Hey all,
For a few years before being a Community Manager, I was on the Destiny Player Support team. Frequently, I'd be dealing with network error reports from players that ranged from specific error codes to a variety of errors that popped up over time. I want to throw out some information fromthe Network Troubleshooting Guide on Bungie.net:
• Destiny aims to be as efficient as possible when transmitting and receiving data so that players with limited bandwidth can have a quality gameplay experience.
• While average bandwidth usage is considerably lower, Destiny may request up to 1 Mbps download and upload bandwidth.
• Destiny data requirements will be impacted by player behavior, with average data usage of up to 1 gigabyte per hour for live gameplay, plus the size of downloaded game updates
• Players that have metered internet may see their data usage cause fluctuations in their ISP costs
• Other applications on a player's network, such as streaming video, file sharing, or other bandwidth-intensive services may have a negative impact on Destiny gameplay.
• If the bandwidth of a player's network connection dips below the required level for sustained periods of time, the player may encounter error codes and disconnects from Destiny.
• Destiny creates connections between a player's console, Bungie’s servers, and other players in a unique way. As such, network performance in other games and applications is often NOT a good indicator that the network is setup for a stable connection to Destiny.
With those bullets listed out, I wanted to call out a few notes that I've learned over the last few years of dealing with this troubleshooting. These are my words, not information from the troubleshooting guide:
- There are multiple steps between your home internet and our servers that can have hiccups, leading to disconnections.
- All games are susceptible to this. Some games are impacted more than others. Our game in particular does require a fairly stable internet connection, and it's something we're continuously looking to improve upon.
- When it comes to Competitive Crucible and Gambit, there is absolutely room for improvement, but the systems in place are currently applying necessary restrictions (30 minutes) to habitual quitters to protect against consistent AFK/Quitting. If we simply gave these restrictions out only to those who quit manually, it would be easy to work around by just unplugging your internet to avoid a 30 minute restriction. We've seen this before, and do not want it to become a strategy of avoiding punishment which leads to continuously negative experience that impacts other players.
- Finally, there are absolutely instances where there are issues on our end where servers need to be spun down, rebooted, or fixed. A very small amount of players are normally impacted by these issues, and the team is aware of a desire for restrictions or loss of glory points due to these issues to be reverted. It never feels good to be given a penalty for an issue out of the players control. We try to keep these instances infrequent, and the penalties are fairly minor. Glory points in particular sting much more than a 30 minute time-out, I know this from personal experience. As the systems stand right now, this would be a fairly technical change to develop, which could take quite a bit of dev time away from other QOL fixes or improvements. In any case, we will continue to add feedback points to this issue and raise the priority as necessary.
Thank you, and to everyone, who continues to provide this feedback. We'll continue to escalate it to the team.
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