Done with Magicka, really tired of multiplayer nonsense

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unmerged(322050)

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May 29, 2011
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  • Magicka
Magicka is fun, especially for multiplayer, but the combination of the inflexible save system and the bugs have created an unworkable, unfun situation. My friends and I are done playing and are unlikely to buy any DLC or any more games by paradox. I hope someone in a position to do something reads this.

I understand why the save system is the way it is. It adds to the challenge of the game and that's perfectly valid. However, with multiplayer the way it is, where players can't drop in or out and glitches regularly bring all progress to a halt (sometimes in such a way that restarting the game is the only way to get things started again), it's unacceptable to ask players to redo 30-40 minutes of progress because the game is broken.

I just finished a session where three friends and I playing on a LAN got to the dragon boss in Chapter 11. The host's character got stuck such that he couldn't cast any spells, move, or take damage. Eventually the other three players died and the game was left in a state where we couldn't do anything but restart the entire level. We quit in disgust. This was the third such bug. The others included events not triggering, people falling through the level, and outright crashes to desktop through the other levels.

If things aren't going to work, you've got to give players the ability to pick up where they left off! The fact that this hasn't been addressed yet is sad.

Sorry to dump this on the forum. I'm sure it's been said but I figure a larger volume of visible complaints might turn into action.
 
I'm sorry to hear you've had these kind of troubles, and I would like to thank you for your well-put, constructive, and non-raging post. It's a pleasure to see that people on the internet don't only dump "this game suxx0rs" posts when they have some (even legitimate) complaints!

The devs frequent this forum regularly, and I'm sure one of them will take note of your post. (Note, I am just a volunteer mod, and have no inside information or contacts to the devs whatsoever) Thanks again for your post, it really restored my faith in internet-humankind! :)
 
Paradox publishes such a wide variety of games, don't give up completely.

At least play their babies Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron before giving up completely.
 
Magicka is fun, especially for multiplayer, but the combination of the inflexible save system and the bugs have created an unworkable, unfun situation. My friends and I are done playing and are unlikely to buy any DLC or any more games by paradox. I hope someone in a position to do something reads this.

I understand why the save system is the way it is. It adds to the challenge of the game and that's perfectly valid. However, with multiplayer the way it is, where players can't drop in or out and glitches regularly bring all progress to a halt (sometimes in such a way that restarting the game is the only way to get things started again), it's unacceptable to ask players to redo 30-40 minutes of progress because the game is broken.

I just finished a session where three friends and I playing on a LAN got to the dragon boss in Chapter 11. The host's character got stuck such that he couldn't cast any spells, move, or take damage. Eventually the other three players died and the game was left in a state where we couldn't do anything but restart the entire level. We quit in disgust. This was the third such bug. The others included events not triggering, people falling through the level, and outright crashes to desktop through the other levels.

If things aren't going to work, you've got to give players the ability to pick up where they left off! The fact that this hasn't been addressed yet is sad.

Sorry to dump this on the forum. I'm sure it's been said but I figure a larger volume of visible complaints might turn into action.

Hey,

Believe me we know how frustrated you are. If we could go back in time and change stuff we definitely would. But since we can't we can only try to fix the fixable and make sure we avoid these kind of things for future Magicka games.

Not much comfort now, I know, but at least you know that were reading you loud and clear.

/s
 
Would it really be difficult to include an option on the escape menu that restarts from the most recent checkpoint to clear glitches? I mean, it could just kill all the players programatically if you want to be lazy about it. Or to keep track in the save game all the checkpoints that have been activated and let the server pick which one to start from? I guess if the game were designed with no clear way to load midlevel that could be an issue but even the first would help!

I mean, we're not talking radical engine changes here, just simple usability fixes to make the game work, at least minimally, for the people who payed good money for it.
 
key points in Multiplayer i would like to see in the future
Drop in gameplay
Easyer to use Kick Feature
Intergrated Voice comunication
Level select.

I'm fine with the game in general and i just see those as features they could add to the game to make it even better.

Multiplay is touch n go if you don't arange it though friends but even with friends they can be retarded players and in no way tactical.
 
