Possible cause of connection issues

[KingSkovald]

I'm trying to help my friend with Red Alert 3, but we can't connect with each other. I already boosted this co-op not so long ago so I hoped that we should be able to connect together, both of us have NAT1 so it looked promising, but we have this blank name glitch no matter what we try.

We managed to connect together only when my friend was using one of her alt accounts. The interesting part was that only that one account worked with my main every time we join lobby without the need to do anything extraordinary, but no other combination of accounts worked so it definitely wasn't an issue with network connection.

During our Bad Company boost I used a tool which is able to collect some metadata from EA servers used for majority of their PS3 games including Red Alert 3. I decided to check if there is anything useful there and wrote a script to format its output in a readable format and checked what data can be collected. Most of Red Allert 3 data seemed useless, just some generic things like IP/Port of the host, PSN IDs, ID of the lobby, game type etc. but one thing that caught my attention was admin_userid field cause for my friend this value was much larger than the values of other players. I don't know what it stands for but it's most likely the internal ID of EA account. Most of active lobby hosts had 9-10 digits in their IDs while my friend and all our alt accounts that didn't work had 13 or more. Numbers with 13 digits are out of range of commonly used 32-bit integers so my theory is that Red Alert 3 has troubles with these kinds of values. Both my main and her alt are the only accounts that can connect together and both have 10-digits IDs while all other accounts that didn't work had 13 digits IDs.

 

Here is example of the lobby spawned by one of my alts which can't connect to anyone:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dbrHas7gTuvFiLGR5v5Jcokr1Gq41rk9/view

 

It would be nice if more players with both working/non-working accounts could check this and either confirmed my theory or not. What you see on that screenshot is just my script that formatted output of eallist.exe tool to more readable format. The tool itself can be downloaded here. Read the description how to create the account there (just pick some random values for password/username and write them down), once it is done the command needed to fetch Red Alert 3 servers data is

ealist.exe -n cncra3-ps3 -a USERNAME PASSWORD cncra3-ps3 -X none

Hopefully someone can find a solution for that and hopefully not in last few days cause this co-op takes some time to complete.

Edited October 19, 2022 by KingSkovald

[Letenko]

Holy shit, you found it. You may actually found the cause of my issue. I thought I was gonna go insane looking why my alt worked while my main didn't. As soon as I finish work and have access to my PC, I will check this.

[NuckleWill]

I was successful connecting using an alt account created in the same year as my main account (2013). With newly created accounts, I have a dark avatar in the lobby, not being able to proceed to the match.

 

NAT 2 connection (2 ps3), no console IP in dmz or open ports to improve connection.

[KingSkovald]

I tried to contact EA support today and although Game Advisor I connected with was quite cooperative and understood my frustration, there wasn't much she could do.
Game Advisors can't escalate to devs so it's a dead end. I posted on their forums, there are some more screenshots/info:
Red Alert 3 Blank Name Critical Bug PS3/Xbox 360 cause - Answer HQ (ea.com)

[Letenko]

I haven't gotten around to checking mine yet, but I wonder if you could disconnect your PSN from the EA account, like people do for Medal of Honor Warfighter and then connect it to another EA account that belonged to a different, working, PSN profile.

[EdinhoN]

On 10/19/2022 at 7:07 PM, KingSkovald said:

I'm trying to help my friend with Red Alert 3, but we can't connect with each other. I already boosted this co-op not so long ago so I hoped that we should be able to connect together, both of us have NAT1 so it looked promising, but we have this blank name glitch no matter what we try.

We managed to connect together only when my friend was using one of her alt accounts. The interesting part was that only that one account worked with my main every time we join lobby without the need to do anything extraordinary, but no other combination of accounts worked so it definitely wasn't an issue with network connection.

