Hey everyone.

I am a bit surprised that this issue hasn't been talked about more, since it is on the official bug list https://steamcommunity.com/app/1142710/discussions/2/3826413850811137613/ at the bottom of the list (which I really hope doesn't represent the priority since it's gamebreaking tbh). 

So, basically, every single coop campaign that I play with friends ends up being a desync-hell. And I know that the majority of players keep to single player campaigns, but this is literally a gamebreaking issue and has been in the game ever since update 3.0 (Chaos dwarfs). It has not appeared before 3.0, so I wonder changes have been made, and if we can't roll back on these changes, regarding multiplayer campaigns (there haven't been new multiplayer features or anything of that sort).

It always starts the same:

The first 15-30 turns of the campaign seem fine, but then desyncs start appearing like every 4 turns or so and get more frequent the longer the campaign goes. At turn 50-60 they happen at least every 2 turns, and sometimes multiple times during one end-turn and the re-sync function has like a 50% to fix it. Sometimes it literally needs 3 tries to fix it (which takes quite some time btw despite good internet and gaming pcs).

Example: we get a desync, resync happens, loadscreen happens, then you end the turn again, desync happens, but this time it literally just KICKS you out of the game instead of trying to fix it again. Then after restarting and reloading on the third try, it resyncs and then it actually got fixed again for that end-turn. However: multiple desyncs can also happen during one end turn...

And very rarely the desync can also happen right when you are about to begin your turn, after the end turn finished, just so that you have to go through the end turn again after it resynced.

At a certain point you literally waste 50% (or more, depending on how many battles you fight) of your time on dealing with these desyncs, instead of actually playing the game. You play "total desync simulator" at that point. Sorry, for sounding mean here, but that is literally what it becomes.

I should mention: Yes, this happens also without mods, and yes, we both reinstalled the game completely and it still happens. It definitely has something to do with the changes ever since 3.0.

On the steam page it is noted that we should send in our DXDIAG reports here, but not exactly where to. We should also send the mp_log.txt files from C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\Warhammer3\logs , correct?

PS: This has been such a frustrating issue for players who like to enjoy the game with friends, so I can't help but wonder: Wouldn't it be easy to check what changes have been made to detecting desyncs or multiplayer campaigns in update 3.0 ? And possibly revert those or fix them?

Sincerely, 

a long time fan & supporter of your games. They are still awesome and the most fun when played together with friends :)

I would like to rise this topic again because as the OP I am a co-op player most of the time. It is great experience to share your campaign with a friend and we spand thousands of hours together in all games WH1-WH3. But unfortunatly multiplayer campaigns not a greate experience to begin with. Desynchs, "waiting for players" stopping messages and permanent crashes is a common things to face.

There was a terrible time short after 3.0 patch were you can not play a coop at all, but a few month and hotfixes later it looks a little bit better now. But believe me it is still not a smooth running pastime. While we have only a few hours during a day to play in the evening we spend most part of this time looking at loading screen and talking to each other and joking about regular crashes. For some reason loading time is doubled in multiplayer campaign and we found out that client game starts to load practicly only after the host game finishes it's loading. 

There is a lot of unstable actions and game breaking bugs you can find. For example you can find a case where launching battle will result in crash on ones player side and you cant do anything about it. Some time there is an option to autoresolve these battles but some time there is not - you dont want to lose you high tier LL's army to opponent you defenitly can beat only because you can't load into battle field.

Also we found one uniqe desynch case which can be fixed in the campaign. We played as dworfs in field battle and desynch poped up every time at the some moment. We traced our actions during battle and found old topic somewhere on the reddit. Thing is - if one of your characters have two special contact effects it will result in desynch with 100% probability. So "Dazed!" and "Sundered Armour" contact effects applied to one character at the same time will mess up a multiplayer battle. For some reason in this case in client game this effect will be replaced and once host tries to understand what effect to apply it will result in two different effects on client game and on host one. You can fix it by changing items providing this contact effects. But this is only one case and truth be told not really common one.

Overall net code is a buggy mess and it is not really much hope mor multiplayer players, because it always hard to fix. Especially if this flaws was included from the start. As I heard current TW engine deep in tech dept and I dont see any chances that it could be easilly fixed.

