I am reposting this from the Bethesda forums, since things seem to be dead there…
The problems:
I can see plenty of Brink servers on Steam. I can seee my friends’ servers on STeam. I cannot “usually” see any servers in game. If I try to connect to a server that I see on Steam it will try to connect for a while and then give me the message that the server timed out. I get the same result if I try to enter a direct IP for a friend’s server.
After months of this, a renewed effort this weekend resulted in my seeing servers show up in-game a few times. On those occasions, I was able to select a server and join, but shortly afterwords I would be dropped with the message “could not authenticate all peers.” Refreshing the server list after this resulted in their having all disappeared once more.
I have only seen servers appear in-game a few times, and I cannot figure out what triggers its occurance.
What I’ve tried:
- Since I couldn’t find any details about port forwarding, I simply turned off all firewalls, including my AV, Windows 7, and the cable modem.
- I also tried a DMZ through my cable modem.
- Following a lead on the forums, I tried hosting a server of my own, and then refreshing the server list afterwords, with no change. I would note that no one ever joined my server for the brief period it was available, which might suggest it isn’t visible online.
- Friends tried to connect to my hosted session via Steam, where they could see me, but this ended with them timing out.
- I tried to join games via Steam, but this would always end with the server timed out error.
- I deleted the files via Steam and re-downloaded all content.
- I deleted the .cfg file and let the game build a new one.
- I had Steam verify the file, and defrag the cache.
If anyone can offer some new ideas on what could be causing the problem, please let me know. Thank you.