PC (Rant) This game has never been as anti-multiplayer as it is now.

Howlune

Howlune

New member
[SIZE=11pt] [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]To elaborate on the title: I mean multiplayer as in any server with a player count above 8 people.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt](Skip this if you don't care about backstory, I tend to over-explain.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Before I get into the details why, I want to preface this by mentioning that I ran a fairly big server for 9 months starting at the beginning of this year (2021) named Sleepless. It was a PvP server I made in protest of a PvP server I had played previously, but left due to admin incompetence/corruption. I quickly taught myself .XML and learned a lot, and made it into one of the most successful servers according to battle metrics earlier this year without even trying to advertise it. People played it because of how much of a labor of love it was for me. Almost every 7 days PvP youtuber came and set up shop on Sleepless at some point. The sad thing is... I lost my love for running it for many reasons; Toxic players, cheaters, DDoS attacks, etc... of course these are things that any admin faces, but the biggest reason was because of the game itself. The constance of the game breaking itself, the memory leaks, the player profile corruptions, the ease of hacking the game, the absolutely massive resource costs (mainly CPU) to run a server effectively... but more than anything, the developer's overall direction.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I have played this game since A16, but with large breaks. I can't consider myself a hardened vet, but I've learned so much so quickly that I feel I've completely de-mystified every facet of the game and find more enjoyment out of modding it than playing it. The more I learned however, the more upset I became. I very much realize this game is engineered for single player and 8 player co-op, and it's a damn shame... probably one of my biggest gripes. Why? Because this game is a hidden gem. When everything works right, large scale multiplayer in this game gives an experience like no other. It was always an experience best shared with as many people as possible... and this is beside the fact that this game would bring in 10x the $$$ if there was more respect given to the community of larger servers. The PVP would be on par, if not better than the likes of Day-Z or even Rust if servers could handle more people without crashing and the netcode was fixed. This game already brings more to the table than those two, but the horrible performance holds it back.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]REASONS FOR THE TITLE OF THIS THREAD:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The game was not always so big-server unfriendly, even if the development direction has always favored singleplayer/coop. Before around A19.3, servers could handle up to 50 players online while still being at least decently playable. A19.3 was released to combat the new wave of nearly unstoppable hackers, but it was also at around this time that servers became unstable with only around 35 people maximum, if not less. While I may have run a PVP server, this affects all servers... PVE and PVP. To make matters worse, the hacking hasn't completely gone away due to the fact this game is biased towards client-side rather than server side. All these hackers have the same thing in common, and that's being able to execute creative mode and debug mode on servers. EAC does nothing against this because it's built in the game itself.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]XRAY:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]While the above is a more recent subject, There are also the huge factors that have existed forever and been mentioned numerous times; Netcode and Xray. For Xray, we have always been able to easily clip our cameras into the terrain and not only see through the world, but shoot everything from bullets to rockets through it. It's as simple as getting on a vehicle and pushing the camera against the terrain (Primarily when underground) or standing on top of a hatch and opening it so your head gets pushed into terrain above. While modders have helped combat this with black screen (turns your view to black when head is detected inside terrain), this is a bandaid on a broken leg. Something as simple as making a heavy fog appear underground (or when detected underground, like using the "_sheltered" cvar or something similar.) could be a huge ease on this burden. This is not a pvp centric issue. You can absolutely trivialize zombies and horde nights doing this as well.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]NETCODE:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Netcode. This has always been issue #1. The netcode for this game is atrocious. even on populations of around 20-25 players, people will seem to "teleport" if they are moving around too fast. Many are even accused of hacking, when they have done no such thing.. the game makes them look like they are. A lot of this has to do with the games optimization and how clientside biased it is. A good friend of mine explained it better than I can:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]"Block Changes are sent out to every player on the server such that the world is up to date for all clients playing. So if player A places a block at +4000 +4000, player B at -4000 -4000 will know. One of the parts where I wanted some change, as the netcode is also so poorly done because there's a lot of redundant and a lot of unneeded information exchanged between all players."[/SIZE]

