Why penalize players in aq 50% health

I am honestly getting so sick and tired of the times I get penalized 50% health in aq because fights will not load. I have full bars of wifi, and the no connection signal doesn't even flash.

What is the point of this mechanic. There has never been a time where I have lost the 50% health due to an error of my own. It seems totally pointless. You are penalizing players for your shoddy servers/coding. It makes no sense.

Can anyone explain this absolute junk mechanic? It makes me feel so stupid for buying the aq questing bundle yesterday.

Comments

Deacon

i can point you to some drums that i've beat repeatedly about this. as have many others. it's so frustrating. i wish i had some answers but no one has gotten any beyond "it's a mechanic to curb the quit behavior" or something.

Negative_100

They put it there so people won't exit the game if they messed up and come back, like a redo without any loss. It's not there for normal quests though. But if you do it in normal quests in a short amount of time it will take half of your health. It's there for the both aw and aq

Negative_100

I am honestly getting so sick and tired of the times I get penalized 50% health in aq because fights will not load. I have full bars of wifi, and the no connection signal doesn't even flash.

What is the point of this mechanic. There has never been a time where I have lost the 50% health due to an error of my own. It seems totally pointless. You are penalizing players for your shoddy servers/coding. It makes no sense.

Can anyone explain this absolute junk mechanic? It makes me feel so stupid for buying the aq questing bundle yesterday.

And it's prob your phone not the servers because I'm perfectly fine. This game takes a lot of space and other things so older phones will be worse for playing the game.

Chitlins

I am honestly getting so sick and tired of the times I get penalized 50% health in aq because fights will not load. I have full bars of wifi, and the no connection signal doesn't even flash.

What is the point of this mechanic. There has never been a time where I have lost the 50% health due to an error of my own. It seems totally pointless. You are penalizing players for your shoddy servers/coding. It makes no sense.

Can anyone explain this absolute junk mechanic? It makes me feel so stupid for buying the aq questing bundle yesterday.
And it's prob your phone not the servers because I'm perfectly fine. This game takes a lot of space and other things so older phones will be worse for playing the game.

It has happened on every phone I have had, and I've had multiple over the years of playing this game, including the newest editions of a Samsung Galaxy and iPhones. Other players have this same exact issue. So it's probably a problem that needs to be fixed.

This game doesn't require a specific phone. If it can't run properly then it shouldn't be allowed. Androids have had trouble with this game for years, but it's not about the phones it's about poor game development. Just because it doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it's not happening to tons of players.

Chitlins

They put it there so people won't exit the game if they messed up and come back, like a redo without any loss. It's not there for normal quests though. But if you do it in normal quests in a short amount of time it will take half of your health. It's there for the both aw and aq

Also I didn't even enter the fight. So I don't understand what your point is. It was the loading screen before the fight.

DNA3000

They put it there so people won't exit the game if they messed up and come back, like a redo without any loss. It's not there for normal quests though. But if you do it in normal quests in a short amount of time it will take half of your health. It's there for the both aw and aq
Also I didn't even enter the fight. So I don't understand what your point is. It was the loading screen before the fight.

Technically, you did enter the fight. At least the servers believe you did. Your game client crashed so you never saw this, but the game servers have no way to know this.

I wish the servers allowed some grace period for this, where if it doesn't see you actually actively enter the fight and it terminates you don't get the penalty, but the problem is the game servers don't actually know this: the game client doesn't send every single game input to the servers, so the servers don't actually know if you're playing the fight or sitting there waiting for the game client to restart. It just knows the fight started, ran for a while, and then ended for some reason. It doesn't know if you tried for the initial intercept and failed and decided to force close to reset the right, or got the wrong random combination of buffs on Venom and decided to restart to retry, or the game client just died at the start of the fight. It doesn't know, so it has to treat all fight crashes as an attempt to exploit the game client, unfortunately.

