Dear Respawn: This is the state of your legacy, the treatment of the community.
by MOM-2236Original Post
Hello Respawn. Hello EA. Hello moderators of the EA Answer HQ. Hello frustrated players.
09/03 Edit: This is my final update to these posts. Respawn, if my understanding of your network is anywhere near accurate, you've got a lot of work ahead of you, and I wish you luck in fixing it.
Here's to all three of your games being playable as soon as possible. I am done with the Titanfall games.
As of present, I am not affiliated with the creators of the document being spread, the rest of NoSkill, or the Remnant Fleet. The members who host and manage the savetitanfall.com website are a part of NoSkill's management.
When the savetitanfall.com website went live, I gave them permission to use a modified write up of my post here (which has been hosted here for a few months), also penned by myself, but beyond using the name I gave the movement to politely get Respawn's attention on this matter ("Operation Red Tape") and the modified information document, I am not consulted for anything that goes up on their website. Any updates pushed are not done with my input.
This post is also available on the Steam Community Forums. It looks way nicer here, though.
09/03 Edit: This is my final update to these posts. Respawn, if my understanding of your network is anywhere near accurate, you've got a lot of work ahead of you, and I wish you luck in fixing it.
Here's to all three of your games being playable as soon as possible. I am done with the Titanfall games.
08/23 Edit: I've been notified my post has been re-instated. I wasn't notified by email with a confirmation that it was even taken down when I last edited it, nor was I notified it went back up.
05/24 Edit: I've been delaying updates on whether the game is playable as it may only be playable for a few hours from my update, but this update is being made as it's been "mostly playable" for most players for at least 4 days so far. Private Match and Training are still non-functional.
05/18 Edit: I appreciate the coverage from Upper Echelon Gamers. As for actual updates on the matter, unfortunately I don't have anything on the status of the servers as of today. It's still impossible to login and play.
05/14 Edit: The game was playable two weeks ago. The servers have been filled with bots again for about a week straight. Still waiting for any changes.
04/21 Edit: Still impossible to log in as of this edit.
04/17 Edit: The game is currently on sale despite being unplayable since the 15th. Players interested in knowing about the exact current state of the game may be interested in the Discord bot The Advocate in our server which keeps track of active player numbers, and my second Discord account which streams active attempts to login to the game. I can only hope that if they solve the issue via IP bans they don't ban the one used by that account too, mistaking it for we-know-who.
As for the status of the servers for this update, Respawns server manager (Stryder) is still not handing out keys required to join lobbies, so you will be incapable of logging in to play at all (the client will just display "No Servers Found"). Presumably they've done this as there's no point in players being online when there's still fixes that need to be deployed. Have some patience; fixing these kinds of issues take time, especially when the code for the project hasn't been touched in approximately 6 years.
One final update near the bottom of the page; there's a new attack vector.
04/15 Edit: Since Respawns announcement that they will be "fixing @TitanfallGame," I've noticed a number of strange occurrences with the severs leading me to believe that there are, in fact, some changes going on behind the scenes. Notably some things disabled in Stryder. As of 20:00UTC today, the servers are still joinable and usable by normal players. Training doesn't work currently, however. Godspeed, Respawn. Your players are grateful, I promise you.
03/31 Edit: The MrPorkNameGenerator names appear to have been discarded in favour of a database composed of real (former and what would be current) player names. I see you parading my name, and the names of some of the members in our community. I know you're reading my threads.
03/29 Edit: Large update in clarity. More updates to come soon, just waiting on some things partially outside of my control to be updated.
03/21 Edit: After my initial posts detailing their actions had gone public, the group shifted the names of the bots to be randomly generated using the MrPorkNameGenerator Java library. Most of the names now visible on the servers will use this library, and no longer contain the "defacto" name which contained racist profanity. These bots aren't real users. They continue to hang around in private lobbies, taking up space to prevent other users from playing at all hours of the day. They have also filled the lobbies used for Training, which blocks new players who receive the initial login prompt from even getting into Training to try the game.
