Input System Update - Sept 2021: Discussion Thread

Hey Summoners,

It’s been a little while since we’ve communicated on the ongoing Control issues, and today we wanted to give you all a different kind of post, where we’ll explore the cause of the issue, what it entails, and the progress we’ve made on our journey so far in addressing the inconsistencies and changes in control timing.

We also want to take a moment to better outline what the issue actually is, as we know there’s some confusion surrounding the exact symptoms of this issue. We’ve seen players reporting issues such as framerate drops or lag that are not related to this issue, and are being addressed separately with some fixes coming your way soon.

We also want to give you more insight into why this process is taking some time to address, why it’s difficult to address issues based on “feel”, and introduce you to a new member of our team!

You can read the post here, and then come back to this thread to discuss!

Comments

unknown

This content has been removed.

ccrider474

My favourite bit is unity had a bug, kabam wrote game to that bug. I can't stop laughing thinking they violated the tos and need a 14 day ban.

Seriously though, I appreciate the in-depth detail on this.

Hudsonman

@Kabam Miike Very insightful and appreciate the transparency. Based on my personal experience and that of my alliance we all spend way more units on solo content than we do on AQ/AW. This is very common in every alliance i have been in and the various line chats i am in. It is therefore very confusing to me that Kabam has decided they will issue more resources for an area of the game where not many resources are used often instead of an area of the game resources are frequently used. As far as my experience and those I interact with greater than 90% of the units we use on revives/potions are for solo content and less than 10% is on AW/AQ content. Yet 80%(ballpark) of the parry/dex bug compensation we receive is for AQ/AW. It doesn't make sense to me or those I have interacted with. Clarification on the reasoning for this decision would be very helpful.

BitterSteel

is it safe to say android players have been a fake alarm till now and theyre not getting any more compensations? (im on android too btw)
I wouldn't say that. One of the reasons we wanted to make this post is so that we can draw a line on what is and isn't this particular issue because some Players were confusing other issues (like lag and stuttering) for it as well, and we want to make sure we can address that stuff separately and ensure people continue to report other issues without thinking they're one in the same.
So correct me if I’m reading it wrong, but you guys believe that the parry issues caused by the engine update are IOS specific, but the update to the lagging and stuttering in 32.3 and 33.0 *should* fix most issues for android players?
I think they mean for everyone both Android and IOS.

Sure, but I’m talking specifically for parry and dex. From the way it’s written, it seems to be implying that any parry or dex issue an android player experienced will be from the stuttering and lagging that is going to be fixed, ergo, after 32.3 and 33.0 android players won’t experience the parry or dex bug but Apple players will until it’s fixed in early 2022.

Chobbly

Really informative post, and transparency like this is to be applauded. Credit where it's due.

Plus, Tapsalot will surely deserve a profile pic at the end of this...

Eternity0

I can assure you good sir Android phones are having dex parry issues as well of course maybe not as dominant as ios i do understand that though! ( also Sir tapsalot Amazing name 😅)

SCZ

Any chance this new robot can do arena?

Demonzfyre

is it safe to say android players have been a fake alarm till now and theyre not getting any more compensations? (im on android too btw)
I wouldn't say that. One of the reasons we wanted to make this post is so that we can draw a line on what is and isn't this particular issue because some Players were confusing other issues (like lag and stuttering) for it as well, and we want to make sure we can address that stuff separately and ensure people continue to report other issues without thinking they're one in the same.
So correct me if I’m reading it wrong, but you guys believe that the parry issues caused by the engine update are IOS specific, but the update to the lagging and stuttering in 32.3 and 33.0 *should* fix most issues for android players?
I think they mean for everyone both Android and IOS.
Sure, but I’m talking specifically for parry and dex. From the way it’s written, it seems to be implying that any parry or dex issue an android player experienced will be from the stuttering and lagging that is going to be fixed, ergo, after 32.3 and 33.0 android players won’t experience the parry or dex bug but Apple players will until it’s fixed in early 2022.

I read it as based on their beta test, Android wasn't having the issues. Again, I could be misreading it. There very well could be people having it but might not have been in the beta.

