Again... totally mixed results with this solution just like all the others -- to me this implies that it is not BL2, it is STEAM.
It is your installation of steam, but only if a certain unknown condition is met. I have plenty of friends able to host without VPNs or forwarding ports. Best thing to try is to verify game cache files and restart steam.
Like many many others... tried this suggestion too -- several times -- and it as yet has not resolve anything. I agree... it's STEAM.
No, it is YOUR steam. there are very few people on any forums having this issue, relatively of course, that it can't be a problem entirely on Steams end. Try removing all Borderlands 2 exceptions from your firewall and starting it up again or even try running the BL2.exe as administrator.
Done both already -- did not resolve anything; and this would not explain why coop worked fined between 12:30 - 07:30 AM Tues, but broke by 3PM same day -- nothing on MY system or network had change between 07:30AM and 3PM. Other have also tried a complete reinstall of BL2 via Steam, and this has not fixed the issue for them either. (Although, not sure how doing this would fix *MY* Steam assuming you mean my Steam client installation.) Going to try opting into the Steam client Beta Program to force an update on my Steam client (my non-beta client was already up to date prior to the BL2 install).
Sorry, that came out rude and I realized that as soon as I posted. I just meant that the problem is limited to a relatively small number of steam users, which means there is something on your computer preventing it from working. Have you tried reinstalling the .net thing?
No worries. =) If this were something on my end (system/network/ISP), then I would have expected to encounter this problem at launch -- I did not. BL2 coop worked flawlessly for 8 straight hours; but by late yesterday afternoon it just stopped working altogether. Nothing on my end has changed, so please explain why you are convinced it is on my end. The only two things that changed between when it worked and when it did not work are: 1. Steam did some maintenance. 2. The Premier Club DLC showed up.
All, I happen to have an enterprise grade firewall at home and performed some packet captures. The game is trying floods of outbound connections on high ephemeral ports (UDP 50000-65535) - forwarding those ports (in addition to the steam list) solved the problem.
I believe it is something caused by those 2 things somehow triggering connection issues. All these issues started happening after that steam update, but for some reason it didn't affect everybody. I've been trying to find a common factor but most people encountering this issue are younger players who can't even tell me what firewall they are using or even what their specs are.
I am sure your packet sniffing analysis is correct, but could you possibly explain why the game worked at launch without having to port forward anything, then roughly 16 hours later somehow required such a solution in order to work? Plus, this is yet another "Your Mileage May Vary" solution since others have tried and it has not resolved the issue for them. I will try it after my reinstall is complete (going to try the .NET solution first) and post back, but I doubt any port forward solution will work at this point. I really think this is a Steam screwup more than anything else, possibly tied to a small subset of user accounts, in which case only Steam can fix it.
When i deleted the rules in my firewall i also deleted the steam.exe rules. That may have an effect... Not sure though.
Yeh, the networking via Steam is all over the map ever since the maintenance and DLC. Have a buddy who bought and installed yesterday afternoon after the Steam maintenance; myself and other pre-order friends cannot connect to him and he cannot connect to us, but he can connect to other Steam friends who also purchased and installed after the Steam maintenance. However, if I tried to join a pre-order friend, which I know would timeout for me, and my buddy tried to join me knowing it would time out for him, he would suddenly join my pre-order friend's game (someone not on my buddy's friends list) even tho I timed out. About as odd a situation as you could think of. Another buddy of mine bought and installed the game late last night. None of us could join him from in-game, but if he sent us a Steam invite, suddenly we could get into his game. However, once in his game, any attempt by us to invite one of our pre-order buddies would fail -- this buddy had to be the one to send the invites for it to work. Dunno if this will still work today - guess I'll find out later this evening when we try again.
As unintuitive as it is considering that on release the game worked just fine, port forwarding the ephemeral ports seems to be working for me. Thanks for the suggestion.
Then the update must have caused your firewall/router to start blocking Bl2 traffic. What firewall/router do you use. I'll try comparing it to what other people have.
Okay, that statement really makes no sense - no update by steam on it's own servers would ever cause hardware on my home network to suddenly start blocking traffic. Perhaps my router always blocked that range of UDP ports by default, and the Steam maintenance simply changed the UDP range that BL2 via Steam would use -- maybe to resolve a conflict with some other game(s)? Possible... Anyway, my hardware is an ISP provided Westell 7500. The *ONLY* ports I have forwarded at this time are the UDP ports that you mentioned: 50000-65535. I do not even forward the Steam ports. I have uPNP and DMZ enabled on this router, although I am not using the DMZ'ed IP as a fixed address for the port forward.
No worries at'all mate. =) I like your enthusiasm for finding a solution tho, so ask away and I'll do my best to provide! Good call on that UDP port range tho; I've passed the info on to the Gearbox and Steam forum discussions regarding this topic. (http://steamcommunity.com/app/49520/discussions/0/882960771709778057/#p11) (http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?p=2773476&posted=1#post2773476) I really do think that this might be the Steam maintenance change that occurred between release and later that afternoon which broke the game; Steam decided to change the UDP range and it turns out that range may not be supported by many router's uPNP feature.
Just thought I'd post. I can now join my friend's games and I haven't changed any information. I hope it was a patch that occurred and it's fixed for others as well?