Chitlins

They put it there so people won't exit the game if they messed up and come back, like a redo without any loss. It's not there for normal quests though. But if you do it in normal quests in a short amount of time it will take half of your health. It's there for the both aw and aq
Also I didn't even enter the fight. So I don't understand what your point is. It was the loading screen before the fight.
Technically, you did enter the fight. At least the servers believe you did. Your game client crashed so you never saw this, but the game servers have no way to know this.

I wish the servers allowed some grace period for this, where if it doesn't see you actually actively enter the fight and it terminates you don't get the penalty, but the problem is the game servers don't actually know this: the game client doesn't send every single game input to the servers, so the servers don't actually know if you're playing the fight or sitting there waiting for the game client to restart. It just knows the fight started, ran for a while, and then ended for some reason. It doesn't know if you tried for the initial intercept and failed and decided to force close to reset the right, or got the wrong random combination of buffs on Venom and decided to restart to retry, or the game client just died at the start of the fight. It doesn't know, so it has to treat all fight crashes as an attempt to exploit the game client, unfortunately.

Yeah that all makes sense. I agree I wish there was an event that happens after the loading screen instead that gets logged once inputs are entered on screen or something like that. Would solve the issue and still stop exploiting the game.

unknown

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SHIELD4AGENT

Good thing when this kind of issue happens to me in AQ I'm playing with Wolverine and just heal back the 50% lost health.

Lvernon15

If there wasn’t a penalty you’d be able to just quit out if you had a bad fight with no penalty

Demonzfyre

They put it there so people won't exit the game if they messed up and come back, like a redo without any loss. It's not there for normal quests though. But if you do it in normal quests in a short amount of time it will take half of your health. It's there for the both aw and aq
Also I didn't even enter the fight. So I don't understand what your point is. It was the loading screen before the fight.
Technically, you did enter the fight. At least the servers believe you did. Your game client crashed so you never saw this, but the game servers have no way to know this.

I wish the servers allowed some grace period for this, where if it doesn't see you actually actively enter the fight and it terminates you don't get the penalty, but the problem is the game servers don't actually know this: the game client doesn't send every single game input to the servers, so the servers don't actually know if you're playing the fight or sitting there waiting for the game client to restart. It just knows the fight started, ran for a while, and then ended for some reason. It doesn't know if you tried for the initial intercept and failed and decided to force close to reset the right, or got the wrong random combination of buffs on Venom and decided to restart to retry, or the game client just died at the start of the fight. It doesn't know, so it has to treat all fight crashes as an attempt to exploit the game client, unfortunately.
Yeah that all makes sense. I agree I wish there was an event that happens after the loading screen instead that gets logged once inputs are entered on screen or something like that. Would solve the issue and still stop exploiting the game.

In the early days of AW/AQ, they didn't penalize anyone who force quit. People exploited that and now everyone says they changed it because Kabam loses money etc.. The only answer that is correct is what DNA3000 said. It was being abused so the solution is that currently, any disconnect will cost half your HP. it's not Kabams fault, it's the player bases' fault for always trying to exploit everything in this game.

unknown

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Corkscrew

Technically, you did enter the fight. At least the servers believe you did. Your game client crashed so you never saw this, but the game servers have no way to know this.
....

It doesn't know, so it has to treat all fight crashes as an attempt to exploit the game client, unfortunately.

Which on a side note, always made me wonder why it tries to do so many connection attempts during a fight when all it does is prove to be a catalyst to dump you from a fight. This makes no sense if you only care about the result and not the progress... do the connection check at fight completion.

To me, the philosophy of much of their fail safes are punitive and based on the assumption that the player is at fault or trying to exploit the system.

This seems particularly unfair given that a) game hangs are more frequent now (at least for me) than ever before and b) I only force quit the game because it's unresponsive or there is the persistent charges bug.

@Chitlins Coincidentally, I was almost amped up enough 30 minutes ago to post here on this exact issue, screen froze, I tasked switched away from the game because I thought it was going to pick back up... nope, game had crashed and I lost 50% health.

donone

So if you quit the fight, why not have it start exactly where you left off? Simple solution.

