"Unable to join, failed to join session "

[rockstar70073]

Can someone please help me figure out how to fix this error? Every time I try to play with someone I get this error

[yoda gaming]

probably a bad connection between you and the other player

[ēdiššu]

That probably means: 'Unable to create a session with the requested peers. Failed with time synchronization based on ICMP protocol (ping)'.

Just keep trying and you'll be summoned. Unless the differences are too high.

[rockstar70073]

Originally posted by KoryfeuszKsiężyca:

That probably means: 'Unable to create a session with the requested peers. Failed with time synchronization based on ICMP protocol (ping)'.

Just keep trying and you'll be summoned. Unless the differences are too high.

But once in like 60 times it works

[ēdiššu]

Try to provide more network quota for the game. Turn off any unnecessary programs that may connect with the Internet during the game.

[rockstar70073]

Originally posted by KoryfeuszKsiężyca:

Try to provide more network quota for the game. Turn off any unnecessary programs that may connect with the Internet during the game.

Do you think it's a problem with my router?

[ēdiššu]

It's most likely a problem with too high ping value. You may lower it for some requests by changing DNS's to those that are closer to your router in the network path (route). It may be also a problem with your Internet connection bandwidth. To solve both of this or get it worse you may try to use a VPN.

Either way... There's something like TTL (Time To Live) in the networking. It works like that:
1. Send a request (peer1) - ping
2. Decide whether to send a response or not (peer2) - pong
3. Receive the response (peer1). If not received by a certain time, send the request again.

Yet! If the request and/or response from peer1 to peer2 exceeds its limit of routes based on the TTL, then the request/response is lost. A single route you may interpret as a computer that ping-ponging the request/response on the network path from peer1 to peer2.

The message in the game itself means nothing from the technical perspective, so I just may speculate how this server-client connection infrastructure works.

[rockstar70073]

Originally posted by KoryfeuszKsiężyca:

It's most likely a problem with too high ping value. You may lower it for some requests by changing DNS's to those that are closer to your router in the network path (route). It may be also a problem with your Internet connection bandwidth. To solve both of this or get it worse you may try to use a VPN.

Either way... There's something like TTL (Time To Live) in the networking. It works like that:
1. Send a request (peer1) - ping
2. Decide whether to send a response or not (peer2) - pong
3. Receive the response (peer1). If not received by a certain time, send the request again.

Yet! If the request and/or response from peer1 to peer2 exceeds its limit of routes based on the TTL, then the request/response is lost. A single route you may interpret as a computer that ping-ponging the request/response on the network path from peer1 to peer2.

The message in the game itself means nothing from the technical perspective, so I just may speculate how this server-client connection infrastructure works.

Wow thank you so much for taking so much time into this :) so what should I do exactly?

[ēdiššu]

I don't what you should do exactly, because the message is imprecise. It happens to me even with players that summons me over and over for hours. Solution: try to shorten the network route of the packages. How to do so?

You may try any of my following suggestions:
- turn off any background programs that may using the Internet during the play (i.e. browser)
- change the DNS's to be closer to the DS servers
- try to connect with DS servers using VPN with shorter network routes
- boost OS Internet settings to fit the highest performance for the poorest connections
- try to play with someone from your place of belonging, like in your country; if you cannot play with that person comfortably then you have just poor Internet connection and you cannot do anything special with that

There's no really a one universal answer for that.

For better understanding of summon sign appearings in other worlds (so I may assume):
1. Summon sign is placed
2. Player request is queued to the asynchronous list
3. Player is summoning to the other world
4. Trying to create session (asynchronously) - connecting phantom with the host
5. Refusing at any errors
6. Loading phantom side area, statistics nerfing and scaling etc.
7. Refusing at any errors at any time for too long duration

The problem is that nearly at any of this points there need to be a network connection. See 7. Also there's still some problems when your game get stuck because of your hardware. How you can interpret that in phantoms worlds?

