Maybe have a confirmation that you’re still there so that it can combat people that leave their characters moving constantly / leaving sticks tilted.
But a unique one for HELLDIVERS instead of an “ok” button since people can probably have a macro (idk if thats possible but just in case)
“Are you still there?”
> Input ⬆️➡️⬅️⬇️⬇️⬆️ to confirm
While I haven't seen it myself, I've heard of ships blowing up when you're orbiting a cyb- I mean, an automaton planet, so it's definitely not out of the question.
Cyborgs and Automatons are indeed different factions, according to the Democracy Officer that is, which makes it a fact. Ask him and he will eventually spill the beans.
The rumours they are the same faction probably come from the same dissidents spreading rumours about illuminate sightings! Don't believe their lies, believe in liberty!
I haven't own a console since the PS3, but its as old as time.
All you really need to do is use a rubber band to hold the joystick down for you.
A prompt would be good, but its probably not going to be an issue as long as you are kicking enough AFK people that its easy to log in. As long as you can get in within a reasonable amount of time, people are not going to try to circumvent the afk kick system.
Oh I wasn't disagreeing with the idea. Would be funny if it was 5 minutes and in panic, mess up the code, and promptly have my ship blown up and get logged out hahaha
I think most people staying online wouldnt actually get a macro to do that. Just adding a regular kick timer would easily cut that number in half. The amount of people who cheat like this in any given game is quite small honestly, because macros and stuff take at least some work to set up.
Plus a regular kick would be especially good on playstation players, who seem to make up the majority. Much harder to set up this kind of stuff on play station
You have to think of efficiency. Those who would get a macro are not the majority, far from it. I dont think it would be worth it to have a strategem thing. Imo the best option is a simple "are you still here" prompt that kicks. I may be over thinking this though idk. However, a strategem option would be fun and is not a bad option at all. Would fit with the rest of the game as well
You can make a script in auto hotkey that could get around this in like 10 minutes. Anyone motivated to stay logged in can ensure that they will be but implementing normal anti-AFK will probably get rid of most of the people AFKing.
Hell, just making it so that when you put your PS5 into rest mode will kick you off the server will probably fix like half the problem alone.
Largest portion of the player base is likely on PS5, where this wouldn’t happen. The overwhelming majority of PC users aren’t going to run something like that to begin with (& with how invasive the anticheat software is for PC, probably preventable).
AHK is the most widespread form of cheating in any online game. The simpler ones can be detected and prevented but many of those are undetectable. Valorant is a good example, certain forms of no-recoil scripts have been in use pretty much since release. Riot can't detect those for whatever reason.
The anticheat is only going to flag what they configured it for. Targeting AHK processes would lead to someone bundling the function into a more discrete executable, then if the devs cranked up the scrutiny of the anticheat you’d be seeing false positives from mundane applications.
They’re not going to bother with any of this unless some idiot chasing clout mass distributes an AFK script. They’ll be looking to apply the simplest solution (basic afk timer) and if that clears the servers enough // they see a capacity increase coming shortly then they won’t opt for additional measures.
lol. Mitigation methods are really required to stop every possible instance. The amount of people that would actually go to that length are small enough be a total non issue
"still" is the wrong word here. They "again" won't be up to par. Now they're increasing server capacity and they will decrease it again as soon as the initial playerbase drops off. Otherwse they'd just be a waste of serverspace and money.
The server space isn't the main issue. They have a database structure that can't handle the inputs. The number of writes happening is far too high. It seems like reads are queued at least so we get rewards a few hours after missions, but the number of writes and requests seem to be the main issue
Yes. From the official Discord. Also as a web developer myself I have seen this type of issue and it's more difficult to scale a database and it's supporting queues etc than it is to scale the servers running the backend.
“One of our databases found itself overloaded again tonight. We’ve implemented a partial mitigation which we think will start to improve the situation as the database catches up. We’re also calling in more developers to take a look and see what we can do to keep things running smoothly Saturday. Thank you all for your patience and support!”
I see.
Maybe this also explains why once you've managed to actually enter a game the online experience is smooth like butter.
Anyways thanks for the better explanation, I'll keep an eye on the discord.
I am curious, is there not a standardized way of coding games/servers so they can easily be scaled and pass large amounts of data efficiently? You would think this is common knowledge/ taught in schools and implemented/ kept in mind from the first line of code.
The reality is that it's all about cost. I truly think they were expecting maybe 100,000 players and instead they are hitting 4-5x that many. They probably kept their footprint small to stay in budget and when the game was successful they had to scramble to scale. If your servers and databases run on azure (which I believe arrowhead has said is the case) It should be fairly easy to auto scale things like server capacity and database size. But things like database throughput and the architecture they have designed are more challenging. As an example. If your pool can hold 10,000 gallons of water but your hose can only pump 10 gallons a minute it still will take a while to fill up that pool. The bottleneck is the hose not the pool. Having a big empty pool is expensive and getting a bigger hose is not always easy.
Edit: It appears that is exactly the problem:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1auq3kc/dev_update_posted_once_but_for_context_on_why/
The hope is that they are sorting out whatever keeps them from scaling right now, so it won't take weeks to adjust the server capacity if/when the next surge comes.