During our Bad Company boost I used a tool which is able to collect some metadata from EA servers used for majority of their PS3 games including Red Alert 3. I decided to check if there is anything useful there and wrote a script to format its output in a readable format and checked what data can be collected. Most of Red Allert 3 data seemed useless, just some generic things like IP/Port of the host, PSN IDs, ID of the lobby, game type etc. but one thing that caught my attention was admin_userid field cause for my friend this value was much larger than the values of other players. I don't know what it stands for but it's most likely the internal ID of EA account. Most of active lobby hosts had 9-10 digits in their IDs while my friend and all our alt accounts that didn't work had 13 or more. Numbers with 13 digits are out of range of commonly used 32-bit integers so my theory is that Red Alert 3 has troubles with these kinds of values. Both my main and her alt are the only accounts that can connect together and both have 10-digits IDs while all other accounts that didn't work had 13 digits IDs.

 

Here is example of the lobby spawned by one of my alts which can't connect to anyone:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dbrHas7gTuvFiLGR5v5Jcokr1Gq41rk9/view

 

It would be nice if more players with both working/non-working accounts could check this and either confirmed my theory or not. What you see on that screenshot is just my script that formatted output of eallist.exe tool to more readable format. The tool itself can be downloaded here. Read the description how to create the account there (just pick some random values for password/username and write them down), once it is done the command needed to fetch Red Alert 3 servers data is

ealist.exe -n cncra3-ps3 -a USERNAME PASSWORD cncra3-ps3 -X none

 

Hopefully someone can find a solution for that and hopefully not in last few days cause this co-op takes some time to complete.

Can you send an example of how creating an EA Account for checking? I've tried using this tool and it's always returning me that Account.password is missing or invalid.

 

Also, what did you use to extract that JSON file with your internal EA IDs?

Edited October 22, 2022 by EdinhoN

[KingSkovald]

7 hours ago, Letenko said:

I haven't gotten around to checking mine yet, but I wonder if you could disconnect your PSN from the EA account, like people do for Medal of Honor Warfighter and then connect it to another EA account that belonged to a different, working, PSN profile.

I thought about that too but unfortunately it won't work, if account is already linked to one PSN it can't be linked to another PSN (check alert text with exclamation mark):
https://help.ea.com/en/help/account/unlink-gaming-accounts-from-ea-account/
To make it even worse there is a 6 months cooldown on how often you can unlink your PSN from EA accounts. So technically you have one attempt to unlink your main EA account from PSN and create a new one from same PSN which will most likely have 13 digits again and then you won't be able to change to your old account back for 6 months, I don't suggest doing it.

 

5 hours ago, EdinhoN said:

Can you send an example of how creating an EA Account for checking? I've tried using this tool and it's always returning me that Account.password is missing or invalid.

 

I tried to create new one but can't get past this password error too, maybe EA has changed something on their side cause I created mine 2-3 years ago. If you need to check your ID send me a DM.

 

5 hours ago, EdinhoN said:

Also, what did you use to extract that JSON file with your internal EA IDs?

 

Sign in here https://www.ea.com/, click on user icon in top right corner, then Account Settings and open "Your EA Data". Click "Request a Download" and you'll have to wait 5-10 minutes for it to become available. There won't be much useful info tho, you'll see "XXXXXX" values for "Internal_ID" properties too, EA is hiding them.

Edited October 22, 2022 by KingSkovald

[EdinhoN]

Unfortunately I can't even connect to EA servers on PS3 when first accessing an online portion of the game, it always gives "Unable to connect to EA Online servers" and I'm on DMZ already. Using the EAlist tool, I see 6 or 7 servers playing right now so servers should be working. If I need NAT1 to connect, I'll probably skip this game as I can't enslave my whole network directly to the ps3

Edited October 22, 2022 by EdinhoN

[U_mad_bro7778]

17 hours ago, EdinhoN said:

Unfortunately I can't even connect to EA servers on PS3 when first accessing an online portion of the game, it always gives "Unable to connect to EA Online servers" and I'm on DMZ already. Using the EAlist tool, I see 6 or 7 servers playing right now so servers should be working. If I need NAT1 to connect, I'll probably skip this game as I can't enslave my whole network directly to the ps3

It takes a few times to connect. Keep spamming versus > online and the game will let you on a some point. You can also try hosting a co-op game to attempt to “connect” to the servers. 

[Cpt_v0kA]

good find! its funny tho because i was having the same suspicions but didn't really look into it since i connected to someone from germany almost immediately and focused on the game instead 

Edited October 23, 2022 by Cpt_v0kA