I keep getting this too. It keeps desyncing every time we play. Its every session of 4 hours about 2 times. Is this being worked on at all? At this point im almost gonna quit the game cause its just not stable at all..

Hey guys,

glad to hear me and my friend are not the only ones.

@ZEN#6254 

Can totally relate to that. Me and my friend also mainly just look at loading screens at some point and make jokes about what will make us desync next or how many turns can pass until the next one.

The issue about the dazed and sundered armour is good to know. Luckily, we hardly have had desyncs in battles. And I mean, if it's a battle, it can be avoided or skipped (often means to lose an army, but hey, better than having on in the end turn and going through the same turn 7 times with loooong failed resync attempts inbetween.

And yeah... crashes, I don't wanna get into those. A common one for me back then was when I press autoresolve at the same time as my coop partner if we were both participating in a battle. And yeah.. one-sided crashes, we had those as well. Thankfully not as often.

@Dyornos#1413 

Hard to say if it's getting worked one. But probably not, since there is not that much fuzz about it anymore.

@Noctani#9193
Okay, sounds plausible but, sadly that doesn't fix it at all. Obviously that is one of the first things we did as well. Many many times.

I also mainly play multiplayer. and idk why this is a thing now, since, before 3.0 this wasn't an issue.

Also, according to the steam post: This issue keeps arrising if one player is ahead of another one during the end turn. So why can't they simply make it so that on every AI faction, you are forced to wait for the other players to catch up(so that you can't move to the next icon)? The player who finishes loading first will have to wait for them regardless at the end. So it makes no SENSE to be able to "get ahead" of others anyways.

Another possible solution would be: Not caring about syncing at all until the AI finished, and then it simply checks at the start of the players turn and only syncs there (e.g. it takes the host's version) and then after the re-sync, you continue from there. This would save soooo much headache and time and nerves. It would literally save hours of frustration throughout a campaign.This would be simple as well, maybe not the best solution, but way better than how it currently is when you play a "desync hell campaign".

Here is the thing from another programmer's perspective: 

If desyncs happen quite a lot at some point and re-syncs tend to fail and mean many long loading screens for the player as a consequence.... Then holy tomato, you gotta change the system, simple as that! Either you change when or how you check for desyncs, or the moment when you do a re-sync or the measurements that prevent desyncs in the first place!

Those are the logical options if the actual source of the problem is too hard to find.

I know I keep bringing this up, but I gotta hammer this point in: We had less than 10 desyncs for sure in a whole year before patch 3.0. When I last played in december, we could have 10 in a day, easily, if it's in the lategame.The chance is high that something got introduced in 3.0 that causes desyncs (obviously) OR the game actually wrongfully sees the current game-states as un-synced(might just be as likely at this point) by checking something wrong.

So honestly, I would just love a response from some employee at CA. I don't see a reason to play the game, if I mainly play multiplayer campaigns and that can be hell.

Yes, this issue/bug only affect's multiplayer, but it's definitely a gamebreaking one, which is why I want it to be a higher priority and would love to help fix it myself.

With all that said, Thrones of Decay is obviously the most important thing to get right, right now. But after that, this really needs to be addressed :(

Just letting you know that you arent alone. I had gotten to 150 turns in a warhammer 2 total war campaign with SFO 2 and a few other mods and even though we had several desyncs we were able to keep going until now. Now no matter which save I load it just desyncs on turn end.


Considering this has been an issue for multiple total war games I doubt it will be fixed

Sadly this happened to me too. Every other turn we get desycn messages and the campaign crushes. I Hope CA can work on this issue. 

Hey all,

Really interesting discussion going on here and some good points being made. If you do (or anyone viewing this) has any desyncs in multiplayer campaigns, please do raise them here with your saves, MP logs & modified.log files. We really want to ensure gameplay is as smooth as can be, and desyncs stop that so would appreciate any information you can give.

File locations:

Saves: %AppData%\The Creative Assembly\Warhammer3\save_games_multiplayer\

MP_Log: %AppData%\The Creative Assembly\Warhammer3\logs

Modified.log: %AppData%\The Creative Assembly\Warhammer3\logs

All the best!

Liam