Update (16/1): Player Proximity DeSync Issue (Solutions/Workarounds!)

[scottishrebel 9]

Update #3 (16/01/14 17:45 UTC):

 

Battleye Devs made further changes yesterday and we are still looking for specfific feedback on your desync issue. Battleye will have a client update coming soon regarding this issue. Please post confirming what your situaution is, What fixes you think have fixed your issue and also how long you have been playing since using a fix without issue.

The issue is by far fixed and we are yet to see or hear from the DayZ Dev's regarding this issue as there are a few cause which is their problem.

I understand that some of you despite all the fixes/workarounds here are still experiencing the issue from an unknown cause. Togther as a community hopefully we can help the best we can. A patch for DayZ is defiantely required that puts some focus on this issue and hopefully that will come soon. I look forward to seeing if the battleye update will have any impact for those of you still struggling with the issue.

 

Please keep the feedback and suggestions Coming.

 

Thank You!

 

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Update #2 (14/01/14 15:40 UTC):

 

Battleye Devs have made changes this morning (14/01/14). Please post feedback in this thread regarding if you are still experieicng the issue (http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/164323-update-141-player-proximity-desync-issue-possible-solutions/page-2#entry1666448). Also remeber that there has been a few reports of issues with protector cases and ammo boxes causing the desync issue aswell which when gotten rid of things work as normal. Also, many people completely uninstalling AVG (NOT DISABLING) and then restarting their PC is also fixing the issue for some.

It apeears with one or a combination of the above the issue is disappearing but please post confirming what your situaution is, What fixes you think have fixed your issue and also how long you have been playing since using a fix without issue.

 

Thank You

 

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So an update:

 

The last poll (http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/163598-friendplayer-proximity-desync-issue-need-your-help-to-find-the-solution/) has been a success and has ruled out all my intial theories. However thanks to the community i thought we had made major progress in finding the cause but a few poeple are now starting to cast doubt on this too but im still going with this theory. We again require help by answering some more poll questions to hopefully get closer to some confirmations of cause and solution.

 

Cause: Most likely, An issue with Battleye, which somehow causes certain Players (Still to determine why only a select few players) to DeSync when a player (and maybe zombies) enter their "network bubble" which is a radius of about 150-200m round the player. This DeSync however affects the players download only meaning other players can still see every movement the affected player takes but the affected player cannot see other players actions or movements (everyone is standing still in the position they were, at the time Desync started). During DeSync the affected player is freely able to move around but will have great difficulty in interacting with the world such as using inventory, openning doors etc. The player will also won't be updated on other player movements. With no players in the "network bubble" desync will stablise after 2-4mins.

 

Battleye has been determined to be the cause due to many of the affected players confirming that all there DeSync issues disappear when playing on the limited amount of Battleye Disabled severs. However, a small number of players are now reporting that they may also have the issue on battleye disabled severs too. My friend who is affected has been playing with me flawlessly on a particular battleye disabled sever (Not experimental build) which has been at times 30-40/40 players for a good amount of time.

 

Solution: Many players have reported various solutions. A member of staff from battleye themselves have posted on the forum denying that battleye has anything to do with the issue, however, they did suggest that people with anti-virus software could be the issue which seemed a highly plausable cause because it would explain why the issue only affected certain players considering different anti-virus companies (Avast, AVG etc) have different databases and methods of dectition some of which could make Battleye or DayZ not work as it should if the anti-virus is interfering.

