Bug report: silent disconnects on mobile client

General Discussion
1

I don’t think this has been reported so far despite many people discussing the problem on Reddit

But I haven’t seen the issue discussed on the blizzard forums. So I thought I’d raise it here as a bug in hope blizzard devs see it:

The problem affects mobile platforms- android, iOS phone and tablet. Symptoms are that mid game the opponents turn doesn’t end or rope, yet the UI is still interactive. If you’re lucky it happens on your turn as you can see you can’t complete playing a card, so you restart the mobile client app and rejoin the game. But if the disconnect happens on opponent’s turn it’s always too late before you realise and so when you restart the app you’ve missed your turn. Sometimes multiple turns. Often the game has ended by the time you rejoin.

Happens on WiFi or 4G equally. My WiFi connection is solid (sat within 3 metres of router) and 4G is good 38ms ping 36.8 down and 24.1 up with 10ms jitter and 0% loss.

This problem was introduced in the March update and was not resolved by the April update.

I’ve reinstalled the app on my iPhone 8 Plus with iOS 12.2 and restarted my device.

This is not a device issue, it appears to be an EU server issue judging by the reddit reports.

If this is classed as a “crash” I think blizzard needs to distinguish it from a typical crash where the app dies and returns to home screen. With this the UI is still interactive, you can browse your hand, emote, tap on the interactive board elements, open friends and options menus etc. It’s actually hard to determine the disconnect has happened.

As it stands, I’m experiencing 1 in every 2-3 games silently disconnecting. And losing due to the bug every 4-5 games. This makes climbing ranked much more difficult.

2 Likes
2

I experience this problem. Running the game on a Google Pixel 2 XL (Android 9).

The description above is accurate.

The client should (at least) raise a warning after a certain amount of time. It is obvious there is an issue with the game when your opponent turns take too long or communication with the server is unstable.

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3

Omg, why ppl don’t learn - whenever Blizz pulls a new expansion/game their servers overload and connection hickups apear - beacuse small indie company, rofl. SC2 Hearth of the swarm was unpleaybale for days (the solo game even) because of that. Anyway… that was the TLDR. Now, why I find the post somewhat funny:

:smiley: a “bug” :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

From reddit:>

You know, when after a twenty minute game you are about to win, then your opponent’s cards stop moving, but by the time you realize they never rope, you reconnect to a game loss?

Code or DOS?"

Can’t you really realise how utterly naive and absent that asumption is? Because yeah - if I’m gonna code/dos/jesus you, i’m gonna w8 20 minutes and not do it right away?

This post, as all the reddit related ones are prime example of how misinformation, coupled with egocentrism and not understanding how basic things work create panic and false acusations.

Game client is stable but not perfect, handles poor connection and especially packet loses semi decent. When you switch from 3g to 4g (call comes) or between cells, game disconects automatically. Same as when switching between bands on a dual band modem. Has nothing to do with dosing, coding, the fairy godmother or aliens, only with ppl not haveing a clue how conenctions work.

client talks to the server when minion with BC is played, at start of each turn and after each interaction cycle (spell/trade/dmg/deatch checks) if your connection stalls between any of those - the game freezes and tries to recconect, pulling out the last board state before the server connection crashed. This might seem annoying, but is done exactly for the purpose to make cheating bad.

How far you sit from your routher has little to do on how good your connection is. Depends on connected devices, routher capabilities, ISP network, signal strenght, routher configs and bugs and so on.

As only a minor % of ppl are expiencing it, I would search for a certain apple update that could have messed with conectivity. If it was something common, trust me - much more then a couple of reddit posts would exist spreading on hundreds of pages, not with ~30 replies each :smiley:

Now, I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to trow off your arguments all together. But, if you experience the problem so often, take 1 or 2 more devices from friends that play it and try to replicate it in a span of at least 20 games. At least one iOS and 1 android. I do believe its related to your device, but to be sure you need much more data then “someone at reddit confirmed it”

1 Like
4

You do realise that, if you’ve disconnected from the client, that the client then cannot issue you with a disconnection warning because…well…you’ve been disconnected from the client :stuck_out_tongue:

5

To Azra,

As above it’s not just iOS devices and point of router distances was to dismiss my end being the issue. This has happened at multiple WiFi locations (3 houses and work WiFi).

If you’d read the reddit threads you’d know the issue started 3 weeks ago since the March update, so isn’t a new expansion server overload issue. You picked one guy taking about DOS from Reddit, but ignored all the other people rationally reporting the problem.