Demonzfyre

So if you quit the fight, why not have it start exactly where you left off? Simple solution.

It's a server thing. The fights are timed so unlike a quest fight where there isn't a timer, the fight timer keeps going. So the server has to reset the fight completely.

unknown

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DNA3000

Technically, you did enter the fight. At least the servers believe you did. Your game client crashed so you never saw this, but the game servers have no way to know this.
....

It doesn't know, so it has to treat all fight crashes as an attempt to exploit the game client, unfortunately.
Which on a side note, always made me wonder why it tries to do so many connection attempts during a fight when all it does is prove to be a catalyst to dump you from a fight. This makes no sense if you only care about the result and not the progress... do the connection check at fight completion.

Actually, that's backwards. The game servers must presume the game client was force closed or in some other way disconnected from the network as a potential exploit, because it fundamentally has no way to know otherwise. The fact that the game client periodically makes connections to the game servers does not make this worse, because whether it does so every so often or not at all, the result is the same: the game servers do not know what happened and thus must presume the worst.

But it is worth mentioning that periodic status messages are better than nothing. Consider the case where you enter a fight and then shortly after the fight begins something permanently disconnects you from the servers. It could be a problem on your end, or it could be a problem on their end, but either way your game connection is permanently lost. Right now, after about ten seconds or so the game client will drop the fight and show you the connection was terminated. Suppose it didn't do that, it only checked at the end of the fight. Now, you could fight the entire fight from beginning to end and *then* be told the entire thing would have to be thrown away because the connection was gone. This would mean a player could fight through a difficult fight all the way to the end only to be told that none of it counted. The game client design is a compromise between not disconnecting you too quickly (after all a network failure could be temporary and resolve itself) and not letting the player continue to play in a lost cause.

To me, the philosophy of much of their fail safes are punitive and based on the assumption that the player is at fault or trying to exploit the system.

This seems particularly unfair given that a) game hangs are more frequent now (at least for me) than ever before and b) I only force quit the game because it's unresponsive or there is the persistent charges bug.

Unfortunately, in this case they have to be. If you presume that disconnections are *not* exploits unless you can prove otherwise, you open the door to uncatchable exploits. It is impossible, in the general case, to tell the difference between an otherwise innocent network failure and someone attempting to exploit the game's network connectivity, using only a trivial amount of network trickery. Someone like me would never, ever have to lose a fight if I didn't want to.

Gamer

Happy to me to in AQ my game crashes know why it crash had play arena for abudt 45 minutes witout reste so unfortunately

Corkscrew

Actually, that's backwards. The game servers must presume the game client was force closed or in some other way disconnected from the network as a potential exploit, because it fundamentally has no way to know otherwise....

And there in lies the problem, because they assume they aren't at fault and you are. I can't tell you how many times, I can check mail, search the internet and message, but the game can't connect. So it isn't my connection, it's their servers. This would be more acceptable if this issue weren't more commonly on their end, but that isn't my experience nor do I suspect is it much of the community's.

I'm not sure what you mean by backwards.

But it is worth mentioning that periodic status messages are better than nothing. Consider the case where you enter a fight and then shortly after the fight begins something permanently disconnects you from the servers. It could be a problem on your end, or it could be a problem on their end, but either way your game connection is permanently lost. Right now, after about ten seconds or so the game client will drop the fight and show you the connection was terminated. Suppose it didn't do that, it only checked at the end of the fight. Now, you could fight the entire fight from beginning to end and *then* be told the entire thing would have to be thrown away because the connection was gone. This would mean a player could fight through a difficult fight all the way to the end only to be told that none of it counted. The game client design is a compromise between not disconnecting you too quickly (after all a network failure could be temporary and resolve itself) and not letting the player continue to play in a lost cause.

Is it better then nothing? Because I can tell you that that red (albeit faint) pulsing loss of connection icon is distracting as anything, because you're wondering at any moment if you're going to get dumped from the fight and hoping that it will reconnect and the fight will count. That distraction alone has definitely cost me during fights. As soon as the status comes up, you know there is a risk that that fight will not count I don't know anyone who would see it and just stop fighting because the fight isn't worth completing because it might not count.

