Look at all the players on MP!

[Greiss]

Again, sad. Four days after the North American release. 6:25 PST in the US on a weekend. 26 players in MP. As someone who plays multiplayer exclusively, there is little hope for those "700+ people in HyperLobby" nights.

Even "newbies" aren't in the "Air Quake" servers. Only the most "hard-core" CEM junkies are playing

[Chivas]

It takes time for players to migrate to Multiplayer. They usually like to become competent with the new flight models and practice there shooting before venturing online. Especially if your using the new CEM.

[machoo]

Turn off CEM and you'll get more people. I for one cbf with all the wanky realistic settings.

[JimmyBlonde]

I thought it was pretty cool that the dud servers are empty and the realistic one is busy.

If all you want is to watch exploding planes there's other games IMO, why pay for detail only to strip the guts out of it? Would you buy a Dodge Viper and and just drive it everywhere in second gear?

[Jaws2002]

There were 60+ people in Syndicate last night.

It taks some time but we'll get there.

[GF_Mastiff]

I actually think the list is broken it only show 10 servers and I believe there is more?

[capt vertigo]

How can one find some online action..?

What/where is the Syndicate...?

I am so accustomed to the simplicity of Hyperlobby, i am afraid I know nothing else...

Mike

[Vengeanze]

I for one have problems listing servers. Mostly only see one at a time. Have to refresh multiple time to see diff servers.

[Winger]

Turn off CEM and you'll get more people. I for one cbf with all the wanky realistic settings.

If you want Wings of prey pilots on your server turn of CEM. If you want sim players on your server turn it on.
CEM for the win!!!!:)

Winger

[JG52Uther]

I think we have to stop thinking hyperlobby numbers of 1000 people on multiple servers, and start thinking in terms of RoF numbers, with 40-50 people playing on one or two servers.
It is sad, but I think thats the way its going to be.

[MadTommy]

It's pretty depressing. i only play MP and only bought the game due to the 128 player servers stuff that was said prior to release.

I assumed the IL2 community was large and would move in force to CloD, seems i was wrong, shame, the game could be so good. But without a community behind it for me its worthless.

[Tree_UK]

Multi player is so badly broken in terms of sound, losing connection and no co-op play that we really are lucky to find anyone else online, once these things get fixed in the next year or two it will improve.

[Tree_UK]

It takes time for players to migrate to Multiplayer. They usually like to become competent with the new flight models and practice there shooting before venturing online. Especially if your using the new CEM.

Well russia and europe have had the game 5 months, i can fly my bird in full realism so i would imagine most others can, the online experience is very frustrating and most can only handle 20-30 mins at a time, it looks awful with the tree's off and there is no co-op play, I would imagine thats more the reason people are not flocking to play online rather than what you suggested Chivas. Also the fact that your opponent can simply press esc and create a new plane at any time during a battle leaving you fighting an empty aircraft is also sending people away. Nice work.

[robtek]

Thank you ,Tree, for pointing out the umpteenth time, in what a a sad and broken status this sim is.

Not that anyone asked for it, or that anyone didn't knew it already.

It is really fine that there is someone who can read the minds of all the buyers of this sim and talk for them.

Not that anyone had time to forget the last post you did this.

It still seems that your fixated to announce the negative points and tell that the possible fixes are in a nebulous future.

If you've lost your faith in the devs team fine, but no reason to try to get everybody on the same negativity trip.

Be assured, the quote in your sig wasn't meant positive.

[robtek]

It's pretty depressing. i only play MP and only bought the game due to the 128 player servers stuff that was said prior to release.

I assumed the IL2 community was large and would move in force to CloD, seems i was wrong, shame, the game could be so good. But without a community behind it for me its worthless.

A community grows, this is not IL2 1946, this is a new start with a new community and it will take some time until the people can look through the veil of negativity and find the good stuff.

[Tree_UK]

Thank you ,Tree, for pointing out the umpteenth time, i what a a sad and broken status this sim is.

