Use a time-limited session lease—not a socket’s momentary state—to decide whether a player is still present. Renew it only when the server accepts valid activity, allow a defined grace period for rejoining after a dropped connection, and expire the session when renewals stop. This lets a returning player reclaim the same identity without leaving abandoned sessions online indefinitely.
What a heartbeat proves—and what it does not
A heartbeat is a renewal signal for a particular record. Depending on the system, that record might be a transport connection, lobby, room, actor, or player session. A transport ping can show that a connection responds; it does not by itself prove that a player is actively playing or that a game session can be resumed. Decide explicitly what “present” means in your game and which signal is allowed to renew that state.
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For example, Unity Lobby’s host heartbeat keeps a lobby from being marked inactive, whereas Unity Relay PING messages prevent a transport timeout. These renew different kinds of liveness; neither should automatically be treated as proof of active gameplay.
Model presence as a lease
Store presence with an expiry deadline. When the server accepts a valid renewal, advance that deadline. If renewals stop, mark the session as temporarily disconnected or stale while its reconnect grace period remains. Once the lease expires, mark the player absent and run the usual cleanup and notifications.
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- Presenting Guild Wars a Competitive Online Role Playing Game with an emphasis on tactical combat. In single player multiplayer and guild-based missions players will explore a fantasy world while pursuing professions and gaining skills that help them develop and advance their unique character.Guild Wars is the first title from Seattle-based ArenaNet which was founded by key members of the creative teams behind the hit games Warcraft StarCraft and Diablo as well as Battle.net the most-successful gaming network in the world.Guild Wars offers cooperative group combat single player missions and large head-to-head guild battles. While each combat experience will be different achievements will be permanent so that the character grows and progresses over time. Unique items special abilities and a wide variety of skills add meaningful value for the player and for his comrades. Missions are not scripted adventures but are tactical battlegrounds where victory or loss is determined by skill and teamwork. Free Online Play (Internet Connection Required)
- The game includes integrated support for guilds, with guild banners and halls, chat rooms and forums -- guilds can challenge other guilds to battle, compete for control of key parts of the world, and be ranked on a worldwide ladder
- Unique Streaming Technology ArenaNet's unique streaming technology forever eliminates the concept of patching a game. You don't have to wait a month for the next big patch to experience new content. Instead, the game constantly and intelligently streams new content to your computer in the background while you play. The world can change continually. This allows us to build a much more dynamic game world than any that has existed before.
- Built for Competition After learning the game and building up your first character, you may choose to test your skills in head-to-head competition or guild warfare. The game is designed to reward player skill and teamwork, not time spent playing, so you won't need to spend hundreds of hours leveling up your character to compete. The game includes integrated support for guilds, with guild banners and halls, chat rooms and forums. Guilds can challenge other guilds to battle, compete for control of key parts of the world, and be ranked on a worldwide ladder.
- Renewal signal: Define whether any accepted packet, a specific application heartbeat, a lobby update, or meaningful gameplay activity renews the lease.
- State scope: Record exactly what the lease covers: connection, lobby, room, or player session.
- Expiry and grace: Choose how long the state remains reclaimable after renewals stop. This is a game policy, not a universal timeout.
- Cleanup: Remove or finalize expired state even if a disconnect notification was missed.
A finite lease places a bound on stale presence. Redis’s game-session tutorial, published March 25, 2026, demonstrates room records with TTLs and optimistic concurrency control using WATCH/MULTI. A TTL is useful for bounded storage, but it does not by itself define the player’s reconnect contract or guarantee that every lifecycle event is delivered.
Reconnect by reclaiming the player session
A network interruption drops a connection; it does not necessarily mean the player has left the game. Reconnection creates a new transport connection, so keep connection identity separate from player or session identity. After the client reconnects, authenticate its session, associate the new connection with the existing player record, and renew presence only after the server accepts the rejoin.
- Detect loss: Treat a dropped socket or transport timeout as a connection interruption, not immediate proof of permanent departure.