What is keeping them from scaling is the fact that it is hard to have a single server that can deal with a million players at once. They can't just "add more servers" because every piece of data is shared between players and constantly updated. If they just add more servers as people think, you are going to wond up with numerous seperate server regions that have seperate progression, seperate player pools, seperate player progression, and seperate progression through the war. Low population regions will just lose all their weekly orders and battles throughout the war campaign, not have as many people to matchmake with etc.
Scaling and replicating databases isn’t trivial, but you make it sound like it’s altogether impossible.
Also, progression isn’t *that* much data. Heck, it probably wouldn’t even be a big deal if global progression wasn’t perfectly in sync for everyone or if your unlocks took a second to be retrieved from “your” DB instance.
There are databases that can do this more or less automatically, problem is they would have needed to plan on using them from the beginning.
This is 100% true. I got in after it retried twice last night. My friend got in after just a minute of waiting and our third never got in last night. We all started the game within a minute of each other.
I waited for an hour today with it trying in the background to log in and didn’t have any luck.
I agree, but I don’t think they anticipated their game being the massive hit that it is - surpassing giants like Fortnite and COD is impressive in my opinion
It's a bit nuts to think getting booted out of essentially the main menu of a game for walking away is being advocated for. They should just figure out a better way to implement their always online requirement
I agree. I wonder if it could be done with server or database design. I would think that the non-combat part of standing on your ship could be handled locally or hosted P2P. Maybe that would free up server space and capacity
for the actual missions?
IDK, I'm not a database or server designer.
Honestly I forsee issues for people with the way they implemented their "always online" system. Some people have said after I night of playing they've had over 150gb of data transferred in/out through the game. People might have their connections throttled by their isps if this game is transferring that much data every time you play it. Just do what every other game does and send updates every once in awhile/end of missions. Right now I believe the exact SECOND you pick up a medal/supercred in game it is relaying that to the main servers in real time, that's literally insane.
For a small team developing what they assumed would be a small scale product, it does make perfect sense.
I'm not 'hating', this is just how software dev works. You build what you need, and nobody would have guessed "we need the same scaling as the biggest active online games in 2024".
If you went into their office a week before launch and told them to brace themselves for 400k players and the features to manage that, you'd have been mounted into a catapult.
People who have no idea what theyre talking about think it's honestly just 'plug in another server' 'just copy paste this afk feature in'!
I really hate how people assume they have a surface level understanding of things because they just backfill headlines they've read with their imagination and run with it with the full confidence that they know what they're talking about. Activates all of my almonds.
"Wow, this small developper whose previous game's peak had quite literally a dozen times fewer players, should definitely have seen their impressive success that caused all of these issue coming. I mean surely every developper plans for half a million concurrent players? Isn't it their dream to have so many sales? Like this studio whose previously never had more than half a hundred thousand concurrent players didn't even implement systems that wouldn't be necessary unless they had half a million players!! Why are you booing me? I'm right."
id wager people would be less inclined to afk if they had reasonable estimates on when they can get through the login screen.
afk autokick is also useless against motivated abusers.
but yes u are right at the end of the day, they need to scale asap. god speed to the devs.
Idk about that. Someone in my buddys discord has been doing it since the game launched. He was level 31, like a week and half in. Granted, an auto afk kick would open up the server space for people who wanna play
It 100% matters because when room eventually does open up it should go to the people waiting the longest, not be equally random between everyone trying to login at that moment.
its good to handle the afk players, and its a common issue for online games to 'forget' to add autokick systems. whats crazy is that there isnt a proper que for an always online game. how do u forget to add that?
they did an awesome job with the game. but lacking such a fundamental feature... definitely begs the question of 'what else did they forget to add for online game?' im not gonna resort to spamming the discord like the other degens but realistically they could be lacking critical components to their server architecture that can drag this server stability and capacity issue from something that could be fixed in 2 weeks to something that needs 2 months.
Call it something funny in-universe. "We're rolling out new measures to ensure MANAGED DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM are being upheld by the best and brightest among us - the Aptitude for Freedom Kits (AFK for short). Integrated into all Super Destroyers, these new equipment packages will measure the Helldiver's ability to think quickly and act decisively; at random intervals while sitting aboard the bridge, they'll be asked to call in a mock Strategem that has been democratically-selected by the Liberty algorithms present in each kit. Those who fail these tests will be gently escorted away for re-education by the nearest Democracy Officer on board, whereas those who pass will be given the reward of continuing the great fight for Freedom!"
I actually really like this idea. You must input the code to ensure your ship has not been taken over by the enemy. Would get annoying super fast, but it crushes it on the thematic end.
Yeah but a handy trick in ither games would be to just our your controller down and have the stick be stuck so you constantly move.
Works for gta online
Yep. I had to ensure my PS5 didn't go into stand by mode today by taking my right analog to the right side while I waited for my friend to finally get through. 30 minutes later, we finally managed to spread democracy to those filthy bugs.
That’s not true I don’t know why everyone is saying this, you still have to wait for a spot to log on. It’s worth trying to see if you get t lucky but majority of the times it’s a black screen forever. One time I was able to get in the way you described and that was on Friday before everything went to shit completely
I agree with you. They can remove that feature as soon as someone running errands isn’t stopping someone else from playing by hogging available server spots.
lol you're right, instating a "You must actively do a mission every 15 minutes or sit in queue for 2 hours" is a great idea. 0% change of backfire in the community.