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[SIZE=11pt]A20: A NEW HOPE? ...nah.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Now as of A20, things have gotten even worse. I was for a while considering booting back up my server, but after fixing mods for a while and really field testing all the changes the developers have made to the game, I'm done. This update is great for the average player of this game. New zombie models! New guns! New realistic cities! But how is this update for those who host servers? The worst it's ever been.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]GRAPHICS:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The game is prettier, sure.... outside of cities. For reference, I have a 3090 RTX (up to date drivers), i7-7700k, 32gb RAM. Going into the new RWG cities with all settings as LOW as possible, dynamic mesh turned off, etc.... 50 fps. No, I had not generated a RWG prior to jumping in the game. God forbid you come across the new skyscrapers, especially the new dishong tower. The game vomits just looking at it.[/SIZE]

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[SIZE=11pt]BALANCE:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Like PVP? All the guns were buffed, including the M60 which was already obscenely overpowered. AP ammo has gone from reducing armor by 25% to 50%... yes, 50%. It's all one shot now and basically impossible without modding. The new pipe guns are imbalanced even for PVE. The pipe machine gun is only marginally worse than an AK and costs two pipes, two glue and 6 wood to make. what.[/SIZE]

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[SIZE=11pt]LOOT:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]At the same time, maybe we need the pipe machine gun to be easy to craft... because loot has been so drastically changed and is completely unfriendly to having more than 10 people on a server. You get scraps now. It's so heavily reliant on this new biome lootstage feature, that you almost HAVE to go to the more "difficult" biomes to get worthwhile loot. This also causes a major snowball effect on larger servers, as a few people can farm the only cities in the high lootstage biomes and have the best gear on the map. For most, this just means you're forced to do quests as looting barely gets you much anymore. Also on that note, trader progress now only applies to specific traders and is no longer map-wide. Big lame.[/SIZE]

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[SIZE=11pt]DRONE:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Just get rid of it. The dev's said on a stream that one of them added it as a pet project, so think about that for a second. It falls through the ground constantly. It's barely useful except for storage and maybe the healing. It's just... fluff. Maybe it'll be cool in the future, but for now... have fun retrieving lost ones for your players if you're an admin (I wouldn't bother).[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Now for the biggest problems of all.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]MAP CORRUPTIONS FROM NEW RWG:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Not long into experimental, multiple servers have been encountering map corruptions on RWG generated maps. Sometimes it would be fine at first, then multiple chunks would corrupt over time. Makes it nearly unplayable. This only really affects higher population servers of around 20+. The developers are aware of the issue, and even started hosting a public multiplayer server to replicate and isolate the issue. So what happened? The server is completely unmodded and unmoderated. Chinese hackers get on the server and destroy a trader. All manner of shenanigans happen, and they can't find the issue. You'd figure this would be a big enough issue to hold off releasing A20 stable right? Nope. Stable is here despite the issue persisting. While it was nice at first to know it was getting looked into, the fact stable is already out is salt on the wound. Perhaps the game really is meant to be single player or coop at most, and that becomes even more true with the next issue:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]ANY PLAYER CAN SEE VEHICLE AND BEDROLL POSITIONS.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]And that means people can easily find landclaims. Sure, pvp isn't important in this game, but ne'er-do-wells exist on every server outside of maybe the private ones. The same clientside hacker can join a PVE server and proceed to ruin everyone's day, and now he barely has to look around. Read more here:[/SIZE]





[SIZE=11pt]CLOSING THOUGHTS:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]There are parts of my post that can come off as rude or out of touch to the devs, and I want to apologize for it ahead of time. Of course, I don't know everything that happens under the hood of this game, but from a more than observational standpoint... It's heartbreaking to watch. I mean no ill-will towards the developers, but I know I'm not the only one with these gripes. It's only been my wish to see the game get better, but what it needs right now isn't new models or graphics updates. I'm not saying I know better, but the game could be a masterpiece if the current "I only sell the things I like" mindset was put aside.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I salute the large server admins who have chosen to muscle through despite an increasingly exhaustive environment. It’s abrasive just how many things need to be accounted for compared to hosting other games. I started my server with a lot of energy, but took me a year to realize it was an increasingly uphill battle that I just don’t have the stamina for any longer. I may likely provide modding support for some of these servers who's admins have earned my respect, and release a few of them to the public. I'm sad, sure. I'll continue to wish for the future, and theres always that chance that when the game is finished, the niche that is big servers will get the attention they deserve. One can only hope.[/SIZE]

Thanks for reading.

