I have been a very vocal dissenter when it comes to this game's broken servers. A lot of my threads have been logical, damning critiques of Bungie's practically non-existent, insulting help articles regarding the various error codes thousands of us receive on a daily basis. And some of it has just been angry, snide remarks about the unplayable condition of the servers themselves. I was vocal for a couple different reasons, but mostly, I believed (with a fair amount of naive idiocy) that my comments mattered. Surely if I illustrated my ills in a mature, well-thought out manner, myself and countless other disenfranchised gamers would see some improvements and actually get to play the game for more than ten minutes at a time. I even got a response or two from Bungie as a result of my threads, which temporarily made me feel like I mattered. There have been multiple patches with server improvements, and yet, every day the help forums are saturated with thousands of new comments from people who cannot play the game. You knew enough about the state of the servers before launch that you were able to give every possible code a very specific name. So how is it possible that you continue to be so clueless about what the codes actually mean? You have actually taken to the forums to ask the community what sorts of fixes worked for them. It doesn't get much more embarrassing than that.
I've come to realize it doesn't matter that you won't actually come out and admit your servers are primarily to blame. Why would you? Being honest about one's own incompetence is unheard of among corporations, and usually spells out termination or serious punishment to the parties responsible for the honesty. It's way easier to trot out a bunch of "help" articles that all implicate our network settings. Your recommended "fixes" are not difficult to implement, and yet they've offered no improvements to my experience (nor the experience of thousands of others who have followed your network recommendations). I feel compelled to mention again -- I have no issue with any other online game/app. It is limited to Destiny alone. And even after being forced to learn about static versus dynamic ip, port forwarding, NAT type, etc, my experience remains the same. Your fixes are smokescreens, distractions from broken servers that you knew were broken from the get-go, as evidenced by all the specific names you had already assigned for every error code imaginable.
It's taken me two months, but I finally understand that the servers are not going to change, and that my experience will remain frustrating. I will continue to play the game in three to thirty-minute intervals, and then get kicked out for reasons that are entirely on your end. Whether you are unwilling or incapable of fixing your servers, you've obviously determined that the players who are unable to play are enough of a minority that they can be relatively disregarded (not counting, of course, cute PR moves like a forum response here or there, or a paragraph in a weekly update). That's understandable from a business standpoint. But it's a huge bummer for me.
As I stated in the subject line, this will be my last extensive server rant. I finally get that I don't matter, and neither do the others who experience similar issues. Carry on without us. I imagine you'll hardly notice.
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4 RepliesGimme Your Hair, Over the past few weeks I have generally found myself agreeing with most of gamers statement about the state of the gameplaying experience - including most of your post above. Most of the above I agree with in the main. However, I would say that my connection stability did improve significantly after last Wednesday's update (or undo as the case may have been). I do genuinely feel for everyone who is affected as my concern is now that the connection may drop at any time - "Once bitten... and all that".. Fortunately, I can't manage the Nightfall on my own and so when it dropped three times (the few times it has dropped over the past week) I didn't lose everything as I could respawn at my friend's position.... You point out that Bungie knew the servers were broken due to the variety of error codes. I have to defend Bungie here. I used to work in electronics testing and found there were often bewildering arrays of error codes/numbers/names etc that appeared to have either no rhyme or reason, or seemed just plain daft. There's no accounting it seems for engineers' minds. I didn't understand what the errors meant, being just a monkey on the shopfloor, but the engineers seemed to know. If Bungie has created a seemingly bewildering array of error codes, it's not necessarily because they know they will happen, only that they MAY happen, and more importantly, what component of the system may have caused it. Again, I feel everyone's pain insofar it's downright annoying when it happens and I still want to throw my controller at the screen, but I understand why the errors appear. By the way, if they had more technical errors (like Microsoft's 0x000xxxxx errors), it makes it easier for people to mix them up, and is shown to be more frustrating for people. What Bungie could do is tell us what the errors may relate to (without detailing proprietary information)....? It may help us diagnose the potential problems at our end if necessary. In a similar vein, the servers may or may not be capable of handling the load. I expect Bungie employs load-balancing on their servers (or at least something similar) and it may be that one or more of the servers are more picky about how well they run (spoiling then fun for everyone). There may be no obvious reason as to why either. I have seen this happen in the company I work for now and it is very frustrating. I doubt the servers were not up to the job, unless the company seriously underestimated just how popular the game would be. What I do completely agree with is the lack of information Bungie have given us. The post you received from Bungie is the most comprehensive answer I've seen, which is a little worrying for a company which prides itself on being part of the gaming community. I don't expect to see any proprietary data at all. But I do expect Bungie to be more open with their details and help. There is a plethora of cures on the forum from people which, while I appreciate worked for them, makes it very hard for the "Joe Bloggs" gamer to work their way through and figure out what may help them. I do not expect people to start playing around with Static or Dynamic (DHCP) IP addressing, and in fact this could cause problems with their home network if they don't understand the potential ramifications. Bungie should either collate the helpful advice, test it and advise us accordingly, or remove it so people aren't being fed potentially useless or problematic instructions. They should be sending out a message to people stating, "This is what you can try.... and let us know if it doesn't help." or if they know the issue is at their end, "Please don't play with your system settings, we know there's an issue, it's at our end and this is what we're doing." Just my twopennithworth.