ED shouldn’t be listed as a Multiplayer game (for now)

Liquidor

L
Little background info. I currently have little over 1400 hours played in ED. Started playing in 2016, done a lot (not all yet, Thargoids scare me!)
I’ve stepped away from ED from time to time, but I always come back. My most recent break was right before the Fleet Carriers went live, and I started playing again late September. Ever since I started playing again, my multiplayer experience has not been what I have been used to.

I usually play games that are fun to play with friends. When I started 4 years ago, 3 of my friends started playing as well. We did A LOT together, cargo hauling, combat, exploring, farming materials, a lot of mining, you name it. Up until August 2020 we never really had much connection issues. Sure, a disconnect or gamecrash every now and then, but it wasn’t more often than once every 6-7 playsessions.
Nowadays we are simply unable to play together. We were trying some bounty hunting last Friday, and litteraly every time we would enter or leave SC, one of us would get:
  • endless supercruise tunnel (countdown at 00:00)
  • [insert color] [insert ship name] errors
  • screen turning 80% black, then eventually crashing
  • game crashing right away

The same is true for any system that is for one reason or the other populair; CG systems, some of the Engineering systems, popular mining or selling systems... the amount of crashes and disconnects is simply beyond measure.
I have a solid 500 mbit down/50mbit up Cable (coax) internet connection, with decent network equipment. I’ve tried static port forwarding but that doesnt help.
Even in our squadron we stopped planning events because the last 4 events were filled for 50% of the time with people disconnecting or crashing. We’re now filling our event calendar with other games that you, you know, can just play properly with as many people as you want (or the game allows).
Yes this is partly a rant. I just don’t understand how things worked so well in the past, but ever since a couple of months its just structurally unplayable.
Yes I get it, its a P2P system, something something free Epic launch, FC’s clogging systems, there’s reasons enough. But please, fix it?
 
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Ettanin

E
Liquidor said:
I have a solid 500 mbit down/50mbit up Cable (coax) internet connection, with decent network equipment. I’ve tried static port forwarding but that doesnt help.
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Do you even have a dedicated IPv4 address or are you inside a Dual Stack Lite or CGNAT? Most cable ISPs no longer give dedicated IPv4 addresses. Just so you know, port forwarding does not work with DSLite/CGNAT because your IPv4 address isn't unique, it's shared with multiple customers.
 

Liquidor

L
Old Duck said:
Maybe your dusty router shouldn't listed as clean for now.
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Like I said I have decent network equipment. The router is an Ubiquiti Edgerouter X, no older than 1,5 years. Behind that is one managed TP-Link switch and then my PC. All wired CAT-6 cable connections.

Ettanin said:
Do you even have a dedicated IPv4 address or are you inside a Dual Stack Lite or CGNAT? Most cable ISPs no longer give dedicated IPv4 addresses. Just so you know, port forwarding does not work with DSLite/CGNAT because your IPv4 address isn't unique, it's shared with multiple customers.
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Even better, I have a static IPv4 address (for which I pay an additional fee), my public IP address hasn't changed since I started using that service 6 years ago. Any other port forwards I have enabled (for things like AC control, NAS, VPN) work flawlessly. The modem has (like in most home-network-ISP-modem cases) built-in router functionality (firewalling, NATing, DHCP, etc), but that has all been disabled on my modem; it simply has a coax cable IN, does its magic, has an STP cable out on which it gives my static IPv4 address to my EdgeRouter. Again any other port forwards I have work perfect so I don't think here is where the issue is.

I appreciate all the help (critique) on my home network setup, but the sole argument that any other game runs flawlessly (at least network-wise :p) is enough evidence in my eyes. Also the friends I was refering to in my OP have completely different home network setups, PC's, ISP's. One thing in common between me and them: ED is pretty much the only game that has such a bad multiplayer playability.

And like @Factabulous said, even when playing in solo you're bound to get into trouble if you visit systems that are heavily visited by CMDRs and FCs.

