10 years of Warframe and players are still consistantly punished for something outside of their control.

[Zahnrad]

I'm not really sure where to start but, Host Migrations.

It's been 10 years and it still feels like the most archaic thing in Warframe. For years it's been the bane of players seeking a fun and enjoyable experience at best, and at worst it results in genuine frusteration and a loss of progress. Even a desire to stop playing the game entirely.

I understand DE try to make fixes to issues that come up as a result of Host Migration but more often than not, it feels like trying to tidy up a tumor to make the problem look less obvious.

 

I'm not going to pretend I understand the exact fundamentals of Host Migrations, but other games that are forced to have Host Migrations always seem to have less issues and problems with Host Migrations than Warframe does.

Host Migrations wouldn't be a problem if players got to keep stuff they earned from missions by default when they occured. But Host Migrations in Warframe aren't forgiving. They outright punish players as if it's their fault for choosing to play with other players. Multiplayer is supposed to be a more fun and enjoyable experience but more often than not, I'd rather play Solo just for the safety and security that I won't lose progress.

Not all Host Migrations are created equally and some are inconveniences that don't stall the mission too much. But others can genuinely break a mission resulting in having to exit the mission and forfeit all rewards. That's not getting into Host Migrations that send you back to your Orbiter completely.

Now with the Circuit, by design you have to extract or you lose all Circuit Progress, which I understand but when Host Migrations break that in some way it feels like being kicked in the head and being told "That's what you get for trusting in other players."

 

I don't know what can be done about Host Migrations, or if Warframe as a result of its engine, design or etc is simply too far for a Host Migration rework to even be feasible but if I had to be blunt, I think Warframe is due for a direct approach to the problem rather than trimming the bugs as they appear.

I'd go as far as to say given Warframes age, it's a priority on par with other popular requests such as Cross-save/play.

 

At the very LEAST give Players an "Out" after or during a Host Migration where their progress can be saved. Circuit progress included.

[CephalonCarnage]

I guess host migrations try their best to copy the game state to a new host, whilst letting the old host wander off.

This should be a last-resort fallback option. To make the game less of a headache for the 3 other players, the host should remain part of the host migration process until the entire game data state has been copied to a different player. Then, and only then, can all players continue whatever they were doing.

However, it might be that the way its all implemented means the data migration is to complex to do in such a simple manner, in which case it needs to be looked at from a developer point of view to make it copyable in bulk like this. There is no other way to expect a game state to magically transfer to someone else. Cases where the host disconnects then the fallback option has to occur, and theoretically this should be just as good, but experience says otherwise. So the code has to be changed to try a full, good migration first.

[(PSN)Unstar]

During "unexpected" host migrations (like the host's internet dies), my understanding is that there's no way to simply let player's gracefully opt out at that point, because the game was depending on data the host had, which is now lost because they have disconnected.  In the past DE tried to address but it left the game open to hacks so they had to shut that method down.

However, for "expected" host migrations, things could get better.  If you want to weigh in on a post I recently made in the Feedback section, feel free:

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Until a remedy is discovered, people can make an attempt to be more aware. 

Maybe stop using wifi with 18 people on it and don't stay in a pug mission for 2 hours without realizing people have electricity that goes out during heat waves and cold waves and storms.

[Zahnrad]

2 minutes ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

Until a remedy is discovered, people can make an attempt to be more aware. 

Maybe stop using wifi with 18 people on it and don't stay in a pug mission for 2 hours without realizing people have electricity that goes out during heat waves and cold waves and storms.

I get where you're coming from, but being "Aware" doesn't really help things, in my case it just makes me more paranoid. Personally I don't play missions for that long, I typically stay in squads for around 20-40 minutes if I intend on playing Endless. Still, even at those lower amounts it still feels really punishing when it does happen.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Just now, Zahnny said:

I get where you're coming from, but being "Aware" doesn't really help things, in my case it just makes me more paranoid. Personally I don't play missions for that long, I typically stay in squads for around 20-40 minutes if I intend on playing Endless. Still, even at those lower amounts it still feels really punishing when it does happen.

So you haven't seen any threads where people miraculously can't understand how a host migration happened on an ESO run, because they jumped through the portal without checking where the host is beforehand? 

[Zahnrad]

3 minutes ago, (PSN)Madurai-Prime said:

So you haven't seen any threads where people miraculously can't understand how a host migration happened on an ESO run, because they jumped through the portal without checking where the host is beforehand? 

I don't play ESO often, it's not my cup of tea. When I do I find it's easier to solo it with a good nuke anyway.

[MouadSaqui]

The game need dedicated servers, I don't think content like raids or any sort of end game will be enjoyable with this amount of connectivity issues, bcs to me right now the game is just unplayable in public squads, I play Solo all the time and its for a reason.

