Timeframe for Memory Leak Fix

From the master post on this subject, v33.0 was intended to repair the memory leak issue (more or less).

If stuttering and frame rate drop are memory leak symptoms, I can attest the current version hasn’t solved the issue for me and others. The same bugs persist in about the same frequency and severity as before.

What is the update on this rolling fix? Is there data that suggests there has been improvement (and comments or tickets isn’t a valid metric here—many like me have just quit posting our bugs because they now feel like part of the game). If so, across what devices? If the fix is in, what then would explain a continuation of the issues noted above?

I realize this is a moving target, much like the dex/parry bugs. But it would be much appreciated if the team could comment on where they think things stand and the path forward.

Dr. Zola

Comments

DrZola

From the master post on this subject, v33.0 was intended to repair the memory leak issue (more or less).

If stuttering and frame rate drop are memory leak symptoms, I can attest the current version hasn’t solved the issue for me and others. The same bugs persist in about the same frequency and severity as before.

What is the update on this rolling fix? Is there data that suggests there has been improvement (and comments or tickets isn’t a valid metric here—many like me have just quit posting our bugs because they now feel like part of the game). If so, across what devices? If the fix is in, what then would explain a continuation of the issues noted above?

I realize this is a moving target, much like the dex/parry bugs. But it would be much appreciated if the team could comment on where they think things stand and the path forward.

Dr. Zola

To whomever disagreed above: what is your experience with the memory leak fix? Has it worked for you? Please explain.

Dr. Zola

No_oneuk

From the master post on this subject, v33.0 was intended to repair the memory leak issue (more or less).

If stuttering and frame rate drop are memory leak symptoms, I can attest the current version hasn’t solved the issue for me and others. The same bugs persist in about the same frequency and severity as before.

What is the update on this rolling fix? Is there data that suggests there has been improvement (and comments or tickets isn’t a valid metric here—many like me have just quit posting our bugs because they now feel like part of the game). If so, across what devices? If the fix is in, what then would explain a continuation of the issues noted above?

I realize this is a moving target, much like the dex/parry bugs. But it would be much appreciated if the team could comment on where they think things stand and the path forward.

Dr. Zola
To whomever disagreed above: what is your experience with the memory leak fix? Has it worked for you? Please explain.

Dr. Zola

It's worked great for me.

danielmath

Is this an android issue?

GrandOldKai

Is this an android issue?

The stuttering? Yes.

I myself have experienced it.

danielmath

Is this an android issue?
The stuttering? Yes.

I myself have experienced it.

Gotcha, I’m on iphone so I haven’t had the parry/dex/memory leak stuff luckily

Renaxqq

Cannot grind arenas without restarting game after 30 minutes of gameplay.

DrZola

If we are taking about the same thing—stuttering, frame drop—then it isn’t just an android issue. I experience it on iOS and have for most of the past few months. When I play for more than 15-20 minutes consecutively, it is pretty reliable.

Either that or I am involuntarily shaking and having brief episodes of syncope while I play.

Dr. Zola

Again, I will ask the disagrees above—provide commentary. Spamming a reaction resolves nothing. Is it resolved for you on Android, iOS, etc.

danielmath

If we are taking about the same thing—stuttering, frame drop—then it isn’t just an android issue. I experience it on iOS and have for most of the past few months. When I play for more than 15-20 minutes consecutively, it is pretty reliable.

Either that or I am involuntarily shaking and having brief episodes of syncope while I play.

Dr. Zola

Again, I will ask the disagrees above—provide commentary. Spamming a reaction resolves nothing. Is it resolved for you on Android, iOS, etc.

What device do you use? I have a 12 and an 8, neither of those have issues

DrZola

If we are taking about the same thing—stuttering, frame drop—then it isn’t just an android issue. I experience it on iOS and have for most of the past few months. When I play for more than 15-20 minutes consecutively, it is pretty reliable.

Either that or I am involuntarily shaking and having brief episodes of syncope while I play.

Dr. Zola

Again, I will ask the disagrees above—provide commentary. Spamming a reaction resolves nothing. Is it resolved for you on Android, iOS, etc.
What device do you use? I have a 12 and an 8, neither of those have issues

Mine is an Xs. Experienced it this morning in AW—jangly fight rhythm, frame rate irregular. I usually shut down everything when I play and that sometimes helps. I’ve tried with VPN on and off and that makes no difference.

Dr. Zola

danielmath

If we are taking about the same thing—stuttering, frame drop—then it isn’t just an android issue. I experience it on iOS and have for most of the past few months. When I play for more than 15-20 minutes consecutively, it is pretty reliable.

Either that or I am involuntarily shaking and having brief episodes of syncope while I play.

