The Literal Speed of the Game

jackstar0

It's been happening to me once in a while for months and finally people in my alliance started chatting about it, so perhaps this is more widespread, and even worse, being exploited by some?

The game plays FAST from time to time on my phone. Everything moves quickly and it speeds up everything in the game... until it eventually slows back down.

So... is this device specific? Are people able to exploit it for faster clears in both Story and Versus modes?

I assume there has to be speed gating to attempt to keep all devices/platforms performing at the same level, but clearly it has bugs or something.

Anyone else comfortable talking about this?

The rockett

It is known that if you are playing a PVE with the mindless and you restart your game before you play their node, all their stuff at the start of the match happens at one time.  It is very nice and in-fact I think this was promised to us when they updated the server months ago.  

After you do this one time, it goes back to the normal slow moving that we all know and love oh so much.  Outside of that, not sure what else there is, but I fully expect that some know and will not talk about it.  

KGB

I've never seen anything like what you describe on my Galaxy S9+. Maybe your phone if it's older and has less Ram it gets bogged down with lots of background apps running (mine has 6 gigs of Ram so no swapping needed).

The only time I ever see the game play 'faster' is when I restart the app the mindless one placement of tiles is instantaneous. But on all subsequent battles it's back to the slow regular speed. The other place I see the game play 'faster' is when using some characters (3* Storm comes to mind) the tile movement and animations (esp on her attack tile horde) goes really fast compared to normal attack tiles.

KGB

Warbringa

Nope I have encountered it in Steam before too.  It is awesome when it does.  I believe I have encountered in various PvEs not just associated with Mindless.  I have found no correlation for why it does so.  The first few times it happened, I was concerned my computer was overheating or something!

Rod5

It happens with Kaecilius as the match doesn’t have to calculate damage/powers as much I suspect.

bluewolf

I've definitely heard that some devices are faster than others at processing certain things (like skipping dialogue and things like that.....but what can you do?  I mean if you're so inclined, I guess you can buy a newer device but I'm not sure that's the best reason to go out and buy a new phone or tablet.

Others might reach a different conclusion, I guess.

HoundofShadow

I experienced the "close the app completely, play pve and mindless one put sap tiles very quickly, and then back to normal speed the next match".

One way to put that Kaecilius theory to the test is to use Spiderman 2099 and see if it slows down the match when his blue CD tile is out. 

PiMacleod

i dunno... i think I know what the OP is talking about.  But I thought it was just my imagination (running away with me)

Certain matches... like DPD matches, for instance, seem to run at one basic speed.  But as I truck on through my SCL10 clears, the gem destruction, falling gems, and more seem to speed up a bit.  Like, not amazingly so, but by such an amount that its nearly unnoticeable... UNTIL you go back to a DPD match, or some other non-SCL rated match.  At that point, I notice the tiles drop just a bit slower... as if "you're not in the big leagues here, so lets slow it down".

Of course, it could be in my head.  It could be my device slowing down...?  Maybe its lag from all the internet stuff going on in my house...   I got no clue.  But I swear I notice that from time to time... just small changes in speed, depending on what I'm playing.

Also, this could be separate from what the OP is suggesting, so maybe I'm just crazy.     But I do agree on the K-silly speed.  No damage to calculate, so it DOES go faster.

supergarv

You‘re not insane. I get that too (speed variations , not only the reproducible game restart issue). I blamed it on server load and background threads maybe stacking up. When I get that speed decrease restarting app/game doesnt help. It‘s maybe 5-10% decrease so I guess most people won‘t even notice.

(Most people don‘t notice plasma TV refresh or 100hz motion upscaling, but I‘m blessed with being annoyed by it .

jackstar0

Since people are interpreting me as having an older device, let me clarify, it's a Pixel 4. It ain't slow.

But once in a while, the whole of the game goes REALLY FAST and not just incrementally, but like WAY fast. If I could capture it, I would happily post to show it off.

Other details: I don't play with animations on, or sound, and I skip dialogue with all due haste to keep things moving during PvE. When the speed-ups happen, it's for maybe 5-10min and everything animating and processing goes much faster.

jredd

i have the same thing happen. happened on my old phone, happens on my new phone. it's like the speed-up they did works once and then stops. be nice if it would work 100% of the time.

tupacboy

I wish we could speed it up even more

jp1

Pretty consistent performance on iOS, at least on a newer device. Maybe it is an android specific issue? 

MoosePrime

Some characters have faster tile swaps.  Doctor Doom and Storm are two that I know of, I believe there are others.

IIAlonditeII

tile matches also goes fast against kaeceliius since it doesn't have to process the damage

jackstar0

Again, this is not related to 2* Storm or other "quick" movers, like the K battle.

This is the entire game. All the animations that you see. Opening tokens. Everything.

Maybe it's android-only, which could make sense as the sheer variety of devices is vast and thus consistent play experiences may be harder to manage on the code-side.

It's just weird and I have a hunch because it happens some of the time, there are those that have figured out how to make it work all of the time to hit much faster in PvP and the PvE where speed is the absolute means to better placement and progress.

JSP869

tupacboy said:

I wish we could speed it up even more

Like maybe if we didn't have to 4+3 clear every single node (2+3 for wave nodes) to be competitive in Story/PvE?

It would be nice if we only had to 2+2 clear PvE nodes.
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/82464/story-pve-remove-3-to-4-of-the-6-rewards-from-each-node-and-make-them-progression-rewards#latest

A_Wise_Man

I've definitely seen this on android.  As the OP stated its not for specific events or characters like mindless ones or ksilly, its for everything for a brief time.  Tiles drop faster, match 3s process faster, abilities fire faster, tokens open faster, etc.  It's like the game plays with some lag 90% of the time and suddenly everything is smoothed out for a short while.  I've tried to recreate it by closing background apps or playing when nothing else is using wifi, etc. but it doesn't seem to be related to any of that.

froggerjohn

Indeed, and I wish there was a way to keep it on.

Like the OP mentioned, it seemed like the devs were going to address this in the speedup optimizations made awhile back, but alas, this brief glimpse into what's possible is all we have.

If you add up the portion of MPQ play time that is spent doing nothing but WAITING, it's a depressingly large number.

KGB

froggerjohn said:

If you add up the portion of MPQ play time that is spent doing nothing but WAITING, it's a depressingly large number.

It's borderline Criminal!

I'd have long ago been fired by my boss if I ever released S/W like that to customers and didn't fix it immediately when they requested the option to speed it up.

KGB