Improved stability and dedicated server

No one is saying MP is perfect either, but I dont want it to all be slung that way, complaining about warping when you have a 500 ping to a server, things like that, never seem to get mentioned.

Our server has a 180ms ping limit with most players ping being less than 100ms, still get warping

And if "MP is so badly bugged", how come I can watch so many people on twitch or other places having fun playing multiplayer? Again, I have seen no one from ED deny that some optimizations are still needed, but lets not get carried away either, "badly bugged" to me means no one can play online at all. "badly bugged" generally means unplayable.

I never said unplayable, but the bugs that are present can make for an aweful online MP experience

It can be aweful when stuff like, warping happens, sling load cargos hovering in the air, disconnections etc and of course server crashes

I don't think you are understanding me , if MP was crapt 100% of the time

no one at all would play MP at all, its just sometimes the bugs make it a bad experience

I suppose its different for me as I would spend time on most evenings in MP

so I see more than others might do

Mission I use is pretty lean on what is active, our server specs are fine for hosting DCS

I dont know about 250ms ping players, anyone over 180ms get auto booted from our server

Open beta and Release are the same build right now ?

Our server has a 180ms ping limit with most players ping being less than 100ms, still get warping

 

I never said unplayable, but the bugs that are present can make for an aweful online MP experience

I would ask the Grim reapers what there secret is when they setup these mission and do very close formations at times. They seem to go quite well and video capture all the MP missions they do.

Right now, only ~160 people play MP publicly. That's not "a lot of people".

No, but that's not even the point, the point is, adding Open Beta, and Early Access modules raise the risk level of bugs, and you should be ready to deal with those when they come up, not that release is perfect, but if you take part in Open Beta, you should expect the possibility of bugs springing up.

dang thats odd

I get Successfully updated to 2.5.2.19273.411 in my release version autoupdate_log.txt

and Successfully updated to 2.5.2.19273.411 beta version autoupdate_log.txt

What should the beta version be at ?

Well, most people just don't post about it because we know ED is aware and working on it. We just deal with it.

That's what they keep saying/people keep reiterating,

Most people in any kind of computer gaming, be it sims or whatever, only do SP. Or that's what I've heard many times from different sources over the years anyway.

The MP community is a vocal one and thus make their presence known in any genre, but AFAIK they're still the minority everywhere. And if this is true, what we'd really need first and foremost is better AI, although I personally wouldn't mind seeing a dedicated server materializing ASAP since I do both myself. But the majority gets to make the rules...

I only see 50 or so posts in this thread, some by the same people, I guess that is not a lot of people complaining about multiplayer either.

Hmm and yet 4,431 views on a post not even 3 days old

Take a look down the first page of this sub forum, how many have anywhere this many views and are approx 3 days old ?

I beg to differ... I have seen many new names and returning names with the introduction of the Hornet, no doubt improvements to MP will always help, but are not the only reason for ED's success.

I guess we have different definitions of "huge". Just seemed like a very logical conclusion that a niche game with very high entry costs would require far less effort to retain players than to rely on attracting new ones.

Or maybe not every enjoys the same things, and maybe people prefer single player, or playing with a smaller group of friends even. As stated, its more of a study sim that MMO, as such, people are going to play offline a lot as well, and the numbers support that.

We can either wildly speculate (on both sides of the fence) and draw conclusions based on simplified data, or we can run a poll to try and find out for sure. It'd be interesting to know either way it goes.

I only see 50 or so posts in this thread, some by the same people, I guess that is not a lot of people complaining about multiplayer either.

I'm not sure that burying a thread under a flood of "I support X" or repeating the same concerns ad nauseam is a good idea.

I only see 50 or so posts in this thread, some by the same people, I guess that is not a lot of people complaining about multiplayer either.

Indeed that is not a lot of people complaining. There are more people that open "thank you ed" threads. So I guess dcs is perfect.

To reply to this thread I agree that this topic is important for many simmers oft DCS. For myself 90% oft flights are in MP. Its more dynamic and social than SP.

An improved and stabilized MP is VERY important for me!

My 2cents,

Flummi

I only see 50 or so posts in this thread, some by the same people, I guess that is not a lot of people complaining about multiplayer either.

Thing is, I personally know guys who won't touch DCS anymore until there is a dedicated server, and one of those until there is a dynamic campaign engine. They have some modules but won't buy any more, either.

Also, you will never see them posting on this forum beforehand as for now they are lost to DCS. Some people vote with their feet.

+1

I would like to build a DECENT server for DCS but it's quite impossible! The Stability on 2.5.2.18736 STABLE branch it's a nightmare!

The way to host a dedicated server is crazy! A Full Client Installation to host MP session, unbelivable. I managed a lot of game server over the time, AssettoCorsa, Arma3, Ark, CS:GO, Empyrion and many other, and I never seen somethink like that.

