The Online 'experience'

[Guest DarthMaulUK]

Now I am a huge fan of this game so today, I decided to take a look online. Firstly I am hit with utter stupidity of Gamespy who cant seem to remember if I verified my email address after SIXTEEN attempts, continues to give me the incorrect login name - so I log out only to find that you cant!

 

I hate to admit but Petroglyph need to take a long hard look at Multiplayer. Its a mess. Again, Gamespy brings with it that 'lack of community feel' with what must be the worst way to play a ladder match in the history of online gaming. Its totally random! You cant select your opponent, you cant challenge, you just click on quick match and wait, and wait, and wait and erm....wait.

 

I really thought that dawn of war was bad but at least you can select who your next victim is and theres no complex way of having your ladder scores added up. I am curious to find out whose decision this was as I am left stunned.

 

Personally, all the Galactic Maps should have been included allowing players the chance to decide if they want to play large scale games.

 

I am not going to mention about the current Multiplayer issues that are still ongoing, despite a new patch as this has already been covered.

 

Im just curious to know how everyone feels about the total randomness of playing a ladder match? Not about the connection issues

 

** THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT THE CURRENT CONNECTION ISSUES BUT TO DISCUSS THE POOR WAY IN FINDING A LADDER GAME **

DMUK

[enterman]

Ive only been able to play 2 1vs1 matchs because all of the other games ive tried I havnt been able to connect to anyone. Yes the multiplayer is truely horrible right now unless u can connect to someone and play (unlikely) but if u do get to play multi EAW and dont get out of sync errors then u will have a great online experiance. EAWs multiplayer is very fun, especially galactic conquest.

[Darth Alec]

Yeah, gamespy stinks. I can't even get enof experiance to make a Human vs. Human guide

[Admiral Sith]

I can play but it wont allow more than 2 players to play a game, not to mention you cant see who is in a Game so if you want someone to join you have to post the exact details of the match.

[Cox_]

Yeah Very poor on the Muli side .5/10 its that bad.

[Admiral Sith]

Id give Multiplayer a 2/10 just because the actual playing is fun, although AUto-Resolve sucks it always makes me lose against Multi Pirates

[Astrotoy7]

lolz.... The current MP sucks the big one - what a mess ... they need to look at that *seriously* because MP is basically what will give the game longevity.

 

wankers

 

you'd think they wouldve tested it properly....those guys must've been down at Burger King that week

 

mtfbwya

[dro]

Get this:

 

I strictly configure the multiplayer options screen to quick match me in 1 vs 1 land game only, and it drops me in a 2 vs 2 land game.

What's that about?

 

No option to choose whether I want to play as empire or rebellion in quick match?

What's that about?

 

In a multiplayer game the opponent out-of-syncs. I hit "kick" the player and game stays at same wait screen. Repeated occurances.

What's that about?

 

Seemingly - Only way to play online is by disabling windows firewall, as the firewall exception list won't register the game permanently. Security down.

What's that about?

 

Petro Please:

You have great concept game here! One big downside is this multiplay. Game's about 500 megs worth of patch updates shy of being multiplayable. Roughly speaking.

Steady the course. Patch the game. We're all here to support ya.

 

Oh, also with respect, support this game right (as has been thus far). We want SW:EaW to be the first in a long line of Petro games, rather than the first and and only game released by Petro!

 

Kind Regards,

 

Pedro

[TK-421]

From experience Gamespy is awful, they really haven't improved gaming in general very much in all these years. I kinda hoped they would have had their own multiplayer servers and setup for the game but they really wen't cheap on it.

 

I'm going to hold off on the online until I hear some good things.

[ghost665_uk]

well first time i played online and while i enjoyed it when it worked, i thought that there should be a way to keep track of stats etc.., maybe some way to do tournaments etc... rather then just random way they did it.

 

ps. maps are a bit on the small side especially if we ever get 4v4 to work lol. also anyone else find them a bit cluttered i mean i like variouty but seemed cramped for tactics other then throw everything u have at the enemy, maybe pirates should be added on MP maps as well to slow people down taking all the map.

[Orao]

I wasn't able to play it yet. Pending connection all the time or I'm randomly kicked. But it seems to me that they tested it only on LAN configuration that's all.

[shadowsfm]

i played skarmage, there was pirates on naboo land

[Cox_]

I have been able to get Multiplayer to work with my clan http://www.ISS-HQ.net

 

Basically you cant use a router (forwarding ports dont work)

Need to have NAT system on

And your firewall needs to be off; Not just unblock for EaW; the WHOLE FIREWALL.

 

Some people think on norton setting permissions help and they dont. Also have to watch out for the newb that thinks everything is alright and they cant be wrong

[ghost665_uk]

i have played loads of games sitting behind a firewall and using a router, all i had to do was forward a port and it worked

[Lindsey]

there needs to be an option to disable the pirates in the 1v1 matches. Nothing sucks more then building up a good fleet then getting reduced to one hero after the computer decides it doesnt like you.

[TotalBiscuit]

Id give Multiplayer a 2/10 just because the actual playing is fun, although AUto-Resolve sucks it always makes me lose against Multi Pirates

 

I found that incredibly frustrating as well. So I modded the game to remove the pirates from multiplayer entirely. Uploaded it for other people to use, you can find the information here

 

TB.

[gswift]

Please excuse me if this is a dumb question. All I've heard about in this forum is Gamespy. I thought that the primary multiplayer service for EaW was going to be XFire. Has anyone tried using XFire in stead of Gamespy? Do the same problems happen there as well?

