Game pauses aka timestop

Since 3.2.1c I've been getting constant timestops, especially every time in the Daresso's Dream (different environmental location each time) also in my own Hideout as well.

The game just goes into Trinity kick (from Matrix) kind of scene, sounds play normally, UI (options etc works) however the game environment seems to be in pause mode, except when drinking potions one will get sounds of those happening.

Thus this issue is preventing advancing in the game forward.

Also another bites the dust, caused HC character death by this. Gnnnggghhh.

Edit: Also happening other areas mostly when in combat. Making the game unplayable.

Only way to out of it is to exit to login or completely from the game and relogin.
Some times after same thing happens again.

logs/Client does not tell anything interesting.

On patch notes 3.2.1c: "Fixed a rare client crash that could occur when changing areas." maybe echo relation to that?

Edit: Added video: https://youtu.be/AQORTH_cG0E

Cheers,

- B

https://imgur.com/a/qFEc2

This seems to be the same case of which I'm suffering.

Started after 3.2.1c as well. Can't recall having similar issues ever before.

Here is a clip of it happening in town https://youtu.be/EgzmLenrbRk

Here are two different runs of WinMTR during both of which this happened multiple times. No packet loss is recorded in any of the runs I've done.

https://pastebin.com/ZYnWc63L
https://pastebin.com/qiv0AgY2

Things I've noted this far.

- Haven't been able to recreate on demand. Seems random.
- Happens on all Gateways.
- Happens on both DX9 and DX11.
- Animations keep going as seen on the video when looking for example at the Cloak of Flame someone is wearing.
- Messages I send are received by others, but I can not see them on my console, nor can I see or hear their replies. They get no "this character is not online" etc. message when they try to message me.
- I can invite someone else to my party and place a portal for them to join my instance. They can see me performing actions, while none of this happens on my screen.
- Occurring on lockstep. On predictive I was able to move around in a friends hideout. At some point I could not see totems being placed anymore, even though the character cast animation played. Tried to start a PVP match to change the instance which resulted in a disconnection. Need to do more testing on this.
- Haven't been able to recreate while using phone internet.
- My internet connection is provided my apartment complex, so I have no access to router. Just a hole in the wall.
- Replaced the ethernet cable with a brand new one.
- Seems to happen regardless of the character, so not related to specific skill etc.
- Exit to character selection does not work. Exit to login screen and TCP disconnection macro both work and seem instant. I'm also able to log back in right away.
- Haven't noticed problems with any other use of internet.
- Running GTX1080, patching most recent driver or downpatching to an older one has no effect on the issue.
- Messages sent and received during the freeze don't seem to show up on client log.
- Happens regardless of league I'm playing.
- More predictive testing shows, that I'll just stay in the instance indefinitely until I log out to login screen. Character selection does not work.
- Disabling Firewall doesn't help.

- Using VPN seems to solve the problem, although I'm still getting big lag spikes using one.

A similar looking case from 2015 bit after lockstep was introduced. https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1457838

Updating more as I figure things out.

POE communication channel debug tool in the client would be helpful aka opened channels could be debugged that if it is a zombie or not or client should implement multimirror channel communication to avoid this or such.

Looking at the video on both of the posts, it "looks" like lag, and nothing to do with hardware, if the game froze then it would be everything, instead you can still do basic stuff like close the inventory and move the mouse, and the effects are still playing (look at the fire in the first and the flaming body armour...the flames still move)

The problem with that assumption though is that if it WAS lag then you would have been disconnected at or around the 6 second mark but both videos go on for quite a bit longer than that

The WinMTR's in the second post only really show spikes of about 100ms not what is shown in the video and there is no packet loss.

As for the post linked by the second person, that is pretty irrelevant.

Yes, lock step causes you to freeze WHEN YOU LAG, that is in place of desync and rubber banding (the causes of which are almost always going to be different)

"

nlilja wrote:

Since 3.2.1c I've been getting constant timestops, especially every time in the Daresso's Dream (different environmental location each time) also in my own Hideout as well.

The game just goes into Trinity kick (from Matrix) kind of scene, sounds play normally, UI (options etc works) however the game environment seems to be in pause mode, except when drinking potions one will get sounds of those happening.

Network communication between your machine and the GGG server has stalled. If it comes back before the disconnect timeout you will get super-speed stuff happening, and then it will work again. If not, you get an unexpected disconnect error.

All the stuff that "works" is locally done: all the work is on the client, and the server just says "animate this", or "display that", or whatever. All the frozen stuff is run by the server.

Find the sticky thread, and run a WinMTR (or PingPlotter) trace during the time this happens. That'll highlight where the issue is occurring, and we can direct you to the correct place to fix it.

PS: the client crash referenced in the patch notes would have caused the game client to do just that, crash and exit. Since that is not what you were observing, it is unrelated.

"

SlippyCheeze wrote:

"

nlilja wrote:

Since 3.2.1c I've been getting constant timestops, especially every time in the Daresso's Dream (different environmental location each time) also in my own Hideout as well.

The game just goes into Trinity kick (from Matrix) kind of scene, sounds play normally, UI (options etc works) however the game environment seems to be in pause mode, except when drinking potions one will get sounds of those happening.

Network communication between your machine and the GGG server has stalled. If it comes back before the disconnect timeout you will get super-speed stuff happening, and then it will work again. If not, you get an unexpected disconnect error.

All the stuff that "works" is locally done: all the work is on the client, and the server just says "animate this", or "display that", or whatever. All the frozen stuff is run by the server.

