Difficulty Joining Games? "Solution"

[vinme]

Everyone has this problem, you can join some players, but not others, or so it seems, or you can join some players more easile than others, meaning it takes less tries or its more likely to work per try.

Solution i have or a thing i noticed for years now, is when you try join, if "cancel" button freezes on the join box, for few sec, it means its working, ie some attempt is being made, and in any host where this is the case, enough tries will let you in eventually, this is 90-95% of people i think, and it might take longer for specific players, ie 25-50 tries, or not as long for others ie 1-5, usual avg is like 5-10.
key is, join, wait for cancel "Freeze" to wear out 2-4 sec, when it does, give it 0.5 sec, if nothign changes, ie "trying to join" thing doesnt change to "joining" or whatever the thing is, i dont remember exactly, then you cancel, try again,  repeat enough.

One thing that greatly speeds it up often, is if you  restart 0ad, or host restarts 0ad or both.
if cancel is always responsive to cursor being run over it by changing in appearance, then you will never be able to join that host no matter how many tries.

I dont know why any of these things are true, but i know they are true.

Probably the second biggest problem 0ad has, after the propensity to get ddosed, if there was some way to conceal names from a hosted game,and or in lobby, ddos wouldnt be feasible, as ddoser would have to constantly keep ddosing everyone all day. Funny that such a problem that decimated game popularity by like 50% many times, still is going on for 3-5 years or something, and hasnt been fixed, even tho so many angles of fixing it.

[BeTe]

For me 95% of my hostings, people can't join. After that, if I restart 0ad, in 90% of cases it works. 

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Funny that such a problem that decimated game popularity by like 50% many times, still is going on for 3-5 years or something, and hasnt been fixed, even tho so many angles of fixing it.

@vinmeYou talk about DDOS or "can't connect"? 

[Stan`]

On 02/04/2023 at 1:31 AM, vinme said:

Probably the second biggest problem 0ad has, after the propensity to get ddosed, if there was some way to conceal names from a hosted game,and or in lobby, ddos wouldnt be feasible, as ddoser would have to constantly keep ddosing everyone all day. Funny that such a problem that decimated game popularity by like 50% many times, still is going on for 3-5 years or something, and hasnt been fixed, even tho so many angles of fixing it.

You can skip the lobby and connect directly to users, it's just not convenient cause everyone has to know their respective ips. But you'll always have the issue of being DDOSed as long as the game will be P2P. When someone joins your match you're basically letting them into your home.

If we had dedicated servers, you'd have the issue of the server being DDOSed, if it was hosted by us, it would DDOS the forums, the lobby, the forge etc.

The number of players has been stable, it's just the number of MP players that has reduced. Also, 4 years ago was COVID and confinements, and people are progressively getting back to their lives.

 

 

[vinme]

On 02/04/2023 at 9:52 PM, BeTe said:

For me 95% of my hostings, people can't join. After that, if I restart 0ad, in 90% of cases it works. 

@vinmeYou talk about DDOS or "can't connect"? 

ddos

also multiplayer numbers are all that matter to me, i dont care for single player, as far as im concerned they are playing a completely different game.
its pointless to conflate the 2 or put them together as a single variable, in the context of this post it is totally self evident that ddosing would in no way affect non MP player so i dont see point of bringing it up, as its not a retort to the huge problem of ddosing that had when it would become more prevalent, caused many players to leave or rarely play.

im pretty certain multiplayer players can in no way compensate with single player gameplay, if they keep getting ddosed, so its not like multiplayer players are migrating to single player.
I dont have the dates, rates, etc, over past 4 years, of ddos prevalence, i just have my experience as i had played and saw lack of activity directly matching ddos activity numerous times.
I agree, only practical solution is hiding the games in progress, through some means.
even hiding names, and controlling spec joins can work just fine.
No, you wont always have the issue of beign ddosed as ddosing hedges on targetting specifically while playing.

[Yekaterina]

There are also issues to do with port forwarding and packet sizes, I think those are also preventing people from joining hosts. I don't see why joining someone is difficult if  both players can join the main lobby.

An additional remark I have is that sometimes the game crashes when I try to join the lobby. It subsequently crashes my entire computer system; the whole operating system freezes and fail to respond to mouse and keyboard inputs. This is especially problematic on Windows 11 and KDE desktop, but less of an issue in Gnome

[vinme]

if i really wanted to, to bother putting enough effort, ie several minutes tops, i could now join ANYONE and have ANYONE join me, so its not a life ending issue, but only becuase i figured out the aforementioned method, with additon of turning off/on the STUN marker as a hosting option(which i have no clue what it means, altho people have explained to me many times) this method which i have no idea why it works, but i do know it works for sure.
Im sure this can be a huge problem, and is a huge problem for many people in lobby as players struggle all the time with this join issue, thats why i posted this method, which maybe reduces 90-95% of the issues signiifcance.
it is quite annoying when im trying to join a TG host and i have to try join 20 times, ie 20X5 sec ie 1.5 min aprox, and evne tho it was at 1/8 players when i started trying, by time i join, its filled and im unable to play, needing to wait 40 more min, but i try to host as often as possible now, to avoid that ahaha.