 

A list of fixes that have worked for atleast one player on their issue:

• Disabling their anti-virus (IF this works i recommend you explore if you can add scanning exceptions in your software and add the dayz folder or disabling any network traffic scanning.
• Making tweaks to their network (Router Firewall, Restarting Router etc)
• Validating dayz files through steam even if it passes
• Complete re-install of Dayz
• Making ethernet port adjustments
• Sudden miracle (Issue just disappears)
• Possibly more that i can't remember or find

We are aiming to prove/disprove the following theroies via the poll and your feedback:

• Battleye is a cause for the DeSync (Whether its beng effected by other prgrams or not)
• Anti-Virus is a cause (Possibly interfering with battleye for Dayz files) and which particular brands are affected
• The issue is on Battleye servers only and playing battleye disabled servers solves the issue (atleast for those servers)

Please answer the polls plus provide as much detail and help as possible via a post especially if your clicking the Other options in the poll and hopefully we are finally getting close to confirming whats going on here. Even if all theories above are disproved it leads us onto more avenues to explore and more polls to be had.

 

Thank You

Edited January 16, 2014 by scottishrebel

[pappaduck 56]

I use McAfee and find disabling real time scanning while I'm playing sorts the problem. 

[scottishrebel 9]

I use McAfee and find disabling real time scanning while I'm playing sorts the problem. 

 

Exactly what i want to hear. Is there no gaming mode or something similar? I think just adding the DayZ folder as a no scan area (Exception) should do the trick.

[boneboys 7988]

I will just quote a BIS Dev here who looks after the security side of things.

"BE uses so small packets that it even can't lag game by default ...
unless you use some weird AV security which may hate BE by default."

 

Now most half decent AV programs will have an exceptions dialog box, so it might be interesting to check that.

 

I use Avast (as does the person quoted) and I have not had any desync problems that seem to be so common amongst certain players.

If there is a desync problem while I'm playing it soon becomes obvious that it is a Client/Server/Hive problem.

 

I strongly doubt that BE is the problem.

 

Player proximity is another question but I have not encountered this myself.

[Disephi 2]

Hey, i have the same problem yesterday night, i live in brazil. after meet with a friend and the server restart i couln'd interact with the world anymore, but today i fixed like this. I was with a backpack inside a backpack and in the first backpack i have a ammo box and a first aid, what i do was, i enter a server, drop the 2 backpacks, log out the server. log in to a new server, then i could interact with the world again, so i come back to the server, and take only one of the backpacks, Fixed for me. i guess is a db problem when you have too much itens inside backpacks inside backpacks.

 

 

btw sorry for the awful english. ^^ hope i help in some way.

[odji 0]

i dont have an anti virus installed but i found sometimes logging out and logging back in fixed the problem for a short time or switching servers, but eventually the problem just stays and i cant play if im near my friends at all

[scottishrebel 9]

Hey, i have the same problem yesterday night, i live in brazil. after meet with a friend and the server restart i couln'd interact with the world anymore, but today i fixed like this. I was with a backpack inside a backpack and in the first backpack i have a ammo box and a first aid, what i do was, i enter a server, drop the 2 backpacks, log out the server. log in to a new server, then i could interact with the world again, so i come back to the server, and take only one of the backpacks, Fixed for me. i guess is a db problem when you have too much itens inside backpacks inside backpacks.

 

 

btw sorry for the awful english. ^^ hope i help in some way.

 

You appear to have solved my issue!!!!!

 

I dumped my ammo box in a quiet server taking the bullets, then joined the server my friend was on and we are now successsfully playing togther for over 45mins now. Still want to give it longer and do more tests regarding if its just ammo boxes, or med kits and protectors aswell.

 

Thank You for your input!

Edited January 12, 2014 by scottishrebel

[Nailer (DayZ) 3]

I really don't think its on our end. I played just fine after the last update. Never changed anything and it just started occurring outta no where. If it was something on our end it would had been doing it this whole time. Unless there was an update after the last one we didn't get notified about.

[Shanks13 3]

I hate to be the asshole here (not really), but arguing that this is anything other than BattleEye at this point doesn't make any sense. Consider the facts:

 

1. The desync bug affects many people.

2. The affected individuals have different hardware and antivirus setups.

3. There is no clear pattern in who is affected.

4. Desync still occurs on non-BattleEye servers, but the server is able to correct for it.

 

The issue is this: All servers suffer from desync issues to varying extents. That's just life. However, on BattleEye-protected servers, the desync is never corrected. As a friend put it "the Internets go out, but they don't come in." Your client communicates with the server, but the server can't or won't talk back. As a result, the desync you experience grows worse and worse until the game is totally unplayable. And because the server can't talk to your client, you typically don't find out that you're desyncing until you try to do something, at which point you're probably dead or something.