[shadowsfm]

i didnt know xfire had gaming servers, we should try that

 

my online gaming experiance:

 

decided to go online with my laptop, couldnt use my gamespy name so i had to make a new one. every time i load my laptop crashes.

 

today i used the big computer. i use ingame to connect with peers. played 6 games, got kicked 40 times while connecting. one match, 2 oponnents left, because the game was in slow mode, they got replaced by ai. it was slow, but fun. once another match got disconnected in the middle of the game.

 

there is people shout, "turn off fire wall." but its not the fire wall, the nat thing is bugged, where sometimes they just dont work. some people with out fire walls just turns nat off.

 

in the end, i was 3 wins 3 losses.

[popcorn2008]

I don't know why petro just didnt allow you to set the size of the galaxy you want to fight in for multiplayer if you do a campaign. Makes more sense to me that way.

 

I really don't like the ladder system either. And Quick Match isnt quick at all

[gswift]

Well, I played my first online games last night. I played 4 quick matches and didn't have any technical problems. The problem I DID have was my skill level. I'm assuming that you start out with the lowest ranking available (I think I was like #2500 or something). The first guy I played just happened to be #64. He walked all over me, but I didn't feel too bad because he was ranked so high. The next three matches were against low-ranking player, but I did even worse. I can't believe how badly I was beaten. I'm a VERY experienced 35 year old gamer, and I've played EaW in single player mode every night since release day. My first thought was that it wasn't worth playing because of the humilliation factor. After more thought, I'm going to stick with it. The better my oponents are, the faster I'll improve (I hope). I just can't believe my strategy was THAT poor.

 

Edit: I must make a correction. I went back and looked closely at my match history. The first two players were BOTH in the top 100, the third was around 150, but my fourth game accounted for that guy's ONLY victory. I hope that made him happy. LOL

[DS_Vespidbat]

i thought it said somewhere u'll be match someone that is close to ur rank...LOL

[gswift]

i thought it said somewhere u'll be match someone that is close to ur rank...LOL

 

If that's the way it was supposed to be, then it must be broken. My name is also gswift on gamespy. You can see my match history if you want a good laugh, although there's an extra loss to one guy because I didn't know what the "report loss" button did, so I tried it out... OOOOPS! I'm such a newb.

 

It may have been that there just wasn't enough players looking for games for the system to find a player closer to my rating. I should note that although I was badly beaten, I had a whale of a time, and I can't wait to get home and try to improve my skill. Competition is so adictive.

 

Edit: I just read that they plan to reset the ladder after the next patch is released. If I can get past the newb learning curve before they do that, then I'll have a chance to start fresh. Looking at it that way, I'm not as anxious for the patch to come out. I've got a lot to learn. MP is sooo different than the AI.

 

Update: I went home for lunch, but couldn't start a quickmatch. So much for my above comments about not having any trouble launching games. It was just sitting on the 'making connections' screen for more than 5 min before I hit cancel. I wonder if they changed something since last night?

 

Update: Later in the evening I was again able to connect without any problems. Nothing was changed on my machine between attempts, so I can only assume that the mid-day problem was something on the gamespy side of things.

[shadowsfm]

there was this one time, this guy built 30 tie crawlers, each are weak, of course, but a group of thirty, rushes my base while im working on tech 2, i was so over powered. another thing. the missle jamming abilitys of at-aa and interdicters needs to be improved. because i can take them out with artilary. another over powering tactic is rushing a base with 10 squads of bombers.

 

what mp realy needs is a surrender option, do i look like i want to wait 10 minutes just to watch this dude destroy all my buildings?

[gswift]

what mp realy needs is a surrender option, do i look like i want to wait 10 minutes just to watch this dude destroy all my buildings?

 

This is SOOO true. There's a lot of talk on the gamespy forums about people disconnecting from games when they are losing badly. I can understand that, because it's really boring when you have to wait for your enemy to finish you off at the end of a match. I usually just walk away and do something else. It wasn't any fun when I was on the winning side either. With the amount of discussion about that topic and the problems it causes with the ladder rankings, I suspect it will be addressed in a patch.

 

I'm really having a blast with multi-player. I keep meeting this one guy that's way out of my league and he beats the tar out of me, but it takes him longer each time...

[gswift]

Okay, I know I'm not supposed to double-post, but I've kinda had a running commentary, it's been a couple of days, and this an entirely new observation. I would update the previous post otherwise. Please excuse my decision to do another post.

 

 

Online play has been REALLY fun when it works (1 out of 5 times), but the technical problems have been discussed ad infinitum and I won't say any more on that.

 

Here's the thing that really curls my toes. There's no filters or modderators in the game's chat area. The stuff that people say there is just profane. It's impossible to interact in any real way. If you ask a question, compliment someone, try to set up a match, or even say hello, you're greeted with a torrent of insults. There's tons of spamming, cursing and flaming. This game needs some serious filter controls added to the online interface. I can't even stand to look at it while I'm waiting for a match. It's just disgusting.

 

Then there's the guys that start games and are deliberately crude and rude in-game. I think their plan is to make you disconnect so they get two wins against you. That's even worse than the chat room because you're stuck in a game with them until you beat them.

 

I'm guessing that the majority of players are mature and respectful of others, but it only takes one guy that repeats an offensive word 100 times in a row to ruine the chat or ingame texting.

 

I know petroglyph is fixing the tech issues, but without some filters it's just too offensive to play anyway. There's not even a way to report the ones that are causing problems, or a way to block individuals. What a shame.

 

Update: Maybe I just never noticed before, but last night I saw a chat monitor for the first time. They didn't seem to be doing much, but they were there, and there seemed to be less spamming.