Just writing out my thoughts here:
I just think Frontier is throwing in their own windows by not fixing these network problems with priority. It is not strange anno 2020, if a game advertises with multiplayer functionality, to expect a stable multiplayer functionality. I read that Oddysey will continue on this P2P path, I'm afraid if Frontier does nothing (or at least not enough) to fix these issues, Oddysey will be just another disaster. If I then have to choose between playing the game with friends with so many disconnects that it's just not fun anymore, OR play the game in solo (which to me is a lot less fun than to play any other game with friends), OR just play another game, I think I'll go for the last option. And not because I hate the game or the developers (quite the opposite, and thats the frustrating part of it) but simply because the limited time I have for gaming, I want to spend.... gaming. And not troubleshooting or reconnecting or any of that stuff.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
Liquidor said:
I appreciate all the help (critique) on my home network setup, but the sole argument that any other game runs flawlessly (at least network-wise :p) is enough evidence in my eyes.
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That argument never worked for me when I had problems on PS4, so you don't get to use it either :p
 

Kantaris

Kantaris
I suggest you and your friends maybe work with the support team, I have none of the problems you are speaking about. I play with lots of people too.
Just because you are having problems and live inside the game doesn't mean they should change the advertising of the game for you.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
Kantaris said:
I suggest you and your friends maybe work with the support team, I have none of the problems you are speaking about. I play with lots of people too.
Just because you are having problems and live inside the game doesn't mean they should change the advertising of the game for you.
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Probably you should go onto the issue tracker and tell that to most of the top reported issues, as a lot of them are about recent networking issues.
 

CptArcher

CptArcher
Add networking to the huge pile of bugs fdev should fix, yet they don't... Just like galmap marketplace data not updating, or keybinds disappearing. Sometimes I don't think fdev even cares
 

Liquidor

L
Kantaris said:
I suggest you and your friends maybe work with the support team, I have none of the problems you are speaking about. I play with lots of people too.
Just because you are having problems and live inside the game doesn't mean they should change the advertising of the game for you.
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I have reached out to the support team. It seemed they didn't thoroughly read through my description, because most of the questions they replied with were already answered.
Then they continued with some generic response about "... recommend making sure that nothing else is using your network in the background" (Yeah right, let's just shut down OneDrive, Discord, etc) and "... ensure that your GPU driver is up to date ".
And like @Factabulous said, take a look at the Issue Tracker and search for 'disconnect', there's plenty of issues reported already on this subject.
"If there's enough reported already on this subject, then why this thread?" To write it off me I guess. And to keep the issue on the radar.

varonica said:
It's difficult, you could describe it as a game with multiplayer features I suppose, but it would still lead to confusion no matter what description they used.
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I would vote for option 3: They fix whatever is causing these issues (or properly help me solve should the problem be on my end). Then they can properly call it a multiplayer game and, BONUS, the players are happy too!
 

Rat Catcher

Rat Catcher
The interesting thing about P2P networking is that not everyone has noticable issues (although some of the FC related ones appear more commonly - and a potential solution found by a player) so responses will be mixed.

Bar FC related (on occasion, sometimes even when the only one in-system is my own) P2P has been pretty much stable for me - so I'd, naturally, expect Odyssey to remain as stable as the current game is, for me.

Calling ED a MMO may be stretching the perceived meaning a little though, even if there are potentially thousands of players online at the same time as me, getting more than 32(?) in a single instance would be uncommon.
 

Commander Biscuit

Commander Biscuit
Liquidor said:
I just don’t understand how things worked so well in the past, but ever since a couple of months its just structurally unplayable.
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I've noticed a lot of server instability playing Hitman 2 recently, that I've never had to deal with in the previous few years. Coincidentally or not, Hitman 3 is almost ready, and I suspect the better servers are being allocated for that game, and Hitman 2 has been relegated to use the older servers or perhaps just less of them. This isn't an isolated case either, but something I've noticed a lot with the Games As Service model as they get worked on or get sequels etc. I'm wondering if FD is doing something similar, either because of Odyssey or perhaps one of their other IPs.
 
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