What really annoyes me in WZ2100

[confused]

Hi,
so first off, i really like this game. But there is so much behaviour around that kills the fun in multiplayergames for me, i have to get rid of those emotions .

First, the cheating. That really f..... destroys a round when u see on a low oil map your enemy floating the game with units, or a teammate building units without one oil pump. I'm aware this is a general problem in Multiplayergames...

And as an result of that problem, the fast blame of cheating. Ok there are many people probably making them faster somehow by cheating, but that not automatically means that if one is faster than you, he is doing it. This happens so often, that people leave because they think the other cheats, because they are to f...... slow! Or they use verry ineffective unit combinations (in multiplayer) like comander and mortharunits. Early rushing is most time the successfull strategy (in high energy maps, which are a good protection against energiecheating i tink).

That brings me to my next point, the early leaving. If people are about to loose, they most time just leave. In some casses i'm ok with this, but especially when you are the host of the game, please don't f...... leave the game. The round is over for everyone, so dont destroy it for all. Some games need quite a time to start, then everyone (exept the cheater) put quite some effort in building everything up, and the host leavse just bevor some battles appear because he got terminated quite fast, that really really sucks. My oppinion is, if you are hosting a game, you should be adduld enought to wait until one site won. Otherwise it feels like rage quitting .
In some cases, quitting is ok, like when there is a power blackout, or there is a person with a gun in your neck and askes you to quit, but in every other case, you can minimize the game and do something else, go drink a coffe or what the f... do i know, but dont end the game for the other 7 people which finally got after several other ragequits of other hosts in a game together.
And even if you are last in your team, and loosing, just give the other their earned win-screen by waiting another 30 seconds, it feels to me allways like when little children play chess and one is realising it's loosing and flips ofer the board so nobody finally wins...

Yes and there is the kicking. Please, if you are hosting a game, and you have to kick someone out of the room, please let him just in a short message know why you do that to him.

That's it for now, maybee i will remeber other points of annoyingness. And everyone else is invited to spill his heard here too

Greetings

[Cyp]

Try 3.1 multiplayer. Because 2.3.9's multiplayer is horribly broken.

[NoQ]

Playing games not arranged in IRC is bad for your health. For quite some years i don't play with random people in the game lobby, and i'm not seeing cheaters anymore, i'm not seeing ragequitters anymore, i'm not getting accused of cheating, not kicking anybody or getting kicked, and every game i play is actually interesting. Simply because people start to have a name, so you can always contact them if something breaks. Simply because you're no longer an anonymous, you have a name and a reputation now. And when occasionally there's not many people in IRC (in which case the lobby is also relatively empty), i try to make maps, try to script AIs and do whatever else comes in mind, which is not too bad too.

Also, yeah, right, switching to 3.1 is the right thing to do to eliminate cheating and for many other reasons.

[aubergine]

As I understand it, version 3.1 and above use "deterministic" games, which from memory means that each machine connected to the game knows what to expect of the other players and can work out if they are cheating...?

[NoQ]

Yeah, sort of. Cheating causes desynchronization between machines, which is visible to all players.

[Iluvalar]

As long as
A) The cheat affect the environment.
B) That effect is not plausible without cheat.

And even still... I have some experiences to run about that... I might have found some more holes.

Saddly, 3.1 is NOT immune again cheating. I believe what protect it is much more A) it's still not the more popular build. B) The unadvertised releases each weeks that make the publishing of the cheat builds too much trouble. So the cheats now must stay on private sides...

[stiv]

As long as the game is open source, there will be ways for a determined scoundrel to cheat their way to an advantage. It is less about the game than the character of the scoundrels themselves.

[Cyp]

At the very least, 3.1 is a lot more resistant to accidental cheating, where your ISP suddenly destroyed enemy bases by lagging your connection, or bugs like like single-player difficulty levels affecting multiplayer (think that one was fixed in 2.3.9, but there's other ridiculous bugs/design flaws, and the fixes aren't exactly backportable).

[vexed]

Nobody ever said 3.1 was cheat proof, it just is more difficult to do some kinds of cheats, since it throws sync errors. Then looking at the logs, you can see what they were trying to do.
The only fix for this is move everything server side, but that takes time to do. Even then, some cheats will still be possible, but it takes more dedication to do those things. Look at WOW, or whatever else AAA game, they have cheaters all the time, and they throw down the ban hammer once the cheat has been detected via their logs.


In 2.X (heck even 1.X) people could do whatever they want to ruin games.

[themac]

Well, I personally wait until the match is over before quitting when I am the host. Unfortunately the action on the map is not shown for the players that have alread be killed. That is quite boring if you have been killed and you are the host too.

[confused]

yes thats ture, there has been a change in synchronisation behavior. The game stops, the units aren't suddenly chainging possitions any more.
Changing the environment of players by looking for irc rooms is a good idea.

In C&C Tiberian Wars, when the original host is leaving, the game changes him, and after a few seconds it's going on. Other way are stand alone servers. But the original game was never that optimized for multiplayer, wasn't it?

[Lord Apocalypse]

Back during the retail release days I don't think many rts games used a client/server architecture.

[stiv]

But the original game was never that optimized for multiplayer, wasn't it?

The game has always used a peer-to-peer architecture. (not to be confused with Per-to-Per!)

Remember it dates back to a time when dial-up modems ruled the Earth.

[BunkerBlaster]

Remember it dates back to a time when dial-up modems ruled the Earth.

Other than cheats, I do not recall sync issues being a problem with the original game during the time of 56k dial up other than computer speed was a factor. The slower the computer the less likely you could utilize all your power. It seems to me as time has progressed, as the internet has gotten faster, lag has become a much bigger variable than it was with 56k dial up.

So what annoys me most is lag. IMO if you have no knowledge of lag you cannot host 8 or 10 player games without a problem. Perhaps someday Warzone will give players reports that help them analyze who they can or cannot host.

[themac]

It really annoys me to see that the nexus AI often produces tons of repair-cyborgs, sending them into "war" without real forces. -.-