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