ping limit and opt-out of matchmaking + bad ping report option

[SneakyErvin]

On 2023-11-05 at 8:11 PM, Hexerin said:

That's a hilariously bad take, for one very obvious reason:

That doesnt really change what he said. Everyone that isnt in one of the major regions will have a drastically bad ping experience since they are forced to matchmake with whichever major region they pick. Which covers places like africa, the middle east and so on with no proper matchmaking to cater to their position on the planet.

Heck, even within the northern americas region(s) the "north america" matchmaker setting is faulty. Since there is one big as #*!% difference connecting between NY and Washington or Anchorage and Miami for instance.

[(PSN)FirmBizkit]

8 hours ago, (XBOX)K1jker said:

Yes, by adding dedicated servers. 

Not by punishing players and ban them from hosting. 

This is a digital extremes problem, and not on the players. Stop this rhetoric and actually address the devs using outdated systems in a 2023 game which is literally the only game having these issues these days.

Would we lose solo mode with dedicated servers? Because that’s a feature I really like and coming from Destiny and a lifetime of MMORPGs I’m actually really intrigued by Warframes P2P networking and feel it could provide a long life after the game is no longer developed since there’s no servers to maintain. From what I know too all of the games calculations are also done client side. All of this would have to become server side with dedicated servers wouldn’t it? From a game preservation standpoint it looks to me like the current system would be the best option.

[(XBOX)Shodian]

9 hours ago, (XBOX)K1jker said:

Yes, by adding dedicated servers. 

Thats quite the opposite of how to help. Something hiccups during the mission? Now all players get disconnected and lose everything. 

[(XBOX)K1jker]

vor 54 Minuten schrieb (XBOX)Shodian:

Thats quite the opposite of how to help. Something hiccups during the mission? Now all players get disconnected and lose everything. 

That's legit what host migration does right now when it fails. You make P2P sound flawless.

And can we please stop this rhetoric of every single online game running on servers right now constantly giving all it's players (millions) problems? It's a flat out lie. 

I'm playing a game with cheap ass Chinese servers and have 1 problem once a month, caused by myself. This "dedicated servers are bad" rhetoric from Warframe players is obnoxious when millions enjoy the benefits of them, legitimately, right now. 

vor einer Stunde schrieb (PSN)FirmBizkit:

Would we lose solo mode with dedicated servers? Because that’s a feature I really like and coming from Destiny and a lifetime of MMORPGs I’m actually really intrigued by Warframes P2P networking and feel it could provide a long life after the game is no longer developed since there’s no servers to maintain. From what I know too all of the games calculations are also done client side. All of this would have to become server side with dedicated servers wouldn’t it? From a game preservation standpoint it looks to me like the current system would be the best option.

How many hours do you pause the game in a day to justify not making progress like other games have done that switched? 

If it's not at least 12 hours, forget it. It's not worth it.

You know how crazy types of missions we could've had with railjack if this thing wasn't P2P? It's legit holding big projects hostage because it causes them to barely work. I played enough horrid railjack to know of that. And no, it's not the players fault. It's DE.

See you guys when Warframe mobile releases, especially on Android, so we can go full circle avoiding what's actually the problem.

Edited November 7, 2023 by (XBOX)K1jker

[(PSN)FirmBizkit]

11 minutes ago, (XBOX)K1jker said:

That's legit what host migration does right now when it fails. You make P2P sound flawless.

And can we please stop this rhetoric of every single online game running on servers right now constantly giving all it's players (millions) problems? It's a flat out lie. 

I'm playing a game with cheap ass Chinese servers and have 1 problem once a month, caused by myself. This "dedicated servers are bad" rhetoric from Warframe players is obnoxious when millions enjoy the benefits of them, legitimately, right now. 

How many hours do you pause the game in a day to justify not making progress like other games have done that switched? 

If it's not at least 12 hours, forget it. It's not worth it.

You know how crazy types of missions we could've had with railjack if this thing wasn't P2P? It's legit holding big projects hostage because it causes them to barely work. I played enough horrid railjack to know of that. And no, it's not the players fault. It's DE.