Find the sticky thread, and run a WinMTR (or PingPlotter) trace during the time this happens. That'll highlight where the issue is occurring, and we can direct you to the correct place to fix it.

PS: the client crash referenced in the patch notes would have caused the game client to do just that, crash and exit. Since that is not what you were observing, it is unrelated.

Happens regulary, don't really think it is network routing issue:

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 192.168.43.1 - 0 | 135 | 135 | 1 | 2 | 16 | 2 |
| No response from host - 100 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| rma2-sr1.dnaip.fi - 0 | 135 | 135 | 21 | 35 | 55 | 31 |
| No response from host - 100 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| rma1-tr2.dnaip.fi - 0 | 134 | 134 | 20 | 34 | 62 | 33 |
| tuk2-sr1.dnaip.fi - 0 | 134 | 134 | 27 | 40 | 67 | 45 |
| netnod-ix-ge-b-sth-1500.softlayer.com - 0 | 135 | 135 | 29 | 40 | 64 | 45 |
| b2.11.6132.ip4.static.sl-reverse.com - 0 | 134 | 134 | 27 | 39 | 65 | 39 |
| bd.11.6132.ip4.static.sl-reverse.com - 0 | 134 | 134 | 44 | 60 | 106 | 54 |
| ae6.dar01.sr01.ams01.networklayer.com - 0 | 134 | 134 | 44 | 59 | 81 | 56 |
| po1.fcr01.sr01.ams01.networklayer.com - 0 | 135 | 135 | 46 | 69 | 184 | 55 |
| f0.4a.3a25.ip4.static.sl-reverse.com - 0 | 134 | 134 | 46 | 58 | 104 | 62 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

Would be helpful if could debug using the previous patch level when everything did work just fine.

Another observation is that it occurs (or conveniently random) when event takes place aka. chest popping, pack action or such.

Or does accounts have different kind of flags or such which could be related? Or authentication token dies as the return channel seems to die or is forwarded to somewhere else?

Cheers,

- B

Added (longer period, happened multiple times):

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 192.168.43.1 - 0 | 2292 | 2292 | 1 | 5 | 124 | 2 |
| No response from host - 100 | 459 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| rma2-sr1.dnaip.fi - 0 | 2291 | 2291 | 20 | 37 | 287 | 30 |
| No response from host - 100 | 459 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| rma1-tr2.dnaip.fi - 0 | 2291 | 2291 | 20 | 36 | 288 | 33 |
| tuk2-sr1.dnaip.fi - 0 | 2290 | 2290 | 25 | 41 | 258 | 43 |
| netnod-ix-ge-b-sth-1500.softlayer.com - 0 | 2291 | 2291 | 24 | 41 | 138 | 41 |
| b2.11.6132.ip4.static.sl-reverse.com - 0 | 2290 | 2290 | 26 | 42 | 267 | 38 |
| bd.11.6132.ip4.static.sl-reverse.com - 0 | 2291 | 2291 | 44 | 61 | 203 | 58 |
| ae6.dar01.sr01.ams01.networklayer.com - 0 | 2291 | 2291 | 44 | 60 | 324 | 58 |
| po1.fcr01.sr01.ams01.networklayer.com - 1 | 2249 | 2238 | 44 | 66 | 295 | 57 |
| f0.4a.3a25.ip4.static.sl-reverse.com - 0 | 2290 | 2290 | 43 | 60 | 189 | 72 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

I'm having the exact same problem, I'm in EU, Finland. With EU gateways I just get the client freeze, my GF gets the same, we're in same network. We don't get the at the exact same time, but both do get them. When I'm having it I can see on her screen that my character is moving within 1 screen radius, shoots, uses skills etc.

After I switched to US gateway (Washington) my client didn't freeze, but got the disconnect all the same. Game log file gives nothing, been hampering with both mine and GF's graphic settings DX11-DX9 and all the other stuff.

The client doesn't show any latency spikes during "crash", nor do I get any packet losses in pinging google etc.

Did try reinstalling the client, alas no avail.
All above with non-steam client, will try next with steam client.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that 1 week ago had no problems of this sort, maybe the most recent patch is the cuplrit?

I'm gonna go ahead and assume your isp is DNA. Seems to be the common nominator with me and OP, although his connection is mobile and mine is fibre. My mobile connection with DNA showed no issues.

Using a VPN has solved the problem for me. I do get some hiccups and can't tell for sure if it's just the VPN. Kinda feels like I'd be getting the same disconnection, but instead of freezing it's able to resolve the problem.

DNA it is. I'll try with mobile net then if that solves anything for me short term, I just wanted to take a day off playing....

EDIT: Mobile is Elisa/Saunalahti and the problem persists..

"

Sekkna wrote:

I'm gonna go ahead and assume your isp is DNA. Seems to be the common nominator with me and OP, although his connection is mobile and mine is fibre. My mobile connection with DNA showed no issues.

Using a VPN has solved the problem for me. I do get some hiccups and can't tell for sure if it's just the VPN. Kinda feels like I'd be getting the same disconnection, but instead of freezing it's able to resolve the problem.

With VPNGate through Germany I could actually get without getting timestops, however I get constant unable to connect instances and unexpected disconnects now...

However with netherlands vpngate I am able to play. A bit fupped up tbh, if it would be issue from the ISP then the vpn would not solve it either, however, as I got into Act3 the stuttering started. Was climbing while in Vaal pyramid.

Thus what it seems that through DNA from POE server to DNA the pipe drops somehow.


- B