I've decided to give 2.4 a try.

[NecoMachina]

I'd suppose if one looks for bugs and mishaps in their game session then the game is big and sandbox enough to find stuck corners. Meanwhile the bgs changes, hundreds of participants in the cg's and powerplay prep and expansion continue and missions for cordial or neutral paying out tens to hundreds of k's , not quite a "few coins". btw, the power generator raid missions can also be done by shooting from the ship or an SLF. skimmer missions too.

Your implying that he's gone out of his way to look for something to complain about. The truth is, these bugs slap you in the face whether you are looking for them or not. Seriously man, the game is REALLY buggy, and has been for the entire 3 years. At what point can we expect the majority of the bugs to be gone and stay gone?

Weirdly I didn't have any connection errors myself. The usual P2P matchmaking issues and player ships popping in and out of existence, yes, but nothing on the scale you described.

I'm not saying that your issues don't exist or aren't bad, but at the same time I think you might have received more than the usual share of issues compared to other players. Usually the game isn't *that* bad at things. Except for multicrew. Multicrew is pretty hopeless both technically and in what you can actually do with it.

The game *IS* 100% for sure actually that bad at the moment. I've seen every single one of the bugs described in the OP. Alot of them have been around for a looooong time.

 

[Drelthar]

To be fair, really guys, this game does, definately have something that doesn't work as well as many other games.

And let's not just totally blame it on P2P.

P2P is a legit connection method, and works in various other places, and also... a lot of connection issues (transaction server, etc etc) aren't to do with P2P really, because it's just you connecting to a server, and doesn't require someone else on the other end.

Those ones are pretty inexcusable.


I have to say, this is the only game I've ever had any kind of significant connection problems with, and I've played quite a lot of games.


Having said that, I generally don't have any major issues, but I do fairly often have quite a few minor ones, especially if I try multicrew, or wings.

I kind of feel like the "It's your connection" thing, while possibly true sometimes, doesn't always hold up, and I feel like sometimes people use it as a catch all excuse for peoples legitamate problems they are experiencing, which isn't good, as FD should be getting feedback on this kind of thing.

 

[Pyrotiger]

So OP makes his usual post-patch criticism. Nothing new. But yeah, it's the acid comments, maybe it's the sense of humour but for me it actually conveys hatred of the game. Fair dos criticising its flaws, of which there are many, but...I don't see any sense in playing a game that you hate, and such posts aren't going to change anybody's opinion either way, so goodbye and good luck with the flawless chocobos, eh?

 

[Drelthar]

The countdown stuck at 5 was something new even for me, and it was hysterical because me and the guy were still able to talk to each other via the ingame voice channel and the write chat.

This... this is the most INSANE thing I have ever experienced in any game.

It's totally mad.

You can also, literally, be in a wing with someone, actually flying around, fighting enemies together, you can even be connected via voice comms, however... you try to use the in game text comms to talk to them direct?

Nope. Could not connect to user.

Oh, right... because I'm not connected to them right now? errr.... ok?

Similar things with other combinations, but it just seems utterly mad.

 

[Komemiute]

Fired up the game after months I'm pleasantly surprised the mission board in a system with 5 billion people has more than half a dozen tasks, finally I must say, it took them only 2 years to make it work. A shame though, now missions pay a few coins, the new rescue agency window pays also a few coins, but transport missions pay millions for a single jump 8 ly away. 10/10 for balance.

Since I felt a little rusty I decided to pick up a "destroy x generator in x settlement" kind of mission. It only worked correctly once, since later on it gave me the "server couldn't upload the total list of mission" error when I tried to access the list.

The planet I had to land on was a few thousand ls away, no biggie, almost reached the orbit and.. connection error, couldn't something something from the server. Had to make the trip twice. Huzzah.
A few minutes later I discover the settlement lays on the side of a huge mountain, I carefully landed my ship at 2 km from the structure in the only landing spot I found, sent the ship away and proceeded on the srv. After what seemed like an eternity of driving on very bumpy and irregular terrain I found the generator and shot it down, swiftly getting away on the only plain terrain there was, where I landed my ship before.