What’s with the hostility and when did I insinuate and lie that every game with dedicated servers has millions of problems or that it’s flawless? I simply asked a question and presented my experience with the current system and what I find beneficial about it. You could have corrected me about the points I made if they were wrong and answered the questions I asked.

The current system seems most beneficial to game preservation and correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t we lose solo mode with dedicated servers as calculations and other things would be completed server side?

If losing these things is a possibility of dedicated servers I don’t think it’s the best solution.

I pause the game quite often when I run solo since it’s the entire reason I choose to do so. Especially on 1+ hour long endless missions. It’s quite literally the answer to every nagging mother over the last twenty years of online gaming asking “Why can’t you just pause the game?!”

When I play these games and especially when I invest substantial amounts of money into them it comes with the expectation that they will be around for 20+ years to play or until I die or get bored of it. That isn’t guaranteed in games which require costly dedicated servers - and is more often than not the case that they shut down.

From what little I understand of Warframes current network architecture it seems very probable that the game will be able to continue past its service life with very minimal investment on behalf of the developer.

Edited November 7, 2023 by (PSN)FirmBizkit

[(XBOX)K1jker]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb (PSN)FirmBizkit:

What’s with the hostility and when did I insinuate and lie that every game with dedicated servers has millions of problems or that it’s flawless? 

The first part wasn't even directed to you.. I responded to someone else. It kinda states it as well 😂

[Nekomian]

5 minutes ago, (XBOX)K1jker said:

You know how crazy types of missions we could've had with railjack if this thing wasn't P2P? It's legit holding big projects hostage because it causes them to barely work. I played enough horrid railjack to know of that. And no, it's not the players fault. It's DE.

This is more of a DE thing than specific to network setup; from the game's perspective, it could just treat all players as client instead of one host and there's your dedicated server setup (it in fact does this for relays and hubs already). The mission types don't particularly matter to the net code in that regard, they're agnostic and just transmit data regardless of what the objective is. It's not holding big projects hostage or preventing anything.

2 minutes ago, (PSN)FirmBizkit said:

The current system seems most beneficial to game preservation and correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t we lose solo mode with dedicated servers as calculations and other things would be completed server side?

If they moved to a purely dedicated servers for sessions style, yes - but there's also no reason they wouldn't be able to keep the existing setup and just check in with the servers on events (i.e. decree collected, mission completed, etc.), allowing a solo player to pause and their own client to act as "host" of their own mission. It's not always "must be p2p or servers only", they can mix and match how things connect and when it's applicable to certain situations, so I don't see this as being an issue.

10 minutes ago, (XBOX)K1jker said:

And can we please stop this rhetoric of every single online game running on servers right now constantly giving all it's players (millions) problems? It's a flat out lie. 

I'm playing a game with cheap ass Chinese servers and have 1 problem once a month, caused by myself. This "dedicated servers are bad" rhetoric from Warframe players is obnoxious when millions enjoy the benefits of them, legitimately, right now. 

I'm putting this at the end cause it's gonna be the more lengthy explanation - I don't think anyone in earnest is saying "dedicated servers bad". Both P2P and server-based hosting have their use cases, benefits, and drawbacks; there's no one inherent or "right" way to provide networking support to users, and it all depends on a bunch of factors.

In this case, it is not scalable to have servers per session due to the sheer amount of them and the number of events that occur in them; other games may be more streamlined, but Warframe has so many varied mission types, objectives, items, statuses, damage sources, and abilities that things are constantly happening and servers would need to process them all in parallel, for tens of thousands of active sessions at once. It's possible yes, but it would cost a lot and functionally it's more beneficial when you can offload that to a game client that may have better connection to other players around them instead. As an example, if the only server is 2000 miles away and you want to play with your neighbor, the game would now have to make that round trip and have like 500ms latency for every interaction, which does not particularly feel nice.

So, in this case Warframe works a bit better with its existing P2P structure; however, it is not without its flaws. Hosts with spotty connections or issues with connecting to other clients in the squad do happen, and it's inconvenient when it does. The game used to handle this quite well and force a migration to a better suited candidate for hosting, which while annoying that it pauses gameplay for this does usually resolve this issue.

