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Attempting to Reconnect - Please balance disconnection effect.

Son of Mu·6/12/2015, 11:11:47 PM·3 votes·746 views

I believe this problem is still there. You're playing a game, it's a tough one, very balanced, you're concentrating very hard, you pull off some amazing saves and kills, keep it up and you'll win. You enter the next engagement, your character stops moving, must be lag, you continually click to attack, but you just stand there frozen while everyone fights around you. You confirm that you're "disconnected". You frantically spam-click back to base so you don't die. Too late. Enemy realizes you are "disconnected" and kills you and wins the teamfight. You spend 6-7 minutes End Tasking League.exe and manually reconnecting, only to get the "Failed to connect to server, please try to reconnect again" only AFTER you've worriedly waited through the full 50-100sec to re-load the match on the champion loading screen. You finally "reconnect" after about 5 tries... but it's to the PVP.net Defeat screen, where some of your team members asking the other team to report you.

The reason I was putting "disconnect" and "reconnect" in quotes is because it's not accurate to call them that. You aren't actually disconnected from the internet. At least, 99.9% of the times this happens to me, I'm still connected to the net. I look at my modem, lights indicate I'm still connected. I open a web browser and load up Google or Gmail, that still loads up. I open up Skype and message someone, that also sends perfectly fine. I guess I'm not "disconnected" after all. I guess that means that it's LoL servers.

The above "proof" is not even necessary as proof. When this happens (and you cannot move), you can see other teammates/enemies moving and attacking around you. This means you are receiving packets, which wouldn't be possible if your modem crapped out on you or your ISP was doing maintenance.

So -- if it's the game's servers -- why doesn't everyone in the room disconnect all at once? That's how it works in basically every other multiplayer game, right? The server goes down, everyone gets booted to lobby, and the game ends up "not finishing" or whatever. The only explanation I have is the way that LoL's networking behaves and networking structure is set up. The only thing that makes sense to me is this:

Your modem -----> LoL network "nodes" -----> LoL specific game (5v5)

Your modem connects to one of many "nodes", and from there, connects to the specific game. Perhaps it is possible that all 10 players in the same game are connected to the same node. Or, perhaps each of the 10 players are connected to 10 different nodes. Perhaps 7 players are connected to 7 different nodes, and the remaining 3 are on the same node. And these "nodes" can crash or lag out, individually.

This is the only explanation I have. It's the only one that makes sense. It can explain why you and 2 of your teammates (who are strangers to you), all begin disconnecting at the same time, but the other 7 players continue playing without issue. Because their "nodes" are working just fine, and the one you are connected through is lagging or overloaded.

I would like to know if I'm correct in my assumption. I play lots of online games, and this is THE ONLY GAME that I regularly experience inexplicable disconnects, and I say this without exaggeration. LoL is the only game where this happens to me, if we aren't counting things like announced server resets on MMOs. (i.e. "Attention: Servers will be going down in 30 minutes, please log out!)

If I am correct, I feel it would be beneficial (and the most fair) to assign all 10 players in the same game to the same node -- ALWAYS. If that node goes down, then we ALL lag out at the same time, and the game should quickly assign all 10 of us to a new node that has available room and is not lagging.

Briefly putting the game on pause for ALL TEN players while it finds a new node would be much more fair than locking out 1 to X player(s) for what is sometimes the remainder of the match until their team loses.

5 Comments

RetroRage966/12/2015, 11:41:53 PM1 votes

Kennen Yes yes yes!

I hate that feeling of hopelessness when your champ freezes and you can't move or anything, people move around you, but you see no particles, then you "reconnect," dead, with five thousand different particle effects going off at once. It is stupidly annoying and frustrating. And worse you get things in chat like "omg bro y u no help me" and "f*** u [champion] report."

@Riot, when your game crashes or freezes, why should I be penalized for it? I didn't design your "nodes!" My internet's not at fault!

I don't really agree with the game pause though. That would be incredibly inconvenient and frustrating, as it could turn a 45 minute time commitment into something like an hour, with ten minutes of just sitting there, waiting. That would probably bring in more reports to you than being disconnected for ten minutes, depending on your skill level.

Delade6/12/2015, 11:43:01 PM1 votes

i experience the EXACT same thing FREQUENTLY. Maybe one in every 10 games. And it seems to happen in a time frame. And only for the client. I can start games no problem, but then never connect. I desperately try to reconnect and it tells me i'm "disconnected - check your internet connection" yet i can stream Netflix or you tube or post forums AS it's telling me it's my fault. Then I end up having to wait 5 mins between games because Riot decided I didn't have a "connection" wtf. Is there something I can do to resolve this? I'm stumped. Don't tell me to run as admin either. it doesn't work.

Son of Mu6/17/2015, 7:51:00 PM1 votes

For me it's about once every 6 games, and that 6th game is basically always a loss because of it.

I would like to know if my assumption about how it works in general is correct or at least in the right ballpark, and if anything is being done to fix it. It just happened again and allowed the enemy mid to walk up and kill me at level 2 in a ranked game, and then be behind 3 levels the entire game (after finally reconnecting) and losing.

Troy2426216/17/2015, 7:55:37 PM1 votes

I get the same issue on occasion and it's extremely frustrating.

Son of Mu6/26/2015, 11:31:04 PM1 votes

Still happening.

To date, this experience of "Enemies can move, but I can't" has NEVER been the result of my own connection failing. i.e. if a storm drops a power line and my internet connection literally goes down, everyone, including myself, and enemies, will stop moving immediately and it will be obvious that it was caused by my own connection being down. What's (still) happening in League is 100% League's netcode/server's fault. Would love a fix. Thanks.