Can we have about half a minute of safety buffer since DCs are still an issue

Given the prevalence of teammates DCing at game start still being a hard to solve error apparently, can we have some sort of buffer like we had in the legacy version where you don’t lose elo if the game is forfeited in the first ~minute of the game? It won’t offer a solution for the current game crashes later on, but at least it gives a way out for all these matches lost at minute 0.

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In legacy quicksearch there was/is no buffer whatsoever either. The problem with buffer in ranked matches is that a player could simply resign instantly whenever they see a stronger opponent and they wouldn’t even lose Elo for it.

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Ah, I didn’t know it was a lobby-exclusive thing. Never really did quicksearch back then.

I follow your explanation, but I currently feel that without reconnect features or a fix for the dcs at game start, it might be a good temporary solution that outweighs people dodging to prevent losing 4 elo because they recognise a higher ranked name?

Small remark, I wrote “minutes” in the original title but I agree that surely is too long

@EaglemutOP

A player experiencing a crash or disconnect should be discernable from a player legitimately resigning.
If they’re resigning, then the buffer time should not be applied.
If they’re experiencing a crash/disconnect, the buffer time could be applied.

Ontop of that, the application could monitor key combinations such as ALT+F4 while AoE is the focused window.

It’s still not airtight, you can theoretically deactivate your network to get out of it, but it does
make it that little bit harder for those players to cheat themselves out of the consequences of “running” from a battle.

Yeah, the issue here is that you can fake a disconnect. People used to just turn off their Wi-Fi or disconnect their ethernet cord. To the service, that looks like a legitimate hardware related disconnect. There used to be threats of deliberately causing OOS and stuff with this.

This was an issue on legacy. It happened pretty frequently. Unfortunately, this is one of those “abuse it and you lose it” scenarios. And it was abused.

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@stopat1453
The unplugging of the network cable or manuel deactivating of the ethernet adapter can be detected. The client would have to monitor the network status and then report back to the server once the connection is restored. I’m aware that the easier ways of detecting network status do not give the information of an actual removed plug, but there are functions and events that you can subscribe to, that provide this information.

Still not an airtight solution because you can rip out the power cord and all and it’s a little complicated to implement for sure, but possible.

There’s no perfect solution to this problem, but some improvement is better than none.

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That sounds like it’s all related to the machine that is running AOE3. Is there a way to detect if the wireless access point is turned off or is disconnected from the internet? Or if the modem has been turned off or disconnected? For my set up, both of these devices are within arms reach.

Even if those can be detected, is there a way to determine if it was malicious? What if a storm just went through.

The developers would have to start playing wack-a-mole and potentially introduce AI to determine intent. That does not seem worth it when there are more pressing issues with the game. At least in my opinion

I absolutely see what you mean, but do you see what I mean?
Why settle for nothing, when you can settle for improvement?

I understand how frustrating it can be. I think the issue is that nothing is better than something sloppy. What we have now is technically an improvement compared to the abuse in the past.

The development cycle around creating a working solution here doesn’t seem simple. If poorly done, we’ll just have people climbing the ladder by systematically dropping.

I think there are a multitude of other issues that should be a primary focus for the development team.

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We’re just entertaining new ideas here and not giving orders to the dev team.
And how simple or not the implementation is, would be decided by them.
An evaluation of a more refined system for detecting legitimate and illegitamate disconnects seems reasonable and simple enough to me. Especially in the name of fairness in multiplayer gaming.
It’s a reasonable request and brushing it off because there are other more pressing issues doesn’t seem helpful to me.