"Error, The session no longer exists." During multiplayer custom race

[Simo911PS 0]

Hello. How to prevent these kind of problems: 
Time stamp: 49min 8 sec
https://youtu.be/8s-6RFCVgqQ?t=49m8s

My internet didn´t go down and my PS4 youtube stream get going normally. The game just boot me out and then I could rejoin. It did that two times in that race. I have very low ping, 100M/100M Fiber with NAT2.

[Hasan12308 0]

I am having the same issue in almost all online races and i'm not sure why. I can play all other games online fine like FIFA 18 with no disconnection. I hope they fix this issue, it is frustrating

[Simo911PS 0]

I had the problem again three times in one race. It´s weird that it does not happen in all races. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw4d4XUp7d8
Ofcourse the AI went to pit at second-to-last lap and took all my points.

I even changed my router and NAT2 to NAT1 after one error. Still I got error at the end of the race. So frustrating. FIX THIS!! Please look @F1Support  into this. I am not definetly the only one with this problem.

[F1Support 0]

I'm afraid this isn't likely to get 'fixed'. The session no longer exists error message can mean a number of things could have happened and there isn't really a way for us to tell what's going on in your particular case. My only suggestion would be to try to get someone else to host the game, it might be that their router and your router sometimes just stop talking to each other, but that's a bit of a guess.

Have a look online about making your particular router as open as possible for your console and you can even try updating it's firmware too. Sorry I cannot be of more help.

[Simo911PS 0]

@F1Support  Maybe you should add an error code to those situations rather than just tell "The session no longer exists". Why you don´t have a network logging in the game so we can address these problems together? I am a network engineer, so your answer is very annoying and not very respectful for paying customer. The game is unplayable if this does not get sorted out.

Its not a host problem I think, because this have happened with two different hosts. other was nat1 and other was nat2. It´s just something in the online code which makes sessions very unstable that even minor packet losses throws people out of the session.

[F1Support 0]

I understand that it is frustrating and I sympathise, but if we add network debugging (and I don't know if Sony or MS would even allow us to do that because the underlying transport of data is done by their services) then everyone who plays all the time has to suffer that overhead. It's not a problem on a good connection but we have to support down to quite low speeds to satisfy first parties.

The only other advice I can offer is to make sure you all stay in the lobby so the network analysis can be done for each player. You'll see the connection icons change from grey to red / yellow / green. I believe if you don't do that the game has to assume the worst so as not to flood your connection so that might help keep things more stable for you.

[SmiX 8]

It happened a LOT in 2016 on Xbox too, our league races were broken many & many & many times with players exiting and reconnecting multiple times every race (my personal record is 5 succesfull reconnections and sixth unsuccesfull - after 2 hours of racing) including moments when player was unable to join the race back at all. No race was without that problem and multiple problems were joining like a snowball (SC, yellow flags for whole race ...). Anyway, 2017 on Xbox, I feel the game connection is more stable than it was in 2016 and in our two or three races in smaller people count (10) we didn't noticed that problem, but we didn' tested and we are afraid of a full 20 players lobby.

Now we are waiting with league racing,  we don't play multiplayer at all, until you fix all the bugs in it, so I can't say now. I believe you've finally found the reasons behind it and arae trying to fix it the best you can

Anyway, @F1Support, come on, this looks like you dont want to fix your game again. You've left many bugs (including this) in 2016 and now you want to run away again without a fix? Try harder! Don't give us that non-helping general advices (btw. have you tried to switch it off and on again?) and add some debug log for you and check the results later. We (believe we) have everything set correctly and this (or similar) problems are happening only in your game, so let us know, what we are doing wrong and what we can do.

This problems are happening so many times to say it is not problem of the game. You should count with that problems and try hold that connection somehow or try to get actual state of game with longer timeout and reconnect or try to reconnect without player to exit the race or find another solution. There is a plenty of options and also one option to blame the user and third party. Even if it is a problem of user or third party, you can try to find out the specific reason of that and try to find a solutions or at least tell us, the problem is this this and this and we can't do that - it is much better than a generic error.

But obviously you don't want to even try and simply saying that "it's user's problem" even if he doesn't know what is the cause? That's ridiculous and makes me sad :neutral:

edit: note: started typing before previous F1Support post and didnt noticed the reply, anyway, it doesn't changed my feelings

[SmiX 8]

F1Support said:

It's not a problem on a good connection but we have to support down to quite low speeds to satisfy first parties.

The only other advice I can offer is to make sure you all stay in the lobby so the network analysis can be done for each player. You'll see the connection icons change from grey to red / yellow / green. I believe if you don't do that the game has to assume the worst so as not to flood your connection so that might help keep things more stable for you.

