A word of warning for lancer users.

Jaraal

During an intense keep defense today, the game ejected me from my lancer, my screen went cloudy, and I got kicked to the loading screen with the message "Error: Booted from server." Apparently hitting too many people with too many lancer shots is considered spam, and you can get booted for sending too many messages to the server.

So thanks to some seemingly buggy code, I not only lost my hard earned lancer, but also an 83k tick (according to my teammates), simply for playing the game as intended. I don't have any suggestions for a way to avoid it, but this is just a heads up that things like this can happen.

the1andonlyskwex

The message you get about being booted for "spamming" is misleading. I don't think it ever has anything to do with a player spamming skills or abilities or anything like that. It's about your computer/console spamming the server with messages (usually due to a lag spike that causes a whole bunch of normal messages to arrive at the server nearly simultaneously).

Vevvev

I get this error from massive battles and Cyrodiil lag, not spamming the Lancer fire button. I know how heart breaking it is to lose these things but I doubt it's because you spammed the left mouse button to get the thing to fire in lag.

Jaraal

If it's not a lancer issue, then the question arises: why are we being penalized for just playing the game? Obviously there's some sort of code that says "if player X sends Y number of server calls in Z amount of time, then kick player from the game."

Why not simply modify the code so value Y includes all ranges of normal game play?

jaws343

Jaraal wrote: »

If it's not a lancer issue, then the question arises: why are we being penalized for just playing the game? Obviously there's some sort of code that says "if player X sends Y number of server calls in Z amount of time, then kick player from the game."

Why not simply modify the code so value Y includes all ranges of normal game play?

Because an individual player's lag against the server isn't necessarily normal gameplay.

the1andonlyskwex

Jaraal wrote: »

If it's not a lancer issue, then the question arises: why are we being penalized for just playing the game? Obviously there's some sort of code that says "if player X sends Y number of server calls in Z amount of time, then kick player from the game."

Why not simply modify the code so value Y includes all ranges of normal game play?

It has nothing to do with how you're playing the game, and everything to do with the internet connection between your computer/console and the server. The number of messages due to you spamming your lancer is miniscule compared to the number of messages from just walking around, for example.

What's happening is that a whole bunch of messages from your computer (which might even be things like automated acknowledgements of data received from the server) are getting stacked up by a lag spike and delivered to the server all at once. The server then sees 1000 messages in a millisecond, thinks you're attempting a denial of service attack, and disconnects you.

Unfortunately, there really isn't much most people can do about it. The one exception is if it happens frequently, you might benefit from fixing issues with your home network or changing internet service providers (or moving out of the boonies).

Nord_Raseri

jaws343 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

If it's not a lancer issue, then the question arises: why are we being penalized for just playing the game? Obviously there's some sort of code that says "if player X sends Y number of server calls in Z amount of time, then kick player from the game."

Why not simply modify the code so value Y includes all ranges of normal game play?

Because an individual player's lag against the server isn't necessarily normal gameplay.

It is in cyrodiil

Jaraal

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

If it's not a lancer issue, then the question arises: why are we being penalized for just playing the game? Obviously there's some sort of code that says "if player X sends Y number of server calls in Z amount of time, then kick player from the game."

Why not simply modify the code so value Y includes all ranges of normal game play?

It has nothing to do with how you're playing the game, and everything to do with the internet connection between your computer/console and the server. The number of messages due to you spamming your lancer is miniscule compared to the number of messages from just walking around, for example.

What's happening is that a whole bunch of messages from your computer (which might even be things like automated acknowledgements of data received from the server) are getting stacked up by a lag spike and delivered to the server all at once. The server then sees 1000 messages in a millisecond, thinks you're attempting a denial of service attack, and disconnects you.

Unfortunately, there really isn't much most people can do about it. The one exception is if it happens frequently, you might benefit from fixing issues with your home network or changing internet service providers (or moving out of the boonies).

Well I wasn't seeing any lag issues on my end. The data probably got stacked up at the Akamai bottleneck then.

Thanks for the info though. Makes sense.

biminirwb17_ESO

Its poorly implemented flood control, it also happens with oils. It has been happening for years without a fix.