WhoDaPoo

Thanks to Kabam Miike for sharing this, and to the eng team that is putting in the hard work to get this to be objective and not subjective as the post highlighted.

As an android user, I can appreciate the call out of lag/stutter/memory leak bug. I have parry/dex issues but they aren't consistent. Given the hype of the usual control issue, I too thought it lumped in there, but you're call out to people with longs sessions and arena hit it on the nose.

Question to the Kabam eng team though, until the memory leak is fixed, what would they define as a window for a "long game session" so that I can know when to restart the game. If someone is grinding arena, or grinding monthly eq, would it be better to restart every 30 min? Once an hour? Does logging out and back in help or a full game restart better?

Thanks and please do keep us updated with this level of detail going forward. I imagine many of us are tech savvy now-a-days and so this level of transparency is really appreciated. Also as a former UX/Community researcher, please pass on to your teams that after having read the post I could feel myself giving it another 1-2 months of tolerating bugs... where as I was maybe 2-3 weeks away from quitting last night.

Keep up the good work!

Amms90

Hey Summoners,

It’s been a little while since we’ve communicated on the ongoing Control issues, and today we wanted to give you all a different kind of post, where we’ll explore the cause of the issue, what it entails, and the progress we’ve made on our journey so far in addressing the inconsistencies and changes in control timing.

We also want to take a moment to better outline what the issue actually is, as we know there’s some confusion surrounding the exact symptoms of this issue. We’ve seen players reporting issues such as framerate drops or lag that are not related to this issue, and are being addressed separately with some fixes coming your way soon.

We also want to give you more insight into why this process is taking some time to address, why it’s difficult to address issues based on “feel”, and introduce you to a new member of our team!

You can read the post here, and then come back to this thread to discuss!

Hello I just want to point out that I am an android user and I definitely have an issue with parry and dex. It's not consistent, it's not each and every fight, but it is there. It may come once every 100 fights (I grind the arena daily) or it can also come twice in a row as I enter aq. I don't understand a single thing about coding and game engine, I'm just saying you should take a better look into android interactions as well. Because if all you're working on is fixing the timing for apple devices, then I may never be able to rely on parry and dex as well as before. I mean... as far as arena goes, if I fail 2 parries in a row and get hit by 2-3 combos, I still survive and I have a way to come back. But when it comes to endgame content or even more importantly aw... I mean what am I supposed to do exactly? If I get comboes 2-3 times I may just die without being able to do anything. And same goes with dex issue. I fail to dex a special, I just die. This is an important issue to address. It's not just ios, it's android too. I can safely say that when the issue first popped out all my alliance mates playing on ios were affected while android users (myself included) weren't noticing any issues. I mean the difference was clear: ios players were saying the game was unplayable while us android players were fine. Ever since the first patch to fix the issue, I started noticing that sometimes my parry window was off. And the same goes for other android users. I believe that maybe the fix that was pushed through had an effect on all devices. I can't see another possible explanation. I play the game several hours a day and I can safely say that I can go on for hours without failing a parry but then again I know that at some point I will touch the screen to parry with the same timing as ever, as I do countless times everyday, and the parry will indeed fail. Knowing this, I've tried to adapt my gameplay to rely less heavily on parry and more on intercepting, but that too proves risky and doesn't necessarily pay off as much as I'd like to. Also, there are abilities and node interactions that pretty much force you to parry (i.e. playing against evade or miss champions without a proper counter, nodes such as icarus and flux dispersal...). As for dexing, the timing is occasionally off. This summer I had my first run in the abyss. I remember the howard the duck fight was long and I can't dex his sp2. So I was just always dexing his sp1, pushing him to sp1 and baiting. Always. I baited and dexed dunno how many of his sp1. But sometimes I would just stand there as if I wasn't dexing. And get hit in the face. This with howard the duck sp1 also happened a few times in aq or eq. I mean it's really easy to dodge but sometimes I swipe and I just stand there and get hit.