I've been pretty vocal about wanting to see some better handling of host migrations / connection degradation because right now it's a toss-up if you lose mission progress and it can take you out of gameplay for like 20s and disable your abilities or revert your progress. I think with mobile users coming soon(ish?) they'll really have to solve these problems because they're only going to compound with more varied devices and potentially spotty connections.

Doing things like making the migrations less painful, enforcing them a bit more strictly on connections that go above a median threshold (i.e. constant 400ms pings), and regularly syncing progress to servers in endless missions (that don't already do so) to prevent reward loss would go a long way in alleviating some of the issues people have with the existing system, without requiring some expensive overhaul that would solve some issues while simultaneously introducing new ones.

[(XBOX)Shodian]

25 minutes ago, (XBOX)K1jker said:

And can we please stop this rhetoric of every single online game running on servers right now constantly giving all it's players (millions) problems? It's a flat out lie. 

I mean, I could say the same about host migrations. I very rarely have a complete crash when I get one.

When I play other games that have dedicated servers, *Cough*Destiny*Cough*, I get kicked to the main menu even when I'm playing solo. I prefer P2P because I have a decent internet connection. 

[(XBOX)K1jker]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb (XBOX)Shodian:

I mean, I could say the same about host migrations. I very rarely have a complete crash when I get one.

When I play other games that have dedicated servers, *Cough*Destiny*Cough*, I get kicked to the main menu even when I'm playing solo. I prefer P2P because I have a decent internet connection. 

Don't use destiny as an example xD it sucks 😅 

vor 8 Minuten schrieb Naroxas44:

This is more of a DE thing than specific to network setup; from the game's perspective, it could just treat all players as client instead of one host and there's your dedicated server setup (it in fact does this for relays and hubs already). The mission types don't particularly matter to the net code in that regard, they're agnostic and just transmit data regardless of what the objective is. It's not holding big projects hostage or preventing anything.

If they moved to a purely dedicated servers for sessions style, yes - but there's also no reason they wouldn't be able to keep the existing setup and just check in with the servers on events (i.e. decree collected, mission completed, etc.), allowing a solo player to pause and their own client to act as "host" of their own mission. It's not always "must be p2p or servers only", they can mix and match how things connect and when it's applicable to certain situations, so I don't see this as being an issue.

I'm putting this at the end cause it's gonna be the more lengthy explanation - I don't think anyone in earnest is saying "dedicated servers bad". Both P2P and server-based hosting have their use cases, benefits, and drawbacks; there's no one inherent or "right" way to provide networking support to users, and it all depends on a bunch of factors.

In this case, it is not scalable to have servers per session due to the sheer amount of them and the number of events that occur in them; other games may be more streamlined, but Warframe has so many varied mission types, objectives, items, statuses, damage sources, and abilities that things are constantly happening and servers would need to process them all in parallel, for tens of thousands of active sessions at once. It's possible yes, but it would cost a lot and functionally it's more beneficial when you can offload that to a game client that may have better connection to other players around them instead. As an example, if the only server is 2000 miles away and you want to play with your neighbor, the game would now have to make that round trip and have like 500ms latency for every interaction, which does not particularly feel nice.

So, in this case Warframe works a bit better with its existing P2P structure; however, it is not without its flaws. Hosts with spotty connections or issues with connecting to other clients in the squad do happen, and it's inconvenient when it does. The game used to handle this quite well and force a migration to a better suited candidate for hosting, which while annoying that it pauses gameplay for this does usually resolve this issue.

I've been pretty vocal about wanting to see some better handling of host migrations / connection degradation because right now it's a toss-up if you lose mission progress and it can take you out of gameplay for like 20s and disable your abilities or revert your progress. I think with mobile users coming soon(ish?) they'll really have to solve these problems because they're only going to compound with more varied devices and potentially spotty connections.

Doing things like making the migrations less painful, enforcing them a bit more strictly on connections that go above a median threshold (i.e. constant 400ms pings), and regularly syncing progress to servers in endless missions (that don't already do so) to prevent reward loss would go a long way in alleviating some of the issues people have with the existing system, without requiring some expensive overhaul that would solve some issues while simultaneously introducing new ones.

