Input System Update - Sept 2021: Discussion Thread

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  • BraderSawBraderSaw Member Posts: 76
    So they are fixing crashing and lagging issue right? or not?
  • KerneasKerneas Member Posts: 3,827 ★★★★★
    1) Great move Kabam, this is what we needed. Some communication. A clear post, explaining it clearly to everyone. Well done

    2) Android user here, I have parry-dex issues just like iOS. You mentioned that Android crashes are gonna get fixed in 2 next updates, which I appreciate, but I am certain the timings are off. This month, due to the objectives, I played the game more than usually and I can say with certainty, that the timings are off and inputs are being dropped (the latter may be caused by the said memory stuff, yes). Are you then ABSOLUTELY sure that the problem is iOS only? I know you said you will be getting more Tapsalots, so please make sure to test with some Android device as well.

    3) I'd like to express that I support you guys at Kabam, I understand these are hard times and while for me it is just a game I can uninstall, for many of you this is a source of money for you and your families.
  • StellarStellar Member Posts: 1,088 ★★★★
    Thank you Kabam for all the information you gave about those issues.
  • Inferior_IronmanInferior_Ironman Member Posts: 16
    @Kabam Miike Sir Tapsalot looks like a baby version of Apple’s Horizon Machines. Those beasts were used to confirm new displays were responding within Apple’s calibration spec. They were phased out in favour of software-based calibration, so maybe there’s a way to get one and repurpose it for testing. At the very least, there may be technical resources available somewhere that speak to the part of the platform you are testing from since it is at the hardware/OS level.
  • ShadowstrikeShadowstrike Member Posts: 3,110 ★★★★★
    Ciedre said:

    Just gonna make a few comments here.
    1. Very puzzled when you say this is an IOS problem, because from what I've seen its actually Android users who say they are most affected by this.

    2. The game stutterering, or gamefreeze started for me only after the parry bug patch was released, and its been horrible since. Game freeze up for anywhere between half a second and a second except the other day when it took half apocs special 1 before it actually started moving again.

    3. Why are there only health potions and revives for aq and aw beeing given out? As far as I'm aware the issue is just as bad in normal quests, and a lot of people saying they wont do any quest exploration these days because of it.
    So atm you are only actually giving out potions for the part of the game that feels most like a job, and not for the part of the game that people should be enjoying.

    4. Was doing EQ yesterday on Cav difficulty and all parries were working fine. But when I swapped over to do 100% on UC difficulty only 2 out of the first 8 parries actually stuck. And the fact that you're saying its a IOS issue is something I find strange seeing as im playing on Android, and I'm pretty sure my skills didnt suddenly drop by that much between changing up those two quests.

    They said next week we should be receiving a solo care package, that should take care of some potions and revives.
  • ShadowstrikeShadowstrike Member Posts: 3,110 ★★★★★

    I appreciate the info though most of it is over my dumb blue collar head but I have two questions:

    Why is the AQ/AW compensation expiring? I would've thought that the stash/expiry date would be extended if this is what is given to compensate the issues.

    Where's the solo comp? Is running paths in act 6 for a cav deemed less important than weak war or map2 AQ?

    1. Because they never extended the cap or remove the expiration on items.
    2. Next week.
  • RetroRocksRetroRocks Member Posts: 68
    Best post on the forums in years!

    I want to say a huge thankyou to the team for sharing this. Fantastic info, very clear , very concise, no emotive rubbish of “hold on with us , please keep spending “etc, just cold hard useful facts, love it! Treats us like adults instead of idiots, I hope this style of info can continue long term.

    It validates our concerns and even better shows you guys have got a good grip on root cause issues, which is music to my ears. Thanks!

    Really appreciate knowing we have 2 separate simultaneous issues, makes much more sense, and even better allows me to stop thinking I might have some kind of crazy motor control deficiency which has slowed my reactions so badly I can’t even play a video game.

    Also the explanation makes total sense which is great: We all know MCOC plays 2nd rate on Android, the Android devices need the users input of a swipe to have started travelling across the screen before registering as a swipe rather than a tap. IOS has always felt solid and responsive in comparison as the swipe is recognised as soon as the users thumb starts to move, so dex triggers instantaneously instead of a after a pause. Moving this dex earlier from this engine bug fix causes confusion as the on screen action and input are disjointed, and hence the whole game feels is unresponsive and overall just not fun and engaging.

