Where are the Multiplayer players?

[Dudester22]

After practicing offline how to fly the A10C, I then decided to have a look at multiplayer tonight. However, I was surprised to see that the rooms are mainly empty apart from a few players scattered about here and there.

 

So my question is simple really. "Where is everyone?" Is there another way to connect to some servers or is this it? Seems so many people talk about the game in these forums, but I don't see many playing it online.

[Vedexent]

There seems to be more traffic on the weekends. This Sunday our server was pretty much full.

 

There are groups out there - but they aren't as active as one might hope.

 

You can always come check us out - but we're primarily a Russian aircraft group ... not a lot of A10C roles.

[Devrim]

I agree Dudester.

 

May be it's time zone thing...

[Hamblue]

One of the silent things happening is that the multiplayer crowd is slowly backing off. The crashes and bugs have been going on for a very long time and little has been done about it. They seem to fix it and within a couple of patches they break it. It's a shame but people will tend to migrate to what works.

 

Edge will be worse IMO because it will be a new platform supported by the same programmers.

I plan to hang in there but haven't been playing nearly as much lately.

[hypersonik]

Check at 3-8 pm west coast time. Saturday is climax.

[ENO]

One of the silent things happening is that the multiplayer crowd is slowly backing off. The crashes and bugs have been going on for a very long time and little has been done about it. They seem to fix it and within a couple of patches they break it. It's a shame but people will tend to migrate to what works.

 

Edge will be worse IMO because it will be a new platform supported by the same programmers.

I plan to hang in there but haven't been playing nearly as much lately.

 

 

This. Sadly- but yeah... I'm not nearly as eager to jump in as I used to be either. I'm in it for the long haul but as a result I'm REALLY pacing myself to sustain my patience. I get in once or twice a month and that's about all I can handle.

[Midnight]

Good question mate, on average there are about 120 players playing and 500 reading the Forum. Just doesn't make sense!

[VapoR]

Another cause: stale missions. You can only fly missions a few times before you memorize exactly where every unit is.

 

Some ways to improve this on the mission designers part:

 

Dynamic weather, regenerated often. Really can create different experiences.

 

Several sets of target areas with enough targets. Create separate packages going to different targets than having 6 waypoints for everyone.

 

More interesting targets: stuff like bunkers and depots gaurded by some AA.

 

Resource system: USE IT. Limit the number of aircraft and weapons available to make everyone more careful to protect what they have.

 

Win conditions: make them tangible.

 

Ultimately what is really needed for MP to be great though is a dynamic campaign. Servers would be full every day!

[ENO]

Another cause: stale missions. You can only fly missions a few times before you memorize exactly where every unit is.

 

Some ways to improve this on the mission designers part:

 

Dynamic weather, regenerated often. Really can create different experiences.

 

Several sets of target areas with enough targets. Create separate packages going to different targets than having 6 waypoints for everyone.

 

More interesting targets: stuff like bunkers and depots gaurded by some AA.

 

Resource system: USE IT. Limit the number of aircraft and weapons available to make everyone more careful to protect what they have.

 

Win conditions: make them tangible.

 

Ultimately what is really needed for MP to be great though is a dynamic campaign. Servers would be full every day!

 

Do you make missions?

[Paganus]

Another part of the multiplayer community is flying on servers that are not public. You can always check out some squadrons.

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=34062

 

We find that with selective patching, missions designed within certain limitations along with our pilots using regimented settings and procedures, we don't have as much crashing as you might find on the public servers.

[TAW_Blaze]

Yeah everytime more than 10 guys go on a server it'll just crash within one or two hours. It's actually a bit amusing, we go on a server then it crashes, and then everyone joins the next one.. and then repeat :D. I'm pretty new though, it'll probably get old soon.

[Vedexent]

We find that with selective patching, missions designed within certain limitations along with our pilots using regimented settings and procedures, we don't have as much crashing as you might find on the public servers.

 

I'm curious: what settings, parameters, and procedures do you find keep things stable?