Not that anyone asked for it, or that anyone didn't knew it already.

It is really fine that there is someone who can read the minds of all the buyers of this sim and talk for them.

Not that anyone had time to forget the last post you did this.

It still seems that your fixated to announce the negative points and tell that the possible fixes are in a nebulous future.

If you've lost your faith in the devs team fine, but no reason to try to get everybody on the same negativity trip.

Be assured, the quote in your sig wasn't meant positive.

Well what Im suggesting is that it may be a good idea for the dev's to fix these issues first to get more people interested/onboard, the online sound and co-op cant be too hard to sort, online sound was working it was the dev's that broke it. Its not me stopping people playing online Robtek, its the poor quality of the product, you must keep repeating that to yourself.

I haven't got a banner up saying dont play online, people are choosing not to because the experience is frustrating. If the dev's fixed that or at least talked about when they might fix it then we may feel a little more positive and come and join you in La La land.

[JG52Uther]

I said it months ago: MG should have just ported the whole il2 multiplayer code across to CoD.Why change something that has worked perfectly for many years for something that doesn't.
Change for the sake of change, and new doesn't always mean better.

[Tree_UK]

A community grows, this is not IL2 1946, this is a new start with a new community and it will take some time until the people can look through the veil of negativity and find the good stuff.

well as far as multi player is concerned at this moment in time it will be a treasure hunt.

[robtek]

The problem is, tree, with posts like yours there are quite a few people which dont even try to find something good, they think: hey, there is a guy who already tried everything and found it wanting, i'll wait until it is fixed before i try.

As there are a few, very outspoken, negative posters here, trying to weave the veil of negativity, they give each other a artificial sincerity.

As the devs are working on the patch, why do you critisize for taking the time to do it right, not again a quick shot from the hip, trying to pacify the ungrateful parts of the community?

Don't try to deceive us and yourself, regardless of the state of this sim, you will always find something negative to point out!

Just "to make it better", of course.

Better to have a broken sim getting better then no sim at all.

[Plt Off JRB Meaker]

I would love to play on multiplayer,but that would mean having to give up all the superb mods that we have been given,especially Jafa's sound mod,and Big Pickles weapon sound mod,sorry but could'nt do without those now.

To play this sim with the wooden sounds that it came with would be sacrilege,once we are given the freedom by Steam to play this sim how 'we' want,then maybe,but I don't think that's gonna happen.

I love multiplayer,to fight against a real human in a dogfight is fantastic,but I want to have all the goodies too,that make the immersion that more real.Besides the multiplayer on COD also needs a BIG fix in it's current state for me it's too broken.

It's a down right travesty that after paying for this sim we can't play it how we would like.I therefore lay this blame fully on Steam's doorstep,you're killing our gaming!!

[Tree_UK]

The problem is, tree, with posts like yours there are quite a few people which dont even try to find something good, they think: hey, there is a guy who already tried everything and found it wanting, i'll wait until it is fixed before i try.

As there are a few, very outspoken, negative posters here, trying to weave the veil of negativity, they give each other a artificial sincerity.

As the devs are working on the patch, why do you critisize for taking the time to do it right, not again a quick shot from the hip, trying to pacify the ungrateful parts of the community?

Don't try to deceive us and yourself, regardless of the state of this sim, you will always find something negative to point out!

Just "to make it better", of course.

Better to have a broken sim getting better then no sim at all.

I think of it more as trying to let the Dev's know what is driving people away from this game, the message is clearly not getting through, above all else Communication is the key.

[pupo162]

A community grows, this is not IL2 1946, this is a new start with a new community and it will take some time until the people can look through the veil of negativity and find the good stuff.

no, not really. my squad has over 50 people active on 1946, waiting for someone to tell them "hey Clod Works" to go ahead and buy it, play it, imrpove their pcs etc...

im preatty sure there are a lot of squads in the same situation.

