PC Multiplayer Sad State of Affairs

[Matt115]

It doesnt run with 8 either just how many times it needs to be said? Dedicated servers are a mess right now and they were for a long time .....corrupted chunks.....Player profiles getting reset......sleeping bag switching....other players claims showing those bugs have all NOTHING to do with max number 8 ppl...not even mentioning NON game breaking bugs like turrets not shooting etc pp

Yep, even SP have some bugs - just wait for update some time because 7dtd game pass made mess so they need to talk with Microsoft

Whether the feedback is given in official bug reports or critical rants here is largely immaterial. The bugs are all already known issues. Posting more of either (reports or rants) isn't going to make it more or less known. The devs have their priorities and that is all there is to it.

We could take bets on whether it will be the PvP crowd or the console crowd that will get what they want out of TFP first...

damn i prefere to say think but in diffrent way

I think this may be an important point but not exactly regarding expectations. It could be that PvP gameplay demands higher standards than PvE. If you are trying to take aim at another human player, that is a lot different than aiming at zombies and probably is much more adversely affected by a poor frame rate or lost packets and imbalances in connectivity. Who cares about look around under ground for PvE but with PvP that is game breaking. Even dupe cheats are much more significant when you are competing vs cooperating. 

So someone playing with 5 players cooperatively might be having a super fun experience while 5 players who are competing against each other and trying to locate hidden bases and get ahead in the arms race and defensive items faster might find things much more frustrating and unplayable because they can't hit the other player due to net performance, people can look around underground and see hidden bases, and figure out dupe cheats that will help them rocket up the progression ladder faster than the other players. Bugs like these can sit around almost unnoticed or at least ignored by the solo and co-op players for years.

TFP is aware of these bugs but I think they are content to leave things as "good enough" for solo and PvE players for the time being. I know they aren't trying to compete with other more dedicated PvP offerings out there.

Honestly i can't agree with you here, This is not about 7dtd but about just PVP and PVE in cod if you loose match you will lose 10 minutes.  but if you lost packets during easter egg quest in zombie you will loose even month of playing (perksaholic). In 7dtd well.... hm zombie like wighht making much less mistakes that humans so depending on stage npc can be bigger treat

That's not how it works.  In a larger Multiplayer server some people are building, some people are mining, some people are looting, so generally you still the same number of zombies when you are out.

If one part of machine don't work good it's good enough to say that machine is broken. So if they use logic that 8 players because = 64:8 = 8 npc per player is enough this mean they will not increase number of players. Because they would have to change diffrent things too

 

[SylenThunder]

Fair enough, I was making the big assumption it would be cross platform play.

I do say current consoles are different an obvious example is console still can’t use mice & keyboard controls to my knowledge which could be wrong.

Controller support is already in the PC version. It is planned for it to be cross-play on all the platforms, but there aren't any considerations for the console being taken that I am aware of. Well, outside of the possibility of the @%$#ed-up server list changes being to meet some shady Microshaft criteria for being in their store. That is literally the only reason I can think of that a change that large was rolled out so suddenly without more testing.

 

[Matt115]

Controller support is already in the PC version. It is planned for it to be cross-play on all the platforms, but there aren't any considerations for the console being taken that I am aware of. Well, outside of the possibility of the @%$#ed-up server list changes being to meet some shady Microshaft criteria for being in their store. That is literally the only reason I can think of that a change that large was rolled out so suddenly without more testing.

Yep, it was forced by MS.... but we don't change past so everything it will now happens is a little bit... pointeless

 

[Roland]

Controller support is already in the PC version. It is planned for it to be cross-play on all the platforms, but there aren't any considerations for the console being taken that I am aware of. Well, outside of the possibility of the @%$#ed-up server list changes being to meet some shady Microshaft criteria for being in their store. That is literally the only reason I can think of that a change that large was rolled out so suddenly without more testing.

One positive aspect of cross platform play is that TFP will be forced to optimize the game to the point that it is able to be played on the consoles. The level of optimization they will need to do in order to come in under the console limitations is most likely more than they would have done to make the game playable for just the PC. 

