The backup systems were designed to have minimal noticeable impact on players, especially including not having to shut anything down and kick players off servers at regular intervals etc. The snapshot backups we take typically “complete” in less than a second after which there should be no visible impact to people, i.e. at worst you’d maybe see a bit of rubber banding for a second or two once a day. The backups system does then have some minimal background performance on server disks etc but none of our monitoring shows any perceptible impact.
It sounds like that brief glitch for a second or two may not be what people are experiencing, i.e. they’re seeing it continue to be bad for a longer period of time. We have also seen a little more impact in metrics during the backup phase than expected (though still not very significant). As a result I’ve shuffled a few things around to move the backups to 08:15 UTC which based on our metrics is during the quietest playing period globally.
In theory it still should have little to no impact so we’ll have to see if anyone reports issues showing at the new time, I’d also be interested to see if people believe they’re seeing the same issue as before from tonight onwards in which case it’s likely to not be related to the backups. If this does fix things for people I’ll dive further into the backup system to understand what impact it was causing which didn’t show up in our metrics.
Lmfao the only real use -.- I’m mostly kidding don’t get offended anyone
Realistically it was happening all through last night from about 8pm eastern time until I finally said forget it around 10:30. It gets fully unplayable for seemingly 30 ish minutes and then kinda of tapers off and becomes annoyingly playable for awhile BUT BUT BUT Portal HUB’s are still just a disaster. Like DISASTER. Just waiting patiently for red dead at this point.
If portal hubs are a disaster then this would suggest that your chunk download is starving your entity bandwidth. (Because near portal hubs your opening many new worlds which requires many new chunks.) Please set your networking chunk download limit to minimum. If this improves the issue then increase you chunk limit gradually.
If there is an issue with servers having to be located on separate continents to provide a good experience playing this game I believe there should be planets in each region us east/us west/eu/aus that include all world tiers, block colors, etc.
That way a player can play on the servers appropriate for their location and still have access to all content available in game.
Mine is set to 4mbit. It happens on any setting. Chunk limiting does not fix this problem during these hours.
It’s getting a bit frustrating with the response always being set your chunks to minimum. It feels more and more each day that this game was not ready for a PS4 release. On top of the crippling lag every evening the game crashes on PlayStation no less than 10 times a day over the course of 2-3 hours as well. Maybe this experienceisnt noticed on the PC as the only people I ever see complaining about these issues are PS4 users. I submit the error report every time the game crashes.
Setting chunks to minimum is not a fix. I did this when you mentioned it a few weeks ago and have kept it low just in case it might be a placebo. It didn’t work then, it didn’t work now.
I play on a 11mb down .670mb up dsl connection that drops roughly 20% of all packets transmitted (crappy infrastructure and no alternative in my rural area).
I play almost exclusively between 2000 edt and 2200 edt. I have yet to see any of the above mentioned game crippling completely unplayable connection issue mentioned above. I do get large lag spikes that take about 5 seconds to clear when trying to rush through portals. Only planes that are totally unplayable for me are the Australian servers as my ping is terrible to them.
PC on my end on a wired connection. Only time I can’t play is when my family is clogging the limited upload pipe with sharing photos on Facebook or similar uploads.
Right, so as I had mentioned the people who are complaining about this absolute crippling game play seem to almost always be PS4 players. I have yet to meet a PC player who is encountering the same issues.
Thanks for clarifying what platform you are on.
Edit: for the sake of comparison I am playing on Comcast outside of the seattle area on a wireless network. I have throughout the last week 86down 24up. PS4 connected to the wireless network is getting 26down.
Hoping it provides context for the devs to help narrow down what to look at. My connection is about the worst example of one to look away, short of playing on dial up lol.
Possibly something inside the PS network? Unsure of how the netcode works for the PSN compared to how a PC players data packets would route. Is there an added layer inside the PSN that concentrates all net traffic going out or do clients direct connect to the game servers still?
If it is linked specifically to PS4 players I’d suspect that there is some additional layer that is getting congested at peak play times on the PSN.
What’s your upload bandwidth that the ps4 is seeing on the wireless connection? Upload pipe in a game like this would have more significant impact on packet response times.
I messed with this at one point with no resolve but I haven’t thought to try it again as there has been several fixes since then so I might have been experiencing something else entirely and have simply forgotten to go back to that. Thanks for reminding me that and I do hope this Is the problem. The main reason I find it a such a big problem is because it’s seemingly been getting worse and I get the game is growing so that’s expected but on that trajectory it will be impossible for a lot of players to run in the near future that’s an entirely different topic though and I appreciate the help. Excited to get back to those settings
Just checked and download is currently 23down and 5.5up via the PS4.
Edit: tested the wireless on my phone and the kids computers, also all on wireless. Download speeds to the computers and phones are 4x what I’m getting on the PS4. Tested the other PS connections in the house and they are getting similar results to me PS.
This leads me to believe that whatever the problem is directly lies with Sony hardware as it can’t make use of the 5ghz band. The phones and PCs are all connected to the 5ghz band.
Hardwiring the PS4 is not a possibility. If this is what the problem is, then this game is just not made for the PS4. I fully believe if I was playing on the PC I wouldn’t be having an issue at all.
I find similar issue where I’m in US and attempting to get through the existing portal networks (PS or Aqua) in order to get to Tier 4 or higher worlds just dies when I try to get through an EU or AU server during evenings CDT. Where I can port through those worlds easily daytime. I’d not logged into the game for about a week and last night trying to get through those portal hubs on EU (Finata for instance) didn’t work, the portal said “Unplayable” and never changed. Also, it had the # of people listed as 30-40 so it was certainly not full.
If it might matter, I’m in Middle Tennessee using AT&T Uverse for my provider. Is there a list of server addresses so I can run some connectivity tests outside of the game at those times?
I’ll try the network/chunk setting mentioned earlier tonight but since the planets below T4 seem to be empty lately this issue will likely make the game pointless to try and play for me, which is unfortunate.
I was curious to do this myself and just checked attached IPs when I went to Finata just now. I haven’t looked these up yet to determine where they might be physically, but these were the active connections I had on Finata (I tried to not be looking at a portal).
I play from the US West (on PC), and this past week I can’t get onto EU planets. And even if I do, as soon as I swing a hammer I enter into the “Unplayable” state. It’s super frustrating because there is no option for some resources since there are not equivalent planet types/levels in all regions.
I know this is a problem with routing from my home ISP to AWS EU because I have the same issue with my work assets in AWS EU. How fast your internet has nothing to do with how fast your connection to an endpoint is. In fact it’s only as fast as the slowest link.
Wonderstruck has 0 control over helping this problem. This is a shortcoming of the cloud computing craze which is, in practice, glorified and overpriced shared VPS hosting (which has always been trash). Regardless of my opinion about how racking up in regional DCs + load balancers is more cost effective and reliable, I think the development team should consider having planets of all types and level in each regional area, for the sake of regional playability.
Guess what the result is when people claim that everyone is going to leave the game unless their issues are addressed? People leave the game. Guess what the results are of people leaving the game? Players who enjoy the game have a better time.
Then they come back when their issues are addressed and a lot of happiness gets covered up by their new bile.
From my point of view, I’m finding beacons and building material after people leave. Thanks!
that’s an entirely different topic though and I appreciate the help. Excited to get back to those settings