I can tell you that one of the surefire ways to get me disconnected is a hard network change, i.e. I switch from one wifi connection to another, or drop from wifi to cellular, which I might have to do so that there IS a connection at fight conclusion. If I do that during a fight even while paused, it often results in the match getting booted. There is absolutely no reason for them to do it unless they're assuming that you are trying to intercept the traffic, yet I would say that 99.99% of players would have no capacity to exploit that.

Because this game is played on a mobile device, it's pretty common to have transient network issues, you could be on a train and go through a tunnel, or you could be switching between hotspots. Punishing players so harshly for a problem that is inherently part of the platform doesn't seem reasonable.

DNA3000

Actually, that's backwards. The game servers must presume the game client was force closed or in some other way disconnected from the network as a potential exploit, because it fundamentally has no way to know otherwise....
And there in lies the problem, because they assume they aren't at fault and you are. I can't tell you how many times, I can check mail, search the internet and message, but the game can't connect. So it isn't my connection, it's their servers. This would be more acceptable if this issue weren't more commonly on their end, but that isn't my experience nor do I suspect is it much of the community's.

I'm not sure what you mean by backwards.

You asked "why [the game] tries to do so many connection attempts during a fight?" The problem is not that it tries to do too many, it is that in a sense it does too few. If it sent real time telemetry to the game servers, like say most MMOs with prediction code do, the game servers would have real time state information from which to attempt to determine what was going on at the moment connection was lost, and that might make it easier for the game to cut the players some slack when the connections are disrupted. Because it doesn't do that, the game cannot guess with any accuracy, and thus cannot detect when the game client is being exploited. It thus has to assume it is.

But it is worth mentioning that periodic status messages are better than nothing. Consider the case where you enter a fight and then shortly after the fight begins something permanently disconnects you from the servers. It could be a problem on your end, or it could be a problem on their end, but either way your game connection is permanently lost. Right now, after about ten seconds or so the game client will drop the fight and show you the connection was terminated. Suppose it didn't do that, it only checked at the end of the fight. Now, you could fight the entire fight from beginning to end and *then* be told the entire thing would have to be thrown away because the connection was gone. This would mean a player could fight through a difficult fight all the way to the end only to be told that none of it counted. The game client design is a compromise between not disconnecting you too quickly (after all a network failure could be temporary and resolve itself) and not letting the player continue to play in a lost cause.
Is it better then nothing? Because I can tell you that that red (albeit faint) pulsing loss of connection icon is distracting as anything, because you're wondering at any moment if you're going to get dumped from the fight and hoping that it will reconnect and the fight will count. That distraction alone has definitely cost me during fights. As soon as the status comes up, you know there is a risk that that fight will not count I don't know anyone who would see it and just stop fighting because the fight isn't worth completing because it might not count.

That's not what I was saying. What I said was if the game client didn't check for connection status during the fight, the player could fight an entire fight only to discover at the end of the fight that the entire fight was for nothing. That's very likely to be far more frustrating than losing connection much earlier in the fight. At least, that is what I would presume if I was the one designing the network code.

As to the issue of moving from one network to another, like say from wifi to cellular, I've seen that break session state in many other mobile games and I suspect for similar reasons. Many of these games use cloud front ends like Google Game Cloud. I don't do development with those APIs, but I suspect many of them either use or optionally use persistent HTTPS connections. Those wouldn't survive client roaming, and you'd then need some form of session recovery to deal with that change, which not all games implement.

Negative_100

Yes. Yes. Yes.
As compensation we should get 12 Tier 6 Basic Catalysts, 12 Tier 3 Alpha, 24-30 Tier 5 Basic, 40 Tier 2 Alpha Catalysts and 999,999,999 Gold. Also just because Kabam are so giving they should throw 5 Six Star Nexus Crystals in there, even if you're a low level player. If you've ever played AQ you should get this exact compensation.