On the downside, I blame the loss of ziplines on the consoles, damn them...

 

[Matt115]

One positive aspect of cross platform play is that TFP will be forced to optimize the game to the point that it is able to be played on the consoles. The level of optimization they will need to do in order to come in under the console limitations is most likely more than they would have done to make the game playable for just the PC. 

On the downside, I blame the loss of ziplines on the consoles, damn them...

Em "The level of optimization they will need to do in order to come in under the console limitations"? just make like cod season 2 and it will be fine  the we will not lose ziplines

 

[Fanatical_Meat]

Controller support is already in the PC version. It is planned for it to be cross-play on all the platforms, but there aren't any considerations for the console being taken that I am aware of. Well, outside of the possibility of the @%$#ed-up server list changes being to meet some shady Microshaft criteria for being in their store. That is literally the only reason I can think of that a change that large was rolled out so suddenly without more testing.

Controller is just a quick example as in Will the controller have auto assist aim, what will happen to mouse & keyboard function. There are others things too like consoles need a 10 foot UI, how well does that scale down to an 18 inch UI and so on. How about video drivers? Do they focus on console optimization or PC or will both be possible with staffing.

I am just a little concerned about consolization 

 

[Howlune]

Telli

One positive aspect of cross platform play is that TFP will be forced to optimize the game to the point that it is able to be played on the consoles. The level of optimization they will need to do in order to come in under the console limitations is most likely more than they would have done to make the game playable for just the PC. 

On the downside, I blame the loss of ziplines on the consoles, damn them...

Telling you now, I don't think anyone i've come to know during the course of my server hosting and playing cares about graphics to the extent that this "consolization" is a threat. The fact they will have to optimize for consoles and PC players inevitably gaining from it does at least give me some hope. Now, the concern goes back to what kind of optimization. Can only pray some netcode improvements push their way into that.
As for right this moment, I don't think theres any space in which players used to more populated servers can really go and get an experience they've been used to. It's been thoroughly neutered by this latest patch. People can mention "oh just revert to previous alphas!" but it shouldn't take much thought at all to see why it doesn't work this way, and that it'll lead to new players never even seeing said server.

I guess my biggest wonder at this point, with how busy the pimps are and how uncertain any future with larger scale multiplayer is, is finding how the modding community can perhaps remove features or ways the game is slowed down so much in more populated multiplayer servers. Whether we can be given the freedom to stop the game from sending out certain netpackages, etc serverside. I think if we were given the choice between a lot of game features or relatively decent multiplayer performance. wed likely pick the second option.

 

[Roland]

Telli

Telling you now, I don't think anyone i've come to know during the course of my server hosting and playing cares about graphics to the extent that this "consolization" is a threat. The fact they will have to optimize for consoles and PC players inevitably gaining from it does at least give me some hope. Now, the concern goes back to what kind of optimization. Can only pray some netcode improvements push their way into that.
As for right this moment, I don't think theres any space in which players used to more populated servers can really go and get an experience they've been used to. It's been thoroughly neutered by this latest patch. People can mention "oh just revert to previous alphas!" but it shouldn't take much thought at all to see why it doesn't work this way, and that it'll lead to new players never even seeing said server.

I guess my biggest wonder at this point, with how busy the pimps are and how uncertain any future with larger scale multiplayer is, is finding how the modding community can perhaps remove features or ways the game is slowed down so much in more populated multiplayer servers. Whether we can be given the freedom to stop the game from sending out certain netpackages, etc serverside. I think if we were given the choice between a lot of game features or relatively decent multiplayer performance. wed likely pick the second option.

Okay, but come on... you MUST realize that the purpose of the latest patch was not to neuter the larger populated servers. It may have happened but it wasn't the intended outcome and with the QA guys actively asking for server owners who are having issues to please post their logs and descriptions of their problems, they are obviously intent upon stabilizing things with the next patch.