    Also proves why in SOP final week I was frustratingly totally incapable of dexing a special based on on-screen contact point and had to push my timing earlier, just like the parry timing being shifted way before on screen hit box contact point.
    Problem of course is now I try to push my dex early as a dirty fix, and often go way too soon getting special attacked in the face trying to guess the new timing.
    If there is even a hope of regaining the old timing that’s great news and may save me quitting MCOC. As if we are stuck with the new timing forever there’s no way I’ll be playing this game, it’s just not got that fun feeling , which is the whole reason I picked this game up 6 years ago.


    Some feedback:
    One big concern I have is : I picked up that the game felt weird within 15 mins of playing when the new update came out.
    Therefore: If it was indeed so obvious to a very average player, surely this update issue should have picked up straight away by a QA test?
    Maybe you guys knew and there was no other option but to push it live. But rather than hide it , or assume it’ll all be okay and we won’t notice, instead maybe some upfront warnings/info would have been appreciated so we didn’t have to go through all this rubbish for the last few months of wondering what on earth was broken.
    Just some words of advice for the next time you have a tech issue…

    Bravo on the post, very brave to share info with the community, huge applause for it.
    Good luck for the fix, any progress is appreciated to help get this game fun again.

    Obviously doesn’t excuse other issues in the game, like the recent horror of torturing us with incredibly tedious objective based side events, … sigh…but let’s fix one thing at a time. We’ll get there. Let’s make MCOC fun again!
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  • Real_Madrid_76_2Real_Madrid_76_2 Member Posts: 3,561 ★★★★★
    I hope the comp package next week is related to questing potions or shards
  • Deadpool87Deadpool87 Member Posts: 573 ★★★

    “Single player content resources”
    Hopefully this is a decent amount of revives and potions

    Yea. I was planning on going after the Grandmaster this weekend with a handful of revives, but I may now wait until next weekend if this is the case
  • 2StarKing2StarKing Member Posts: 855 ★★★
    I'm an IOS player. I'm not happy about my options for normal game play (wait til 2022 for final fix or switch to Android). I truly hope the iterations along the way to the final fix are significant enough for me to have a good "FEEL" long before 2022.
  • pseudosanepseudosane Member, Guardian Posts: 3,994 Guardian
    @Kabam Miike i suggest taking it to the team as device specific for Android.

    My newer One plus8t has much lesser issues compared to my older One Plus5t
  • BitterSteelBitterSteel Member Posts: 9,264 ★★★★★
    @rockykoston to continue our conversation here, I’m not saying the unity engine only updated for IOS. I’m saying that update only caused the parry dex issue for IOS and not Android. I’d encourage you to read the entire post again, because I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood that aspect. I don’t mean that in a patronising way, just that if you think Kabam are saying Android players don’t have an issue with parry or dex, then you haven’t read the whole thing.

    Please read it again, but I’ll direct you to this part which explains the IOS issues.

    “ When we refer to the “Parry and Dex issue”, we’re not actually talking about an issue with Parry or Dex, but a framerate and control input issue exclusive to iOS devices that is most noticeable when trying to Parry or Dex, since these are two mechanics players rely on quite often.

    Marvel Contest of Champions is built on a 3rd Party Game Engine built by our partners at Unity, which has an input system built-in. We’ve relied on Unity's input system since the game was built, and have regularly updated the Engine as they have released updates. With the most recent update to the Engine, a bug was fixed where iOS devices had been operating at the device’s own frame rate, instead of being capped to 30fps as it was set to. This meant that iOS devices had a slightly different input window than Android devices, but this was never identified.

    Since this is how iOS devices had always worked with our game since launch, we had built game interactions around that input window. Now, because this bug in the engine has been fixed, it changed the input window of inputs for all iOS devices and pushed back the input window by mere milliseconds, but that is enough that it is noticeable when playing the game.

    This is the issue that we are working to address, and our fix for it is to integrate an entirely new control input system from our partners at Unity. But this is not a quick or easy task.”

    Only the IOS input window was pushed back, therefore it cannot be the cause of the Android issues.
  • alegka312alegka312 Member Posts: 67
    Sry, but my English is not so good, so I can’t understand few things. I’m iOS user, so can someone tell me, will they fix the lag and stuttering issue? I’m using iPhone XR, and FPS and stuttering is the top issue for me right now, because game unplayable for me. If they fix this, can I ask when? I found some issues will fix October and November update, and other in 2022. Tnx
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  • BigPoppaCBONEBigPoppaCBONE Member Posts: 2,405 ★★★★★
    alegka312 said:

    Sry, but my English is not so good, so I can’t understand few things. I’m iOS user, so can someone tell me, will they fix the lag and stuttering issue? I’m using iPhone XR, and FPS and stuttering is the top issue for me right now, because game unplayable for me. If they fix this, can I ask when? I found some issues will fix October and November update, and other in 2022. Tnx

    @alegka312 2022 for iOS parry/dex

    October and November for lag/stutter.
  • BitterSteelBitterSteel Member Posts: 9,264 ★★★★★
    Haji_Saab said:

    I have a bit of trouble digesting this whole “feel” thing .. if i can consistently produce the “bug”, how is it just a feel thing?

