Calamity multiplays... ¿Horribly?

[Totopap]

Looking here on the forums it seems to be the most popular mod for multiplayer and I have to wonder why when so far it has been a very bad experience in multiplayer.

I have played Calamity singleplayer up to Wall Of Flesh and it was amazing, but now I'm playing with some friends and it's BAD.
If it's relevant, we have some addons, those being: Vanilla Music, Catalyst, Clamity, Vanities, Hunt Of The Old God and Wrath Of The Gods.


First of all, there are so many desyncs. Vast majority of weapons that don't use the vanilla swing/use animation don't sync at all, movility accesories desync on use (even something as basic as that dash accesory from the clothier, when a player dashes with it they briefly desync) and bosses while the vast minority of them desync when they do it gets REALLY bad, The Hive Mind is just unplayable on multiplayer (and it was my favorite boss on singleplayer).

Technical issues aside, the general design of the mod is really bad for multiplayer or at least boss design is. Bosses move really fast and are very reliant on positioning relative to the player, so if the boss wants to position to the left of a player you happen to already be to the left of they will move at unavoidable speeds on top of you and deal a lot of contact damage (Skeletron straight up teleports on top of you).
This is also very problematic with aggro switching, because bosses move so fast and are so reliant on positioning relative to the player, when they switch aggro they sort of spontaneously zoom across the arena and can contact damage you. And this constant spontaneous zooming also forces you to use weapons with strong homing, massive aoe or extremely fast attack speed or else you will pretty much not do any damage at all, you will just miss everything.

Lastly, there's the screen clutter. I don't think there's much to explain on this, in singleplayer (at least pre-hardmode which is the only part I cleared in singleplayer) this isn't really a problem, by yourself you don't create that many projectiles and you should know your own projectiles well enough. In multiplayer, with 4 persons spamming erratically as many projectiles as possible because the boss is constantly zooming across the entire arena, you just don't know what's on the screen anymore. Our last succesful boss fight was Cryogen, the amount of times I walked straigh into a bullet and died is deppresing, a snowstorm happened and a graveyard formed mid-fight so the visibility was almost non-existent. In low speed battles the screen is so cluttered you can't spot the enemy bullets in the mess of friendly bullets that is being created and in high speed battles, such as Anahita's (we attacked her accidentally, the only hardmode boss we beat is Cryogen), when a glowing thing comes from off-screen you just don't have the time to assess wether it's a friendly projectile or a enemy projectile.

[Vukmir]

Yeah multiplayer issues exist, but it is a free content mod that adds so many items, bosses, weapons, accessories etc. that it could nearly be considered it's own game. I've completed it many times, both solo and with friends, had the same problems and I still think the pros easily overwhelm the cons.

[Totopap]

Originally posted by Vukmir:

Yeah multiplayer issues exist, but it is a free content mod that adds so many items, bosses, weapons, accessories etc. that it could nearly be considered it's own game. I've completed it many times, both solo and with friends, had the same problems and I still think the pros easily overwhelm the cons.

Rating it in all of it's entirety at once is very hard when the singleplayer is so good and the multiplayer so bad.
But rating the mod in it's entirety wasn't the point, the mod was designed with singleplayer in mind and works flawlessly in it's intended enviroment and they added multiplayer compatibility at all just because they could I suppose. The point is ¿Why is it so popular for multiplaying? There are so many good options for mods that are actually designed with multiplayer in mind, the most obvious probably Thorium with 2 classes designed around it, but Calamity isn't a good option, it just devolves into hoping deaths are spaced enough and you do so by playing "Where's Waldo?" with the boss' bullets while holding click in the boss' general direction and just spray and pray.
If you tell me you have fun with Calamity in multiplayer, I think what you are actually having fun with is spending time with your friends, because unless I'm doing something wrong I just can't see how multiplayer Calamity is fun at all.

[Timon]

I actually dont have any desync problems when playing it with friends, so i cant relate to that.
the thing with the bosses i only encounter when the melee player dies and the boss focusses another player. other than that, the boss is aggroed on the melee guy 99% of the time. The screen clutter i can fully relate to, especially when theres a rogue involved.
considering calamity was designed for singleplayer, i think it overall does very good in multiplayer