Multiplayer and Out of Sync errors

[Bandus]

Anyone that has played CK2 or EU4 multiplayer for any length of time knows that "out of sync" errors were, and are, pervasive. This error can range from a minor annoyance to completely ruining multiplayer games. To wit, when two friends and I played our last game of CK2 multiplayer, it got to the point where we would receive "out of sync" errors doing nothing but loading the game. No need to even unpause it, just immediately out of sync.

What's worse, the support for this issue has been...less then satisfactory...in my experience. Despite many reporting the issue, the standard reply seemed to be very basic level troubleshooting that rarely seemed to result in a legitimate fix.

With regard to Stellaris, I wonder what attention is being given to the multiplayer component with regard to eliminating the "out of sync" error? Is this an area of concern for the developers or will lessons learned from past Paradox titles using Clausewitz be applied?

 

[LloydSev]

I'm also interested in this, because I *really* want to buy Stellaris. I just don't want to play it single player. I want to play it with my friends, and recently we've stopped because we get to a point where we can't avoid these Out of Sync errors in both CK2 and EU4.

 

[Ailure]

I'm having high hopes they learned their lesson seeing that EU IV have gotten much more playable with the patches in the last half year or so, and even CK2 isn't too bad now if you are taking precautions (but still desyncs too often to be considered smooth). I only ever seen one desync in the latest EU IV version, and that was in a save that was from pre-cossacks DLC. I'd argue that the biggest show-stoppers in EU IV ironically aren't multi-player specific bugs right now (bugged events, graphics and UI getting glitcher and glitchier due to memory leak)...

But this time around, please if you have hotjoin in as a feature... make sure it works reliable this time around. It never ever worked right in EU IV and still dosen't, and would make players dropping out due to technical problems (someone tripped over a cat5 cable or the hopefuly rare desync ) so much less of a hassle. Infact it's probably quite important to get multiplayer working right first time around, as parts of Stellaris looks more interesting to do in multiplayer than other paradox grand strategy games (such as that everyone starts out on a more equal footing).

 

[Xalhador]

So, this "out of sync" problem is really, really annoying. We too get this nearly every game and it makes multiplayer near unplayable.

No mods, same game versions, only difference is one DLC.
How are people even playing this with more than 2 players?

And i´m gonna say this right here, for a game that costs ~200€ with all content and DLCs, this is ridiculous to the point where it´s insolent.
This issue makes me kinda regret i bought this stuff, since it´s taking the fun out of it.
Can´t be recommended like this.

As for Stellaris, i would love to buy and play that, but i will keep an eye out for this issue and it might very well be the deciding factor.

 

[Beric]

EU4 still has persistent out of sync errors, which may or may not be related to the fact we play cross-platform (both Macs and PC's). On average it's about 1 OoS an hour. I really hope they make this a priority for Stellaris.

 

[Maizel]

Almost never get OOS errors in EU IV. Slightly more in CK2.

I am sure they will be in Stellaris as well. But as long as they are on EUIV level, I dont mind so much.

 

[Praetori]

Anyone that has played CK2 or EU4 multiplayer for any length of time knows that "out of sync" errors were, and are, pervasive. This error can range from a minor annoyance to completely ruining multiplayer games. To wit, when two friends and I played our last game of CK2 multiplayer, it got to the point where we would receive "out of sync" errors doing nothing but loading the game. No need to even unpause it, just immediately out of sync.

What's worse, the support for this issue has been...less then satisfactory...in my experience. Despite many reporting the issue, the standard reply seemed to be very basic level troubleshooting that rarely seemed to result in a legitimate fix.

With regard to Stellaris, I wonder what attention is being given to the multiplayer component with regard to eliminating the "out of sync" error? Is this an area of concern for the developers or will lessons learned from past Paradox titles using Clausewitz be applied?

Without trying to diminish the problems in other titles (because I do believe the netcode could've been handled better by PDS) they've stated that they put a lot of effort into the Stellaris MP coding. Then again I must say that basically EVERY OOS issue I've experienced in other PDS titles have been due to single participants connections/Firewalls/ISPs. Putting a few computers up at home with a properly configured network resulted in no OOS issues for 10-12hrs of consecutive gaming. The same goes for internet-games. With proper handling of the traffic and on stable connections the issues were few and far between. Playing a game with your friends however shouldn't require you to be a TCP/IP guru so more fault-handling would be very welcome (along with dedicated servers with persistent world-state/hotjoin).

