This is going to be a bit involved but I am going to include the history of how this game ran for me in closed and open beta as well.
Closed Beta: Game ran perfect, never had problems connecting or disconnects once I was in.
Open Beta: Couldn't get logged in properly, had to switch proxy from none to EU to be able to login and play. Would either have brutal rubber banding or no login at all using US or NONE. However with EU proxy my issue was that I was able to log in fine but every time I would change zones I had a good 50% chance of getting disconnected and I would have reconnect probably a dozen times every hour of gameplay. This was annoying but it always reconnected first try so it was still playable, this went on for the majority of open beta. At the end of open beta (Day before servers went offline) this issue was solved and I was able to stay connected even when changing zones, I disconnected a couple times in about 4 hours of playing when going from Earth space dock to Sol system, nearly perfect gameplay though. Figuring they had sorted the issues out I bought the 12 month subscription for the game.
Headstart: Jan 29th, Lunch time (PST) I logged in and created my character and finished the first ground portion of the tutorial without any hitches, never had any login problems or disconnects in this period. Later that evening after the kids were in bed I tried to log in to play my character again and I just could not seem to get logged in at all. I messed around for a good 2 hours and managed to log in a few times but I would get disconnected and have to having to wait 20+ minutes to log back in again. I maybe got in about 25 minutes of gameplay in 2.5 hours of mucking about. EU was still the only proxy that would let me on and be playable until disconnect, tried None and US but US would not login and None would be so laggy I couldn't even move basically, completely unplayable so I always went back to EU. This issue was still going on all weekend, haven't tried playing since the most recent 72 mb patch, that is dling now.
Things I tried/tested in my couple hours of messing around:
-Every proxy setting, EU was only one that let me on in a playable way (others were either lagfest or no login at all).
- Tried some different video drivers.
- Changed video settings to many different things, made no difference EXCEPT that it seemed the act of changing video settings would often get me to the point where I could sometimes login but would not help with the disconnecting at all. No idea why changing video settings (doesn't even matter what change, just the act of changing them) would often get me past a screen where it would hang connecting to account server but it often did.
- Tried setting to safe mode in the launcher without success
- Updating router firmware Trendnet tew-432brp router. No change. Set my PC on the DMZ and briefly turned off all my firewalls for testing, still no change.
- Installed STO on my laptop and acted much the same as my desktop, needed EU proxy to even patch the game up and get in but still disconnected me and hung on loading maps before disconnecting me.
- Ran Champions nettest.exe and it would always timeout on some of the ports in the 7000 range like 7203 or one of the other ones, I ran this at least a dozen times and would have different 7000 ports time out each time.
System Specs Desktop:
AMD Phenom II 955 BE (not overclocking to run the game or anything)
4GB Gskill 1600mhz ram
Nvidia 8800GT
Asus M4A78T-E motherboard (onboard sound and LAN)
Windows 7 pro 64 bit (legal copy)
Laptop:
Gateway NV53
Turion II MX500 processor
4GB Ram
ATI Radeon 4570 video card
Windows 7 home 32bit
Located in:
British Columbia, Canada (Fort St. John)
ISP: Shaw
It's pretty safe to say it's not a driver/software/hardware issue given the same problem on both of the above systems, running different AV software and firewalls too. Common factors seem to be my ISP, Router, and Cryptic's server. The fact that it was running great for closed beta and the end of open beta make me want to point to Cryptic or a combination of my ISP routing the connection to Cryptic.
Things I am planning to try still:
1) Plug one of my computers direct into internet without the router and see if that helps (I've tried every router setting change you can think of from port forwarding to DMZ and updated the router firmware already).
**UPDATE** Tried straight through without router and same results. US proxy wouldn't let me even get passed connecting to login server. NONE proxy would get stuck at retrieving map list, and EU I eventually connected and was disconnected shortly afterwards.