[Phazon]

I don't think there is anything wrong with the multiplayer code itself. Sure the GUI could have been better (which MG has been working on) but the code itself is fairly solid. It also offers some impressive features that are unique to Cliffs of Dover. There is alot more possible with this new engine, people just need time to figure it out. Lack of documentation for the FMB slows this process down, as does missing features and bugs.

It also does not help that MG had problems with Steam not listing the servers and the current critical bugs that make it hard to enjoy MP. There are so many people who have currently put the game on the bench, waiting for the game to be fixed. The sooner we get this "one patch to rule them all" that the next update seems to be turning into, the sooner the online community can start to develop and grow.

[esmiol]

i agree.

let the time to CLOD to evoluate and be really playable...

at the moment.. lot of people don't have a computer strong enough to play but it is not the really problem...

till bug sound is present... till sound are not remake and till IA are not fix...

when all this will be done and when some addon will come with ne planes,etc... more and more people will comme from il2 to CLOD.

remember how many times some people are stay on EAW before to go on il2 ;)

[von Pilsner]

It's a down right travesty that after paying for this sim we can't play it how we would like.I therefore lay this blame fully on Steam's doorstep,you're killing our gaming!!

It is Luther and Co. who decide what mods count as cheats (not Steam/Valve). If MG green-light a mod then it won't trigger a V.A.C. ban.

[ATAG_Dutch]

I was on the Syndicate server for a couple of hours last night. There were roughly 40 people online at the time, but many came and went over the couple of hours.

The chatbox was full of people asking 'How do I get into the game?' and 'Which button do I press?'.

Once they were in the game, they were asking 'How do I start the engine?' or 'What do I do with prop pitch to take off?'.

So, two observations;

1) The game needs a 'help menu' for new multiplayer users. 'Click your flag, then run your mouse over the white airfields, then click on the airfield, then go to loadout, etc, etc.
It would be great if this could be included in a patch at some stage in the future, but the trouble is that there'd need to be guides for all the different permutations available so the onus would probably fall on the server providers.

2) It appears to me that many new players want to re-enact the Battle of Britain on the Channel Map, rather than 'airquake on the Isles of Doom'. So maybe a Channel map with simple engine management would attract more players.

Full real is fantastic, but if we look at the numbers on the various Hyperlobby servers, mission based simplicity such as UK Dedicated 1 is still more popular on a regular basis.

Just a couple of thoughts......

[Sternjaeger II]

I believe that the reason behind this is mostly because of the high end specs necessary to play the game decently. Considering the buggy game quality of the moment and the aforementioned high pc specs, few people are getting in CoD and still playing Il-2. Things will change in time, but it will be a troubled, long one.

[Mysticpuma]

If you want Wings of prey pilots on your server turn of CEM. If you want sim players on your server turn it on.
CEM for the win!!!!:)

Winger

Nice dig at those who enjoy all simulations and games, I didn't realise that this was an exclusive club?

Should I respond with "if you want to hear what's going on in your surroundings, fly WoP Servers", no, I wont lower myself! :rolleyes:

Seriously, just embrace what there is, no-need to be so vindictive. I enjoy flying and shooting, you may enjoy clicking a switch, clicking another switch, and another and another, but I just like flying and shooting...each to their own, MP

[Mysticpuma]

[QUOTE=robtek;313977]
It still seems that your fixated to announce the negative points (edit), but no reason to try to get everybody on the same negativity trip.

[QUOTE]

Which is why I pointed out Winger's post above. If you enjoy your game, enjoy your game.

Cheers, MP

[Blackdog_kt]

I don't think there is anything wrong with the multiplayer code itself. Sure the GUI could have been better (which MG has been working on) but the code itself is fairly solid. It also offers some impressive features that are unique to Cliffs of Dover. There is alot more possible with this new engine, people just need time to figure it out. Lack of documentation for the FMB slows this process down, as does missing features and bugs.