 
Hey, Thanks for the feedback!!

Howlune said:
Perhaps the game really is meant to be single player or coop at most
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It really is. They have never pretended otherwise. Those who wish to keep trying to shove a square peg into a round hole are welcome to do the best that they can but you have correctly identified the round hole that this game is meant to be.

That's not to say that the shortcomings you've mentioned aren't things they will want to look at and fix wherever possible, but they will most likely be fixing them to work well with player populations of 8 players max. And they are very much aware of the lost opportunity they are turning away from by not making this game more Rust-like or DayZ-like or even Fortnight-Like or PUBG-Like. They are willing to forego the cash cow of the large scale multiplayer  PVP survival and/or battle royale genres to stick with their desire to make the best single player and cooperative player zombie survival game with a completely destructible world in existence.

I do hope that with optimizations and further changes it will become more possible for you to be able to run 50 player servers in a stable and fair game world.

 
The loot is my major concern as of now. I joined the developer testing server on day 88 i believe to help out by doing what I always do. Then I asked if it was PvP enabled after I heard someone shooting guns near me (which I didn't have at the time) and I was told yes. So instinctively I left, I'm not gonna get mowed by someone who has more time on the server than I do. Especially when there are 6 bases by the trader.

It's a real shame since this game isn't great for PvP, it's a much better co-op game where survivors work together or independently. Not against each other, the last thing I need is to go offline for 9 hours, come back and my stuff could be destroyed by someone bulk crafting dynamite, it's just a terrible thing to play PvP, especially when we NEED bases late game for horde nights.

 
Roland said:
I do hope that with optimizations and further changes it will become more possible for you to be able to run 50 player servers in a stable and fair game world.
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That would be a dream. Handling at least 50, with the server staying stable. It's still not as much as preferred, but given what were working with it'd certainly be a miracle. Thanks for being understanding, and I do hope at least some of the things I said really do get looked at for the sake of the game.

 
I think that the part that TFP only supports MP up to 8 players should be made more accessible. Most people find out about that when they encounter problems with servers that have more players than that.

The new cities are kind of a slap in the face tbh. Yes, they look great, it feels super nice, looks way more realistic. And i love them.

But getting huge FPS drops on medium settings with a system that is way above the minimum requirements after beeing told over and over that we can´t have more zombies due to minimum requirements is quite the joke.

 
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this game is heavily cpu bound not gpu bound... a 3090 with a 7700k have literally no sense in this game. because is still a 4 core cpu even with the 8 threads... lol

 
Honestly, A20 puts the game in a state where I personally fear most dedicated servers are at risk of closing down. Besides the bugs that were introduced with to A20 which might corrupt worlds (let's be honest, we also had those cases before) the main issue in my consideration is the question as to why so many things have not received an update at all. 

Basically the only server-side update is the "EOS Future Proof". That makes it seem a bit hypocritical, as we did not even get properly working netcode for steam-to-steam communication - now we connect additional platforms. From my PoV this is the minibike all over again which wasn't remotely fixed before 5 new vehicles were already added to the game for versions ahead. 

What didn't update was any sort of anti-cheat itself. A19 already showed a large variety of (EAC-bypassing) hacks around - unfortunately they basically had a head-start for A20. As a modder/coder focussed on Anti-Cheat tools for servers, I personally have to say, that I have given up my hope for A20 dedicated servers as there is nothing they can do if they are not receiving help/new means from the official code.

But what potentially disappoints me the most is the fact that a potentially harmful software is available which docks into the game and acts as a gateway for all clients. Steam authorization etc. gets routed through the Chinese gateway, potentially putting client data at risk, likely using steam emulation. Further, providing the gateway with valid steam auth information to potentially use to harm other servers through DDoS attacks not filtered out by DDoS filters as they appear as valid game connection attempts. Those servers support beyond 50 players as a lot of redundant net-code flow is removed or handled more efficiently before the dedicated servers even step in. Now, while this appears promising to many server owners and hosts who would want to have a massive multiplayer, it's a huge threat to the game, to servers, and to the players. When the tool was introduced during A19, it was reported to TFP for violations. As the players won't know if they connect through a Chinese gateway or the official one, I had expected  the pimps would take the issue seriously and try to make sure that there is valid and secure auth for clients to the game.