Nicely written, and I'm curious how the game unfolds with mobile in the mix.. this topic will start over when it does 😅 

[Zakkhar]

On 2023-11-05 at 6:47 PM, Hidoi said:

all your problems could be fixed by going to the settings and putting your matchmaking ping limit to 50-100, that way you'll get to host more often. also punishing people for bad ping isn't really a good idea.

Amount of players who think it does something beside giving you warning whenever you get invited by hosts with high latency, is astonishing.

I repeat: in public matchmaking the game has no way of checking your latency to potential host. You can put 1 ping limit and you will still have the same Matchmaking experience as if you put 1000. That setting doesnt fix anything. It is placebo for uninformed people.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Zakkhar

[Skoomaseller]

On 2023-11-05 at 9:13 PM, SDGDen said:

hi, im on PC and on the EU region, normally i get around 33ms ping. i have gigabit fiber networking that's insanely stable.

 

so why in the unholy clem do i get matchmade with hosts that net me and the rest of the non-host players a consistent 1.6 SECONDS of ping... on an alert nonetheless (the tenno united 3 forma alert).

 

in my opinion, DE should do the following:
>fix the matchmaking ping limit since it's clearly not working
>add a way for players that have bad internet or a bad computer to opt out of hosting. 
>have a way to "report" players for unplayable ping, with multiple reports they should automatically be opted out of hosting (i dont mean to ban them obviously. often times bad ping is beyond their control) 


edit: and before people claim this was a crossplay issue, everyone was on PC. 

let's not report players for something, like you said, could be outside of their control.

I agree it should be addressed, but for now, you can set your ping limit to the lowest possible (100) to avoid potentially laggy hosts, if you haven't already. if it isn't working maybe file a report. 

it's working for me (playing from Singapore), constantly get hosts <100ms, with the very occasional >~100-110ms host. before, my limit was 300 and I'd be matched into lobbies with host ping >200. so from what I can see it has helped. 

if it isn't working... could just be not enough players in your region, which is unfortunate. :(

Edited November 8, 2023 by Skoomaseller

[Illegal_Squirell]

Instead of reporting, DE could implement something where a client would check the host for ping, if the ping reported high then it would report to DE, then DE could check if non-hosts would consistently have high ping when a certain player host the game, and they could implement a threshold for how many times it happened and act accordingly.

[Nekomian]

7 hours ago, Zakkhar said:

I repeat: in public matchmaking the game has no way of checking your latency to potential host.

This is demonstrably false; logs even indicate the exact ping threshold you have when searching for hosts (mine is set to 200, as seen below):

ThemedSquadOverlay.lua: MissionSelection::OnFindPublicSessionsComplete: filtering search results (maxPing=200)

The matchmaking service finds all public squads for a node (MatchingService::FindSessions), pings the host ([Info]: Phase 0/1/2 - requesting introduction (PTT_FIND_SESSIONS, id=XXX) & Net [Info]: Sending ping request to IP:4950 & Script [Info]: ThemedSquadOverlay.lua: Search result PLAYER_NAME ping=83), and filters based on the ping of the existing sessions, dropping any outside of the filter range or that didn't reply (Net [Warning]: Dropping session that failed to reply to ping: SESSION_ID (host: SESSION_ID, USERNAME, ping time=200mss, limit is: 0.2s), and then connecting to the session it chooses (Net [Info]: MatchingService::JoinSquadSession).

The reason people get joined to sessions with much higher pings than the rates they have set (which is all this setting does, it does not prevent others from joining you as a host with that set amount) is because it's not taking a very long average or median rate, it's just an extremely brief test and it replies in a timely manner. The client joining a host receives a ping of say 80ms once, and then in game it's 500ms+ with occasional dips to 80ms maybe every 30s or so, but it's so brief it's probably unnoticeable. Unless you make players wait longer to get average or median pings from the matchmaking service that truly reflect how stable the connection will be (which would be at least 10s+ honestly), it's always going to have this issue of not quite being as accurate as it seems, or looking like the filter does nothing when it does.