Ship says screw the conveniently plain lz and lands exactly on the rugged terrain, near the base, where turrets (or drones, can't say) were targeting it and bringing down the shields.
Once reached the ship I got completely stuck underneath the hull, because the irregular terrain couldn't let me fit through the cargo slot. Sent the ship away, I recalled it after 7-8 minutes of driving, since I wanted to get as fas as possible from whatever irregular terrain the game could have sent my ship on. Finally got back and discovered the left panel ui was completely unresponsive, it wouldn't switch tab from left to right. Had to exit and re enter the game.

On my way back I decided to try out multicrew, because the thought of jumping 28 times to reach Maia was giving me a headache.

First try was a no go for every single option available, tried a few minutes later again and ended up on an exploraconda. Rubberbanding, chat kept unfocusing every single time the pilot pressed the fdrive button making the conversation exquisitely frustrating, and a gorgeous perspective from inside the skull of my avatar, where I could see the eyebulbs and the fringe.

Second try I end up on a bounty hunting corvette where as soon as I got into the slf it gave me an error and sent me back to my ship.

Third try I finally found a seat on the xeno sight seeing multicrew option.
Very eerie and nice cutscene I must admit, after having seen it a few times it went kinda meh though and we decided to go visit the thargoid structure thing discovered a few months back since I didn't (and still havent) seen it yet.

Frameshift drive charging, 5..... 5
"Hey, is the countdown frozen to you too?"
"Yep"
Had to close the game from manager since the esc button was also unresponsive.



And still this day, people get wildly mad at me when I say this game, after 3 years, is an early access game in alpha disguised as full release.

Question-

If I don't have any of your problems, is the game still bugged or it may be a different issue?

 

[Ian Skippy]

To be fair, really guys, this game does, definately have something that doesn't work as well as many other games.

And let's not just totally blame it on P2P.

P2P is a legit connection method, and works in various other places, and also... a lot of connection issues (transaction server, etc etc) aren't to do with P2P really, because it's just you connecting to a server, and doesn't require someone else on the other end.

Those ones are pretty inexcusable.


I have to say, this is the only game I've ever had any kind of significant connection problems with, and I've played quite a lot of games.


Having said that, I generally don't have any major issues, but I do fairly often have quite a few minor ones, especially if I try multicrew, or wings.

I kind of feel like the "It's your connection" thing, while possibly true sometimes, doesn't always hold up, and I feel like sometimes people use it as a catch all excuse for peoples legitamate problems they are experiencing, which isn't good, as FD should be getting feedback on this kind of thing.

If I posted having issues, I'd listen to suggestions and try them. If I'd just scold people who offer advice while continuing to complain, it might seem I had more interest in complaining than finding solutions. And without any network logs or settings, this topic provides virtually no useful feedback to FD. So what is actually the point? Providing useful feedback? Finding solutions? Or just spleen-venting with no interest in either?

OP can do as he wants, but if he cant even be bothered to check his settings...

 

[Toumal]

You can also, literally, be in a wing with someone, actually flying around, fighting enemies together, you can even be connected via voice comms, however... you try to use the in game text comms to talk to them direct?
Nope. Could not connect to user.

That's Elite and its five different ways of communication your game client does at any given time. It's not the best design in the history of multiplayer games. Unfortunately I think we'll be stuck with it, at least unless Frontier buckles up and commits to spending a LOT of effort into redoing multiplayer as a whole. I'm afraid they think it's just good enough for now, and perhaps it really is. Only when FD feels that something is horribly broken they will consider a proper solution. Point in case: Landing pad assignments. Remember when your assigned pad kept changing as other players left/joined your instance?

The way ED's P2P quietly falls back to singleplayer is also very convenient and devious at the same time: You can be the victim of poor P2P matchmaking, NAT issues and/or outright game bugs and not notice a thing, except for the fact that you are unable to see human commanders. I've had friends of mine who never saw another human soul for weeks, and then we found it was just a NAT issue and they'd effectively been playing solo the whole time.

Just the other day I was checking out the barnacle forest and saw a fellow commander in an AspX in front of me, and he popped out of existence, then back in, then out again, then back in. Checking the netlogs I saw constant issues with instancing, maybe a network thing on his end, maybe on mine, or a game bug... we'll never know.


Here's the thing though: Getting Multiplayer working reliably is really, really hard. Getting P2P MP working reliably is twice as difficult.

