Friend Only Game turns Public

[Inkcharm]

Hey, I bought this game for a friend and myself. We played it online as a Friend Game, enjoyed it. Today we picked it up again to continue - only to find the game was suddenly public, and we keep having random people join the game.

I don't want this. If I wanted to play a public game, I would play a public game. I've unfortunately played the game too long to get a refund, which frankly annoys me to no end, as a bug like this is a dealbreaker to me. What do I do? How do I turn my PRIVATE game back to PRIVATE?

Please help...

[76561198818353027]

I'm very sorry to hear this and that the private games do not stay private after you resume it. We unfortunately have not had or seen many reports about this issue, and currently there is no plans on releasing updates to the game. But I have informed our team about this and they are looking into it. We have to wait and see.

For now, you can always try to kick the joining people out and with that “limiting” the attendees to your friends.

I’m very sorry that I could not provide a fix but I hope the solution is useful.

[mece]

I have the same issue. :(

[MarjutFB]

Originally posted by mece:

I have the same issue. :(

Unfortunately it's still not in our plans to fix this. Sorry!

However I did place other workarounds for the game not working in the other thread where you posted. Please check those!

[Inkcharm]

I think it's a shame that you've made a multiplayer game, and have no interest in fixing a thing that impacts the multiplayer experience negatively.

[Zhae]

Have the same issue

[MarjutFB]

Originally posted by Inkcharm:

I think it's a shame that you've made a multiplayer game, and have no interest in fixing a thing that impacts the multiplayer experience negatively.

I'll forward your feedback ahead. I also asked around and seems like we really tried to fix this, and we patched the issue two times but the issue seems to still happen sometimes. Sorry for the inconvenience, and that I wasn't aware of this. :(

Also based on the reports we have, yes it's very likely isn't happening for everyone.

As said above, not that it's also possible to kick the players you don't want it. Even though I know it's not the same.

[Darkness]

Originally posted by MarjutFB:

I also asked around and seems like we really tried to fix this

Yeah, I remember some patch notes mentioning this. I just wonder why you never allowed us to change an ongoing game to public online/private online/offline, as you did on other Trine games, which seems more like a complete way to fix it and give more freedom.

I just guess the intended original roguelite design ended up harming 9P potential a little here and there on several ways.

[JLarja]

Originally posted by Darkness:

Originally posted by MarjutFB:

I also asked around and seems like we really tried to fix this

Yeah, I remember some patch notes mentioning this. I just wonder why you never allowed us to change an ongoing game to public online/private online/offline, as you did on other Trine games, which seems more like a complete way to fix it and give more freedom.

Unfortunately, things don't always work in a way that something done once can be easily done again. Most of the programmers that worked at Frozenbyte during Trine 2 development (and even many that worked on Trine 3) have left the company. The network and especially lobby code (including code that handles public/private distinction) is a spaghetti monster level mess. It will be updated (rewritten mostly) for Trine 4, but that doesn't help 9P at all.

Of course, you always have to compromise on something. People consider Trine 2 to be rather well-behaving and relatively bug-free game, but it still has something like 500 known bugs.

-JLarja / Frozenbyte

[Inkcharm]

Basically, I would like to play a game where a core mechanic works reliably. If I want to play a private online game with just a friend, I do NOT want to have to kick someone every couple of minutes. That's not a solution. I also don't want to waste time making a new game with no guarantee that this issue won't crop up again. Sadly, my refund windows have long passed, but that teaches me to put my money elsewhere, frankly. When the compromise comes at the cost of a core feature... yeah, I don't know, the ratio of games to time to money doesn't work out in this game's favour, then. Not that it'll bother the makers, as my money has already been spent - on my copy and the one for the friend I intended to play this with. Privately. Without people barging into our session regularly, disrupting fun times. It's a real pity :(

[ɃƵ Crazy Cat Lady]

Oh no, other people joining your multiplayer game. Heaven forbid you team up with people you have never met before?
Thanks for letting me know what snobby little brats the community is. I won't be buying this game.

[Inkcharm]

Originally posted by Christian2222:

Oh no, other people joining your multiplayer game. Heaven forbid you team up with people you have never met before?
Thanks for letting me know what snobby little brats the community is. I won't be buying this game.

Yeah, heaven forbid in a game with PUBLIC Multiplayer and PRIVATE Multiplayer, I want the PRIVATE Multiplayer to say PRIVATE, and if I want to play with people I've never met before I'll join the, y'know, PUBLIC areas.

[EnviousElazul]

We had the same issue today. We started playing yesterday as 4 man local multiplayer and continued it today but only with 3 players. Somehow it had turned into global multiplayer and we had problems with random players. Most of them were extremely nice and left when we told that we wanted to play alone.

[Inkcharm]

Originally posted by Envious_Elazul:

We had the same issue today. We started playing yesterday as 4 man local multiplayer and continued it today but only with 3 players. Somehow it had turned into global multiplayer and we had problems with random players. Most of them were extremely nice and left when we told that we wanted to play alone.

Which, y'know, good on the community. But that's also definitely the community making up for a core feature being broken that the developers don't intend to fix. :( It's a real pity.

[ardwark]

Same issue. Both friends only games that were started can only be resumed as public games. This is especially bad if people are joining before the actual friends have managed. This is an extremely basic feature, and breaks the game entirely. It's frightening me that the last news about this was in September with a "we are looking into it".
I like the game, but as it is I will change my review to not recommended, cause it's unplayable in the way that we bought the game for.
If there is no news about a fix for this (btw devs: simplest fix would be to have ANY kind of multiplayer options in the actual gameplay part of the game) soon I will request a refund for the game being unplayable.

[MarjutFB]

Originally posted by kaot:

Same issue. Both friends only games that were started can only be resumed as public games. This is especially bad if people are joining before the actual friends have managed. This is an extremely basic feature, and breaks the game entirely. It's frightening me that the last news about this was in September with a "we are looking into it".
I like the game, but as it is I will change my review to not recommended, cause it's unplayable in the way that we bought the game for.
If there is no news about a fix for this (btw devs: simplest fix would be to have ANY kind of multiplayer options in the actual gameplay part of the game) soon I will request a refund for the game being unplayable.

We're sorry about this!

The game is still playable, so I can't promise a refund but you do have the right to ask for it. Unfortunately some issues get lost in the game code and might even be impossible to fix. I don't know if this is the case here, but sadly we haven't been able to find any leads that would help to fix this issue.

It's still possible to kick players by writing /kick playername to chat, but unfortunately we don't have any other solutions at this point.

Cheers and still thanks for trying the game (kaot and everyone else)!