[Sept 18] Disconnection heartbeat time

I am suffering a lot of disconnects in PoE. I was blaming my internet company.

But now I am not so sure. I jumped on another online game (that I don't want to play instead of PoE!) and did not have these problems, and I have been downloading a huge chunk of data for 12 hours without a drop.

So it seems to be something to do with this specific game (and my computer?), and sometimes after the 3rd drop in an hour, I have to shrug and give up for the night.

I agree with the others. It should be 3 seconds. I have just starting playing the beta again, but had to quit. The load times take forever, the lag is consistently terrible and I had frequent disconnects. (basically unplayable.)

6 sec? dudes... its imposible to surbvive HC league in Vaal Ruins or 6 sec 1v1 against brutus... and then what? 30 lvl from begin? 6s is like forever when u dont control ur hero... but lower then 3 sec is stupid cuz ppl wil ALT=F4 evry time before dead....

It's a tricky balance between having people pulling their internet cables to survive anything and killing the majority of players from DCs.
If you guys think 6 seconds is too long remember ToG's is TEN in that ridiculous gear check P2W monstrosity that is Inferno.

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tzaro wrote:

What about a command line option allowing the Player to set their preferred heartbeat length themselves?

-heartbeat n seconds

Right on. Lost a hardcore character (around level 40) today that could have been saved if I could have picked the kick delay time. User-chosen preference is ideal so everyone can find what time delay works best for their situation (hardcore vs default)and internet connection. I have fast internet and play hardcore exclusively so I'd probably go for 2 seconds at most.

6 seconds? That's enough to kill you 6 times over and a very long time even on a horrible connection. Explains my 2 week hc race league character's death on crash, though.

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tzaro wrote:

What about a command line option allowing the Player to set their preferred heartbeat length themselves?

-heartbeat n seconds

+1 to this. It allows serious players to tweak their game experience without burdening morons casual gamers with yet another strange option.

I have a rubbish net connection with pretty bad latency, so I kinda assumed it was a fault on my end when I'm hit with constant disconnects - but I doubt this was the case here if the disconnection's after 6 seconds.

Hard to tell though since I'm logging in US server from NZ (go kiwis), plus not really sure what is done client side and what is done on the server side, and can't really tell if I'm lagging or not.

I suggest some kind of latency window or icon displayed ingame (assuming this isn't in the game already). Also perhaps have the game do some kinda ping test when you log on to a server, and have the client set the disconnection response rate based on the check.

Being F2P you will get a lot of casual folks logging in just to check the game out, so I say to be on the safe side keep it at 6 seconds. Otherwise folks with bad connections, or people not logging onto servers local to their zones might get hit with disconnects, and might end up rage quitting even before they start.

Giving advanced users the option to change the time is an option too, but keep in mind most players probably won't know what to do with it - assuming they could even find the option at all.

This is a great idea, thanks for adding this to the options!

Is it possible for the game to determine whether if a player gets disconnected because of connection problems or client crash, from using alt+f4?
Also, what happens if the player presses ESC and exits the game when in a pinch, do the 6 seconds work there?

I'm one of those that at least tries to play Hardcore on really bad connections. The problem is mine and not GGG's however I would really love to see 2 things happen. Let me explain:

I have a reasonable 4Meg ADSL line that I use when playing at home where the ping is normally a smoothish 180-220ms. I did however still die on this connection to a major de-sync/flat-line on Monday while playing in the 1 week Ladder race. The problem was simple, I had become accustomed to a steady line over the weekend and was caught off-guard by an unexpected connection flat-line. Sadly in my traumatised state I forgot to screenshot the occurrence.

I also play on a "Mobile" connection while on "Job-sites" which are literally all over the countryside with fair to very poor connections. When I play with this connection I play with the "F1" overlay active so that I can keep one eye on the latency graph. The way the current graph is, is obviously a terrible distraction and this brings me to my suggestion/request.

Seeing as you already have a "Heartbeat" system in place, (which has never worked in my favour by the way) how much would it take to add an "activate-able" overlay with 3 lights (green yellow red) in one corner which can literally warn a person of loss of connection or poor connection status. Alternatively allow us to only have the latency graph show without the other 2 graphs.

Secondly Please reduce the heartbeat to 3 seconds.