@felker_s @SnowmanHD
Not once I left a match because of this BUG, and it always solved itself after some time. Most of the time I could see someone was still loading on my team, or I asked the opposing team if anyone on their side was still displaying the picture of the wrong faction, to which they always confirmed (which is the sign for a loading player).
Curiously, when the countdown started I asked the player if he had just loaded, and he confirmed it took ages to load. Or sometimes a player left, but the number of "waiting for players" didn't increase.
I really think it's more convincing to believe this, then in a BUG which fixes itself if you wait a lot, or if specific player(s) suddenly leave.
And felker, if you had 2 open spots and it said waiting for 3, then 1 open spot and it said waiting for 2, and finally no openings and waiting for one, this fits perfectly into my explanation that you had 1 loading player, who was displayed but was actually still in the loading screen.
Let me make things clearer: When you first join a lobby, you enter the loading screen, but your name isn't displayed in the scoreboard to whoever is already in the selection screen, nor you're counted towards the waiting for # players message, but your slot is already yours, no one will be able to enter after you and snatch your spot from you if they load faster.
However, if you have just finished a match on this lobby, and starts loading the next one, your name will be displayed in the scoreboard to whoever loads before you, but you WON'T be counted towards the waiting for # players, which leads to this situation.
Seriously, in HvV, who didn't see a message like "Waiting for 5 Players" just as loading finishes, but the scoreboard shows 8 players? This means you loaded faster then those 5 players, and as they begin to finish loading, the waiting for # players message starts to decrease the # until everyone loaded. This is so common.
With all this info I gathered since November, I can guarantee this is the case, it's a design flaw, not a BUG. Bring me a full lobby, with all players sending messages on chat and the game still showing a "Waiting for # Players" and I'll believe there's a BUG with this, but what I explained is still true and still explains most cases (if not all of them, which is actually my belief)
@RogueZeroRendar @felker_s @SnowmanHD @EA_Atic
Rogue, take a look at this clip and tell me if you still think what you're saying is the case:
https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aku4_KVZ5c2XgUglGfeDIDJg9cjh
First, I started recording this clip after waiting in this lobby for about 3 minutes already, and the clip itself is about 2 minutes long. I doubt it took someone 5 minutes to load.
Second, the gamertag holding up the match is Crigdawg876. As you can see, he/she was in the previous match. By this point numerous other players had already loaded in and then left once they saw it was stuck. Notice how at the very end of the clip, when Crigdawg is removed, the players needed corrects itself.
Here's my theory: I suspect that Crigdawg was never actually there to begin with, in reality...I think they left after the previous match ended and before the new lobby started, but for some reason the game still lists them as there (this would be the bug). The game holds that spot for them and won't let a person fill it, but the game also simultaneously knows that they already left, hence listing the need for 1 more player than it shows listed. Eventually the game figures out they're not actually there (maybe they loaded into another match or logged out) and removes them. Just a hunch.
FYI: this same situation also happened to me in Hero Starfighters mode over the weekend.
Some very good responses here - it certainly is an interesting bug. Personally, I'm not too sure what it is. Someone still waiting for the game to load makes sense, but then again, have any of us ever been the person waiting for it to load? Surely we would have by now, considering this bug seems to happen quite often. Neither the people I play with or myself have had to wait a long time.
I doubt it is a crash, as it seems to happen too often - and once again, I've never experienced a crash after Heroes Vs. Villains.
Someone leaving the game and it not properly registering also makes sense. However, today when I had the bug, I am 99% sure it fixed on its own without any players leaving. It left me quite surprised.
I presume the reason we don't see it in the larger game modes is because there are a lot more players, and the lobbies don't need to be full for a game to start. Therefore the bug may occur in all game modes, but we just don't notice it.
I would still count it as a bug. Even if it is a bad design, it shouldn't be happening. It turns a lot of people away from playing the game.
You doubt someone took 5 minutes to load? I already took more then 5 minutes to load, so it's totally possible. This scenario is exactly what I've been telling here, this guy was suspended in loading screen, which triggered the message and wouldn't allow you to start. As soon as his loading was resolved (either by finishing or quitting), things went back to normal.
