I'll start by saying, I dont do this, ever, I hate forums and I hate the idea of them so for me to be posting on here, its a big deal.



When you look through the "Tech Support Forum" or more like "All this game does is crash in Multi Forum" you see that no tech support agent has ever answered any of them, when you design a game, that quite frankly will not draw in massive crowds, and the handful of people that play this game everyday, start up big games, and try to actually get past turn 50 without a problem, come on here and say "Hey Amplitude, this is a HUGE problem, can you please fix it" you would think that you could, i dont know, maybe listen?



But no, instead you add a new wonder and fix the Harmony, NO ONE EVEN USES VANILLA RACES, if you play a multiplayer game and you see someone using a vanilla race, thats how you know they just bought the game.



How about you fix the biggest problem this game has, the fact that you can not go into a game and play the whole game without having to reload if every single player in the game is not from the same country as you.



And in case, you guys (Amplitude) do not play your own games, it is VERY hard to get a game full of people from the same country.



Seriously, this is the most frustrating issue ever, 4 times today I was in the middle of a game and it finally started picking up, only for it to Desynch so many times that I had to just say "I'm calling it quits" it does not matter who the host is, after the Desynch happens, its game over, every turn after the Desynch it will Desynch again no matter how many times you reload the game.



I'm not trying to sound like an as*hole, but I really enjoy this game, I get great enjoyment out of it and I would like to continue to get enjoyment out of it without being angered every time I try to play a game with my friends that live in a different country.



If you can add all of this new DLC to the game for free, how come you guys can't answer the dozens of posts on your forum complaining about a REAL issue, instead of fixing issues that DO NOT MATTER.



But ya, Harmony is so "well balanced" now, I have seen all of ZERO people playing as Harmony this last week.



But I have seen a lot of people get extremely frustrated and give up completely on this game in the last week, because we all thought you would fix this bull**** constant Desynch issue.



And you know whats great? in the time it took me to write this, one of my friends has gone on and off Endless Space 5 times, want to know why? Because the game he's playing keeps freezing and Desynching!



Oh and just in case I get an answer like "just play single player than" No, its not that simple, because I'll play single player on Endless and I will dominate the AI because the AI is horrible and to answer the next comment "play as a more challenging race than" their is no challenging race against the AI, you could win a Diplomatic Victory against 7 AI Cravers on Endless difficulty and not break a sweet (pun intended)

This is pretty strongly worded but I agree with the premise of it. The game itself is fun but the crashes and desyncs make it unenjoyable after a certain amount of time. The AI itself is weak (seriously... not just cheating AI but having increasing penalties on the player?) but excusable since the game seems to focus on multiplayer.



We never needed new content involving a few minor techs that most people won't use except in sandbox match (e.g. gas giant terraforming), we needed a game that could be played the majority of the time without a crash, freeze, desync, or terrible bug. Past that, there were so many small but near essential improvements that should have been implemented into the game near release (i.e. better fleet merging, rally points, not allowing 1 scout ship to blockade a planet, etc.) that either took way too long to implement or still haven't been implemented. Easy to fix gameplay flaws (i.e. severe disadvantage without starting with admin and overly important techs that made everyone follow a very similar tech path) had the same treatment: either took too long to be implemented (just changing a few numbers and asking for some player input takes less than an hour for balancing something) or were never really implemented.



I give Amplitude kudos for supporting the game with additional content and you guys really seem like good people, but the reality is that ES is much less enjoyable than it should be because it's plagued by so many of these problems. Many people really do feel the same way and even though this game no longer turns profits, it will definitely affect our future decisions when dealing with your studio. I hope there were lessons learned here that will appear in your next games; the potential is there but has been poorly realized in ES.

Hi, I see what you have to say. I must say that ES has become more and more stable with each released. (I don't usually multiplayer though, so I can't comment on that aspect). Perhaps there is an issue with hardware such as drivers or indepth settings I could help with to improve your experience not just with ES but with other games as well? As a self-taught computer tech with many years experience, I have come across stuff others haven't, and may have some useful tricks or implements that may help you. Drop me a line on here if you want to take me up on it.

I still have the occasional issue with a diplomatic crash. Ya know, long strings of "Diplo-code" that kills the game before you get a diplomatic victory >_>

To help fix some of the problems, the biggest problems I have in multiplayer show up in one of two ways: one player colonizes a system, but is unable to build an exploitation on one of their planets, or suddenly one player cannot choose their tech, move their ships, build anything, move heroes, or just generally play the game. Both of these are fixed (for me) by saving the game, having everyone leave, and then reloading it. However, when it happens every few turns (which it has on occasion for me), it is extremely frustrating.



I'm not sure what causes it though, because, sometimes, I can take dozens of turns without any problems, and, other times, we have three or more such crashes in a span of ten turns (or less).



I realize screen shots would be helpful, but hopefully this information can be used to try and fix the problem, rather than just ranting without explaining what is happening on my end.