Further Connection Issues - Beta 2D

Not whining, just more info possibly for Netcode Devs

from Demigod Forums

So you get on vent with your two buddies and you wanna rock some Demigod.  Unfortunately, you cannot because you spend half an hour trying to get the three of you into the same game, and eventually give up and play DoTA instead.  (Hope this pattern doesn't continue into Live.)

Anyway, the problem user appears to be Seriok for us.  However, when Yuriken hosts, Seriok can connect.  But if Yuriken hosts and RedCheckers connects, Seriok can no longer join (just sits stuck at Trying to Join.)  If Seriok hosts no one can join.  If RedCheckers or Yuriken hosts, they can join each other's games, and other users can also connect (we actually had 8 humans in a game lobby the other day, although we abandoned it because we wanted to get Seriok in and he couldn't join.)

These players are all behind different configurations, different IPs, different hardware.  How is it that Seriok can connect to Yuriken's game, but cannot connect to other games, or to Yuriken's game once another player has joined?  I understand that he has to establish connections with each other player, but is there some setting in a firewall (software or hardware) that could prevent this?  I'm befuddled and I'm a certified network admin...  I understand it is Beta and YMMV and all that, but the fact that Stardock claims connectivity is now around 80% makes me wonder if maybe there is a setting for Seriok to make this work - because for him connectivity to anyone other than Yuriken is apparently zero...

1,314 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top

This has been a persistent issue and seems to come in a few overlapping flavors -

1.  player A is locked out of any game which includes player B

2.  player A can only join games with player B, but locks everyone else out who tries to join after

3.  any two of player A, B, and C can join each other's games, but the third is locked out

4.  player A can join any game, but once connected to a game with player B locks out all subsequent players

Did I miss any?

You also see issues in games over 2 v 2 where about 30% of the time the 6th player to join will be unable to establish a connection to one or more players.  Once this happens that player will never be able to join that game, regardless of restarting client or retrying connect. 

The result of all of this is that as long as you are not looking to get into any specific game with any specific players you can get a 2 v 2 pretty quickly with 80% success.  Where the "80%" model breaks down is when you want to play with specific people or in a specific game.  Then I would drop the success rate down to about 20%.

   

 

Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

The thing is, we are supposed to be able to play 5v5's... Even if this connectivity was 95% or a magical 99%, getting a 5v5 going with 10 specific people will still have issues for a significant % of the time.

IMO, unless they can get this technology to connect at like 99.5++ %, they should really implement an alternative. Would be nice if you could select what "connectivity method" you want when you HOST a game...So then the host can decide if he wants to use this new technology or the "old" method that many games use...

I suppose the "hail mary" would be if the host didn't have to decide anything, and every player who joined the game could decide whether to use the "new method" or "old method"...and the game simply had two 'networking' groups... Those who picked the new method would get the game update packets one way, the rest another...

I call that last option a "hail mary" because it would require some very funky modifications on how the game-packet updates move... I doubt they will try for that one, hehe...

 

-Drexion

 

 

 

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Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

Yes, and in addition to this a point might be:

5. Player B can join a game that Player A hosts.  Player B cannot join Player A's hosted game if any other player has yet joined.  Player B has not successfully connected to games hosted by any other players.  Player B has not successfully hosted any games (even with a single human opponent.)

There are other things which I think are obvious to people that have spent any time trying to coordinate games with specific people as well...

1. If someone who can't join tries, they effectively kill any chances for normally valid players to join.  E.g. Player A hosts, Player B can always join Player A's games.  However, Player C tries to join first, and fails...Now Player B cannot connect to the game, neither can players D, E, F.

2. If you want to have another shot at joining or hosting after any games are completed or after joining or failing to join a game, you must close and reopen the application.

 

It appears a lot of the trouble here has to do with successfully closing failed connections and connection attempts.  Maybe the newer netcode is doing this now but we are impatient in waiting for a timeout/error?  A wait of 60 seconds to join a simple game lobby is probably unacceptable for most users, especially without a progress indicator.

 

A lot of these could be at least mitigated if we offered more verbose indicators to the client.  A status which shows "Connecting to Yuriken, negotiating, Success!  Connecting to RedCheckers, negotiating, negotiating try 2/3, Failure!  You lose, reboot your machine, your router, your mom, and try again!"

Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting Yuriken, reply 3



A lot of these could be at least mitigated if we offered more verbose indicators to the client.  A status which shows "Connecting to Yuriken, negotiating, Success!  Connecting to RedCheckers, negotiating, negotiating try 2/3, Failure!  You lose, reboot your machine, your router, your mom, and try again!"
End of Yuriken's quote

Yuriken and others,   They are working on the things you are mentioning.  Read this post by the CEO

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/338425

It mentions they want 99% connection success rate.  It mentions they will give more status and a better way to eject people who can't connect.   It will be in Beta 3 or later.

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

I did want to update - Seriok was in a game and another user was able to join afterwards, allowing us a 3v3 against comps...I don't know what could have changed.

Reply #6 from Demigod Forums Top

I am also a network admin, and I had the exact same problem.  Thing is, it was with DotA/WC3, not Demi.  It was the darndest thing, I couldn't figure it out for the life of me.