Age of Wonders 4, constantly out of sync

[Triumph Jordi]

@TriumphPaul2
Hi, it has been over three months since I brought this issue to Paradox attention. Both through the support and this forum, and the game is still unplayable in multiplayer for me and my friend. Can we please have some compensation for this?

Hey Flandersqq, the Watcher Update did a huge update to MP Stability and Out of Syncs. Do you have any specific situations that cause consistent Out of Sync that we could look into?

Same issues even on latest patch except now it crashes on top of desync message. Multiplayer is unplayable. It is laughable at this point.

Hey Dragula, if you're experiencing crashes then please provides us with the Crash Report name so we can have a look. If some data is incorrect there, resulting in a crash then a OoS makes sense. We would need the crash data to actually see what's incorrect there.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

Hi,
We tried again now with the latest versions and there is a difference, however the end result is the same.. the out of syncs are constant resulting in an unplayable multiplayer game.. I can see very few bad reviews on Steam regarding this issue. Wouldn’t it be possible for you to provide me with a free steam version of the game? It has been quite some time now with little to no progress with this issue.

Hey Flanders,

My previous question still stands, are there any specific situations in which you observe these? A Out of Sync occurs when there's a difference in game data so getting you a Steam Version of the game isn't going to make a difference.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

In this thread i have provided you with all the information needed to reproduce the issue (at least on our PCs) you would have to provide me with what further insights you may need in order to investigate this issue further.

In your most recent test, at what turn did you go Out of Sync? Was it during World Map or Combat, or during the AI Turn? Were both Players online at the time?

I believe you may be a little bit too hasty to rule this one out. Are you certain that there is no possibility that running the Epic and Steam version of the game could have something to do with this issue?

If you were playing with a Xbox or PlayStation user then possibly, since the way the game gets compiled differs but not for Steam, Epic, GoG. Like I said, a Out of Sync occurs when Game Data between the involved players is different, this means that one or more PC's ended up with a different results while processing the same actions. i.e. for Player A a ability does 11 Damage killing a unit while for Player B a ability ends up doing 10 Damage and does not kill the unit.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

I see. I just want to make sure that we do not rule out any option, especially this one since it would be a rather simple test to conduct, since we only need a single Steam copy of the game to test it. If you have any other suggestions what should test for you to get to the bottom of this issue, please go ahead an provide us with that. We would like to have this issue resolved and be able to enjoy your game.

Did some Epic/Steam test but the frequency of Out of Syncs weren't statically higher then when testing just within Steam. Out of Sync's take a lot of time to track down and fix so there's not much more that you can do besides describing the situations and actions during which they occurred.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

How do I report this in a useful way?

Exactly the way you just did. These are the steps/situation descriptions that we need to try and reproduce these issues. Logs don't contain useful information when it comes to Out of Syncs and sessions are cloud based so you don't have any saves. These descriptions where you just detail what the situation was and what occurred leading up to the Out of Sync is the best way to report.

Last time we had out of sync, the AI moved 3 stacks on the strategic map, but my friend intercepted one of the stacks. However, before combat was initiated, on my screen the 3rd stack was in another position. On his screen, the stack was left alone (thus why he attacked). We couldn't not detect if lag cause this discrepancy or if it was independent from connection speed. He won a on auto combat and I crashed. After I logged back, I still saw the 3rd stack existing there. On his screen there was only 2 stacks. We reverted the turn, and similar thing happened again. This time he went for manual combat and after the win, the 3rd stack mysteriously disappeared from my screen, even though it was half a screen away.

 

[Triumph Jordi]

I always submit my crash reports/dumps when it crashes. Is that not enough?

Submitting Crashes is sufficient for us to get an idea of how common/severe a crash is. Reporting it with the dump is a surefire way for us to retrieve it and look into fixing it. Otherwise crash reports in our aggregate get handled in order of frequency.