A19 has already shown that those servers are on top, and servers not using the software had been targeted by hackers and DDoS frequently. I expect this to continue until the chinese hackers own the dedicated server "market".

Don't care about Dedi or multiplayer, alright, but if the dedi code TFP provides, opens gateways for potentially harmful software and puts client's data at risk, just might better not be providing those loopholes at all.

 
SylenThunder said:
Didn't we already have this thread recently?

Ahh found it.
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But this thread explains more in detail and with hopefully some points to be made compared to that one. I also kind of find it insulting when people compare what we want to a Battle Royale. I don't think that thread equates, but I get it. What were looking for is not in this game. Despite our best efforts to make it work, to which have been successful for a long time, the final nail is in the coffin and we couldn't dodge it this time.

It's just saddening is all. I can only hope and pray that after the full release, that the real icing on the cake that are large servers for this game get more support.

mr.devolver said:
Oh, it's so painfully obvious that 7 Days to Die favors single player gameplay! The elephant in the room that proves this point is perk called Charismatic Nature!
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A more apt comparison would be the book that gives bonus damage to humans, the book that delays turret detection and uhm.... land claim blocks? Are there reasons to use land claim blocks on 8 player coop besides picking workstations up..?

 
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Howlune said:
A more apt comparison would be the book that gives bonus damage to humans, the book that delays turret detection and uhm.... land claim blocks? Are there reasons to use land claim blocks on 8 player coop besides picking workstations up..?
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Nah, those are very hidden game mechanics only players who already have some experience with this game know about, I was talking about more apparent stuff that can be seen even by completely new players who just opened and explored the perks for the first time, but I see you got my point and you even added more to it, so you are well aware that your rant was a little bit exaggerated. ;)

 
Lots of interesting points of the problems PvP and large pop servers have. And I see absolutely no way how TFP could fix those without compromising a lot of other objectives they likely have. They surely wouldn't have stopped at supporting only 8 players if supporting 20 or 40 could have been done with moderate effort.

PvP alone is a rats nest of difficulties and headaches for a developer. Other companies have large departments to combat cheaters and still can't get them under control. 

7D2D is a full voxel game and it uses a non-voxel general purpose graphics engine. There may have been ways to make it faster from the start, but all full voxel games have been behind normal 3D games in terms of performance. The achilles heel of voxel games is that they have much more data to transfer, calculate and simulate where normal 3D games and even a lot of hybrid voxel games just have a potemkin village, walls without anything behind.

 
Roland said:
They are willing to forego the cash cow of the large scale multiplayer  PVP survival and/or battle royale genres to stick with their desire to make the best single player and cooperative player zombie survival game with a completely destructible world in existence.
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You just nailed it with this one line. I have said this for four years to them. They are committing false advertising by producing the best single player/coop experience while selling the game as an open world multiplayer with pvp capacity. IT IS LITERALLY NOT CODED FOR THIS TO FUNCTION. They have proven that over and over with some of the bugs they left in. They were so blatant in their testing bias, that they missed players respawning on other players beds for most of an entire alpha release. Now we have servers crashing and chunks/regions breaking but in a 'stable' release. Pimps are also running a dedi server open to the public for the first time to try and nail the issues down. I wonder how many insane issues they have discovered for the very first time as they experience what we have been dealing with including the unencrypted netpackages getting modified by experienced hackers that have worked in the counter strike hacking community for over a decade. I know because they have talked to me about it.

The devs have said repeatedly during streams that they have been coding it for single player so arguably multiplayer is a stretch goal at this stage and it shows. This is over 7 years of dev time and the core functionality of their netcode is still being constructed and altered for functionality. Either they have absolutely no idea what they are doing or no care to design the multiplayer end of this, which is honestly fine by me, they just need to remove the pvp option and stop the false advertising. It is pretty obvious they pushed out for another christmas sale again. For a company not aiming for a cash cow, why did they release this for christmas sale time while it clearly has game breaking issues that could not be claimed as stable. We have seen them do this before with buggy 'stable' releases dumped during sale times. That has to be one of the biggest F U to this community with the patience they have shown.