 

From (2), we know that this is most likely a problem for which individuals are not responsible. Blaming hardware or antivirus does not make any sense, given that a variety of individuals in varying circumstances are affected. Denial of this only demonstrates that people like the BattleEye developer are out of touch with reality.

 

From (4), we can intuit that, for some reason, BattleEye blocks messages from the server to the client. The issue here is not that desyncs are occuring. The issue is that they go uncorrected. Conclusion? BattleEye is causing issues and people need to stop using it for the time being. It doesn't even provide a meaningful amount of protection over the already-existed VAC protection.

[Rushthezeppelin 8]

Honestly I get desync/rubber banding even on non-BE servers now.  I'm not sure why but this is the case.

[Dryze 2]

Posted this in your other thread roughly 2 hours ago, hope its still helpful:

 

I saw theories that said uninstalling, reinstalling, verifying steam caches, etc would work. None of this worked for me. I then saw a theory that it was due to conflicting Windows Firewall and antivirus programs. I disabled my AVG and logged in, and the game worked for me perfectly. I decided to go one step further and test if the game worked if I switched from AVG (Free Version) to Avast! (Free Version). My game is now running perfectly smooth with Avast! on and enabled.

 

It may be worth adding a poll option that asks which antivirus programs users who are experiencing issues use. From what I've seen, that is the issue here. Conflicts between BattleEye and antivirus.

 

Please let me know if this helps!

 

TLDR: Uninstall AVG, use Avast!

Edited January 13, 2014 by Dryze

[Disephi 2]

You appear to have solved my issue!!!!!

 

I dumped my ammo box in a quiet server taking the bullets, then joined the server my friend was on and we are now successsfully playing togther for over 45mins now. Still want to give it longer and do more tests regarding if its just ammo boxes, or med kits and protectors aswell.

 

Thank You for your input!

 

Glad i help someone! ^^

[Disephi 2]

You appear to have solved my issue!!!!!

 

I dumped my ammo box in a quiet server taking the bullets, then joined the server my friend was on and we are now successsfully playing togther for over 45mins now. Still want to give it longer and do more tests regarding if its just ammo boxes, or med kits and protectors aswell.

 

Thank You for your input!

 

Glad i help someone! ^^

[odji 0]

i have an update 

as disephi said i had a protector case with a filled ammo box

upon dropping it and the ammo box ( i took the ammo out and put it in a different box) 

i changed servers and it seems to have fixed the problem for me so far

maybe some issue with containers?

i hope this helps

 

-edit 

 

nevermind im still having problems

Edited January 13, 2014 by odji

[Shanks13 3]

TLDR: Uninstall AVG, use Avast!

 

Given that people are still having this issue with Avast! and no antivirus, this clearly isn't the source of the problem, nor is removing AV programs a solution.

 

 

i have an update 

as disephi said i had a protector case with a filled ammo box

upon dropping it and the ammo box ( i took the ammo out and put it in a different box) 

i changed servers and it seems to have fixed the problem for me so far

maybe some issue with containers?

i hope this helps

 

And given that this issue affects fresh spawns and individuals on empty servers, containers aren't the source of the issue, either. A note, though: stacking stuff in cases and backpacks will cause servers to crash or lag. That is, however, unrelated to the issue at hand.

[ar3k 0]

Posted this in your other thread roughly 2 hours ago, hope its still helpful:

 

I saw theories that said uninstalling, reinstalling, verifying steam caches, etc would work. None of this worked for me. I then saw a theory that it was due to conflicting Windows Firewall and antivirus programs. I disabled my AVG and logged in, and the game worked for me perfectly. I decided to go one step further and test if the game worked if I switched from AVG (Free Version) to Avast! (Free Version). My game is now running perfectly smooth with Avast! on and enabled.

