No multiplayer games visible

[Toommm11]

I got this quite annoying issue ever since I bought the game. As tread title says, I can't find any multiplayer games. EVER.

I am playing in steam online mode, with everything else working, firewall disabled (I found no ports to forward, though), other games work somehow fine in multiplayer (Magicka, Sanctum), except for Vertex Dispenser which doesn't work, either.

I got the issue for over a month, and today I decided to do something about it, because the fact that I bought a game for nothing (singleplayer is too short and with no challenge) made me quite angry.

[gnoj]

The problem is that no one plays multiplayer anymore. Add me on steam, if you want to play multiplayer with me

[n0m3rcY]

i dont find any, too!
i bought this for playin online, but now i cant?
not worth the money!!!!

[Zaragorne]

The problem is no one is hosting.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/DetourmultiplayerNOW

Just join that group and when you want to play, just ask someone there!

[AeneasXI]

I was interested in picking this up, but since this is a multiplayer game and the multiplayer seems to be dead just like the multiplayer from Shattered Horizon I won't.
Dont get me wrong Shattered Horizon was a great game and I got a fair share of fun out of it, but now that the multiplayer is dead I wouldn't recommend the game for anyone anymore so I took my recommendation of it off eventhough I think its a great game.

Devs, do something to get a decent playerbase... nobody will buy a potentially dead game...

There are enough options. 80%+ sales for your game, developer playing themselfs, hire people to play, organise tournaments, events, unlockables, free dlc and with each dlc release do a sale like killing floor or Team Fortress did. and so on.
It's a shame so many good indie multiplayergames and they don't know how to keep some players playing.
Heck I would play your game for hours a day if you would offer me some kind of beta access to new features of the game or new games.

Fact is hardly anyone buys a dead multiplayergame. At least if they knows its dead

Originally Posted by SNDZag1

Servers are player hosted, so if you want more, host more lobbies.

Dude thats just not how it works. Players open the game, look if there are servers, if there are none then most will quit it and play something else. Maybe they look another 2,3 times later to see if its really dead and then never look at it again.

It really is your responsibility that there are enough servers and players to play with.(At least if you really are interested in earning some money) Even if you dont work with dedicated servers it should be your number 1 priority to always have some games running! Also word of mouth wont ever be positive for your game when it has empty servers. And seriously whats more effective and cheaper then word of mouth?

[Zaragorne]

Originally Posted by AeneasXI

I was interested in picking this up, but since this is a multiplayer game and the multiplayer seems to be dead just like the multiplayer from Shattered Horizon I won't.
Dont get me wrong Shattered Horizon was a great game and I got a fair share of fun out of it, but now that the multiplayer is dead I wouldn't recommend the game for anyone anymore so I took my recommendation of it off eventhough I think its a great game.

Devs, do something to get a decent playerbase... nobody will buy a potentially dead game...

There are enough options. 80%+ sales for your game, developer playing themselfs, hire people to play, organise tournaments, events, unlockables, free dlc and with each dlc release do a sale like killing floor or Team Fortress did. and so on.
It's a shame so many good indie multiplayergames and they don't know how to keep some players playing.
Heck I would play your game for hours a day if you would offer me some kind of beta access to new features of the game or new games.

Fact is hardly anyone buys a dead multiplayergame. At least if they knows its dead



Dude thats just not how it works. Players open the game, look if there are servers, if there are none then most will quit it and play something else. Maybe they look another 2,3 times later to see if its really dead and then never look at it again.

It really is your responsibility that there are enough servers and players to play with.(At least if you really are interested in earning some money) Even if you dont work with dedicated servers it should be your number 1 priority to always have some games running! Also word of mouth wont ever be positive for your game when it has empty servers. And seriously whats more effective and cheaper then word of mouth?

You make extremely good points, and basing this off Stick Arena Ballistic, Platform Racing Two, and Territory War Online this is my theory.


If there is:
1 hosted game - Players will join, one might host another game, however this is unlikely especially if there is just one person in that game room. They are generally suspected to be AFK.

2 Hosted Games - People will combination of join and host new ones depending on how many people are on.

3 Hosted Games - Multiplayer will heat up slightly if people see that there are people playing multiplayer.

[Moe45673]

This is tragic. This looks like just my kind of game. I watched the WTF TotalBiscuit video and since the bugs experienced in that game are fixed, I would love this.

