Victoria 2 multiplayer dissapointment

[PlayerHOI]

Hi all

I'm really not sure where to start, I fell in love with Victoria 2 after wanting something more polished and better looking then EU3, the cultural unions, the range of naval units, the exciting era of the game and so on.

Naturally, after 200 hours of single player games I decided to try an online game to spice things up, Victoria 2 is an awesome game to test your diplomatic and strategic talents against other players.

I think the total amount of time I played online would not exceed 4 hours. Besides the numerous out of sync's the game could not run higher then speed two and would at times crawl to speed one again cause the game couldn't cope with the "massive amount" of players (15).

After slowing down a game for a scheduled match I decided to resign and play with a friend from my country. Things were not much better, even with someone who I had a ping of 40 max the game insisted to go slow because it could not handle it.

After these failed attempts I decided to try EU3 just for the heck of it. And after playing about 5 hours with 17 players on speed 3 and no lag I realized I was angry.

Angry because the game I loved so much could not be played, I purchased a game and could not enjoy all of its features because of a mechanic that slows the game to a crawl.

I can only assume the reason for this unbelievable lag is the pops, if the game can't handle them in SP games I can actually understand why it struggles in MP games. But what I cannot understand is why this issue isn't addressed and fixed.

The only thing I can suggest is to limit the amount of pop's per country to a number that today's computers can handle, not all of us have a net connection of 15MB/s but despite that other games which are no less complex in their core (like EU3) play smoothly.

Sorry if this post sounds like a long rant but this really makes me sad, I love Paradox and your games but please let us use a simple feature as MP games without having all of this frustration because of faulty design, if the game cant handle so many pop's take drastic steps to reduce their number but please do not ignore the issue.

 

[Dominatus]

It's true that the game was not very designed regarding POPS, they really should have just used Vicky 1 system which never lagged the game.

 

[unmerged(311286)]

this game does not work multiplayer.. i bought it off steam along with a few friends.. we registered the cd keys with paradox web site then logged onto meta server and all got into the chat room together, then removed our firewalls and attempted to join each others game and no matter who hosted it, it would not let us it says cannot connect to server.. so i go over to his house with my pc and connect LAN line.. keep in mind we bought at the same time over steam.. dosent work.. firewalls r down we even tried ip connecting and sending a player invite through steam. nothing... dont plan on playing multiplayer i talked to others that confirm this... the game designers didnt care and therfore i wouldnt recomend buying the game for multiplayer.. if im wrong someone correct me and tell me what i didnt do but after hours of attempting everything from redownloading it to try every version from 1.1 to 1.3 patches to reinstalling in a different file location.. notta im disapointed as everyone else i know is also.. i c that some have got it to work.. why cant we???

 

[NapoleonI]

Multiplayer and online gaming is not Pardox strong point. Take a look at EUIII DW and "Paradox Connect" and you will have nightmares for months to come. The save-games are bloating to several Gigs and the game speed comes to a crawl.
I spent more than a hundred hours on an online achievement only to realize it was broken or corrupt or something. I completed the achievement but did not get it. I somehow prefer the problems VickyII have, where you can tell it is broken before you spend hundreds of hours on it .

Being a long time customer to Paradox is somewhat like being in a abusive relationship. You get used to the beatings and the abuse and after a while you start to think that it is normal. Everyone says they love Paradox games (and so do I), but you somehow know deep down this isn´t right. But what can we do? Stop buying the games? Sounds reasonable, but unfortunately they are more addictive than crack cocaine. So what am I doing right now? Trying to play multiplayer with a friend of course, even thou the game crashes constantly.

 

[Musthavename]

this game does not work multiplayer.. i bought it off steam along with a few friends.. we registered the cd keys with paradox web site then logged onto meta server and all got into the chat room together, then removed our firewalls and attempted to join each others game and no matter who hosted it, it would not let us it says cannot connect to server.. so i go over to his house with my pc and connect LAN line.. keep in mind we bought at the same time over steam.. dosent work.. firewalls r down we even tried ip connecting and sending a player invite through steam. nothing... dont plan on playing multiplayer i talked to others that confirm this... the game designers didnt care and therfore i wouldnt recomend buying the game for multiplayer.. if im wrong someone correct me and tell me what i didnt do but after hours of attempting everything from redownloading it to try every version from 1.1 to 1.3 patches to reinstalling in a different file location.. notta im disapointed as everyone else i know is also.. i c that some have got it to work.. why cant we???

I strongly recommend using a VPN client such as Hamachi. It's simple to set up and circumvents firewall issues. It was the only way I could set up a game of EU3 with friends.

Also, when you tried at a LAN, you did attempt to connect via the local IP address and not the internet IP address right?

 

[Grubnessul]

LAN and Hamatchi work like a charm for me for both vicky2 and EU3

 

[The Zealot]

Being a long time customer to Paradox is somewhat like being in a abusive relationship. You get used to the beatings and the abuse and after a while you start to think that it is normal. Everyone says they love Paradox games (and so do I), but you somehow know deep down this isn´t right. But what can we do? Stop buying the games? Sounds reasonable, but unfortunately they are more addictive than crack cocaine. So what am I doing right now? Trying to play multiplayer with a friend of course, even thou the game crashes constantly.

This. I don't give up and keep being vocal. They know they have a lot of talent, but there's definitely too much slopyness and lack of attention to detail. I can't let those guys get away with it. Will it change their focus, their priorities? Maybe not. But it will definitely make them more conscious about their job's responsibilities.
For example, the last official patch for HTTT was issued around 9 months after the last beta patch, which had quality and only one major bug, a crash on exit. Only Paradox knows how they managed to add new bugs that didn't exist in that beta, including borking country tags when you changed your country name, a major major failure. Excuses like "well, we have Divine Wind now, so HTTT stays as it is" only made things worse.

Are resources limited? Oh yes. Can you leave one of your games broken when it wasn't with the previous patch? Absolutely not. It shows an incredible lack of work ethics to 1) mess up what was fine and 2) leave as it is forever. Official patches are really important to a lot of people, especially those who play in multiplayer, so points 1 and 2 combined are really hurtful to our feelings. To me HTTT would be perfect as the final expansion if only it allowed a "build all" button on the Ledger to build a building in as many provinces you had money for in the least amount of clicking, in the order I chose. So if I had ordered the list in alphabetical order, or by tax value, or production value, or revolt risk, or religion, BAM. One click and all the top Production provinces get a marketplace, leaving me with only a few ducats left, but that's ok, it will be worth it.



Vicky 2 is another great game. But damn, the tooltips could be much better, providing more information, the game needs the major bugs addressed, make multiplayer really playable so it's enjoyable, and do not, in any circumstance, allow your own patches to bork the paid Download Content like the other Interface you can get on Gamersgate and Steam. It really is adding insult to injury.

 

[Enderborn_]

I played a small game in LAN with a friend literally (and I mean literally) 3 meters aways and it was fine until the whole out of sync BS started. What does that even mean!?

 

[austrianemporer]

I played a small game in LAN with a friend literally (and I mean literally) 3 meters aways and it was fine until the whole out of sync BS started. What does that even mean!?

No necromancy please.