Some games do well with great UI and story. Some do well with AI and graphics. What is this game aiming for? You say it wants to be the best, the best at what? That is what we have been asking for 7+ years. What is this game trying to be? If it is a single player voxel playground with zombies, make that happen and stop grifting the community with drones and stupid things. I mean that in the nicest way possible. I am not trying to be insulting, I am trying to get serious with you. Your reputation, if you had one, is pretty bad right now whether you know it or not. Most of the community has labeled you a do not host event meaning every single game you produce from here on in will be avoided like a plague because you are committed to false advertising for 7 years. Over half your servers would stop hosting if they knew you were not coding things for them to operate properly. They all need special managers coded by third parties to function long term even for simple stuff like backups since your game is literally corrupting the world right now.

It is actually insulting to call this a stable release. Your new id system has noticeable issues the mod community caught already. You are working on drones when the id system fails and can cause memory leaks with how you ascertain them. The twitch integration has an error when calling on simple stuff like client info which I have reported in a bug report. Apparently you never tested running a player name with an underscore in it through your id system with twitch.... and this is effecting all of your console commands too. People can pretend to be other players by setting their name as someone else's id. This is not stable, this was a christmas sale patch

 
TBH I play 7DTD single or coop only last few Alphas and I love it this way. There is not much good coop games, especially in this genre. I am not good at competitive games like PUBG or CS GO, that's why I'm having a lot of fun here. It's much better experience to play with friends this way instead of PVP. I got other games like Squad for PVP experience.

 
meganoth said:
Lots of interesting points of the problems PvP and large pop servers have. And I see absolutely no way how TFP could fix those without compromising a lot of other objectives they likely have. They surely wouldn't have stopped at supporting only 8 players if supporting 20 or 40 could have been done with moderate effort.

PvP alone is a rats nest of difficulties and headaches for a developer. Other companies have large departments to combat cheaters and still can't get them under control. 

7D2D is a full voxel game and it uses a non-voxel general purpose graphics engine. There may have been ways to make it faster from the start, but all full voxel games have been behind normal 3D games in terms of performance. The achilles heel of voxel games is that they have much more data to transfer, calculate and simulate where normal 3D games and even a lot of hybrid voxel games just have a potemkin village, walls without anything behind.
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I think that for most "issues" PVP-servers have, there are decent ways to get around, modding in order to balance to your own desires etc. And big credits to the pimps to allow such a variety of modding opportunities in order to adjust the game.

Some the hardcoded stuff currently is a no-no for pvp, like the position data in client logs. That's reported and we'll see if they consider it a bug or not. 

But if you tell me, that the pimps can't do what one china-hacker did with making the exchange of data more "efficient", due to the lack of manpower, then I don't buy that part. Currently servers are left with the option to a) go with the pimps gateway, which is secure, but runs with little efficiency or b) go with an obfuscated chinese gateway which makes your server run more efficiently but you have no clue what it does to your server or the client info. I personally considered this A20 as crucial to see if they are willing to protect their playerbase on dedicated servers or not. 

And don't get me wrong, I really think A20 has major improvements and is a great step (drone aside) for 7 days as a single player and p2p hosted game. And I have also personally accepted that we have different views on where the game should be going and I'm absoutely not mad about it. Disappointed and sad that I didn't get my way - yes. But thats not more important than the views of other players.

 
@Roland Well they do actively "advertise" this as PvP while they don´t mention racing with vehicles. On steam and on the homepage. 

Advertise is a too strong word though. Still. the sentence" Work together cooperatively to build settlements or work against each other raiding other player’s bases" should really not be in the description of the game if you look at how PvP was treated during development, wich is not at all other than making it possible. 

I know their focus isn´t PvP and that it actually was released on accident and kept by popular demand, but TFP should simply be completly silent about it until they actually work on it tbh.

Btw, when will the minimum requirements be fixed? No on can tell me that you can play this now with an old dual core beeing in downtown.