It also does not help that MG had problems with Steam not listing the servers and the current critical bugs that make it hard to enjoy MP. There are so many people who have currently put the game on the bench, waiting for the game to be fixed. The sooner we get this "one patch to rule them all" that the next update seems to be turning into, the sooner the online community can start to develop and grow.


Pretty accurate assessment. I was never a regular multiplayer flier back in the IL2 times (i would usually fly online for a couple of weeks on Spits vs 109s or warclouds, go back to single player for a couple months, then back to a couple weeks of multi and so on), so that carries over to CoD. However, i initially did get discouraged from all the negative comments until a few days ago i got on Syndicate with a buddy for a few sorties and guess what? I shouldn't have listened to these people in the first place, multiplayer is currently better than single player even for a mostly offliner like me.

It works fine on my rig with AI voices disabled and trees set to very low (no sound bug at all in more than 3 hours of flying last Friday) and it also covers the lack of variety in single player content until we start getting more user made campaigns and missions with scripting (like the excellent ones people post in this very forum): i have a sandbox environment with a few thousand objects, about 200 AI bombers in the air randomly spawning all over the place, plus human opposition.


I think there is no single reason that people don't massively migrate, there are many.

For some the game doesn't work well enough, no use denying that and i'm not out to convince somebody that all is fine, there are still things that need work.

However, there are also a lot of other people for whom the game works well enough. This "well enough" is also a matter of what you want to do. If i were more interested in how things look then sure, i'd be discouraged that i have to turn down the trees. However, since i'm mostly interested in gameplay i have a very simple formula: turn my settings down to maintain playability, as long as it looks better than IL2:1946 to my eye it's acceptable for me.

This kind of people don't flock to MP for other reasons. Many are mostly offliners like me, some don't like the unrealistic behaviour that players adopt in multiplayer, others don't like the fact that their unrealistic behaviour is curbed by the new realism settings and most of all, there is a huge number of people who expected this to be a jump forward in time to the point where IL2:1946 is after 10 years of development: rock solid, runs maxed out on pretty much any 2 year old PC, has a few thousand user made additions to choose from (how? we just got the game a few months ago, some did mere days ago :-P ) and a huge multiplayer base.

Well, if we take a look at hypperlobby we'll see that a lot of this is servers with relaxed difficulty settings. Nothing wrong with that of course, but if we are among the so called "full real" fliers (i prefer the term full switch/difficulty) the thousands of people on Hypperlobby don't mean much, it's the handful of full switch servers and the squadron based coops we care about and even then, some people's opinions are further divided: some fly both modes, other only fly coops and others yet only fly in DF mode on objective/mission oriented servers.

Much in the same way, the almost full switch servers constitute the majority of current servers for CoD. If people just want an updated IL2:1946 experience with better graphics and FM/DM, they won't join because they don't know CEM and don't care to learn it.

I certainly don't advocate relaxing the difficulty settings on the few servers i might be interested to fly on (i want it to be possible to crash without enemy action and i similarly want my opponent to suffer from multitasking overload in a fight if i'm better at CEM than him) just to swell the numbers. However, until some servers with more relaxed difficulty appear, the people who prefer this gameplay style won't spend much time in MP.

This hasn't got so much to do with the state of the game as much as with the fact that we don't have enough people yet on the whole to overcome these divisions.
If we had enough people interested in running servers and ended up with 3-4 full switch servers, a few more with CEM off and yet a few more with semi-arcade settings, then there would also be a lot more people flying online.

Long story short, people like different things or place varying importance on them and we can't just expect to shepherd them into a handful of servers we like until they want to join or something more suited to their taste appears.

Like i said, MP runs fine for me and the difficulty settings used on the majority of servers are exactly what i prefer, but i still don't see myself flying online more than a few times per month. That doesn't have to to with the state of the game (which on my installation is completely playable at a standard that i consider more than acceptable, it's actually on the "rather good" part of the scale), it's only got to do with the fact that i'm not a 100% onliner.