Can't limit hosts via ping assist

[Dunnymeister]

I'm not convinced that the Ping Assist feature is working as I expect it to. Since it's hard to reliably locate players/hosts in specific regions I've been running tests to various websites on ports 80 and 443. I'm getting mixed results: I can't block any traffic on port 80 (Ping Assist of 60ms still allows me to communicate with a site that has 350ms ping as reported by the R1) and port 443 only seems to respect the geo-filter, I can't communicate with anything else regardless of the ping values.

 

To get started, can you help me work out why:

• Host ID: 9d2bcf9ac83ce0e5 (average Ping of 55.8ms from me as reported by the R1) can't be connected to over port 443 with a Ping Assist of 300ms? Geo Filter Map + Settings: https://puu.sh/BlgEp/708ff80bef.png, Host Ping Graph: https://puu.sh/BlgFv/ec228b51d6.png, Port 443 Configuration: https://puu.sh/BlgyU/d2d532c3c9.png
• Host ID: 7234814cd111595e (average Ping of 346.5ms from me as reported by the R1) can be connected to over port 80 with a Ping Assist of 60ms? Geo Filter Map + Settings: https://puu.sh/BlgBH/ebfde194cd.png, Host Ping Graph: https://puu.sh/BlgCI/13a0e405cc.png, Port 80 Configuration: https://puu.sh/BlgxT/ddc2a2c32d.png

I want to use ping only to locate players instead of geolocation, so I'm desperate to get this working. 

 

Further Information

Strict Mode: Disabled

My location: Perth, Australia

R1 debug version 1.03.6j running on rb-951g-2hnd

[Dunnymeister]

I thought I'd add some more background to this:

 

I live in Perth, Western Australia and am trying to limit my Splatoon games to people under a certain latency. Their geographical location doesn't concern me as long as they're under N milliseconds of latency to me. The Nintendo matchmaking servers in Japan are approximately 190ms away, so I was under the impression that setting my Ping Assist to 250ms would allow me to connect to them and also find me players under 250ms of latency. This doesn't appear to be the case, all connections are blocked regardless of latency to the player/host.

 

Moving the geo-filter to Japan lets me connect to the matchmaking servers and opponents in Japan but I'm seeing Australian connections(sub 100ms latency) being blocked. 

 

This ends up with the worst of both worlds: Players in Japan over my Ping Assist settings are able to connect, and Australian low-latency players are not able to connect: https://puu.sh/BlAuu/56e9a5ce1c.png

 

This leads me to think that the R1 is not respecting my Ping Assist settings at all. Or (more likely) it doesn't behave how I thought it does. Can I get an explanation as to how it works, and what I can do to help limit my games to players under a certain latency while still connecting to the matchmaking servers?

 

Note: 250ms sounds like a lot but I'm not trying to find perfect opponents, just avoid being matched against people with 350ms of latency (which happens often enough for it to be an issue).

[Dunnymeister]

Is Ping Assist only on for certain services/games? I switched from "Wii Online" to "Xbox Live" without changing any other settings and the Ping Assist started working as expected.

 

Edit: Kind of. The Ping Assist is still not allowing the majority of players to connect even though pinging them via the Host Filtering page shows they're about 70ms under my Ping Assist limit.

[Netduma Jack]

Hi, welcome to the forum! You've found one of the solutions to this - using the Xbox Live service. That service works best for most games, and we always recommend it for PC games. (This service selection system is much clearer in DumaOS, which is a free upgrade coming soon).

 

It sounds like the game net-code is interfering in some way. With Ping Assist set to 250ms and Strict Mode off, do you see hosts being blocked on the map? What is their ping value, and could you screenshot this happening? If you increase your radius to include those, do they still get blocked?

 

I'd recommend adding some of the hosts you would prefer to join to your allow list, and blocking (denying) some of the hosts that you wouldn't like to join.

 

I believe that Splatoon is region locked, and since the player-base is quite low in Oceania (for most games) they often add Australian players to the same region as those in Japan. That's just me thinking out loud, and that's the problem you're facing.

[Dunnymeister]

Hi Jack, thanks for getting back to me.

 

Splatoon is P2P with some servers to handle matchmaking. To find opponents it uses ping-based matchmaking, so being in Oceania we often get grouped with the Japanese. I consider this a good thing (large playerbase, high skill players, approx 160ms latency compared to the US/EU which is much worse).

 

Ultimately I don't mind where the player is located as long as they're guaranteed to be under a certain latency and I feel that the game is a little too forgiving with how high a latency it allows some players to have when putting them in a room (I get matched with US/EU players, or even people in Oceania with crappy connection quality).

 

I've whitelisted the matchmaking server IDs (100% quality) so I have no problems there, but the game fails to connect me to players that appear to fall within my Ping Assist allowances.

 

Current settings: https://puu.sh/BlIf7/6c8be53ca7.png(My home location is in the middle of the ocean with a minimum radius to force Ping Assist settings to be used over geographical location - I don't care where other players are as long as they're under the Ping Assist threshold)

 

To answer your questions:

With Ping Assist set to 250ms and Strict Mode off, do you see hosts being blocked on the map?

 

They appear to be blocked, they get the "Outside Filter Host Range" symbol. It's worth noting this doesn't happen to all players, but there's cases where players 50ms away from me are being blocked while those 120ms from me are being allowed.