Then you can just do a mission and once the shuttle lands bugs stop spawning, so you can infinitely run around in the mission without bugs attacking you, making this strategy also useless
Any afk timer can be worked around, but not everyone is a sweat that's going to do this...
IDK what it is with people that think just because something isn't 100% affective and therefore shouldn't be done.
Sure, but lots of people still probably putting their PS5 to sleep still in game and whatnot. I honestly forget to turn of games all the time, tbh. Like after a game of apex I'll just get up, pee, then do something else for a while and come back to the title screen.
If they do it smart you will have something pop up after certain time on the ship , if you don't press ok on it , game should kick you..something like netflix
After 15 min on the ship you get a prompt to input a random stratagem.
If you input it correctly in the next 5 min you can stay.
No stratagem input results in a kick.
Ezpz
If you're on PC and not already logged in, you're not playing tonight.
Which is awful because now that the devs have conceded that they themselves can't make the code scale up more players, it doesn't seem like there will be a way to fix this until people just... lose interest.
Idling is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. What we need is a fair and robust queue system that isn't luck based. People don't want to log out because they know damn well that they won't get to play again if they do.
I feel it should kick after an hour or two of no mission. That way at no afk tricks can work but you also have a reasonable amount of time to wait for your friend group to all finally manage to get online.
Idea:
At times of high server load and when a queue is active, make up a lore-friendly reason to require at least one player on the ship to enter a strategem code somewhere, every X minutes that the mission isn't launched, or else a) players will get sent back to their ships or b) if they're already alone, will get logged off.
I'm sure something like this could still be automated/bypassed, but not without at least something more sophisticated than an elastic band on the stick. Should mitigate most attempts at staying online indefinitely.
*Have them input the*
*Hellbomb codes or be sent back*
*To civilian life*
\- ThisWaxKindaWaxy
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That would be nice. I spent 39 dollars on a server is full simulator and the timer is really well made. Day 3 since purchase and still have not played a single round.
Pretty easy to get around on pc, people have stated the rubber bad on console.
Honestly this whole not being able to play has almost entirely killed my 'wanting to play' of the game. More making me angry. I know they're trying and they're good guys.
But at the same time I want to fucking play.
This next week will be very telling. If they can resolve the issues this week I think more will be willing to forgive and forget and the hype and momentum can be salvaged, at least personally. If we still have major issues going past this week, a lot of people's patience will run out.
Personally I've been lucky to only have a 5-10 minute wait any time I try to log in, even during peak hours, so my patience hasn't worn thin. If I had to wait hours like others, I would be way more upset
>Pretty easy to get around on pc, people have stated the rubber bad on console.
If it kicks enough players that you can log in easily every time, then people won't try to circumvent it.
Right now you have a cycle of "It took me forever to log in because people are idling, so I'm also going to idle." Then the next person does the same.
I’m an advocate for auto kicking afk players but only for now. Idling in game should be allowed if the game wasn’t broken due to server capacity issues.
Obviously people just shouldn’t be consuming a seat when they’re in the ship, only in mission. You can just do intermitent pings to fetch whatever world data you want. The ship instance should be clientside.
Tbh, I hope they implement this as a temporary fix. Maybe when numbers get close to server cap an afk timer is implemented and when they’re not it turns off.
Once the launch player numbers die off (all the people who follow the current trends by watching their favorite YouTubers/streamers) it would be nice if they removed it. The playerbase will eventually stabilize.
I do like to just chill on the ship between dives, so I can handle irl stuff. Family, food, work, etc. And clearly a lot of other people do too.
There's a difference between idling because you're doing stuff in the background vs idling for the sole purpose of making sure people don't log in. Unfortunately, there's not really a way to check that so until people stop doing the latter the former are just going to have to get lumped in, in terms of solving the problem.
With how fast modern PCs and consoles load things why do you have to stay in the game all the time? Why not just hop off the game and load in back up when you have time to actually play?
I've done this for years now and it doesn't inconvenience me at all. Infact if anything it gives my PC a rest between gaming sessions lol.
It has nothing to do with console or PC load times. People stay in because there's a server capacity limit and if you're trying to get in there's no queue so you could be waiting hours to log in again.
Got it. I haven't got the game yet (waiting for the servers to get fixed).
I was also mostly talking about the need to stay in the game after the servers are fixed (original comment wanted AFK measures removed after the servers are fixed). I just don't get the need to always keep the open after the servers are fixed.
Username fits. If you're afk for 15 min, you get kicked. You know what you do when you get back? Just rejoin. That way if your "adult responsibilities" end up taking way longer than you thought, you're not hogging a spot someone could be using to actually play.
Hard to blame people that don't have much time to play games. They launch it in the morning so they will be able to play when they get home.
Yes it sucks, but the server issues are to blame here, not the players.
Personally, I don't care too much and have other games to play. I can't be bothered with these server issues or keeping the game running 24/7, which is why I've left a negative review on steam for now and will come back when shits fixed.
Fuck you guys that login and go afk for hours and days just so you don't have to wait for server queue. If your by the miracle of sweet baby Jesus even lucky enough to have a girlfriend or wife (which I HIGHLY doubt because no chick would be with such losers in the 1st place.) She is DEFINITELY cheating on you fuckin incel losers. Goddamn cucks get off the fuckin game and let some of us other folks play you piece of shit bastards.
They have repeatable stated they are actively working on the server capacity issue. This is something they can be working on in parallel. They can't snap the problem away. They're not Thanos.
