Help! iPad Air LAG

[Burialfaith-1572]

Dear Blizzard,

I have been a faithful Hearthstone customer since december 2014. I have been with you through all the good and the bad since then.

Until recently, all issues where fixed in a prompt manner as expected by such a big and good company like you. Within the last months you’ve somehow shown the opposite to the reputation that you have built. Even if only to mention a 7 months delay to fix a chat issue preventing friends from chatting (issue posted on Oct. 19 2019, fixed on Jan. 31 2020, reopened on Feb. 29 2020 and fixed again on May 13 2020).

There is a pending issue since 4 months (Mar. 11 2020) where iPad Air lags when full assets are downloaded which is triggered by: 1. Playing Galakrond; 2. Generating cards from other classes; 3. Having 8 or more minions of the board. Yet, still no acknowledgement has been made to this issue which is very easy to reproduce. Would it be possible to please fix what is causing this lag on iPad Air device?

Thanks in advance,
Best regards

Lag spike on player's turn

Greetings, I was playing a game against a druid and after that he played Azalina Soulthief and finished his turn, the game started to lag very bad on my turn and I couldnt play a single card due to lag. I had to quit Hearthstone and launch the game again to remove that lag. This kind of lag spike in Hearthstone has happened maybe 3 other times in the last month with different trigger, resulting in playing 1 card instead of 2-3 more and being unable to attack with all minions already on board, …

LAG prevents playing the game (iOS)

Greetings, When matches last past a certain amount of time, lag will almost always begin rendering impossible to play cards, attack with minions or even use hero power! Using iOS 12.4.6 on iPad Air. This started around March 21, about 3-4 days after Blizzard mentioned in Hearthstone app on March 17 that it found issues with some ISP slowing down Hearthstone. During those 3-4 days following that connectivity warning, Hearthstone ran fast and clear as it never did. Afterward, Hearthstone started…

Sudden LAG on iPad Air

I had no lag (which occurs in ranked play) since the last update until today were I completed downloading assets. It seems like its the full resolution cards, sound or animation which would be responsible for lag on this iPad Air running iOS 12.4.6. Edit: With download assets stoped at 4%, I played today at 3h43 GMT-5 against a rogue. He played Reno, I killed it with fireball then its secret cheat death triggered and lag started. I can’t conclude that not downloading assets prevents all la…

Is my Hearthstone device too old?

Using iPad Air with iOS 12.4.7 and games gets very laggy, resulting in being unable to play cards, attacks with minions and/or using hero power. Some matches are fine other are laggy. Opponent’s playing Galakrond and creation of new cards results in lag. Devs/support dont acknowledge this issue since initial post 2 months ago. Anyone else encountering this issue with their Hearthstone’s device?

[ERNewb-1306]

They aren’t going to fix this. they are going to let the older devices continue to be unable to play the game to the fullest until eventually the devices won’t run the game.

You can bet, however, the older devices will still be listed in the Apple store as a supported device.

[Burialfaith-1572]

What I am wondering is why are there only 3 people who claimed to have this issue in four months and not more.

[Drakuloth]

Burialfaith,

Which exact model of iPad Air do you have? The original, or a later version? We do have another thread with reports of low RAM devices having crashes. This may be somehow related. Have you tried anything to troubleshoot this yet on your end?

[Burialfaith-1572]

Greetings Drakuloth,

The iPad Air model is MD789CL/B.

Recently after a patch (about 1 month ago), I noticed that there were no more lag, but instead disconnection of 5 seconds about every turn I was playing. This resolved by itself in the 2-3 following days and got back to lag.

Regarding troubleshooting, I commented on March 11th 2020 that:

@Burialfaith-1572

I was playing a game against a druid and after that he played Azalina Soulthief and finished his turn, the game started to lag very bad on my turn and I couldnt play a single card due to lag.

and on June 3rd 2020 that:

@Burialfaith-1572

I played against a rogue who played Evocation from mage class and it led to lag.

“ERNewb” player stated on June 3rd 2020 that:

@ERNewb-1306

it will usually slows down when bunches of cards are made, such as when a bunch of lackeys get generated, and then generate cards from that.

I personally noticed that “Duplicate” secret from Mage and “Evocation” (from Mage) when played by that class doesn’t lead to lag. Thus, it seems that: 1. “Only cards generated from another class leads to lag”.

The second type of event leading to lag as stated by “HolyRolr” player on April 9th 2020 is:

@HolyRolr-1173

Gets very laggy especially with galakrond matches

I confirmed this saying on May 22th 2020:

@Burialfaith-1572

Yes, I noticed that too today while playing against a rogue (15h10 GMT-5). Game started to lag right when he played Galakrond.

Thus it seems that: 2. “Playing Galakrond card lead directly to lag”.

I tried uninstalling Hearthstone about every new patch since March 11th 2020 and recently noticed that NOT downloading game’s assets would lead to a reduction of lag not triggered by the two points mentioned above (could be triggered by time?). This suggest from a post on May 20th 2020 that:

@Burialfaith-1572

It seems like its the full resolution cards, sound or animation which would be responsible for lag on this iPad Air

Unfortunately, this wouldn’t be the best fix as as stated on July 10th 2020:

@Burialfaith-1572

after 8 minions are on the board game stars lagging

Thus it seems that: 3. “When many minions are on the board (8+) this leads instantly to lag”.

It might be important to mention that I only use the iPad Air without fully downloading the assets. So the above statements are all under that condition.