[Quimoth]

Don't forget the souls that play on systems that can barely run the open-worlds or railjack. Those cause host-migrations too. I've been in that position myself for a while before I could afford a new PC with specs that allowed running said content at more than 30 fps tops.

The issue with host-migrations isn't one that is easy to solve at all. Not to mention the causes for a host-migration could be one of a thousand different things.

Try getting to know how something like Git works. Then try working on some project with at least 4+ people working simultanously on different branches. It can go wrong so quickly in so many different ways, each with eventually only one easy solution which requires you to pick a certain point in the main branch that is still stable. I get questions at least once a month from colleagues who are stuck with git branch that have become entangled in the weirdest ways.

However easy you assume this can be, multiply that by ten and then square it and you might be coming close to how difficult it is to re-sync a system that is out of sync automatically without any errors. That is if you even have something to work with to begin with because as stated above, if the data from the host is fully lost this often leads to data simply being GONE.

[PublikDomain]

55 minutes ago, Zahnny said:

I don't know what can be done about Host Migrations, or if Warframe as a result of its engine, design or etc is simply too far for a Host Migration rework to even be feasible but if I had to be blunt, I think Warframe is due for a direct approach to the problem rather than trimming the bugs as they appear.

Nothing can really be done about migrations directly and there's always going to be some worst-case scenario where the host is lost in a way that makes a session unrecoverable.

But what can be done is accepting the fact that bad things sometimes happen and dropping the sadomasochistic "everything should be lost on failure"/"it's your fault someone had a bad connection" mindset that's so pervasive. Because god forbid someone else decides to play on wifi or suffer a power outage and how dare people want to play a long time with the strangers they meet?

If you've picked it up, you should keep it when you leave. Simple as. Host migrations, aborts, mission failure, or leaving for any reason whatsoever, you should keep the things you've earned because you've already earned them. Retroactively losing rewards that you've earned because you didn't leave through the right door does nothing but cause headaches. Not only does it punish playing multiplayer in a multiplayer game, even with the most perfect connection that never ever drops it also punishes players for pushing past their limits and making an attempt because if you give it your all and fail then #*!% you for even trying. So people play conservatively and leave at the slightest hint of danger, which is just lame, and anyone that does want to push further and try gets saddled with the resulting migrations and #*!% you for someone else leaving. Why would anyone want either of those things? Just drop the crime and punishment routine.

Edited July 10, 2023 by PublikDomain

[(PSN)Unstar]

9 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

If you've picked it up, you should keep it when you leave. Simple as. Host migrations, aborts, mission failure, or leaving for any reason whatsoever, you should keep the things you've earned because you've already earned them. Retroactively losing rewards that you've earned because you didn't leave through the right door does nothing but cause headaches. Not only does it punish playing multiplayer in a multiplayer game, even with the most perfect connection that never ever drops it also punishes players for pushing past their limits and making an attempt because if you give it your all and fail then #*!% you for even trying. So people play conservatively and leave at the slightest hint of danger, which is just lame, and anyone that does want to push further and try gets saddled with the resulting migrations and #*!% you for someone else leaving. Why would anyone want either of those things? Just drop the crime and punishment routine.

This might be the best paragraph I've ever read in these forums.  Well said.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

4 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

Nothing can really be done about migrations directly and there's always going to be some worst-case scenario where the host is lost in a way that makes a session unrecoverable.

But what can be done is accepting the fact that bad things sometimes happen and dropping the sadomasochistic "everything should be lost on failure"/"it's your fault someone had a bad connection" mindset that's so pervasive.

If you've picked it up, you should keep it when you leave. Simple as. Host migrations, aborts, mission failure, or leaving for any reason whatsoever, you should keep the things you've earned because you've already earned them. Retroactively losing rewards that you've earned because you didn't leave through the right door does nothing but cause headaches. Not only does it punish playing multiplayer in a multiplayer game, even with the most perfect connection that never ever drops it also punishes players for pushing past their limits and making an attempt because if you give it your all and fail then #*!% you for even trying. So people play conservatively and leave at the slightest hint of danger, which is just lame, and anyone that does want to push further and try gets saddled with the resulting migrations and #*!% you for someone else leaving. Why would anyone want either of those things? Just drop the crime and punishment routine.

I think the issues with your idea is, of all players are allowed to keep rewards up to the second they've been playing, then there would be a LOT of bail out players, increasing migration issues many times over. We can just look at the posting patterns here to get a good sense of player behavior.

In short, people lie, and will lie about going up to certain point or time in a mission with you. By adding an anytime opt-out with gathered rewards, essentially you will create the most crybaby, whiney, spoiled and laziest players ever.

