Who do we blame for the online problems & what can we do?

[geezer1791]

For the past month we have not been able to race in an online room without having most (if not all) people being disconnected numerous times. This morning we started a race with 11 people and 6 were disconnected before the race ended. Are the servers maintained by Sony or PD? Is anyone trying to correct the problem? Is there anything we can do? (And it's not because we're GEEZERS)

 

[Aggserp4]

This definitely a problem on Sony's part.
Apart from contacting them, which may not yield results, all we can do is hope they fix it.
I heard Sony is shutting down some PS3 servers to make room for PS4 ones, but it's just a rumor I guess.
Here's hoping they fix all this in GTS!

 

[kilesa4568]

Maybe the problem lays in between you and the servers? I don't know how the servers are hosted either but if the traffic is unstable between you and the server, it's as good a reason as any for disconnection issues.

It's a shame there's no way of doing a tracert to check if there's any problems in any of the hops or distance travelled.

 

[Cobra2245]

I think that the problem lies in the hands of GT6 itself. Not one time have I ever joined/hosted a room and didn't get disconnected from the lobby or disconnected from someone else. Some rooms could have 14 people, and then 7 or 8 disconnect one after another in less than a minute. Or, the other problem is when some players don't show up for some drivers. For example, there could actually be 10 people on the track, but one player only sees 9 or less. I've spent more time in lobbies asking how many people are on the track than actually driving, which I thought was the point of GT6, but I guess not.

I try to host lobbies for friends, but they always have so much trouble getting in the room that they give up and go to something else. They always disconnect from the lobby and each other as well. The servers have been bad since GT5, and Kaz or PD haven't bothered to even notice the fact that the game is broken. This has been SIX YEARS since GT5 was released, and to this day the servers are still unstable. I fail to see how, as the CEO of a game that is sold globally, and in GREAT numbers, how Kaz and PD don't realize that the servers don't work. I feel like either Kaz has just lost interest in the franchise (since there hasn't even been much news or progress on GT Sport), he's forgotten about GT6, or he's too lazy to do anything.

When GT7 is released, I probably won't get it, unless there's actually a significant improvement – not only in the online part, but in graphics, a better car list (such as getting rid of the 500 Nissan Skylines there are, etc), and monthly updates, as was promised when GT6 was released 3 years ago.

 

[Sick Cylinder]

For the past month we have not been able to race in an online room without having most (if not all) people being disconnected numerous times. This morning we started a race with 11 people and 6 were disconnected before the race ended. Are the servers maintained by Sony or PD? Is anyone trying to correct the problem? Is there anything we can do? (And it's not because we're GEEZERS)

I've hosted an online race meeting every Sunday for about 5 years and never had to cancel a meeting until three weeks ago - something happened then resulting in a catastrophic reduction in service, making online racing virtually impossible for us - the most obvious guess is that about three weeks ago Sony reduced the infrastructure devoted to the PS3.

This may be a cynical and deliberate ploy to get people to switch over to PS4 or it may be a planning error - perhaps Sony underestimated how many people would still be on PS3 - I don't know which it is, but something dramatic happened about three weeks ago.

 

[watermelon punch]

I've hosted an online race meeting every Sunday for about 5 years and never had to cancel a meeting until three weeks ago - something happened then resulting in a catastrophic reduction in service, making online racing virtually impossible for us - the most obvious guess is that about three weeks ago Sony reduced the infrastructure devoted to the PS3.

This is my experience too, identical experience.
I've been racing Sundays for years, and we'd have some problems from time to time, but not like this!

Racing has become impossible on Sunday afternoons (US EST).

Obviously that wasn't always the case or I wouldn't have continued racing on Sundays prior to a few weeks ago.

And the last 2 times I raced on a Monday haven't been that good either. Coincidence that the 2 Mondays I raced were U.S. national holidays?

Certainly does seem like a server infrastructure load issue of some type.

 

[Famine]

Who do we blame for the online problems

Everyone, including each other.

what can we do?

Not a great deal.

Are the servers maintained by Sony or PD?

No.

This kinda of goes back to the first answer. There's basically three tiers of things going on. You have:
SEN - The gaming infrastructure, as run and maintained by Sony
Matchmaking servers - The things that developers have to connect gamers to each other. In this case, PD.
'Servers' - Where the racing actually happens. This is your console and the console of everyone else you're connected to.