 

It may be worth adding a poll option that asks which antivirus programs users who are experiencing issues use. From what I've seen, that is the issue here. Conflicts between BattleEye and antivirus.

 

Please let me know if this helps!

 

TLDR: Uninstall AVG, use Avast!

I was using Avast when this happened and went to AVG again thinking that Avast was the issue so that rules out any AV causing this issue..

[zaer 0]

Just wanted to add what my friends and I experienced regarding this issue.

 

We play in a group of three on the Singapore servers, one member was having this desync issue repeatedly (we accidentally killed her and the issue went away after she respawned until she met up with us again). She met another freshspawn on the coast and didn't experience that issue, so we figured it might be one of us. After some experimenting of dumping supposedly bugged items that may have caused this (small protector cases, ammo boxes) in another server and testing the items one by one, we managed to narrow it down to a small protector case that wasn't on her, but on the other guy in my group. This also happened regardless of whether she was on our friend list or not. Neither I nor my friend with the presumably buggy protector case experienced such issues.

 

Both my friends run AVG while I run Avast, so we ruled out anti-virus pretty early. All the servers we play on run BattleEye, and my friend tried numerous uninstall/reinstall/cache verifications to no avail. 

 

Hope this helps.

[Nel 2]

You appear to have solved my issue!!!!!

 

I dumped my ammo box in a quiet server taking the bullets, then joined the server my friend was on and we are now successsfully playing togther for over 45mins now. Still want to give it longer and do more tests regarding if its just ammo boxes, or med kits and protectors aswell.

 

Thank You for your input!

 

 

 

I tried this as well. Had 2 ammo boxes and protector case. Looted them and then dumped on a server then joined a new server and was able to play with my friends for about 2hrs then it started happening again.

Edited January 13, 2014 by Nel

[scottishrebel 9]

Update:

 

Ah dam. To update, i myself removed my ammo box from my backpack took the ammo and joined my friend on a server but this seemed to only fix the issue for a few hours (about 3hrs) then my friend was again badly desynced for a long period. He then uninstalled his AVG completely and lauched the game and this fixed the issue for another few hours but it returned like a pestering wasp wanting food.

 

There seems to be many different causes at play here. I think the current list of the issues is as follows:

• Battleye and Anti-Virus (AVG is one thats standing out) not playing nice with each other
• Some sort of bug with either Ammo Boxes, Protector cases, and First Aid Kits or all of them and the affected players either have these on them or in fact its the players they are close to that are causing the issue for them by having them.
• General ISP and your own network issues.

If any of these are present they seem to cause affected players a high ping (200-999) which in turn leads to desync rising to 100,000 rendering them only able to move and unable to interact with the world.

 

The only true fix for my friend and I and partly suggested in the poll is playing on non Battleye Servers connected to the same public hive and running the same current build. In these servers we have played for over 10 hours without any desync issues (jumping into a battleye server at the time would have caused instant desync), with ammo boxes etc and with 40/40 players. Infact these have provided the best standalone experience since battleye was introduced tbh with some of the best pings ive ever seen for my friends and i in varying locations. It was unfortunate that we have been put off playing on them thanks to being shot through walls in one instance (definate hacker) which is the downside of playing on such servers.

 

This is the sole reason i believe Battleye and/or assosiated files which are removed in non battleye servers is the cause for some people experiencing major desync issues BUT i would like to stress, i don't believe its the same scenario for all players having the desync issue and that the issue might not be the coding of battleye itself but how other programs such as anti-viruses are veiwing/interacting with it.

 

Whats starting to annoy me more than the issue itself is the complete silence from the Dev Team. It dosen't matter if they have a fix or not but atleast telling us they are aware that an issue exsists and are investigating would be great to know.