Also something else I want to report is that from my testing in the last months since the issue appeared I find that most of the failed parries are on the opponent's medium dash. I somehow have less troubles to parry a light attack when I'm close to the opponent. This is because the moment he moves I just tap to parry and it works. On medium dashes, sometimes my input is late and sometimes it's early. So I either get caught off guard and take a combo, or I get hit on the block. Either way fighting champs that require to parry their medium has proved more troublesome. On my old phone I had a lag in my inputs and the issue was different. In fact I couldn't parry a light, since my input wouldn't come in time and I'd get hit. Instead, I'd be able to parry a medium dash by anticipating it. This was a matter of lag in my control inputs. When I bought a new phone I had no troubles anymore. For example I couldn't properly use captain marvel movie on my old device... doing 12-13 parries to charge her was a nightmare. With the new phone I used her a lot and I came to love her. Now, since the issue came out, I have her sitting on the bench. I ranked up other champs that rely less on parry for the sake of my items stash and my units stash.

All this to say that android users are also suffering an issue with parry and dex. It may be less frequent than with ios, I don't know... but I don't want to think that Kabam will only work towards fixing ios version of the game. All this time I've been hopeful that the next update the issue would be resolved. And now I'm reading that you're not even convinced there's an issue on android to begin with? That's really horrible to find out... Basically I'll have to spend more than others to do endgame content and I won't be reliable in aq/aw because anytime I could just miss a parry and die? And what about an alliance then? Should there be a purge of android users if you want to push? Because only ios users will be able to rely on their inputs? This is not good for the health of the community and the game

unknown

This content has been removed.

Wiredawg1

@Kabam Miike one thing that has not been addressed by you guys or asked is this. Is this issue going to effect release date of book 2 act 1 chapter 3 which was said to be released next month or the next back issue which was set to be released in November…would like an update on that mainly next months one as there will be a lot of players specially f2p players starting to farm potions revives and energy. And not knowing does effect that cause of time in overflow

DNA3000

is it safe to say android players have been a fake alarm till now and theyre not getting any more compensations? (im on android too btw)
I wouldn't say that. One of the reasons we wanted to make this post is so that we can draw a line on what is and isn't this particular issue because some Players were confusing other issues (like lag and stuttering) for it as well, and we want to make sure we can address that stuff separately and ensure people continue to report other issues without thinking they're one in the same.
So correct me if I’m reading it wrong, but you guys believe that the parry issues caused by the engine update are IOS specific, but the update to the lagging and stuttering in 32.3 and 33.0 *should* fix most issues for android players?
I think they mean for everyone both Android and IOS.
Sure, but I’m talking specifically for parry and dex. From the way it’s written, it seems to be implying that any parry or dex issue an android player experienced will be from the stuttering and lagging that is going to be fixed, ergo, after 32.3 and 33.0 android players won’t experience the parry or dex bug but Apple players will until it’s fixed in early 2022.
I read it as based on their beta test, Android wasn't having the issues. Again, I could be misreading it. There very well could be people having it but might not have been in the beta.

That's not exactly what they were saying. What they were saying was that they had identified a potential issue (the Unity input system change) on iOS, and decided to test what the impact of that change was. But what they discovered was that in blinded testing with a control build of the game, players were just as likely to say the beta build improved matters whether they actually got the updated build or not. This told them that the perception of the problem was so subtle it was strongly susceptible to placebo effects. Just telling players the game got better convinced many that the game got better. The placebo effect was the dominant effect, not build changes.

If this can happen in iOS, the reverse can also be happening on Android. Just telling people there's a problem, or them hearing about a problem, can induce many players to start experiencing problems. So there's no way to know what the precise problem is or how many players it affects just from anecdotes. I'm sure most of the players experiencing issues on both iOS and Android sincerely perceive issues, but their testing suggests that a statistically significant number of those people are not being affected by a technical issue: they are being affected by psychological influences.

That doesn't prove there is no problem on Android. What it means is the situation is sufficiently obscured by this kind of situation that the best that Kabam can do is attack the problems they can identify first, and see how the situation changes, and if problems persist, attack them separately without the other problems clouding the picture.

unknown

This content has been removed.

DNA3000

Thanks for the candor and free sharing of real information. Good progress there, indeed.

So we all agree the game was broken overnight and months later basic inputs like striking, dexing, and blocking still don’t work (“feel”) like they did for the last 5 years prior. In a game where content is tuned so high (SOP, Act 7, High Tier War, AQ, etc) that milliseconds matter, parry or die, we players cannot possibly control or account for this!

