Co-op problems

[famalex]

So, to start with i am really enjoying co-op. Unfortunately, it has simultaneously been my worst experience in the game due to a number of things - mainly the game itself. I have had so many more bugs, crashes and softlocks in this mode alone than in all the other modes combined. It is unbelievably frustrating. This is especially noticeable in the higher difficulty tiers. One example is, for no apparent reason, I totally lost all control of my robot until I died, and this happened twice in one round once reaching Uranium. The first time merely required a mk5 to shoot me, but the second happened after a level ended, making regaining control impossible as i could not die.
Even without the bugs however, the mode is not flawless. Though not bugs, this is an excellent opportunity to share some of the problems minor and major that have been bothering me. One of the more minor things is how when the commentators/emperor are shot, they play a voice line for every single arrow. This creates a backlog of voicelines that block out useful information that they might give. And no, i'm not going to turn them off because they are funny. Unfortunately, some people think that it is a great idea to spam arrows at the commentators, making an incessant storm of the same 6 or so comments over and over again, which as you can probably imagine, is very annoying when they end up playing the level announcement 2 levels later. My solution would be to limit the number of arrow-related voice lines that can be queued up at once, or to clear the voiceline queue when the next level is loaded, playing the voicelines for that level immediately after clearing the queue
Another problem that many have mentioned is that sometimes people will go AFK or sit around not doing anything. As this has been mentioned many times, i won't delve too much into this, as i am sure doborog is actively working on this
A request that i would like to make is to give newly-joining players a few (2 or so) upgrade points per difficulty tier passed. While i can just about fight a mk5 robot with just a sword, given the numbers that they are seen in in uranium, it seems unfair to make players go against some of the Emperor's finest robots with the power of a mk1 sword robot + intelligence. However, i do not think it is necessary to give them all of the upgrade points that would be available at that difficulty tier - it is only fair to get some challenge if you have not yet contributed to beating some levels

It pains me to write all this, but these issues, especially the bugs, have ruined almost every single co-op game i have played. I have played several hours of Co-op, and only 2 sessions out of many have ended voluntarily. Every other one has ended due to a crash, softlock, disconnect or some other problem that has made it impossible to continue playing. It is unbelievably frustrating

Now if you will excuse me, i have some garbage bots to trash. It is very cathartic

[hollowedcommander]

This whole statement really proves how rushed out co-op ended up being. It could of been great, but because the update was rushed out, the bugs stayed, a lot of ideas are not polished, which resulted in a mediocre update. I hated dealing with random server crashes in co-op, it just seems to happen randomly. [Don't know if that was fixed now]. There is always that one random chance of a spidertron falling through the map, or some other crap to stop your run, etc. But in the end, you can always expect this feeling whenever they launch an update, a feeling of dread as you anticipate a bunch of bugs to get added to the game. They always rush out an update that is buggy, and I been seeing this happen ever since the chapter 3 update, which was about 2 years ago.

All of this bug fixing after the update launched should of been done during the development of co-op, not after the release of the update. Even with the experimental branch, they still leave some bugs unfixed in it and bring it to the public release of the update.

Also the developers are not actively fixing anything right now because they went on vacation for a week. But I'm sure they are thinking about these issues and how to fix it.

[famalex]

Originally posted by hollowedcommander:

They always rush out an update that is buggy, and I been seeing this happen ever since the chapter 3 update, which was about 2 years ago.

I really, really hope that you are wrong, but to be honest, this has become standard for the gaming industry: mention an update, promise a release date then inevitably realise that you won't reach it.

Doborog, if you are reading this, know that I for one am fine with updates being pushed back for the sake of making them stable. Don't rush them out right before the holiday/vacation period when you can't then fix bugs that occur. If you must release an unfinished update then make it an experimental branch, or add it to the steam betas or something. Don't make the game break just to meet deadlines, it would be such an improvement

[paranoidmelon]

i turned off the commentators because they weren't funny to me. Maybe if they had more lines but gets old quick when you're a star

[Doborog Games]

Thanks for all your feedback, famalex! This update did have a lot of bugs and I agree it could have used a few more days of bugfixing.

That said, updates where we add major new multiplayer features are often going to have some degree of bugs that we just don't catch until the game goes live and the number of people testing it goes up by an order of magnitude. There were a lot of those this time around.

We're going to keep iterating on co-op for the next few weeks, and hope to improve server stability even more as part of that as well as taking a pass on AFK solutions, upgrade points for late joiners etc.

And I definitely hear you on the arrow issue. It's extremely annoying for me too. :)

[famalex]

Thank you for responding - it is good to know that my feedback has been seen, and most importantly, read by the developers. Any ideas on roughly when a patch will be available for these bugs (as lets be honest, they need to come first). My suggestion of priority would be bugs, AFK, arrow-message spam and then any other issues that arise. I will make another reply if i find any new issues. Hopefully we can soon move away from these bugs and annoyances and back towards creativity and chaos on the discussions

[Doborog Games]

There's one very frequent bug in particular we might hotfix in the next few days, then some of those other things will likely be bundled into a larger release a few weeks from now.

[famalex]

Here is one more thing - the tendency to end up in distant servers - aka I am definitely in the EUwest region, but i find that sometimes i keep being put in USeast servers over and over again. While I understand that sometimes all the servers in the EUwest region will be full, it isn't always clear, and happens so often that it just gets really frustrating - I want to be in the server with the fastest connection, but I end up in a server that is 70+ ms slower. It would be nice to get notified why you are being put in more distant servers when it happens - eg i get put in USeast because EUwest servers are full, and i get told that it is the reason

[Doborog Games]

Strange, we don't actually move you to other region based on if they're full or not, so must be something with the ping. In the settings you can set an override region so you always end up in the one you want.

[famalex]

Thanks