Stop new feature development and fix Host Migration issues once and for all

[SneakyErvin]

14 hours ago, Gelos.Prime said:

I agree DE probably cannot completely re-write their entire network and group-based architecture.  But I also assert they can do a lot more to make it better and more reliable.

They cant really do much with what they currently have set up since anyone can be the host and the minimum requirements along with all possible connection variables between players are just too vast. They would practically need to rework it, and not only rework what we currently have, but rework it in a way so it functions more like Destiny 2, which runs on a hybrid setup.

And as far as I've read about Destiny 2, their setup works similar to WF but the main difference is that whenever a host migration occurs a dedicated server steps in during the transition until a new host is found. Which makes for a near seamless transition while also allowing people to still play while the matchmaker is at work finding a new host.

In WF it just directly tries to find a new host out of the 3 players left, which can have terrible results. Since even if the connection was great between each of those 3 players to the host it doesnt mean the connection between those 3 players is great. Because even if you have your ping limit set to 50 another can have theirs set to 250, which means the ping between you and that other player can be far greater than your desired 50 since it was the limit set between you and the previous host. Then the hardware comes into the picture aswell, where the new host may have utterly shoddy hardware to host, but play just fine as client.

[Corvid]

8 hours ago, S2Weak said:

It's actually very easy to fix.

No, it really isn't. Otherwise, they would have done it already.

8 hours ago, S2Weak said:

Just make every game session hosted by official servers like Relays.

Relays work by vastly reducing the amount of information each player transmits to everyone else (pretty much just where they are and if they are currently moving). Ever notice how if another player jumps they just seem to float upward while walking in place?

Bear in mind that since there's no combat in relays, there's already much less that the game needs to keep synchronised since there's no AI involved.

If you tried to run actual coop missions on the relay server system, it would be an absolutely miserable experience.

[S2Weak]

10分鐘前 , Corvid 說:

No, it really isn't.

MMOs from decades before (and current days) were hosted on official servers with combat, open world, world bosses and chat bubbles.

 

I think it is actually harder to do P2P connections because of uncertainty of hardware and network environment.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

On 2023-10-05 at 6:00 AM, Gelos.Prime said:

DE, this is not a request, but a demand:

oh no.. I'm sure the devs are absolutely shaking in their boots at the thought of you... doing what exactly? nagging them to death? lol.

host migrations suck, but they happen, always have, always will regardless of what systems the game runs on. 

[Corvid]

1 hour ago, S2Weak said:

MMOs from decades before (and current days) were hosted on official servers with combat, open world, world bosses and chat bubbles.

OK, and they were all built from the ground up to run like that. Warframe was not.

The problem is changing the game to run on a fundamentally different network system. If you knew even a little bit about the subject beyond the surface level, you would know that that is not easy.

1 hour ago, S2Weak said:

I think it is actually harder to do P2P connections because of uncertainty of hardware and network environment.

Neither is significantly easier or harder than the other. It's a matter of perks and drawbacks. P2P with occasional server authentication was deemed the best option at the time.

[Zimzala]

2 minutes ago, Corvid said:

OK, and they were all built from the ground up to run like that. Warframe was not.

The problem is changing the game to run on a fundamentally different network system. If you knew even a little bit about the subject beyond the surface level, you would know that that is not easy.

Neither is significantly easier or harder than the other. It's a matter of perks and drawbacks. P2P with occasional server authentication was deemed the best option at the time.

Bold mine.

Many of those MMOs have regular, hours long downtime where no one can play, because the central server is offline.

If the central server gets hacked, everyone is at risk.

If the company goes offline, no one can ever play.

There is no perfect solution, which is what the uninformed demand.

The current solution is 'good enough' at scale and there are simply some people in the world for whom accepting "good enough" over desired perfection is some sort of crime against nature.

Finally, it's intended to be a co-op OPTIONAL game unlike an MMO where it's often required to have a group to complete some of the content.

There is nothing wrong with wanting a better netcode infrastructure, just as there is nothing wrong with wanting world peace, but that does not mean it's easy, cheap, straightforward, or possible.

[SneakyErvin]

1 hour ago, S2Weak said:

MMOs from decades before (and current days) were hosted on official servers with combat, open world, world bosses and chat bubbles.

 

I think it is actually harder to do P2P connections because of uncertainty of hardware and network environment.

That is far different from changing something years down the line. MMOs are built on that server structure from the ground up, it is one of the corner stones that result in a game being called an MMO even. And WF doesnt have anything near the server structure of an MMO. They could potentially shift to a dedicated server system based on conclave, but that is still highly doubtful because conclave only handles a small amount of players on those servers and nothing else. No way to tell how that would work in PvE.