Warning: the situation that is keeping Titanfall 1 unplayable involves the group keeping it unplayable using racist profanity. This post does not censor such occurrences in the images. If you do not like the idea of your game being filled with repeated usernames using racist profanity, do something about it. Deleting my posts will not remove the bots or their names, it will only cover up the situation. We the players are all already aware that these bots use these names. 03/21 Edit: The bots using the name(s) currently documented in this thread do not appear to exist in normal rotation anymore, but they are kept here as an archive of the groups behaviour.
My name is MOM-2236. Most people call me MOM. I'm a former moderator what was likely the largest community for Titanfall 1 players, known as the Remnant Fleet, but I am no longer affiliated with them. We'd amassed over 1600 users over the course of the communities' existence between 2019 and June 2021. Users join our server under the shred of hope that they will be able to play, which we currently, in 2021, could not even offer anymore because the situation was so dire. There is plenty of interest in playing Titanfall 1 still, and I am going to detail exactly why that is currently impossible.
Titanfall is currently (officially) available for sale on PC through Steam and Origin, with Steam users downloading the game through Steam's repositories and then launching the game by proxy using Origin much the same way modern Ubisoft games are run through Ubisoft Connect (their launcher was previously called uPlay) when they are owned on Steam. After being greeted with the main menu, nearly every user who attempts to log in will be greeted by this message:
This error happens regardless of the data centre we point the game towards. It happens regardless of Windows Firewall settings, which version of Windows is used, which majour update or Service Pack is installed, and which Windows Updates packages are currently installed; or which drivers the end user is using for their Ethernet, WiFi, GPU and/or chipset. It happens regardless of the users router port settings, if the computer is set in the DMZ within the routers settings, there is no effect if the user calls their ISP, if they use a VPN, mobile hotspot on their phone via WiFi or USB, change the Proxy settings for their browsers or network connection, if they replace their router, or even modem; it does not matter what ISP they have, nor what country they live in. The problem users are facing is that there are presently no available srcds instances which can host a Private Lobby for users to log into, because all ~60 individual supported instances (used for the Private Lobby section of the multiplayer hosted on servers contracted by EA and/or Respawn to be hosted by Multiplay) are currently filled with bots — IE, no real paid customers are connected, and no “player” which is presently connected has paid for a licence to play the game.
Fortunately me, it's possible to force the game to join another users lobby (even if they aren’t on the players Origin friends list) because the game leaks enough info for me to do so. By pointing the client to a lobby it can join, we can login, and be able to get past the main menu and see the Private Lobby screen. So let's do that.
This is the screen most users will see upon managing to login and enter a Private Lobby. Because of a mixture of factors — First is the way Titanfall has included and makes use of the Origin API, in which it does not verify that the name stored in engine, originally the user's Origin name, is in fact what their account is actually named after initializing it. Second is the fact that the length of any given users name (as far as the engine is concerned) can be far larger than what was possible in the original version of Source that Respawn licensed from Valve (Source 2009, the basis of Portal 2), which to begin with is much larger than can be set for an EA account, and thus much longer than any name provided through the Origin API in normal operation — it is possible that if even just one user's client provides to the server a specific name (which to repeat, is not verified at any stage of connection or play, to be the players actual Origin name), the packets sent by the server to each client which lists that name will be interpreted by the clients as a disconnect message from the server. This causes regular clients to disconnect from that lobby back to the main menu, making the game unplayable even with a single client using the same method of joining existing lobbies, just to join ours instead. This was the attack method used between 2018 and early 2020 — manual intervention from members of the group trying to keep the game unplayable, by manually joining players lobbies and crashing them with the invalid name.
The fact that no part of the game checks the provided name of a client is valid has been abused for years. The Disconnect: +++ issue (again, stemming from the abuse of the poor implementation of the Origin API statically linked to Titanfall) to kick users from the game can be avoided client side. It’s fairly easy to fix by users themselves given the skill and knowledge of Source 2009s variables, or by using a pre-made DLL-based hook. That being said, we the community would rather it was fixed by Respawn (or a team contracted by EA/Respawn) themselves, which would be included in all installations of Titanfall as downloaded from Steam or Origin, instead of telling users to modify their game. For the rest of this thread, I will have my client running with a patch for the Disconnect: +++ exploit, so at least with the game will no longer be interpreting illegal player names as a disconnect message, allowing me to stay in lobbies. We're going to quickly find out that this isn’t enough to make the game to be playable, however. This next screen shows what most patched users will be greeted with, should they manage to beat the bots and log in to a Private Lobby for themselves, but not get kicked because of an invalid name.