[(PSN)Unstar]

9 minutes ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

I think the issues with your idea is, of all players are allowed to keep rewards up to the second they've been playing, then there would be a LOT of bail out players,

I'm not sure if I follow what you're suggesting.  It seems to me that if failure didn't result in lost rewards, there would be no reason for players to jump ship.  Can you explain why you think the number of players who bail would increase?

[PublikDomain]

6 minutes ago, (PSN)GEN-Son_17 said:

I think the issues with your idea is, of all players are allowed to keep rewards up to the second they've been playing, then there would be a LOT of bail out players, increasing migration issues many times over. We can just look at the posting patterns here to get a good sense of player behavior.

In short, people lie, and will lie about going up to certain point or time in a mission with you. By adding an anytime opt-out with gathered rewards, essentially you will create the most crybaby, whiney, spoiled and laziest players ever.

If people leave, I do not care. Don't see why you would either. Call them whiny, spoiled, lazy, might I even suggest entitled? However it is you want to disparage your peers, I frankly do not care. I care far more that my time is being constantly wasted by migrations in the Circuit than I care about someone else respecting their own time.

20 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

Just drop the crime and punishment routine.

[PublikDomain]

10 minutes ago, (PSN)Unstar said:

I'm not sure if I follow what you're suggesting.  It seems to me that if failure didn't result in lost rewards, there would be no reason for players to jump ship.  Can you explain why you think the number of players who bail would increase?

Because they'd get the thing they want and leave. We saw this in Railjack with Anomaly Shards, where aborting the mission kept your Shard. It would definitely happen.

It also doesn't matter whatsoever because if someone leaves and the game migrates, if you're not being punished for it anymore then who cares? 95% of the time it'll migrate fine and it's just a little hiccup, and even in the worst case where the mission drops or the second-worse case where the mission hangs you'd still keep your stuff and lose no progress. It could even be the third-worst case scenario where it dumps you solo by yourself and you're expected to clear a lvl1,000 Defense wave alone because your teammates weren't lucky enough to make it with you. None of that would matter because you'd always keep your stuff.

It also doesn't matter because people can already get what they want and leave, just at specific allowed exit points (Circuit waves, self-extract in Survival, just aborting when a Nightwave task or Riven task is completed, etc). The game is perfectly happy letting the host bail at the last second of the countdown and leave their teammates to migrate. This is already something that happens, it's just that right now the game punishes everyone else for it. But crime and punishment wants to grind your balls because punishing the "crybaby, whiney, spoiled and laziest players ever" is far too important to improve the QoL for everyone else. Gosh that S#&$ty mindset gets me irate. It's so pointlessly petty, selfish, and hateful. It's gross.

Edited July 10, 2023 by PublikDomain

[Learicorn]

I do agree that this game is way too punishing in terms of taking away player's loot. I feel like if they did some basic, systemic changes maybe it wouldn't help reduce the host migrations themselves but would surely mend the frustration caused by them

[-AncientWarrior-]

I think there should be a difference between host migration - yes keep what you've earnt, .. but any abort mission - no dont keep what you've earnt.  I'm positive the Devs could sort out the difference between aborting mission and getting a HM.. 

[kamisama85]

Solving this is not going to be entirely up to DE, as there is much more going on that is outside of their control such as what people's hardware is, what connections they are on, and unforeseen events like power outages, weather, natural disasters, etc.

But the moment such a change is made where people can drop literally at any time and cash out will be the end of any continuity in a mission that started as a random party. The break points (i.e. 5 rounds of defense, 5 minute survival, a full clear of excavation or interception, 2 of 3 spy targets, a full railjack run end to end, etc.) was the cohesion that kept people in the mission until a certain point before everyone could unanimously leave.

If this becomes irrelevant, then the moment someone get's exactly the drop they came for, they will drop and move on to doing other things. You already see this in relic pubs where someone such as the host gets exactly the one item they wanted on the first relic and just jumps ship. There are drops that don't require a mission clear that people want as well. Forget waiting for the end of the round any longer. Mission failure was the only insurance you had to ensure a party was with you until a stopping point.

There are plenty of players who can make do, and may not even care if people leave the mission, but for players who do rely on a full team or need help through partying, this will impact them immensely because multiplayer will no longer be reliable outside of pre-made parties. 

[PublikDomain]

32 minutes ago, -AncientWarrior- said:

I think there should be a difference between host migration - yes keep what you've earnt, .. but any abort mission - no dont keep what you've earnt.  I'm positive the Devs could sort out the difference between aborting mission and getting a HM.. 

But what about cases where there's a migrate that leads to a stalled mission? The only way out right now is to abort, or hope that a second host migration from the new host aborting fixes it. Even if stalled missions were detectable and never happened in any future content ever again, what if there's a migrate that works correctly and resumes the mission but the remaining team then fails due to the new and unforeseen lack of manpower? There's always going to be some situation where someone fails/aborts/drops due to something that isn't their fault.

