This whole thing makes me wonder if all of the timing issues we see are due to issues polling the server constantly.
Combat doesn't require talking to the server at all. In fact, this is the cause of a completely different problem. The game client can completely lose connectivity with the game servers and yet if you are in the middle of a fight the game client will keep humming along for a while trying to reestablish contact, with your fight continuing to be executed locally on your device.
If you've ever been in a Battlegrounds match where you fight a defender and defeat it, only to have the game either crash completely or jump out of the fight, and when you return to the match your fight appears to have restarted, but with less time - that's a consequence of this fact. What happened was the BG match fight started on your device but contact with the BG instance server was lost, so the game servers were not informed of the fact that the fight started on your device. So the game servers believe you are still in the middle of loading the fight. When your game client finally crashes or you defeat the defender and end the fight, your game client cannot continue on and resets. It is at that point that the game server is informed you've entered the fight and instructs your phone to start the fight from the beginning, only with just a few seconds left on the clock (because the fight clock has been running all this time).
In the old days, I used to see this behavior when I would be playing the game and walk into an elevator where I would completely lose signal. The fight would continue on my device so long as the outage did not last too long.
This all makes sense, especially with the scenario you have shown. But isn't there server connections going on behind the scenes during a fight? Because yes I have seen times where I would get an internet interruption and it would allow me to continue on for a bit (thanks phone for trying to connect to the stupid xfinity router instead of the much better one 3 feet away) but eventually the fight would crash and I would get the reconnect button. Which would suggest to me that there is still connecting going on even if it isn't required for the fight.
It was just interesting to me that 2 fights that obviously were not synced to the server correctly went so smoothly. Anecdotal evidence at best I know. Maybe I should test killing my wifi during BG matches next time I go up a tier and losses don't matter.
During a normal fight, the game periodically tries to make sure there is an actual connection to the game servers. If those messages fail to send or be acknowledged, eventually the game client gives up and assumes the game client is borked, and either crashes or disconnects, terminating the fight. This can take a while though: in my experience ten to twenty seconds or more.
Battlegrounds seems to require something more, probably additional resources dedicated to the BG matches, but the game client does not adequately check for those continuously. So it is possible for a game client to lose sync with the BG resources but still be theoretically connected to "the game" and this allows players to fight in a BG match for an extended amount of time with the game client happily continuing to allow the fight to continue, when the player is actually doomed by the fact that the game client has been desynced or dropped from the BG servers, so that fight is a lost cause.
@DNA3000 I will ask this: are you absolutely sure about that?
Is there literally nothing being communicated between device and server during a fight?
I ask this not because I have any reason to doubt your assertion, but I would think there has to be some continual connection between device and server during a fight. Is there non-fight data being shared during a fight?
Dr. Zola
There are keep alive messages being sent back and forth, and some status messages. However, the actual amount of live telemetry being sent back and forth in real time is - or at least was when I last looked - negligible. Furthermore, none of it seems to affect the fight, as experiments in the past have shown that when this traffic is completely blocked a fight in the game will not pause or "rubberband" like it does in games where the game client and the game servers must be kept in sync (most MMOs work this way).
If this has changed recently, I would not be aware of this, as this is something I don't specifically go looking for unless I have a specific need to do so. I'm trying to stay retired from my criminal past days of applied reverse engineering experimentation. And it is always possible this could change in the future, as live telemetry would be one of the things I would implement to deal with cheaters in the game for a variety of reasons.
Interesting. But it could affect the fight, no? And if a game company were trying to catch cheaters, there might be more than nominal interaction during a fight?
It was just interesting to me that 2 fights that obviously were not synced to the server correctly went so smoothly. Anecdotal evidence at best I know. Maybe I should test killing my wifi during BG matches next time I go up a tier and losses don't matter.
To address this separately, this might be just a coincidence, or it might be because when connectivity is actually working, the game client has to spend a small amount of resources actually doing the work of maintaining that connection. When the connection is lost, ironically the game client can spend all of its time running the game, because the necessary but time consuming background task of maintaining game server contact isn't happening anymore.
There's also the third option: some third factor is simultaneously causing your game client to lose connectivity to the BG servers, and also preventing your device from seeing other things. The collective impact of your device simultaneously not having to process a number of background messages including MCOC is making the game ironically run smoother.
@DNA3000 I will ask this: are you absolutely sure about that?
Is there literally nothing being communicated between device and server during a fight?
I ask this not because I have any reason to doubt your assertion, but I would think there has to be some continual connection between device and server during a fight. Is there non-fight data being shared during a fight?
Dr. Zola
There are keep alive messages being sent back and forth, and some status messages. However, the actual amount of live telemetry being sent back and forth in real time is - or at least was when I last looked - negligible. Furthermore, none of it seems to affect the fight, as experiments in the past have shown that when this traffic is completely blocked a fight in the game will not pause or "rubberband" like it does in games where the game client and the game servers must be kept in sync (most MMOs work this way).
