Re: Servers: Troubleshooting for EA/Respawn and Multiplay

@apostolateofDOOMWell, Respawn's problem dumbed down sounds like this:

"We have 100kg of potatoes and this one regular bucket. We need to make all of them fit in to deliver them in one shipment. Multiple shipments are unacceptable, people are hungry and not willing to wait."

Please, tell me, how much focus do you need to solve this? If I give you a billion, will you do it by tomorrow? If I get angry and punch puppies, call you lazy or unfit for your job, threaten to sue or go on a hunger strike until you succeed, will you feel more motivated to do it?

Oh, let me tell you how I think you should do it as well. Throw in the bucket a small black hole, it's 2021, we know enough about black holes and we've been having this hadron collider for years now,  let's just rent it and put it to good work. Or, melt that bucket and print an advanced structure that can hold all the load, I've seen this in some movies. I'm sure you can afford all the tools, research, testing because you sell expensive food.

@DoYaSeeMe Don't bring potatoes into this! 

Skin, dice, dehydrate, and compress them into potato starch and once we removed the unnecessary water weight, for a billion i'll shove it up my backside (no lube) walk and deliver it by hand within 24hrs. No puppies harmed! 😃

I'm not throwing insults, threatening, or calling Respawn lazy. This is their job they're underperforming in and they should welcome our feedback on stuff we would like to see that they can improve upon. I just know if they focus and invest into these problems with the same effort they do in their collection events (i know they're not same people but you get my meaning) we should and can see improvement. The reason i'm troubleshooting for them is because we highlighted these issues from day one but don't even get a response to servers till very recently and still nothing tangible from them.

They try a one size fits all approach and for a lot of people it's not satisfactory. 

On a positive note, I think everyone here just wants to see Apex be the best it can be and it's falling short of that so hopefully minds with a better understanding on the subject can work some magic. 🧙

@apostolateofDOOMYou know, water molecules are kind of important for the flavor and I assume people want to eat decent food, not dust with a hint of broken back blood and sweat. You just gave me a reason to accuse you of not paying attention to player needs :P

Everyone here and at Respawn as well. They are very well aware of all the big issues and most probably had to deal with them for much longer than our Apex life. They actually dug very deep inside the Source engine to address a lot of issues it had on the networking side, besides other things. And they've been doing this for some years before the launch of Apex. But, to be somewhat satisfied, people want devs tied to their desks, working at 110% capacity 24/7, while also being thankful for their 10$ investment into hundreds of hours of entertainment.

@DoYaSeeMe  If they want the trimmings to be delivered on time then compromises must be made and i'd be more concerned how it got to them. Army gets dehydrated food so just add water after, it'll be fine. 😛

While a lot of players likely did spend minimal amounts on the game there's a lot that have bought an heirloom or most/all of them (just a few of the limited users on AHQ have bought few of them) and a lot of those that have are usually content creators or pro players actively promoting the game bringing more revenue anyway. They've been very successful selling 150 buck heirlooms with collection events each season and that's not accounting for normal skins which has also been successful.

When they released Apex it was just a casual game and Respawn said they would place more focus on it being competitive if it was community requested.

I'm in the US, and I've consistently had bad ping numbers, disconnects, and slow motion games this season.  It's not unusual for a team mate to drop in and lag out immediately.  I've seen lag issues with other EA games as well, but a game like TitanFall 2 and Battlefront 2 have offline content I can play if I want.  Or otherwise, some forgiving game modes that aren't sweaty PvP.

Thinking about it, the fact Apex has no real gameplay variety could be part of the problem.  No custom lobbies like other games.  No PvE content.  No offline content.  No story campaign.  Anyone who wants to play Apex has to queue into the same handful of BR options.  A lot of people playing Apex don't even care about BR.  They just like the Legends and it's the only way to play them or level the Battle Pass, etc.  Give them other gameplay options, and they'll play them instead.  And Apex will draw in even more gamers who don't want to mess with BR or are tired of the constant issues in BR.

@ArchAngeL-PCX I didn't play any of the Titanfalls but from what i understand they brought in to many game modes there splitting the player base and are reluctant to do the same here but in Apex's case i think they've gone to far the other end and not brought enough in.

@DoYaSeeMe Tell that to my backside! 😛

Doesn't matter if you paid for cosmetics or not and makes no difference if it's a paid game or free to play pushing regular purchasing events because the industry went a certain way that's more profitable for them. This also doesn't mean i or anyone should be happy with lower quality service and not advocate for changes that would improve our experience. 

I'm asking for them, not demanding and with all things if it doesn't meet my expectations i just won't pay for it. Others have said they used to spend loads but won't any more in its current state, which is reasonably fair imo.

I updated having a network expansion on performance display and stuff about Valorant, possibly setting your own limits with relevant pic, code refactoring mentioned by @DoYaSeeMe and copy/pasted some other bits he mentioned elsewhere with more to come soon.

Also, does anyone have a link to the dev Q&A on reddit as i can't find it and would like to put it up if/when they discuss the servers.

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@apostolateofDOOM

Also, does anyone have a link to the dev Q&A on reddit as i can't find it and would like to put it up if/when they discuss the servers.

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Can you give me all the details you have, maby I can find it for you. 

@DoYaSeeMe In a rush but i'll get back to you on that. 👍

@OldTreeCreeperThat's all i remember as i only glanced at it briefly and unable to find it since. I'm sure it was someone here on AHQ that posted it though.

They spoke about a lot of things but promised to have someone talk about the servers the next time as they didn't have anyone dealing with them available then.