[$able 257]

I hate to be the asshole here (not really), but arguing that this is anything other than BattleEye at this point doesn't make any sense. Consider the facts:

1. The desync bug affects many people.

2. The affected individuals have different hardware and antivirus setups.

3. There is no clear pattern in who is affected.

4. Desync still occurs on non-BattleEye servers, but the server is able to correct for it.

The issue is this: All servers suffer from desync issues to varying extents. That's just life. However, on BattleEye-protected servers, the desync is never corrected. As a friend put it "the Internets go out, but they don't come in." Your client communicates with the server, but the server can't or won't talk back. As a result, the desync you experience grows worse and worse until the game is totally unplayable. And because the server can't talk to your client, you typically don't find out that you're desyncing until you try to do something, at which point you're probably dead or something.

From (2), we know that this is most likely a problem for which individuals are not responsible. Blaming hardware or antivirus does not make any sense, given that a variety of individuals in varying circumstances are affected. Denial of this only demonstrates that people like the BattleEye developer are out of touch with reality.

From (4), we can intuit that, for some reason, BattleEye blocks messages from the server to the client. The issue here is not that desyncs are occuring. The issue is that they go uncorrected. Conclusion? BattleEye is causing issues and people need to stop using it for the time being. It doesn't even provide a meaningful amount of protection over the already-existed VAC protection.

Those are some tough accusations.

Let me state that correlation != causation. I have investigated this issue and couldn't find any relation to BE. Note that I'm talking about the desync issue here, not the stuttering/freezing that a few people experience (which can be caused by certain security software in combination with BE). We are talking about two separate issues here, so they should not be mixed up. Desync issues can hardly be caused by any security software.

Keep the following in mind:

1. Non-BE servers aren't quite active and don't have nearly as many connects/disconnects.

2. Non-BE servers use a separate hive.

A user I was talking to confirmed that after a while he experienced this issue on non-BE servers as well.

[Nel 2]

Those are some tough accusations.

Let me state that correlation != causation. I have investigated this issue and couldn't find any relation to BE. Note that I'm talking about the desync issue here, not the stuttering/freezing that a few people experience (which can be caused by certain security software in combination with BE). We are talking about two separate issues here, so they should not be mixed up. Desync issues can hardly be caused by any security software.

Keep the following in mind:

1. Non-BE servers aren't quite active and don't have nearly as many connects/disconnects.

2. Non-BE servers use a separate hive.

A user I was talking to confirmed that after a while he experienced this issue on non-BE servers as well.

As a player who wants to play this game I appreciate your efforts in looking into this issue. Based upon the amount of desync posts and complaints I think you will agree there is certainly a problem here. Understandably its been extremely hard to pinpoint but I think between the community and you all (dev's) we'll get this righted it will just take time.

 

I hope for all our sakes your investigation continues and didn't stop after 30 minutes of testing/ trying to duplicate.

 

I really think the community would be at ease here if we had some additional communication on whats being done to fix this issue specifically and the community can kinda rally around your efforts to help test and duplicate.

[BigHairyFenian (DayZ) 18]

Dropping the protector case worked, i had to drop it, log out and log back in but it worked. Pretty fucking weird if you ask me.

[Mr Hyde 3]

I'm experiencing the same issue as others pointed out in relation to boxes, protection cases and anything that cause items nesting in the inventory. Dropping those seems to partially fix the problem but it's still there even if it has a lower impact on desinc

Edited January 13, 2014 by Mr Hyde

[scottishrebel 9]

Dropping the protector case worked, i had to drop it, log out and log back in but it worked. Pretty fucking weird if you ask me.

 

How long have you played since? We are finding all the fixes are only fixing it for a few hours.

[BigHairyFenian (DayZ) 18]

How long have you played since? We are finding all the fixes are only fixing it for a few hours.

About half an hour, i'll keep playing and report back in a while.