Actually, part of the problem is many players can. A lot of people claim to not experience any issues whatsoever, even on iOS. How is this possible?

If you're player A, you never saw a problem. If your own personal timing for Parry was like Player A, the changes did not affect you at all. But if your timing was like Player B, Parry broke for you.

Now if Player B could learn to Parry like Player A, then they could "fix" the problem on their own. So some players saw a problem, adjusted their timing, and now their reflexes are "programmed" with the new offsets and the problem disappears. In fact, there are almost certainly many players who did this unconsciously, and thought the problem was no big deal.

Because the timing shifted by small amounts, and because players are not robots and do not execute parries and intercepts in precisely the same way every time, when the timing changes by one animation frame that will *sometimes* affect a player and sometimes not, because the game might be off in the same way every time, but the player doesn't do the same thing every time. So some players would be never affected, some would always be affects, and many would be intermittently affected, even though they perceive they are doing the same thing every time.

Slightly tangentially related. I'm guessing some people are wondering why can't Kabam just make the game like it was before. And when I look at those charts, something jumps out at me immediately. MCOC is an intrinsically 30fps game. That means a single frame is about 33ms. Those offsets are not whole multiples of 33ms. In other words, and this gets a little bit technical, if MCOC used single frame quantum - if everything happened at frame time boundaries and not in the middle of frames - all timestamps for all activity visible or otherwise would fall on whole multiples of 1/30th of a second, plus or minus some sync round off. They don't. That means it is not a trivial manner to change MCOC back to the behavior it exhibited before, because MCOC cannot simply "round off" all action clocks to specific frames. Instead, the timing of the game depends on dynamic engine states that don't align with the visible animation clock, which cannot simply be arbitrarily set.

BigPoppaCBONE

is it safe to say android players have been a fake alarm till now and theyre not getting any more compensations? (im on android too btw)
I wouldn't say that. One of the reasons we wanted to make this post is so that we can draw a line on what is and isn't this particular issue because some Players were confusing other issues (like lag and stuttering) for it as well, and we want to make sure we can address that stuff separately and ensure people continue to report other issues without thinking they're one in the same.
So correct me if I’m reading it wrong, but you guys believe that the parry issues caused by the engine update are IOS specific, but the update to the lagging and stuttering in 32.3 and 33.0 *should* fix most issues for android players?
I think they mean for everyone both Android and IOS.
Sure, but I’m talking specifically for parry and dex. From the way it’s written, it seems to be implying that any parry or dex issue an android player experienced will be from the stuttering and lagging that is going to be fixed, ergo, after 32.3 and 33.0 android players won’t experience the parry or dex bug but Apple players will until it’s fixed in early 2022.
I read it as based on their beta test, Android wasn't having the issues. Again, I could be misreading it. There very well could be people having it but might not have been in the beta.
That's not exactly what they were saying. What they were saying was that they had identified a potential issue (the Unity input system change) on iOS, and decided to test what the impact of that change was. But what they discovered was that in blinded testing with a control build of the game, players were just as likely to say the beta build improved matters whether they actually got the updated build or not. This told them that the perception of the problem was so subtle it was strongly susceptible to placebo effects. Just telling players the game got better convinced many that the game got better. The placebo effect was the dominant effect, not build changes.

If this can happen in iOS, the reverse can also be happening on Android. Just telling people there's a problem, or them hearing about a problem, can induce many players to start experiencing problems. So there's no way to know what the precise problem is or how many players it affects just from anecdotes. I'm sure most of the players experiencing issues on both iOS and Android sincerely perceive issues, but their testing suggests that a statistically significant number of those people are not being affected by a technical issue: they are being affected by psychological influences.

That doesn't prove there is no problem on Android. What it means is the situation is sufficiently obscured by this kind of situation that the best that Kabam can do is attack the problems they can identify first, and see how the situation changes, and if problems persist, attack them separately without the other problems clouding the picture.

