Why does it take forever to find a friends server??

[Merck]

Finding a friends local hosted game is getting to be near impossible at best to find. I don't know if Giants is trying to degrade & force players to purchasing servers in their money grab?? But it takes at least 15 minutes & upward to try having a friends list display on the server page - - If you are lucky at having it display at all!

Mind you, this same friend hosts many other local games & there is no issue at all about finding his game listed to play. So I know it is NOT the internet or either of our connections.

The search box is near useless, since if you type select characters it will display NO games at all. Also the more you type the lower the chance you will have of finding the friends game. But by typing the minimum characters, you will get just about every game displayed.

And searching by the map, doesn't seem to work at all. Maybe it works for some maps??? But my friend is playing a TSZ... map, which should display his game, but it shows nothing.

[magicISO Sweden]

"Can't see my server or the game of my friend"
If this is your thought currently you are experiencing the up to 2 hours Server Browser delay problems that are currently ongoing.
Apologies for that right away.
It's not just you that is experiencing it and the team is already working on the fix.
The game you are looking for should show up very soon.

Interested in more details about the problem?:
The problem can be described the easiest as a "delay in servers showing up"

So if you restart your dedicated server or start your multiplayer game it will not be directly visible in the server browser.
Important note: if you see your server after a restart or while it's offline, but get an "could not connect" this is likely not your restarted server,
but rather the session from before the restart; so that error is expected since the session ID has changed with each restart.

The problem is only "unbearable" on high peaks, so throughout the week or in the mornings all should be working as expected.
Currently the highest delay monitored was 2h, so while there may be some cases with longer delays, this however was the maximum delay monitored, average is much less.
Reactions from the community confirmes what our Team found the issue for the delays to be, so that in lower peak times the problem is non existent.

Our recommendation until the fix is to not unnecessarily restart servers & set automatic restarts to a less active time like the early morning.

Please stay patient & Happy Farming if you made it onto your Multiplayer game.

from giants discord

[Merck]

This is a private hosted local game & NOT a paid. or dedicated full time server.

When my friend is online, he starts the game up in multi-player, & then I try to join. This is a crap-shoot at best, & the vast majority of times lately, his game will NOT display on the server listing page.

[Qrusher]

It doesn't seem to matter if its a dedicated or hosted local game. The servers don't show up on the list for hours right now. I have the same as you, i start a local server and my friend tries to connect and it won't show it. It seems to take hours for it to show up. Its made local server play basically unplayable. I'm not gonna start my game and leave it running for hours before i can multiplayer. Just have to wait till they fix it.

Sure wish they had a direct connection option or LAN option.

[magicISO Sweden]

its for all multiplayer game

[Merck]

I agree Qrusher

MagicISO, it is for all the games that I have tried to join for quite some time now. Basically every time I have tried to join friends games, it takes a long time. This is not a new thing, although it seems to be getting worse lately. But has happened from release date to now.

[magicISO Sweden]

this started around 2 weeks ago

[Beherov]

Hello! You wrote that it takes 2 hours to update the server. I have been unable to play in cooperative mode for days now, because whenever I try to do it, morning or evening, I can't find my friend's server. I can't watch it in the morning to see if it's working, because I'm working then and I'm free in the afternoon or evening. It would be nice if there was a solution to this problem, as I read that many people have problems with this besides me. I have been playing framing simulators for a very long time, but I have never encountered such a problem.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[Merck]

Beherov