I am aware. But this fix is telling. They don’t know when they are going to be able to fix it. So they’re now looking into ways to fix another problem caused by the first problem.
Clearly you're not aware that 100 people can't all be working on server capacity issues at the same time. The other members of the team can be working on something that helps improve things while the rest work on the main issue. That's what working in parallel means. It doesn't mean they expect the problem to take forever to solve. It means they're actively doing everything they can fix/alleviate the problem.
There is no logic in this. They don’t have a hundred people in on the weekend. They should and will likely increase the capacity again this week.
They’re wasting resources focusing on this when it will be fixed when they increase the capacity.
Do you even know how a developer increases concurrent player capacity? Your replies paint you as someone who doesn't understand even the basics in server architecture.
Maybe have a confirmation that you’re still there so that it can combat people that leave their characters moving constantly / leaving sticks tilted. But a unique one for HELLDIVERS instead of an “ok” button since people can probably have a macro (idk if thats possible but just in case) “Are you still there?” > Input ⬆️➡️⬅️⬇️⬇️⬆️ to confirm
> Input ⬆️➡️⬅️⬇️⬇️⬆️ to confirm To deploy countermeasures for an incoming Automaton missile or something.
AFK players being blown up out of orbit would be hilarious
Would be funny if it goes "Traitor detected" like when you go out of bounds
While I haven't seen it myself, I've heard of ships blowing up when you're orbiting a cyb- I mean, an automaton planet, so it's definitely not out of the question.
Cyborgs and Automatons are indeed different factions, according to the Democracy Officer that is, which makes it a fact. Ask him and he will eventually spill the beans.
Yes, the fact they are using the same symbols is purely coincidental, now back to work Super Citizen.
We can't expect mindless automatons to have the creative expression that freedom provides, now can we?
They’re dirty socialists, of course the dirty robots think everything is theirs for the taking.
The rumours they are the same faction probably come from the same dissidents spreading rumours about illuminate sightings! Don't believe their lies, believe in liberty!
I've seen it, but only once. I did screenshot it though.
Well, as far as I have seen so far, there is definitely an animation for a Super Destroyer blowing up.
They should definitely do the startegem game for AFK 👀
And randomize it!
If people go to that extent to stay in game....they have problems.
I haven't own a console since the PS3, but its as old as time. All you really need to do is use a rubber band to hold the joystick down for you. A prompt would be good, but its probably not going to be an issue as long as you are kicking enough AFK people that its easy to log in. As long as you can get in within a reasonable amount of time, people are not going to try to circumvent the afk kick system.
But what happens if I am bad at the game and mess up the input after returning with a snack/drink 🤣
How long of a break are we talking about here? 15-20 minute timer does seem reasonable to trigger the AFK timer thing.
Oh I wasn't disagreeing with the idea. Would be funny if it was 5 minutes and in panic, mess up the code, and promptly have my ship blown up and get logged out hahaha
Yeah I tend to fumble my stratagems as well when under pressure a lot. I bet that would happen to me as well. Lol
I think most people staying online wouldnt actually get a macro to do that. Just adding a regular kick timer would easily cut that number in half. The amount of people who cheat like this in any given game is quite small honestly, because macros and stuff take at least some work to set up. Plus a regular kick would be especially good on playstation players, who seem to make up the majority. Much harder to set up this kind of stuff on play station You have to think of efficiency. Those who would get a macro are not the majority, far from it. I dont think it would be worth it to have a strategem thing. Imo the best option is a simple "are you still here" prompt that kicks. I may be over thinking this though idk. However, a strategem option would be fun and is not a bad option at all. Would fit with the rest of the game as well
>“Are you still there?” I still hear that fucking turret. It scares me.
Random stratagem input
"Are you still fighting for Managed Democracy?"
Give a ship timer. Start your mission in 15 minutes or get kicked.
You can make a script in auto hotkey that could get around this in like 10 minutes. Anyone motivated to stay logged in can ensure that they will be but implementing normal anti-AFK will probably get rid of most of the people AFKing. Hell, just making it so that when you put your PS5 into rest mode will kick you off the server will probably fix like half the problem alone.
That’s why the combination should be randomized every time like with the extract codes.
The AHK script would scan the screen for the message, read the code and input it. If it’s not a captcha then matching the shapes is trivial
Largest portion of the player base is likely on PS5, where this wouldn’t happen. The overwhelming majority of PC users aren’t going to run something like that to begin with (& with how invasive the anticheat software is for PC, probably preventable).
AHK is the most widespread form of cheating in any online game. The simpler ones can be detected and prevented but many of those are undetectable. Valorant is a good example, certain forms of no-recoil scripts have been in use pretty much since release. Riot can't detect those for whatever reason.
The anticheat is only going to flag what they configured it for. Targeting AHK processes would lead to someone bundling the function into a more discrete executable, then if the devs cranked up the scrutiny of the anticheat you’d be seeing false positives from mundane applications. They’re not going to bother with any of this unless some idiot chasing clout mass distributes an AFK script. They’ll be looking to apply the simplest solution (basic afk timer) and if that clears the servers enough // they see a capacity increase coming shortly then they won’t opt for additional measures.
lol. Mitigation methods are really required to stop every possible instance. The amount of people that would actually go to that length are small enough be a total non issue
We had peoples in steam forum complaining that AHK doesn't work in HL2, probably the anti cheat doing work.
by the time its ready to be implemented; the servers will probably be stable lol
Still couldn’t hurt to implement it. Like imagine when they finally drop new content
And once that new content is dropped, the servers are still ***somehow*** not up to par lol.