[Vedexent]

It's a shame but people will tend to migrate to what works.

 

But what are they migrating to? Apart from Falcon BMS - which arguably is a pretty narrow genre; you don't have multi-role capabilities like you do with DCS - and more arcade like, lower fidelity game/sim hybrids, what else is there?

 

The combat sim market is pretty lean right now - and that might be part of the problem. A stiff competitor might light a fire under ED to clean up the platform.

 

And my question wasn't rhetorical - if there's an up and coming combat flight sim that's drawing in players, I'd love to know what it is.

[SNAFU]

Do you make missions?

Just thought the same.

 

Makeing missions for this software was pain since DCS started. With every little patch triggers have to rechecked, reworked and missions have to be tested and tested all over again. I am surprised that there are some masochits, who are still making missions at all, well, I am too, when I have some time to kill...

 

But just when you have reworked a mission, the next patch is out and you start all over again.

 

I wonder how 3rd party developers deal with this? They put their existence on the line with spending development time into DCS?

 

But still it is the best simulation available. :joystick:

[Grimes]

Makeing missions for this software was pain since DCS started. With every little patch triggers have to rechecked, reworked and missions have to be tested and tested all over again. I am surprised that there are some masochits, who are still making missions at all, well, I am too, when I have some time to kill...

 

Its a complicated multi-faceted issue of which there is no clear answer to. Innocent changes to weapon behavior in the name of realism, or how AI react, or a bug, or new features, or really any change to the sim can dramatically alter the expected behavior of any mission. Ammo bunkers now require bigger bombs to destroy it? My mission is broken! Obviously it varies, and in my opinion that reaction shouldn't warranted to a change like that. Tankers getting bugged and having a mission which relies on tankers... yah totally warranted. With the tankers bug its a sim side fix which requires 0 effort from a mission builder to address unless that mission builder wants to redesign a mission to no longer use tankers for short term play-ability.

 

The degree of which missions need to be rechecked is fairly small I think. All you need to do is try and play a mission for the fun of it rather than as a hypochondriac parent worried about your kid. If someone else plays the mission and finds a problem, chances are they will tell you. Its doubly true if they like the mission or its an often player MP mission. Yes its suggested for you to re-save a mission file from patch to patch. For the most part its not required, its just dependent on unknown variables to you guys for whenever mission editor related files or the mission file format changes slightly. Considering the game can still read BS1 mission files should probably an indication of how robust the editor can be with different mission file formatting.

 

Simply put, changes to mission behavior is an un-avoidable consequence of a sim that is constantly evolving. For better or worse it happens.

[VapoR]

Do you make missions?

 

Yes.

 

Making the improvements I mentioned would be work, lots of work. But it's still true.

 

The mission editor could have some improvements that would make this stuff easier: ability to see unit placement without launching the game is an example. Some kind of unit placement randomizer would be good too.

 

I've been working on one large mission for months now. What I'm trying to do would be done in minutes with a DC and would be better. At the end of all my work I may find that it runs like crap in a full server.

 

Frustrating.

[SNAFU]

Simply put, changes to mission behavior is an un-avoidable consequence of a sim that is constantly evolving. For better or worse it happens.

 

Sure. Volunteer mission builders don´t depend on it, so either you deal with the fact or you don´t. I guess you know better than anybody else here , that a single, realistic and complex mission with voice overs, scripts, randomized to a little degree, with a realisitc briefing (even with the flight planner tool a good briefing can take you a day to make it) can easily be an effort of over an hundred hours. So if you have a job, other hobbies and a social life you can easily spent a year on making a decent mission. In this time you spent about 10% of the total time, reworking the mission due to patch-changes in AI behavior, trigger and other new issues caused by the reworking.

 

Just for a consideration, now imagine a 3rd party developer team working at 110% capacity to stay in business has to go through all the debugging again everytime ED changes something in the basics, for example AI response to threats. I think they simply cannot effort that money/time wise.

