Host migration ... so far, happens in (and ruins) EVERY GAME

[Megazawr]

In the last 6 months or so I had only 3 or 4 really bad cases of host migration. 1 where I lost all exp in sanctuary onslaught, 1 or 2 when sanctuary onslaught broke and next zone didn't appear and efficiency froze(and also I couldn't click anything in the menu while falling through the void so I had to alt-F4), and one where I lost all loot except mods and credits.

 

Oh, I also had a case when Exploit orb disappeared.

Host migration has always been a buggy mess that made stuff break or disappear.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Megazawr

[Ardicius]

Sorry to hear of the latest few folks with issues.

Just had another "Host Migration" destroy progression on a SP Defense run: in this case, everyone was booted to solo, and the level progression was stuck at "4 rounds to complete." When successive rounds were completed to determine if after 4 more rounds would things "complete"... short answer, NOPE!

I just wish we could have some clarity from DE on this issue. While I say "issue" there are probably a plethora of things that could be going on for each and every migration that occurs... sometimes they're even legit.

But the regularity in games which it occurs when it is not something on our end (i.e., not our internet connection, not our ISP, not our computer catching fire, etc.) seems to point at something that DE might, just MIGHT want to examine further.

And not just leave us venting into the Void.

[VladYvhv]

Just tried to do a SO run. Hit host migration on spawn-in, similar to what happened earlier on with the Cambien Drift. This time, it did not "soft lock" to black screen, but rather gave a Misson Complete! Screen. I had spawned in on the default spawn-in spot, so hadn't even had a chance to move toward the portal to start round 1 yet. I'm a bit surprised it didn't just set me as the new host... Also, I'm not sure why it says that I racked up 471 kills. 🤨 I didn't get a chance to kill anything.

[Numerounius]

For me I absolutely hate the fact that it destroys the buffs you have on. 

Got a nice critical chance buff or that sweet fissure bonus you were looking for? Nope host migration cancels it even if it goes all smoothly otherwise.

[(PSN)TheD1vineWizard]

I love losing all my buffs when someone decides to leave and its a host migration! Kinda garbo tbh

[Ardicius]

Thanks to those of you who are posting here, and sad to hear you're having the issues you're having... we're over 2,000 views on the thread, and still no formal response from DE on the issue.

Just tried to do the weekly Archon run... two "Host Migration" issues so far, with no one willingly dropping from the mission at either point that makes any sense.

Please keep posting if you continue to have issues. One can hope that more views will eventually equal more attention from DE.

Just not holding my breath here: it's been an issue since at least October of last year (making it at least 5 months so far as if this post.)

At this point, I run group games with the assumption I'm going to be kicked to solo mode involuntarily. It changes the frames I would want to run with.

Once more:

PLEASE DE: ADDRESS THIS ISSUE!

[VladYvhv]

Honestly, host migration is the reason I'm so invested in yellow archon shards. The +energy on spawn is immune to host migration. Some mods might work after one host migration, but after 2-3, most of the time, you're working on base stats +whatever you've got archon shards for.

[VladYvhv]

Also, I've noticed that new people can join a squad and be listed as host, rather than getting bumped down to the highest number available position. So, if you're positon 4 in a squad, and host migrates out, and someone else migrates in, you're still position 4. This can mean that you can get more than 3 host migrations. At which point, I just abort mission and seek help from clan/alliance members in Invite Only mode.

[VladYvhv]

Well, this is a new one on me. Host migration happened after the squad decided to end the mission, before the exit button appeared.

[Ardicius]

Just here to scream into the Void once again...

Since I last posted, I have hit the magic number of 50 separate "Host Migration" events.

That's FIFTY. Five Zero.

Just had 4 in ONE MISSION.

<sighs>

Thanks for posting on here... we're approaching nearly 2.5k views so far... and so far, nothing from DE.

<SIGHS>

Warframe is becoming more and more of a solo experience for me. :-(

[CortiWins]

I feel your pain.

[Ardicius]

Once again, back to report on "Host Migration" issues happening EVERY TIME I try to run a group on Lua for Steel Path. So far, 3 games in a row that we cannot get past 5 minutes before a "Host Migration" reverts us all to solo mode.

Over 2,600 views.

I guess we MIGHT need to hit 100k to get their attention... at this rate, I'll be retiring and telling my stories to fellow Tenno in rocking chairs at the nursing home.

While I am trying to alleviate some of my frustration with comedy, I am genuinely... well, let's just say the list of expletives that I'd LIKE to use would make George Carlin proud.

DE: PLEASE ADDRESS THIS ISSUE! (Before I start collecting my Social Security checks!)

[TazMman]

Every time I join a team in any zariman mission as a client, if the host gets to the elevator and force - finishes the mission, I am immediately returned to zariman - hub with the ui displaying the previous finished mission and my rewards from that one, nowhere to be found.....!