As for the chat thing: We know it's not the receive side that's the problem, so I'd put the text chat sending behind the same API as the market and other services. Use an MQ of your choice on the backend side to store/route the chat messages. You could even store messages for players while offline, which would be a nice additional feature. There's simply no reason for not being able to send a chat message to another player at any given time, unless there's basic connectivity problems (in which case you get booted from the game anyway)

 

[kilvenny]

I am going to bite here. I don't see these issues currently, but I did in the past have connection issues, so I am going to share my experience, just in case its of some benefit, please feel free to disregard on the basis that I am a fanboy.

ED uses peer to peer networking, many on line games do not. Peer to peer is a way of reducing the cost for the developer, but in turn it means that players especially in multiplayer on line generally need to have better networking that handles connection not just to the dev's server, but to the other players in their instance. It's worth reading up on, because it makes very interesting reading. Upload speeds can also be a big factor. When I first started playing ED I couldn't understand why I got lots of connection issues and others didn't, but no issues with other games. I traced it to my ISP throttling my upstream, the small print was illuminating in the contract! I upgraded my line and the problems disappeared. I just dropped a gtx1080 in at the weekend to replace an aging gtx760 in my Desktop and that seems to have had an impact on performance as well in some areas. I usually game on a laptop and I had through circumstance had to revert to my rig and I was noticing it was much worse than my laptop, the only variable being the graphics card (desktop has better cpu).

I am in the privileged position of being able to indulge my hobby and sadly not everyone is in that position. However IMHO and experience this game does benefit from a speedy internet connection and decent graphics hardware. Whether it should or not is another question of course.

 

[Quester91]

So OP makes his usual post-patch criticism. Nothing new. But yeah, it's the acid comments, maybe it's the sense of humour but for me it actually conveys hatred of the game. Fair dos criticising its flaws, of which there are many, but...I don't see any sense in playing a game that you hate, and such posts aren't going to change anybody's opinion either way, so goodbye and good luck with the flawless chocobos, eh?

Who said, ever, that I hate this game?
And who said that ffxiv is flawless?

Mate, triggered?

 

[avow555]

To summarise - OP has repeated connection issues. Blames game for requiring a good internet connection.

The game makers changed the default network settings so blaming the game is quite relevant.
I do not however think the OP was blaming the game, just commenting on his recent poor game experience, he's not the only one.

 

[shadragon]

Unfortunately, you're preaching to the unresponsive. They won't listen. They dare not listen. To do so would be to lay waste to their unwavering defence of a sub-par product.

You see, you say that, but last night I played for three hours on one account doing a CG, then three hours on another account doing missions. Never experienced a single dropout, never had an issue with my SLF or SRV. Had 15 - 22 missions on the boards with 5-6 factions to choose from, did 30'ish hypserspace jumps without problems. The last session, I was chatting to two buddies, each 2,000 KM away, over voice comms, sharing my screen with both so they could see my game play and updating several other games through Steam. Throughout, I was using Inara, EDDB and the forums. Not one problem in six solid hours of play and I'm on an island in the middle of the North Atlantic with Internet that is "aspirational" at best.

It's only sub-par for you while others are having excellent game experiences. Logic says that isn't the games fault.

So Questor has some sort of connectivity, system, hardware, or driver issue. Either his ISP/router is filtering traffic or his home system has issues. There's all sorts of tech articles issued by Support to help you fault find what is wrong, but to use them you need to recognize that Frontier techs are not responsible for your hardware or ISP. You are. Instead of blaming them, take some responsibility and sort out your home system before blaming others.

 

[Quester91]

So Questor has some sort of connectivity, system, hardware, or driver issue. Either his ISP/router is filtering traffic or his home system has issues. There's all sorts of tech articles issued by Support to help you fault find what is wrong, but to use them you need to recognize that Frontier techs are not responsible for your hardware or ISP. You are. Instead of blaming them, take some responsibility and sort out your home system before blaming others.

Aww, as if yesterday was the first time I played this game
One of the best isp of my country? Check
ED port forwarding? Check
25+ mb adsl? Check.



I've played nearly a hundred different games in the last few years, many of them have online functionality or are always online. Again, never - had - a - single - problem. Not even with those indie games early access you can find in the suburbs of steam for 5 €, nothing.

Elite is the only game that has this kind of issues, and many people experience these problems.

