One month and multiplayer not even slightly fixed

[Darkspark]

One month on and multiplayer is still unplayable. It's not the fact it doesn't work. When it wants to work, you can just about get a playable game, but there are SO MANY issues that have just been ignored or just difficult for T17 to reproduce (despite appearing on all the computers I have W:R installed on.

If the multiplayer component was known to be as bad as it is, I would have respected T17 if they had held off like Crystal Dynamics have done with their latest Tomb Raider game.

To summarise the list of issues that have plagued W:R since day 1 and not been fixed are

1) The Session not Available message when attempting to join a game. There is no reason given why this appears, but you are booted out of the game lobby straight away or after a few seconds.

2) Lightbulbs don't work. Not even close to working. I can't see other persons lit lightbulbs and my own lit lightbulb goes out each time I press it. If there was a worse way of starting an online game, I can't think of it. How about a ready countdown button for the host?

3) That random crash which happens when a network game stars (if you are lucky enough to get past the lobby). Everything freezes and you need to restart the pc.

4) The lengthy "waiting for players" message that appears despite having a 8mb broadband connection. How there is lag in a turn based game I have no idea. Sometimes the message can appear for over 30 seconds for each players turn.

5) The awful chat interface which is stuck in last century. Most people would prefer a scrolling overlay type chat activated with the t or y key. And the chatbox that cannot be used when there is network lag (between turns)

6) I can't browse my weapons when others take their turn.

These are all things that have bugged multiplayer since the start and which ALL haven't been fixed. It's strange that I have never noticed a single bug in any other multiplayer online game, but can name numerous ones for one game that I really like. Sure all games have problems but tend to fix the noticeable ones really quickly. Nothing has been done in a month and I am sure that many others are also not happy.

[Djoszee]

1) The Session not Available message when attempting to join a game. There is no reason given why this appears, but you are booted out of the game lobby straight away or after a few seconds.

Agreed. Why does it make us join the game at first place anyway?


2) Lightbulbs don't work. Not even close to working. I can't see other persons lit lightbulbs and my own lit lightbulb goes out each time I press it. If there was a worse way of starting an online game, I can't think of it. How about a ready countdown button for the host?

Next time it happens, pay attention to the colors of the flags. From my experience:
- the lightbulbs will go out when the colors are still the same
- the lightbulbs will go out when the colors are beeing switched
- your opponent may get frustrating and starts to flash his lightbulb


4) The lengthy "waiting for players" message that appears despite having a 8mb broadband connection. How there is lag in a turn based game I have no idea. Sometimes the message can appear for over 30 seconds for each players turn.

Is it different when you play local people in stead of worldwide people?
Do you have a router? It may slow down the p2p connection (im not an it specialist though ;))


5) The awful chat interface which is stuck in last century. Most people would prefer a scrolling overlay type chat activated with the t or y key. And the chatbox that cannot be used when there is network lag (between turns)

- It should be transperant (option)
- It should be on top of the screen (option) and you should be able to keep it open while playing
- it should be possible to open and close it using the same key


6) I can't browse my weapons when others take their turn.

That's just a feature request...
And yes, i skipped the quote on 3)

[Coconut31]

I hope your requests will be added ;)

[Darkspark]

I understand that the lightbulb should turn off when a setting change is made or somebody leaves etc...but it doesn't work period for me. If it does stay on, I can't be sure that other people can see it, thus it is useless. It will turn off when no settings are changed. It may as well be a cosmetic feature, because it is of no practical use when starting a game. Ready lights should be totally scrapped in my opinion and left to the host.

I only play worldwide games but that is no excuse for the poor network performance. If I can play games like altitude and Modern Warfare 2 without any problems on a wireless connection, then there is something wrong with Worms.

If T17 just fixed the big VISIBLE problems first before the minor problems, players would be a lot happier and there might be a larger online community. I know I speak for many people when I state that I'm put off even starting W:R for the multiplayer knowing I'm going to encounter all the bugs I've listed EVERY TIME I attempt to play. It's safer for me to just load up a game like altitude. I join a game and play...its as simple as that.

[Thurbo]

Ready lights should be totally scrapped in my opinion and left to the host.

Agreed, also because if you join a lobby, you usually want to play and not to go to the toilet before the game starts or something ;) At the moment it is just plain annyoing to sit in the lobby and can't start because one player reads a magazine, waiting to start out whereas he doesn't realize his bulb went out again.

Should stay in lobbies for ranked matches though.

[Wormetti]

Ranked probably shouldn't even have lobbies. It's supposed to be random 1 on 1 matches, so starting automatically with whatever random person it finds would make sense.

[Thurbo]

Ranked probably shouldn't even have lobbies. It's supposed to be random 1 on 1 matches, so starting automatically with whatever random person it finds would make sense.

Yes! Then it should be possible to find matches much quicker than before, too.

[Djoszee]

But what happens when you want to play ranked against a friend?

[Thurbo]

It's not even allowed to invite friends to a ranked game. I'm not sure why, but probably because it would be possible to "cheat" by inviting the same friend again and again, knowing that he is a total idiot in Worms - et voilá, you got a lot of points on your account :p

[D_Wormkill]

Tonight an update will arrive...or tomorrow, depending on Valve time. It should fix the online problems....I hope

[Darkspark]

I hope it finally fixes the online problems. Then we can start with actual gameplay fixes hopefully.

For instance fix the baseball bat trajectory and power.

[.JeT]

I, for one, would like to be able to see peoples schemes instead of the "Custom scheme" or whatever it was.

[Darkspark]

The next patch needs to tighten up hosting. If somebody leaves; the game shouldn't crash. It crashes 100% of the time for me. Which is annoying as 70% of the time when you're playing forts, after somebody loses all their worms, they leave...

[Plutonic]

Do you actually mean crash, or just that the game exits? If it's the former thats quite nasty, if its the latter, no worms game has ever has host migration yet, and while it's probably easier to implement on a worms game than an FPS, it's still not something you implement in a game lightly.

[Wormetti]

It's supposed to have host migration. The console version does but of course it doesn't always work.

[Darkspark]

Do you actually mean crash, or just that the game exits? If it's the former thats quite nasty, if its the latter, no worms game has ever has host migration yet, and while it's probably easier to implement on a worms game than an FPS, it's still not something you implement in a game lightly.

Well everything freezes and I can't exit the game, so have to use task manager to exit.