Yes. Joining already active game would be nice feature. Such thing could be made so that player icons to be added (like in your PvP) that show "dead" status. When player joins, he/she comes into play as dead player that can be resurrected. If player leaves the game, player icon becomes blank and makes room for any other player who wants to join. This would allow clients reconnect if they happen to lose connection and time out.
 
i think we should also have a magicka lobby thats interactive and in game, menus are boring i want to be able to explor the castle n RP a little bit with speech bubbles instead of console text :3
 
@tuggray
That would be great!
Who knows, the devs might be secretly working on something like that, haha.

On-topic
The only problem I have sometimes is the spells not being executed, when I tab my keys too fast.
Like, when I try to cast shield on myself, if I press E and don't wait untill the yellow spell appears around my character, the shield won't be casted.
This only happens if I'm not the hoster.
As for the DC's, I don't have any issues. Btw, is Magicka peer to peer?
 
Tried one very last time. I don't think I need to elaborate on how it went. Did ANYONE QA test this game?!

I can understand hardware incompatibility. I can understand some bugs at launch for a small, inexperienced studio that can't afford really extensive testing. But it's been 6 months and the multiplayer mode remains effectively unusable. These are not obscure bugs that crop up under certain conditions. These are HUGE flaws in game logic! Not only that, there aren't even workarounds to help people enjoy the game in spite of them. The comment from Shams worries me.

"Well guys, we'll fix only what we can, lesson learned for next time I guess."

What, you don't have the source code? You can't add in a few menu options and look into finding ways for multiplayer to better recover after desynchronizing? Can't pressure the developers to do anything useful but pump out a bunch of DLC?

Ok, Then I guess I learned my lesson too. Don't give Arrowhead Game Studios or Paradox any money ever.
 
Yeah, multiplayer is pretty much bullshiit in this game. Its been a standard for years now to have things like dedicated servers and matchmaking and playing magicka is like going back to 1999.

PvP is going to be such a fuucking fail without dedicated servers:((
 
Yeah, multiplayer is pretty much bullshiit in this game. Its been a standard for years now to have things like dedicated servers and matchmaking and playing magicka is like going back to 1999.

PvP is going to be such a fuucking fail without dedicated servers:((
Dedicated servers are expensive to dev and maintain. Many indie games work on peer-to-peer servers, not to mention a recent popular, triple-A FPS that made stirs amongst PC fans because it used peer-to-peer and not dedicated servers.
Many players here do quite fine with the current setup. The trick is to have a friends list with local people to keep a low ping. There's a thread here (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?539527-This-is-the-thread-for-people-who-want-to-play-Magicka-but-have-no-(Steam)-friends!) for people to discover steam friends to play with.
I'm betting the PVP is going to be a blast and most of the community will enjoy the addition.
 
Dedicated servers are expensive to dev and maintain. Many indie games work on peer-to-peer servers, not to mention a recent popular, triple-A FPS that made stirs amongst PC fans because it used peer-to-peer and not dedicated servers.
I fail to see how creating a console based server application to host a server is more expensive (apart from the time they use to code it). Terraria devs quickly realized that people complained of having to have graphics card to host a server so they made their changes quite quickly. And for upkeep, they have to deal with same amount of expenses as they do now by having the master server up to keep track of announced servers.
Also preferably completely free of charge dedicated server application that can be ran on multiple computers without having to buy the game. That would open the market for server renting services, making the game more accessible and there for more popular. -> profit.
 
I fail to see how creating a console based server application to host a server is more expensive (apart from the time they use to code it). Terraria devs quickly realized that people complained of having to have graphics card to host a server so they made their changes quite quickly. And for upkeep, they have to deal with same amount of expenses as they do now by having the master server up to keep track of announced servers.
Also preferably completely free of charge dedicated server application that can be ran on multiple computers without having to buy the game. That would open the market for server renting services, making the game more accessible and there for more popular. -> profit.
Time to dev = cost. Time to test = cost. Time to maintain and bugfix = cost.
I agree with you that it'd be nice, just saying that there are cash and time costs involved and not everything has dedicated servers.