Dr. Zola

Again, I will ask the disagrees above—provide commentary. Spamming a reaction resolves nothing. Is it resolved for you on Android, iOS, etc.
What device do you use? I have a 12 and an 8, neither of those have issues
Mine is an Xs. Experienced it this morning in AW—jangly fight rhythm, frame rate irregular. I usually shut down everything when I play and that sometimes helps. I’ve tried with VPN on and off and that makes no difference.

Dr. Zola

Weird. You think it’s an issue between mcoc and specifically the Xs? Since the 8 is older and runs fine

FiiNCH

If we are taking about the same thing—stuttering, frame drop—then it isn’t just an android issue. I experience it on iOS and have for most of the past few months. When I play for more than 15-20 minutes consecutively, it is pretty reliable.

Either that or I am involuntarily shaking and having brief episodes of syncope while I play.

Dr. Zola

Again, I will ask the disagrees above—provide commentary. Spamming a reaction resolves nothing. Is it resolved for you on Android, iOS, etc.
What device do you use? I have a 12 and an 8, neither of those have issues
Mine is an Xs. Experienced it this morning in AW—jangly fight rhythm, frame rate irregular. I usually shut down everything when I play and that sometimes helps. I’ve tried with VPN on and off and that makes no difference.

Dr. Zola

I play on a 12 pro, and I don’t suffer from what you’ve described (thankfully!).

I’ve noticed some improvement in parry over the last few weeks, but I am still struggling with the AI recovery speed. I get clipped far more often than I ever used to.

Riptide

Is this an android issue?
The stuttering? Yes.

I myself have experienced it.
Gotcha, I’m on iphone so I haven’t had the parry/dex/memory leak stuff luckily

I’m on iphone too and have on and off issues with parry, dex, and lag

No_oneuk

I'm on an XS also with zero issues since about a month now

mattress

I'm on Android and this month feels the worst yet as far as lag/freezing. Even dex/parry are way more noticeable than they were the last few months

AverageDesi

I've tried on a 11 pro and it's smooth AF. Literally no problems

The_Sentry06

My new Samsung A22 is quite smooth.

Zeezoos

I use a 1st gen iPad Pro and experience regular lag and stuttering during fights. I don’t play as much as I used to but it seems to be worse rather than better this month,

DrZola

@danielmath @AverageDesi @No_oneuk @Riptide

This is helpful…I’m running the last iOS prior to 15 on WiFi. Do you get better gameplay via data or WiFi? Current iOS 15 or not? Any other suggestions?

Genuinely wondering what it is for me. Content creator videos always seem far cleaner and smoother than anything I get.

Thanks in advance.

Dr. Zola

KnightZero

I'm on Android. Haven't had any improvement with stuttering and lag issues. Just had it happen in war today, took a special to the face since the game just froze for a second.
Many allymates are facing the same.

DrZola

If we are taking about the same thing—stuttering, frame drop—then it isn’t just an android issue. I experience it on iOS and have for most of the past few months. When I play for more than 15-20 minutes consecutively, it is pretty reliable.

Either that or I am involuntarily shaking and having brief episodes of syncope while I play.

Dr. Zola

Again, I will ask the disagrees above—provide commentary. Spamming a reaction resolves nothing. Is it resolved for you on Android, iOS, etc.
What device do you use? I have a 12 and an 8, neither of those have issues
Mine is an Xs. Experienced it this morning in AW—jangly fight rhythm, frame rate irregular. I usually shut down everything when I play and that sometimes helps. I’ve tried with VPN on and off and that makes no difference.

Dr. Zola
Weird. You think it’s an issue between mcoc and specifically the Xs? Since the 8 is older and runs fine

Possible. I haven’t been able to pinpoint it. Stutter is the easiest term for it, but it’s like frames just get dropped at certain points—run out, near parry point. I’ve shared videos with ally mates, a few of whom experience it as well, but no one really has a solution. I would think it was specific to my device (damage?) if others didn’t see it also.

Dr. Zola

danielmath

@danielmath @AverageDesi @No_oneuk @Riptide

This is helpful…I’m running the last iOS prior to 15 on WiFi. Do you get better gameplay via data or WiFi? Current iOS 15 or not? Any other suggestions?

Genuinely wondering what it is for me. Content creator videos always seem far cleaner and smoother than anything I get.

Thanks in advance.

Dr. Zola

I always run current ios. I do both wifi and data with my 12, only wifi on my 8 since it doesn’t have data

Riptide

@danielmath @AverageDesi @No_oneuk @Riptide

This is helpful…I’m running the last iOS prior to 15 on WiFi. Do you get better gameplay via data or WiFi? Current iOS 15 or not? Any other suggestions?

Genuinely wondering what it is for me. Content creator videos always seem far cleaner and smoother than anything I get.

Thanks in advance.