I noticed today that lag can also be created when I play a card which requires an animation and immediately try to attack with a minion. Its like I force the number of actions displayed on the screen and is maybe like a CPU bottleneck. I noticed that after the 1st animation was over, if I waited a couple sec, I would be able to attack with a minion, but that would still be a bit laggy and after pressing the “End turn” button, lag would disappear. Thus is seems that: 4. “Doing two actions at once or in a very short time interval creates lag which disappear once the animations are over or turn is ended”.

On the other hand, an observation which I made on April 7th 2020 was:

@Burialfaith-1572

This started around March 21, about 3-4 days after Blizzard mentioned in Hearthstone app on March 17 that it found issues with some ISP slowing down Hearthstone. During those 3-4 days following that connectivity warning, Hearthstone ran fast and clear as it never did. Afterward, Hearthstone started to run more slowly and on some matches lasting “long enough”, lag started to occur preventing the game from being playable or risking skipping turns while forcing shutting down of the app and launching it again.

Since no patch were released 3-4 day after that warning on Hearthstone login screen and the lag reappeared, this suggests that: 5. “The iPad Air is able to run Hearthstone flawlessly” 6. “The lag could be related to some specific ISP or Blizzard’s server being overcrowded”.

Since cards generated from another class leads to lag (as stated in point #1), on June 11th 2020, I came to think that:

@Burialfaith-1572

the size of the game is increasing for sure every expansion. So how does the RAM is filled when a Mage meets a Rogue? All the possible cards from the mage are being loaded into the RAM so that when 1 card is played, it is ready to appear on the board? Same for Rogue? In such a situation, increasing collection size would directly increase RAM requirement. If that is true then generating cards from cards would thus require reading to HDD with possible “fulled” RAM during a match creating lag?

Thus as a premise, I would say that the iPad Air can easily run Hearthstone as “Hearthstone ran fast and clear as it never did” around March 21th 2020 and March 23th 2020 (and since no major changes has been made to the game since April 7th 2020 as its the same expansion, it should still have those capacities). On the other hand, since downloading full game’s assets leads to higher frequency of lag, it seems there is a bottleneck either with the RAM and/or CPU/GPU. Lag due to RAM seems likely as once 8 minions are reached on the board it triggers (without full assets downloaded) and resolve when minions quantity decreases. I can’t settle whether the “internet connection” (ISP, Blizz server) would be responsible entirely or partially about the lag occurring in Hearthstone, but it seems likely to have an impact on performances. Are cards generated from another class produced on iPad Air or on Blizz servers?

[Drakuloth]

Burialfaith,

Within that information I received what I was after. You are on a first generation Ipad Air Silver. That iPad only has 1GB RAM, and while it can technically play the game, we expect it to have poor performance in some cases, especially those which put more cards and effects on the board. It is possible when we fix the problem with players crashing on 2GB/3GB RAM devices, your problem will improve.

However, given the age of that device, I expect that you will continue to have this issue until the device becomes unsupported with future patches and new content and no longer launches the game. Your best bet to fully avoid this lag would be to upgrade to a more recent device.

[Burialfaith-1572]

Greetings Drakuloth,

Thank you for the answer.

That is very unfortunate although. I also happen to have purchased an iPhone 4S on December 2016 as it was the lowest device able to run Hearthstone back then only to have it removed from supported device within the following weeks.

Would it be possible to have more options (than downloading or not game’s assets) to improve the performances of Hearthstone on mobile devices? Such options would be:

1. Decrease game resolution
2. Turn off cards animations or sounds separately
3. Turn off all animations and interactions possible with the board
4. Have the core application ran on Hearthstone’s servers and mobile devices “streaming” to it
5. Surprise us and invent a way to have legacy devices be able to run Hearthstone lag free up to 10 years of Hearthstone

Thanks in advance,
Best regards

Edit:
6. Would it be possible to run Hearthstone from PC and through (new) options allow it to pair with a mobile device on the same network so the PC with higher specs could run Hearthstone flawlessly and the mobile device would provide the inputs?

[Caterpepi]

Hey, Burialfaith! For the suggestions on giving more options to help improve the performance on mobile devices, this would be better provided as feedback on the #community-discussion forums.

Technical support only assist with technical issues that can be resolved through troubleshooting. We are not the developers and have no ability to change or add something to the game. The developers may not see the feedback on the technical support forums, since these forums are predominately managed by the support team. The community discussion forums is where many of our community managers and developers seek out feedback and suggestions to help improve the player experience.

While we do help with communication on bugs that appear like a technical issue, but ultimately these situations do require a fix from our team. Mobile performance has been a prime concern and our team is aware of some issues with low RAM (2-3GB or less) devices, for iOS in particular, experiencing these problems. It’s a frustrating situation, but I hope that there may be something added or an update soon to help alleviate these issues. Thank you for the suggestions!

[Burialfaith-1572]

Meanwhile the patch is being produced, I’ve found a way to mitigate the issue around wasted match (ranked play) due to lag with other iOS users also experiencing the issue.

1. Download Hearthstone anew and dont download assets (that’ll prevent the game from crashing and would maybe transform crash into lag).
2. Always wait for any animation to finish before touching the screen (that’ll prevent more intense lag from occurring).
3. When lag occurs, double press the home button (to see all opened apps), wait 2-3 seconds when you see the opened apps (only Hearthstone should be opened), then click Hearthstone. That should force the app to remove exceeding data in the RAM and resume Hearthstone not to 100% free of lag, but often to an actually playable level.

Hope this helps