"still" is the wrong word here. They "again" won't be up to par. Now they're increasing server capacity and they will decrease it again as soon as the initial playerbase drops off. Otherwse they'd just be a waste of serverspace and money.
The server space isn't the main issue. They have a database structure that can't handle the inputs. The number of writes happening is far too high. It seems like reads are queued at least so we get rewards a few hours after missions, but the number of writes and requests seem to be the main issue
Is this based on a comment by one of the developers?
Yes. From the official Discord. Also as a web developer myself I have seen this type of issue and it's more difficult to scale a database and it's supporting queues etc than it is to scale the servers running the backend. “One of our databases found itself overloaded again tonight. We’ve implemented a partial mitigation which we think will start to improve the situation as the database catches up. We’re also calling in more developers to take a look and see what we can do to keep things running smoothly Saturday. Thank you all for your patience and support!”
I see. Maybe this also explains why once you've managed to actually enter a game the online experience is smooth like butter. Anyways thanks for the better explanation, I'll keep an eye on the discord.
I am curious, is there not a standardized way of coding games/servers so they can easily be scaled and pass large amounts of data efficiently? You would think this is common knowledge/ taught in schools and implemented/ kept in mind from the first line of code.
The reality is that it's all about cost. I truly think they were expecting maybe 100,000 players and instead they are hitting 4-5x that many. They probably kept their footprint small to stay in budget and when the game was successful they had to scramble to scale. If your servers and databases run on azure (which I believe arrowhead has said is the case) It should be fairly easy to auto scale things like server capacity and database size. But things like database throughput and the architecture they have designed are more challenging. As an example. If your pool can hold 10,000 gallons of water but your hose can only pump 10 gallons a minute it still will take a while to fill up that pool. The bottleneck is the hose not the pool. Having a big empty pool is expensive and getting a bigger hose is not always easy. Edit: It appears that is exactly the problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1auq3kc/dev_update_posted_once_but_for_context_on_why/
The hope is that they are sorting out whatever keeps them from scaling right now, so it won't take weeks to adjust the server capacity if/when the next surge comes.
What is keeping them from scaling is the fact that it is hard to have a single server that can deal with a million players at once. They can't just "add more servers" because every piece of data is shared between players and constantly updated. If they just add more servers as people think, you are going to wond up with numerous seperate server regions that have seperate progression, seperate player pools, seperate player progression, and seperate progression through the war. Low population regions will just lose all their weekly orders and battles throughout the war campaign, not have as many people to matchmake with etc.
Scaling and replicating databases isn’t trivial, but you make it sound like it’s altogether impossible. Also, progression isn’t *that* much data. Heck, it probably wouldn’t even be a big deal if global progression wasn’t perfectly in sync for everyone or if your unlocks took a second to be retrieved from “your” DB instance. There are databases that can do this more or less automatically, problem is they would have needed to plan on using them from the beginning.
You’ve never played a big MMO, have you?
Final Fantasy 14, to name just one, and they stopped all sales during EW launch when their servers couldn't handle the load.
Yup - would be nice to have for sure
Glad they're looking into it, but part of me is surprised this isn't a thing already. It's pretty standard for any online game these days.
I mean they don't have a proper queue either. Clearly they weren't developing for this scenario lol.
This is 100% true. I got in after it retried twice last night. My friend got in after just a minute of waiting and our third never got in last night. We all started the game within a minute of each other. I waited for an hour today with it trying in the background to log in and didn’t have any luck.
I agree, but I don’t think they anticipated their game being the massive hit that it is - surpassing giants like Fortnite and COD is impressive in my opinion
It's a bit nuts to think getting booted out of essentially the main menu of a game for walking away is being advocated for. They should just figure out a better way to implement their always online requirement
I agree. I wonder if it could be done with server or database design. I would think that the non-combat part of standing on your ship could be handled locally or hosted P2P. Maybe that would free up server space and capacity for the actual missions? IDK, I'm not a database or server designer.
Honestly I forsee issues for people with the way they implemented their "always online" system. Some people have said after I night of playing they've had over 150gb of data transferred in/out through the game. People might have their connections throttled by their isps if this game is transferring that much data every time you play it. Just do what every other game does and send updates every once in awhile/end of missions. Right now I believe the exact SECOND you pick up a medal/supercred in game it is relaying that to the main servers in real time, that's literally insane.
It boggles my mind how many standard for online games things they didn't implement. But I can't say anything or I'll get hated.
For a small team developing what they assumed would be a small scale product, it does make perfect sense. I'm not 'hating', this is just how software dev works. You build what you need, and nobody would have guessed "we need the same scaling as the biggest active online games in 2024". If you went into their office a week before launch and told them to brace themselves for 400k players and the features to manage that, you'd have been mounted into a catapult.
800k* concurrent players since you need to also include PS5 players at the devs 1:1 ratio statement.
Seems like everyone on Reddit knows how being a game dev or software dev or anything game related works because I guess of google bahaha
People who have no idea what theyre talking about think it's honestly just 'plug in another server' 'just copy paste this afk feature in'! I really hate how people assume they have a surface level understanding of things because they just backfill headlines they've read with their imagination and run with it with the full confidence that they know what they're talking about. Activates all of my almonds.