No. In all seriousness, I think that they should nerf the amount of health taken from you. NOT get rid of it, but nerf it ALOT. they should take it down to 20 or 25 percent health.

Seems very reasonable.

I agree, but I think for normal questing they should keep it the same. And it's kind of weird. My game has been perfectly fine but others have problems. Why would that happen?

Corkscrew

You asked "why [the game] tries to do so many connection attempts during a fight?" The problem is not that it tries to do too many, it is that in a sense it does too few. If it sent real time telemetry to the game servers, like say most MMOs with prediction code do, the game servers would have real time state information from which to attempt to determine what was going on at the moment connection was lost, and that might make it easier for the game to cut the players some slack when the connections are disrupted. Because it doesn't do that, the game cannot guess with any accuracy, and thus cannot detect when the game client is being exploited. It thus has to assume it is.

Yeah, I think that's my point, if they don't care about the progress of the match, connecting to the servers during the match is pointless, whether it is once every 5 seconds or once every 5 milliseconds. The concept of too many or too few connections is irrelevant if you don't send back useful information. So my statement is more accurately put, why bother connecting so many times if you do not send back useful information to store the state of the game so that it can be recovered.

The number of variables to establish the state of a match is significant, but ultimately finite. Each champ can only be at a finite number of locations on the screen, in a finite number of possible positions in their animations and status of their active buffs, debuffs etc etc. Lots of variables, but ultimately finite. So it's a case of not impossible, but too hard basket relative to what Kabam get out of it.

As to the issue of moving from one network to another, like say from wifi to cellular, I've seen that break session state in many other mobile games and I suspect for similar reasons. Many of these games use cloud front ends like Google Game Cloud. I don't do development with those APIs, but I suspect many of them either use or optionally use persistent HTTPS connections. Those wouldn't survive client roaming, and you'd then need some form of session recovery to deal with that change, which not all games implement.

I'm not saying I don't know the technical reasons for why it could happen, my point is that it shouldn't happen the way it does. As you point out, they can store state at the client for recovery. The point is that their development philosophy seems geared more towards preventing player exploitation than ensuring players have an uninterrupted experience and then penalizing them for when there is a problem with the game that is probably not their fault.

N1nthcloud

I think to solve this problem.

Kabam just needs program it take 50% of your health after the fight physically starts.

A loading screen is just a loading screen.
Theres not hitboxes, no ready that flashes across the screen, not health ticks.

Maybe if they programed the anti-quit feature to start after "the words -READY, then FIGHT flashes across the screen?

Use the word "fight" as the trigger command or something?

Because when you get stuck in the loading screen..... there is nothing.... just a spinning wheel.... with the words loading..... as far as i can tell it just freezes on you and then penalizes you for it.... which sucks

the only way i see this not working... is if its actually glitched out, with the fight somehow actually running & playing out in the background.

Lormif

Actually, that's backwards. The game servers must presume the game client was force closed or in some other way disconnected from the network as a potential exploit, because it fundamentally has no way to know otherwise....
And there in lies the problem, because they assume they aren't at fault and you are. I can't tell you how many times, I can check mail, search the internet and message, but the game can't connect. So it isn't my connection, it's their servers. This would be more acceptable if this issue weren't more commonly on their end, but that isn't my experience nor do I suspect is it much of the community's.

I'm not sure what you mean by backwards.

But it is worth mentioning that periodic status messages are better than nothing. Consider the case where you enter a fight and then shortly after the fight begins something permanently disconnects you from the servers. It could be a problem on your end, or it could be a problem on their end, but either way your game connection is permanently lost. Right now, after about ten seconds or so the game client will drop the fight and show you the connection was terminated. Suppose it didn't do that, it only checked at the end of the fight. Now, you could fight the entire fight from beginning to end and *then* be told the entire thing would have to be thrown away because the connection was gone. This would mean a player could fight through a difficult fight all the way to the end only to be told that none of it counted. The game client design is a compromise between not disconnecting you too quickly (after all a network failure could be temporary and resolve itself) and not letting the player continue to play in a lost cause.
Is it better then nothing? Because I can tell you that that red (albeit faint) pulsing loss of connection icon is distracting as anything, because you're wondering at any moment if you're going to get dumped from the fight and hoping that it will reconnect and the fight will count. That distraction alone has definitely cost me during fights. As soon as the status comes up, you know there is a risk that that fight will not count I don't know anyone who would see it and just stop fighting because the fight isn't worth completing because it might not count.