So we're in a lobby. The text visible in chat within my last screenshot here is a result of a community-made patch, which intercepts the source of the Disconnect: +++ issue. At the moment every other player slot in the Private Lobby is reserved from the moment we finish loading, and at least one the “players” here reports to the server that it has no DLC, the latter of which leaves me unable to queue for anything other than the Campaign playlist because every other playlist will require DLC to enter the queue. Even if the I attempt to queue for Campaign, I would be met with a window telling them that they are connecting to a new lobby forever until the dialog is cancelled. This is due to the fact that the instances used for playlists and Private Matches are one and the same, so by having around 32 Private Matches set up, each with a single bot in them, it’s impossible to queue. Even if the user does get into a playlist lobby somehow, it will be impossible to load a map as the server will not start the countdown until at least 2 players on each team are ready (total of 4), and we already have 5 bots on our own team which will never reach that state. These “players” will never connect, and within the game we will never see their names — the lobby nor scoreboard can naturally never display the names of users in the Connecting... or Loading... state. Remember how I said that every available lobby instance was filled? How about we use standard Source Engine protocols to query Multiplays servers, and find out what the players names are on those servers, just like how the GameTracker website works with other Source Engine games like Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike: Source. If we do that, we don't need the names to show up in-game in our client, as the server will report to us the names it was given by the clients in a text based form without requiring any in-game visibility at all. If we query all the servers, we can figure out what all the lobbies are filled with, as each server instance can respond individually.
Alright well that's... that's clearly not a legal Origin name. In fact there's not even a real client behind the connection in this lobby, as already stated. Prior to my publication of the EA Answers HQ and Steam Community Forums threads, this “account” (if I can even call it that), with the same name and Origin ID, was repeated across many lobbies. While there have been notable occasions where the names used in these bots come back and are visible en masse on the servers again, most of the bots currently use a Java library called MrPorkNameGenerator, which leads me to believe the bots themselves likely run in Java as well, unless the names have been generated and compiled in a database, instead of being created on demand when a connection is initialized.
31/03 Edit: The exact day this bot name was discontinued is 18/03.
In order to reserve a slot, all the server has to be given is an Origin ID (the internal numerical ID) and a username (the public name visible to all players and can be searched on Origin or EA Desktop). This is enough information for the server to reserve a slot under the assumption that a genuine user is trying to connect. The script can still reserve a slot (despite not being a real Titanfall client) because the server waits for clients to respond after it requests verification, allowing the script to take up space on servers while it waits 180 seconds (3 minutes), after which the slot reservation and connection attempt expires server-side via timeout. Because the script can retry faster than a real Titanfall client can, it keeps nearly every required slot reserved and can claim them much faster than a real, licenced-and-paid-for client. When a slot is reserved by the server for a connecting client, it can’t be claimed by a new join request (in this case, a user with an actual client) to replace it until the server frees the slot reservation when giving up via timeout. Let's take a look at a lobby I managed to login to when using my second EA Account.
Again a username which is not valid in Origin. The User ID and name of the MOD-2236 account is genuine, as it is a real EA Account with a Titanfall licence.
31/03 Edit: The bot visible in the above screenshot is the same bot used in the older Atomic Bomb exploit, just with a different name.
Here's a lobby with some more real players:
The other proper looking users here are not connections from the users who own these accounts. The group keeping the game unplayable with the bots hate some specific members of the community, hence the use of their names. Between the few actual players here, the following are bots with stolen names, and have no (paid version or not) Titanfall behind them. These fake players should not be confused for the real players they are named after. The fake players are highlighted here:
So lets say we somehow managed to manipulate their way way into a playlist lobby... this could take several hours, no exaggeration, and even then they’d be quickly faced with a directed attack from the group resulting in one of the following two errors instead: the first crashes the game to the desktop outright.
This kind of error should never happen during normal gameplay. It is caused by a malicious client, and of course is used to intentionally kick other users from the game, preventing them from playing. The next exploit will kick players back to the main menu, but itself does not directly crash the game into a state where the process must be killed (via the engine catching the error via dialog, or dying and presenting the user with a Process stopped working dialogue).