I hope the ED is going to invest more time and resource to develop a dedicated server build!

That's what they keep saying/people keep reiterating, but the real question is whether people play SP because they actually prefer it or because of the state of MP.

In my case it's the latter.

I've been giving up on MP for time being, for me it's just to much hassle ATM. My DCS flying is unfortunately restricted to shorter SP sorties now and then. This also stopped me from buying any new modules/maps since MP is the main reason I play games/sims.

I still hope things will change for the better but as many others I have anticipated the DS for many years now.

Would be interesting to see the result of a simple poll regarding this...

I never said unplayable, but the bugs that are present can make for an aweful online MP experience

To offer a counter-argument: I haven't been on your server for a while, and only in DCS 1.5, since indeed the performance there was quite aweful (flying in a Ka-50 close to the ground was a slideshow and completely unplayable in VR).

I have been on other open MP servers, where the overall performance was much much better than on yours (like NineLine stated, when we join a MP server we often don't know the hardware it's running on). That, combined with your constant complaining and ED-bashing on your server description, has kept me from joining ever again.

I'm not claiming there is no problem on ED's side when it comes to MP hosting large-scale missions with a lot of people on them, simply because I tend to not join such servers and as such have very little experience with them.

Instead, we've been hosting in-house servers (just for our squadron), including heavy missions with lots of scripts running, and that has never been a problem. The only times when people were "warping", is when there was an easily-identified problem on the client's side.

We have opened up our server a few times and had 40 people on it, without major issues. But mostly we have between 6 and 12 people on it at any given time, or less.

Saying that DCS multiplayer experience as a whole is "aweful" is simply not true.

For the people running servers locked for people not in their squadron and/or air wing, a dedicated server applications is most needed because currently those people need the minimum hardware to run DCS (Why would you want a sound card on a dedicated server, if not for DCS? - Not having a GUI would also reduce some requirements on the server, and electricity costs), and it forces them to buy the maps twice.

In my case it's the latter.

If that is the result of your experience on large servers such as havoc, blue flag etc, I'd recommend you find or build a squadron, and host your own missions for friends and/or your own squadron. The experience might be quite a bit different :-)

@Elysian Angel , does sling loading work for you on your server?

as in when you move some cargo about do all the clients connected see it when it is dropped elsewhere?

I've been reading this thread and there is a bit of hyperbole around DCS Multiplayer and its current state. It's definitely not perfect but it does work. However, it is NOT very accessible from a administrative and a client stand point. What I mean by accessible is, multiplayer is a much worse experience than single player in terms of stability and from a general 'wtf is going on' point of view.

Multiplayer lobbies take a long time to load with no indication to the user of what actually is happening.

There is constant jitters and pauses in multiplayer as well as rubber banding/trampolining clients.

The more complex the mission the problems seem to get exponentially worse but there is no feedback from the server to the administrator as to what might be the problem (bandwidth/cpu issues).

Yes, the 'numbers' may indicate that single player is more popular but I would wager that the multiplayer element is more vocal at this time. If single player is such a focus and multiplayer is being left to rot, then you may as well just remove multiplayer all together.

Everyone I speak to about DCS talks about multiplayer. Hoggit, one of the biggest communities exists almost solely because of multiplayer and it's community.

We've raised these issues with ED via this forum for a long time now and nothing appears to be done. We are told that it is being worked on, yet, despite all the mini-updates and better community focused communication we have heard nothing regarding the multiplayer experience. This is bordering on disrespect to the multiplayer community.

I ask you ED, tell us what you are working on. Tell us what improvements you are going to make and put our minds at ease. You have been great with communication lately but we need to know what we can expect from multiplayer, so we can continue to invest our time and our money into this hobby.

I say this with respect, but also through fatigue of wondering and hoping.

I really can't remember where I may have read this but isn't DCS working on a completely separate function or app just for hosting a multiplayer server? if not then this would be a great idea.

I really can't remember where I may have read this but isn't DCS working on a completely separate function or app just for hosting a multiplayer server? if not then this would be a great idea.

Supposedly.

does sling loading work for you on your server?

Lately we've only been flying the Hornet, and it's been a while in general since we flew helicopters.

We have done sling loading in the past without major issues - but that was back in 2017, before DCS 2.5 .

Multiplayer lobbies take a long time to load with no indication to the user of what actually is happening.

On this particular issue: for me, reducing Preload Radius to minimum (100 I think?) helped immensely, along with disabling the page file in Windows. But my PC does sport an M.2 drive.

I also want a stable dedicated (Linux) server for DCS.

The current solution is not really practical and unfortunately has the problems already mentioned.