Almost a year later, Multiplayer is still a mess

[anikaiful]

With respect mate I played Guild Wars 2 for a bit... a hundred players was pretty norm for some of the bosses, maybe more.

Debate has gone on and on about this p2p v server etc.

P2p in my humble opinion has effectively nerfed proper multiplayer, period. I honestly believe the only people who don't see that have never played a proper multiplayer game before......

tis the saddest thing about ED

It's pointless to compare ED with games that do not track e.g. bullets one-by-one.

 

[ElectricZ]

As the OP mentioned, a huge number of people playing ED will never realize there are any problems.

It's only when you try to play with the same people over and over that it becomes evident. Running through space randomly meeting people, you'll never notice that you can't talk to somebody or you're not seeing the same thing in an instance. But when you try to play with the same wingmates and get "Unable to connect" message you know you're in trouble. It was stated by FD in the dev thread that dedicated co-op missions weren't going to be implemented anytime in the near future. That makes no sense with the addition of wings. On the one hand, they want you to team up. On the other hand, they don't seem to want to provide any in-game incentive to do it. It's pure speculation on my part, but I'm starting to think that it's because they tried it in-house and couldn't make it work reliably. If they released it to the general public in the current state of the game, all it would do would generate complaints from players who see completely different things when in the same instance, let alone trying to sync up mission objectives and payouts.

I really, really hoped CQC was going to force Frontier to acknowledge the shortcomings of their network models. With CQC they are effectively forcing players into the same instance. But look at what they've done... Max 8 ships instead of 32. They've simplified the flight model. All weapons are auto-aim. It's like they knew that their P2P scheme wasn't going to be able to handle it, so they scaled the game back in a big way to keep things from getting out of control.

And if you go look at the CQC forum, it's still a mess. People are unable to see other players. Warping. Lag. Inconsistent performance. Unreliable matchmaking. Some people can't even see anybody in their games. As part of the 1.4 installation instructions, it's mentioned that UPNP must be enabled, but a lot of ISP's don't even support UPNP, or deliberately block it because they think it's a security vulnerability. Yet it's now a requirement? Sure, there's a manual workaround, editing an appconfig file, enabling port forwarding, and opening a port in your firewall... But honestly, how many other games in 2015 need this kind of extra effort to play multiplayer when it's an advertised feature of the game.

And there's the rub. The game requirements make no mention of minimum bandwidth requirements or quality of service. They make no mention of UPNP as a requirement for multiplayer. Yet people can freely play the game without either, and inadvertently degrade the experience of those they connect with. It's been a problem since the Beta launch back in 2014, and unless something changes it will haunt ED well into Horizons...

 

[Vow]

Don't understand 100% everything you brought up, but i agree that their need to be changes with the whole networking thing. Two experiences come to mind about this, the Hutton Mug delivery to that random research station 160LY away and just my general experience when i try to play with friends(who no longer play anymore) i'am not knowledgeable about this enough to point out the actual caues but i know it's their.

 

[Dbrn47]

Well it isn't like they marketed the game as multiplayer or anything. I don't see what the big deal is.

 

[SnowyNI]

P2P - The best way ever to skimp on the cash for servers AND add a on the fly DRM and call it a stock market! The clever little weasels.

 

[Gray Lensman]

Agreed.
(No bananas.)

 

[Sylow]

blah, blah.

The big question is: what does this thread have to do with PvP? I fully agree with the OP, although i am not interested in PvP at all. Just play together with some people, go to a RES and start hunting pirates together. You WILL notice if just one in the group or even somebody else who stumbled into the same RES is from a corner of the world which is not close to you. Yes, it happens that you have people from three different continents in one instance.

In such a situation you might not see all of the ships (player or NPC) around you, ships can warp around, when using ballistic weapons your crosshair start to rubberband, etc. All the ugly stuff which other games have eliminated a decade ago is here in full force. But oki, now you want to eliminate multiplayer. Offline play already was eliminated due to technical reasons, so why not do the same with multiplayer, resulting in a single player game which requires permanent internet access? Great plan...

 

[Oheck]

OP:

Exactly how many man-hours would it take to code client-server structure into any part of the game, make it work together with whatever P2P was left, how much would it take to replace the P2P with client-server if that turned out to be easier? And for that matter, how much would it cost them to maintain the massive servers that would take? How much, that is, above and beyond what they pay to rent Amazon's servers even for just what they already do? I don't expect an answer, I know I couldn't begin to guess and I doubt you can, I just want you to think about it.

What I would hope for an answer to is: what, exactly, are you willing to pay FD to undertake such a project? I mean, you can get almost anything if you make it worth somebody's while, but it would be a massive investment on their part, and they'd have a right to expect a healthy profit. So, how much will you chip in? How much will others chip in? I'll tell you what I'll chip in: Zero, zilch, nada. I can live with the game as it is, and I wish it wasn't multiplayer at all.

I'm tired of all this griping. I'm tired of everything fun getting nerfed because the PvPers thought it was too scaaaaaary to actually try to deal with it. I'm tired of all the debating, the drama, the absolute, utter bull. If you're going to call for them to overhaul multiplayer, here's MY plea: ELIMINATE Multiplayer. Kill Open; leave us with Solo mode ONLY. And I would totally understand if they wanted to just shut the forum down, too! Good grief, the things the FD staff must think when they log on here, and look at what certain yammerheads say over, and over, and over again... Ha, yeah, they'd probably think of me as one of the yammerheads.

