Dev Update #6 - MPQ Unity Launch Pt 3

scottee

Sounds like the game is optimized for the newest phones (iphone 16, pixel 9 pro), but everyone else is getting lag and crashes.

LavaManLee

@scottee said:
Sounds like the game is optimized for the newest phones (iphone 16, pixel 9 pro), but everyone else is getting lag and crashes.

That's what I'm thinking. Just noticed, on my iPhone 16, it takes about three seconds to load the game when I launch it. Before Unity it was a good 15-20 seconds. Very noticeable change in loading the game itself.

bluewolf

My iPhone 15 is basically fine although I get irritated by some in match slowness in PvP.

I mean besides all the bugs and things, lagginess fairly limited.

Chrynos1989

@bluewolf said:
It would be awesome if the devs had some clear communication around expectations we should have around auto/forced updates and things.

It would be awesome if we had any kind of communication at all… and only if it was the devs telling me through @S0kun that I‘m an annoying pest for bothering them so much…

dianetics

@bluewolf said:
There are definitely some people on the old engine playing PvP.

They have already authenticated, so they can continue their clears and do what they are doing.
We are 6 days out from the patch.

They won't be able to go much longer. The game will explicitly tell you to update after so many days. I've seen this dozens of times.
Also, if you have one device on a higher patch and another on a lower patch the lower patch will infinitely load at 100% but never actually authenticate.

Players will be forced soon and then everyone will be on Unity and have to suffer collectively.

Chrynos1989

Why do I see class of 2013? Anniversary comes early this year? Or is it a requiem?

JoeHandle

@Hellblazer666 said:
So still nothing from the dev's regarding a fix? Maybe August or September 🙄

A fix ... for what? Unfortunately, there are a LOT of issues, apparently device and OS-specific issues. A fix for everything? Well, unfortunately ... never. It's whack-a-mole. Get this isue papered over on this OS/device, great ... but, whoops, that caused an issue on this OS/device ... fun.

As others have noted, it would be great if the devs could share their priorities ... but communication breeds communication ... yadda.

I can tell you that isn't hell all over. The game runs fine on my phone, a budget Motorola from 2024, Android with 8Gb RAM. It uses an amount of RAM that a similar games do. It runs smoothly enough. It is sucking battery. But it isn't overheating. I wish everyone else could say the same ... but that's not the nature of implementations distributed across a world of diverse user devices!

On Steam the game is also .... OK. DIfferent every day. Lag on opening tokens on Sunday was bugging me ... that process is slow enough when it works right! ... but that was cleared up on Monday. Hope that sticks. Many issues have been addressed since Unity was dropped on Steam, thankfully. Progress is being made.

Krazy

@Chrynos1989 said:

@bluewolf said:
It would be awesome if the devs had some clear communication around expectations we should have around auto/forced updates and things.

It would be awesome if we had any kind of communication at all… and only if it was the devs telling me through @S0kun that I‘m an annoying pest for bothering them so much…

I am quoting @S0kun (taken form Discord)

"It's definitely on our radar. One of the potential improvements is lowering the frame rate like some have suggested. R326 is going to lower PC to 60fps and mobile to 30fps. Not sure if that will actually fix things while we investigate further, but we'll see."

Let's give them time to test it out.

WilliamK1983

You mean let's give ourselves time to test it out for them.

Tpsimoes

@Krazy said:

@Chrynos1989 said:

@bluewolf said:
It would be awesome if the devs had some clear communication around expectations we should have around auto/forced updates and things.

It would be awesome if we had any kind of communication at all… and only if it was the devs telling me through @S0kun that I‘m an annoying pest for bothering them so much…

I am quoting @S0kun (taken form Discord)

"It's definitely on our radar. One of the potential improvements is lowering the frame rate like some have suggested. R326 is going to lower PC to 60fps and mobile to 30fps. Not sure if that will actually fix things while we investigate further, but we'll see."

Let's give them time to test it out.

Like it was this Unity Engine Deployment? 🤣

KGB

@Krazy said:
I am quoting @S0kun (taken form Discord)

"It's definitely on our radar. One of the potential improvements is lowering the frame rate like some have suggested. R326 is going to lower PC to 60fps and mobile to 30fps. Not sure if that will actually fix things while we investigate further, but we'll see."