It's not specific to my account, either. Here's some other players.
This final message is a result of manual intervention from one of the users involved in making the game unplayable. The cause involves lagging the server for long enough — likely by sending commands repeatedly which would not be sent during normal gameplay — it is possible for the server or client to collect so much data that sending it all at once results in an overflow, leading to the server kicking the real players under the assumption it will prevent continued overflow. This last message cannot be fixed client side, as the issue needs to be solved before the server lags because of repeated, unnatural commands are amassed from a single user. Many other Source games which support community servers will use plugins to kick users attempting to spam commands not required for gameplay which may be abused to lead to an overflow, but this is not possible at the moment with Titanfall as the dedicated servers are not in the hands of the community but centralized within 5 data centres, none of which are regarded by the community as being fast enough to deal with even simple lobbies composed of only 8 players total of the 12-16 players possible.
04/17 Edit: The new exploit used in the first Titanfall as of April: It appears that the attack has shifted from illegal commands by false clients to just spamming join requests from the info I have been given so far (these are still not real clients, presumably anyway). Unlike the [User] overflowed reliable channel kick method, the scoreboard does not indicate that any player is attempting to join with this new wave. All players in the lobby will experience ping climbing nearly unanimously until it reaches 999, where the client will disconnect via timeout, or by client desyncronization. By enabling cl_showfps, players can get a clue as to what is going on: the CL frame time climbs, with players moving whenever the timing drops back down before it continues to climb again. AI in the match (including auto titans) appear to move as normal while all players are stuck in place. Players occasionally move based on what inputs were registered last by the server; players are also affected by gravity when they are suddenly moved. It's not a playable state.
Respawn your legacy is rotting. Literally. The state of the first game is so dire that it's literally unplayable on PC, not because the user count is too low to sustain matches, but because you have let this problem go on for three years. Players have spent those past three years trying to get your attention on this matter. We've tried making noise with the EA Support channels with both the Chat and Call function. We've tried making noise on Reddit. We've tried making noise on the EA Answers HQ forums. We've tried making noise on Twitter. We're now making noise on the Steam Community forums. We have yet to get your attention.
Titanfall has been regarded as broken for three years, with only a break where it was playable occurring between March 2020 and November 2020 where the group who have been trying to prevent everyone from playing seemingly gave up with their then-current efforts as that was spoiled by the fix developed at the time to prevent the Disconnect: +++ message. People who have spent money on this game in the past 3 years have bought a licence to view the main menu background video and music, and the Intro as viewable in the main menu, not for a game. If anyone at EA or Respawn who could possibly fix this issue has heard about our plights, the community at large has heard nothing in response. The lack of communication has disgusted many in the community. If the team at Respawn or whoever is contracted to fix these issues needs help to be directed where they need to start, there are members in the community I (MOM-2236) can put you in contact with who will know where to direct them.
If EA does not deem it important enough to fix the issues with the Dedicated Servers themselves, there are plenty of members in the community who would be willing to host the Titanfall Dedicated Servers required to continue to play Titanfall on their own to continue to support the community at large. The players EA and Respawn have left behind are looking for the experience that has not been replicated since the release of the original Titanfall, which is not replicated in the slightest by the completely different genre and playstyle found in Apex Legends; these players will not move on from Titanfall to Apex Legends, they will move on from Respawn and EA to other venues.
Addendum: They are targeting the servers for Titanfall 2 as well now, too.
As of present, I am not affiliated with the creators of the document being spread, the rest of NoSkill, or the Remnant Fleet. The members who host and manage the savetitanfall.com website are a part of NoSkill's management.
When the savetitanfall.com website went live, I gave them permission to use a modified write up of my post here (which has been hosted here for a few months), also penned by myself, but beyond using the name I gave the movement to politely get Respawn's attention on this matter ("Operation Red Tape") and the modified information document, I am not consulted for anything that goes up on their website. Any updates pushed are not done with my input.
09/03 Edit: This is my final update to these posts. Respawn, if my understanding of your network is anywhere near accurate, you've got a lot of work ahead of you, and I wish you luck in fixing it.
Here's to all three of your games being playable as soon as possible. I am done with the Titanfall games.
