ED is almost unplayable right now. PLEASE upgrade the server hamsters.

[Cmdr Snuffler]

I've encountered more bugs, crashes and issues in the last few days than I have in the last 10 years combined.
For me the game is almost unplayable and has more massively impacting issues than the original alpha and beta drops.
Here's a list of the more common issues I run into every single session (there are way more than this list, but these are the most frustrating)

• Purple Python connection errors
• Very long SC drop times.
• 1-2min hyperspace times (sometimes hyperspace turns green and I go backwards)
• Passenger missions vanish from the Transactions tab
• Transaction server errors when completing passenger missions
• 10+ players in my instance...blip...all 10 vanish and I'm all alone in my own instance
• Hyperdicted by goids in witchspace, while evacuating people, only to drop and find no goids in the instance
• In galaxy map, select a star and go to system map. Click back to go back to the galaxy map. Clicking on another star terminates and closes the galaxy map

and my 3 personal favourites...

• Cmdrs AFK on the rescue ship means it's impossible to land when playing in open. Only way to get around this, while staying in open, is to block 2-3 Cmdrs in the instance. Log to main menu and then log back in while praying it's not a packed AFK instance again. Once passengers have been dropped off I unblock the Cmdrs. An auto logout for docked AFK Cmdrs, and increased mission timers, would be very beneficial right now.
• Plotted route lost/forgotten after a jump. This happens randomly and results in the route having to be re-plotted from the galaxy map. Nightmare when jumping into a system with loads of hungry FDL and Python Mk2s looking for Cmdr blood! Got enough to deal with, without having to reselect my destination from the nav panel or galaxy map.
• Big blank black screen appears blocking my forward view. 30 secs later the entire screen turns black, and stays black. Only way to rectify this is to end task using task manager. This issue usually occurs when I've finally got landing permission for the rescue ship and I get within a km of the landing pad. Just had this 5 times in a row while trying to land on the rescue ship!!! It can also happen randomly in SC, but 9 times out of 10 it's in the rescue ship instance. This occurs at least once every single round trip to Sol I do.

The last two have caused me to fail many missions due to them timing out before I get the chance to hand the mission in.
A lot of the issues started to happen sporadically after the Mandalay release...when I was 1/2 way through my 1st trip to Colonia. Each jump took 2mins in hyperspace, so my total round trip took days and days. The irony is that If I'd done it 6 months ago in a 20ly jump range brick I would have completed the trip in about 1/2 the time it took me in my new long range Mandalay.
Since the announcement of the Titan heading to Sol the issues have exponentially got worse.
EDIT: During off peak times the issues are there but don't happen as often. 6 -7pm gmt to 11pm gmt is when the servers go into meltdown and make the game unplayable for me, tonight was the worst ever.


I understand a lot of players have returned for PP2 and the new ships, which is fantastic...but with the state of the game right now I can't see them hanging around for too long.
There are a few threads about griefers in murder boats killing Cmdrs flying unarmed buses...in my opinion the biggest griefers at the moment are the bugs and ED servers by a good country mile.

I feel that FDev should hold off with this Titan storming Sol story line until the game is running smoothly and is stable.

Have FDev made any public announcement regarding the issues plaguing ED right now?
What are other peoples experiences?

 

[GJ51]

I just did a load of Passenger Missions out of Sol without any major issues.

I have noticed the extended jump times as well recently. I don't normally fly in busy areas so it's not waiting for instancing with other CMDRs in Open that's causing the problem.

I just went to Sol to see what all the buzz is about, but the profit oppoptunity isn't any better than just normal trading where I'm left in peace...

Back at my FC now - all is quiet

 

[Factabulous]

What are other peoples experiences?

It's been fine. Apart from the game refusing to shutdown if I've been hyperdicted, but that's not the end of the world.

 

[Cmdr Snuffler]

It's been fine. Apart from the game refusing to shutdown if I've been hyperdicted, but that's not the end of the world.

Is that due to the main menu not showing when pressing ESC?
When I get the blank screen/panel blocking my forward view I can still open/close and see the edges of the nav panels etc...but ESC doesn't open the menu to exit the game.

 

[aRJay]

I've encountered more bugs, crashes and issues in the last few days than I have in the last 10 years combined.
For me the game is almost unplayable and has more massively impacting issues than the original alpha and beta drops.
Here's a list of the more common issues I run into every single session (there are way more than this list, but these are the most frustrating)

• Purple Python connection errors

No coloured snakes of any kind.

• Very long SC drop times.