 
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Howlune said:
[SIZE=11pt] [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]To elaborate on the title: I mean multiplayer as in any server with a player count above 8 people.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt](Skip this if you don't care about backstory, I tend to over-explain.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Before I get into the details why, I want to preface this by mentioning that I ran a fairly big server for 9 months starting at the beginning of this year (2021) named Sleepless. It was a PvP server I made in protest of a PvP server I had played previously, but left due to admin incompetence/corruption. I quickly taught myself .XML and learned a lot, and made it into one of the most successful servers according to battle metrics earlier this year without even trying to advertise it. People played it because of how much of a labor of love it was for me. Almost every 7 days PvP youtuber came and set up shop on Sleepless at some point. The sad thing is... I lost my love for running it for many reasons; Toxic players, cheaters, DDoS attacks, etc... of course these are things that any admin faces, but the biggest reason was because of the game itself. The constance of the game breaking itself, the memory leaks, the player profile corruptions, the ease of hacking the game, the absolutely massive resource costs (mainly CPU) to run a server effectively... but more than anything, the developer's overall direction.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I have played this game since A16, but with large breaks. I can't consider myself a hardened vet, but I've learned so much so quickly that I feel I've completely de-mystified every facet of the game and find more enjoyment out of modding it than playing it. The more I learned however, the more upset I became. I very much realize this game is engineered for single player and 8 player co-op, and it's a damn shame... probably one of my biggest gripes. Why? Because this game is a hidden gem. When everything works right, large scale multiplayer in this game gives an experience like no other. It was always an experience best shared with as many people as possible... and this is beside the fact that this game would bring in 10x the $$$ if there was more respect given to the community of larger servers. The PVP would be on par, if not better than the likes of Day-Z or even Rust if servers could handle more people without crashing and the netcode was fixed. This game already brings more to the table than those two, but the horrible performance holds it back.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]REASONS FOR THE TITLE OF THIS THREAD:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The game was not always so big-server unfriendly, even if the development direction has always favored singleplayer/coop. Before around A19.3, servers could handle up to 50 players online while still being at least decently playable. A19.3 was released to combat the new wave of nearly unstoppable hackers, but it was also at around this time that servers became unstable with only around 35 people maximum, if not less. While I may have run a PVP server, this affects all servers... PVE and PVP. To make matters worse, the hacking hasn't completely gone away due to the fact this game is biased towards client-side rather than server side. All these hackers have the same thing in common, and that's being able to execute creative mode and debug mode on servers. EAC does nothing against this because it's built in the game itself.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]XRAY:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]While the above is a more recent subject, There are also the huge factors that have existed forever and been mentioned numerous times; Netcode and Xray. For Xray, we have always been able to easily clip our cameras into the terrain and not only see through the world, but shoot everything from bullets to rockets through it. It's as simple as getting on a vehicle and pushing the camera against the terrain (Primarily when underground) or standing on top of a hatch and opening it so your head gets pushed into terrain above. While modders have helped combat this with black screen (turns your view to black when head is detected inside terrain), this is a bandaid on a broken leg. Something as simple as making a heavy fog appear underground (or when detected underground, like using the "_sheltered" cvar or something similar.) could be a huge ease on this burden. This is not a pvp centric issue. You can absolutely trivialize zombies and horde nights doing this as well.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]NETCODE:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Netcode. This has always been issue #1. The netcode for this game is atrocious. even on populations of around 20-25 players, people will seem to "teleport" if they are moving around too fast. Many are even accused of hacking, when they have done no such thing.. the game makes them look like they are. A lot of this has to do with the games optimization and how clientside biased it is. A good friend of mine explained it better than I can:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]"Block Changes are sent out to every player on the server such that the world is up to date for all clients playing. So if player A places a block at +4000 +4000, player B at -4000 -4000 will know. One of the parts where I wanted some change, as the netcode is also so poorly done because there's a lot of redundant and a lot of unneeded information exchanged between all players."[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]A20: A NEW HOPE? ...nah.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Now as of A20, things have gotten even worse. I was for a while considering booting back up my server, but after fixing mods for a while and really field testing all the changes the developers have made to the game, I'm done. This update is great for the average player of this game. New zombie models! New guns! New realistic cities! But how is this update for those who host servers? The worst it's ever been.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]GRAPHICS:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The game is prettier, sure.... outside of cities. For reference, I have a 3090 RTX (up to date drivers), i7-7700k, 32gb RAM. Going into the new RWG cities with all settings as LOW as possible, dynamic mesh turned off, etc.... 50 fps. No, I had not generated a RWG prior to jumping in the game. God forbid you come across the new skyscrapers, especially the new dishong tower. The game vomits just looking at it.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]BALANCE:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Like PVP? All the guns were buffed, including the M60 which was already obscenely overpowered. AP ammo has gone from reducing armor by 25% to 50%... yes, 50%. It's all one shot now and basically impossible without modding. The new pipe guns are imbalanced even for PVE. The pipe machine gun is only marginally worse than an AK and costs two pipes, two glue and 6 wood to make. what.[/SIZE]