9 minutes ago, Zimzala said:

Bold mine.

Many of those MMOs have regular, hours long downtime where no one can play, because the central server is offline.

If the central server gets hacked, everyone is at risk.

If the company goes offline, no one can ever play.

There is no perfect solution, which is what the uninformed demand.

The current solution is 'good enough' at scale and there are simply some people in the world for whom accepting "good enough" over desired perfection is some sort of crime against nature.

Finally, it's intended to be a co-op OPTIONAL game unlike an MMO where it's often required to have a group to complete some of the content.

There is nothing wrong with wanting a better netcode infrastructure, just as there is nothing wrong with wanting world peace, but that does not mean it's easy, cheap, straightforward, or possible.

Most of that applies here too though, only the point regarding maintenence downtime is different for WF and a major benefit of the current system. But the risk if the company gets hacked or the game shuts down is exactly the same. Since everything is stored at the company end, so if they get hacked info will leak just the same as it would if we played on dedicated servers all the time. And since everything is stored at the company end, if WF shuts down we wont be able to play without them reworking how things work before that, same as for every other always online game aswell as MMOs.

You are also correct that the current system is good enough since the game is indeed co-op OPTIONAL and not forced. I've gotten fed up with host migs etc. and since there is no real reason to group in the first place (outside of rad share really) playing solo is perfectly viable and enjoyable for me. We also barely communicate in groups in this game. I honestly think I've said less in WF over the course of 6 years than I did over the course of a week or month in an MMO.

Edited October 6, 2023 by SneakyErvin

[Hayrack]

I chuckle every time somebody says Warframe is co-op. Co-op in the same amount as "competitiveness" or "E-sports" in Conclave.

If you want to do particular/serious stuff in Warframe, do it ALONE.

Now, take a deep breath and remember, that in the world of live disservice gaming, you are not entitled to good time, awards and satisfaction.

[Zimzala]

3 hours ago, Hayrack said:

... in the world of live disservice gaming, you are not entitled to good time, awards and satisfaction.

Want a cocktail to go with those bitters?

[(XBOX)K1jker]

vor 23 Stunden schrieb Silligoose:

It's a coding issue.

I'd love to see it improved or see innovations being attempted as with Bungee. Sadly, looking at the truckload of bugs DE introduces with updates, Duviri being a prime example, I do not have high hopes for the company behind said bugged releases actually addressing this issue. 

Even if by some miracle they decide to give it a go: One of their main selling points for Focus 3.0 was "removing the jank" from Operator play, but we're still moonwalkin'!

They gonna have to with mobile in the mix, especially pesky and troublesome Android (mind you, I'm on Android since it's launch) 

I'd like to see a feature that saves progress from missions, so no matter what happens I get to keep my loot. 

I'm playing mostly solo since 2018 because I can't endure losing stuff anymore, especially in open worlds where it's not just "a couple orokin cells". 

[Hayrack]

1 hour ago, Zimzala said:

Want a cocktail to go with those bitters?

[LittleLeoniePrime]

On 2023-10-06 at 11:04 AM, CephalonCarnage said:

This woulnd't stop hosts that truly disappear from the network, but woudl fix all the open world problems, including the extraction at Zariman.

which let's face it, those are probably barely 5% of all host-migrations.

Edited October 7, 2023 by LittleLeoniePrime

[CephalonCarnage]

31 minutes ago, LittleLeoniePrime said:

which let's face it, those are probably barely 5% of all host-migrations.

doubtful in the extreme. The number of times a host has truly disappeared on my is minimal. The number who have quit the squad (for any non-technical reason) is huge in comparison. People quitting open worlds and Zariman is large. The number quitting because the mission wasn;t going their way (eg Archons) is large, the number quitting because someone didn't have the right relic, high. The number quitting because they wanted to speedrush the mission again and couldn't wait 10 seconds - reasonably high at times.

[-Krism-]

On 2023-10-05 at 7:00 AM, Gelos.Prime said:

I am sick of getting Host Migration issues and am growing more angry each time they happen

Sounds like someone doesn't understand how squad connections work

The game uses the internet connection of the host to connect everybody together in a single instance, they do not work like a server does; if you keep having issues, that means the problem comes from you, not the game's

[SplineDrive]

19 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

The game uses the internet connection of the host to connect everybody together in a single instance, they do not work like a server does

I'm sorry, but that that's wrong.