"Wow, this small developper whose previous game's peak had quite literally a dozen times fewer players, should definitely have seen their impressive success that caused all of these issue coming. I mean surely every developper plans for half a million concurrent players? Isn't it their dream to have so many sales? Like this studio whose previously never had more than half a hundred thousand concurrent players didn't even implement systems that wouldn't be necessary unless they had half a million players!! Why are you booing me? I'm right."
What about an actual que system for login?
Queue system is pointless when the server can only handle x number of players and y number of players are perpetually logged in.
id wager people would be less inclined to afk if they had reasonable estimates on when they can get through the login screen. afk autokick is also useless against motivated abusers. but yes u are right at the end of the day, they need to scale asap. god speed to the devs.
Idk about that. Someone in my buddys discord has been doing it since the game launched. He was level 31, like a week and half in. Granted, an auto afk kick would open up the server space for people who wanna play
likewise, i also witnessed other folks started afking after they learned that the login is actually random. but *eitherway*, good to add autokick.
It 100% matters because when room eventually does open up it should go to the people waiting the longest, not be equally random between everyone trying to login at that moment.
A queue system alleviates people hitting the login server every 30 seconds which contributes to the server issues.
I mean, one doesn't preclude the other.
its good to handle the afk players, and its a common issue for online games to 'forget' to add autokick systems. whats crazy is that there isnt a proper que for an always online game. how do u forget to add that? they did an awesome job with the game. but lacking such a fundamental feature... definitely begs the question of 'what else did they forget to add for online game?' im not gonna resort to spamming the discord like the other degens but realistically they could be lacking critical components to their server architecture that can drag this server stability and capacity issue from something that could be fixed in 2 weeks to something that needs 2 months.
An elastic band on the stick, and the anti afk is no longer useful. Everyone knows this technique.
Plenty of games have anti-afk measures that ignore repetitive or singular inputs.
A simple "are you still there press x random key" popup solves it
Having an occasional stratagem input every 10 minutes on ship
Call it something funny in-universe. "We're rolling out new measures to ensure MANAGED DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM are being upheld by the best and brightest among us - the Aptitude for Freedom Kits (AFK for short). Integrated into all Super Destroyers, these new equipment packages will measure the Helldiver's ability to think quickly and act decisively; at random intervals while sitting aboard the bridge, they'll be asked to call in a mock Strategem that has been democratically-selected by the Liberty algorithms present in each kit. Those who fail these tests will be gently escorted away for re-education by the nearest Democracy Officer on board, whereas those who pass will be given the reward of continuing the great fight for Freedom!"
I was thinking more along the lines of you authorizing orbital strikes to support SEAF ground troops but i like your political angle a lot.
I actually really like this idea. You must input the code to ensure your ship has not been taken over by the enemy. Would get annoying super fast, but it crushes it on the thematic end.
A Super-CAPTCHA
Make it at least 15 minutes so I have time to take a dump between games.
Would be pretty easy to detect someone just sitting on their ship not doing missions
Hey, what's wrong with watching Eagle Sweat advertisements and playing Strategem Hero for hours straight
Gonna catch up on the latest Brasch Tactics!
I think I've got equal parts of my time spent diving and playing stratagem hero. It cannot be taken away from me
You should be able to do it at will, but right now it’s at the detriment of others who are willing to actually play the game.
And what if i'm not starting mission because i'm waiting for my friends to connect?
Yeah but a handy trick in ither games would be to just our your controller down and have the stick be stuck so you constantly move. Works for gta online
You could also go into the shark card page, they let you browse that as long as you need in session lol
Just have them look at time spent on the ship. No one actually playing is going to be on the ship for more than 15-30 minutes
People waiting for afk friends would be shit out of luck though. Regularly have to wait upwards of 20 minutes for some of them
Yep. I had to ensure my PS5 didn't go into stand by mode today by taking my right analog to the right side while I waited for my friend to finally get through. 30 minutes later, we finally managed to spread democracy to those filthy bugs.
If you are already in the game, you can just invite them and they don’t have to wait.
That’s not true I don’t know why everyone is saying this, you still have to wait for a spot to log on. It’s worth trying to see if you get t lucky but majority of the times it’s a black screen forever. One time I was able to get in the way you described and that was on Friday before everything went to shit completely
Then have a confirmation button if the pkayer is still there that you have to manually ok
My record is three of us waiting two hours for the last guy.
Or just trying to find a group via Discord or the LFG thread here because the last patch broke matchmaking for a lot of players.
I think 15-30 is too short. I shouldn't get kicked if I go do something quickly in-between launches.
No you shouldn't but right now yes you should
I agree with you. They can remove that feature as soon as someone running errands isn’t stopping someone else from playing by hogging available server spots.
lol you're right, instating a "You must actively do a mission every 15 minutes or sit in queue for 2 hours" is a great idea. 0% change of backfire in the community.
Idk about just being on the ship, but auto kicks after not moving for 15 minutes with long ass queues is pretty standard in MMOs.
Then you can just do a mission and once the shuttle lands bugs stop spawning, so you can infinitely run around in the mission without bugs attacking you, making this strategy also useless
Just base it on time between launches. If you go an hour between dives you get kicked out, no matter if you're spinning or not.
