Disconnected From Server (Recurring Issue)

This is a recurring problem, happening several times a day while I’m playing Overwatch. It happens randomly in the span of several hours. For instance, I could play 4 hours and have it not happen, or I could play 2 hours and have it happen twice. I kept a semi-reliable log for a couple of weeks. I didn’t manage to record every instance, as sometimes I’d be too busy trying to reconnect to finish my game. Gaps in days are days I wasn’t playing Overwatch. The DC problem has happened every single time I play for several months.

What I call “The Red Triangle Of Bullsh@t” appears either on the left side in game or across my screen in menus. Despite there being no actual lag or latency, I get booted from the game, usually back to the login screen.

Nearly every time this happens, I get replaced instantly via matchmaker. I get punted to the menu while my friends continue playing, and in the 5 seconds it takes me to click “Join Game,” someone else has already filled the spot. This has even happened during games where the enemy team was left with 5v6 due to someone leaving and the matchmaker NOT filling their spot - but my spot gets filled instantly. That’s honestly the most annoying part to me.

The second being the fact that I am BOOTED from the entire game despite having NO LATENCY. I’ve been lagged out before, I’ve had crap internet before that disconnected frequently, and I know what it looks like. THIS. ISN’T. IT.

My best guess here is that there’s a small glitch somewhere, a split second of packet loss, and Overwatch sees that and reads it as a full disconnect and boots me (and other people with this problem) from the game several seconds later despite still being actually connected.

Here’s the log of instances I recorded, in PDT:

DC to Desktop = completely logged out, closed to desktop to login faster rather than enter my info.
DC to login = booted to login screen but didn’t need to re-enter info
DC to menu = returned to the main menu screen.

Assume my spot was instantly filled unless specified.

8/31/20 4:59pm DC to desktop
9/4/20 4:15am DC to menu
9/6/20 2:07am Lag Freeze but no DC
9/6/20 2:09am DC with no triangle, booted back to login
9/8/20 1:17am DC but still in game (not replaced)
9/11/20 7:41pm DC and then put into a whole new game wtf
9/13/20 9:07pm DC to menu
9/16/20 ~10:30pm DC but still in game (not replaced)
9/17/20 12:15am DC but still in game (not replaced)
9/17/20 2:20am DC to menu
9/17/20 12:30pm DC but still in game (not replaced)
9/17/20 2:18pm DC to menu
9/20/20 ~7:00pm DC to login then back into game (not replaced)
9/20/20 9:41pm DC to login
9/21/20 11:58pm DC to menu still in queue
10/2/20 6:53pm DC to menu
10/3/20 1:00am DC to menu

I sat in a custom game for hours waiting for it to happen so I could catch it using WinMTR. Someone told me I have to restart it every 10 to 15 minutes instead. Wonderful that I have to go through all this effort just for anyone to believe me at all that THIS ISN’T A PROBLEM ON MY END.

Here’s the initial log from last night, IP address exed out and links broken with spaces so I can even post it:

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| WinMTR statistics |

| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |

|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

| xxx.xxx.x.x - 0 | 6778 | 6778 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 |

| xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - 1 | 6773 | 6772 | 6 | 11 | 101 | 14 |

| agg63.cnpkca2601h.socal.rr .com - 0 | 6777 | 6777 | 8 | 14 | 101 | 11 |

| agg21.chwocadq01r.socal.rr .com - 0 | 6777 | 6777 | 7 | 15 | 109 | 12 |

| agg24.lsancarc01r.socal.rr .com - 0 | 6777 | 6777 | 7 | 18 | 395 | 13 |

|bu-ether16.atlngamq46w-bcr00.tbone.rr .com - 0 | 6777 | 6777 | 8 | 15 | 102 | 17 |

| 66.109.5.135 - 1 | 6773 | 6772 | 9 | 18 | 105 | 15 |

| 66.109.9.161 - 0 | 6777 | 6777 | 8 | 16 | 139 | 9 |

| ae1-br02-eqla1.as57976 .net - 0 | 6770 | 6770 | 7 | 33 | 3288 | 9 |

| 137.221.68.91 - 1 | 6773 | 6772 | 9 | 15 | 141 | 12 |

It remained fairly steady most of the time, until the disconnect happened. Notice that the “Worst” ping on the 2nd to last hop reached 3288. That’s what happened approximately 10 seconds before I was booted from the server. The ping jump happened instantaneously, with no noticeable lag or other repercussions, but I was still of course booted from the game several seconds later, despite still playing with no latency or problems.

Apologies if I sound short in this message, but this is a recurring problem that everyone seems intent to purposely ignore, misinterpret, or say is my fault, for the last several months that I’ve been complaining about it and troubleshooting. Here’s my responses to the common deflections I always get:

  • It’s not my machine. I have an expensive PC with fantastic parts. I do not experience DC’s on ANY other game, interruptions with streaming, or anything vaguely similar to what I do with Overwatch.

  • Overwatch is the only Blizzard game I play, so I can’t say if this is a problem with other Blizzard games as well. I can say that this is ONLY a problem I experience with Overwatch. No other online game I play has any sort of interruptions.

