Servers: Troubleshooting for EA/Respawn and Multiplay

@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. 🥳

@DoYaSeeMe ''Their 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 🙂''  If i can draw you back in for a moment? 😛

The link you sent me: "Tickrate is about ai and not about player experience at all." GGWP : titanfall (reddit.com)

The conclusion of that discussion is basically Jon (imslothy) contradicting himself trying to sidestep what people were asking about throughout (which was pretty clear what they were asking and devs do have a habit of overcomplicating things 😛) playing word games about what they use internally being different to most other titles with one of the last posts being...

''Yes, I agree about the contradictions. u/slothy seems hung up on the semantics. When random people in the community show their concern by asking about "tickrate" -- they are really asking about the server-to-client update rate. After hearing his responses for a while now, I think he knows this, but doesn't want to focus attention on the 20hz update rate because he believes the cost-to-benefit ratio of using anything higher doesn't make sense for their game. Fair enough. If it is simply a business decision, I can understand that. But don't sit here and tell your hardcore fan base that you've got a cutting edge FPS networking implementation. I'm sure it's a model of robustness and efficiency when it comes to minimizing operating costs, but 20hz has no place anywhere as an update rate to the world state in any fast paced FPS game.

Probably, the subset of players who actually care that much about the game to hope for a baseline of 60hz are too few to matter to them, from a design perspective.''

After reading it all, this last post makes a lot of sense. As ranked and casual are already split ques and i know it will use a lot more server resources and increase their costs but like custom lobbies in other games, couldn't we have higher refreshed environments for ranked and comp? 

@apostolateofDOOMI hate the fact you are almost begging this guys to solve a problem that is obviously on their end, needs to be taken care of since at least 1 year ago, and they have the courage to deny it in the face of an entire community. And what is worst, to the face of fidel customers that stuck to this game for more than 2 years now.

Honestly, the only feeling i get is that these guys do not care. All their actions remark that:
- They don't care about NO DAMAGE REGISTER (today i had the worst experience in 2 years regarding this, literally NO DAMAGE)
- Season 8 was a recycled map (barely 20% of it), a recycled legend (fuse is a male Bangalore basically), recycled anniversary skins, recycled useless crap servers, recycled attitude...
- Cheap battle pass with very few good things, and nothing worth it after level 50...
- Quests are not even real anymore, just comics..
- NEVER, I got a solution not an authorized EA/Respawn voice to the same issues with servers
- The forum has more than 10k posts complaining about servers. Never a solution

Now I see your post, SO MUCH WORK on it, so many expectations, so much kindness, and this people basically pissing on it like it was nothing...

If I made the same thing they do in my own job, I'd get fired in the blink of an eye.. I honestly cannot believe the attitude, but in the end I understand it:
- They feed us garbage and we eat it every day, why would they give us something different right? And even less when this product is in the end of its lifecycle, with a reduced budget, and still making money... Honest, would us make anything different just for honor's sake?

So, if we want these people to do something, we need to act as the pissed off customers we are and stop playing like we do every day. Maybe that way they will understand, or even make a better game than this one.