The host is the server.

The only difference between peer-to-peer and server/client is the host happens to be one of the players.

[-Krism-]

3 minutes ago, SplineDrive said:

the host happens to be one of the players.

That's exactly what I said:

24 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

The game uses the internet connection of the host to connect everybody together in a single instance

 

[SplineDrive]

28 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

they do not work like a server does

That's what you also said...

 

The only reason everyone moans about it is because the host can (legitimately) disconnect.  You wouldn't be able to tell the difference if the host never disconnects.  Also, I'm well aware that either option (PTP or server/client) would also need to contact other servers (for example, chat server or the server that deals with loot/progression etc)

Edited October 7, 2023 by SplineDrive

[-Krism-]

1 minute ago, SplineDrive said:

That's what you also said...

You know exactly what that means, as in it is created upon the players connecting to each other

[SplineDrive]

2 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

You know exactly what that means, as in it is created upon the players connecting to each other

 

No because, the players don't connect to "each other".

 

They connect to the host (server).

Edited October 7, 2023 by SplineDrive

[Nekomian]

3 hours ago, -Krism- said:

You know exactly what that means, as in it is created upon the players connecting to each other

It's a semantics thing, everyone connects to the one host, who "acts like a server" in this instance being a centralized point for communication between clients. The clients technically "communicate with each other" but indirectly, by proxy of the host relaying their positions, abilities, damage, etc. to everyone else.

I think the other user took issue with you saying it doesn't work like a server would, because from the game's perspective it does; each new host session created is a new "server" in so much that it's that central point to connect to, the only difference being that since it's a P2P architecture it can change and migrate as opposed to a fixed dedicated one that never (or very rarely) changes domains or locations.

20 hours ago, (XBOX)K1jker said:

I'd like to see a feature that saves progress from missions, so no matter what happens I get to keep my loot. 

I've been asking for this forever, open world missions have it and there's honestly no reason for "normal" endless missions not to - if I just grinded up to wave 60 and have a power outage, which is out of my control, it sucks to just have my time disrespected by the game when I spent it playing and that work should be valid and counted. Even if it's just every 5 waves or 5 mins that it saves that missions current progress, that would cause way less complaints (and support tickets) from the community and not add that much more server overhead given people can already complete captures in 30s back to back and open worlds save progress constantly.

On 2023-10-06 at 7:45 AM, SneakyErvin said:

And as far as I've read about Destiny 2, their setup works similar to WF but the main difference is that whenever a host migration occurs a dedicated server steps in during the transition until a new host is found. Which makes for a near seamless transition while also allowing people to still play while the matchmaker is at work finding a new host.

I'm unfamiliar with D2 (I played it for like, 30 mins and got a bit bored of it), but that sounds like a good solution to some of the issues that P2P faces; the most annoying part IMO about host migrations in Warframe at the moment isn't that they happen, but rather how disruptive they are to gameplay (10s+ of pause, loss of progress, etc.). It would be nice to just have them seamlessly transition, but I get they'd have to start storing a lot more info about the session per client to piece together a new one in case the host's connection randomly drops or it cannot transition gracefully. If it were easy they'd definitely have already done it, but I can keep hoping they'll at least try to improve it one day haha.

4 hours ago, CephalonCarnage said:

The number who have quit the squad (for any non-technical reason) is huge in comparison. People quitting open worlds and Zariman is large. The number quitting because the mission wasn;t going their way (eg Archons) is large, the number quitting because someone didn't have the right relic, high. The number quitting because they wanted to speedrush the mission again and couldn't wait 10 seconds - reasonably high at times.

My experiences tend to differ from this - I don't often have people randomly leave missions, and if they do I can tell it's usually a connection problem; as an example, I'm waiting in Teshin's cave, someone connects, is loading for 30s, and then disconnects before their model even moves on the screen. It's usually console players as well, so it may be some issue with crossplay dropping the connection somewhere or the system locking up when batch loading, causing network calls to stop responding, or any number of things. I had this happen 10 times in one circuit run once, we just kept waiting for a fourth person but they kept all instantly disconnecting without fully loading in - it's possible the host's connection was causing issues for them too, a lot of ISPs and network equipment does not play nice with stuff like correctly using UPnP or forwarding the UDP ports properly for the session.

I guess it depends on the content played, I'd like to see stats on it tbh because everyone is going to have different experiences with migrations and leavers depending on what content they engage in. I don't do spy sorties or open worlds with others and rarely run relics anymore, so I might experience things vastly different from others.

