First, I want to apologize in advance for this rant. I'm posting this in the hopes that one of the developers will read this and understand why we are pulling our hair out. Please, if anyone can add intelligently to this thread please do. I'm concerned that eventually the patches will quit coming and we will wake up with a still unplayable MP environment.
I play in a regular group of 6 players. We have been playing since December and we really enjoy HOI. Most of us seem to enjoy adding some flavor, like diplomacy via email, etc. However, we have to be the most patient group of gamers on earth to keep attempting to play this game in MP. One of our members last night likened playing HOI MP to the early days of online gaming. I have to agree.
- Chatroom. This has to be fixed. If a player exits and then comes back in, sometimes other players can't see him, names start getting listed twice, and all sorts of other problems.
- Loading the game. Almost every load of the game results in a CTD for one of the six players. Then everyone has to ctrl-alt-del and shut down HOI in the loading screen and restart, hoping no one else CTD's on the next load.
- Lag. Anything over 6 players produces unbearable lag. How come almost everyone out there can play very data-intensive games such as MOH without the game killing lag we experience running HOI in below normal speed? It has to be the network code. I would like to hear from anyone out there who does not regularly have problems playing over 6 players. I know there are exceptions from time-to-time, but even cable players have problems frequently on larger games.
- Bugs. We could start another thread on this, but last night we had a particularly nasty bug I will use as an example. On 9/12/36 at exactly 0:00 hours, the host would CTD. We tried a different host, same CTD. Finally, the host ran the game in SP for a couple of days until we got past that firm crash date, then saved and resent the data files (via email, because the in-game transfer algorithm sucks). Of course, this got us past the crash, but we all had units moving all over the place (from the AI playing us for a couple of days) and the UK had convoys all screwed up which is terribly frustrating given the sheer number of convoys.
The above bug example is just one example of what we have to go through to make this game work in MP. It cost us over an hour and tons of frustration. This is the point of my thread, we seem to have to get creative and waste time every time we play.
It is a testimony to the love of HOI we all share in my group to put up with this game. I am asking the developers to read this and pleading that they remember us in the MP community.
Please give us some time and attention in an upcoming patch.
Ulster
I play in a regular group of 6 players. We have been playing since December and we really enjoy HOI. Most of us seem to enjoy adding some flavor, like diplomacy via email, etc. However, we have to be the most patient group of gamers on earth to keep attempting to play this game in MP. One of our members last night likened playing HOI MP to the early days of online gaming. I have to agree.
- Chatroom. This has to be fixed. If a player exits and then comes back in, sometimes other players can't see him, names start getting listed twice, and all sorts of other problems.
- Loading the game. Almost every load of the game results in a CTD for one of the six players. Then everyone has to ctrl-alt-del and shut down HOI in the loading screen and restart, hoping no one else CTD's on the next load.
- Lag. Anything over 6 players produces unbearable lag. How come almost everyone out there can play very data-intensive games such as MOH without the game killing lag we experience running HOI in below normal speed? It has to be the network code. I would like to hear from anyone out there who does not regularly have problems playing over 6 players. I know there are exceptions from time-to-time, but even cable players have problems frequently on larger games.
- Bugs. We could start another thread on this, but last night we had a particularly nasty bug I will use as an example. On 9/12/36 at exactly 0:00 hours, the host would CTD. We tried a different host, same CTD. Finally, the host ran the game in SP for a couple of days until we got past that firm crash date, then saved and resent the data files (via email, because the in-game transfer algorithm sucks). Of course, this got us past the crash, but we all had units moving all over the place (from the AI playing us for a couple of days) and the UK had convoys all screwed up which is terribly frustrating given the sheer number of convoys.
The above bug example is just one example of what we have to go through to make this game work in MP. It cost us over an hour and tons of frustration. This is the point of my thread, we seem to have to get creative and waste time every time we play.
It is a testimony to the love of HOI we all share in my group to put up with this game. I am asking the developers to read this and pleading that they remember us in the MP community.
Please give us some time and attention in an upcoming patch.
Ulster
