Circa Lag

james · 2019-11-04T15:21:23.247Z

The servers log connection details for all players - this allows us to see how variable the connection is and how often it drops. For example I can see that for your last session that:

Data sent 556KiB, received 103KiB, UDP received 22KiB, UDP packets dropped 162, Input packets sent over WebSocket 195.

That UDP packets dropped is definitely an issue. The client is trying to send input to the server and it’s not arriving (or it’s arriving too late). If this happens for too long then the client will switch to a different protocol: WebSockets. It’ll try and switch back as UDP which should be a little faster.

We could expose an option to stop this switching and always favour WebSockets.

This could help if the experience of switching between the protocols if the problem.

But this will not help if any data sent over the connection is struggling.

Additionally, your latency histogram is:

100ms 16.216215%
125ms 40.540539%
150ms 4.054054%
175ms 1.351351%
200ms 0.000000%
225ms 2.702703%
250ms 0.000000%
275ms 0.000000%
300ms 2.702703%
325ms 5.405406%
350ms 5.405406%
375ms 2.702703%
400ms 0.000000%
425ms 0.000000%
450ms 0.000000%
475ms 0.000000%
500ms 0.000000%
525ms 1.351351%
550ms 0.000000%
575ms 0.000000%
600ms 0.000000%
625ms+ 17.567568%

17% of the messages from the client to the server are arriving too late and will be rejected.

One action you should definitely try is to make sure your Chunk Download Limit is set to MIN. This will slow down the request for chunks and the worlds will load slower. This will make sure that your bandwidth is not getting exhausted. It may help - and is worth trying. (Reminder that the worlds will load slower, so at some point it should be increased again.)

IM2COOL4U001 · 2019-11-04T15:25:05.080Z

I was hit with this last night out in the higher tiered worlds, and I did set chunks to min and still was given the infamous “unplayable connection”. though about after an hour it stopped and I was able to turn the settings back up.

Syneater · 2019-11-04T14:08:54.000Z

Can’t get to Circa. I get illegal protocol message. Thanks for your help

james · 2019-11-04T14:12:51.350Z

This message is often sent if the connection is too slow. (It should be much clearer.)

The game will not allow you to connect if it believes the connection is too bad.

I’m on Circa now.

Maybe try a few times.

krasniy · 2019-11-04T14:16:33.586Z

James, there is definitely been some strange lag the last couple days hard to explain. Maybe the whole system needs a reboot?

DaOne82 · 2019-11-04T15:08:59.588Z

Circarpous has been laggy during the end of last week and today its 100% unplayable, Lamblis and Xa Frant are the same as well…

krasniy · 2019-11-04T15:12:58.153Z

Biitula is experiencing waves of lag as well from time to time. It was happening quite a bit yesterday I haven’t been in game yet today to know if it’s still going on

DaOne82 · 2019-11-04T15:23:12.434Z

I’m on now and biitula not bad on my end but circarpous, lamblis, xa frant are a write-off for me…

james · 2019-11-04T15:24:35.239Z

All 3 players on this thread are playing from North America.

It seems that at the moment connections from NA to the EU servers are quite variable and prone to dropping packets.

Rumplypigskin · 2019-11-04T15:26:58.520Z

Yup, north America here, and I could not connect to circarpous last night. Haven’t check in the last 9 hours tho.

Syneater · 2019-11-04T14:08:54.000Z

Can’t get to Circa. I get illegal protocol message. Thanks for your help

krasniy · 2019-11-04T15:27:42.930Z

So it’s a problem in between somewhere??? Is there anything within your control to do? Or is this something outside?

james · 2019-11-04T15:34:56.623Z

For players on PC - you could experiment with disabling the UDP connection. (Maybe the UDP traffic is routed differently to the WebSocket traffic )

We don’t recommend doing this permanently as the UDP connection should generally be faster.

Details and a little background are here:

Option to disable UDP Suggestions

@lucadeltodecso I think you’re the right person to ask about this. Is there a possibility that an option could be added to the game to disable UDP? The game seems to use UDP but fallback to TCP if UDP totally fails. But if the UDP is mostly working and only failing the odd packet, users may get laggy game-play but the game seems to keep trying to use UDP. An option to just always use TCP may help some people’s connectivity issues. What do you think?

If it does help then please let us know.

For PS4 players - this option should make the PC connection slower. But maybe something funky abound the routing makes playing more stable. If it does help, then we can expose an option into the game settings for all players.

DKPuncherello · 2019-11-04T15:43:39.939Z

I don’t think it’s restricted to circa - feel free to merge. Lag on Eresho and Finata too for me.

Anyone else lagging hard? General

I’m in Chicago on Comcast

For what it’s worth this is the first time I’ve EVER had this sort of US/EU lag during a time other than 7-11pm EST. I’m still lagging now.

Here’s where it gets weird. I decided to test boori just for the heck of it, figuring it would lag too. Nope. Boori (AUS) is just fine for me. Usually when EU lags for me, AUS is just as bad. And as mentioned it’s always during 7-11pm. So maybe this is a new, slightly different problem?

AeneaGames · 2019-11-04T19:18:07.546Z

james:

It seems that at the moment connections from NA to the EU servers are quite variable and prone to dropping packets.

Well since a few weeks what happens to me on EU servers, even on my home planet, I get Unplayable Connection regularly, perhaps once every hour or so, where for a few seconds nothing seems to update.
But it’s not just happening on EU servers either, also on US ones, but lately on US ones the ping also seems much higher than usual with spikes that go up way too high, so much so that at times they seem to resemble an AUS server…

What I mean by the last bit is that with AUS planets I am kinda used that there are some days that they aren’t playable, never before did I also have the same experience on US planets which is happening often lately…

Did Amazon change anything on their end perhaps??

Alienfish · 2019-11-04T20:15:10.867Z

I’ve been having trouble just using portals. Some work, some don’t, and restarting is hit or miss. They just won’t load, so I can’t get around. So can’t even play rn

Edit: still some issues but is playable now

Edit2: and now I can’t even warp home

Soju-VB · 2019-11-05T00:44:32.940Z

Similar issues for me, which is the whole reason I suggested the second home beacon idea… so we can get “somewhere” when connections to a particular server are being stupid.

Second "home" beacon for cubits Suggestions

Please add an option for players to use cubits to purchase the ability to have a second home beacon. This would allow players with hit and miss connections to be able to set a home beacon on a different server if they choose, which would allow them to escape the bad connection they may have to their primary server. This would also help when one of the servers or planets is down, giving players a way to get to somewhere else without spending a ton of coin, or being stuck all together if they do…

LunaiHunter · 2019-11-05T01:34:02.591Z

circa? as in cicarpous 1?

Syneater · 2019-11-07T16:46:22.617Z

Still can’t get there. Been playing since day 1 of ps4 and have never had any connection issues. I go to circa almost daily for hunts the last 2 months and never had an issue until now

Syneater · 2019-11-07T17:01:16.389Z

Well it seems ok now. Thanks Devs