Not sure why you needed to jump on a thread to berate, if you don’t experience the problem, move on. Let blizzard determine if there’s a bug or not

And the final point, I’ve played HS for 4 years on mobile. I’ve experienced occasional disconnects but they detected quick and resumed. It rarely effected game. It’s happening ever 2-3 games now. By all logic something has changed.

6

I am having the exact same issue on my desktop and 2 laptops, so this might not be a “mobile-only” issue.

Been having it for 6 weeks or so now

7

Oh man! This community is somewhat harsh!

The client, is the game that run on your device.

Your game client should react and inform you when nothing happens for a period that is too long. It could even suggest a reconnect/restart. The game client being silent it’s not intuitive and it is a bad user experience.

2 Likes
8

Told you, phisical distance from router, unless taken to extremes (20 m in open / between 2 walls, etc) has nothing to do with connectivity but signal strenght, if it’s stable you should have no problems at all. HS hardly takes more then 50 mb traffic in a season, played from mobile.

If you need to read trough tens of posts to figure out what the problem is - rarely there is some :slight_smile:

Because it starts with a hackusation, also - did you bothered to read my last paragraph stating - might really be a problem, but you provide not enough info about it.

Me too, had a real problem after switching from S6 to S9, exactly like the one described above, turned out that I had to switch off the auto network scanning, as slight deviations in signal strenght were leading to switch from 4g to 3g and back and i’ve experienced dropse ach 15-20 seconds in hs

1 Like
9

Hackusation? You’re on your own there. I’m reporting a bug not hacking or an accusation. As a dev for 25 years, I know receiving bug reports is nothing personal, it’s useful to improve the quality of a product. I’ve reported a reproducible problem, seen on my two devices on multiple networks with stable connections, it’s something new in last month that hasn’t happened routinely in 4 years and others are reporting same issue frequency increase in last few weeks on android , therefore it’s a reasonable to report as a bug here (blizzard provides no other way for mobile hearthstone client users to request support). Not sure why you’re so upset about this, but I’m sorry it has offended you. Peace.

10

Well i would suggest you post your complain in the technical forum section but i guess you will get a copy/paste message from customer support to reinstall hearthstone / reset your device to factory settings :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway the US forums have way more topics on this maybe spitting through some of the simmiliar complains they have there.

11

Ah here it is , and yes this problem has become more common

edit: well they talk in here about crashes not disconnects

12

I see same too on my iPad Air with latest iOS. I have been playing hearthstone on my iPad for a few months with no trouble then in last few weeks I’ve had a lot games in ranked where turn never ends. I close app and run it again and find I lost the game or missed a turn. Really annoying. PC games seems fine though so I’ll stick to that for now

13

Yes nostalgmus, lots of threads about crashing but not disconnects. I found it hard to believe it was just me as I’d changed nothing my end (had my 8 plus for a year) but when I saw Reddit threads about silent disconnects as a distinct problem, not a crash, I thought it worth reporting. Weird I posted in General as I thought I’d raised it in technical, my bad. Maybe that’s why Azra got upset about this thread, sorry. Happy for a mod to move to technical.

14

I see you posted it in the technical forum section to, just need to wait for a reply.

In the meantime is this maybe a solution ? :stuck_out_tongue:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/u9bpe.jpg

15

Haha. Yeah nice gadget but it happens on WiFi in multiple locations as well as 4G

16

first link you provide starts with “OMG I’m DOSSED!”

agree on that

and the rest of the post.

And I did overreacted a bit. If you stay around here you’ll notice a trend for snowflakes to attribute their own ingame shortcomings to outer factors, and your post was triggering enough in it’s beggining. I apologize for my reaction.

Also - yeah, it’s silly that mobile related problems never had a dedicated tech supp forum and are trasnfered here.

Probably you will not get a respons from blizz employee, here.

17

I’m not necessarily after a dev feedback, but as seen with the blue posts on iOS crash threads, bliz employees do read these forums and take reports of problems seriously. I’m sure they’re not snowflakes liable to overreact to bug reports.

18

just happened to me and here i am making my first post on bliz forums in 5 years bc of it.

19

Can you detail:

  • device
  • os version
  • WiFi or 4G
  • how the silent disconnect appeared
  • did restarting app resume to your turn?
20

This is still happening 11/04/2019 tested with 4g and 3 wifis and it happens on all of them its not the dc that hurts its the fact that it doesn’t tell you you disconnected. I mainly play arena so this really hurts. I got to my last straw yesterday loosing yet another game because the client cant figure out it timed out. to be honest i didn’t expect a problem of this nature to last too long in a blizzard game im too afraid of playing another arena because of this this was happening for a while now. and Im very inclined to believe it also happens to some people i play against. android 7.0 galaxy s7 edge