For the most part, connection problems are caused by us - either by the quality of our home internet (could be the ISP itself, or even just playing when someone else is on Netflix) or by not optimising the set-up for gaming (like all those chaps on wireless) - and even if we have done the best we can, the other chaps in the lobby might not have done and the connection is only as strong as the weakest link in it. After that, it's SEN - as we saw recently when Sony announced it would have a free weekend in relation to some game or other, which saw huge traffic spikes and killed the 12hr race in our GTPSS forum.

PD's 'servers' do practically nothing - though they need to exist to create and maintain the lobbies, so when they're off there's no play either.

 

[Ridox2JZGTE]

Last weekend I hosted testing lobby in Ridox Club, no issue at all, spent hours without being DC'd. Sometimes I do get DC'd when I join public lobbies, but I blame my internet with only 7.2 Mbps down and 1Mbps up.

 

[Mr Grumpy]

Everyone, including each other.Not a great deal.
No.

This kinda of goes back to the first answer. There's basically three tiers of things going on. You have:
SEN - The gaming infrastructure, as run and maintained by Sony
Matchmaking servers - The things that developers have to connect gamers to each other. In this case, PD.
'Servers' - Where the racing actually happens. This is your console and the console of everyone else you're connected to.

For the most part, connection problems are caused by us - either by the quality of our home internet (could be the ISP itself, or even just playing when someone else is on Netflix) or by not optimising the set-up for gaming (like all those chaps on wireless) - and even if we have done the best we can, the other chaps in the lobby might not have done and the connection is only as strong as the weakest link in it. After that, it's SEN - as we saw recently when Sony announced it would have a free weekend in relation to some game or other, which saw huge traffic spikes and killed the 12hr race in our GTPSS forum.

PD's 'servers' do practically nothing - though they need to exist to create and maintain the lobbies, so when they're off there's no play either.

Not causing an argument over this but considering my home network hasn't changed since I've owned a PS3 (apart from a speed upgrade) why was I able to host race's on GT5 throughout it's entire life span with no problems & only just recently (within the last 2-3 months) we are all having problems ? Surely it's not us Famine as nothing has changed our end (speaking on my own behalf obviously)

 

[Famine]

Not causing an argument over this but considering my home network hasn't changed since I've owned a PS3 (apart from a speed upgrade) why was I able to host race's on GT5 throughout it's entire life span with no problems & only just recently (within the last 2-3 months) we are all having problems ? Surely it's not us Famine as nothing has changed our end (speaking on my own behalf obviously)

You'll be wanting this part of that post:

and even if we have done the best we can, the other chaps in the lobby might not have done and the connection is only as strong as the weakest link in it. After that, it's SEN - as we saw recently when Sony announced it would have a free weekend in relation to some game or other, which saw huge traffic spikes and killed the 12hr race in our GTPSS forum.

 

[Mr Grumpy]

You'll be wanting this part of that post:

I did notice the 12hr race event problems this weekend as I tried to watch it countless times, only to find myself looking at a red flag situation
As for the connection it's got to be SEN, because I've had room's shut down after 5-10 minutes with no one in it.
there is definitely a problem their end, I feel for the guys that actually pay for it.

 

[Famine]

As for the connection it's got to be SEN, because I've had room's shut down after 5-10 minutes with no one in it.

That doesn't mean it's SEN! It could be - but it could also be one of the others, and unless you were signed out from SEN that's the least likely. After all, you're relying on physical internet infrastructure to communicate with a server farm in Japan to maintain your lobby (that's literally what PD's servers do).

It'd just require a surge or drop of the order of tens of milliseconds in any cable or node to cause that (and the most common place for that to happen is between the kerb and your house, or between your router and your device), which you probably wouldn't even notice otherwise. Or it could be SEN too.

 

[Mr Grumpy]

That doesn't mean it's SEN! It could be - but it could also be one of the others, and unless you were signed out from SEN that's the least likely. After all, you're relying on physical internet infrastructure to communicate with a server farm in Japan to maintain your lobby (that's literally what PD's servers do).

It'd just require a surge or drop of the order of tens of milliseconds in any cable or node to cause that (and the most common place for that to happen is between the kerb and your house, or between your router and your device), which you probably wouldn't even notice otherwise. Or it could be SEN too.

Well regardless of what's going on wherever, lets all hope it gets a bit better soon, because I enjoy tuning in to the endurance event's you guy's host every now & then. It must be really frustrating for those who put alot of time & effort into getting it up & running just for it to crap out every hr or so.

 

[Sick Cylinder]

Something happened three weeks ago which has made conventional championship racing virtually impossible on a Sunday. Instead of grumbling too much about things over which I have no control, I have decided to embrace the new conditions and cancel my Cobra Endurance Championship and replace it with the "Disconnection Cup" a series of very short disconnection friendly races.