@F1Support

1. How do you determine a good connection? 

2. What can we assume from network analysis icons? What does it say? How can we say it's bad?

I have a 10 Mbit Up/Down, strict NAT -  I am always green in lobby. I am not a host and host is always green to me too ...

I play only 50% races, but probably every longer (50%) race in 2016 I needed to reconnect, can't say in 2017. Also our league had 10-14 players in a lobby per 50% distance races, while I never got that reconnection problems in 5 lap races and public lobbies even if there were "red" icons on opponents ... Are you sure, there is no problem in the game? Why is (or was) it only in longer races?

[FRACTURED 30]

F1Support said:

I understand that it is frustrating and I sympathise, but if we add network debugging (and I don't know if Sony or MS would even allow us to do that because the underlying transport of data is done by their services) then everyone who plays all the time has to suffer that overhead. It's not a problem on a good connection but we have to support down to quite low speeds to satisfy first parties.

The only other advice I can offer is to make sure you all stay in the lobby so the network analysis can be done for each player. You'll see the connection icons change from grey to red / yellow / green. I believe if you don't do that the game has to assume the worst so as not to flood your connection so that might help keep things more stable for you.

Will there be optimisations for the upcoming eSports league? Or do they get dedicated server support or something?


If not, I am definitely streaming that, can't wait to see 20 eSports pro's absolutely lose their ish in a live feed

[Simo911PS 0]

@F1Support which ports should be open when playing on PS4? I am not a fan of nat1 because then I can't use udp telemetry. Dmz is another solution but in real life you should not use that for ps4 or any device. I might try that but that is not the real solution. It creates traffic that is not meant to forward to ps4.

What MTU setting you prefer?

[F1Support 0]

@Simo911PS take a look at https://portforward.com/router.htm. I've not tried this myself but it was linked by someone on this forum thread https://community.playstation.com/content/pdc/us/en_US/pdc-communities/support/Consoles-Peripherals.topic.html/what_ports_do_i_need-scGJ.html.

@SmiX a strict NAT is not going to help you to my knowledge. Open NAT is going to mean you can join more games. Once you're playing you're communicating with other players directly so if someone else has strict NAT you might not be able to talk to them directly and the host may have to relay information between you. That creates more latency which makes the experience worse for you.

@FRACTURED I take it you're not aware of the nine online eSports races that AOR held then? Aside from a problem with disqualifications on Xbox One the first week (patch 1.6?) it all ran quite smoothly to my knowledge, there were certainly not mass disconnects or the like so you might be wasting your time if you want to see people losing anything. Like any serious eSports event we'll be doing the proper stuff on a LAN though so all the participants are there in person and we shouldn't have to worry about issues with the internet. https://f1esports.com/

[SmiX 8]

F1Support said:

@SmiX a strict NAT is not going to help you to my knowledge. Open NAT is going to mean you can join more games. Once you're playing you're communicating with other players directly so if someone else has strict NAT you might not be able to talk to them directly and the host may have to relay information between you. That creates more latency which makes the experience worse for you.

Well, that's not an answer for my questions ...

SmiX said:

@F1Support

1. How do you determine a good connection? 

2. What can we assume from network analysis icons? What does it say? How can we say it's bad?

Anyway, you are again saying it is a user's problem ... Again :neutral:

I have no problem joining the game.

I am connected to host and we have both green status in the lobby.

I have no problems in short races.

I have problems in longer races.

I have no problems in other games - why do I have a problem in this game?

So you "know" that NAT is a problematic in your game. Ok, what you did for players with NAT strict? Yeah, you did created a HOST in the lobby who is sending data to those players. Yes, you did! Awesome! ... Wait, is it working? Nope. Why? We want to know and make it better, because all other games works, only F1 is not ...

NAT is not an answer. If you believed it is, think again, because there is many players without possibility to have an open NAT and most of casual players is also not aware of whats their NAT status at all. They don't care, because they play 5 lap races and it works. It only doesn't work in longer races. Or didn't worked in 2016 (but Simo is reporting it is still a problem in his case).

I can't have NAT open since my ISP is blocking it and they want me to pay another sum of money to make it open, I can't change ISP.

Btw. saying again, I didn't get that problem yet in 2017, but in 2016.

Ask yourself:

Why can I race in Project Cars with 16 people without problem?

Why can I race with 24 people in Forza without a problem?

Why can I race with 20 people in short race in F1?

Why I can't race with 10-14 longer race in F1 (2016)?

And also all other multiplayer games are working. Do the other games have a better network code? Network architecture? Why F1 doesn't?

[Simo911PS 0]

@F1Support yeah I have those ports 

TCP	1935, 3478-3480
UDP	3074, 3478-3479

 open already after the first race which gave me errors. It didn´t help. But is that really official information? I would like Codemasters to tell which ports are the right ones. They should be in FAQ section. But didn´t find them there.