You can't look at setbacks and bugs associated with first release alpha features as intentional warfare against you personally from the developers. They aren't against people who push the limits of the officially supported number of players. The changes that most recently came are the first go and will bear some polishing and refining. These changes were things that had to be done under time constraints in order to meet the deadline of when Microsoft wanted to launch 7 Days on Game Pass.

People who advise you to go back to the previous patch aren't telling you to do that permanently because this is the new normal. They are telling you to do it as a temporary measure until the problems are fixed. They may not get fixed to the level you want them, true, but the issues caused by the 20.4 patch are definitely side effects that the devs didn't intend and that they want to get sorted-- hopefully in a 20.5 patch.

 

[Matt115]

I guess my biggest wonder at this point, with how busy the pimps are and how uncertain any future with larger scale multiplayer is, is finding how the modding community can perhaps remove features or ways the game is slowed down so much in more populated multiplayer servers. Whether we can be given the freedom to stop the game from sending out certain netpackages, etc serverside. I think if we were given the choice between a lot of game features or relatively decent multiplayer performance. wed likely pick the second option.

Well this MS not TFP fault this time 

These changes were things that had to be done under time constraints in order to meet the deadline of when Microsoft wanted to launch 7 Days on Game Pass.

It was deal with devil - so i was logical it will be bad. But - there is no option to change  past... so whatever what will happens now - is just pointless 

 

[Howlune]

Okay, but come on... you MUST realize that the purpose of the latest patch was not to neuter the larger populated servers. It may have happened but it wasn't the intended outcome and with the QA guys actively asking for server owners who are having issues to please post their logs and descriptions of their problems, they are obviously intent upon stabilizing things with the next patch.

You can't look at setbacks and bugs associated with first release alpha features as intentional warfare against you personally from the developers. They aren't against people who push the limits of the officially supported number of players. The changes that most recently came are the first go and will bear some polishing and refining. These changes were things that had to be done under time constraints in order to meet the deadline of when Microsoft wanted to launch 7 Days on Game Pass.

People who advise you to go back to the previous patch aren't telling you to do that permanently because this is the new normal. They are telling you to do it as a temporary measure until the problems are fixed. They may not get fixed to the level you want them, true, but the issues caused by the 20.4 patch are definitely side effects that the devs didn't intend and that they want to get sorted-- hopefully in a 20.5 patch.

I must have had some poor choices in words. Im definitely aware the devs arent "out to get me". Obviously if something makes the game less playable for even just certain people it's not ideal. I'm aware bug reports are a large part of getting issues fixed, but it's not always easy to know what has happened when there are many stealth changes in patches that were unaware of. I get the need for confidentiality sometimes, but sometimes it's easier to know if theres an issue with, say, networking if we saw significant changes in networking in the patch (Just an example, not actual). In the case of larger servers for another example, it's hard to troubleshoot when the issues only arise at a certain population. Its kind of hard to gather enough people just to test and troubleshoot instead of actually play the game normally.

 

[Matt115]

I must have had some poor choices in words. Im definitely aware the devs arent "out to get me". Obviously if something makes the game less playable for even just certain people it's not ideal. I'm aware bug reports are a large part of getting issues fixed, but it's not always easy to know what has happened when there are many stealth changes in patches that were unaware of. I get the need for confidentiality sometimes, but sometimes it's easier to know if theres an issue with, say, networking if we saw significant changes in networking in the patch (Just an example, not actual). In the case of larger servers for another example, it's hard to troubleshoot when the issues only arise at a certain population. Its kind of hard to gather enough people just to test and troubleshoot instead of actually play the game normally.

Honestly - a lot of  connection  problems can be  connected with steam. Few times after steam updates 7dtd and l4d2 was working bad as hell

 

[Howlune]

Honestly - a lot of  connection  problems can be  connected with steam. Few times after steam updates 7dtd and l4d2 was working bad as hell

And may attribute to why these super high pop servers on the the server browser are able to achieve that. They bypass steam authentication servers first and foremost, as well as filter a bunch of unneeded netpackage query.

 

[Vedui]

 These changes were things that had to be done under time constraints in order to meet the deadline of when Microsoft wanted to launch 7 Days on Game Pass.