 

I don´t know how to do it better and don´t think that it is possible for ED to go on, without changing the fundamental structure, I am justing pointing out that this simple issue can be a huge problem for 3rd party developers.

Edited October 25, 2013 by SNAFU

[Dudester22]

But what are they migrating to? Apart from Falcon BMS - which arguably is a pretty narrow genre; you don't have multi-role capabilities like you do with DCS - and more arcade like, lower fidelity game/sim hybrids, what else is there?

 

The combat sim market is pretty lean right now - and that might be part of the problem. A stiff competitor might light a fire under ED to clean up the platform.

 

And my question wasn't rhetorical - if there's an up and coming combat flight sim that's drawing in players, I'd love to know what it is.

 

Well I know it's not the most complicated Sim out there, but I have been playing Cliffs of Dover since it has been Modded by Team Fusion. One server has 80 - 100 players with no lagg and it makes for some good arial combat. I never thought I would install COD again, but it's been brought back to life since it's been modded.

[Vedexent]

Simply put, changes to mission behavior is an un-avoidable consequence of a sim that is constantly evolving. For better or worse it happens.

 

Complex and expensive? Yes.

 

Unavoidable? No.

 

As a systems analyst and tester, I know it's not avoidable. It's called continuous integration and regression testing.

 

However, I also know that it's bloody near impossible to retrofit this approach into an existing project. And I recognize that open ended simulations contain testing challenges not found elsewhere.

 

DCS bears all the software hallmarks of a project that has evolved way beyond its original scope (you think?), and as such is a bearcat to keep consistent, so I don't really expect the project team to be able to easily keep things consistent - short of a complete code re-design and re-write (and I don't have millions of dollars in spare change to help fund that).

[Vedexent]

Well I know it's not the most complicated Sim out there, but I have been playing Cliffs of Dover since it has been Modded by Team Fusion. One server has 80 - 100 players with no lagg and it makes for some good arial combat. I never thought I would install COD again, but it's been brought back to life since it's been modded.

 

Thanks! Sadly, for me - I'm a fan of modern aircraft combat, and so far as I know you can't import an Su-25 into a WWII sim :)

[Dudester22]

One day 50 years later I'll be talking with my grandson like:

"...you know kiddo, once in the past we had a sim called LockOn:FlammingCliffs2, and just imagine, you could run on-line missoins with 50+ players for 3+ hours, and it did not crash! But it died out of beauty on the day when DCS-World was released...".

 

And my grandson says:

"...you are kidding me grandpa, that's impossible! Look at our DCS-World version 94.7.643, it can barely run for 30 minutes on my brand new PC with 2048 cores and 64 petabytes of RAM. You could not have something that rock-stable 50 years ago!..."

 

So this Sim used to work in Multiplayer and now it doesn't? I wasn't aware of all these disconnects because it was my first look at Multiplayer, but if this the case then that sucks big time. I am not a single player type of person and always prefer Multiplayer. I only played this single player until I learnt something before moving on to Multiplayer. My guess now is that after all this time they are not going to fix these issues. So, is it time to move on or do you reckon they can fix something that wasn't broken in the first place?

[ApoNOOB]

If you are getting constant/regular disconnects this is unrelated. Change the connection setting in the MP browser to LAN.

 

I still see many people playing, but it's undeniable that some people get fed up with constant MP issues. For myself I can only say that after a days work flying 20 minutes to the target zone just to crash is not very high on my list.

 

On the other hand there is no real alternative to DCS which will lure me back anytime I rage quit. Just like that dog you kick and chase away I will sit here next patch, with big expectant eyes, happy to see you no matter how bad you treat me... wagging my.. wait stop!

Edited October 25, 2013 by ApoNOOB

[Vedexent]

So this Sim used to work in Multiplayer and now it doesn't? I wasn't aware of all these disconnects because it was my first look at Multiplayer, but if this the case then that sucks big time. I am not a single player type of person and always prefer Multiplayer. I only played this single player until I learnt something before moving on to Multiplayer. My guess now is that after all this time they are not going to fix these issues. So, is it time to move on or do you reckon they can fix something that wasn't broken in the first place?

