Something Needs To Be Done About Host Migration

The other day, I lost 45 minutes of Steel Path Circuit progress, due to a random host migration. I’ve got no idea what happened, because I was in a call with some friends, yet there I was, no longer with my squad. After a lot of waiting, I was taken back to my ship, with no option to rejoin my squad or anything. I didn’t even get a Mission Complete or Mission Failed screen. I got nothing.

Frankly, I was pretty pissed off. My relationship with Warframe has been stretched as of late, and after losing all that progress, I quit the game for a bit. When I got back on later, I ended up just wandering around Duviri for a bit before quitting for the night.

What annoyed me most about this particular host migration was that it was completely unpredictable. The game didn’t even bother to put me back into my own instance of the mission, it just quit. However, most host migrations are generally caused by the host leaving the match while everyone else gets zoomed off into their own, new instance. Sometimes, if loading screens are long (and they definitely can be if you’ve been playing for a while), you can appear in a failed mission, as the game has continued without you. This is most common on defense and mobile defense missions, but can also happen elsewhere if you’re unlucky.

So what can a player do about host migrations? Not much. Not much at all. The best way to avoid a host migration is to leave the mission the same time the host player leaves. This is the most reliable way to extract without any host migrations. Well, mostly. Sometimes you can get a host migration if the host leaves before you finish loading back in your orbiter. This is normally harmless, unless you wanted to stay in that squad.

The problem is, host migrations are tricky to avoid, and often end up with someone losing some of their hard-earned loot. But what can be done about it? It’s a messy situation, because not everyone has the same computer or ends up in the same situations. Warframe uses peer-to-peer hosting for missions, which requires relying on one player to host the game for the other three players. But the host can be anyone in the squad, whether they have a beefed up super computer or are playing on the Nintendo Switch. Sometimes you’ll get a host migration while loading into the mission itself, as the game tries to make a better player host. But that rarely happens and has a tendency to break, making things worse.

My own idea is that we just get more extraction screens. If you get host-migrated, then you should be able to have a second extraction screen once you have reconnected, so you don’t end up losing your loot. Everything should remain completely paused in the loading screen until the player or players have loaded back in. And once everyone is back, they should have an option to extract for a second time. This will at least save people from losing their loot through sheer bad luck.

The question is, how easy is it to implement? I have no idea. But I don’t see why a second extraction screen would be so hard to create.

Until then, to avoid most host migrations, always try to extract when everyone else, especially the host, extracts as well. Better to finish early with less loot than to risk losing it all.