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Steam - Open BETA Branch - Moving toward the future!

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PDX_Pariah

PDX_Pariah

Community Manager
Jul 21, 2020
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An update from our CK3 Tech Lead, Lykchen:

Hey everyone,

Along with the release of the Azure patch we will update the Multiplayer Open Beta today at 10:00 (GMT+2).
This new build has the version 1.4.1 and contains all changes from 1.4.0 Azure as well the MP stability improvements that have been available on the open_beta branch for a while. This way you can enjoy all the improvements from Azure along with the MP stability improvements we’re currently testing.

In addition to that we have made two changes on 1.4.1 to further improve the Multiplayer experience:

  • Increased network stability of clients joining MP lobbies with decreased save game transfer speeds
  • Increased network stability of client login procedure
We know these issues have been present for several players, so we would really like to hear if these latest changes improve your experience or not.

Note that we are still working on tweaking the Multiplayer experience for CK3 in this given branch, and so players could encounter a known issue preventing them from continuing in Singleplayer after dropping out of a multiplayer session, and the host not recognizing that a client dropped connection in case of crashes etc.

If you are already opted in to the Steam beta branch, you should get the update automatically once it drops.
If you would like to opt in now, you can access it by right-clicking Crusader Kings III in your Steam library, selecting Properties, entering the 'Betas' tab and selecting "open_beta - 1.4.1 multiplayer improvements" from the list.

We do ask that if you do participate in this Steam branch that you PLEASE RE-REPORT ANY MULTIPLAYER ISSUES YOU MAY BE FACING - provided they reoccur for you on this build, of course - as it will help us determine how the fixes on this particular branch are going in real time. This Beta branch is entirely voluntary and you are under no obligation to participate if you do not wish to do so.

Please be aware that general issues or suggestions concerning the Azure patch should be reported in the regular bug report or suggestion forum sections. This subforum should focus on issues that relate to the Multiplayer experience on 1.4.1, or general issues that are unique to the 1.4.1 build.

When reporting an issue, please let us know your internet connection line type (fiber, cable, ADSL, satellite, 3G, 4G etc).
Click to expand...

=====

Howdy all,

It is with a glad heart that I announce we are now opening a BETA Branch available to Steam users. After the success we saw with previous Steam branches, we are hopeful that this one will help us to address issues with our Multiplayer system. This branch will stay open for a few months to help diagnose as many issues as possible.

With that in mind, we ask that if you do participate in this Steam branch that you PLEASE RE-REPORT ANY MULTIPLAYER ISSUES YOU MAY BE FACING as it will help us determine how the fixes on this particular branch are going in real time. This Beta branch is entirely voluntary and you are under no obligation to participate if you do not wish to do so. We have an open beta subforum here for exactly such a purpose!

From our wonderful QA team:
Our mission is always to deliver the most quality product as possible to the player. QA acts as the player representative within the development team, and works towards providing the team with as much information as they need to create a product that is as fun as possible to play.

We are aware of numerous issues, including the Out-of-Synchs, empty lobbies, incorrect version issues and with this open Steam beta we aim to improve the multiplayer situation.

As always, please report anything you find on the bug report forums and we will check it out as soon as we can. We really appreciate uploading the randomlogs which include multiplayer logs to the bug forum reports as well because this helps us immensely. Logs are available in the folder under C:\Users\<name>\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings III\oos.

We hope you help us in reporting any and all issues that are still pain points for you, as well as any issues that are still occurring on the open beta branch. It is important that older issues are reported again so that we know if they are still occurring on the beta branch.
Click to expand...

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy and that we see some real and positive results from this branch!
 
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Good decision and setup! Just wondering about something though: will something like this (for instance a beta branch with intermittent dumps until Azure drops) be done for SP (bugfixes) as well? Or will you follow a different path there?
 
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Finally ! We have been waiting for this decision for a very long time !
Thank you for taking our voice into consideration and ensuring that we regain the enthusiasm for paradox games.

We will be able to become real paradoxians again !
 
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PDX_Pariah said:
Howdy all,

It is with a glad heart that I announce we are now opening a BETA Branch available to Steam users. After the success we saw with previous Steam branches, we are hopeful that this one will help us to address issues with our Multiplayer system. This branch will stay open for a few months to help diagnose as many issues as possible.

