Steam Friends Integration and Downtime Issues

arualarual Join Date: 2005-03-12 Member: 44989Members
in Ideas and Suggestions
Is NS2 going to totally rely on Steam's Friends network for finding and joining friends games? I believe the major issue with this is that when Friends goes down, which will be out of your control, it is virtually impossible to join games with friends. Recent popular PC games such as L4D2 and MW2 can basically become unplayable (to join, if already ingame you are generally unaffected) when the Friends Network goes down, which unfortunately does happen, scheduled or not.

Then again I honestly don't understand why L4D decided to totally eschew use of a proper filterable & sortable Server List (official Steam or otherwise) which worked great with past games, including NS1. Perhaps I'm just being picky and other gamers don't have this issue; I just remember a scenario from a couple of days ago when our 4-person L4D2 team had a member drop, he couldn't rejoin the game because Steam Friends was down. We ultimately ended up leaving, even attempting "join xx.xx...." in console failed with some generically unhelpful L4D2 "Cannot connect to server" error.
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Comments

  • Draco_2kDraco_2k Evil Genius Join Date: 2009-12-09 Member: 69546Members
    NS2 will use classic server list - I gather - so this shouldn't be a problem. I don't think I've seen Steam's master server go down once.

    Also, L4D doesn't use server browser because of low player counts, you have to start and go through with the game with the whole team. At least that's the theory.
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  • RobBRobB ＴＵＢＥＳ ＯＦ ＴＨＥ ＩＮＴＥＲＷＥＢ Join Date: 2003-08-11 Member: 19423Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    I dont think that 4 vs 4 (Versus, Fuelhunt) qualifies as low player count. It's just plain old retarded game design.
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  • Draco_2kDraco_2k Evil Genius Join Date: 2009-12-09 Member: 69546Members
    <!--quoteo(post=1761268:date=Mar 26 2010, 04:41 PM:name=RobB)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (RobB @ Mar 26 2010, 04:41 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1761268"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I dont think that 4 vs 4 (Versus, Fuelhunt) qualifies as low player count. It's just plain old retarded game design.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    Obviously they should have had 12 survivors battle 12 infected. 0_o
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  • RobBRobB ＴＵＢＥＳ ＯＦ ＴＨＥ ＩＮＴＥＲＷＥＢ Join Date: 2003-08-11 Member: 19423Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
    Nah, that gets messy. I've seen that with bots. Its disgusting. Ok, it may be because of the bots that literaly littered the area blocking the infected from spawning, but who cares anyway.
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  • JimydJimyd Join Date: 2003-02-08 Member: 13289Members
    <!--quoteo(post=1761269:date=Mar 26 2010, 06:43 AM:name=Draco_2k)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Draco_2k @ Mar 26 2010, 06:43 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1761269"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Obviously they should have had 12 survivors battle 12 infected. 0_o<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    Actually I have a bunch of community servers that are modded that way, it is quite fun.

    Much better than standard L4D.
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  • JirikiJiriki retired ns1 player Join Date: 2003-01-04 Member: 11780Members, NS1 Playtester, Squad Five Silver
    Occasional steamfriends downtime is not an issue and this does not affect gaming itself.
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