Duke Nukem Forever Multiplayer Lag

[Nuby1Canuby]

Since the release of the game it is lagging the host of a public game so badly that it is unplayable at times.
For the rest of the people on the server the lag is intermittent.
As soon as you start hosting a public server your screen will start freezing, even if you are the only person on the server. Sometimes it will be fine and other times your screen will freeze for a few seconds several times a minute. I've also seen it where you won't be able to pick up a weapon and suddenly the weapon will be gone and an opponent will be shooting you with it.
This means people are reluctant to host a game and will frequently shut down the server mid game or as soon as it ends.
It appears to be a result of the browser querying the server and greatly improves when the server is full.
People have tried various combinations of hardware and settings and nothing seems to help.

When you host a game as a private server it feels smooth and the hit detection seems fine.
You don't earn experience points or achievements on a private server but that wouldn't give you weapon upgrades or perks. Just hats, glasses and shirts along with items for your digs. Nothing that gives higher ranked players any advantage in multiplayer.

As it stands now if you want a smooth multiplayer game you either have to ensure your public server has 8 people or use private servers and have people join using your Steam friends.
People in different regions don't see the same games listed and it may take a few tries to connect to a Steam friend.

There have been no patches since the game was released and no official announcements from Gearbox.

The game has your microphone on voice activation even if you have it set to push to talk in Steam. You can set your in-game audio VOIP to 0 so you don't hear other people but they can still hear you. I tried setting my Steam voice microphone volume to 0 and it muted my microphone volume in TeamSpeak 3.
If you want to use a separate voice server you have to get everybody on the server to set the in-game VOIP to 0, so they don't hear an echo.

You can't host a dedicated server and play the game on the same PC. To play on your own dedicated server you would need 2 copies of the game, 2 computers and 2 separate steam accounts since you currently have to be logged on to Steam to host a dedicated server.
The only option you see when running a dedicated server is "exit DNF Server".

I hosted an 8 player dedicated server and it appears to use a peak of 80 kB upload when it is full, with a peak CPU usage of 60% on my Q6600 quad core. Most of the load is on the first 2 CPUs. I suspect to prevent hardware lag for the clients at peak usage, you need a quad core CPU and should have at least 1 megabit or better upload bandwidth to host a server.


I thought they would have released a quick patch by now, so people can host a PC multiplayer game without constant lag.

 

[Jon55]

I really can't say I'm surprised. The game was bug-ridden enough just in single player. I'm sure multiplayer will get fixed eventually, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Gearbox is really trying to give themselves a bad reputation.

 

[Nuby1Canuby]

They just released a 500MB patch and it is still causing the host's game to freeze for a few seconds if the server isn't full.
Their attempt at a fix in the last patch was to raise the host's ping from 1 to 50. It didn't help any.

I opened a support ticket with 2K on August 12 and they acknowledge they are looking into the issue with the team but unfortunately they do not have a solution at this time.
Then they close the ticket after a week of no updates.
I'm on my third ticket.

Now they want people to buy their $10 DLC when they can't even get the multiplayer to work without the host's game freezing.

Has anybody else tried hosting a game and had the problem with the game freezing when it isn't full?
There were lots of complaints initially.