Re: Need for Speed Carbon: Can not play online 2/16/16

@Straatford87 Testing the server internally does not validate the health of the firewall, IPS, NAT, etc. separating your LAN from the internet where we, the users, are connecting.  Your test would be more valid if two of the employees were able to connect to each other from their homes (not through a VPN) to the server.  This is the closest simulation of the connectivity issue we are encountering.

You could alternatively go through your change control process to early January roughly and see if any changes were made then that may interfere with the connection from the internet to the LAN.

@Xenodys

I cannot go into details about our investigations but I can assure you that we have a dedicated team to check everything through multiple aspects.

Additionally, firewall, NAT, etc, are settings that should be checked on your personal network. If you need help with that, then there are dedicated guides available via portforward.com:

• XB360
• PS3
• PC

Furthermore, there has been at least one user in this thread, other than me, that has confirmed that he was able to connect to another user. So if the above and previously suggested information in this thread does not help you, then the last suggestion I have is to contact your internet provider for further assistance.

We can't all suddenly have the same NAT issue after previously connecting fine. We connect to the EA servers, but lobbies don't work. Even MightyMango, the guy YOU gave "EA Moderator" status to can no longer play online to hand off that achievement to people. He's been trying to reach you through twitter the past month. This problem started near the end of December right after I saw a trending article on Facebook about EA having online server troubles with a bunch of titles all at once. The rest were fixed, but whatever that issue was is likely the problem here.

@Straatford87

As a reminder, I'm a networking professional and have a CCIE.  I have more knowledge of the process and protocols involved in packets from my home LAN getting to your servers than you as a community manager does.

You seem to misunderstand what I'm talking about.  What you are referring to in your response to my post is a common issue with TCP/UDP port translation during the NAT process on home routers resulting in packets being forwarded with incorrect TCP/UDP ports preventing the remote server from being able to know what kind of data (i.e., HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, etc.) is in the packet.  I have UPnP and port triggering enabled on my home router to ensure that the correct TCP/UDP information is retained from the Xbox when it's packets are going through NAT translation.

When I say NAT, which is a protocol used primarily to preserve the IPv4 address space by allowing companies and users to have one or a few public IP address for several devices behind their router with private IP addresses (RFC 1918), I am talking about the translation on EAs end of this process.  Unless EA uses an IPv6 address space (unlikely) or has it's servers in a DMZ (requiring that all servers have a public IP), you will have NAT on your internet edge devices to translate the public IP address and TCP/UDP ports on the packet sent from my Xbox into the private space used in your internal network.

In addition to NAT, you will also have a firewall, intrusion prevention system (IPS), etc. to protect your corporate LAN from the internet.  This is another potential location for a drop to occur if your internal test has already validated connectivity via your LAN.

The user reporting no issues is playing the PC version of the game.  Everyone reporting issues is playing the 360 version of the game.  If these servers (or virtual servers) were the same, we would be able to connect cross-platform for this game.  This is not the case. A PC players experience is not proof that the 360 version works.

It is situations like this that lead to EA being voted as worst company multiple years in a row.  I'm glad you didn't get it this past year but you are not helping your companies case by giving us the same initial response this far into the post.  I would appreciate if you can escalate this further up the chain or have someone from your escalation group be involved in our conversation.

I checked the game tonight and found that it was working again for the 360. I think the EA specialist team I have been talking to for the past week figured out the issue. But thank you for responding to us and for following up on this problem if you did so as well. It helps to keep sane if we have someone that responds, even if they can't address the problem right away.  Thanks again!

🙂

That is good news, @Flolais. Thanks for updating us 🙂

Looks like the servers are broken again, and it seems pretty much the same problem this time around.

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Other-Need-for-Speed-Games/Need-for-Speed-Carbon-Online-not-working-Xbox-360/m-p/6418844#M8694

Could we get this resolved like last time?

Also having this problem on Xbox 360. Every time I try to connect to a match or create an unranked lobby, it says "Could not join game. Please try to join a different game."

I have the same issue. I have two consoles X-box 360 with two different Gold accounts on each one. I already owned the game on my main Gold account. A few days ago, I purchased the game for my other Gold account. I tried to find matches using my two consoles; NAT status was open, both consoles were using fixed IP and my router set with port forwarding. I tried to find matches with a few friends as well and the same issue happened. We can connect on EA Nation (Sign in Successful!) and search for a match: "Searching for players..." >> "Joining game session..." >> "Could not join game. Please try to join a different game." It always happens. EA, the issue is real and is happening, please solve it. I purchased a second digital copy of the game on XBOX Live and now I can't play it online, so it is very unfair. Does it mean I wasted my money? You know that there are a lot of players like me around the world with this same issue.

Indeed, seems like the same issue is occurring again. Could we please get this fixed, again? Kick the EA Specialist teams' laptops 😉