Soldiers are told to never to cross a bridge in marching order, because the combined power
of their footsteps hitting the bridge at the exact same time could make it desintegrate.

In programming terms, think about 2 timers. One ticks every 3 seconds, the other every 5.
When they intersect at 15 seconds, only one tick is transmitted while the other one is lost.
Now some part of the Software waits for that second tick which never arrives.

Something like that could explain the extreme long freezes we encounter.
And maybe i just talked nonsense. But sometimes stepping away from the problem solves it.

[TinFoilHat]

Dropped in a dozen or so matches tonight in both IS and Clan mechs, got desynchs and zero ping mechs in at least half the games. Tourmaline, Frozen City (day and night), Canyon Network - usually noted when firing multiple weapons at once at close range, eg srms and lasers, or lasers and mg's.

[Nemesis Duck]

Anecdotally, I've noticed desyncs at certain times of the day when I suspect there were a less NA players. (I'm NA)

For example, last bad desync session was early Sunday morning (~9:00am) PST but there were no desyncs the next day in the early evening (~5:00pm PST).

[Marmon Rzohr]

Steps to reproduce and other information:

Location: Croatia
ISP: 20/10 Mbps down/up Amis Telecom fiber optic connection
In game latency: 112-125 ms (old ping was 150 ms)
OS: Win XP SP3

Every so often (I haven't timed so can't be sure the intervals are regular) there is a spike in latency (desyncing). It lasts between 4 or 5 seconds and 10 or 20 seconds. I am able to issue commands but the game lags so far behind, what I see on the screen doesn't even remotely correspond to what is happening.

It seems to happen soon (a couple of min at most) after I connect into a match. I don't recall it happening in an endgame situation. But it could be only a small sample size.

I must add that while I'm experiencing a desync other players (or at least most of them) appear to be unaffected, as when things go back to normal I see that they have advanced in a normal manner or fought with the enemy in a way they could not have if they had such extreme latency.

Almost every match I played today was affected by this bug (could be every single match, but I do not recall if this is the case).


P.S. If it happens to be relevant, I've seen a similar bug before when the server lagged out (everyone in the match "desynced" - started lagging horrendously, so they had no option but to wait out the timer or disconnect from the match). Only that was an isloated incident I have seen only two or three times since I started playing this game. Also the lag never stopped when that happened unlike these current issues when the lag stops after some time.

Edited by Marmon Rzohr, 02 September 2014 - 02:04 PM.

[Kiiyor]

Thanks for the update.

Anecdotally, I'm having far fewer desynchs than before, but they are still happening. Last night I desynched alone in front of a fresh DireWolf, hit all stop and patiently twiddled my thumbs. When the game came to, the DW was dead and NO-ONE KNEW HOW IT DIED.

Now, i'm not saying it's some form of homicidal ghost responsible for the desynchs, just that it's a possibility.

[Sandpit]

Still happening for me at least as often as it was. Game is just about unplayable most of the time.

As others have stated (many times) it seems like this did not become prevalent until the reconnect option was implemented

[Gyrok]

Well, I have noticed this effect always seems to come in the middle of the most mechs engaged in combat, there is typically the most drag when many weapons are firing at once...especially things like lasers/MGs/SRMs

Edited by Gyrok, 02 September 2014 - 02:18 PM.

[Felbombling]

I'm no software engineer, but I suggest you remove the rejoin feature and see what happens. Most people associate that patch with the bad desync and rubber banding issues.

[TLBFestus]

I log in
I select a mech
I join a game
At various and sundry times I desync.

Not much more I can tell you.

[anonymous161]

Why do they expect us to do their work for them we have paid plenty it's time they start throwing out some money! Why dont they hire actual game testers for quality control? I'll tell you why it's because they are cheap and just want to grab your money and go once they know they can no longer carry on with their fake mechwarrior game.

[Zolaz]

If you desync while you are over heated you will blow up. Had it happen to me. I am starting to wonder if this desyncing problem is setting the Community Warfare timeline back or not.