 

[Gazza116]

This is a Sony issue in my opinion , they are only just coming round to the fact that it could be them rather than blaming every other man and his dog.

Heres a quote from the guys at project cars, if you go to their forum you'll see that everyone is up in arms about it also Codemasters F1 2015 game is suffering the same fate:

"Yes, our online team is in contact with Sony and while initially (when it all started) they said no other developer were reporting online issues, only recently they admitted there might be online trouble at their side, so they started to investigate. We don't have much more details to share at the moment."

 

[Sick Cylinder]

This is a Sony issue in my opinion , they are only just coming round to the fact that it could be them rather than blaming every other man and his dog.

Heres a quote from the guys at project cars, if you go to their forum you'll see that everyone is up in arms about it also Codemasters F1 2015 game is suffering the same fate:

"Yes, our online team is in contact with Sony and while initially (when it all started) they said no other developer were reporting online issues, only recently they admitted there might be online trouble at their side, so they started to investigate. We don't have much more details to share at the moment."

It's nice to hear that they are investigating - if you hear any more please keep us updated.

My experience with this is that friends in a variety of countries are experiencing the same problems including guys with top quality broadband connections.

 

[Gazza116]

no problem, and yes its happening all over the place, games like Evolve and Helldivers have also had disconnects, so it seems it is a major problem right now. Hope Sony sort it out.

 

[AudiMan2011]

The problem is at Sony's end. My internet has been stable otherwise I would've been dropping out of the network all the time. I'm not accepting any of Sony's tripe excuses, especially as there's a lot of us paying for PS Plus so we expect a quality service without having to deal with this crap.

I am this close to packing in Playstation, not renewing my Plus, buying a G920 and moving to Forza permanently if this 🤬 continues. I'm not having it any more.

 

[eran0004]

This is a Sony issue in my opinion , they are only just coming round to the fact that it could be them rather than blaming every other man and his dog.

I had to tell the customer support how their own system works First they denied that they even had servers, but when I pointed out that we are in fact connecting to one when we go online ("connecting to lobby server", "you have been disconnected from the lobby server", "you have lost the connection to the lobby server") they said that they would take a look at it.

They also said that Gran Turismo Sport would use another method (meaning not peer-to-peer) for online gaming, but that could just have been general PR talk to try to limit the damage, I'm not sure how involved the customer support are in the details of the next game...

 

[Sick Cylinder]

I am rapidly reaching the conclusion that the only thing we can do is vote with our feet and buy an X Box instead, because with each day that goes by it becomes clearer that Sony either don't care about the current situation or their technical staff are completely unable to manage a reliable network or both. This is what I have just posted on our race thread after another ruined Sunday afternoon:

Yet again we have had to cancel an online race meeting due to the appalling service offered by Sony / Polyphony Digital. I fail to understand how or why they have been unable to fix the current network instability problems which began about two months ago.

Sony cannot possibly expect anybody to bother buying a PS4 and paying for an online service when they have shown themselves to be incapable of providing a proper service for their customers. The current situation is nothing short of disgraceful.

I have started making enquires regarding the stability of the Microsoft network used for the X Box, which I am told by avid gamers at work who use it is virtually problem free.

If Sony / Polyphony Digital don't stop sitting on their hands and actually start fixing this problem I don't see that there is any alternative, but to skip the PS4 and GTS / GT7 and switch to the X Box and either Forza, Project Cars or Asetto Corsa.

Unfortunately for those of us with wheels this is an expensive decision - it may not be so bad for those people waiting to buy a PS4 compatible wheel as they could now buy an Xbox one instead. For me with an old PS4 compatible wheel (a Version 1 T500 which has little secondhand value) it is more likely that I will pack up racing altogether.

I can't see any point in buying a PS4 and paying a subscription to race online to a Company which has shown itself to be incapable of providing a satisfactory network.

What do you guys think? Are you ready to give up altogether? I know my wife would be more than happy if I did and put the money for a PS4 towards a new, larger fridge instead.

Is there anything else we can try? Or is it time to just say that's it - Sony and Polyphony Digital you had your chance and you blew it and no you are not getting any more of our hard earned cash?

 

[AudiMan2011]

Although my latest Super GT race went off virtually problem free until the end, I'm also on the cusp of kicking Playstation to the kerb and go to Xbox/Forza full time since I have the console as well. All these problems have stretched my relationship with the brand I have been loyal to since 1998 to breaking point and I am ready to walk.

I just need that trigger.