I can tell you that one of the surefire ways to get me disconnected is a hard network change, i.e. I switch from one wifi connection to another, or drop from wifi to cellular, which I might have to do so that there IS a connection at fight conclusion. If I do that during a fight even while paused, it often results in the match getting booted. There is absolutely no reason for them to do it unless they're assuming that you are trying to intercept the traffic, yet I would say that 99.99% of players would have no capacity to exploit that.

Because this game is played on a mobile device, it's pretty common to have transient network issues, you could be on a train and go through a tunnel, or you could be switching between hotspots. Punishing players so harshly for a problem that is inherently part of the platform doesn't seem reasonable.

The bolded is not how the internet works. There are different paths to different servers, not all servers sit on the exact same node in the exact same place. If googles site can be unreachable to me, but still reachable by you, and still not be googles problem, but mine.

Lormif

You asked "why [the game] tries to do so many connection attempts during a fight?" The problem is not that it tries to do too many, it is that in a sense it does too few. If it sent real time telemetry to the game servers, like say most MMOs with prediction code do, the game servers would have real time state information from which to attempt to determine what was going on at the moment connection was lost, and that might make it easier for the game to cut the players some slack when the connections are disrupted. Because it doesn't do that, the game cannot guess with any accuracy, and thus cannot detect when the game client is being exploited. It thus has to assume it is.
Yeah, I think that's my point, if they don't care about the progress of the match, connecting to the servers during the match is pointless, whether it is once every 5 seconds or once every 5 milliseconds. The concept of too many or too few connections is irrelevant if you don't send back useful information. So my statement is more accurately put, why bother connecting so many times if you do not send back useful information to store the state of the game so that it can be recovered.

The number of variables to establish the state of a match is significant, but ultimately finite. Each champ can only be at a finite number of locations on the screen, in a finite number of possible positions in their animations and status of their active buffs, debuffs etc etc. Lots of variables, but ultimately finite. So it's a case of not impossible, but too hard basket relative to what Kabam get out of it.

As to the issue of moving from one network to another, like say from wifi to cellular, I've seen that break session state in many other mobile games and I suspect for similar reasons. Many of these games use cloud front ends like Google Game Cloud. I don't do development with those APIs, but I suspect many of them either use or optionally use persistent HTTPS connections. Those wouldn't survive client roaming, and you'd then need some form of session recovery to deal with that change, which not all games implement.
I'm not saying I don't know the technical reasons for why it could happen, my point is that it shouldn't happen the way it does. As you point out, they can store state at the client for recovery. The point is that their development philosophy seems geared more towards preventing player exploitation than ensuring players have an uninterrupted experience and then penalizing them for when there is a problem with the game that is probably not their fault.

It is not "pointless" it is an anticheat measure. There are ways to alter the client, or even the data. You check periodically to ensure people are not doing that. This is one of the reasons why games with client servers, like Diablo have such a problem with cheating.

hungryhungrybbq

There's a second opportunity for the game to crash after the fight as well. When you're in the victory screen, the fight results can fail to upload. Which results in what DNA mentioned as going through the effort of winning the fight only to have it reversed and then penalized 50%. In AQ, it's annoying. In competitive war, it can mean the difference between winning or losing the match, or even the season. It certainly would be nice if there was another way to implement this anti-cheating mechanic. I'm just not sure if there is.

DNA3000

As you point out, they can store state at the client for recovery.

