Re: Error "Could not join server (1)"

OK @jsimpson32 ,

So I guess that its not your server owner account that you try and join to play with, on your own server, but a secondary account that you use then?

And it is two of those secondary accounts that are blocked from entering your HC server?

I'm having the same exact issue.  I can join 2 of 3 of their servers.  I am not banned on any of them.  This started a few days ago.

We need "therealroksteady" from Dice to please address the issue.

@jsimpson32 , @Blackfish212 , @gemcandy98 ,

I am happy to try and help you guys, but I need to hear from the server owner please.

Suggest the server owner contact me through PM here on EA.

Again I am the server owner, I personally make payment on these servers.  I’m also now getting banned on my other servers.

I can comfirm this issue.

3 of my 5 servers are affected by this issue since last week...

It turned out that resetting the server GUID... And by this losing your whole player base would fix this issue. At the same time kill your server forever...

Anyways, it also turned out that new server GUIDs are affected by this after a few days.

However, the issue dissapears sometimes for a few hours/days and comes then back

I also would like to adress an additional issue:

1. It is known that servers use fake player counts to populate.

2. Together with this issue the following is happening since last week: The fake players do not show up for the affected servers anymore (in the in game menu). This is extremely unfair because at the moment most servers still have fake player counts and all other servers are basically done and dead now... This is not a fair competition..

3. This is extremly unfair.

The BF4 server market is extremely unfair atm... Please help us...

@H3diusTbh. This issue seems like smth at the Blaze is going on. Not sure tbh.

It does not affect all players. The majority is not able to join from Battlelog and gets this error. Looking at the communication between Origin and Battlelog reveals only an unknown error.

Joining over the in game menu still works though. I did several tests and it turned out that the issue is linked to the server GUID. Moving to other machines/hosts with a GUID will not make the error dissapear. However, resetting a GUID does... So smth with the Blaze or any backend system is screwed up.


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Same for the fake player counts. All servers should be able to use them or none... Excluding a small portion is unfair....
We need a level playing field...

I can confirm the issues discussed in here are actually happening. While it thankfully hasn't happened to me yet, I know of friends and other players who are having this issue and cant seem to fix it since it appears to be some weird error in the Blaze Backend.

And yes, fake player / seeding issue h3dius talks about needs to be addressed and fixed properly! It's absurd and preposterous to fix these fake numbers in battlelog the browser based menu and not in the ingame (.exe) menu. Seeding existed for a long time, used by server owners to help populate their servers. Now with the current bugs going on, seeding doesn't work with our servers anymore. Again, same issues h3dius described; Accounts can't join our servers, getting the error message mentioned in the title of this thread. Seeding doesn't show up in the battlelog menu anymore, for everyone. That's fine, I guess. But for some reason just like h3dius said, seeding is also not showing up in the ingame menu for our servers. Pretty weird considering other servers still visibly have seeding, you can spot that in the ingame menu easily. So we demand that seeding stops working in both menus (ingame and battlelog) altogether or to fix it so its working for everyone again. Its unfair for us server owners who are putting real money into this. Unfair...

@jsimpson32Also just to comment on this could not join server⚽ is not a kick or ban message on battlelog. A ban would trigger either a kicked by punkbuster event (if the ban has been issued with punkbuster) or a Kicked by admin for plugin kicks. The ban list of bf4 servers would also show the corresponding reason and event in battlelog.

What happens here is not related to bans. The client closes with an unknown error while connecting to the server. Though an analysis with wireshark reveals that this happens before a connection to the server is opened by the client. It clearly seems like this event comes from the Blaze backend... Just "unknown error" isn't helping...

Interesting observations @H3dius ,

As we can confirm that on consoles this is definitely the same error message players gets, when they are in fact banned on the servers.

It is not always the player gets the message on screen that they cannot join the server because they are banned.

They simply just gets this less helpful error message "Error - Could not join server ( 1 )".

From consoles and analyzing the network data packages, its caused by what appears to be a botched list of active gaming players and the ban list cache (memory or written onto HDD) on the specific server.