This is why I said "the ping was probably fine when it first connected to the host's IP and tested it, so it decided to join" in my original message, and why this type of thing cannot be reasonably used to approximate a "bad connection" and should not be used for any reporting or "host banning" purposes, since it's just one network route from IP to IP and could be messed up or dropping packets anywhere in-between. It's also why I suggest that DE should try to sync regular mission progress to servers, have stricter host migration criteria, and make host migration feel less bad / not interrupt gameplay flow since that is way more solvable than ensuring everyone's network equipment around the globe is working perfectly at all times and never has latency spikes or connectivity issues.

[Zakkhar]

46 minutes ago, Naroxas44 said:

This is demonstrably false; logs even indicate the exact ping threshold you have when searching for hosts (mine is set to 200, as seen below):

Thank you for demonstating I am essentially right. Great self burn.

46 minutes ago, Naroxas44 said:

Unless you make players wait longer to get average or median pings from the matchmaking service that truly reflect how stable the connection will be (which would be at least 10s+ honestly), it's always going to have this issue of not quite being as accurate as it seems, or looking like the filter does nothing when it does.

No, it wouldn't. Not to mention there is a big difference between single ping and latency in game while hosting games of 4 players.

Also it still only half of the problem. The other half is how game picks hosts, out of all players queuing.

PS: It is still better system than SC2/HotS, where if you disconnect from game you have to wait in queue while the game loads from replay (on 3x speed, but still). Small indie company made those games.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Zakkhar

[Nekomian]

1 minute ago, Zakkhar said:

Thank you for demonstating I am essentially right. Great self burn.

Not sure how "it restricts matchmaking via ping limits set in your client" is being misinterpreted to "it doesn't respect ping limits at all", but alright.

3 minutes ago, Zakkhar said:

No, it wouldn't.

I would look into how network routing and jitter can affect RTTs; if they're not taking enough time to do measurements they can be inaccurate, since some connections can have massive spikes or lots of jitter in either direction. Expecting the 0.5s it performs ping requests in to be an accurate indication of the connection quality is a bit misguided, and a longer test duration would give a better indication of what to expect.

[Zakkhar]

16 minutes ago, Naroxas44 said:

I would look into how network routing and jitter can affect RTTs; if they're not taking enough time to do measurements they can be inaccurate, since some connections can have massive spikes or lots of jitter in either direction. Expecting the 0.5s it performs ping requests in to be an accurate indication of the connection quality is a bit misguided, and a longer test duration would give a better indication of what to expect.

Feel free to contact DE with your know-how. And while you are at it, tell them how to code chatbox lock option.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Zakkhar

[Zakkhar]

30 minutes ago, Naroxas44 said:

Not sure how "it restricts matchmaking via ping limits set in your client" is being misinterpreted to "it doesn't respect ping limits at all", but alright.

You are misinterpreting what I wrote. I never wrote that. All is said is it has no way of checking and measuring how your ping will look like when you connect to host and therefore no way to reject "bad" hosts - the mechanics you described so extensively for me. All it does is restricts some hosts. Depeding whether it catches them on high or low ping, some of those rejected ones can actually be more stable than the ones it allows (high albeit stable latency tends to be not as bad as fluctuating one)

In short. It is placebo.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Zakkhar

[Nekomian]

You stated this:

9 hours ago, Zakkhar said:

Amount of players who think it does something beside giving you warning whenever you get invited by hosts with high latency, is astonishing.

And I showed it does indeed do something besides give a warning, just not in the way that you expect it do due to the method it checks pings not being accurate to in-game connection. That does not make it a placebo, it just doesn't work as you intend it to. A placebo would be if it doesn't work at all.

[Zakkhar]

3 hours ago, Naroxas44 said:

And I showed it does indeed do something besides give a warning, just not in the way that you expect it do due to the method it checks pings not being accurate to in-game connection.

It does something alright. It has little to no effect on actual matchmaking (maybe making the queues longer, because it drops the potential hosts). But yeah it does. Well, beside the warning - warning is completely intended.

3 hours ago, Naroxas44 said:

That does not make it a placebo, it just doesn't work as you intend it to. A placebo would be if it doesn't work at all.

That is exactly what makes it placebo. Players believe it improves their matchmaking experience. Their faith makes it "work".  All placebos do something, no substance can be completely neutral to your body. It can be vitamin C, hell even clay is not completlely neutral.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Zakkhar