Might I make a suggestion, to communicate more of this as part of the patch process and in the patch notes? I think with a greater understanding people are better able to appreciate the situation. I'd be the first to admit I thought the patch was pointless (especially in light of the damage it caused to people's gaming with critical bugs and fatal errors wiping servers etc), but as part of my patch review I was also SPECULATING  that it was tied to the Microsoft gamepass launch. However it's only speculation as there was no mention of that at all in the patch notes, which really would have helped.

There are many times where the patch notes contain information on specific changes (even if in a cryptic fashion), but does not actually highlight why things are occurring.

"This patch contains a number of fixes and tweaks that we were intending to hold off until we had more sizeable "meaty" items. Current Steam players might not benefit from a MS Store inclusion, this is a very important step forward as we move towards launch, and getting the game onto multiple game stores and enaabling cross-storefront gaming capabilities with view of cross-platform support later on."

With something like this, written in better English than mine and sprinkling relevant important facts, we as a community have a lot more to go by and can better understand why it was necessary. While it might not prevent bugs, I would suspect it would make a difference to those 3 people of us who read through the patch notes!

Likewise, 20.4 was probably the poorest patch for a long long time in regards to errors introduced, as I've for years never gotten as many people telling me they've had serious or even fatal errors (world wipes) as a result of a patch. Going back to updating the community of TFP's assessment of what happened (was it rushed? Insufficient testing? Touching code in areas which had very very unintended and hard to test/catch problems?) would also be really helpful. I'd much rather see THAT on twitter, than "Here's our new merch!" or "catch this streamer!" posts, and help give people a better idea of how this can be avoided in the future.

All that said, I LOVE that TFP is probably the only game I have that allows us to roll back and choose previous patch-versions of the game. A stroke of genius that no other publishers seem to have adopted!

 

[Matt115]

Might I make a suggestion, to communicate more of this as part of the patch process and in the patch notes? I think with a greater understanding people are better able to appreciate the situation. I'd be the first to admit I thought the patch was pointless (especially in light of the damage it caused to people's gaming with critical bugs and fatal errors wiping servers etc), but as part of my patch review I was also SPECULATING  that it was tied to the Microsoft gamepass launch. However it's only speculation as there was no mention of that at all in the patch notes, which really would have helped.

There are many times where the patch notes contain information on specific changes (even if in a cryptic fashion), but does not actually highlight why things are occurring.

"This patch contains a number of fixes and tweaks that we were intending to hold off until we had more sizeable "meaty" items. Current Steam players might not benefit from a MS Store inclusion, this is a very important step forward as we move towards launch, and getting the game onto multiple game stores and enaabling cross-storefront gaming capabilities with view of cross-platform support later on."

With something like this, written in better English than mine and sprinkling relevant important facts, we as a community have a lot more to go by and can better understand why it was necessary. While it might not prevent bugs, I would suspect it would make a difference to those 3 people of us who read through the patch notes!

Likewise, 20.4 was probably the poorest patch for a long long time in regards to errors introduced, as I've for years never gotten as many people telling me they've had serious or even fatal errors (world wipes) as a result of a patch. Going back to updating the community of TFP's assessment of what happened (was it rushed? Insufficient testing? Touching code in areas which had very very unintended and hard to test/catch problems?) would also be really helpful. I'd much rather see THAT on twitter, than "Here's our new merch!" or "catch this streamer!" posts, and help give people a better idea of how this can be avoided in the future.

All that said, I LOVE that TFP is probably the only game I have that allows us to roll back and choose previous patch-versions of the game. A stroke of genius that no other publishers seem to have adopted!

I think they expected that everything will be fine. So hm...  so maybe they wrote so little in patch notes because they was thinking that things will be working fine

 

[NekoPawtato]

There are many times where the patch notes contain information on specific changes (even if in a cryptic fashion), but does not actually highlight why things are occurring.