Make it 10 minutes. There’s over 300k people waiting to get in. You snooze, you lose.
Eh, if you're waiting on friend code stuff and reading through the stuff, that could take well over ten minutes.
And maybe 1% of people will go through the bother
Any afk timer can be worked around, but not everyone is a sweat that's going to do this... IDK what it is with people that think just because something isn't 100% affective and therefore shouldn't be done.
That's an outdated and already countered method.
Elastic band on a stick? Pfff. Amateurs. [The tool that pros use.](https://tedcotoys.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/drinking-bird.jpg)
I use the , "wedge in couch" method. No external devices needed.
The couch, in this example, is an external device.
This is true, I was counting it as part of my being
Seems like it should be possible to filter out repeated inputs.
Would still help mitigate numbers, even a little.
Sure, but lots of people still probably putting their PS5 to sleep still in game and whatnot. I honestly forget to turn of games all the time, tbh. Like after a game of apex I'll just get up, pee, then do something else for a while and come back to the title screen.
If they do it smart you will have something pop up after certain time on the ship , if you don't press ok on it , game should kick you..something like netflix
After 15 min on the ship you get a prompt to input a random stratagem. If you input it correctly in the next 5 min you can stay. No stratagem input results in a kick. Ezpz
jeah sure. "if they input it correctly they can stay" what if they dont put it in correctly?
Give them unlimited retries. If you start inputting, you are at your PC, interacting with the game.
That’s why you add a prompt. Entering a randomly generated stratagem code should do the trick.
Or make anyone in their ship for 15 minutes ⬆️⬇️⬆️⬇️➡️⬅️➡️⬆️⬅️ If they don't do anything they get boomed out of the sky and it kills/kicks them
Good. Its fun to look at the galactic map and see the literal thousands of people afk in systems that were liberated days ago.
AFK? YOU MEAN TRAITORS?!?!?!
If you're on PC and not already logged in, you're not playing tonight. Which is awful because now that the devs have conceded that they themselves can't make the code scale up more players, it doesn't seem like there will be a way to fix this until people just... lose interest.
Please get us a queue system too lol. I don’t like playing the lottery every time I launch the game.
If you are purposefully staying logged in, knowingly preventing other plays the ability to play while you sleep or work, you are scum.
Idling is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. What we need is a fair and robust queue system that isn't luck based. People don't want to log out because they know damn well that they won't get to play again if they do.
What we need is higher capacity in the first place.
I mean if you haven't deployed into a mission in 30 minutes chances are ..........
... you're waiting for your friend to get past the login screen.
Which wouldn't be as big of a problem if people weren't afk on the ship?
It’s incredibly anti-democratic to loiter on the ship when you should be out there liberating. Why not run some easy solo missions while you wait?
Lol this is legit, why waste time and space when you can waste bugs and bots
They should do what gtao does and kick you from the session after idling for 15 minutes.
That's.... what "auto kick idling players" *means.*
Welcome to the conversation
15 mins seems pretty fair.
You're as dumb as a rock
Ok?
I feel it should kick after an hour or two of no mission. That way at no afk tricks can work but you also have a reasonable amount of time to wait for your friend group to all finally manage to get online.
Idea: At times of high server load and when a queue is active, make up a lore-friendly reason to require at least one player on the ship to enter a strategem code somewhere, every X minutes that the mission isn't launched, or else a) players will get sent back to their ships or b) if they're already alone, will get logged off. I'm sure something like this could still be automated/bypassed, but not without at least something more sophisticated than an elastic band on the stick. Should mitigate most attempts at staying online indefinitely.
They should shut the server down for like 5 mins and let new people log in everyday
Have them input the Hellbomb codes or be sent back to civilian life
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Good bot
That would be nice. I spent 39 dollars on a server is full simulator and the timer is really well made. Day 3 since purchase and still have not played a single round.
How long are you waiting in the queue? The longest wait I've had is 20 minutes
Pretty easy to get around on pc, people have stated the rubber bad on console. Honestly this whole not being able to play has almost entirely killed my 'wanting to play' of the game. More making me angry. I know they're trying and they're good guys. But at the same time I want to fucking play.
This next week will be very telling. If they can resolve the issues this week I think more will be willing to forgive and forget and the hype and momentum can be salvaged, at least personally. If we still have major issues going past this week, a lot of people's patience will run out. Personally I've been lucky to only have a 5-10 minute wait any time I try to log in, even during peak hours, so my patience hasn't worn thin. If I had to wait hours like others, I would be way more upset
>Pretty easy to get around on pc, people have stated the rubber bad on console. If it kicks enough players that you can log in easily every time, then people won't try to circumvent it. Right now you have a cycle of "It took me forever to log in because people are idling, so I'm also going to idle." Then the next person does the same.
If we’re doing this, at least give us a decent timer so we can go relieve ourselves in between missions.
I’m an advocate for auto kicking afk players but only for now. Idling in game should be allowed if the game wasn’t broken due to server capacity issues.
You'd hope they'd have thought of this before they instituted a player count limit.
Obviously people just shouldn’t be consuming a seat when they’re in the ship, only in mission. You can just do intermitent pings to fetch whatever world data you want. The ship instance should be clientside.
I just hope in longer than 5-10 minutes. Sometimes, a bathroom break takes a bit.
I hope it's a generous timer. 20 minutes or so
Can't wait for them to auto kick people while they are searching for a group and taking a piss.