2) Call my ISP and see if they can do anything, but when I can run every other game fine and download files in the 1.5mb/s - 2.2mb/s range (given an appropriate site) I doubt they are going to be helpful. My friend is also running the same ISP in the same province albeit about 1,000 km's away and he has no issues at all and doesn't need to set EU as proxy.
3) Wait for Cryptic to make it work on their end. I've submitted tickets to them from open beta and headstart but no reply yet. I've made several forum posts and researched many more for ideas to try. Here's a quote from Cryptic regarding some issues with their proxy servers:
"The current proxy software tends to get overloaded fairly easily, we are in the process of deploying a new one for testing, but it will be a few more days until everything is setup."
and
"Indeed, there are additional servers (running various permutations of proxy software and configs for testing) coming online in the next week-ish. Should be transparent from your end, since we will be round-robining across them." Dated: 1/30/2010
So somewhere between a few days to next week-ish (from 1/30/2010) they'll be trying some new proxy software that MAY make the game playable for me and many others running the EU proxy to play. That's hardly confidence inspiring.
Any others ideas for things to try would be helpful. Thank you.
I'm experiencing exactly the same symptoms as you are, as far as I can tell. This occurs for both my brother and I who are on the same residential internet connection. We're also using Shaw as our ISP as you are, but we are based in Edmonton Alberta. I'm very interested in any new information regarding this problem.
I do too, posted farrrrrrrrr to many times about this problem to go over it all again though Never seen a response from Cryptic that directly address this issue. Like you, I've checked and updated everything. The only time I can do fleet actions is logging in w/o a proxy and just after the server has been reset.
Friend and I sitting in the same room, me on a new desktop custom built, him on a new laptop. We're doing a mission together, start flying, I get disconnected from server and he's fine. I get back in, join the fight, disconnected from server again. I spend half my time logging back into the game, joining the group again, just to get disconnected again two minutes later.
Ever since late in the open beta I have had this issue. Mine is after I log in and before I get to the character server it says that it is connecting to the Login server, and then eventually times out. I do not know how to change the setting of anything or how to get any more information though I would like to help with more details.
Nine out of ten and often much more never make it past the server issue and then once I get in I tend to have days where I get frequently disconnected and have the issue logging back in. Other days no problems at all. Its very frustrating. I do not want to add to the clutter of complaints and I think the above post was very informative and well put.
Please help us. I have a digital deluxe edition from steam and a lifetime sub already on good faith that you would have these problems fixed by early start, now I am just looking forward to being able to log in normally and play on launch day. My early launch has turned into a sit and wait-athon. It would be nice to have faster replies to connection issues as well.
I'm experiencing exactly the same symptoms as you are, as far as I can tell. This occurs for both my brother and I who are on the same residential internet connection. We're also using Shaw as our ISP as you are, but we are based in Edmonton Alberta. I'm very interested in any new information regarding this problem.
Wouldn't be surprised if Shaw was part of the problem along with numerous other ISP's especially some UK ones. Seems any ISP that requires a proxy to get routed to the game properly ends up badly due to the proxy problems Cryptic is having, I suspect that is where the combination comes in to result in this.
Man I feel your pain. I'm in British columbia and I have the same problem you have and have run all the same tests and some other ones besides (putting out my hair/cursing the gods). Shaw is also my ISP as well.
However, I noticed in the open beta that the game would work fine after the server was restarted....sometimes. Then the server would restart again and I would be forced to use the EU proxy again. the responses you've gotten from cyrpic iseem to indicate that the problem is on their end. Plus they had numerous releases in regards to server issues so i'm pretty sure it's not OUR computers fault.
Hopefully it gets fixed soon. I've logged about 2 hours total since the pre-launch.
I have he same issue, I play from Australia (East Coast) and while I can connect using no proxy and play it's far more "stable" using the US Proxy though, as you'd expect it's more sluggish (but I tend to stay connected). I also had this issue in Open Beta and, after one of the patches it seemed to go away.
First thing, if you can get in game turn on "/netgraph 1" as this will show you your ping and the transmit and receive information. Being Australian I'm no stranger to stupid high pings but this is what i have noticed.