"This patch contains a number of fixes and tweaks that we were intending to hold off until we had more sizeable "meaty" items. Current Steam players might not benefit from a MS Store inclusion, this is a very important step forward as we move towards launch, and getting the game onto multiple game stores and enaabling cross-storefront gaming capabilities with view of cross-platform support later on."

With something like this, written in better English than mine and sprinkling relevant important facts, we as a community have a lot more to go by and can better understand why it was necessary. While it might not prevent bugs, I would suspect it would make a difference to those 3 people of us who read through the patch notes!

I agree, and I liked how they explained the reason for adding EOS back in A20.0, perhaps something similar could have been done with A20.4?

To future-proof our game, including allowing us to use the latest anti-cheat and expanding to other platforms later on for future crossplay capabilities, we added Epic Online Services (EOS) to the game. For regular players this should not have any noticeable effect, you do NOT need an account on Epics platforms. EOS only knows your SteamID which is public anyway and matches that to an ID for EOS that is only valid for 7 Days to Die.

 

[SURVIVE]

Sigh I hate topics like this……

First the game isn’t designed nor ever sold to support 30/40/50 player plus servers.

Second even though it is in alpha don’t you think it’s getting kind of old? Do you really expect 50 people to play on the same damn server FOREVER?
Third when you get tired of playing the game or it has lost its fun nobody gives a crap about a long winded good bye. Nobody cares.

Fourth sounds like you had hundreds maybe thousands of hours of entertainment for what are $20 spent, that’s an INCREDIBLE value.

But it sets a trend. A trend that AAA companies started doing 12 years ago. Now that trend is threatening to infect the games we wanted to support instead of AAA games. Indie companies were supposed to be the answer to developers that ignored consumer feedback by instead listening to it. Like I said, it's  a trend for companies that get big. countless developers have ignored feedback, sometimes even when someone goes out of their way to point it out mathematically. So I hope the TFP next game is just better all the way around.

 

[Matt115]

But it sets a trend. A trend that AAA companies started doing 12 years ago. Now that trend is threatening to infect the games we wanted to support instead of AAA games. Indie companies were supposed to be the answer to developers that ignored consumer feedback by instead listening to it. Like I said, it's  a trend for companies that get big. countless developers have ignored feedback, sometimes even when someone goes out of their way to point it out mathematically. So I hope the TFP next game is just better all the way around.

Nope. AAA have something that inde company don't have - money and technology.  I wish there was good that could be WW2 shooter with 1 K players with vehicles, artilery etc but... this is not possible. I wish TFP implemented RZG like L4D2 but... Valve is rich as hell and have ( had? ... you know valve is anomaly) famouse programmers.  They want 50 people per server? K. But  i want RZG and.... both things are impossible ( yes you can make server hosted by diffrent company - but it's like paying for mod). So TFP know what people thinking but... honestly? if they had diffrent view on stuff - they choose to make 7dtd as SP and MP for few players not "smaller mmo" like ark or conan. And honestly - this is not 2006 anymore  - you have bigger competition, you have to deal with bigger companies and technology is more complicated that ever. Maybe after next 20- 30 there will be only AAA companies. Sad? yeah that's how life looks like

To be clear ; players want more and more and more. But making games in much and much expensive so...  indie companies don't ignoring feedback. It's like more - they know what people people want but they want it's impposible for them. So they doing what they can

 

[SURVIVE]

Nope. AAA have something that inde company don't have - money and technology.  I wish there was good that could be WW2 shooter with 1 K players with vehicles, artilery etc but... this is not possible. I wish TFP implemented RZG like L4D2 but... Valve is rich as hell and have ( had? ... you know valve is anomaly) famouse programmers.  They want 50 people per server? K. But  i want RZG and.... both things are impossible ( yes you can make server hosted by diffrent company - but it's like paying for mod). So TFP know what people thinking but... honestly? if they had diffrent view on stuff - they choose to make 7dtd as SP and MP for few players not "smaller mmo" like ark or conan. And honestly - this is not 2006 anymore  - you have bigger competition, you have to deal with bigger companies and technology is more complicated that ever. Maybe after next 20- 30 there will be only AAA companies. Sad? yeah that's how life looks like