If this has changed recently, I would not be aware of this, as this is something I don't specifically go looking for unless I have a specific need to do so. I'm trying to stay retired from my criminal past days of applied reverse engineering experimentation. And it is always possible this could change in the future, as live telemetry would be one of the things I would implement to deal with cheaters in the game for a variety of reasons.
Interesting. But it could affect the fight, no? And if a game company were trying to catch cheaters, there might be more than nominal interaction during a fight?
Dr. Zola
Yes. I haven't looked, because then I would be tempted to find out what was going on. And I probably will now, just to see if things have changed once I have some time, so thanks Doc, you'll be getting a bill for my bail.
This post is so full of it. And I’ll tell you why I calling kabam out as liars. And great example as was done just this month. Last week as a matter of fact
When a bug is in game that benefits players. (The boss hack in incursions that was higher) it gets fixed nerfed with in matter of hours or days. These bugs are not within game for longer then 2-3 days max
Bugs that negatively effect players or help kabam with making more money. These bugs takes weeks, months or as incase of input issues years to fix. Kabam response is oh we can’t duplicate it. We need more info. That line is a bunch of you know what. It shows that their developers and employees don’t play game. If they freaking did it wouldn’t take em months to find a duplicate bugs.
This has actually been debunked many times in the past. Kabam fixes bugs depending on a variety of factors but this is not one of them. The problem is when a "player beneficial" bug *isn't* fixed immediately, players don't credit Kabam for dragging their feet on that bug. Instead, they are blamed for fixing something that never should have been fixed.
In other words, Kabam fixes all "player beneficial" bugs at different times. When it is fast, they are accused of fixing them fast because it benefitted the player. If they take long to fix it, players claim it isn't even a bug.
The only element of truth to this has to do with exploits. By definition, all exploits are player benefiting bugs, because who would exploit the game against their own interests? Economically material exploits have the highest priority to fix, because they can do the most damage. This is seen as Kabam focusing on player beneficial bugs, when they are actually focused on the highest game damaging bugs.
There are many instances of Kabam addressing bugs in content that would otherwise deprive players of rewards, and they often do so very quickly. Conversely, when they address bugs that allow unlimited farming, it can take them years to address those because they typically are not a high priority bug to fix. But do players say that Kabam allowed the bug to persist for a long time against their own economic interests? No: they are accused of fixing a bug that didn't need to be fixed because the fact that it had been around for a long time is supposed proof it isn't a bug that needed to be addressed at all.
This is 100% a perception problem, not an actual bias when it comes to addressing bugs.
Also before you try to come back at me which I know you will cause that way you are and always do on every post. Keep in mind this
All updates have to be given to platforms 3 months in advanced. Kabam has 3 months from time they give the update to apple and google to find bugs. Now why don’t they actually use the ccp for what it was originally intended for which was to test champs content and to find bugs not use it as a marketing arm of their company
I'm not sure why you believe this to be true, but it is not. Any Apple developer can tell you this: the typical approval time for app updates is within 72 hours, often sooner (cf: Submitting for Review). Depending on the complexity of the update and the workload at Apple, I've seen updates take a week to get approved. I have never heard of an MCOC update or any other app update take three months to be approved and released to the App Store servers.
As to the CCP, the CCP is given access to the test server and to some degree the developers. However they are not paid employees of Kabam and how they choose to use those resources is not under the direct control of Kabam. Kabam doesn't "use" the CCP in any way. The CCP program is a collaboration between the content creators that would be creating content for the game anyway (which is why in general content creators must meet certain content creation prerequisites to join the program: they can't join unless they are already substantial content creators in their own right). The presumption is that granting this access will improve their ability to make the content they want to make, which will be automatically mutually beneficial.
There are content creators that are highly critical of Kabam and MCOC, at least at times. Provided they are not abusive or straight up lie about stuff, I have never seen a content creator restrained from being critical. And trying to make the CCP content creators into a "marketing arm" would backfire, as content creator audiences follow content creators for their authentic perspectives, whether that is good or bad, and would quickly tell if they were shilling against their normal positions (they get accused of doing that even when a potato bug with two active brain cells can tell they aren't, so they wouldn't get away with doing it deliberately).
Wrong. As it has been proven by others I know. New updates have to be given 3 months out. And of course the old debunk ****. As usual a load of you know what as usual ****
This post is so full of it. And I’ll tell you why I calling kabam out as liars. And great example as was done just this month. Last week as a matter of fact
When a bug is in game that benefits players. (The boss hack in incursions that was higher) it gets fixed nerfed with in matter of hours or days. These bugs are not within game for longer then 2-3 days max
Bugs that negatively effect players or help kabam with making more money. These bugs takes weeks, months or as incase of input issues years to fix. Kabam response is oh we can’t duplicate it. We need more info. That line is a bunch of you know what. It shows that their developers and employees don’t play game. If they freaking did it wouldn’t take em months to find a duplicate bugs.