[SDGDen]

"hey DE could you switch your entire game's hosting architecture and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars placing servers all around the world, potentially cutting off millions of players in areas where servers cannot be set up or forcing them to suffer terrible connection issues because they're not close enough"

 

meanwhile, all of the above would still not fix disconnecting, just no longer because of host migration but because you can still DC from the server if it or your network has a hiccup.... unless it hands the match over to a different server which means you're once again facing host migrations.

 

you're literally asking DE to invent failure-proof wide-area networking which as far as i'm concerned (and i work in IT) isn't really possible for this application in the slightest.  

[Silligoose]

On 2023-10-06 at 8:11 PM, (XBOX)K1jker said:

They gonna have to with mobile in the mix, especially pesky and troublesome Android (mind you, I'm on Android since it's launch) 

I'd like to see a feature that saves progress from missions, so no matter what happens I get to keep my loot. 

I'm playing mostly solo since 2018 because I can't endure losing stuff anymore, especially in open worlds where it's not just "a couple orokin cells". 

It would be great to see a feature that saves progress as a mission progresses (in terms of pick-ups and other progression elements), but a recent experience indicates to me DE doesn't really care much about players losing progress during missions: I was playing SP circuit for an hour or so, encountered a bug that prohibited further progress due to objectives not initializing and knew due to this, I'd have to exit the mission and lose rewards and progression of many rounds. While still in mission, I contacted Support with evidence of my progress and despite that, they couldn't help me in retaining rewards or progression. I'm not mad at Support - they did what they could and that was appreciated, but they are following the guidelines as laid out by DE and apparently those guidelines include not helping players despite proof. That's just the way it is.

Aside from my anecdotal proof, looking at the state of content releases with the myriad of game-breaking bugs, the state of asset releases that are incomplete, them avoiding to even acknowledge the lack of care regarding these releases, even the way they "celebrate" 10 years with their community by way of FOMO skin packages inflated in price with premium currency, it seems evident the player experience is not very high on the priority list at DE.

It is a shame to hear you've had to play solo due to losing progress or rewards.

[CephalonCarnage]

On 2023-10-07 at 4:18 PM, Naroxas44 said:

My experiences tend to differ from this - I don't often have people randomly leave missions, and if they do I can tell it's usually a connection problem; as an example, I'm waiting in Teshin's cave, someone connects, is loading for 30s, and then disconnects before their model even moves on the screen

That will be an artifical situation caused by the natiure of circuit - people drop in, see the optiosn and quit. Deliberately, not network drops. It may be that they take longer to populate their state in the lobby because its possibly built with the same lazy-loading code used in open world lobby areas, not game missions. These are deliberately designed to host oats of players on a DE server, so you can form the squad. Not P2P at all.

I have had network type issues through a VPN sometimes, but in these cases I never join the squads at all, the matchmaking never succeeds in the first place. You'd think people who join don't have network issues, or you'd see a similar number of disconnects mid-mission.

Edited October 8, 2023 by CephalonCarnage

[taiiat]

i think i'd say that Host Migrations has been over 90% success rate since i started playing in 2013. in the first couple Years only the rate would probably have been closer to 50%, but the later Years more like 99% and so all the data averaging together to ballpark 90%.

if individuals consistently have issues with Host Migrations, that isn't representative of the majority experience. perhaps your Network configuration is very wack and isn't abiding by Networking standards. this is something that could be diagnosed, though...

 

On 2023-10-07 at 7:33 AM, SplineDrive said:

They connect to the host (server).

often times even not directly to the Host, but to the "Relay Servers" (not to be confused with the Relays, the places in the game) that are scattered around the World that act as Networking Hubs to help compensate for Players which have very broken Networking configurations and are unable to create or maintain connections to places - and those Servers create the connections between Players for them, to try and bandaid Peoples' broken Computers.

Edited October 8, 2023 by taiiat

[SDGDen]

20 minutes ago, taiiat said:

often times even not directly to the Host, but to the "Relay Servers" (not to be confused with the Relays, the places in the game) that are scattered around the World that act as Networking Hubs to help compensate for Players which have very broken Networking configurations and are unable to create or maintain connections to places - and those Servers create the connections between Players for them, to try and bandaid Peoples' broken Computers.

to add to this, this is also why warframe runs entirely connection-based matchmaking and why it preffers connecting you to players as physically close to you as possible (the less physical network it has to travel through, the better the connection will be) 

i don't think DE even has *that* many relay servers, they probably just have some they rent out rather than having their own hardware in a datacenter somewhere.