To be clear ; players want more and more and more. But making games in much and much expensive so...  indie companies don't ignoring feedback. It's like more - they know what people people want but they want it's impposible for them. So they doing what they can

As someone that used to pre pay for games I can tell you that money and technology means absolutely nothing when your game doesn't work on launch or even half a year later as one of the most simple tryed and true genres like FPS. One of the most anticipated multiplayer games of the year had such a horrible launch that half a year later there's talk of going F2P. That game was an example of explicitly not listening to player feedback and only caring about reviews from people that cant even do the simplest of mechanics. And as I see TFP, Wildcard and klei entertainment are growing, others may follow their practices. if a company that was small became a big deal by doing something specific, it would be logical for someone in the same field to follow suit and gain that growth, however little it may be. I understand not listening to nonsensical feedback, but what happens when the people that are actually trying to help you are considered nonsensical feedback? it happens alot.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Likewise, 20.4 was probably the poorest patch for a long long time in regards to errors introduced, as I've for years never gotten as many people telling me they've had serious or even fatal errors (world wipes) as a result of a patch. Going back to updating the community of TFP's assessment of what happened (was it rushed? Insufficient testing? Touching code in areas which had very very unintended and hard to test/catch problems?) would also be really helpful. I'd much rather see THAT on twitter, than "Here's our new merch!" or "catch this streamer!" posts, and help give people a better idea of how this can be avoided in the future.

This. Couldn´t agree more. Also explaining what you need to do to find your servers before forcing the changes onto the players would have helped a LOT. Never seen such a huge amount of people switching back one version just because there was no information on how to find a server from your history. Literally just about 15 mins of time posting detailed information on every platform would have helped a ton of people.

This would also have been a non issue if introduced in the first version of a new alpha.

And ofc telling people why changes are made that seem like two steps back because they where done in a hurry.

 

[P3rf3ctVZer0]

Whether the feedback is given in official bug reports or critical rants here is largely immaterial. The bugs are all already known issues. Posting more of either (reports or rants) isn't going to make it more or less known. The devs have their priorities and that is all there is to it.

We could take bets on whether it will be the PvP crowd or the console crowd that will get what they want out of TFP first...

If they have any level of common sense it will be to hyper target the serializer they broke.

Telli

Telling you now, I don't think anyone i've come to know during the course of my server hosting and playing cares about graphics to the extent that this "consolization" is a threat. The fact they will have to optimize for consoles and PC players inevitably gaining from it does at least give me some hope. Now, the concern goes back to what kind of optimization. Can only pray some netcode improvements push their way into that.
As for right this moment, I don't think theres any space in which players used to more populated servers can really go and get an experience they've been used to. It's been thoroughly neutered by this latest patch. People can mention "oh just revert to previous alphas!" but it shouldn't take much thought at all to see why it doesn't work this way, and that it'll lead to new players never even seeing said server.

I guess my biggest wonder at this point, with how busy the pimps are and how uncertain any future with larger scale multiplayer is, is finding how the modding community can perhaps remove features or ways the game is slowed down so much in more populated multiplayer servers. Whether we can be given the freedom to stop the game from sending out certain netpackages, etc serverside. I think if we were given the choice between a lot of game features or relatively decent multiplayer performance. wed likely pick the second option.

If they continue to ignore smarter people on netcode changes it will ultimately destroy TFP. Many even in community are better at netcode honestly they should just post a bounty board. That works great on Chrome. (Bounty is a call to smart people to make some money by fixing or improving on bugs and exploits.) Obviously TFP is not a billion dollar company but they have dedicated and skilled modders. They just need to accept outside help.

I digress though because I don't have the skill to code and it is unfair to throw stones. I just know from observation they have options. I mean I do see what the brothers are doing too - it is ultimately there vision and by their execution they do improve. I recently learned a type of modding by just trail and error execution related to xUI which for me is a huge deal. This will be my last post on the matter - I will probably say more once a21 or a20.5 drops. Happy hunting everyone.