 

What is their ping value, and could you screenshot this happening? If you increase your radius to include those, do they still get blocked?

 

Since I made the post earlier today it turns out that a domestic link between our states has been severed and the redundant link is at capacity causing international traffic to crawl. I'll get back to you on this as soon as I can, sorry for the holdup.

[Dunnymeister]

ok, just found found a player in the same city as me who was blocked despite the Ping Assist settings.

 

Settings: https://puu.sh/BlJvX/37f118487f.png

Geographic Map: https://puu.sh/BlJtU/8879b2db22.png

Host's Statistics: https://puu.sh/BlJv1/37897cc6b8.png(Ignore the distance measurement - this is because my home location is not set to where I actually am)

 

What I expect to happen: Player is less than 230ms ping, player is allowed to connect.

What happens: R1 blocks the connection

 

The player it did allow me to connect to (the green circle on the geographic map) had approximately 60ms ping - so there's something that's not quite right going on.

 

If you increase your radius to include those, do they still get blocked?

 

 

No, they don't get blocked when I do this. But I'm trying to filter out the high-latency players who are nearby to me but allow those player far away with a reliable connection to still play so increasing my radius doesn't fix my issue. (e.g. I want to play with people in Australia, filter out people with high pings due to unreliable connections (e.g. some people in Malaysia and Indonesia) but allow the low latency Japanese players. The only reliable way to do this is using Latency as a metric and not geographic distance).

[Dunnymeister]

I know you guys have had a busy week (DumaOS R1 announcement and forum migrations) but would someone be able to help troubleshoot this?

[Netduma Jack]

Hi - sorry for the wait. You're right, it's been a mad week but it should be more calm now!

Could you provide the ID of any server you see being blocked if it's inside your radius / below your ping assist value. I can then cross-check these and see what kind of server they are. There could be good reason they're blocked.

You should be able to add any of these blocked servers to your allow list, which should allow you to connect to them. Keep in mind that there could be multiple servers in the same location (with different ID's), so multiple blocks may be required.

Also as a workaround, is it not possible to use your radius (i.e put it over your home location) and instead block the high-ping servers within the radius? You're currently doing it the other way around, so this workaround could be a faster solution. There should be less high-ping hosts to block, rather than low-ping hosts to allow.

[Dunnymeister]

I did provide one example previously, should I collect more? (HostID: 499023ee2de88388)

47 minutes ago, Netduma Jack said:

Also as a workaround, is it not possible to use your radius (i.e put it over your home location) and instead block the high-ping servers within the radius? You're currently doing it the other way around, so this workaround could be a faster solution. There should be less high-ping hosts to block, rather than low-ping hosts to allow.

Splatoon is a P2P game so the "hosts" in this case are actually "clients". The active playerbase is quite high and the chances of being matched with the same person twice are quite low, so blocking high-ping hosts individually does not sound very effective.

[Netduma Fraser]

Yes please provide more. From my testing just need to enable 2-4 servers and you should be able to filter properly.

[Dunnymeister]

2 hours ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Yes please provide more. From my testing just need to enable 2-4 servers and you should be able to filter properly.

Just to be 100% certain here - are you proposing to add these IDs to the cloud filter's whitelist? These aren't the matchmaking servers being blocked, they're players. Adding them to a whitelist would probably be a bad idea. (I'll list the matchmaking server ids below to help other users who are using the geo filter but these servers are unrelated to the issues I'm having).

To clarify my problem:

• I'm using Ping Assist exclusively - the geo filter is placed in the ocean so that it does not get used when considering who to allow/block
• I have whitelisted the matchmaking servers (I have them at 100% quality so they can be connected to regardless of latency or geofiltering).
• When I try to enter a lobby, I successfully connect to the matchmaking servers and they then attempt to find me a game. Sometimes this works, but most of the time players under my ping assist threshold are blocked and I can't enter the lobby. In these cases, when I check the blocked player's ping the R1 reports their ping as significantly under my Ping Assist threshold.

I feel the images provided previously should illustrate the issue quite well. These statistics are for the warning icon on the left of Australia.

• Settings: https://puu.sh/BlJvX/37f118487f.png
• Geographic Map: https://puu.sh/BlJtU/8879b2db22.png
• Host's Statistics: https://puu.sh/BlJv1/37897cc6b8.png

Why was this player/client blocked when the Ping is 5ms? It feels like a bug in the Ping Assist feature

========================

Suspected Splatoon 2 Server Matchmaking IDs:

a2b6bf8a5341a5aa
c5dcb6817964d8dd
807d1ae51a1fcacf
556affca07f49ea3
a334d5a0d142c2c7
137e9d681bb2e8ed
8d767843132c0c11
e87e35001b879ea3
a5721de80f44a1a6

 

[Netduma Jack]

Hi Dunny - don't worry, we investigate these servers / hosts thoroughly before decisions are made. We make sure players aren't whitelisted, as that would indeed be a really bad idea!

We'll have to test this a bit further to see what is going on. It's difficult to test since we aren't in your location, but I believe there are some matchmaking servers that (if whitelisted) should make a lot of difference to how this plays. I don't believe this is a bug at all - this is all purely cloud and net-code related.

Once the right servers are discovered and whitelisted, hopefully those locked servers should open up and allow connections through (if the game allows for it). I don't handle the cloud and game testing though - that's Frasers domain. I trust he'll put these ID's to good use! Thanks for providing those.