EA Explains "Excessive Grieving", "Lag" and Other Items

[Nevada_Ballin]

- Excessive Grieving

In order to maintain a fun, competitive environment, we must monitor users for behavior that alters an opponent’s ability to play Madden NFL 12. As such we have a number of metrics that are monitored in-game which we consider potentially “grievous”. Thresholds for these metrics are maintained on our servers, and when players repeatedly perform actions enough times to break that set threshold, they are kicked for “Excessive grieving”. Some of these are obvious, such as the user drawing too many offsides, encroachments, and false starts penalties. NOTE: These are USER behaviors. You are not at risk if the CPU happens to draw these penalties without user input.

The more obscure kicks, however, come in the form of being removed for “Network Timeouts”. Without going into too many details, these occur because we have determined that something on your end is degrading the gameplay experience for your opponent. This type of kick is only used in more extreme situations, because we do not want to kick users who are not acting maliciously. However, the bottom line is, if you are kicked for “Network Timeouts” it is because something on your end of the connection is degrading your opponent’s play experience (i.e inducing lag, hitching, etc).

In the past, many of these issues were simply communicated to the user in the form of a “Peer has Disconnected” popup. Based on community feedback, we decided to communicate why the peer was kicked instead of identifying it as a general problem. In short, nothing has changed on the functionality side, we’re simply now accurately communicating to users why games are ending.

- Lag

There is a very common misconception that head-to-head games are laggy due to poor EA server performance, but that’s not the case. When you enter a head-to-head game, the lag is determined completely by the connection to your opponent. There is no middleman in this situation, so any lag experienced is a result of the connections from you and your peer. The exception is in Online Team Play, where all connections do go through an EA server, to prevent having up to 6 connections that could impact the gameplay experience. In Online Team Play games, it is actually possible for the server to be at fault for some lag.

More items discussed in their blog here > http://www.ea.com/madden-nfl/blog/on...cooowytmtmkyxk


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[GiantNFC7]

This is all very interesting. I've never quit a game this year and my DNF% somewhere hovers around the 25% mark. I've been booted and timed out numerous times so far.

[sgibs]

awesome post.

interesting to know that OTP goes through EAs Servers anyone notice more lag there?

[Gtrght77]

I don't see how they can say the lag is not any fault of the servers, you can have two people with very fast internet connections and the lag will still be horrible. That sort of lag only seems to happen when playing madden to.

[NickJ3]

Glad EA is acknowleding thede issues and trying to fix them.

[wavygravy2k]

I don't see how they can say the lag is not any fault of the servers, you can have two people with very fast internet connections and the lag will still be horrible. That sort of lag only seems to happen when playing madden to.

It's possible someone else in the household might also be connected to internet downloading something. This causes lag, I've noticed.

[daphillydon]

I don't see how they can say the lag is not any fault of the servers, you can have two people with very fast internet connections and the lag will still be horrible. That sort of lag only seems to happen when playing madden to.

Ditto. Where's the accountability EA? That's one of the most elaborate and wordy disclaimers I've seen in years.

[djKianoosh]

even two people who have super fast connections via their ISP's could still potentially have problems between them over the internet. That's just the nature of the internet guys. believe me, one of my projects is hosted in Akamai, which is the leading player when it comes to making things seem faster on the internet. there's a LOT that can go wrong peer to peer between two people, even if their upload/download speed (for example, what you get from speedtest.net) are both very high.

There are layers of networks and several handshakes in between any two points. When the content is dynamic and not static, that's what you have to live with. And gameplay between two people is inherently dynamic. not all of it, but the important parts of it definitely.

Having said all that, it always amazes me how FIFA and Call of Duty can do this sooooo well but Madden cannot. AND they've BEEN doing this for years!

[daphillydon]

EXACTLY!! When's the last time somebody received a De-Sync error on Call of Duty???

[Michael]

- Excessive Grieving

In order to maintain a fun, competitive environment, we must monitor users for behavior that alters an opponent’s ability to play Madden NFL 12. As such we have a number of metrics that are monitored in-game which we consider potentially “grievous”. Thresholds for these metrics are maintained on our servers, and when players repeatedly perform actions enough times to break that set threshold, they are kicked for “Excessive grieving”. Some of these are obvious, such as the user drawing too many offsides, encroachments, and false starts penalties. NOTE: These are USER behaviors. You are not at risk if the CPU happens to draw these penalties without user input.

The more obscure kicks, however, come in the form of being removed for “Network Timeouts”. Without going into too many details, these occur because we have determined that something on your end is degrading the gameplay experience for your opponent. This type of kick is only used in more extreme situations, because we do not want to kick users who are not acting maliciously. However, the bottom line is, if you are kicked for “Network Timeouts” it is because something on your end of the connection is degrading your opponent’s play experience (i.e inducing lag, hitching, etc).

In the past, many of these issues were simply communicated to the user in the form of a “Peer has Disconnected” popup. Based on community feedback, we decided to communicate why the peer was kicked instead of identifying it as a general problem. In short, nothing has changed on the functionality side, we’re simply now accurately communicating to users why games are ending.

- Lag

There is a very common misconception that head-to-head games are laggy due to poor EA server performance, but that’s not the case. When you enter a head-to-head game, the lag is determined completely by the connection to your opponent. There is no middleman in this situation, so any lag experienced is a result of the connections from you and your peer. The exception is in Online Team Play, where all connections do go through an EA server, to prevent having up to 6 connections that could impact the gameplay experience. In Online Team Play games, it is actually possible for the server to be at fault for some lag.

More items discussed in their blog here > http://www.ea.com/madden-nfl/blog/on...cooowytmtmkyxk


.

This is info is so true. However there are times that you can not get a game because of routine maintance.

[Rwill784]

This ***** is getting really ****ing old. I had this game on 360 and I got booted for "network timeouts" to the point where I lost like 20 games and I never even lost 1 fairly. I have COD, WWE SD vs Raw, Need for speed, and other online title and never lag, experience problems, or lose my connection anyother time.

I just brought it on PS3 and it's the same ****ing thing!! EA is full of crap saying it isnt their fault, their ****ing servers suck, fix them and stop blaming the paying customers.

[Kohla221]

yea i enjoy knowing why it got disco'd

[Smisstah1]

I recently played a guy who constantly called time outs and paused the game, after each score.
I received a message stating exceeding time outs and lossed the game in which I was winning. I hear from other guys that this is a glitch for players who dont know how to win.

[jsjohn2000]

Thanks for the explanation of what EA is doing to end games with excessive lag. My DNF went from 3% to 12% when I moved from the United States (Fios) to the United Kingdom (BT DSL).

Regarding maintaing a fun and competitive environment. EA needs to start tracking 4th down attempts again and consider kicking guys who go for 4th every down and kick onside kicks when it is uncalled for. This takes away from realistic gameplay and results in creating a negative game environment.

[thegame11]

Thanks for the explanation of what EA is doing to end games with excessive lag. My DNF went from 3% to 12% when I moved from the United States (Fios) to the United Kingdom (BT DSL).

Regarding maintaing a fun and competitive environment. EA needs to start tracking 4th down attempts again and consider kicking guys who go for 4th every down and kick onside kicks when it is uncalled for. This takes away from realistic gameplay and results in creating a negative game environment.

I do get where your coming from with the 4th downs and onside kicks, but honestly they can do what they want just stop them. This is a video game with no to very little strategy involved, its not real football that we watch on Sundays. I can't lie it annoyed the hell outta this one game dude kept kicking onsides in the end I made him pay for it.