There have been various other threads which touch on this topic, and many solutions offered - none of which ever actually work, so I figured I'd start again.
The problem, which started occurring on iOS 6, and has become chronic with iOS 8 is that Game Center will spontaneously disconnect players for no apparent reason. In my game I can have 2 to 4 players going and sending data to each other at a pretty good rate of 10-20 packets per second. The game will be running smoothly, and there's no sign of lost or delayed data. Yet all of a sudden one player will suddenly stop receiving or sending data, and then 20 seconds later it will timeout and disconnect from the game. This usually triggers a cascade which causes the remaining players to suddenly disconnect without warning.
In another thread someone thought the problem was caused by Reliable data packets - when one got lost Game Center would disconnect that player. This is not the case. I tried making all my data unreliable and it made no difference. Others have suggested it was caused by having Double NAT enabled on the router - not the case either.
Normally, this problem is sporadic, but in a new game we're working on it happens 100% of the time in a 3 or 4 player match, and occasionally in a 2-player match. It won't happen if all of the devices are in my office on WiFi. However, if I put one device on cellular it will fail every time. Or, if two devices are in the office on WiFi, and the other 2 are across the country on WiFi it'll fail.
Game Center clearly has issues, but this one is absolutely killing me. Has anyone made any progress in figuring out why Game Center will spontaneously lose connections with players even when things appear to be working just fine?