Generally when things are working I have a ping of ~500ms (I'm assuming it's milliseconds as that' sounds about right), this is normally when I;m running through an area of open space with regular traffic (15-30 people in a public zone). Then, for no apparent reason the ping rapidly increases. If it gets much over 2000 I just stop pushing buttons. Normally the storm subsides and the ping settles down.
Sometimes I even don't die!
When the ping gets into the 5000+ range something else happens, I get the serious rubber banding and I constantly replay commands I have already entered at this point I usually kill the client because some kind of runaway situation has been reached an one of two things happen.
I get disconnected (random time internal)
It just keep rubber banding... longest so far is an hour (I cooked dinner and ate with the family).
The other situation is when I enter my most favorite system Sol.
Here the ping executes just once the graph never draws.
Unless I send a constant set of commands to the server I just don't move. I have tried setting speed to max and driving (through the rubber banding) into the station and waiting for the dock message, then waiting for the bitmap to draw (the accept never works before that) and then mashing the button a few hundred times.
Eventually it works after maybe 20 minutes, that isn't total that's after the last step.
Everyone else moves, I see them move they pass me by and dock, usually in real time with no delay. There is no delay in the action so it can't be cached movement I see people warp in behind me and fly straight past me to the station and dock.... lots of them.
The numbers (from the netgraph command) are interesting here, I have repeated them below as I have been trying to dock at SOL the whole time I have been writing this post.
Ping: 1445 (hasn't changed)
Send: 39 (unpacked 39) - Fluctuates between 8 and 250, numbers are almost always equal.
Received: 11448776 (unpacked 21780131) the first number starts at about the 250k range and slowly increments the second one... just keeps going up and up.
When I saw this I was reminded of some issues I had with DDO and Fallen Earth. Both had the same symptoms.
Fallen Earth's just plain disappeared a few patches and 2-3 days into release.
I quit DDO because I just couldn't play, and I pre-ordered it. Tried it again when it went free to play. Had the same issues but I did notice a "change" to the setup menu. They had a setting that allowed the client to tell the server what sort of transmission speed that it could handle. By regulating the flow ALL the artifact disappeared and I am more then happy to play DDO now.
I did some research and if I understand it correctly the server, at least in these cases was flooding the client.
One last observation of the issue I noticed tonight. I was going fine doing the missions in the "Stop the Signal" I was averaging 300-500 ms pings with the occasional spike that I responded to and they died down as expected.
Then I got to the last space battle with the Klingon fleet... and the ping "started" at 5500 and never dropped. I had all the symptoms detailed here and it just never recovered. I died a few times, restarted the client and finally just didn't continue the mission.
I have also seen this occur when I get dragged into the Enemy Signal missions when I am in an instance with players who are on the same side but NOT grouped with me. As in the Klingon mission, there is a Klingon fleet and you have no control of them, in the Enemy encounter if you have the grouping option set to off (as I do) you are in the same situation and when you are sitting outside of SOL you are also in the same situation.
In an instance with a number of others who are allied but not grouped with you. No idea if that helps but that's my experience.
I also killed Zone chat more or less permanently when I started to suspect it was connectivity related. As indicated Grouping is set to auto-decline and I never enter SOL on anything other then minimum graphics.
Hope that helps the investigation.
J.
PS: Disconnected and set back to logon screen when I hit Submit. *Sigh*
PPS: I submitted 40+ tickets on this issue perhaps 8 got through I had a time out on ticket creation
PPPS: Attempting to change instance gave me a "No Valid Instance" message or something like it.
I hang at the retrieving list of maps screen for an indescribable amount of time.
Once i load i cant even move even at full impulse.
I cant type to my friends nor enter any system that i happen to be orbiting around.
All I can do is turn and if the map does allow me to enter (after another indescribable amount of time) I have the same issue then too.
I have had this issue since open beta and head start.
I cant even find any solution to this online.