Apparently you don't. And on that single assumption alone the game online structure is solid, flawless and the root of all evil is obviously mine. Ok.

 

[dayrth]

...ED port forwarding? Check....

Sorry if you have already addressed this but, as you use port forwarding have you seen the changes that were made and the way you have to forward ports now? If not here is the link:
https://support.frontier.co.uk/kb/faq.php?id=344

One thing to note is you can only use ports 5100, 5101, 5102, 5111, or 5200 for ED now.

 

[Sashenka]

Hey OP, maybe get your CCNA certification, it seems to be required to play ED.

Jokes aside, I'm having problems with the mission board too. Meanwhile other multiplayer games are running flawlessly, I'm even playing Destiny 2 on WIFI on PS4 and it's a FPS. But the rest of 2.4 is pretty cool.

 

[Harry Hates Golf]

I guess sometimes in the bar, you got to look at the lady sitting next to you, realize it ain't never going to happen, finish your beer, and leave.

You can always find another bar, and like buses, there will always be another lady to spend your money.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Glad to say that I am having zero issues. Haven't experienced a single bug or drop out yet and that included the massive payouts issue. Not saying that there aren't issues, but they must be rare.

 

[Iskariot]

What? I didn't look for anything, I just wanted to play a game like I play any other titles on my steam library, and in a single session of 1 hour and a half I encountered at least 3 game breaking bugs in a product that's very, very rough around the edges overall.

You guys are incredible, borderline Stockholm syndrome lol.

Don't be ridiculous.
This is a game in the middle of development. Most of us are acutely aware of that.
Many of us are just forgiving because we realize what a huge job it is to create this unique spacesim.
2.4 has just been released and there are always unforeseen problems that get addressed asap by Frontier after release.
That is why I never play the game just after a big update has been released.
I wait a few weeks.

I recently finished The Witcher 3. That game is a Finished game, but I encountered many bugs.
It is part of the territory with huge games.

If you want to help then report the bugs you encountered.
If you do not want to help then let yourself out.
Whining solves nothing.

 

[TheNut]

As this is a P2P game, your multiplayer experiences will only be as good as the weakest link. Elite Dangerous is not the only game to have these sort of problems either. They were quite rampant with Mass Effect: Andromeda, which also used P2P. Generally speaking, these are some variables that will influence your P2P experience:

1. The distance between you and your peers.
2. The quality of network between you, the ISPs, and your peers.
3. The quality of networking protocol and UDP packet handling implemented by FDev.
4. The quality of FDev's matchmaking server.
5. The PC performance of you and your connected peers.

From my own analysis, I've sometimes been paired with people on the opposite side of the country (over 4000 KM), which is quite high and generally not recommended for P2P connections. I have also seen some instances where I was paired with peers on the other side of the planet, which is very bad. I see that more as a fault with the matchmaking server.

It goes without saying, for the best P2P experience you'll want to find some local buddies and setup a private group. It's not the most immersive or convenient way to play, but it does guarantee you a quality level.

 

[Quester91]

Don't be ridiculous.
This is a game in the middle of development. Most of us are acutely aware of that.

Ah, you're one of those people who believe elite has several more years of glorious development ahead and we're still at the beginning of this mystical "10 years project plan" that was dismissed some time ago.

It kinda reminds me of playstation 3 users when after years and years of its lifespan they were still around saying "We still haven't seen the true power of the *dramatic sound* CELL CPU!"

IF you believe there's anything real boiling in frontier's cauldron which is not recycled content, such as atmospheric landing, space legs, or anything more than a few scripted cutscenes and microtransactions galore really, you have to to turn down your naiveness down a notch, or two.

You're better than that, don't be ridiculous

 

[Cupcake]

It all gives the appearance of a poor connection, and even though you can play other games without error, other people have reported similar problems in these forums with ED only. Something about setting up 'port forwarding' on your modem? I may not have remembered the term correctly and cannot tell you what it does, but computer experts here will be able to point you in the right direction. It's solved a lot of player issues for forum contributors.

Welcome back to the game

I remember one of the BIG selling points for this game to be touted by DB himself was the fact it required very little bandwicth and would be easily playable over the most mediocre internet connection......... I take it that bull went the same way as the in-depth gameplay? LOL