    I think all it means is that they couldn’t definitively find the problem by feel alone. They mention that in the beta test they gave half the players a fix, and half the control with no fix. And the results were inconclusive because players were asked to “feel” whether it was wrong. 61% of the players with the fix said it was better, 63% without the fix said it was better.

    Android users even said the fix was better or worse. And this shows that it was a psychological change, not anything measurable.

    All it means is that this test they tried didn’t work. It would be like a coffee company testing a new coffee and giving the test group a new one, and a control group the old one then, the control group says that their coffee tastes better than before, even though it’s the same coffee.

    They’re not saying the bug is just a feel thing, the feel direction was one way they tried to solve it, and in the end decided it wouldn’t work. They then decided to create the robot Sir Tapsalot, to give them something to actually measure.

    So instead of asking you or me whether we felt like parry was better or worse, they made the robot that can map when the window of input for parry is.
  • LilMaddogHTLilMaddogHT Member Posts: 1,203 ★★★★
    DNA3000 said:





    Yeah, I'm an iOS player and I definitely felt like Player B at the beginning and could tell something was really off but I feel like I have adjusted to Player A because I rarely experience the issues I was originally having anymore (and adjustment likely due to me just playing too much 😅).

    Still get some lag/frame drop & numerous daily game crashes but happy to hear that will be fixed in the Asset Memory leak correction 🤘🏼
  • BitterSteelBitterSteel Member Posts: 9,264 ★★★★★

    @rockykoston to continue our conversation here, I’m not saying the unity engine only updated for IOS. I’m saying that update only caused the parry dex issue for IOS and not Android. I’d encourage you to read the entire post again, because I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood that aspect. I don’t mean that in a patronising way, just that if you think Kabam are saying Android players don’t have an issue with parry or dex, then you haven’t read the whole thing.

    Please read it again, but I’ll direct you to this part which explains the IOS issues.

    “ When we refer to the “Parry and Dex issue”, we’re not actually talking about an issue with Parry or Dex, but a framerate and control input issue exclusive to iOS devices that is most noticeable when trying to Parry or Dex, since these are two mechanics players rely on quite often.

    Marvel Contest of Champions is built on a 3rd Party Game Engine built by our partners at Unity, which has an input system built-in. We’ve relied on Unity's input system since the game was built, and have regularly updated the Engine as they have released updates. With the most recent update to the Engine, a bug was fixed where iOS devices had been operating at the device’s own frame rate, instead of being capped to 30fps as it was set to. This meant that iOS devices had a slightly different input window than Android devices, but this was never identified.

    Since this is how iOS devices had always worked with our game since launch, we had built game interactions around that input window. Now, because this bug in the engine has been fixed, it changed the input window of inputs for all iOS devices and pushed back the input window by mere milliseconds, but that is enough that it is noticeable when playing the game.

    This is the issue that we are working to address, and our fix for it is to integrate an entirely new control input system from our partners at Unity. But this is not a quick or easy task.”

    Only the IOS input window was pushed back, therefore it cannot be the cause of the Android issues.

    @BitterSteel
    I just don't believe it.

    Either they've not tested enough or they're afraid to acknowledge that Unity update is affecting android devices.

    Now you'd ask why would they not accept it, because of the sheer variety of android devices, models, OS etc. They've never really been able to fix the android issue so if this is the same thing then it's nothing new.

    iOS is clearly much easier to identify and fix because of the small environment.

    But the fact that they are dismissing android as a generic lag and stutter is what they've been doing forever.

    The fact that android now has configurable screen refresh rate with phones going UpTo 144hz and no update to make that compatible, tells us everything.
    Ok, well I don’t think spreading conspiracy theories and claiming Kabam is lying is going to help anyone. They’ve said what they’ve said, they have no reason to lie.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Member Posts: 36,575 ★★★★★
    With the sheer number of people who use Android, do you honestly believe they'd intentionally alienate them? I mean, that's not even logical. And yes, it's more difficult to optimize a plethora of devices running it. That much they've been upfront about for years.
    What they're saying is the updates should improve both, but what they discovered was there were separate issues going on. With 2 different platforms, that's not unheard of. This conspiracy that they don't care about Android users is as old as the Legends program.
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