- Keep bounded state: Retain the player’s session for the configured grace period, with a finite expiry.
- Validate the rejoin: Check the session credentials or token and confirm that the session remains eligible for resumption.
- Attach the new connection: Bind it to the existing player record rather than creating a duplicate player.
- Renew after acceptance: Refresh the lease when the server has validated and accepted the rejoin.
- Expire otherwise: If the grace period ends without an accepted rejoin, mark the player absent and clean up the state.
Guard against delayed events from the old connection. For instance, an old connection’s late leave message must not clear presence that a newer connection has resumed. A connection-generation number, session version, or equivalent ownership check can reject stale updates. This is an implementation safeguard for the identity handoff, not a behavior guaranteed by the providers below.
How provider timeouts differ
Vendor timeouts apply to distinct systems and should not be copied as a universal player-presence grace period.
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| System | What its liveness setting covers | Documented behavior |
|---|---|---|
| Unity Lobby | Lobby activity | Unity documents a default active lifespan of 30 seconds, configurable at the project level. The Multiplayer Services SDK automatically keeps sessions alive, so manual heartbeat pings are not needed when using sessions. Lobby updates count only when lobby properties change; no-op updates and changes only to host player data do not count. Unity Lobby documentation. |
| Unity Relay | Relay client transport | Unity documents a default client disconnect TTL of 10 seconds. It also documents a 60-second TTL when the host is alone after BIND and before another peer connects, and recommends periodic PING messages to prevent unintended timeout. These are Relay transport rules, not an application-level player-session grace period. Unity Relay documentation. |
| Photon PUN 2 | Room player retention for rejoin | Quick Rejoin can return a disconnected client to a room if the server still treats the player as active. Reconnect and rejoin require PlayerTTL; the documentation does not establish one universal PlayerTTL value. Photon PUN 2 documentation. |
| PubNub Presence | Joined presence state | Heartbeat or subscribe activity can renew joined presence. PubNub emits a TIMEOUT event when activity is not received within the configured interval. This is presence-service behavior, not proof of gameplay activity. PubNub documentation. |
Retry without creating a reconnect storm
Clients should retry within the session’s reclaim window, but synchronized clients that retry at the same fixed intervals can produce a burst of load. Exponential backoff spreads attempts over time; adding random jitter helps prevent clients from retrying together. Set a retry limit or stop condition that fits the lease and tell the client when the server considers resumption no longer possible.
The node-redis reconnect guidance documents automatic reconnection and allows a custom strategy. Its example uses exponential backoff capped at 3,000 ms plus random jitter from 0–100 ms; those values describe that example, not a universal requirement or benchmark.
Make expiry and event handling reliable
Timeouts and leave events are useful signals, but cleanup should not depend on receiving every event. Redis’s game-session tutorial uses Pub/Sub for room lifecycle events and characterizes it as fire-and-forget. If a missed event would leave incorrect state, use a durable event log or a snapshot-and-reconciliation path to recover. The lease expiry remains the bounded fallback for abandoned presence.
For observability, distinguish at least connection loss, accepted rejoin, lease expiry, and final session cleanup. That separation makes it possible to tell a transient disconnect from an abandoned session without treating every dropped connection as a permanent departure.
Implementation checklist
- Define what “present” means and which server-validated signal renews it.
- Keep connection identity separate from player/session identity.
- Set a finite lease and a reconnect grace period appropriate to the game; no universal heartbeat interval or expiry duration is established.
- Authenticate rejoin attempts and attach accepted connections to the existing player session.
- Use an ownership or generation check so stale connection events cannot override a newer rejoin.
- Expire and clean up abandoned state even when notifications are lost.
- Use bounded reconnect retries with backoff and jitter to limit synchronized retry load.
The WebSocket reconnection guide likewise recommends separating session identity from connection identity, retaining bounded session state, and cleaning up expired presence. It is a technical guide, not a protocol standard or a vendor guarantee.
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