If you believe it might have something to do with the game not recognizing he isn't loading, this doesn't necessarily counts as a bug, but rather probably a programming oversight. His client didn't tell the server he isn't loading anymore, so the server still thinks he is loading. As I've been waiting for a loading that went over 5 minutes, I believe there's no timeout feature for this, which means if the client stays hung up for say 8 minutes, the game will wait these 8 minutes until the client forwards the message it isn't in this lobby anymore. I'd go further and say that if a client gets eternally stuck in loading screen and doesn't do anything about it, the lobby will stay this way forever.
And also, it's fairly normal that after a crash on the client it takes a fair amount of time for the server to realize that client has left the lobby.
I'm sure if DICE changed the message to "Waiting for X Players to load" when the room is full but not everyone has loaded yet, this doubt would vanish.
Has any of us been on that situation? Yes, I've been the guy who took ages to load, and also the guy who got a friend on this situation while talking via discord, so it was clear this was the case. When I was loading, they would see "Waiting for 1 Player" and as soon as I loaded the message vanished, and counter started. Similarly, when my friend was taking ages to load, I was seeing the message, and as soon as he confirmed to me he loaded, the message vanished and countdown started. So here's my proof.
It happens too often, true, but crashes happen very oftenly in life, you're very lucky to still believe crashes aren't something that happen all the time. My PC crashes almost everyday I use it, be itself, or just an app I use on it.
For your situation where "the bug fixed itself" it's nothing more then the lazy loader finally loading the game without a crash. As I said before, I already took more then 5 minutes to load.
And about calling it a BUG, I understand it can be called that, but then people instead of understanding what it really means, they'll just stay away from it as if it was something which can't be dealt with. However, I never left any match that this happened after I realised it was a loading issue, and I always played the match afterwards, it always fixed itself. So to me it's better not to call this a BUG, but simply a design flaw.
To finish this, a few examples of why my PC crashes: It gets very hot; I suspend it without a restart for a long time; I have more applications open eating my RAM; Windows decides to download the Windows Updates; Origin crashes; Nvidia crashes; Nvidia decides it's time to update; My power cable unplugs and when I realise it, it already sent me back to desktop and the game probably crashed with that.
In a console, many of these situations can also happen. Another good reason for crashes is the machine getting old, and I believe many players have computers/consoles from 2 or more years ago.
Regardless of whether or not you call it a bug, or what the source of the problem is, it really should be fixed. Nobody wants to wait 10 minutes for a match to start, especially when the lobby appears to be full already.
@RogueZeroRendarthanks, I appreciate your reply.
Oddly enough, a couple of days after posting my response I was playing HvV with a friend and it took him a few minutes for the game to load. As soon as it had finished loading no more players were needed (in the full lobby). I guess I wasn't believing it as I had never seen it occur, yet the bug happens almost every session I play. I personally have never been in the longer loading screen situation.
As you said, the wording ('Waiting for one more player to join') should be changed, and it is a bad design flaw. But as @nrobh points out, there may be a bug that causes a player to take a lot longer to load the game, which should be remedied.
@nrobh
I couldn't agree more, it should change. The way it is now, it scares players away. If it at least allowed us to know we're just waiting for someone that's still loading, then we know the truth and can act accordingly.
@LOTR2013
Problem with BUGs here is that DICE has a BUG list so huge and so complex, they won't fix more then 50% of all BUGs we have already experienced plus those that are yet to come because they don't have the resources to do this. If we really want a bug to be fixed we must do 2 things: Give them the most info we can collect on the BUG (and be the most accurate possible), and bring a lot of attention to it.
So we should choose which BUGs we want to get adressed. This one is a BUG that is being incorrectly reported here, as there's no BUG in the character selection screen that even with a full lobby won't let a match start, but rather we have an issue with client/server communication of one or more players that's incorrectly labeled as "Waiting for X Players". This issue may be just a slow loading from the client (which fixes itself after that player loads), a crash from the client which may take some time to be acknowledged by the server (this is a standard issue on most if not all client/server communications out there, and it fixes itself after the server realises the client has dropped, so his name vanishes from the scoreboard and the incorrect message gets updated) or an unknown BUG for unknown reasons which may hang the match indefinetly (despite nobody showing this issue taking ages, we're still measuring on ten minutes or less).
That's why I've been coming here to put this issue in its correct place. This issue should be solved, but isn't gamebreaking like the thermal vision BUG, Disabled Block BUG, Corpses Attacking BUG, Death by Object/Environment BUG, Eternal Choke BUG, and the list goes on and on and on and on
