Desync, lag & crashes are too much.

So yesterday I finished the night at 38th on the Standard Flashback ladder after struggling all day with lag and desync, just to clarify it's not my internet seen as I've tried EVERYTHING to fix this. On my final map of the night abaxoth spawned in my map and crashed my game instantly, logged in to lost exp. Today I log in to find it's even worse, obviously because it is a "Race" I had to play on anyways and have proceeded to die 7 times due to game crashes, desync and lagg (All recorded).

Basically due all this i've had to quit the race to save me from the mind numbing boredom of running 5000 maps per level. Please don't have mechanics in a race that the console can't even handle properly, is it me or does that seem like common sense? -_-

I think its fair to call their servers unstable.
Especially small updates use to cause this, but it also happens random for no reason.

I've had sporadic issues.

I partially solved one issue with packet-loss by getting a new router. That helped, though I can still see some, on occasion, when I trace my connections. So, there can still be an issue, it's just that things are under some better control, now.

My connection is also better, too. I'm running a 1gigabit connection, which may be giving me a better pipe to get/give command/status updates.

However... The regular XBox One will cough up blood and freak-the-heck out, sometimes, with all the different mods that maps have. I died last night to a Harbinger/Otherworldly/Bloodline group, not because I couldn't handle it, but because I shield-rushed through the pack, to get away from a trouble-spot, and then I got rubberbanded back to the trouble-spot... where I died.

So, all that on the screen and the bunches/bunches of mobs there, as well as whatever new outworld/otherword/whatsits were jumping in and whatever the Harbinger was calling up... That was just too much information for even my pipe or their servers to respond to. Either that or the Xbox just said "@$%@$% it" and kicked me out..

POE is really happy about lots of flashy effects. OK, fine. And, they try to offset that with dynamic resolution. Check - No problem. But, even with all that, there's a limit to how much something can deal with. Likely me rushing through a large pack of mobs with all that other stuff going on was just too much for anything to calculate and deal with.


I think XBoxers are going to have to make some changes on our end. We will have to tailor our builds. We'll have to tailor our tactics. We will have to do this even more than PC players do, who face some similar issues.

PS - Knockback is a definite killer. If you have anything with any sort of knockback support, dump it. Fast-moving hitting movement skills suck, too. Shield rush, whirling blades, be careful about using them through mob-packs and try not to spam them too much when moving through a map. Show off your fancy MTXs in town or in your Hideout and, the more sparklies you have, the more you should probably dump before doing anything serious. etc..

PPS - Oh, when I died? It was seriously "off-peak" time. I couldn't sleep, decided to run some low-level maps until I felt better, no "real players" were online that I could see. (Except for one guy with MTXs not wearing a darn tabula) The load would have been at its lowest at 5:30 am'ish in the morning and I still got some issues. It's not the server load for those. Btw - I did some trading and it was almost instant! INSTANT! I got two items seconds after I bid on them... at 5:30 am EST... Somethin's funky.

Fortunately i don't have packet-loss issues and with 200mb connection there should be no issues I think as this is considered the "Premium" internet speed in my area. I am using a regular Xbox one which I had suspected was a contributing factor to this issue, but I believe that this is an optimization problem from GGGs part, which will hopefully improve with upcoming patches. There are points where I may as well be playing Super Mario for the NES it gets that pixelated at times, and even then i'm getting 5 FPS :')

With 12 characters total on Xbox one the only "Functioning" movement skill I have found is blink arrow, with all the others I have tried I literally get my little toe caught on a rock and i'll be pulled back to my death. This has really constricted my choices when it comes to build making which is a shame when one of this games main pulls is the build/tree diversity.

On the bright side though I decided to run a map when i had 10 minutes spare today and i found a divination strongbox that dropped a "The Doctor" card. Pfft trying to buy me off like that eh GGG? :')

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EU_Rogue wrote:

... but I believe that this is an optimization problem from GGGs part, which will hopefully improve with upcoming patches. ..

There's little doubt that some work could be done with optimization on XBox. All I can say of my recent experiences is that they're better than they used to be since I switched out my router and my ISP gave me a "free" bandwidth upgrade. Loading times are a bit better and response times seem better, too.

Every action, AFAIK, bounces to and back to GGG's servers. (Cheat prevention, for one reason.) The more actions there are, the more junk that has to go back and forth. And, if there's a little delay? Welcome to rubberbandworld.

So, optimizing your pipe from the box to the GGG is critical. Run cabled, limit bandwidth hogs like someone streaming a movie while you're trying to finish a map, etc. I checked my XBox bandwidth report out of curiosity and... wow. Compared to playing D3 for more hours than I played PoE, it was no contest - PoE shuffles a lot more data back and forth.

As I'm sure you're aware, no normal commentator can say "This is what is wrong with your connection/computer/life. :) All anyone can do is offer the same standard debug junk that anyone with some small bit of knowledge can offer. The rest is up to you to figure out. :) Unfortunately, it seems like there is a lot more work required of Xbox'ers for optimizing what they can of PoE than other XBox games. (Though, things like packet-loss are universally problematic across all games, even if I never experienced any problems with some...)

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With 12 characters total on Xbox one the only "Functioning" movement skill I have found is blink arrow, with all the others I have tried I literally get my little toe caught on a rock and i'll be pulled back to my death. This has really constricted my choices when it comes to build making which is a shame when one of this games main pulls is the build/tree diversity.

The way I see it, if it combines fast movement/relocation with "hits" it's going to cause a problem. Shield rush, dashing blades, even leap-slam, all have caused me rubberbanding issues at one time or another. The more "things" the game has to report and wait for a response for, the more chances there's going to get something that gets lagged and that one little thing can force your position/action to get updated to the failure point.. back in the pack of mobs, again. And, when there's a huge pack of mobs with 'splosions all over, me with curses up and area attacks hitting multiple mobs while my hitpoints are dropping.. and I think to myself "this is the perfect time to get out of this pack and do some culling with Shield Rush at the same time"... Well, no, on Xbox, that's the wrong time to use an ability that will hit a large number of mobs in rapid succession while rapidly moving your character to a new location. :)

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..On the bright side though I decided to run a map when i had 10 minutes spare today and i found a divination strongbox that dropped a "The Doctor" card. Pfft trying to buy me off like that eh GGG? :')

The constant lure of "Lootbased RPGs." Around the corner waits your Howitzerblowupsword. It is there, waiting for you. If you don't keep playing and don't go around that corner, you won't get it! "Oh, look, a portal scroll..." And still, around the other corner, "that's where my Howitzerblowupsword is I bet!"

Of course, you saved that card. Another one is going to drop any second now, right? Better save it! :)