back up active game

fmftint

MPQ requires on line play, why is it then that in the case of a client crash we must lose all match info?
my client just crashed, I lost the match, a team up, my active boosts, and 2 heroes were knocked out of action

_RiO_

fmftint wrote:

MPQ requires on line play, why is it then that in the case of a client crash we must lose all match info?
my client just crashed, I lost the match, a team up, my active boosts, and 2 heroes were knocked out of action

The server makes you auto-lose on crash or connection loss to prevent averting a loss by performing a 'cord-pull'.

fmftint

_RiO_ wrote:

fmftint wrote:

MPQ requires on line play, why is it then that in the case of a client crash we must lose all match info?
my client just crashed, I lost the match, a team up, my active boosts, and 2 heroes were knocked out of action

The server makes you auto-lose on crash or connection loss to prevent averting a loss by performing a 'cord-pull'.

that's not what im asking about. you should be able to resume a game in progress.
would it be so hard to have a Resume/Forfeit option upon relaunch ?

_RiO_

fmftint wrote:

_RiO_ wrote:

fmftint wrote:

MPQ requires on line play, why is it then that in the case of a client crash we must lose all match info?
my client just crashed, I lost the match, a team up, my active boosts, and 2 heroes were knocked out of action

The server makes you auto-lose on crash or connection loss to prevent averting a loss by performing a 'cord-pull'.

that's not what im asking about. you should be able to resume a game in progress.
would it be so hard to have a Resume/Forfeit option upon relaunch ?

You do realize people would cord-pull as a save-scumming mechanic to abuse random components in skills that way, right? Especially on hard matches...


Let's talk scale as well:
You want to force a back-up of each and every individual game to occur on each and every turn.
How do you see that happening on the current server hardware?
On occasion it is already hard-pressed to hand out end-of-event placement rewards and time and again it has had leaderboards get stuck or go down.

Pwuz_

_RiO_ wrote:

fmftint wrote:

_RiO_ wrote:

fmftint wrote:

MPQ requires on line play, why is it then that in the case of a client crash we must lose all match info?
my client just crashed, I lost the match, a team up, my active boosts, and 2 heroes were knocked out of action

The server makes you auto-lose on crash or connection loss to prevent averting a loss by performing a 'cord-pull'.

that's not what im asking about. you should be able to resume a game in progress.
would it be so hard to have a Resume/Forfeit option upon relaunch ?

You do realize people would cord-pull as a save-scumming mechanic to abuse random components in skills that way, right? Especially on hard matches...


Let's talk scale as well:
You want to force a back-up of each and every individual game to occur on each and every turn.
How do you see that happening on the current server hardware?
On occasion it is already hard-pressed to hand out end-of-event placement rewards and time and again it has had leaderboards get stuck or go down.

I think part of that problem could be resolved by NOT putting that burden on the servers. A lot of games can be totally shut down and restarted without rebooting. They pick up right where they left off. I'm not sure how difficult this would be to code for, but the game COULD potentially ALWAYS pick up where you left off, and require the player to choose "Retreat" to end a match artificially.

FaustianDeal

There is a lot of back-forth between the server and client while a game is in progress.. that much if obvious from the new reports of increased data consumption by the app. I think this is an attempt to collect richer statistical data, and also they are likely mining that data to look for cheats and exploits. If all they got on the server was "fight initiated", and then "fight completed: current health levels" then they wouldn't have the information about what happened in between to detect even the most obvious hack.

I haven't inspected the data transmitted deeply enough to know if it currently includes enough 'state' to be able to easily restore an in-progress game. The game would have to report to the server the current board layout as well as AP and health level of each character after ever move had completed - otherwise all it would know is "there is a game in progress on your device" and the device won't have the state information required to get back to where you were after an app/device crash. If we are willing to tolerate the game consuming even more data then that extra information could likely be included to facilitate the restore of an in-progress match.

They could even allow users to opt in/out of that extra data load for users sensitive to data rates. It is a little bit of a catch-22 because people with poor connections are the ones more likely to experience a crash and they are the ones least able to afford having the game packets swell with all that extra information.

Unknown

In Pokemon TCG Online games continue where they left off against the AI. Not sure how it works when playing against real opponents. I haven't played that yet. You can also completely turn off animations via a real options menu or just click once to skip them while they are playing. Of course there isn't much visually in the way of animations in that game but it is something nice to have. It makes games faster. Oh, it also doesn't have obnoxious flashing destroying your eyeballs. It also runs on my netbook. It looks nice and smooth too. MPQ can't.

I think there should be a timeout like 3 minutes or so. If your PC, mobile crashed, lost your connection, someone called etc, you should be able to get back in that game provided you get in the game during the timeout. Since MPQ doesn't have real PvP I don't think timeout being 3 minutes would be a big issue. The only problem is I don't think current servers of the game can support a feature like this. They would probably need to upgrade their servers. That would probably also make scrollable rankings possible or maybe just widen the range a player can see in the rankings.