With that in mind, we ask that if you do participate in this Steam branch that you PLEASE RE-REPORT ANY MULTIPLAYER ISSUES YOU MAY BE FACING as it will help us determine how the fixes on this particular branch are going in real time. This Beta branch is entirely voluntary and you are under no obligation to participate if you do not wish to do so. We have an open beta subforum here for exactly such a purpose!

From our wonderful QA team:


In the meantime, we hope you enjoy and that we see some real and positive results from this branch!
Click to expand...
Is this beta only affecting multiplayer, or are there changes to the single player game as well?
 
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Regarding mods, it can be very wonky to have the same checksum. Therefore, a button in the launcher to force reset the sqlite file, and one to force redownload any mod would be rad.

Ref:
1. It happens a mod won't boot : http://wiki.communityflavorpack.com/troubleshooting/ck-launcher
2. It happens steam workshop doesn't update or fails to diff updated files. In particular, it doesn't remove files. A forced clean up via the launcher would help (remove workshop folder content and resync) : http://wiki.communityflavorpack.com/troubleshooting/force-reinstall
 
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LTGMosq said:
Good decision and setup! Just wondering about something though: will something like this (for instance a beta branch with intermittent dumps until Azure drops) be done for SP (bugfixes) as well? Or will you follow a different path there?
Click to expand...
Interesting question.
We do keep the option of doing open betas as a tool in our toolbox. Our main usage for it is if we have few impactful but inherently risky bug fixes.

We did an open beta of the fixes we wanted to get out quickly for our 1.3.1 patch regarding raid hostility. We see this as an important avenue to both get quick feedback on potential knock-on effects from fixes but also to allow the players most affected by some issues to opt-in for bug-fixes early.

However it does have some significant drawbacks. Mainly it does take time and effort as well to prepare and deliver even these beta patches which we are in general having quite a bottle-neck for. Which also leads to the part where we still have to focus mainly on the versions that we deliver to the main branch that the very vast majority of the players are playing on to make sure that we keep those updates to the high quality we strive for.

So the answer is that it's not impossible that we will deliver open beta patches for specific single-player bugfixes. However I think it's likelier with our current knowledge and behavior that any open beta branch in that format will be very short-lived and for very specific important fixes rather than a general collection of fixes that is regularly updated.
 
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El Tyranos said:
Regarding mods, it can be very wonky to have the same checksum. Therefore, a button in the launcher to force reset the sqlite file, and one to force redownload any mod would be rad.

Ref:
1. It happens a mod won't boot : http://wiki.communityflavorpack.com/troubleshooting/ck-launcher
2. It happens steam workshop doesn't update or fails to diff updated files. In particular, it doesn't remove files. A forced clean up via the launcher would help (remove workshop folder content and resync) : http://wiki.communityflavorpack.com/troubleshooting/force-reinstall
Click to expand...
This is useful feedback that this tends to be a problem. I'll make sure that we have it on our radar.


If you know of any specific reproducible steps to end up in a state of wonky mod installs then that information would be invaluable for us to troubleshoot and fix the issues.
 
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Divine said:
If you know of any specific reproducible steps to end up in a state of wonky mod installs then that information would be invaluable for us to troubleshoot and fix the issues.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, regarding the launcher, players come at me complaining "the mod doesn't work". I am not aware of any repro step. I'll try to torture the launcher a bit see if I can come up with something.

Regarding the second issue (files mismatch), this is steam workshop fault's and it's not limited to CK3. However the checksum makes it very annoying as it prevents from connecting (when a simple value difference would likely be local to the player and not lead to a major MP incompatibility between users). Hence why a "delete local files and force redownload" button would solve all issues involving steam workshop files handling.
 
Divine said:
Interesting question.
We do keep the option of doing open betas as a tool in our toolbox. Our main usage for it is if we have few impactful but inherently risky bug fixes.

We did an open beta of the fixes we wanted to get out quickly for our 1.3.1 patch regarding raid hostility. We see this as an important avenue to both get quick feedback on potential knock-on effects from fixes but also to allow the players most affected by some issues to opt-in for bug-fixes early.

However it does have some significant drawbacks. Mainly it does take time and effort as well to prepare and deliver even these beta patches which we are in general having quite a bottle-neck for. Which also leads to the part where we still have to focus mainly on the versions that we deliver to the main branch that the very vast majority of the players are playing on to make sure that we keep those updates to the high quality we strive for.

