Invalid Improve Disconnection Notification

[Mushfiq]

PS Showdown is incredibly inefficient in notifying when a player has disconnected from his battle. This is incredibly frustrating as this leads to numerous disconnect losess. This is worsened by the 60-second disconnect timer which is criminally low. By the time a player learns about the disconnection, the match is already over. So I suggest making the disconnect timer at least 150 seconds.

In the long run, it would be better to allocate resources to real issues like creating a more robust connection that prevent d/cs in the first place, instead of wasting on needless fluff such as the AI "bad word" detector. I'm sure PS player base would much appreciate not losing all their points because of PS's random disconnects and ultra low disconnect timer, rather than auto-muting random trolls who use curse words.

 

[Hecate]

In the long run, it would be better to allocate resources to real issues like creating a more robust connection that prevent d/cs in the first place

This is an end user issue, not something we can fix other than recommending you get better internet.
What we can potentially do is make the notification more clear, but there's not else we can do to fix it. I don't believe extending the disconnect timer is desirable at this time.

 

[Celever]

I will say that as someone who lives on university WiFi, a speedier disconnection alert (if that’s possible) would be desirable! My uni WiFi sometimes drops out for a couple of seconds, my PC doesn’t identify that it dropped off because it’s for a short period, but it’s long enough for Showdown to begin its disconnection process. Because Showdown disconnection and reconnection takes a while, it has resulted in forfeits due to playing on the uni WiFi that would have been avoidable had I immediately tried to reconnect, rather than assuming my opponent was taking their time. More frequent timer notifications would fix this, though they’re undesirable for other reasons.

However, I understand if this can’t be fixed. It seems difficult to work out at best and impossible at worst.

 

[Hecate]

Making the browser popup notification faster isn't particularly feasible either. You already get it as soon as your browser determines the connection has been lost.

 

[Mushfiq]

This is an end user issue, not something we can fix other than recommending you get better internet.
What we can potentially do is make the notification more clear, but there's not else we can do to fix it. I don't believe extending the disconnect timer is desirable at this time.

Why would extending the disconnection timer not be desirable? It solves an actual problem of players losing battles because of PS's delay in showing the disconnection notification

 

[Celever]

Why would extending the disconnection timer not be desirable? It solves an actual problem of players losing battles because of PS's delay in showing the disconnection notification

It's commonplace for people on the ladder to disconnect in order to grief opponents, instead of forfeiting as they should do. Sometimes, people do this in order to make their opponent start a second battle before rejoining in order to give themselves the upper hand of only focussing on one battle while the opponent has to deal with two. The disconnection timer being what it is therefore limits the effect of this griefing, as toward the top of the ladder people have to wait for the disconnection timer to run out before starting their next game in case they're placed at the disadvantage.

 

[DaWoblefet]

Basically what Celever said - one minute is seen as a sweetspot between "allow players enough time to reconnect" and "minimize potential abuse". It's an arbitrary figure, to be sure, but unless you can demonstrate some objective criteria where increasing the disconnect timer to 150 seconds would increase the probability that legitimate connections are identified and can be corrected before a timer loss, then it's just sheer speculation. Maybe 2 minutes wouldn't be enough; maybe 5 minutes wouldn't be enough. It all depends on how fast your device responds to knowing it's disconnected.

I sympathize with your struggles. For a long time, I lived in an area where there was no high speed internet option available, even if I wanted it, so I had to deal with Showdown sometimes disconnecting repeatedly, or not being told because my device thought it was connected but it was in fact not, etc. I've lost tournament games to this. But I also had to deal with slow internet for every other service I wanted to use. We welcome all developers who want to try to improve connection handling, but arbitrarily changing the number of seconds won't change anything.

The other comments in this thread seem to have been addressed. If someone can improve Showdown's connection part of the codebase, more power to them! But that's about as helpful of a suggestion as "make the games more accurate to cart mechanics" - Showdown overall does a pretty good job, but it's far from perfect.

One practical suggestion I can offer to test if you're online, which I used heavily while living with poor internet, is just typing in a chat command and see if you get a response. It's not like you have to do it every turn, but if you think "man it's taken a while, let me see if I'm still connected", that's one way to test if your internet is lagging.

 

[Mushfiq]

In that case, why not just merge the disconnect timer with the battle timer? Since the battle timer is already at 150 seconds, make the disconnect a part of that time period. If a player disconnects, the battle timer counts down as usual. The player has to join during that timer countdown and play. The potential penalty in the decision-making timer for the disconnected player should be negligible. (60-second D/C timer + 135-second decision timer vs a flat 150-second timer).