Hope that @jsimpson32 

Would come back to me in PM, as would be interesting to see if certain work-around also would work on the PC platform.

In console world, it is a deteriorating condition, that slowly but surely brings a server to its knees.

Would be good to confirm if same for PC world, as then we are clear the issue is in EA backbone infrastructure and not actually due to game server end itself.

EA keeps sending us to go to the server hosting entities for them to fix it, while we have so far not seen anything not working there in that end as intended...

@CyberDyme

players are not banned here... +90% of joins resulting in this is not caused by a ban... Or any caching... Even moving the serverID.dat to a clean server installation does not fix this... The error moves with the ID of the server...

Jsimpons and my PC servers are affected by the same problem.

Though it usually dissapears for us after a blaze disconnect event. But comes back after a certain point.

https://4.e4gl.com

https://2.e4gl.com

https://5.e4gl.com

Are my affected servers

Though the problem is currently not here. Dissapeared yesterday again...

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The mentioned problem with the missing fake player counts. No idea if both problems are connected.

It is still here and killed all our servers for good...

Please DICE... Fix this... Our community spent 6 years on building fair servers for players and this unfair competition kills us now....

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@H3dius wrote:
@CyberDymeWhat also speaks against this theory is that joining from battlelog is not possible. However, joining from the newer in game menu is still possible and does not result in the error.

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Yeah, this last point here @H3dius  is a good point for the PC world problem.

I would still like to hear from @jsimpson32  though, to try and see if the console workaround also can work in the PC world, for specific accounts/server situations resulting in this peculiar error situation.  I still have some insights not able to share here, but testing it in practice would enable me to make a stronger case with EA, if shown to work.  It is related to the EA user domain controllers.  And how they interact with the game servers.  But EA have not been willing to open up and share the real data so far on this.  Hence, we are stuck, as they both point towards each other as root cause for the problem.

All while we the server renters/payers/players are shouting and screaming in vain, as obviously nothing is truly done about fixing it... 

Hi ! I play a lot on E4GL servers but since last week i cannot join when i want to play unfortunatly because i am getting constantly disconnected for "COULD NOT JOIN SERVER ⚽"

I thought in first about a pb ban, but i am not banned by evenbalance. Could someone fix this bug that doesn't want me to play the game on my fav servers :/ ?

I also tried by using the in game luncher to see if it would work but it is even worst that i thought, just take a look at the picture i linked it literally says UNKNOW ERROR / CODE ERROR ⚽ and it also says after clicking ok that i am joining the server, but in reality i am not and when i want to join an other server nothing happen like i am stuck, i have literally to close and open the game back like wtf.... I hope this bug will get fixed soon because it is not verry funny....

Server = https://2.e4gl.com

Thanks and have a good day...

PS: sorry for bad english i am french...

@Tizoux Ok so this also happens from the ingame menu zz... It's possible for me to join the server in game... only getting the error here on battlelog...

@Tizoux is not banned....

Not in our database... not in PRoCon, not over RCON, not in punkbuster...

I checked the RCON log and there is not any RCON event for him...

I would also like to add that I have checked our server logs (AARP) as i am also one of the founders. You can see people trying to connect but they never fully connect and there is no kick message issued from the server,. They just don't connect. I know of several people trying to connect to our HC server and cant, but they can join our other two servers just fine.

This is getting ridiculous. EA is killing our server with this nonsense. Please fix it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

May 20, 2021 5:30 AM
-FLS-Clubfoot1
just keeps telling me i've lost connection to session even though i can't even load in.

ERROR Unable to join ⚽

Our servers have been around for 6 years, but the stuff that has been happening since last week killed some of them forever...

Many players cannot join anymore...

The fake numbers which other servers can use and at least 3 of our 5 no longer can because it seems like the slot reservation has been lowered from 2 minutes to a few seconds on those?...

This is just another death penalty for the affected servers... (not sure if all servers are affected by the same problems though)...

Since this only affects a fraction of the servers.... Most servers are still here with fake numbers....

How is this fair? We've spent so much time on this... built an outstanding community, and what's the reward? Death...