 

[Grif_E]

There is a Dev Diary about multiplayer. You should go read it.

 

[Tiaexz]

they just need you to be able to resync from hosts copy ingame. Would fix the need to completely restart the client unless it is a major bug.

 

[Admiral Howe]

Then again I must say that basically EVERY OOS issue I've experienced in other PDS titles have been due to single participants connections/Firewalls/ISPs.

But "user error" is never as satisfying as blaming the producer.

 

[Beric]

But "user error" is never as satisfying as blaming the producer.

The problem is that I don't get these types of issues when I play non-Paradox games with the same people. If Paradox games require specific network configurations to work properly they should specify this and have a troubleshooting app. Otherwise, I can only assume that the problem is on Paradox's side.

 

[Admiral Howe]

Well Paradox games do have a ton of data going back and forth too - and that number snowballs as the game matures. So that's part of the issue.

I wasn't trying to deflect that the MP code being tight is vital, just mentioning that often times it's just a bad firewall setting.

That, and it's significantly better than the EU1 and 2 days

 

[CatsPajamas]

The good news is the Stellaris development team was well aware of the previous issues with Paradox Games' multiplayer, and from the Multiplayer Dev Diary it seems like a lot of time and effort went into improving the experience. Here's a relevant quote:

One of our longstanding issues with multiplayer is that clients desynchronize, which is usually solved by having the host rehost the game, but this can be quite a menace when playing multiplayer with 20+ people, so we’ve decided that this is an issue we should prioritize higher in Stellaris. Thanks to persistent testing and fixing of out-of-syncs as soon as they happen, we’ve managed to make Stellaris our most stable multiplayer experience yet, allowing us to run stable multiplayer with up to and probably more than 32 players. We test our multiplayer stability weekly by playing multiplayer with our betas and the developers on the project, and it’s loads of fun.

 

[Xalhador]

But "user error" is never as satisfying as blaming the producer.

Nice attitude you got there, very helpful and totaly not offensive to other people....
Must be their fault or technical ignore when they experience problems and then come here to wrongly complain about stuff, right?

 

[Admiral Howe]

Nice attitude you got there, very helpful and totaly not offensive to other people....

While I appreciate the irony of showing attitude while complaining about my (not there) attitude, so kudos there.

In the 17 years I've been playing Paradox games MP games falling out of sync has always been a problem. And, as I said, it was far more common than it used to be. Today so much of the OOS problems, however, seem to be a misaligned router, a closed port, a pot forwarded incorrectly, and the like. These are all use errors and must be controlled by the user. If people get offended by that, well that's their business and they can get over themselves as life isn't designed to be sanitized of offense.

Must be their fault or technical ignore when they experience problems and then come here to wrongly complain about stuff, right?

Often times it is, as I mentioned above. And there's nothing wrong - or shameful - about user error as long as users are willing to learn and grow from it. If someone comes to me with a misconfigured firewall and I walk them through fixing it, cool. If they keep doing it, uncool.

Now, based on your post, you are suggesting users never make mistakes. As there's absolutely no reason to get that upset otherwise.

 

[Xalhador]

maybe you´re right in many cases. In our case, i´m pretty certain it´s not a user problem though, since i of course checked those things^^

 

[Admiral Howe]

Hey, I only meant in a lot of cases I've seen. I didn't mean to imply in all cases - or your specific cases. I do apologize if that was unclear.

 

[Xalhador]

Apology accepted^^ Didin´t mean to be nosey either. But coming from some other boards, your statement was rather time sensitive to mine, so probably i took it a bit harder than it was meant.

I´m waiting for my second player to show up right now. Vijaynagara needs to finish conquer Asia! Without OOS errors!

 

[Admiral Howe]

My regular second lives in Norway, so he and I have had some pretty epic OOS errors and restarts through the years.

 

[Xalhador]

We´re both in Germany, so the internet shouldn´t be that bad. Norway is a big place though^^