You never, ever, ever trust client state in an online game. Never ever ever. I'm retired now, but I wasn't always the fine upstanding citizen you see before you today. I know what's possible when a game makes that horrible mistake.

That's why I said it is not about sending too much, but rather sending too little. You cannot trust the client. The only way to know what's happening at the client is if the client sends real time telemetry to the server, so the *server* contains the real time state of the client implicitly.

The number of variables to establish the state of a match is significant, but ultimately finite. Each champ can only be at a finite number of locations on the screen, in a finite number of possible positions in their animations and status of their active buffs, debuffs etc etc. Lots of variables, but ultimately finite. So it's a case of not impossible, but too hard basket relative to what Kabam get out of it.

That's not how you do this. The server sends the client a randomly generated initializing PRNG seed that the client uses to initialize all of its random number generators, if any. Then the client sends the server all of the player inputs, timestamped frame-accurate. That's it. With those two pieces of information, the server can calculate the precise state of the game client, because if you think about it that's all the game client does: it takes player inputs and deterministically calculates the state of the game. If your random number generators reproduce the same values because they are initialized identically, replaying the player inputs into a copy of the game, or a server state engine that does the same thing, you should get back exactly the same results.

It is a little more complicated because you have to account for things like client-side frame drops or clock-quantum skips, but that's just a little more telemetry. The problem is that this has to be built into the way the servers process things right from the start, because it is very difficult to retrofit this sort of thing down the road. Consider how long it took Kabam to add the ability for the game servers to figure out how long a fight took for the purpose of legends run rankings. That is a strong hint about how much knowledge the game servers have about the running state of the game clients. Which is to say, almost none.

Corkscrew

You never, ever, ever trust client state in an online game. Never ever ever. I'm retired now, but I wasn't always the fine upstanding citizen you see before you today. I know what's possible when a game makes that horrible mistake.

Again it all goes back to the point that it's an anti-exploit architecture, which I understand to extent. But 99.999% of the gaming population has not way of taking advantage of corrupting the information on the client or intercepting the traffic. They still haven't eradicated bots from the arena, which I suspect affects less of the gaming population than dropouts. So the anti-exploit philosophy doesn't really seem to be doing them any favours.

That's not how you do this. The server sends the client a randomly generated initializing PRNG seed that the client uses to initialize all of its random number generators, if any. Then the client sends the server all of the player inputs, timestamped frame-accurate. That's it. With those two pieces of information, the server can calculate the precise state of the game client, because if you think about it that's all the game client does: it takes player inputs and deterministically calculates the state of the game. If your random number generators reproduce the same values because they are initialized identically, replaying the player inputs into a copy of the game, or a server state engine that does the same thing, you should get back exactly the same results.

Yes, and there are a finite number of inputs that a player can enter.
It still doesn't answer the question of why keep connecting to the server if you are doing nothing with the connections other than deciding if you're going to boot a player from a match... unless the only reason to connect is to determine if the player is somehow trying to exploit the game.

Corkscrew

I can't tell you how many times, I can check mail, search the internet and message, but the game can't connect. So it isn't my connection, it's their servers.
The bolded is not how the internet works. There are different paths to different servers, not all servers sit on the exact same node in the exact same place. If googles site can be unreachable to me, but still reachable by you, and still not be googles problem, but mine.

Ok, I take your point.
And this is only anecdotal, but if anything has a connection issue, it's almost always MCOC rather than anything else. It is the first thing that has connectivity issues whenever my connection waivers. I'm definitely not the first and most likely not the last to say that.

This doesn't make it ALWAYS an issue on their end, but their punitive measures ALWAYS make it as if it is our fault.

jdrum663

They put it there so people won't exit the game if they messed up and come back, like a redo without any loss. It's not there for normal quests though. But if you do it in normal quests in a short amount of time it will take half of your health. It's there for the both aw and aq
Also I didn't even enter the fight. So I don't understand what your point is. It was the loading screen before the fight.

Yep, it just happened to me...again. This game is borderline unplayable.