 

[faceman557]

Are you guys talking about being signed out of psn, not just a lobby?
Ive had my ps3 on for about 2 years straight. Could just change channels and jump in and race online or most recently COD. Around Nov/Dec i have been signed out of PSN on a daily basis, as opposed to the zero DC in the 6 years i've had a ps3.

 

[Andyc709292]

I host a Thursday night thrash - has been bad of late.
Having said this, with custom tracks I've noticed that my HDD light is lit full on for a minute or two. During that time I'm lag crazy if I try and race. Once it calms down it's a lot better.
When racers join the track it gets bad too.

One of our racers is on NBN - he's the one who gets disconnected...

Oh and Telstra sucks at the moment if you're anywhere near their infrastructure here in Aus - http://servicestatus.telstra.com/

Overall - I'm mindful of a thrashing PS3 causing issues, I set my rooms to standard to try and help and after all that our infrastructure here is terrible anyway...

 

[Sick Cylinder]

I host a Thursday night thrash - has been bad of late.
Having said this, with custom tracks I've noticed that my HDD light is lit full on for a minute or two. During that time I'm lag crazy if I try and race. Once it calms down it's a lot better.
When racers join the track it gets bad too.

One of our racers is on NBN - he's the one who gets disconnected...

Oh and Telstra sucks at the moment if you're anywhere near their infrastructure here in Aus - http://servicestatus.telstra.com/

Overall - I'm mindful of a thrashing PS3 causing issues, I set my rooms to standard to try and help and after all that our infrastructure here is terrible anyway...

If you host using custom tracks is it worse than normal?

 

[epic_apri_39]

If you host using custom tracks is it worse than normal?

Sadly this is the case.

 

[tarnheld]

Having said this, with custom tracks I've noticed that my HDD light is lit full on for a minute or two. During that time I'm lag crazy if I try and race. Once it calms down it's a lot better.
When racers join the track it gets bad too.

Yes, custom tracks are more prone to lagging than native tracks, especially at sector boundaries, but other than that i didn't experience more DCs on custom tracks. In my experience the DCs are more of a random thing (you never know when it hits you) that get more pronounced (read unbearable, preventing normal racing) during weekends or holidays. And that i can race with the same people on weekdays with whom it is impossible to stay in a room on weekends strongly suggests the problem lies with the infrastructure.

 

[geezer1791]

Yes, custom tracks are more prone to lagging than native tracks, especially at sector boundaries, but other than that i didn't experience more DCs on custom tracks. In my experience the DCs are more of a random thing (you never know when it hits you) that get more pronounced (read unbearable, preventing normal racing) during weekends or holidays. And that i can race with the same people on weekdays with whom it is impossible to stay in a room on weekends strongly suggests the problem lies with the infrastructure.

Our (Geezer Club) experience is that custom tracks are a little worse but worse than impossible isn't a difference. We cannot race on weekends without 90-100% of participants getting DC. The same participants are able to race weekday mornings with no problems. 👎

 

[Andyc709292]

If you host using custom tracks is it worse than normal?

I'd say so, we do one week custom track & multi-car classes (cos it's a pain to change it) and one week single car classes & multi-track racing. Seems to work - other than lag issues.

 

[davidt33]

I don't even bother to join in on the online rooms and races. Not worth the stress for me. Seen enough people complaining. Just sticking with the Seasonals.

 

[Polsixe]

Everyone, including each other.Not a great deal.
No.

This kinda of goes back to the first answer. There's basically three tiers of things going on. You have:
SEN - The gaming infrastructure, as run and maintained by Sony
Matchmaking servers - The things that developers have to connect gamers to each other. In this case, PD.
'Servers' - Where the racing actually happens. This is your console and the console of everyone else you're connected to.

For the most part, connection problems are caused by us - either by the quality of our home internet (could be the ISP itself, or even just playing when someone else is on Netflix) or by not optimising the set-up for gaming (like all those chaps on wireless) - and even if we have done the best we can, the other chaps in the lobby might not have done and the connection is only as strong as the weakest link in it. After that, it's SEN - as we saw recently when Sony announced it would have a free weekend in relation to some game or other, which saw huge traffic spikes and killed the 12hr race in our GTPSS forum.

PD's 'servers' do practically nothing - though they need to exist to create and maintain the lobbies, so when they're off there's no play either.

Since it's a relatively new issue it must be more SEN or PD. It's not reasonable to think widespread users across the globe all of a sudden all start having home and/or local ISP connection issues. The common link and most likely is logically the servers hosting the gameplay.