Can't a discussion exist to throw around ideas to improve something? Why are you even commenting in a thread discussing a mode that you clearly despise? The second someone brings up multiplayer the only thing that typically comes out of a Solo'ist mouth is PVP PVP!!! There's more to an MMO then PvP. Play your solo game and leave those interested in multiplayer to discuss it. The game is continually advertised as a MMO, so it only lends to reason to make that aspect work properly and seamlessly, with tools for those players to communicate as they do in any other MMO. How long is it since Wings came out? Things are still not functioning as they should. It has to get resolved at some point. Certainly not by the means you suggest.

 

[Ghostickles]

1 and 2 you describe is due mostly to the indifferent state of the internet as of today. Varying connection rates and latency. Not much to do about that till everyone playing has a decent connection.

We are still in the infancy of being able to play these games And of the internet.

Other games, I dont have these problems. Please explain to me why Elite is so *special.

 

[sbdags]

I stopped reading after "I have repeatedly warned.."

Sorry why should I be following your warnings? You lost a reader.

 

[Kubicide]

1 and 2 you describe is due mostly to the indifferent state of the internet as of today. Varying connection rates and latency. Not much to do about that till everyone playing has a decent connection.

We are still in the infancy of being able to play these games And of the internet.

Only one at the infancy is FDev. Not sure where you have been but I've been playing games over the Internet for, what, 18-20 years now. Sad to hear others find this concept new. FDev simply took the cheap way to connect the players (by using P2P as they did) and it will always have many limitations.

 

[Temple604]

I really enjoy this game, but the MP issues are one of the most frustrating and game killing for me. Organized pvp battles are a nightmare to set up, and require a lot of patience, changing instances, reloging, and luck to even have the chance for it to happen. I think a good easy fix to this would be to make instances set and be able to selected by players. For example you ask your friend "what instance are you in?". Oh ur in instance 2, so you go to the menu and select the instance swap option. Would also be nice for them to list how many people are in an instance. etc

 

[Tarman]

I stopped reading after "I have repeatedly warned.."

Sorry why should I be following your warnings? You lost a reader.

Didn't take much for you then did it.

NOES THE WORDS
THEYRE GOING IN MY EYES AND MAKING MY BRAIN DO STUFF

Or not, you know. It's a case by case thing.

 

[CmdrJacks]

I neither agree nor disagree. I would like a banana but that is beside the point. You make, in general, good points. They already have servers, you seem to be asking to scale it dynamically to enhance the game. This is difficult to argue against, I just don't know what the impact would be on their plan.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

OP, the drum about P2P vs C/S has been banged to death. Even should FD decide they wanted to do it, it would require a massive effort at this stage, and delaying other plans. Not to mention a load of refinement and testing of the changed network code which would leave months of new bugs.

On top of that, it works "good enough" for most people for most of the time. There is little incentive to actually change.

Finally, C/S is not the panecea that some people seem to believe. Sure, there are some advantages, including making the game a little harder to hack, but you point to lag as being a problem of P2P, but C/S is also likely to have lag, perhaps worse lag. You want larger instances with a C/S architecture, you're actually asking for lots of lag.

And of course the big one - server costs. Then we start looking at monthly fees. I bought a game that didn't have monthly fees. It was a big selling point for me.

You might as well drop it, the drum has been well and truly banged over the months.

 

[OnePercent]

This thread makes me face palm so hard seeing everyone look at OP like he is a .

OP is 100% correct, if you are indifferent to OP, CLEARLY you have never played a true multiplayer game other than elite, if you find the concept of a stable and reliable internet connect extremely alien and new; CLEARLY you have no idea what you're talking about.

To put it simply, Frontier CHOSE P2P for the purpose of one thing only - COST. P2P is by far the cheapest.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

To put it simply, Frontier CHOSE P2P for the purpose of one thing only - COST. P2P is by far the cheapest.

Thanks to which, we have no monthly subscription fees. \o/

 

[Loudstorm]

I thought open play only for billboard abuse.

 

[Moriarte]

Nah, lost cause. The whole game is a demo and is compromise upon compromise. And at this point no one in their right mind will be charitable enough to invest millions in new infrastructure. Someday the big boys, like EA or something, will get together couple hundred mil, a bunch of talented people and will make the best space sim. ever with all the modern bells and whistles, market the crap out of it and sell it for a billion profit.. Look at Battlefield 4, GTA 5, Skyrim - ahead by a mile.

I don't see projects of such magnitude work any other way. Oh, it all works on some level, but stuff like "a year later MP is a mess" is just a given.

 

[Vow]

OP, the drum about P2P vs C/S has been banged to death. Even should FD decide they wanted to do it, it would require a massive effort at this stage, and delaying other plans. Not to mention a load of refinement and testing of the changed network code which would leave months of new bugs.

On top of that, it works "good enough" for most people for most of the time. There is little incentive to actually change.

Finally, C/S is not the panecea that some people seem to believe. Sure, there are some advantages, including making the game a little harder to hack, but you point to lag as being a problem of P2P, but C/S is also likely to have lag, perhaps worse lag. You want larger instances with a C/S architecture, you're actually asking for lots of lag.

And of course the big one - server costs. Then we start looking at monthly fees. I bought a game that didn't have monthly fees. It was a big selling point for me.

You might as well drop it, the drum has been well and truly banged over the months.

I'd reckon it's not quite dead yet and for a game that's supposedly has many more years of upgrades through expansions, it being a "massive effort" shouldn't dissuade FD from investing more in their network.