  • It’s not my internet. I have a top of the line router that RARELY drops (and my PC is connected via Ethernet, not WiFi). Not to mention, if it were an internet DC problem, everything else would also suffer at the same time from the internet going out (Spoiler: it doesn’t). I’ve had trash internet before, and this isn’t that.

  • Again, it’s not my internet. I contacted my provider first and foremost when it started happening to complain to them about it. After they ran diagnostics, there was 0 downtime during the times that I was getting disconnected. Not so much as a single glitch.

This is 100% a problem on Blizzard’s end. I’ve seen several other posts complaining about the exact same problem and getting brushed off because they understandably don’t want to take HOURS out of their day to sit and wait for it to happen and catch it on a program that you have to micro manage every few minutes.

But sure, I’ll do it later, even though I’ll probably get brushed off anyway since Blizzard is a flawless infallible company that can’t possibly be having a server glitch somewhere that’s affecting a specific group of people. :upside_down_face:

I too have been having this same issues on multiple computers in the house. If we’re both playing we’ll both get disconnected at the same time. ISP says everything is fine on their end.

It’s important to consider that while less than 50 people are reporting connection issues on the forums in the last few days, thousands are playing without issue. No one posts here unless they have a problem, so it always seems like an issue is affecting more than it is.

Well, simply put they cannot assist with a problem without data backing it up. Just saying there is an issue doesn’t show them where, and it might be something they can pass on to an ISP. Just depends what’s happening. And ultimately, Blizzard is only responsible for their game client and their servers, not the route you use to reach them. Server down time is reported on their news channels.

That sounds like it could be a local network flood issue, or IP lease time issue. Your ISP wouldn’t see this as an problem on their end since it would be specific to your modem or router.

I’ve talked to many more people who haven’t posted on the forums about it, whether because they’re too lazy to do so or don’t want to deal with being told that nothing will be fixed.

The issue isn’t the server downtime of less than a millisecond (despite the fact it’s clearly happening on Blizzard’s end), the issue is that it results in being booted from the game altogether and instantly replaced. That’s the obnoxious part. That I can play a 5v6 for 20 minutes straight, then get booted for no reason and replaced immediately. The matchmaker and whatever it is that thinks someone is disconnected when they aren’t actually disconnected is the issue.

Being booted to login screen mid-game when there’s been NO LAG AT ALL is the issue, along with whatever causes matchmaker to just stop looking for new players when someone leaves the game during pick phase. It needs to get fixed.

I couldn’t care less about the 11th hop reaching 3k ping for a split second, if it didn’t always result in getting kicked from an otherwise completely fine, lag-free match.

Still might wanna work on the catch up protocols for whatever the case may be in the event of a slight lapse in connectivity. If it didn’t send me straight back to the menu, I was lagging so hard I couldn’t move right even if I wanted to stay in the game.

That’s only a protection mechanism (ignores pings and inflates value) since you don’t see it on all the hops before and after it.

I think the bigger issue here is your ISP. Check the worst column. It’s great for your local equipment (4ms to modem) but once it connects to roadrunner/spectrum/charter the ping is already reaching 101ms after one hop. That ping should be less than 50ms at worst on nodes so close to you.

Maybe other stuff you use online doesn’t use those same hubs that are performing so badly, but I’m confident this is causing at least part of your issue. I also say this because I play 'round the clock due to a sleep disorder, and I haven’t disconnected due to an issue at Blizzard in months – and before that it was never with the frequency you’re describing. And I play on the Los Angeles server the most of the time.

The developers have addressed that there isn’t a way to tell between an unintentional disconnect and pulling the power cord on your modem. Other games may offer a longer rejoin period, but they can’t magically tell what happened either. I guess with Overwatch they feel this shorter time is adequate or necessary.

I’m a volunteer, not a doormat. Insults aren’t helping with the troubleshooting process, and I don’t recommend using them on people trying to assist you.

The game uses 60 packets per second, but the WinMTR only uses 1 packet per second. It’s possible that some of your data was lost in that span, which caused a disconnect, and it didn’t show up in the WinMTR since it’s only testing once per second (instead of 60 like the game does). The test was also run for way longer than the instructions recommend, so the data saturation could be an issue.

When a large discrepancy between best, average, and worst appears there is some sort of instability happening on the network connection. Most commonly this is caused by bad hubs on the network, local software, or ISP throttling. The broadband infrastructure in SoCal isn’t bad enough to warrant this poor performance, and you should urge them to provide better service for your money.

I responded about this earlier, but in less detail. The Blizzard hop showing 3k ping is designed to ignore a lot of ping traffic. The type of ping a WinMTR uses is also one of the types that a DDoS attack would use. By ignoring some of the pings, it inflates the response time to that 3k number. However, if that was the actual number, the whole test would be littered with 3k ping responses, and you wouldn’t be able to authenticate or play on the Overwatch server with a full three seconds of ping.

Further troubleshooting can be directed to the staff using their ticket system.