So the answer is that it's not impossible that we will deliver open beta patches for specific single-player bugfixes. However I think it's likelier with our current knowledge and behavior that any open beta branch in that format will be very short-lived and for very specific important fixes rather than a general collection of fixes that is regularly updated.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the elaborate and direct response. Good to see your reasoning, and quite understandable.

Now, uh, end of hijack. Back to you MP folks! ;)
 
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Shout Out to the devs for the Beta... We played a full 11hrs today without one dysnc, random disconnection or logging out of account.

We did note that if someone is already in a plot, you can invite them into the same plot and recieve double their plot power.

Besides that, i am super stoaked with this!
 
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This is great. I've been waiting for CK3 to finally be stable in MP.

But I'm wondering will a chat box also be added as a part of the MP improvements? It's really important especially for those who wish to host public lobbies.
 
Hey everyone,

Last week we have released an Open Beta branch on Steam, marked as "open_beta - 1.3.2 Multiplayer Improvements".
Many of you participated in the initiative, and we have collected a great amount of insights coupled with your very valuable feedback.

Thanks to these data, we are now exploring an option to improve the Networking.
This change applied only to this open beta branch on Steam will increase Save Game Transfer Speed for all players participating in a multiplayer game.
This improvement is now available. We are eager to read what you think of this change and hear your thoughts.
If you are timed out from the server when trying to join a multiplayer game, please let us know.

Note that we are still working on tweaking the Multiplayer experience for CK3 in this given branch, and so players could encountered a known issue preventing players from seeing any game in the MP lobby or kicking them back to the main menu from the loading screen.

We wanted to thank you for taking the time to raise your report to our teams, and for participating in the open beta! :)

You can access it by right-clicking Crusader Kings III in your Steam library, selecting Properties, entering the 'Betas' tab and selecting "open_beta - 1.3.2 multiplayer improvements" from the list.

View attachment 715728

We do ask that if you do participate in this Steam branch that you PLEASE RE-REPORT ANY MULTIPLAYER ISSUES YOU MAY BE FACING - provided they reoccur for you on this build, of course - as it will help us determine how the fixes on this particular branch are going in real time. This Beta branch is entirely voluntary and you are under no obligation to participate if you do not wish to do so.
 
  • 4Like
  • 1
Reactions:
An update from our CK3 Tech Lead, Lykchen:

Hey everyone,

Along with the release of the Azure patch we will update the Multiplayer Open Beta today at 10:00 (GMT+2).
This new build has the version 1.4.1 and contains all changes from 1.4.0 Azure as well the MP stability improvements that have been available on the open_beta branch for a while. This way you can enjoy all the improvements from Azure along with the MP stability improvements we’re currently testing.

In addition to that we have made two changes on 1.4.1 to further improve the Multiplayer experience:

  • Increased network stability of clients joining MP lobbies with decreased save game transfer speeds
  • Increased network stability of client login procedure
We know these issues have been present for several players, so we would really like to hear if these latest changes improve your experience or not.

Note that we are still working on tweaking the Multiplayer experience for CK3 in this given branch, and so players could encounter a known issue preventing them from continuing in Singleplayer after dropping out of a multiplayer session, and the host not recognizing that a client dropped connection in case of crashes etc.

If you are already opted in to the Steam beta branch, you should get the update automatically once it drops.
If you would like to opt in now, you can access it by right-clicking Crusader Kings III in your Steam library, selecting Properties, entering the 'Betas' tab and selecting "open_beta - 1.4.1 multiplayer improvements" from the list.

We do ask that if you do participate in this Steam branch that you PLEASE RE-REPORT ANY MULTIPLAYER ISSUES YOU MAY BE FACING - provided they reoccur for you on this build, of course - as it will help us determine how the fixes on this particular branch are going in real time. This Beta branch is entirely voluntary and you are under no obligation to participate if you do not wish to do so.

Please be aware that general issues or suggestions concerning the Azure patch should be reported in the regular bug report or suggestion forum sections. This subforum should focus on issues that relate to the Multiplayer experience on 1.4.1, or general issues that are unique to the 1.4.1 build.

When reporting an issue, please let us know your internet connection line type (fiber, cable, ADSL, satellite, 3G, 4G etc).
Click to expand...
 
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