This still happens?

Fucking really?

Started playing again for the first time in ages. I played with a nice player through Forest and Mines in ULT. Went back to the lobby. and a damn "- - -" v1 player changes my character to LVL 200 fat humar. I didn't loose any items, but I'll have to codebreaker my character back to its lvl, class and whatnot. Seriously, there were only like 5 people online, why bother mess with people on DC/PC pso anymore?

I remember there used to be some sort of bug related to this that caused your character to change in the lobby, but I don't remember what the trigger was, and I thought we fixed it a long time ago...

Well apparently its still a bug. As it just happened to me again. Before I could even load into block 2 of Altimira I was disconnected. Upon loading my character again, I am one again a LVL 200 fat humar named - - -, no ID or type.

I had just fixed my character using codebreaker and was logging in to make a backup save on the server. Seems its not safe for me to play...

Was there anybody else online? I checked the logs on both Iselia and Altimira, and I don't see a record of you getting disconnected with the name --- today. If nobody else was there, then it can't be someone NOLing you. I think it's related to your inability to load quests and such. Something is causing your character data to corrupt, and the fat HUmar is probably PSO's default way of reading the corrupted data with --- as an invalid name.

Until you find a way to fix your ISP not letting you load quests, it would seem that you should only connect with test characters.

BlueCrab confirms that a fat HUmar is what you get if all your character data is zeroes, so it would seem that your ISP errors are causing you to get disconnected when your character becomes invalid, but instead of getting the A: Reload error, your character parameters are all getting zeroed out. Why you're becoming level 200, though, is a mystery.

There were 3 people online, but I think you are right about it not being someone actually attacking me. What a strange glitch indeed.

Something else too. I am trying random things, it seems it only happens when I go to Altimira, when I connect to Vega there is no problem at all so far.


Well I will be moving to a new apartment in a few months, so I can get my own internet setup, but I want to try and figure this stuff out. My girlfriend has a portable wifi hotspot thing from her cell phone company, so I will try connecting to that via ICS and see if I still can't download quests and such.

I'm pretty sure that will work. On the bright side, PSO uses very little bandwidth due to being designed for use with a modem, so it shouldn't contribute very much towards any data caps your girlfriend's mobile account might have. Watching a single HD video on YouTube would use the same amount of bandwidth as playing PSO nonstop for like a month.

*edit*

Just so you know, your character didn't die in vain. We just spent the afternoon testing NOL stuff, and Sylverant now has NOL protection, so if anybody does try to NOL people in the future, it won't work anymore.

Just FYI, such a thing happens when your router MTU size is set as: size mod 4 != 0

Are you familiar with this character?
http://tomo-net.org/lan/cs/mtu_miss.jpg
It occurred to me within DC V2, not only at the official SEGA server, but this server around 2014.

That... looks like quite a relevant piece of information. Thanks for pointing it out! Now if only he can find a way to change it when the router is provided by somebody else... Maybe he can call somebody?

I remembered that somebody else had this problem in the past... maybe it was you.

The router is my own. It's a linksys router I brought from the states.  Right nwo my MTU setting is set to "Auto."  I can manually configure it.  I don't know much about that, so what should I set it to?

But yep, that picture posted is exactly what I am changing into. Glad to see there is someone who has seen what I've seen.

Glad it seems to be related, let's see if the hypothesis holds
The MTU size depends on your connection, but how about 1400? (try bigger when too slow)

Nightstalker, you are my hero.

I set my MTU to its lowest value, which now allows me to download quests without the game crashing. I also seem to be able to get into Altimira without freezing or corrupting! You have solved my PSO problems.

So I don't know much about MTU. Basically setting a lower value lowers the amount of data sent at any given instance - thus slowing my traffic? Is that correct? Should I just leave it as be at its current setting (578) or will I see adverse effects on other things on my network?

Had to take a trip through spaceship to celebrate. Again thanks so much!

I don't think you need to set it that small; the 1400 size that nightstalker recommended is a value I've seen in other networking equipment before and complies with what Wikipedia says the Maximum Transmission Unit for Ethernet v2 and PPoE v2 should be (1500). My guess would be that your router was either using some kind of huge value that was too big for PSO to handle, or it was using a size that was not divisible by 4, which made PSO freak out. Using 578 will probably negatively impact your network performance in other applications, so I would suggest 1400 or 1492 as the highest value to try.

Great, thanks for the report! You can further tune the parameter as Ives said.

I myself still have some "broken" characters, but according to your step, they can be rescued, yay!

Aleron Ives wrote:
*edit*

Just so you know, your character didn't die in vain. We just spent the afternoon testing NOL stuff, and Sylverant now has NOL protection, so if anybody does try to NOL people in the future, it won't work anymore.

Oh noes! I always wanted to try this out (pshh, don't tell anyone kay?).
Hopefully v1 freeze tech in town still works? xD

You can still NOL yourself.

Aleron Ives wrote:You can still NOL yourself.

Lol, not that I want to break anyones character, but freeze tech in town was something I always wanted to try. I don't think anyone fixed it...

*bans*

Ah, the server is peaceful once more.

Aleron Ives wrote:*bans*

Ah, the server is peaceful once more.

*time to organize a private v1 freeze party in a locked game*

Just kidding, I'm away from home, so I won't be touching my Dreamcast for quite some time...