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You can find non-douche players of your skill level and just roll with them. I've seen people do that.
The only problem for me is that you might be playing against your faction or Western Divisions.
I'm pretty new to MP in this game but so far Iv had no problems with players. Every one waits till I finish my positioning before pressing play, and everyone stayed till the end. Haven't won a single battle yet but I'm learning. The amount of micro is much more than SP 🤯😆.
I realize now that ranked game is the way to play in this game. MP custom games are a ghost town, most often.
Limited player agency and a general lack of broader community trust since SD1 kinda flopped means that a lot of the players for other Eugen titles don't find the meta very engaging. A lack of open armory, and severe meta tilt for the various army groups means that you will always see certain armies, and never see others. That combined with the Wargame deck difference (Cat A/B/C armies being age not unit allocation) being more engaging than the SD2 system means most people didnt make the jump.
This game's MP is not grandstategy enough for the Paradox people, and not wargame enough for the Eugen crowd or the kind of people who liked Men of War, and is still too wagameish for the historical arcade RTS players (Like Company of Heroes or similar) requiring way too much micro for them to play casually.
Combine with a somewhat toxic 'muh-accuracy' crowd of players in the general player base, and the Multiplayer falls well flat. You can quick match and see what you get. You can join 3rd party groups, communities and discords to plan games, you can make friends buy it and only play with each other. But the real deal seems to be that you buy this game for PvAI not PvP gameplay.
I play several Paradox titles, I play mostly all of the men of war titles, I play the Wargame franchise, and I play Gary Grigsby's Franchise as well, along with SD2 and I love them all.
If you want to speak about yourself, then by all means, do, but dont speak for others.
I also play all of those, and I play SD2. But you seemed to miss my earlier comment about why Steel Division 2 falls into a middle ground for all of these sub-genres. I can break it down for you more if you didn't understand:
The strategy and depth of a grand campaign is only playable in SP in the current build of SD2. All MP is are skirmish style maps and battles. There is no connectivity (yet?) between MP games. This does not appeal to someone looking for a Grand-Strategy title like Hearts of Iron, or Victoria, or Paradox titles.
Steel Division 2 acts as a premature Wargame title (like ALB or WG:RD) by limiting player freedom and agency in all of the design philosophy. You do not have open armory for MP, you do not have complete unit access for MP, and some units are available only in SP (Like the SU-75 which only appears in a SP partisans deck, and not in MP) It is incredibly restrictive and very heavily measured in Meta. It lacks the freedom of a true wargame style game like what you see in MoW:AS2 or Wargame Red Dragon where the freedom to build or play armories is unrestricted.
The game has a steep and unrelenting learning curve for the purpose of using and mastering mechanics for it to be considered and Arcade Strategy title. Games like Company of Heroes are much smaller scale, and much simpler for the first timers to play that they do not feel opressed by the very nature of the game. These games also retain flexibility and competitive nature to keep them alive. CoH2 competitive and ranked is still going strong to this day. CoH1 is being kept alive by the work of modders who refuse to let the game die.
Steel division 2 is too much of a niche game trying to jack-of-all the WW2 RTS market that it fails completely to fully realize its potential for any of these sub-genres. I get 'those informations' by looking at the Steam Player activity for the games. You can track the player stats, and draw conclusions. its called interpreting data. If you have another interpretation to offer; please do.
That's all fine but it doesn't negate my previous point at all.
You could build every single division that existed in Eastern Front and play with these once you engage in battle (so you would have regular division setup instead of 3 regiments) to play with.
If a stack of multiple divisions, then you can choose all available units in those divisions, or at least chose which one you want to fight with.
This would combine a great world war 2 RTS (Steel division 2 ) with the greatest World War 2 Wargame. It would be epic.
It is failing in general. All i'm doing is trying to expose these failings. Hopefully the community at large will learn from these mistakes. As for my comment, you are wrong.
Outside of a single type of singleplayer mode, it doesn't hold any turn based strategy at all. I compare it to Paradox games because this game's predecessor was partially developed by Paradox, and everyone continues to draw logical lines between SD2 and SD1. Large scale map strategy and macro tactics are hallmarks of the genre 'grand strategy' which is a staple of the Paradox world, and what the SP Campaigns are attempting to mimic.
That has nothing to do with why the Multiplayer is dead, which is what this thread is supposed to be about. Your previous quote is wrong about that too. Otherwise you stated an opinion about games you love, which I won't argue with because that is you opinion. The final comment you made was that these are my opinions, which is false. There is hard data about the game you cannot dispute. These are not opinions, they are facts. Only the last paragraph is my opinion, and it is more a theory about the game in general rather than true opinion.
Is the game failing: it is.
That isn't an opinion, it is fact. When you compare it to all similar titles: it is going unplayed. Unplayed video games are failing games. Look at the hard numbers I link below and tell me what you see.
Like i said Steam player statistics are publicly available, but i will break it down for you.
Steel Division 2, within its all time record, experienced peak simultaneous players through Steam, with 2257 players online. That number was achieved in its first months, and since has seen steady and inevitable decline. As of the last 24 hours of posting this, the high was 544 players on steam. This is in less than a year of gameplay.
The Steam Chart for SD2:
https://steamcharts.com/app/919640#All
Steel Division 1, hit an all time peak of players with 4606 simultaneous on Steam. That is more than double the all time peak on SD2. Since then, in the 3 years it has existed, it has plummeted to the current 24 hour peak at time of writing this, to 172 players on steam. Feel free to form an opinion on why this is; I already have, but don't lie to the numbers because they are quite obvious.
Steam Charts for SD1:
https://steamcharts.com/app/572410#All
Wargame Red Dragon, has an all time peak of 4779 players on steam. This exceeds even SD1's all time count. In the 5+ years it has been out, it too has seen a decline in players. However, its current highest peak in the last 24 hours as of the writing of this post is 927 players. This is more than triple the player count of SD1 and almost double the count of SD2. The monthly peaks for players has been over 1k for the last 20+ months. SD2 has broken 1k twice (in June and July of 2019 after launch), and hasn't been able to since, even with the Vistula release month.
Wargame RD Steam Chart:
https://steamcharts.com/app/251060#All
Similar WW2 RTS games with impressive skirmish scale like MoW:AS2 are doing fine. Men of War Assault Squad 2 has an all time peak of 9720 players. The last 24 hour peak as of writing this is 2363. A game that has open and reliable player agency, dedicated modding tools, and as much mechanical depth and strategy as Steel Division or Wargame is doing far better than any of the above games. Even though this game is older than all the above, and both Steel Divisions combined, it continues to be a populated, competitive, and popular game.
Steam Chart for Assault Squad 2:|
https://steamcharts.com/app/244450#All
We can go over why restricting player agency and freedom is bad for the game, we can also discuss why the various mechanics are bad or good for the game. At the end of the day, you have to admit the game is not doing well, and try to rationalize why. I have provided concrete evidence as to why, and theories based on the data given. If you disagree then you are probably lying to yourself. If you want to lie to yourself and others, then who is really passing off disinformation? If you have contrarian data; please share it with us, i do not mind admitting I am wrong.
SD is enjoy it while it lasts,seems like OP just missed the train. You will have to get used to EST.