17 minutes ago, kamisama85 said:

You already see this in relic pubs where someone such as the host gets exactly the one item they wanted on the first relic and just jumps ship.

And in Survival missions the moment someone get the drop they came for they can walk to the exit and leave. In wave-based missions like Defense or Circuit they can jump ship just a few minutes later. In open worlds players can leave the squad whenever they want, or go to the exit and extract that way. Riven challenges and Nightwave tasks count even on abort, so players are free to leave as soon as they're ready. Even with Affinity players keep the earned Affinity on abort - they just lose the bonus. If you get to R30 in ESO without needing the bonus you can just leave.

So if players can already do this, if we already have to deal with the consequences, and if multiplayer is already inherently unstable due to both the physical realities of online games and the unpredictable and unstoppable actions of players, then the question that remains is if something should be done about this reality or if it should be left to keep negatively impacting people.

Edited July 10, 2023 by PublikDomain
typo

[Drachnyn]

Technically you can control being host by teaming up with atleast one person.

[kamisama85]

33 minutes ago, PublikDomain said:

So if players can already do this, if we already have to deal with the consequences

Understood, but there comes a point where if you're already aware that this can happen and it does not matter to you, then you should just play SOLO and be done with it. Yes, I know it's the overused 'fix' that people keep suggesting but if you are okay with people coming and going, then you don't actually need a party of people present to do what you were doing, which means going solo would take away any headache of those things happening. It's the people who absolutely rely on a party to be present with them to hand hold them that will be impacted and that will be largely newer fresher players who cannot complete early or mid content on their own.

[Zahnrad]

8 minutes ago, kamisama85 said:

Understood, but there comes a point where if you're already aware that this can happen and it does not matter to you, then you should just play SOLO and be done with it. Yes, I know it's the overused 'fix' that people keep suggesting but if you are okay with people coming and going, then you don't actually need a party of people present to do what you were doing, which means going solo would take away any headache of those things happening. It's the people who absolutely rely on a party to be present with them to hand hold them that will be impacted and that will be largely newer fresher players who cannot complete early or mid content on their own.

Seems kinda alienating to me. I mostly play on Solo unless I want to do more tedious or time consuming missions quicker. But kinda odd to have the Multiplayer in a Multiplayer game to be a sub-par experience compared to Solo.

[(PSN)Unstar]

30 minutes ago, kamisama85 said:

It's the people who absolutely rely on a party to be present with them to hand hold them that will be impacted and that will be largely newer fresher players who cannot complete early or mid content on their own.

You're making some big assumptions here.  I don't need other players to complete content, but for most people it's a lot more fun to be in a group rather than soloing; if this weren't the case, there's no way DE would be allocating the resources they have to getting cross-play functional.

If you prefer solo that's fine, but it's hard for me to imagine doing most content in Warframe without my fellow Tenno; they're what truly make each mission something more interesting than mindlessly slaughtering endless waves of AI minions.

[Nekomian]

This issue comes up every so often on forums, gonna link to a post I made about it as well that goes into a bit of detail: 

The TL;DR is: this whole issue is more of a connection degradation handling problem. Host migrations will always occur and are unavoidable (sudden power outage, internet loss, PC or game crash, etc.); handling how the game processes things from that point and assigns a new host / continues the mission (including buffs and abilities) and saves rewards without disruption is the part it doesn't seem to be always doing correctly.

2 hours ago, MouadSaqui said:

The game need dedicated servers

While it would be nice, it's not feasible at scale (specifically for in-game squads, the matchmaker & profile / relay servers already exist); you'd need tons of servers per region and have to reconstruct the existing net code to work with them, and still run into situations where if people aren't near the servers but are next to one another they'd have considerable latency (i.e. two people 1000 miles from the server that are neighbors now both have effective 300ms ping to one another, despite being physically close). P2P can work fine and many games implement it, it's more of just the fallback not working as intended in this game.

[PublikDomain]

1 hour ago, kamisama85 said:

Understood, but there comes a point where if you're already aware that this can happen and it does not matter to you, then you should just play SOLO and be done with it. Yes, I know it's the overused 'fix' that people keep suggesting but if you are okay with people coming and going, then you don't actually need a party of people present to do what you were doing, which means going solo would take away any headache of those things happening. It's the people who absolutely rely on a party to be present with them to hand hold them that will be impacted and that will be largely newer fresher players who cannot complete early or mid content on their own.

What if I just like being social and playing with people in this online multiplayer game and don't want to be punished for that? "Just go play solo" ignores the problem and doesn't solve anything. And if it's the player's responsibility to "solve" this issue on their own then why are you concerned with these players who rely on a party? Can't they just git gud?