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[SIZE=11pt]LOOT:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]At the same time, maybe we need the pipe machine gun to be easy to craft... because loot has been so drastically changed and is completely unfriendly to having more than 10 people on a server. You get scraps now. It's so heavily reliant on this new biome lootstage feature, that you almost HAVE to go to the more "difficult" biomes to get worthwhile loot. This also causes a major snowball effect on larger servers, as a few people can farm the only cities in the high lootstage biomes and have the best gear on the map. For most, this just means you're forced to do quests as looting barely gets you much anymore. Also on that note, trader progress now only applies to specific traders and is no longer map-wide. Big lame.[/SIZE]

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[SIZE=11pt]DRONE:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Just get rid of it. The dev's said on a stream that one of them added it as a pet project, so think about that for a second. It falls through the ground constantly. It's barely useful except for storage and maybe the healing. It's just... fluff. Maybe it'll be cool in the future, but for now... have fun retrieving lost ones for your players if you're an admin (I wouldn't bother).[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Now for the biggest problems of all.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]MAP CORRUPTIONS FROM NEW RWG:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Not long into experimental, multiple servers have been encountering map corruptions on RWG generated maps. Sometimes it would be fine at first, then multiple chunks would corrupt over time. Makes it nearly unplayable. This only really affects higher population servers of around 20+. The developers are aware of the issue, and even started hosting a public multiplayer server to replicate and isolate the issue. So what happened? The server is completely unmodded and unmoderated. Chinese hackers get on the server and destroy a trader. All manner of shenanigans happen, and they can't find the issue. You'd figure this would be a big enough issue to hold off releasing A20 stable right? Nope. Stable is here despite the issue persisting. While it was nice at first to know it was getting looked into, the fact stable is already out is salt on the wound. Perhaps the game really is meant to be single player or coop at most, and that becomes even more true with the next issue:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]     [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]ANY PLAYER CAN SEE VEHICLE AND BEDROLL POSITIONS.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]And that means people can easily find landclaims. Sure, pvp isn't important in this game, but ne'er-do-wells exist on every server outside of maybe the private ones. The same clientside hacker can join a PVE server and proceed to ruin everyone's day, and now he barely has to look around. Read more here:[/SIZE]





[SIZE=11pt]CLOSING THOUGHTS:[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]There are parts of my post that can come off as rude or out of touch to the devs, and I want to apologize for it ahead of time. Of course, I don't know everything that happens under the hood of this game, but from a more than observational standpoint... It's heartbreaking to watch. I mean no ill-will towards the developers, but I know I'm not the only one with these gripes. It's only been my wish to see the game get better, but what it needs right now isn't new models or graphics updates. I'm not saying I know better, but the game could be a masterpiece if the current "I only sell the things I like" mindset was put aside.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I salute the large server admins who have chosen to muscle through despite an increasingly exhaustive environment. It’s abrasive just how many things need to be accounted for compared to hosting other games. I started my server with a lot of energy, but took me a year to realize it was an increasingly uphill battle that I just don’t have the stamina for any longer. I may likely provide modding support for some of these servers who's admins have earned my respect, and release a few of them to the public. I'm sad, sure. I'll continue to wish for the future, and theres always that chance that when the game is finished, the niche that is big servers will get the attention they deserve. One can only hope.[/SIZE]

Thanks for reading.
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Great post.  Ive done some research on my own about a similar situation.  It seems the Witcher 3 will never be Designed to handle 50 players at the same time.  
 

Let me know if you want all the details Ive uncovered.

 
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