Maybe if I can find 3 other people to play it with I'll chip in for a 4-pack. A game like this should have a community, even if it's small. It's like Simcity 2000 mixed with Ticket to Ride for people with short attention spans.

[SNDZag1]

AeneasXI, I have read your post. I'm not sure what else to say to it at this moment other than telling you we developed DETOUR under completely part-time circumstances, do not have a full-time studio, and don't have the money to pay people to play our game. Having a server up all the time means that someone has to be playing and hosting. We certainly can't do that -- we have to work, live, and sleep. Killing Floor and (especially) TF2 are funded by much larger companies with more than 1 game under their belt. What you're proposing is not word of mouth, but in fact a decent marketing budget.

The fact of the matter is that we have tried almost nothing but word of mouth.

Originally Posted by Moe45673

This is tragic. This looks like just my kind of game. I watched the WTF TotalBiscuit video and since the bugs experienced in that game are fixed, I would love this.

Correct. We fixed all of the bugs present, within the week of that videos release. Patch 1.1 and 1.2 didn't actually increase our sales much at all from where they have been. I can only conclude we released slightly too early -- but working on a game for 2 and a half years, it seemed like the right time. Obviously we don't have a huge QA team, and throwing 1000 players on a game finds us a LOT more bugs than we could've ever found during development.

A game like this should have a community, even if it's small

We have given no shortage of places for people to gather and communicate. Have any of you even glanced at Sandswept.net? We've put the link just about everywhere and our site traffic is practically non-existant. That entire website is tailored for people to sign up and participate in a community.

It might seem so obvious from the outside, but there really is no magic developer button for getting people to participate on forums, play our game, and so on. We sure think DETOUR is loads of fun. The best thing we can do is spread the word, release it, and hope you guys think it's fun too.

We're trying our best. If you like the game, you can always help out!

[SNDZag1]

It has occurred to me that some players are not aware you can add AI players to multiplayer lobbies.

Simply click on the gray player slot in a hosted lobby in order to add an AI player and set its difficulty.

[Zaragorne]

A couple things to the Devs.

1.Organize a "Map Maker Challenge" for the players, with the reward a copy or two of Detour for friends. Let the players decide which map wins!

2. Make harder AI! Even with them set to the highest difficulty they seem brainless. In a game with me, another player, and two AI, the AI sat there bombing useless things and making a 5 way road that led to the same thing, In the WRONG direction.

3. Add more single player challenges.

4. Separate the Single Player with AI from the multiplayer screen, it was confusing to me at first. Not only that but I still don't understand why single player modes are listed under Multiplayer.

[Moe45673]

Hey Geoff,

It's truly a bummer. Your game is quality. I'll throw my support your way, even if I never end up playing it (which would solely be due to having noone to do it with).

[SNDZag1]

Thanks Moe, I really appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Zaragorne

-snip-

Here is the problem with all of these suggestions. We like them. Hell, we even agree with the majority of them. The issue is profitability. We've made a sweet game, we love it, but at the end of the day we have to also make some money so we can keep doing what we love. For us, as a part-time, unfunded indie studio, DETOUR is first source of income, aside from personal expenses we've made while creating it.

At this point, DETOUR is out of it's profitability phase and a patch 1.3 or free DLC would cost us a lot of time (not incredibly profitable time) that we could spend working on our next project. For example, we didn't see much of a jump in sales at all with patch 1.1 and 1.2, but we know they're worth it because any new players and players who already love and play the game have had their experience bettered by it. It just didn't help sell many new copies, that's all.

We're still watching DETOUR, but we're at the point where we've done all we can to patch up the major issues and deliver the title we planned to deliver. In hindsight there's 100 things we'd change, but doing that now won't result in anything worthwhile for our time. If things take off with DETOUR (an amazingly good review on some big site, or another community picks it up in full) we will always reconsider.

I hope that sheds some light on our reasoning here.

We'll keep trying to get people playing, but it's truly up to you guys to get friends together and play it. We can't force that. Thanks guys, we appreciate every bit of feedback. Happy trucking!

[gnoj]

Maybe you should get the game on daily deal.