Dr. Zola

I’m running iOS 14.8

Don’t have data

Ancient iphone, but I’ve never had problems until the whole thing started.

It tends to come and go with me. There’ll be a day of parry not working, a break, then dex will stop working.

Crine60

Still having issues on Android with ignored inputs, wrong actions for the inputs, short freezing which make me get hit with combos or specials, infinite loading has started back up in last aq and some regular quests this week when it had been fine for months now, longer load times and maybe some other stuff I am forgetting right now.

I also have for the most part stopped posting about it because they either don't seem to be fixing the issues, aren't responding to posts or are still actively deleting posts.

Crine60

I think this thread isn't bumping to the top when new comments are made also. Not 100% sure but think my last comment didn't move it so testing with this one.

Crine60

Yep, new comment didn't bump the thread up and the comment count didn't increase. Shady move, but typical.

unknown

This content has been removed.

DNA3000

If stuttering and frame rate drop are memory leak symptoms

They can be, but they are not the signature symptoms. The signature symptom was game client crashes after significant sustained activity. On many platforms this was accompanied by moments when the game appeared to studder or freeze when it was attempting to load or swap resources in increasingly constrained memory pools. Some players might have only seen these symptoms if they only played for medium bursts of time: they would get to the point where the studders happened but didn't play long enough to see the crashes. Also, the behavior could have been different on Android than iOS due to differences in the memory management systems.

As far as I can tell, as someone who grinds arena a lot, crashes are down substantially on iOS. Although I haven't been tracking hard data since the first patch, anecdotally I can say that it takes about twice as much "activity" to induce a crash as before. So I know the memory leak(s) have been mitigated to some extent.

Whether the changes have improved things on every platform, I can't say. But they have consistently done so for me (currently on iPhone 11 and current generation iPad Pro).

AverageDesi

This is helpful…I’m running the last iOS prior to 15 on WiFi. Do you get better gameplay via data or WiFi? Current iOS 15 or not? Any other suggestions?

Genuinely wondering what it is for me. Content creator videos always seem far cleaner and smoother than anything I get.

Thanks in advance.

Dr. Zola

Always wifi. Never seen a difference even when using data. Not iOS 15

DNA3000

If we are taking about the same thing—stuttering, frame drop—then it isn’t just an android issue. I experience it on iOS and have for most of the past few months. When I play for more than 15-20 minutes consecutively, it is pretty reliable.

Either that or I am involuntarily shaking and having brief episodes of syncope while I play.

Dr. Zola

Again, I will ask the disagrees above—provide commentary. Spamming a reaction resolves nothing. Is it resolved for you on Android, iOS, etc.

As an experiment, try playing with all iOS push notifications turned off. I have had many off and on bouts of background push causing performance issues on iOS. They seem to come and go for reasons I have never been able to correlate to anything in particular, but they do happen to me.

The other possibility that comes to mind is thermal throttling. Try playing with the case off (if you use a case) and see if a less insulated phone helps. The fact that the problem seems to occur after longer sessions of play makes me suspect thermal throttling as a potential possibility. Why it happens to some people and not others, even people who play on the same model iPhone, is probably just one of those funky combinations of what software they are running and the particulars of their phone's manufacture. My previous iPhone X used to heat to ridiculous levels that my iPhone 8 never did for some reason, and this then went away with my 11.

DrZola

If we are taking about the same thing—stuttering, frame drop—then it isn’t just an android issue. I experience it on iOS and have for most of the past few months. When I play for more than 15-20 minutes consecutively, it is pretty reliable.

Either that or I am involuntarily shaking and having brief episodes of syncope while I play.

Dr. Zola

Again, I will ask the disagrees above—provide commentary. Spamming a reaction resolves nothing. Is it resolved for you on Android, iOS, etc.
As an experiment, try playing with all iOS push notifications turned off. I have had many off and on bouts of background push causing performance issues on iOS. They seem to come and go for reasons I have never been able to correlate to anything in particular, but they do happen to me.

The other possibility that comes to mind is thermal throttling. Try playing with the case off (if you use a case) and see if a less insulated phone helps. The fact that the problem seems to occur after longer sessions of play makes me suspect thermal throttling as a potential possibility. Why it happens to some people and not others, even people who play on the same model iPhone, is probably just one of those funky combinations of what software they are running and the particulars of their phone's manufacture. My previous iPhone X used to heat to ridiculous levels that my iPhone 8 never did for some reason, and this then went away with my 11.

This is terrific—will try both suggestions. It’s very frustrating—I realize iOS isn’t the target for the memory leak patches, but it would be nice to get reliable frame rendering on my device.

I’ve bumped up to 15.1, so let’s see if that helps as well.

Thanks to everyone who provided constructive input.

Dr. Zola