Since last week’s patch, I’ve had aggressive disconnection issues. I’ve had a couple of games of just lag spikes, but most games I keep disconnecting with a Desync error. I attempt to rejoin, but usually disconnect again a short time later, or sometimes disconnect immediately upon catching up to the game. Over and over all game.
This has happened for both Quick Match and ARAM games.
A couple of other people have experienced this disconnect issue with me at the start of the game, but after that, as far as I’m aware, it’s just me disconnecting.
I’m not seeing any other obvious internet issues on my end, and prior to last week, I’ve rarely see any Heroes connections issues since Alpha.
The game is nearly unplayable, and I feel bad for my teammates having to deal with the incompetent AI in my stead, or the connect/disconnect pattern which makes it a pain to have to ping my character to keep it in the fight.
Having the same issues in D4 as well for the past 3 days. No problems in other non-Blizz games.
I work in IT and can tell you that it is not my PC (it happens on more than one system) and not a problem with our connection. Both PCs are hardwired, so no wifi. No packet loss, latency speed issues, etc. I have 1GB fiber straight to my home (Metronet) so would be honestly surprised if it were related to a connection issue on our end.
If you own D4 I’m curious if you are having the issues there as well. Check the forums for D4, there are posts all over the place for the past 3 days about others having the same issue. The games are unplayable. No response from Blizz yet as far as I can tell.
Thanks for sharing your story. I do not have D4. But it’s good to know there are more people out there. I might mosey over to the D4 boards just to see more active engagement with this issue. There may not be a big enough player base in Heroes anymore for people to report this issue here.
Assuming you are using Windows then frequent desync issues would point towards a hardware stability problem. Your system is somehow calculating stuff incorrectly, or what it does calculate turns incorrect over time. The checksum picks this error up resulting in a desync error. Although this sort of error often causes major crashing and BSoDing, it can be more subtle and cause unexpected game behaviour and in the case of lock step style synchronised games like HotS, desyncs.
If using MacOS it could be a bug. The MacOS version is less polished/stable than the Windows version, especially the ARM builds.
As far as I am aware Diablo IV cannot desync because of the synchronisation model used. The server is the only machine calculating the results in Diablo IV, with the clients being streamed the resulting state for local display. As such the local calculations are mostly for display so variances in them between clients and even the server does not matter and will be fixed when the newest state from the server arrives.
Diablo IV might have other issues, including poor server connectivity and recently a major DirectStorage incompatibility.
This is an ISP issue. I’m betting everyone having this issue has Metronet. Go slide over to the D4 boards and take a look. Metronet has acknowledged the problem and is working towards a resolution. It is a problem with one of their bandwidth providers, Juniper. The problem is with the connection routing from Lansing to Chicago and everywhere that uses that route. A lot of people in Iowa and QCA are having the problem. VPN resolves it if you have access to that.
Here is a thread discussing it:
… and no. Desync is absolutely not a hardware problem. It is a connection issue.
Thanks a ton for sharing this and all that useful information on that other thread. I, too, have Metronet in the Midwest. I saw someone else ask about that on a different thread over there, but with no additional context, and I didn’t notice all the updates to the thread you linked.
It’s disheartening to hear that Metronet’s quality has been going down. But at least this issue isn’t specifically theirs–but the lack of basic monitoring is disappointing. And also typical of the “bare minimum” ISPs these days. I had a problem with my last ISP a few years ago, but it seemed like unless it happened WHILE I was on the phone with them, they had no monitoring to refer to. And the issue usually lasted 2-5 min…so no way I’m getting anyone on the phone in that span. But I digress.
Debating on whether I want to hassle myself (and them) with trying to get added to the list. Or just wait. And maybe consider a VPN.