Dev Update #6 - MPQ Unity Launch Pt 3

@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.

So If I have an iPhone 16 I should update? I have been avoiding updating since it showed up in my available updates list.

@Kross said:

@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.

So If I have an iPhone 16 I should update? I have been avoiding updating since it showed up in my available updates list.

I have an iPhone 16 and waited until the upgrade was forced on me. That was this AM. Game has been fun (beyond things that affect everyone like no saved teams). Battery drain is what it always has been and system is fast. Faster than old engine.

@KGB said:

@dianetics said:

@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.

This is a catastrophically bad decision. It ties performance to your internet connection. I am 99% on WiFi (home or work) and still I see a lag on every menu. I've played a few matches on cellular (AT&T) and it's no different lag wise. On the old app, I could tell the difference between WiFi and cellular when it was pushing post battle rewards. Since I can't now it says their servers are overwhelmed and/or putting everything server side was a terrible idea.

They should not be streaming ANYTHING from the server at all. The only thing that should be sent is rewards / token results. Everything else should be client side.

This also explains why battery use is off the charts. It's very expensive power wise to send data over Wifi/cellular (even Ethernet cards on PCs increase your power pull from your power supply). I can't believe anyone whose ever developed anything for Mobile would OK this design decision...

KGB

Could one of you knowledgeable gentleman put this as a question for IceIX in the other thread? If I think I understand what is being said then this explains a lot to me and why my tablet is struggling.

@dianetics said:

@KGB said:
Since I can't now it says their servers are overwhelmed and/or putting everything server side was a terrible idea.
They should not be streaming ANYTHING from the server at all. The only thing that should be sent is rewards / token results. Everything else should be client side.

I don't think everything is server side. But, it appears the beginning of the match is.
I used a vpn to pop around about 5 different servers and after pressing fight the beginning of the match took anywhere from 3 seconds to 5 minutes.
A good server would load immediately and the game was very fast and responsive. A bad server would stall on resolving the passive powers and support stuff at the very beginning of the match. The more stuff I added the longer it took.
Also, some stuff I had pre-cached had to be redownloaded if there were new assets that had to be downloaded as well.
It's all very weird stuff.

Very strange especially since the old app didn't require that. I know for sure it would pre-load teams in your PvP queue so that you could skip a few after being out of Wifi/cell range before you'd run out. You could also start and play 1 battle in this state too before you'd have to reconnect to the server to report the result / get your reward.

Clearly that's not the case now. That's worrisome because it means game performance depends on your local server. That will kill the PvE crowd. All we can hope is it's a bug where the game keeps downloading assets you already have on the device without realizing they are there.

KGB