I even took off a few days of work to rank up.
:mad::mad::mad:
I think I'm having the same issue, and I'm living in Kamloops, BC. I can't even make a ticket about it in-game from all the lag, and the website page for making tickets doesn't do s#!t. I started my own thread about this HERE. I've had enough and I'm going to call their tech support line as soon as it's open on Monday.
I've been searching the forums for a while, trying to find a solution to the constant lag and disconnects I've been getting on a daily basis for several weeks now.
I've replaced my router.
I've had my ISP send technicians.
I've done hours and hours of troubleshooting on my PC with both my ISP and my computer manufacturer.
Nothing is working.
Today I was noticing several dozen threads on the forums with several people in each one, all having the same issues. And all living on the west coast of North America. After looking at the domains of the hops with high pings and dropped packets, I've started to see a distinct trend. It just hit me that all the problems seem to be almost entirely on systems owned by some company called InterNAP; I did a google search and found 2 things: internap.net and pnap.net are both owned by InterNAP, and 2) STO is NOT the only game suffering from the same issues with InterNAP; WoW and others are having the same problems. And it's all people on the west coast, such as BC, Washington, etc.
Is InterNAP the real cause of our woes? How do we fix the problems that are being caused by InterNAP, if it IS their systems interfering? Cryptic can't do anything because it's not their servers, and I'm not sure my ISP can do anything because it's outside their network. So what do we do? InterNAP seems to be causing a HUGE issue for hundreds of MMO players across the west coast of North America, and it seems they ahve been for months.
Comments
10 char
Nine out of ten and often much more never make it past the server issue and then once I get in I tend to have days where I get frequently disconnected and have the issue logging back in. Other days no problems at all. Its very frustrating. I do not want to add to the clutter of complaints and I think the above post was very informative and well put.
Please help us. I have a digital deluxe edition from steam and a lifetime sub already on good faith that you would have these problems fixed by early start, now I am just looking forward to being able to log in normally and play on launch day. My early launch has turned into a sit and wait-athon. It would be nice to have faster replies to connection issues as well.
Wouldn't be surprised if Shaw was part of the problem along with numerous other ISP's especially some UK ones. Seems any ISP that requires a proxy to get routed to the game properly ends up badly due to the proxy problems Cryptic is having, I suspect that is where the combination comes in to result in this.
When I do get in I get disconnected randomly when changing zones and have to wait 10 mins or so to get back in.
I have only started having this problem since head start.
I also get stuck at retrieving list of maps when trying to use None as my proxy setting.
However, I noticed in the open beta that the game would work fine after the server was restarted....sometimes. Then the server would restart again and I would be forced to use the EU proxy again. the responses you've gotten from cyrpic iseem to indicate that the problem is on their end. Plus they had numerous releases in regards to server issues so i'm pretty sure it's not OUR computers fault.
Hopefully it gets fixed soon. I've logged about 2 hours total since the pre-launch.
First thing, if you can get in game turn on "/netgraph 1" as this will show you your ping and the transmit and receive information. Being Australian I'm no stranger to stupid high pings but this is what i have noticed.
Generally when things are working I have a ping of ~500ms (I'm assuming it's milliseconds as that' sounds about right), this is normally when I;m running through an area of open space with regular traffic (15-30 people in a public zone). Then, for no apparent reason the ping rapidly increases. If it gets much over 2000 I just stop pushing buttons. Normally the storm subsides and the ping settles down.
Sometimes I even don't die!
When the ping gets into the 5000+ range something else happens, I get the serious rubber banding and I constantly replay commands I have already entered at this point I usually kill the client because some kind of runaway situation has been reached an one of two things happen.
I get disconnected (random time internal)
It just keep rubber banding... longest so far is an hour (I cooked dinner and ate with the family).
The other situation is when I enter my most favorite system Sol.
Here the ping executes just once the graph never draws.
