Welcome to GWENT Bug Hunters Episode 1 - 4.1 End Turn Lag
Hey guys, often there are misunderstandings regarding why bugs occur and for a while, I’ve wanted to share with you all more information regarding why and how they happen. In this first of hopefully more entries, I wanted to focus on the End Turn “Server Lag” that players are currently experiencing after the 4.1 update that was supposed to speed up the game.
First, we need to explain WHY the card tooltips have been changed. Before 4.1, a tooltip would appear on the side whenever a card or leader ability was played.
This was being shown for 6 seconds regardless of the text length. The game was completely disconnected from this. Early in iOS development, we had to actually turn this off. Why?
Because it would cover up a significant part of the battlefield and the cards being played behind it where completely being missed. It also caused a “fun” scenario where you would still be seeing tooltips for your opponent’s cards during your turn (as the screenshot provided shows).
While many of us are used to this behavior and have essentially learned to ignore it in problematic cases, it’s easy to see it as a non-issue. However, for new users, or even mobile users in general, this was unacceptable to us. This is why we added a new system (with options) to display it in a more coherent way and involved in the flow.
There was one issue with this system that only occurs in online matches that was discovered very late into the process. In order to protect players from having shorter turn timers when they were forced to watch a long series of animations from their opponent’s turn, the server does not consider a player’s turn as ended until both players have confirmed seeing all the animation.
This means that while your opponent is busy seeing the tooltip of the card you played from hand, your turn is NOT over. We managed to find a compromise right before 4.1 development finished where the coin would flip and the camera move in this scenario so at least you feel like the game recognizes that you pressed end turn. However, the server is NOT processing end of turn effects like bleeding until your opponent finishes seeing all of your actions.
This waiting for players is protection at the core logic of GWENT’s gameplay loop that has been around since Homecoming. We believe that this turn timer protection is a good thing as otherwise, players would be able to abuse the system and grant their opponents shorter turns.
We plan on changing this part of our gameplay CORE to the ONLY wait for a player to confirm he is ready for his turn before starting his turn timer. We don’t want players to wait for their opponents to see things for the game to move forward in a smooth rhythm.
However, while this change will definitely fix the feeling of the game being slower it is important to me for you to understand a few things:
Making games is difficult and full of surprises. The current issue is not one we are super happy about but at the same time, such things happen. What is important is we will be working diligently to improve the situation and appreciate your patience regarding this issue.
Sincerely,
SlamaTwoFlags AKA Jason Slama
Game Director of GWENT
Hey guys, often there are misunderstandings regarding why bugs occur and for a while, I’ve wanted to share with you all more information regarding why and how they happen. In this first of hopefully more entries, I wanted to focus on the End Turn “Server Lag” that players are currently experiencing after the 4.1 update that was supposed to speed up the game.
First, we need to explain WHY the card tooltips have been changed. Before 4.1, a tooltip would appear on the side whenever a card or leader ability was played.
This was being shown for 6 seconds regardless of the text length. The game was completely disconnected from this. Early in iOS development, we had to actually turn this off. Why?
Because it would cover up a significant part of the battlefield and the cards being played behind it where completely being missed. It also caused a “fun” scenario where you would still be seeing tooltips for your opponent’s cards during your turn (as the screenshot provided shows).
While many of us are used to this behavior and have essentially learned to ignore it in problematic cases, it’s easy to see it as a non-issue. However, for new users, or even mobile users in general, this was unacceptable to us. This is why we added a new system (with options) to display it in a more coherent way and involved in the flow.
There was one issue with this system that only occurs in online matches that was discovered very late into the process. In order to protect players from having shorter turn timers when they were forced to watch a long series of animations from their opponent’s turn, the server does not consider a player’s turn as ended until both players have confirmed seeing all the animation.
This means that while your opponent is busy seeing the tooltip of the card you played from hand, your turn is NOT over. We managed to find a compromise right before 4.1 development finished where the coin would flip and the camera move in this scenario so at least you feel like the game recognizes that you pressed end turn. However, the server is NOT processing end of turn effects like bleeding until your opponent finishes seeing all of your actions.
This waiting for players is protection at the core logic of GWENT’s gameplay loop that has been around since Homecoming. We believe that this turn timer protection is a good thing as otherwise, players would be able to abuse the system and grant their opponents shorter turns.
We plan on changing this part of our gameplay CORE to the ONLY wait for a player to confirm he is ready for his turn before starting his turn timer. We don’t want players to wait for their opponents to see things for the game to move forward in a smooth rhythm.
However, while this change will definitely fix the feeling of the game being slower it is important to me for you to understand a few things:
- This bug is not a result of a pasta dish coding paradigm. It is a result of well-intentioned protection of players that conflicts with smoother player experience. There is a healthier balance here and we aim to hotfix this as soon as it is safe to do so.
- We are taking slightly more time to “fix” this bug to avoid introducing more serious issues. Since this server/player protection (syncing) has been a gameplay technology principal for so long, changing it is potentially risky and not something we want to rush into.
- Improving the feel of the end of turn and rounds will NOT technically make the matches any faster as the delays will be disguised into the opponent’s turn (unless you all believe that playing longer tooltip combos of many cards to eat up your opponents turn time is a legit valid strategy).
- We are evaluating changing the default speed of tooltips from slow to fast, though we are hesitant as slow is the perfect speed for new players reading new tooltips. For the record, they are dynamic meaning they will show longer or shorter depending on tooltip length.
- For now, if you feel like this really sucks, please change your settings to now showing tooltips (or fast) as this will reduce your contribution to these delays.
Making games is difficult and full of surprises. The current issue is not one we are super happy about but at the same time, such things happen. What is important is we will be working diligently to improve the situation and appreciate your patience regarding this issue.
Sincerely,
SlamaTwoFlags AKA Jason Slama
Game Director of GWENT