It seems doubtful it's going to help much on the lag. The reason is I don't see lag due to frame rate issues (animation like my daily resupply dropping works just fine). Virtually all the lag is due to user input (changing menus, moving tiles, scrolling roster etc) which says the problem is reloading assets and post processing on those assets needed to build menus/game board/roster screens etc. Instead of caching they are rebuilding endlessly. Frame rate won't help that.

KGB

DonnieBrooke

I apologize if this issue was already noted in the 53 pages of this topic, but has anyone mentioned the issue of when the opposing team makes a match, if there are no matches available, then the system is rotating the board during their turn(after the last match) giving them extra matches?

I have seen this happen about 3 times since Unity update, but I do not often see board rotation due to lack of matches.

For OS information, I see a lot of people advising newer devices don't suffer the same issues. I am on a Samsung Galaxy S21 Android version 15. I am not experiencing the crashes everyone else is, but the lag is crazy. Touch also seems extremely sensitive as I hit one button and its like the button hits twice. Its caused me to join several PvP matches without setting a proper line up. Something else I noticed is 3* Doom seems to get put on my team often but I rarely used him before. Not sure why that keeps happening.

KGB

@DonnieBrooke said:
I apologize if this issue was already noted in the 53 pages of this topic, but has anyone mentioned the issue of when the opposing team makes a match, if there are no matches available, then the system is rotating the board during their turn(after the last match) giving them extra matches?

I have seen this happen about 3 times since Unity update, but I do not often see board rotation due to lack of matches.

This issue has been posted in the Bug Forum. At least 2 of us reporting seeing it happen.

Once I saw it happen when I still had an available match I was about to make and suddenly the board reshuffled and I got a free match.

KGB

dianetics

@KGB said:
It seems doubtful it's going to help much on the lag.

The frame rate issues will help with overheating, battery issues, and potentially asset caching.

The lag is coming from server interaction. If you do not have a stable connection to the content servers you can get timed out.
I have had several hard crashes due to time outs.
If you have a vpn you can bounce around on servers and actually feel the difference between strong and weak connections.

bluewolf

Today I discovered that at least on iOS (presumably all platforms), the game is doing something new: it is pinging the servers while you're in a match, and if you lose a connection (turn on airplane mode for example) you get the "Comm link disrupted" message. Previously the game only pinged the servers at specific times and never during a match itself. So you would complete the match, then it would ping the server to notify the game of your results etc.

So, the game seems to have increased its data usage for some reason (perhaps collecting anonymized user location data for purposes of selling user lists to advertisers? who knows) but at any rate obviously higher data use by the app/more pings will result in more battery drain etc.

entrailbucket

@bluewolf said:
Today I discovered that at least on iOS (presumably all platforms), the game is doing something new: it is pinging the servers while you're in a match, and if you lose a connection (turn on airplane mode for example) you get the "Comm link disrupted" message. Previously the game only pinged the servers at specific times and never during a match itself. So you would complete the match, then it would ping the server to notify the game of your results etc.

So, the game seems to have increased its data usage for some reason (perhaps collecting anonymized user location data for purposes of selling user lists to advertisers? who knows) but at any rate obviously higher data use by the app/more pings will result in more battery drain etc.

They can't get location data unless you give them permission, but I don't remember if they ask for that.

It's actually not a terrible idea to call home during a match -- they had to do some weird workarounds in the past to fix some airplane mode exploits.

I doubt that's the reason this is happening now, though, they probably screwed something else up.

dianetics

@bluewolf said:
Today I discovered that at least on iOS (presumably all platforms), the game is doing something new: it is pinging the servers while you're in a match, and if you lose a connection (turn on airplane mode for example) you get the "Comm link disrupted" message. Previously the game only pinged the servers at specific times and never during a match itself. So you would complete the match, then it would ping the server to notify the game of your results etc.

It's not pinging servers. It is exchanging and or streaming data. This never happened during matches before (besides loading assets).
There are points in the match (especially the beginning) where it seems like match data is being resolved server side and not client side.

If you have the ability to throttle your data and record it (wireshark) you can actually watch the game slow down as the data stream piles up.

When a lot of things resolve at the beginning of the match (passive powers, team ups, and things being thrown on the board) if there is not enough bandwidth the game will crawl and potentially freeze.