@apostolateofDOOMTheir former lead network engineer, Jon Shiring, was pretty open to the public. You can find some interesting bits about the Titanfall 2 servers and game engine and some messaging between him and Battle(non)sense in that link in your inbox 🙂

@apostolateofDOOM some visual stats from YT which are simply a snapshot at this time, and not necessarily indicative of the overall picture. Pictures are the exact sequence from yt this morning. 

@DoYaSeeMe I checked it briefly but i'll give it another look later.

@OldTreeCreeper It's not even top 12 currently from what i can see.

We also hit the 100 post milestone! Next up 500?

@apostolateofDOOM according to the numbers presented there by YT, Apex is 15th! But the last few are close run. 

@apostolateofDOOM just checked now to see if there is any difference. There is a difference to the previous order of games being watched, but Apex is now in 16th place.

@apostolateofDOOM further tacker and player stats for a Sunday. 

https://tracker.gg/

https://playercounter.com/

Apex 

12,255,609 Tracked Players

     984,382 Players Online

Fortnite

93,710,744 Tracked Players

 6,542,354 Players Online

@OldTreeCreeper I think if you accounted for all the smurfs tracked and players without trackers then that number likely wouldn't be far off.

Also, checked some bits about Riot. Shared this before, but I'm doing it again because it explains some of the basic issues of the network really well: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/fixing-internet-real-time-applications-part-i .

A quote from the conclusion: "I am fixing the <redacted> internet for players! There are players with lag and packet loss and I have to <redacted> help them!” - Wait, they're not fixing the netcode or the servers for that?!? Oh my...

@DoYaSeeMe I want to see some effort from them in improving or at least addressing it and if that takes 10,000 pages, 100,000 posts or the support of 1,000,000 people then that's what it takes.

I know it's very likely a futile effort but you can always try and with enough support/supporters you have a higher chance of them being unable to ignore it if it's put out in a constructive way. Problem with this is, those that play comp and content creators that could rally that kind of support and pressure the devs are risking their revenues by taking such coordinated action. 

This isn't limited to just me or my network as almost everyone experiences these problems because the way they handle matchmaking and allocating servers is fundamentally flawed for a competitive game. Note competitive,  as a casual game with no e sport presence this would all probably be fine(ish).. Look at the streamers or competitive players who will do their utmost on their end to make sure they have the best connection possible but still have problems and if the rest of the state of the game is anything to go by then cost saving measures or keeping up with content has slowed the QoL updates which has been pretty detrimental to the core experience over time.

It's embarrassing to advertise ALGS play offs with this kind of performance.

As i mentioned in the first post, developers want it to be instant and easy with a fully automated system so it's accessible to everyone no matter the platform or location so they can jump straight in and play. Which is fine for a casual game but not everyone wants that for a game that advertises as an e sport and would like to set their own preferences and tailor their experience to get the most out of it. 

Respawn don't want you to have that for various reasons.

Also, RIOT at least communicated an attempt at improving it for their users but we don't even get that here or much else for that matter, unless it's fan art or something to pad their public or private profiles.

@apostolateofDOOMI think you disregard or simply deny the costs for the improvements you want, very understandable as you're not in this very complex domain. However, this weakens your standpoint and you can't make up for it with extra pressure.

Also, I think this thread is way too long already, so I will stop contributing. I've spent a lot of time into giving rational arguments and research & provide useful linksto help people form more educated opinions, was worth it though, as I've learned new interesting things in the process.

So long, and thanks for all the fish. SeeYa on other threads.

@DoYaSeeMe youngtree was playing on his pc yesterday with friends and complained of being ejected from ranked games, even acquiring a small ban. His switch counterpart complained of the same problem. YT was upset but I told him there was no way to diferenciate between a bad server service and his mobile hotspot dropping out, it happens to me too on the mobile broadband service, more frequently lately with no reconnect to the game, not ranked. 

So I played ranked with him on my xbox. The very first game we played we came second and that was worth 48 points to him, except he did not get his points. He came out of the finished match to have the previous match results displayed in the match review with no error along the way. I got my points for thd match! 

No disconnect here but clearly a server error, and a big one at that. This error did not occur again over the evening, but I'm sure, and YT is sure, some assists/hits were not counted. But difficult to catch given the in game pressure play.

Way off T @DoYaSeeMe I just got YT the audio book of the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy read by Stephen Fry, and he's loving it. 

@DoYaSeeMeI don't deny there's likely a cost and potentially a heavy one for them over time but with more comp teams entering the fray, i think it'll be a worthy investment if they get to it asap.  You're right though, it's a complex subject and i admit i lack experience but as an end user all i can do is highlight an issue that we have and provide as much information as possible for them to determine where the problem is and improve it, if possible. I still believe they can.

Mine isn't an isolated or even rare case as most people experience these issues but some don't know how to express that constructively instead of the ''EA/Respawn servers are trash'' or ''fix your game'' or ''they just want money and don't care about users experience as it's a business'' ect.. I wanted to develop the thread in a positive way that people could interact and possibly have a positive outcome from and i welcome input from people like you who know more on the subject, even if we disagree.

I have learnt a bit over the course of this thread and more confident now they could make those improvement if they decided to, but yes, it'll cost them to do it but they have the resources if it's pushed through multiple avenues feeling it's wanted and a worthy investment.

@OldTreeCreeper It's been that long since i watched it i barely remember. Time to hit up some old classics! Last time i did that in sci fi i lost nearly 3 months. 🥳