To be honest, the reason why most play single player is because multiplayer doesn’t work as it should in it's current form. This CANNOT be understated, the fact that multiplayer games don't work, with a working mp game of 4 people being considered lucky (anything above that a small-big miracle). 16 player multiplayer sessions are a wet dream. Stuff like, types of internet connection, firewalls, geography, PC hardware etc. affect the performance of this game in MP. If the MP game crawls, it is not playable. Hamachi for example fixes much of this by providing an VPN though is slow-ens the game speed, while GR is faster but more unstable causing much more crashes (which increase the more players is involved, 2-3 players is still relatively stable). I'm not going to go into detail about these problems since they have been multiply times posted on this forum.George Geczy wrote:There has been some investigation into using Steam multiplayer and matchmaking. One reason that this hasn't had a high profile is that most games are single player mode, and multiplayer is small segment of time played.
The big issue, however, is that a switch to Steam Multiplayer would need to be "complete". It does not look like it would be possible to support multiple systems (the current DirectPlay and the new Steam MP) at the same time. So switching to Steam MP would mean that we would no longer be multiplayer playable on Gameranger, Hamachi, or non-steam launched games.
On the other hand, we'd gain Steam matchmaking, the larger steam user base (versus gameranger), and possibly improved connectivity.
Thoughts?
-- George / BattleGoat.
(Note: This message was also cross-posted to the Steam Forums)
In essence the reason why today many people don't play this game in MP is because it isn't working. Don't know how more clear I can be .
Compare your own titles to your competitors like Paradox, where you have youtubers streaming the games in big multiplayer sessions that potential customers can se. If people have fun and laugh they give a good impression of the game. One of the first thing I do when I want to buy a new game is to look it up on youtube to look at it's graphics, game functions, different ways to play it and what does it's players think of it. The experience in multiplayer is different from singleplayer and could thus be viewed as a different product. The more players the richer the experience. 3 players tends to end up with 1 vs 2 at some point, not always fun if the same players band to gether allways, thus bigger games is a plus more options to ally with, more dynamic.
The reason I've personally been so inactive recently have been because I am fed-up of playing singleplayer and multiplayer is just causing too much frustration, thus not an option anymore. This issue has led me not to play this game anymore, this game was even the last hold-out title on windows that kept me on that platform (thus why I'm unable to continue modding). One large multiplayer game back in the day was successful, the "great powers" game if I remember correctly, it gave me the taste for the value of a large multiplayer game that never subsided and never could be replaced. These kinds of games are practically impossible to achieve due to previous problems highlighted. Sure in theory it should work... but.
I don't personally care what the solution is, if it is Steam MP or not, but that is the only solution that I see since Gameranger, Hamachi, Direct IP etc is a nogo. Either you tackle all the individual problems plaguing the ruined MP experience or you find a way to push through them all at once. Thats my opinion .