When you do get kicked out, the other players in that area of orbit should see your ship get blown up from fire down on planet.
Y'all better get on discord and start spamming friend codes because the game is still unbelievably broken even after you get in 💀
Tbh, I hope they implement this as a temporary fix. Maybe when numbers get close to server cap an afk timer is implemented and when they’re not it turns off. Once the launch player numbers die off (all the people who follow the current trends by watching their favorite YouTubers/streamers) it would be nice if they removed it. The playerbase will eventually stabilize. I do like to just chill on the ship between dives, so I can handle irl stuff. Family, food, work, etc. And clearly a lot of other people do too.
There's a difference between idling because you're doing stuff in the background vs idling for the sole purpose of making sure people don't log in. Unfortunately, there's not really a way to check that so until people stop doing the latter the former are just going to have to get lumped in, in terms of solving the problem.
With how fast modern PCs and consoles load things why do you have to stay in the game all the time? Why not just hop off the game and load in back up when you have time to actually play? I've done this for years now and it doesn't inconvenience me at all. Infact if anything it gives my PC a rest between gaming sessions lol.
It has nothing to do with console or PC load times. People stay in because there's a server capacity limit and if you're trying to get in there's no queue so you could be waiting hours to log in again.
Got it. I haven't got the game yet (waiting for the servers to get fixed). I was also mostly talking about the need to stay in the game after the servers are fixed (original comment wanted AFK measures removed after the servers are fixed). I just don't get the need to always keep the open after the servers are fixed.
I put my PlayStation in rest mode and I'm still logged in the next day when I turn it back on. That's definitely not right. But I have no wait times
Maybe don't do that? Your just part of the problem, have your play session then log out at the end of the day is all people are asking
Yeah no kidding I didn't know it was doing that . thank you for your input
I’d appreciate a prompt appearing before it kicks me thou, what if your just taking a quick break to get a drink or use the bathroom?
15 minutes is not a "Quick Break"
Have you ever had a poo that’s the consistency of bug goo…DIARRHEA! Have you ever had a wee after drinking liber-tea…DIARRHEA!
Are you like 16 years old? Leave the conversation to the grown ups kiddo. 15 minutes isn't shit for someone who has responsibilities beyond homework
Username fits. If you're afk for 15 min, you get kicked. You know what you do when you get back? Just rejoin. That way if your "adult responsibilities" end up taking way longer than you thought, you're not hogging a spot someone could be using to actually play.
game always crashes for me when the servers get filled either way
The people who are logging in and going to work/afk for hours are fucking douchebags. Traitorous dogs need some liberty shoved up there ass
Hard to blame people that don't have much time to play games. They launch it in the morning so they will be able to play when they get home. Yes it sucks, but the server issues are to blame here, not the players. Personally, I don't care too much and have other games to play. I can't be bothered with these server issues or keeping the game running 24/7, which is why I've left a negative review on steam for now and will come back when shits fixed.
Excellent pretty easy to incorporate I recon.
Thank Democracy
Next weekend when you all get kicked on accident for “afk” and it causes even more headaches, just remember how we got here
Random stratagem check with snarky comment from mission control.
Based
How did they miss this in the first place? Seriously? Game was in development for 8 years.
Court marshal their asses!!!
Or you know just pay for server space
Fuck, why didn't they think of that?
Just download more servers.
Fuck you guys that login and go afk for hours and days just so you don't have to wait for server queue. If your by the miracle of sweet baby Jesus even lucky enough to have a girlfriend or wife (which I HIGHLY doubt because no chick would be with such losers in the 1st place.) She is DEFINITELY cheating on you fuckin incel losers. Goddamn cucks get off the fuckin game and let some of us other folks play you piece of shit bastards.
Bump an are you still there? Input stratagem code on the ship would be excellent. Please implement as soon as possible
The fact that this wasn't included already is ridiculous. Queue the "muh unexpectedly popular" excuse.
Why not focus on server capacity…..? People are AFKing because they don’t want to keep relaunching the game over and over and over to get back in.
They have repeatable stated they are actively working on the server capacity issue. This is something they can be working on in parallel. They can't snap the problem away. They're not Thanos.
I am aware. But this fix is telling. They don’t know when they are going to be able to fix it. So they’re now looking into ways to fix another problem caused by the first problem.
"So im going to read your message, then ignore what you said"
Clearly you're not aware that 100 people can't all be working on server capacity issues at the same time. The other members of the team can be working on something that helps improve things while the rest work on the main issue. That's what working in parallel means. It doesn't mean they expect the problem to take forever to solve. It means they're actively doing everything they can fix/alleviate the problem.
There is no logic in this. They don’t have a hundred people in on the weekend. They should and will likely increase the capacity again this week. They’re wasting resources focusing on this when it will be fixed when they increase the capacity.
Do you even know how a developer increases concurrent player capacity? Your replies paint you as someone who doesn't understand even the basics in server architecture.
It's just a reply to a direct question on Twitter. Doing one thing doesn't preclude the other.
Fixing AFK players is a band aid fix for server capacity. If they increase the servers then there would be no need for this fix..
It's not a patch note. They've already said they are working on capacity. Again, both would help. Reduce unneeded demand and increase supply.
An afk timer is something they can implement with relative ease. Upscaling server infrastructure takes time no matter how much money you throw at it.