Fix your F'ing Servers

[smoky relic]

I'm tired of getting desynced every other turn, or getting disconnected from server 3-4 times in a 1 hr time frame. Use the money you get from the season pass/DLCs to hire a guy who knows what they're doing when it comes to the technical side of multiplayer to actually make it work... FFS...

[round stone]

I mean one could ask in a more polite way but from my understanding this is just a thing since Planetfall. Would be cool if it desynced less but mp might be an after thought.

[smoky relic]

It was mainly frustration at the time of writing it.

I mean this game has been out for 2 years and they can't get their servers in order?

Me and my friends played for about 6 hours the other night and about 2-3 of those hours were recovering from Desyncs and Server Disconnections. Kinda frustrating to have that much time wasted, ya know?

[round stone]

Ye I understand where you're coming from

[glad sky]

The issue isn't a server issue it is the way multiplayer was made initially.

To quote myself from a different thread:
I wish I was a programmer so I knew the proper terminology, but my friend described it as this:
let's say you and I are playing a multiplayer game of addition and multiplication. both of our computers have a view of the world, starting at 10

A -> 10
C -> 10

I click multiply by 2

A -> 10 * 2 -> 20
C -> 10

now my computer is going to send your computer the information that I clicked that button. in the mean time, you click add 2

A -> 20
C -> 10 + 2 -> 12

my message arrives, and your message also arrives

A -> 20 + 2 -> 22
C -> 12 * 2 -> 24

we are out of sync, nothing will ever bring us back in sync

[fresh arrow]

Do you have it on classic turns or synchronised turns the reason desync exists is simply too much information happening at the same time that your or the other person cant keep up.

To reduce desync keep it to classic turns as its 1 bit of infomation at a time.

You got to remember every piece of information must be the same for everyone involved this is commonly known as being synchronised. If some much as 1 number goes different it can have a chain reaction effect causing some really weird stuff to happen.

Now the question is what is your CPU with other players CPU because this game is very CPU heavy like most 4x games.

[glad sky]

While it is true that classic turns does reduce the instances of desyncing significantly, it is also quite foolish to even allow syncronised turns in the first place if the system wasn't built to support it. Additionally having players move simultaneously while AI move independantly once all players have ended their turn would alleviate some additional desyncs (though I've had one of the CMs disagree with me).

[fresh arrow]

Dude smaller games can handle it

If your doing anything bigger then mid with a low end computer your computer is simply not going to be able to keep up.

[glad sky]

I literally just stated a way to break up the pace of computing into smaller chunks to allow for it.

[smoky relic]

If they implemented Simultaneous turns they 100% should make sure it actually works...

[torn cliff]

my understanding is that they use P2P instead of a centralized server. So messages get very chatty. I do not know their architecture, but my educated guess is that they send messages/saves to each other which causes dsyncs. For a central server process to work, it does not need to be their server. It just needs to be someone's pc to host. By having a centralized host that could gate all operations and ensure a queue is in place before messages get out of sync.

[glad sky]

Yeah, ideally they'd switch to that system, I thought P2P meant that but I since learned I was wrong. This is a quote from Jordi when I asked about moving AI to standard turns while players still have simultaneous turns: ```Moving the AI to a separate turn order wouldn't have any impact on Out of Syncs as there are still 2 or more Humans present that each process the Actions. Multiplayer in AoW4 still sends all actions to all involved human players and each PC process and resolves those actions themselves. The Server is only used for storing the Session as it enables crossplay with other PC Platforms and Consoles.

As long as we get clear Out of Sync reports we can fix them, as we've done in the past. We just fixed a few in the Open Beta because we got reports that said "If I do X, in situation Y then the Game goes Out of Sync".```
I believe this is wrong as it would reduce the rate of OOSs but whatever. Because of how the multiplayer system fundamentally is, the only way to truly fix it is to rely on a centralized server, even if it is another players. Having everyone process together is what is causing the sync issues.

That amount of work would require the multiplayer to be remade entirely, which isn't going to happen sadly.

[prisma bone]

Damn, I feel this so much right now...