Dark Souls have no network compensation (if there are problems then the players character won't be animated - lack of data; in games like Battlefield moves are actually predicted and mapped, so you don't see this microlags and desyncs), but has sort of a network time compensation (waiting for a while after summon may give you some profit with synchronisity between phantoms and the host).

[rockstar70073]

Originally posted by KoryfeuszKsiężyca:

I don't what you should do exactly, because the message is imprecise. It happens to me even with players that summons me over and over for hours. Solution: try to shorten the network route of the packages. How to do so?

You may try any of my following suggestions:
- turn off any background programs that may using the Internet during the play (i.e. browser)
- change the DNS's to be closer to the DS servers
- try to connect with DS servers using VPN with shorter network routes
- boost OS Internet settings to fit the highest performance for the poorest connections
- try to play with someone from your place of belonging, like in your country; if you cannot play with that person comfortably then you have just poor Internet connection and you cannot do anything special with that

There's no really a one universal answer for that.

For better understanding of summon sign appearings in other worlds (so I may assume):
1. Summon sign is placed
2. Player request is queued to the asynchronous list
3. Player is summoning to the other world
4. Trying to create session (asynchronously) - connecting phantom with the host
5. Refusing at any errors
6. Loading phantom side area, statistics nerfing and scaling etc.
7. Refusing at any errors at any time for too long duration

The problem is that nearly at any of this points there need to be a network connection. See 7. Also there's still some problems when your game get stuck because of your hardware. How you can interpret that in phantoms worlds?

Dark Souls have no network compensation (if there are problems then the players character won't be animated - lack of data; in games like Battlefield moves are actually predicted and mapped, so you don't see this microlags and desyncs), but has sort of a network time compensation (waiting for a while after summon may give you some profit with synchronisity between phantoms and the host).

OK thank you so much I'll try that and let you know how it goes thanks once again :)

[cridus]

it happens very rarely that a person starts getting this error practically every single time, with very
few exceptions. the only time it happened to me, I hard-rebooted my modem and it got fixed.

normally, that message appears when you were about to enter a world in which there was someone that had blocked your steam profile, so the invasion/summon fails.

[rockstar70073]

Originally posted by cridus:

it happens very rarely that a person starts getting this error practically every single time, with very
few exceptions. the only time it happened to me, I hard-rebooted my modem and it got fixed.

normally, that message appears when you were about to enter a world in which there was someone that had blocked your steam profile, so the invasion/summon fails.

It happens to everyone I try even when I never played with that person before

[Devil Jin]

Best solution is stop using wi-fi.That's all.

[cridus]

Originally posted by rockstar70073:

It happens to everyone I try even when I never played with that person before

I know, I said that it usually only happens when someone had blocked you, but very rarely you get that error almost every single time for some reason, and the fix for me was to hard-reboot the modem.

[rockstar70073]

Originally posted by cridus:

Originally posted by rockstar70073:

It happens to everyone I try even when I never played with that person before

I know, I said that it usually only happens when someone had blocked you, but very rarely you get that error almost every single time for some reason, and the fix for me was to hard-reboot the modem.

i tried hardbooting the modem i re-installed the game and the problem still consists

[><=-- = =]

So, since this is one of the top Google results for this issue and it was happening to me (it just started suddenly), I wanted to share my fix. Bandai has a list of ports to open, and it completely cleared up my summoning/being summoned failures:

https://support.bandainamcoent.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/512/458/dark-souls-iii---connection-tips-for-dark-souls-iii

I had to both open (port forward) the TCP and UDP ports (my router also had a specific format which must be used to get all the ports in),

- reboot the router, _and_ also totally
- quit and restart Steam, but afterwards I was summoned as Blue Sentinel automatically and in my own summon signs right away.

* I still have issues sometimes, but I notice they go away on their own (usually within a few hours to a day), so I can only assume it's just network congestion, because without changing anything it starts working again, but definitely improved with these ports.

Hope it helps someone else.