Complicated by the problems being intermittent on Android seemingly forever with each update. From their description, iOS players have been hitting from a pitching machine (slight change == end of days) while Android has been taking sliders from a kid all hopped up on pop rocks and Jolt (it's a good day when you don't get hit). When iOS players were saying the window was different, many Android players said, "Yeah, that's how it is. You get used to it. Even once you get used to the timing, you'll take the occasional 'parry' straight to the face."

@Kabam Miike , what does this mean for the future of the game at 60 - 120 fps if iOS was supposed to be locked at 30 and wasn't (many iOS players would have sworn on their first-born that they ran at 60) and Android could run 120 smoothly and then the 1/2 frame rate bug popped up.

Malreck04

I mean, more solo compensation is always welcome

Jestuh

I appreciate the update on the issue and the long explanation, but I wanted to suggest something else be added to help diagnose issues since “feel” wasn’t adequate.

Some devices, not iPhones afaik, can show inputs on screen and record this with your screen caps and vids.

In the bugs forum, I’m always asked to post a video of what happened but without my inputs that information isn’t very useful (especially when it just shows me not blocking).

I also anted to echo what others have said, while we appreciate the compensation for aq and war, eq and content exploration is taking just as big a hit as both aq/aw.

The compensation was ok (I mean pulling a 6s xforce Deadpool didn’t exactly give me the warm and fuzzies), but we need much better single player progression type compensation. My aq/aw stuff is just expiring and I’m selling it for lousy gold.

I know you said you’ll address that at some point. I just wanted to raise the issue again. There are lots of people in my alliance frustrated by the bugs but also frustrated by compensation that doesn’t address our issues and just goes to waste.

Daddrieda

Finally I might be able to play the game on my iPhone 6. It still runs ok with it and would Ben greater if the crashing and dropped frame rate could go away. I strongly believe a setting that allow the user to change the resolution would be another side-to-go to improve it further. After all we are the only one that know our own devices best.

Priyabrata

Hey Summoners,

It’s been a little while since we’ve communicated on the ongoing Control issues, and today we wanted to give you all a different kind of post, where we’ll explore the cause of the issue, what it entails, and the progress we’ve made on our journey so far in addressing the inconsistencies and changes in control timing.

We also want to take a moment to better outline what the issue actually is, as we know there’s some confusion surrounding the exact symptoms of this issue. We’ve seen players reporting issues such as framerate drops or lag that are not related to this issue, and are being addressed separately with some fixes coming your way soon.

We also want to give you more insight into why this process is taking some time to address, why it’s difficult to address issues based on “feel”, and introduce you to a new member of our team!

You can read the post here, and then come back to this thread to discuss!

Love the new team member you've got there..and glad he's coming in clutch

Also thank you for the transparency and also for the upcoming fixes for android hope everything works out for everyone

Nix2222

Very informative and much appreciated!

unknown

This content has been removed.

The_Sentry06

Excellent post! Thank you for the info.

Wiredawg1

While I glad kabam is sending comp regarding aq aw and solo story. Seems you’re forgetting another aspect of game this effects also and has been no comp on that or even addressed and that is arena. People aren’t doing arena cause of the issue either combined with constant game crashes. I know I haven’t done any arena since this has started. Are you going to comp that also?

unknown

This content has been removed.

GroundedWisdom

I should consider inventing Nodsalot for my Zoom meetings. Lol.

BraderSaw

Yes I finally might be able played that game after that issues fixed soon.

benshb

Such an awesome post. Though it's very technical and everything (like the Namor/Cull/EbonyMaw Nerf post back then) I think more player would totally read these kind of posts, and it definitely help in the transparency question.
Kudos!

P.M.: @Kabam Miike will this affect the release of 7.3 and variant 8? They are supposed to come in oct/Nov?

LordPSN

1 thing I didn't like is how the original post intended that the issue is IOS specific only.
This is wrong. I am facing the same issue on my android phone and nothing is mentioned in the OG post about android.

The_Sentry06

1 thing I didn't like is how the original post intended that the issue is IOS specific only.
This is wrong. I am facing the same issue on my android phone and nothing is mentioned in the OG post about android.

They literally mention that they believe that Android issues are caused by a memeory leak bug or something and they are rolling out two fixes for it in the subsequent updates.