[Ardicius]

Chiming in once again to report on "Host Migration" messing up yet another mission...

This week: Archon Hunt. Every time I run with a group, we get multiple occurrences, with eventually us getting dropped to solo mode.

<SIGHS>

Once again, a simple request: DE PLEASE LOOK INTO THIS! 

[Kaleeiv]

if you are in a group and end up solo after a host migration, you're likely the one with the crashy connexion.

that or ... sorry, could help myself wondering.. do you play limbo in groups?

[Nekomian]

@Ardicius I read through a bit of this thread, and while I've addressed it elsewhere before I figured it would be useful here too.

Warframe uses a P2P (peer-to-peer) network topology for squads and in-game missions; after their servers matchmake, the onus of keeping the session connection alive (it does still do calls to their server periodically I believe, but is not the basis of the session itself) is entirely on the engine and the connections of the people in the squad. I've heard time and time again "but it's not my ISP, other games work fine and everything else works fine!", and it could still be misconfigured network equipment or an ISP backend issue, on a single host or client. There's lots of people with garbage ISPs and equipment out there, many of whom have no choice with internet providers and have to deal with what they're dealt with (I can sympathize, this was me for a decade too); many people are also on Wi-Fi and get tons of packet loss from interference, or have a really bad router (or ISP provided modem / router combo) with horrible QoS implementation (i.e. sibling starts watching a show and now your entire connection is borked for 10s or so while it buffers for them). Most things will work fine for most people, like Netflix, web browsing, and maybe even server-based games that aren't P2P; that doesn't mean that it won't still have problems with this game's port forwarding over UDP, which is why a lot of people (especially on CG-NAT) have to use VPNs or some alternative method of connecting to even be allowed to matchmake in squads. Given the sheer number of devices with varying performance (I'm interested to see how mobile will even handle crossplay, if they'll be able to host sessions or only join existing ones) and the 1000s of different network setups, it's no surprise every other mission seems to have a host migration.

DE can do better about making migrations degrade gracefully and not having them be annoying slogs between gameplay (and not disabling abilities that should at the very least be refunded energy costs if you just used them), but they cannot eliminate host migrations without reworking their entire network structure to a server-based one, which does not scale well and is not economically sound for them to do. If you personally want to see less migrations, you can set your matchmaking ping in-game settings to 200ms or lower and adjust your PC type to "Desktop", as this prioritizes hosting over joining existing squads (from what I've been told, this setting is archaic at this point so it might be broken tbh).

I do hope they work on net code more to make it feel more seamless and not a sudden jarring gameplay stop, but I understand that has its own challenges; any of the "mission completed but didn't get rewards" posts also need to be addressed, as the engine should verify with 100% certainty that the session was completed and that the rewards did sync with the server. It already does this in various open world aspects regularly and for prime parts on relic openings, so I'd like to see more server syncs during missions (maybe per rotation on endless). I understand that means more overhead, but it gives players a lot more confidence in getting their rewards and probably means less of support staff's time will be wasted on those tickets. Any of the various "X gets disabled after migration" stuff also needs to be fixed, I'm unsure if it's set up this way because of certain values that are handled client-side that don't get transferred over to new hosts or what but it absolutely breaks some abilities, items, and other necessary gameplay stuff that it should not.

Apologies for the long post, but I wanted to address everything I kept reading in one post - the TL;DR is that the current network topology relies on the individuals' network equipment and connection, and that a lot of people just have bad equipment or connections that works for most stuff but is finnicky with how Warframe handles things. DE can try and make this more seamless, but they cannot eliminate host migrations as is.

[VladYvhv]

 

On 3/18/2023 at 11:32 PM, Naroxas44 said:

@Ardicius I read through a bit of this thread, and while I've addressed it elsewhere before I figured it would be useful here too.

Warframe uses a P2P (peer-to-peer) network topology for squads and in-game missions; after their servers matchmake, the onus of keeping the session connection alive (it does still do calls to their server periodically I believe, but is not the basis of the session itself) is entirely on the engine and the connections of the people in the squad. I've heard time and time again "but it's not my ISP, other games work fine and everything else works fine!", and it could still be misconfigured network equipment or an ISP backend issue, on a single host or client. There's lots of people with garbage ISPs and equipment out there, many of whom have no choice with internet providers and have to deal with what they're dealt with (I can sympathize, this was me for a decade too); many people are also on Wi-Fi and get tons of packet loss from interference, or have a really bad router (or ISP provided modem / router combo) with horrible QoS implementation (i.e. sibling starts watching a show and now your entire connection is borked for 10s or so while it buffers for them). Most things will work fine for most people, like Netflix, web browsing, and maybe even server-based games that aren't P2P; that doesn't mean that it won't still have problems with this game's port forwarding over UDP, which is why a lot of people (especially on CG-NAT) have to use VPNs or some alternative method of connecting to even be allowed to matchmake in squads. Given the sheer number of devices with varying performance (I'm interested to see how mobile will even handle crossplay, if they'll be able to host sessions or only join existing ones) and the 1000s of different network setups, it's no surprise every other mission seems to have a host migration.