No, the occaisional one where the sound doesn’t sync with the drop but they have pretty much stopped.

• 1-2min hyperspace times (sometimes hyperspace turns green and I go backwards)

Maybe 1 in 3 is an elongated jump no weird colours.

• Passenger missions vanish from the Transactions tab

Never looked.

• Transaction server errors when completing passenger missions

No.

• 10+ players in my instance...blip...all 10 vanish and I'm all alone in my own instance

Not that I have noticed.

• Hyperdicted by goids in witchspace, while evacuating people, only to drop and find no goids in the instance

Unfortunately not they are always present and too often far to close when I boost.

• In galaxy map, select a star and go to system map. Click back to go back to the galaxy map. Clicking on another star terminates and closes the galaxy map

No idea I haven’t done that.

and my 2 personal favourites...

• Cmdrs AFK on the rescue ship means it's impossible to land when playing in open. Only way to get around this, while staying in open, is to block 2-3 Cmdrs in the instance. Log to main menu and then log back in while praying it's not a packed AFK instance again. Once passengers have been dropped off I unblock the Cmdrs. An auto logout for docked AFK Cmdrs, and increased mission timers, would be very beneficial right now.

Only had someone on the pad twice and they were gone in a shortish time, couldn’t see or target them though.

• Big blank black screen appears blocking my forward view. 30 secs later the entire screen turns black, and stays black. Only way to rectify this is to end task using task manager. This issue usually occurs when I've finally got landing permission for the rescue ship and I get within a km of the landing pad. Just had this 5 times in a row while trying to land on the rescue ship!!! It can also happen randomly in SC, but 9 times out of 10 it's in the rescue ship instance. This occurs at least once every single round trip to Sol I do.

Never had this.

The last two have caused me to fail many missions due to them timing out before I get the chance to hand the mission in.
A lot of the issues started to happen sporadically after the Mandalay release...when I was 1/2 way through my 1st trip to Colonia. Each jump took 2mins in hyperspace, so my total round trip took days and days. The irony is that If I'd done it 6 months ago in a 20ly jump range brick I would have completed the trip in about 1/2 the time it took me in my new long range Mandalay.
Since the announcement of the Titan heading to Sol the issues have exponentially got worse.

I understand a lot of players have returned for PP2 and the new ships, which is fantastic...but with the state of the game right now I can't see them hanging around for too long.
There are a few threads about griefers in murder boats killing Cmdrs flying unarmed buses...in my opinion the biggest griefers at the moment are the bugs and ED servers by a good country mile.

I feel that FDev should hold off with this Titan storming Sol story line until the game is running smoothly and is stable.

Have FDev made any public announcement regarding the issues plaguing ED right now?
What are other peoples experiences?

Almost nothing like yours.

 

[wrmiller]

I have had multiple instances where the game crashes when using SC to go somewhere. Quite frequently over the years, but especially during the last few days. Single player. GMT + 7. For all intents and purposes, the game is unplayable in it's current state.

 

[nanothargon]

I've had some crashes recently, and the queue for the rescue ship is a problem, but I just quit to menu and drop to solo mode to land. No need to fail the mission.
This is another of those cases where it's handy to have solo mode - even though I prefer to play in open all the time.

But yep - more server-related delays and bugs recently, is my feeling too. Possibly due to there being a surge in player numbers? Maybe some service somewhere is getting overloaded?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I've really not seen many of these. I'm certainly not saying that you're not getting them or that there isn't a (set of) bugs which needs fixing, but it's not necessarily a lack of server hamsters.

• Purple Python connection errors
• Very long SC drop times.
• 1-2min hyperspace times (sometimes hyperspace turns green and I go backwards)
• In galaxy map, select a star and go to system map. Click back to go back to the galaxy map. Clicking on another star terminates and closes the galaxy map
• Big blank black screen appears blocking my forward view.

None of these other than the occasional extended hyperspace tunnel, but only occasionally (and far better than it was a month ago). I play a fair bit between 7 and 10 pm game time, too.