 

Multiplayer works - or at least it has been working for me and the people I've been flying with.

 

Multiplayer does seem to have issues if you push past certain scenario and map limits, however. Apparently - as previously noted - if your scenarios stay within certain limits things are fairly stable. Yes, we'd like big, complex, integrated operational scenarios which seem possible in the system as it is designed - but it seems there are stability issues with that.

 

I haven't run up against those issues - yet - but we've not tried huge hyper-complex mission scenarios in our group, yet, either.

[VanjaB]

The thing is, DCS was never meant to be a multiplayer focused simulator. At least thats not what I went into when I bought the Ka50 and A10C all those years ago. It was designed with fidelity in mind, not performance or balance or server stability or any of those things that multiplayer fans need/desire. With EDGE we might get some of that again (pure speculation though) but first and foremost what most DCS fans want is simulation fidelity.

[ENO]

There are a few VERY small things that you can do to ensure you get the most out of the MP experience. It's just unfortunate that these VERY small things are not built into the program and quite frequently result in people stomping off in frustration and never looking at the sim again.

 

The biggest one is the switch mentioned above. For SOME reason- and I'm not going to sugar coat my frustration- we STILL need to CONSTANTLY remind / tell people to switch their network speed setting to LAN...

 

This completely non-intuitive setting is the absolute LAST option a person is going to choose unless being given a reason to by coming into these forums. When you're getting ready to play plublic multiplayer- switching to LAN isn't exactly common sense.

 

Guys coming in and saying they crash within 5 minutes are usually set to any other setting... blessedly this is a quick fix and most guys are straightened out about it in the server on TS3- and this goes for most servers. It's the first option suggested to people and frequently the most successful at rectifying the problem (for those who say anything about it or know about these forums).

 

Most other crash causes happen a bit earlier in the session and currently involve more 32bit problems (given that it just switched over to "unsupported") and Saved games / DCS folder / config / network.cfg related files.

 

I understand that hardcoding in the fixes necessary to make the saved games / dcs folders wouldn't be easy. Seems to me the files there were meant to preserve existing settings so that people don't need to switch them back all the time... we asked for that and we got it and this is the result- so I'm cautious to get too upset about that... but again it's one of those things that unless a person came in here to look it up (if they made it that far), they wouldn't know about it.

 

The whole LAN thing is probably the biggest killer of the expansion of the MP community.

 

And to Vapor... You make a valid point about mission editing(I think a couple others commented on it as well) in that you're not slamming the mission builders as much as commentating about how some development in the mission editor to make the experience more efficient would go a long way to giving enthusiasts the realism "fix" they desire.

 

I'm no mission building master by any definition- but I've worked through the trials of about a dozen mission designs over the last year or so with some expert tutelage from the community's best and as much as I was into designing the "more realistic" scenarios, the experience many were looking for simply didn't line up with what the platform delivered.

 

I laughed at Grime's analogy about going into a mission you designed worrying about it like a sick child- That's exactly what I do and that too is ruining my passion for flying (that's my own issue, not ED's). Unfortunately there's no way to "put it aside" in the MP community since everyone is, in fact, telling you (with good intentions) about every single problem they're experiencing... most of which have NOTHING to do with the mission and relate more to hardware issues or software conflicts on their end... not to mention a daunting list of mods- some of which from 1.1.1.1.

 

And at the end of this babbling rant, the only thing that gives me the energy to barf this monologue all over the screen is the passion I have for the concept. Just like it frustrates me to hear about all the bad things in my missions, I imagine that having me (and others) nitpick the deficiencies of the DCS series to death can't be beneficial.

 

So while the MP experience may be somewhat lacking in its ability to satiate all of our expectations... in being critical of the failures please remember to contribute your logs / dump files / tracks / .miz as requested so ED has a chance to fix it. Doing so may not help fix the problem, but NOT doing so will definitely not help solve anything.

 

 

> soap box

end