DE can do better about making migrations degrade gracefully and not having them be annoying slogs between gameplay (and not disabling abilities that should at the very least be refunded energy costs if you just used them), but they cannot eliminate host migrations without reworking their entire network structure to a server-based one, which does not scale well and is not economically sound for them to do. If you personally want to see less migrations, you can set your matchmaking ping in-game settings to 200ms or lower and adjust your PC type to "Desktop", as this prioritizes hosting over joining existing squads (from what I've been told, this setting is archaic at this point so it might be broken tbh).

I do hope they work on net code more to make it feel more seamless and not a sudden jarring gameplay stop, but I understand that has its own challenges; any of the "mission completed but didn't get rewards" posts also need to be addressed, as the engine should verify with 100% certainty that the session was completed and that the rewards did sync with the server. It already does this in various open world aspects regularly and for prime parts on relic openings, so I'd like to see more server syncs during missions (maybe per rotation on endless). I understand that means more overhead, but it gives players a lot more confidence in getting their rewards and probably means less of support staff's time will be wasted on those tickets. Any of the various "X gets disabled after migration" stuff also needs to be fixed, I'm unsure if it's set up this way because of certain values that are handled client-side that don't get transferred over to new hosts or what but it absolutely breaks some abilities, items, and other necessary gameplay stuff that it should not.

Apologies for the long post, but I wanted to address everything I kept reading in one post - the TL;DR is that the current network topology relies on the individuals' network equipment and connection, and that a lot of people just have bad equipment or connections that works for most stuff but is finnicky with how Warframe handles things. DE can try and make this more seamless, but they cannot eliminate host migrations as is.

A big problem with lowering the matchmaking limit too far, however, is that for some missions, you won't get a squad at all. Because no one who qualifies is running that mission/bounty. That makes the solution non-viable for certain mission types that are more designed for multiplayer. Interception, Profit Taker/Exploiter, Lephantis, steel path, arbitartions. So, that's kinda shooting ourself in the foot when we have to abort mission because not enough squad members to really complete it.

[Nekomian]

16 hours ago, VladYvhv said:

A big problem with lowering the matchmaking limit too far, however, is that for some missions, you won't get a squad at all. Because no one who qualifies is running that mission/bounty. That makes the solution non-viable for certain mission types that are more designed for multiplayer. Interception, Profit Taker/Exploiter, Lephantis, steel path, arbitartions. So, that's kinda shooting ourself in the foot when we have to abort mission because not enough squad members to really complete it.

A lot of missions, like Steel Path ones, already don't get squads due to the sheer amount of missions that exist that aren't frequently played. Though they're designed for multiplayer, many of them (like interception, lephantis, and many steel path nodes) are still totally do-able single player, it just requires a different approach and loadout. I did the entirety of steel path basically solo with very little issues.

That said, 200ms is more than enough for average ping rate thresholds; for context, US West to EU countries is about 200ms on average, meaning you should have plenty of players in a matchmaking pool (your entire region basically) no matter your location, given the mission is popular. Things like Profit Taker, Exploiter Orb, Eidolon hunts, etc. that all require team efforts always have players available running those missions, so this limit should not be a problem; it's only to filter out very far away or bad connections where spikes in latency would cause average pings to be much higher than 200ms, though it can't completely detect these either since spikes can be inconsistent and not show up during matchmaking.

It's not intended to be a perfect / permanent solution, but will help somewhat with random migrations due to high latency connections.

[VladYvhv]

Something else that's a problem though, is when the host has an actual problem, such as power failure, or some other technical difficulty that boots them out of the squad and forces host migration on everyone. Or the occasional bad squads, where leaving the mission or the squad is a decision that the host makes. And sometimes the resulting host migration makes the next host leave. And then the third host, which leaves us with having just suffered a string of 3 host migrations in short order without it being anything to do with connection and more to do with a cascade of jerk rage quits. This can be because they didn't get what they wanted from mission rewards rotations, bounty stages, etc. The rare whatever didn't spawn, so they rage quit on the squad.

[Nekomian]

Those are all valid issues that the net code itself needs to be designed to handle more gracefully; host migrations will happen (i.e. host wants to leave early, power failure, internet failure, etc.), but having that migration not interrupt the flow of gameplay and not feel intrusive is a better solution than other solutions like having people get "better" internet or equipment, group users into "client" and "host" pools to potentially have less "host migration due to leaving", dedicated servers, etc.

