Reconnect to Lost Sessions. We need this asap.

  • UrihamRayne
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    Hitting the nail again. It's been over a year I've been repeatedly suggesting the mechanic and I've not been alone through the years, I can't believe we haven't heard anything about it thus far.

    Every time any player that is sailing solo crashes or gets disconnected he loses the session to no fault of his own. Every time a player crashes or gets disconnected while playing in a crew of randoms in open crews he has to open the ever so cumbersome xbox app to ask for an invite or friend request to fix a problem that he didn't cause. Every time a player crashes or gets disconnected in any circumstance I do not believe we have to be obligated to have a crewmate willing to invite us back to keep playing the game. League of Legends, Dota 2, Overwatch and many other multiplayer games have functional reconnect features, design wise SoT shouldn't be any different.

    This is how it should work:

    • If a player leaves a session in progress in any way, for 15 minutes the main menu will present the player with the choise to return to the lost session.
    • If the player doesn't select the option within the time frame, his connection to the session is severed. The player may choose to sever his connection manually.
    • During the 15 minutes, the crewmates that are still in the session may vote to sever the d/c early. Making that player unable to reconnect unless invited back (or joining through a friend).
    • (Optional) If all players from a crew disconnect from a session, the ship will automatically drop it's anchor.

    Any claim that this feature is exploitable needs to be very well constructed and convincing, otherwise don't even try.

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  • TwiggssOnTreess
    Ship Mate
    Insider

    @urihamrayne Agreed.

  • K1LROYw4sH3R3
    Captain
    Insider

    +1 please. Asked for this a long time ago. Should have been in the game from day 1.

  • Drewdigon
    Captain
    Insider

    @urihamrayne This needs to happen.

  • Corvum Mortis
    Seafarer
    Insider

    @urihamrayne

    What happens to the ship and items aboard the ship while the client is disconnected?

    What happens if client is only connection to the server?

  • UrihamRayne
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    @corvum-mortis

    What happens to the ship and items aboard the ship while the client is disconnected?

    It should still be vulnerable to attacks, the most important thing is maintaining the connection to the session, because you may be in the middle of a quest or in an alliance you are having a good time with. I'd only grant the ability for the ship to just anchor itself automatically as a thing to prevent the ship to move out of the world by standing still.

    What happens if client is only connection to the server?

    If I understood this question correctly, you mean to ask what happens if the person is the only one in the server and loses connection? Well this is very rare to happen since server merges occour whenever you are in a low population server, but in the rare chanse it doesn't, then it still reconnects to the server regardless, I see no issue.

  • DaddeeSmash
    Marauder
    Insider

    Not a bad suggestion but 15 minutes is way too long imo. 5, tops.

  • UrihamRayne
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    @steveboddy

    15 minutes is way too long

    Why is it too long? What is the downside?

  • Galactic Geek
    Seafarer
    Founder

    I would be okay with 3 minutes. You really only need enough time to reconnect. Any more than that is just a potential and unnecessary tax on the system and possibly exploitable.

  • UrihamRayne
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    @galactic-geek 15 minutes is enough for a game crash reconnect, a beard error, a quick power outage reconnect and/or a internet hiccup reconnect, around 60-80% of the time. 3 minutes only serves for beard errors and crashes everything else is a low chanse of actually being enough time. Most other games I listed keep the window for reconnection indefinitely (or penalize you for taking too long but still allow you to come back) and I haven't heard in any of those any evidence of exploits or server tax complaints.

    Now on how it's exploitable in SoT? Probably impossible unless people elaborate on how, saying it is doesn't make it so.

  • Galactic Geek
    Seafarer
    Founder

    Well, I would think that a player in an open crew could leave the game and because that spot is being held for his/her return, it forces the other crew members to play with a pirate down as it would prevent potential new pirates from joining the crew.

    That said, I noticed that it was suggested that the crew can vote to cancel the rejoin. While a decent idea, this can also be abused as well.

  • UrihamRayne
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    @galactic-geek

    While a decent idea, this can also be abused as well.

    Do I have to spell it out that criticism needs to be elaborated every single time? Elaborate you point, abused how? If you think it's gonna be abused define a situation where you'd consider an abuse.

    From my perspective, the only abuse is that a person is kicked out if they don't want to be out of the crew, but given that you can't kick someone out of the session in the first place if theyare connected and that the downside of not having this option is that afk players don't get the boot for longer clogging up the matchmaking on open crews, I think that it's a compromise we can tolerate, right?

  • Galactic Geek
    Seafarer
    Founder

    @urihamrayne See, I don't have to tell you - you figured it out for yourself. 😅

  • Crimsonraziel
    Master
    Insider

    @galactic-geek said in Reconnect to Lost Sessions. We need this asap.:

    That said, I noticed that it was suggested that the crew can vote to cancel the rejoin. While a decent idea, this can also be abused as well.

    So what? Explain how the harm of the potential abuse outweighs the benefits. Until then you have no point.

  • Lem0n Curry
    Vanguard
    Insider

    @urihamrayne
    I agree with you in principal, though think 15 minutes is too long for boats that have more than one person. Don't like it that the crew that's left has to cope with an empty space for that long (I've spend way too much time in the Arena's tavern to get one crew to close it, don't want to spend that long convincing two others to severe the link with the missing player).

    What would help in multiplayer crews is a message that someone has left (or joined) the crew.

    • "Hey, Curry mostly says goodbye when he gets tired of playing with us",
    • "Could be a disconnect, let's close the crew and invite him in a minute"
      instead of
    • "Hey Curry, need any help with fixing the holes?"
    • ....
    • "Curry, we almost killed the Shrunken Ghost, why didn't you say you needed help...."
      Curry ends up on a sunk Galleon and hears the laughter of a Skalleon and a Megalodon swimming away.
  • mentimjojo
    Legend
    Insider

    @urihamrayne said in Reconnect to Lost Sessions. We need this asap.:

    @steveboddy

    15 minutes is way too long

    Why is it too long? What is the downside?

    The downside? When people leave/alt f4s, or crash, the boat stays for 15minutes in the server, meaning a new ship/crew can't join. Its takes a spot and server resources while the player might not be coming back.

    If they only would do a reconnect on a crash or disconnect that would be fine, but its almost near impossible to detect if something is an alt f4 or a crash. (And i know this because i'm a developer myself)

  • UrihamRayne
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    @mentimjojo

    Its takes a spot and server resources

    I don't understand why is that a bad downside compared to making solo play more stable and making reconnecting more practical and less relyant on needing a crewmate to serve as an anchor for you in the server. I mean anything takes server resources anyway, why is this feature apperantly the one to break the camel's back?

  • UrihamRayne
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    @lem0n-curry Yeah I do agree with your point, I think that something that would happen is that most of the time people won't manually sever their connection when they leave, possibly leaving the crew waiting on the timer for the spot to expire it's timer. However this depends entirely on player behaviour, if players are constantly confirming that they want to disconnect or the crew is capable of agreeing with dropping the player from the reconnect timer this should be a non-issue. The one thing I'd suggest as an optional solution is to perhaps allow for single vote drop the reconnect timer, with this it increases the risk of trolling a player in an unfortunate situation but still may be worth the risk.

  • Chronodusk
    Commander
    Insider

    @urihamrayne

    We do need a reconnect feature at some point, but to prevent from potential abuse:

    -It should be a prompt that is available to decide on immediately after being disconnected, and the prompt will expire after 5 minutes.

    -The prompt is only available for certain types of disconnects, specifically for server related errors. Voluntarily leaving the game would not prompt a reconnect, inactivity disconnects would not initiate the prompt either.

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