(Haven't seen the passenger or hyperdiction bugs either but I haven't been doing anything which might set them off this last week)

Do you see similar slowness/connection error/etc. problems (including the other really weird ones) if you do use Solo? Maybe what you're getting isn't from your own network or the Frontier servers but someone else in the instance with a really bad connection setting off some client bugs?
(I've been playing in various bubble systems in Open but haven't seen another player for about two weeks, so that certainly feels like a possibility)

[*]Cmdrs AFK on the rescue ship means it's impossible to land when playing in open. Only way to get around this, while staying in open, is to block 2-3 Cmdrs in the instance. Log to main menu and then log back in while praying it's not a packed AFK instance again. Once passengers have been dropped off I unblock the Cmdrs. An auto logout for docked AFK Cmdrs, and increased mission timers, would be very beneficial right now.
[/LIST]

Certainly Frontier seem to be aware that this is a problem in general - with the Stronghold Carriers and the picture of the Colonisation Carrier both having a lot more large and medium pads than the average megaship - but this certainly isn't one which can be solved with server upgrades: if anything what you need for this one is worse instancing.

They have said that the other rescue megaships will be moving closer in - hopefully that also means missions being spread between them for additional landing pads.

 

[Brrokk]

I had no issues yesterday with loads of Sol evacuation missions. Knowing that there's only one large pad on the Cornwallis I played in Solo. That may make the difference for network issues.

 

[Tifu]

Try playing in Solo and see if you still get the same level of instability. If the problems magically disappear it could well be a hamster issue on the FD side.

Running Horizons 4.0 on a laptop with an i7 with integrated GPU. As long as I stick to low or medium settings it's ok .

 

[Alec Turner]

While not going as far as the OP I would say the game has been at its most unreliable all year over the last couple of weeks. Numerous Braben tunnels, assorted game crashes and server connection failures, and yeah … that black screen thing at the rescue ship which requires a task kill. Could be server load due to player numbers I suppose, but maybe also some bugs (or bottlenecks) associated with PowerPlay 2.0?

 

[Darkman Returns]

Braben tunnels (moreso in Open), unreliable Fleet Carrier cargo transfers, FPS drops and stuttering since Update 19. None of the others you mentioned.

Removing Rares/Pods has really had an impact on player numbers it seems, as I'm seeing far fewer commanders in Open than before too.

 

[Alien]

I will split this into two parts:

Before I bought a fleet carrier yesterday:
I had a few long jump times and the game seemed to "hitch" as in, it would have times where it would pause for a second, which might not sound bad, but when you're doing something, like trying to slow your ship down before it slams into the planet so you can land safely, the game twitching is stressful. It didn't happen often or happen for long, but it did happen after powerplay2.0 went live.

After I bought a fleet carrier yesterday:
I sat in the captain's chair to make my first jump and found that using that panel to the right was problematic because the game had issues switching to the galaxy map or back or switching to carrier services and back to the point where I had to press escape a few times until the options menu came up and resume the game.

Other than those things, I can't say I've experienced anything to make me say the game is unplayable.

 

[Alien]

And now after server maintenance, when I launch the game and it goes to log me in, I get the server under maintenance message and my weekly ARX hasn't been added.

EDIT: Now I can log in, but I didn't get any ARX from last week (I should have had 400)
EDIT 2: I submitted a ticket about the weekly ARX.

 

[IstvaanDCIV]

I've not been experiencing the same range of troubles being reported by some. Hyperspace jumps have been taking noticeably longer since the update. There seems to be a bit of hitching that wasn't there before. Maybe some other oddities I can't recall right now. But nothing that makes the game unplayable.

I imagine trying to solve issues like this is a real hair-puller for developers, since it seems to be extremely variable from user to user.

 

[Rat Catcher]

my weekly ARX hasn't been added.

Arx are earned playing each week, and added at the end of each play session, not following the Thursday tick...

Or, at least, mine are done that way...

 

[Morbad]

My CMDR is well outside the bubble and I'm still experiencing elevated loading times and more disconnections than I've ever experienced in the past, at least around prime time.

The lack of a docking queue has been an issue since before the game was launched. Frontier has never seen fit to implement any kind of vaguely contextual remedy for this, instead relying on clunky network/instance manipulation to play in high traffic areas. Just another decade-plus placeholder.

 

[Valorin]

Upgrade incoming...

 

[Leadfoot]

Well, I'm going to add that TRYING to play in open at any station is still in operation (but not in an "under invasion" status) with human players in it has a rather funny situation involving dozens of NPC ships, both inside and outside the station all jammed up, bouncing back and forth a few feet at a time, etc. Only solution is to switch to either player group or solo.

FYI, there were only two other players in my instance when I checked. Luyten's Star, Ashby City station.

Frontier, if you want us to play in open so we can meet others at the departure point we're using, you gotta fix stuff like that.

 

[Bravador]

I have the exact same issues as the author, the black screen being the most dramatic. The game is practically unplayable in open for me since this update. It really ruins the experience for me.