Unless I send a constant set of commands to the server I just don't move. I have tried setting speed to max and driving (through the rubber banding) into the station and waiting for the dock message, then waiting for the bitmap to draw (the accept never works before that) and then mashing the button a few hundred times.
Eventually it works after maybe 20 minutes, that isn't total that's after the last step.
Everyone else moves, I see them move they pass me by and dock, usually in real time with no delay. There is no delay in the action so it can't be cached movement I see people warp in behind me and fly straight past me to the station and dock.... lots of them.
The numbers (from the netgraph command) are interesting here, I have repeated them below as I have been trying to dock at SOL the whole time I have been writing this post.
Ping: 1445 (hasn't changed)
Send: 39 (unpacked 39) - Fluctuates between 8 and 250, numbers are almost always equal.
Received: 11448776 (unpacked 21780131) the first number starts at about the 250k range and slowly increments the second one... just keeps going up and up.
When I saw this I was reminded of some issues I had with DDO and Fallen Earth. Both had the same symptoms.
Fallen Earth's just plain disappeared a few patches and 2-3 days into release.
I quit DDO because I just couldn't play, and I pre-ordered it. Tried it again when it went free to play. Had the same issues but I did notice a "change" to the setup menu. They had a setting that allowed the client to tell the server what sort of transmission speed that it could handle. By regulating the flow ALL the artifact disappeared and I am more then happy to play DDO now.
I did some research and if I understand it correctly the server, at least in these cases was flooding the client.
One last observation of the issue I noticed tonight. I was going fine doing the missions in the "Stop the Signal" I was averaging 300-500 ms pings with the occasional spike that I responded to and they died down as expected.
Then I got to the last space battle with the Klingon fleet... and the ping "started" at 5500 and never dropped. I had all the symptoms detailed here and it just never recovered. I died a few times, restarted the client and finally just didn't continue the mission.
I have also seen this occur when I get dragged into the Enemy Signal missions when I am in an instance with players who are on the same side but NOT grouped with me. As in the Klingon mission, there is a Klingon fleet and you have no control of them, in the Enemy encounter if you have the grouping option set to off (as I do) you are in the same situation and when you are sitting outside of SOL you are also in the same situation.
In an instance with a number of others who are allied but not grouped with you. No idea if that helps but that's my experience.
I also killed Zone chat more or less permanently when I started to suspect it was connectivity related. As indicated Grouping is set to auto-decline and I never enter SOL on anything other then minimum graphics.
Hope that helps the investigation.
J.
PS: Disconnected and set back to logon screen when I hit Submit. *Sigh*
PPS: I submitted 40+ tickets on this issue perhaps 8 got through I had a time out on ticket creation
PPPS: Attempting to change instance gave me a "No Valid Instance" message or something like it.
Once i load i cant even move even at full impulse.
I cant type to my friends nor enter any system that i happen to be orbiting around.
All I can do is turn and if the map does allow me to enter (after another indescribable amount of time) I have the same issue then too.
I have had this issue since open beta and head start.
I cant even find any solution to this online.
I even took off a few days of work to rank up.
:mad::mad::mad:
Nothing is working.
Today I was noticing several dozen threads on the forums with several people in each one, all having the same issues. And all living on the west coast of North America. After looking at the domains of the hops with high pings and dropped packets, I've started to see a distinct trend. It just hit me that all the problems seem to be almost entirely on systems owned by some company called InterNAP; I did a google search and found 2 things: internap.net and pnap.net are both owned by InterNAP, and 2) STO is NOT the only game suffering from the same issues with InterNAP; WoW and others are having the same problems. And it's all people on the west coast, such as BC, Washington, etc.
Is InterNAP the real cause of our woes? How do we fix the problems that are being caused by InterNAP, if it IS their systems interfering? Cryptic can't do anything because it's not their servers, and I'm not sure my ISP can do anything because it's outside their network. So what do we do? InterNAP seems to be causing a HUGE issue for hundreds of MMO players across the west coast of North America, and it seems they ahve been for months.
So who's job is it to fix it?