This has actually been debunked many times in the past. Kabam fixes bugs depending on a variety of factors but this is not one of them. The problem is when a "player beneficial" bug *isn't* fixed immediately, players don't credit Kabam for dragging their feet on that bug. Instead, they are blamed for fixing something that never should have been fixed.
In other words, Kabam fixes all "player beneficial" bugs at different times. When it is fast, they are accused of fixing them fast because it benefitted the player. If they take long to fix it, players claim it isn't even a bug.
The only element of truth to this has to do with exploits. By definition, all exploits are player benefiting bugs, because who would exploit the game against their own interests? Economically material exploits have the highest priority to fix, because they can do the most damage. This is seen as Kabam focusing on player beneficial bugs, when they are actually focused on the highest game damaging bugs.
There are many instances of Kabam addressing bugs in content that would otherwise deprive players of rewards, and they often do so very quickly. Conversely, when they address bugs that allow unlimited farming, it can take them years to address those because they typically are not a high priority bug to fix. But do players say that Kabam allowed the bug to persist for a long time against their own economic interests? No: they are accused of fixing a bug that didn't need to be fixed because the fact that it had been around for a long time is supposed proof it isn't a bug that needed to be addressed at all.
This is 100% a perception problem, not an actual bias when it comes to addressing bugs.
Also before you try to come back at me which I know you will cause that way you are and always do on every post. Keep in mind this
All updates have to be given to platforms 3 months in advanced. Kabam has 3 months from time they give the update to apple and google to find bugs. Now why don’t they actually use the ccp for what it was originally intended for which was to test champs content and to find bugs not use it as a marketing arm of their company
I'm not sure why you believe this to be true, but it is not. Any Apple developer can tell you this: the typical approval time for app updates is within 72 hours, often sooner (cf: Submitting for Review). Depending on the complexity of the update and the workload at Apple, I've seen updates take a week to get approved. I have never heard of an MCOC update or any other app update take three months to be approved and released to the App Store servers.
As to the CCP, the CCP is given access to the test server and to some degree the developers. However they are not paid employees of Kabam and how they choose to use those resources is not under the direct control of Kabam. Kabam doesn't "use" the CCP in any way. The CCP program is a collaboration between the content creators that would be creating content for the game anyway (which is why in general content creators must meet certain content creation prerequisites to join the program: they can't join unless they are already substantial content creators in their own right). The presumption is that granting this access will improve their ability to make the content they want to make, which will be automatically mutually beneficial.
There are content creators that are highly critical of Kabam and MCOC, at least at times. Provided they are not abusive or straight up lie about stuff, I have never seen a content creator restrained from being critical. And trying to make the CCP content creators into a "marketing arm" would backfire, as content creator audiences follow content creators for their authentic perspectives, whether that is good or bad, and would quickly tell if they were shilling against their normal positions (they get accused of doing that even when a potato bug with two active brain cells can tell they aren't, so they wouldn't get away with doing it deliberately).
Wrong. As it has been proven by others I know. New updates have to be given 3 months out. And of course the old debunk ****. As usual a load of you know what as usual ****
Kabam has pushed out game client updates in response to bugs reported by players in less than three months. If this is an attempt at gaslighting, it is a really, really bad one. Even diehard Kabam haters have explicitly complained about observations that Kabam has closed player-beneficial exploits in mere days with game client updates.
I don't know what sort of people you're surrounding yourself with, but I would recommend an upgrade. Anyone who has ever interacted with any app distributed on either App store is bound to have seen instances of apps being updated far faster than that. You're trying to convince people who live on Earth that the Sun only rises on alternating days. No one has to trust me on this one, they can just rely on their own observations. Good luck with this one.
Comments
Battlegrounds seems to require something more, probably additional resources dedicated to the BG matches, but the game client does not adequately check for those continuously. So it is possible for a game client to lose sync with the BG resources but still be theoretically connected to "the game" and this allows players to fight in a BG match for an extended amount of time with the game client happily continuing to allow the fight to continue, when the player is actually doomed by the fact that the game client has been desynced or dropped from the BG servers, so that fight is a lost cause.
Dr. Zola
There's also the third option: some third factor is simultaneously causing your game client to lose connectivity to the BG servers, and also preventing your device from seeing other things. The collective impact of your device simultaneously not having to process a number of background messages including MCOC is making the game ironically run smoother.
I don't know what sort of people you're surrounding yourself with, but I would recommend an upgrade. Anyone who has ever interacted with any app distributed on either App store is bound to have seen instances of apps being updated far faster than that. You're trying to convince people who live on Earth that the Sun only rises on alternating days. No one has to trust me on this one, they can just rely on their own observations. Good luck with this one.