I discussed this more in detail in this other (semi-related) thread, just so I don't have to repeat myself too much haha:

[Ardicius]

@Naroxas44

Thank you for your posts on this thread: I've been off for over a week due to knee replacement surgery, and was about to post another "Host Migration" issue rant when I read your and @VladYvhv 's posts.

I really do appreciate your "long" response on March 18: it covers a lot of outstanding questions that I had regarding the issues that "Host Migration" issues: I just wish that DE would have been the ones to respond!

I work from home with a Fortune 500 company, so I know that my computer, ISP, and connectivity are all not-issues: I've had my IT Team look into it as such.

Your explanation about how the host architecture works makes me think that I would do well to make my minimum ping be set for 200 AND that when it makes sense for me to default to being the host, as stability isn't my issue.

I also understand that the system isn't perfect, and packet drops can and do happen. It just seems like the number of "Host Migration" issues seemed to skew more toward it being an issue that DE could address... but perhaps not.

@Naroxas44 and @VladYvhv :I will make the tweaks that you've suggested: thank you SO much for lending your expertise!

 

And @Kaleeiv : I do NOT play Limbo in pubs: I want to make friends on here, not enemies! ;-)

[VladYvhv]

Something I've had to explain to some clan members: Host Migration is able to kill "unkillable" frames like Revenant, and bypasses the supposedly "all powerful shield gating". I suspect that this might be because the action in the mission is not paused while you're stuck on the loading screen, and before you're given control back of your frame. I've been instantly downed/killed because of host migrations using Revenant as my main (and Revenant Prime after his release). Supposedly, one should not be able to be one-shotted because shield gating would at the very least come into play once, and should give time to initiate rolling guard or start casting Mesmer Skin. However, the game lag from host migration might bypass this by having us taking damage before we're fully loaded back into the mission. It's only really noticeable in stuff like Sanctuary Onslaught around zones 7+, and on higher level content like Archon Hunts, where when you load back in, you've been swarmed by eximus and high level baddies (and sentients in the archon hunts). I don't really want to seek out bad hosts and test that theory, but it's another example of how the game is broken when host migration occurs. Ideally, HM should freeze the action, countdown, etc, until everyone has loaded back in. For faster loaders, this would mean the baddies also being unkillable, until everyone's back in the mission, but I think it would be preferable to spawnign back in only to die instantly.

[MaxTunnerX]

On 2022-10-14 at 10:32 PM, Ardicius said:

Over the past week or so, I have noticed a LOT of "Host Migration" messages during missions that result in the entire team being disbanded and losing all progress.

This just happened to me FOUR times in a row while attempting Sortie Mission 2: I either joined a Team, or was the Host, and before we could progress past the first datamass time interval, the "Host Migration" happens, we disband, lose all progress, and the timer resets.

This either give a me a long delayed timeout and puts me in solo mode, or my teammates simply disappear before the first time interval occurs.

It is getting VERY annoying to keep losing progress/team members.

Is "Host Migration" of an unusual frequency destroying playing experience happening more often to more people lately as well?

Is this directly related to the cross-platform play? I didn't seem to have this sort of problem as often before cross platform was launched.

Either way, PLEASE FIX THIS ASAP, DE! 

Warframe is getting more and more buggy with every update. For the last year or longer I have seen bugs that I had never seen in this game before. In other, badly made games yes, but not in Warframe. Seems like the devs have the feeling that if they dont add a million items in every update the player count will go to 0, so they dont even think about stopping to fix anything. So yeah, until this feeling of theirs changes, we will be stuck in Skyrim except no console commands, mods or community patches.

Edited March 31, 2023 by MaxTunnerX

[VladYvhv]

Recently had 3 new host migration problems. All of these with ping set all the way down to 100, on Deimos, Necralisk/Cambion Drift.

1. Happened in a Tier 3 Isolation Vault right after bounty completion. Host left the squad, resulting in the remaining 3 of us in a squad, but unable to exit the vault, because the door to the vault had closed during the loading screen, trapping all of us in there. The solution turned out to be with each of us manually leaving the squad, we were able to leave. 
2. Same night, but hours later: Another Tier 3 iso vault bounty, following a successful previous tier 3 iso vault bounty without the squad disbanding. The host decided to leave while we were still in the transition hallway between necralisk and drift. After host migration, we all got stuck in the transition hallway. The doors were not there, and attempts to pas through the black outline of the door resulted in falling into nothingness and respawning back in the hallway, with no way out. At this point, I aborted mission to Orbiter, relogged, and went on to other parts of the game.
3. The next night, attempting more Tier 3 Iso Vaults runs, I got hit by host migration right at the moment I entered the drift. This resulted in the "you will be returned to the multiplayer lobby" message, and returned me to the "landing craft comes to the nekralisk" animation.

[Nuada_2]

Hi,

 

just happened 3 times in a row with 2 different hosts in an attempt to open a radshare relic mission.