Message to FD from everyone in Open. Please stop everything and fix instancing/matchmaking first.

[TruffleSnout]

Also, to the whole "this issue does/does not affect solo" it actually does, just not visibly. I get kicked out (of a solo session) many times because of a bad connection to the Matchmaking server. So matchmaking/instancing does have an impact on Solo.

Now why a solo player needs to connect to a matchmaking server is a whole other can of worms, but I don't know the application's internal networking architecture so I'll not comment.

 

[Seonid]

Thank you
Everyone in Open

Er... no. You don't speak for me and I didn't vote for you.

 

[Metalstardust]

I agree with the fix everything first approach. I am getting real fed up submitting bugs and not even getting an acknowledgment. Let alone a fix.

 

[Sean71596]

This is a non-issue for me. Please work on other bugs and features, anything except instancing would be cool.

So, what, just because you play in solo/pg or don't engage in PvP, you'd prefer FDev to just screw over the entire PvP community? People are leaving this game every day in droves; I'd be willing to say that the major player groups have already lost about 1/3 of their members and if these issues are not fixed soon, that number will probably be about 2/3 by next month; I've heard solemn vows from popular streamers of elite even that it these issues aren't fixed soon they're going to move on. Less players means less digital content sold such as skins and future paid expansions, which means it would indeed affect your solo/pg game indirectly, even if you never stepped foot in open.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

So, what, just because you play in solo/pg or don't engage in PvP, you'd prefer FDev to just screw over the entire PvP community? People are leaving this game every day in droves; I'd be willing to say that the major player groups have already lost about 1/3 of their members and if these issues are not fixed soon, that number will probably be about 2/3 by next month; I've heard solemn vows from popular streamers of elite even that it these issues aren't fixed soon they're going to move on. Less players means less digital content sold such as skins and future paid expansions, which means it would indeed affect your solo/pg game indirectly, even if you never stepped foot in open.

Did you miss the "please stop everything"?

Or was that also added for dramatic effect?

 

[Surly_Badger]

Since The Fuel Rats' rescue service depends on winging up and getting into instance with players who are running out of air, instancing is a big deal for us. We have lost at least 2 rescues (maybe 4, depending on how you count) in the last few weeks, due to instancing problems. Pilots, waiting for fuel, knowing a Fuel Rat is on the way ... suffocate in their cockpits.
Instancing: The Silent Killer

The Galaxy Map "search" bug also costs us time and lives; we need to be able to locate and jump to a rescuee, and often are reduced to "find the nearest star with one name" and scrolling around from there.

I know there's no such thing as a "minor" bug, but these two are really hitting the Fuel Rats where it hurts.

​

 

[Robert Maynard]

I think people in this thread need to stop getting jacked out of shape because OP made a minor generalization. He's obviously implying something such as "everyone in open who would like consistent player interaction and/or pvp" but he kept it simple, and you bite his head off for it. Any idiot can tell that there's obviously people that don't agree 100%, but OP's point stands.

If there had not been a clearly unsubstantiated claim in the OP / title then it would not have been picked up on. No heads have been bitten off in this discussion. As to who can tell that there are obviously people that don't agree 100%....

Many people talk of supernodes. Supernodes are a good idea, and would solve most of the problems you see in this threat. Supernodes would also be fairly easy to incorporate into the current system.

While that may (or may not) be a solution, it is unlikely to be a zero-cost addition to the network infrastructure for the game and would therefore adversely impact the day-to-day running costs of the game.

These issues also affect private group mind you. The problem here isn't about solo vs open; it's that this issue and combat logging have been around for months, and they have seemingly been swept aside as "irrelevant" by FDev, with little to no progress made on fixing these issues and many others, but with additional things added over the already broken framework. I'm not for or against stopping production completely until these issues are fixed, but it would be nice to see that they are actually planning on doing something with it instead of focusing 99% of their efforts on the next minor/major patch. For instance, we got that post from Sandro months ago about combat logging and yet it's still rampant and prevalent all throughout the game.

Instancing is one issue. Combat logging is a different issue altogether. Without introducing a guaranteed method of determining whether a player combat logged or their connection has dropped for some other reason and also introducing an impartial third party (as other game clients in the instance cannot be trusted) method of handling the "lost" ship as an NPC (which would presumably try to evade attackers and leave the instance through hyper-jump or jump to SC then vanish), I don't see how the effects of Combat Logging can be lessened.

 

[Henji Shizuka]

Instancing is one issue. Combat logging is a different issue altogether. Without introducing a guaranteed method of determining whether a player combat logged or their connection has dropped for some other reason and also introducing an impartial third party (as other game clients in the instance cannot be trusted) method of handling the "lost" ship as an NPC (which would presumably try to evade attackers and leave the instance through hyper-jump or jump to SC then vanish), I don't see how the effects of Combat Logging can be lessened.

Simple enough. Make the timer 30 seconds or more, like other mmo's and make it visible if the player is logging out with a symbol of some kind on the ship. That would help a big deal on people who is fleeing from a fight or a pirate by logging out.

 

[Derath]

Instancing is one issue. Combat logging is a different issue altogether. Without introducing a guaranteed method of determining whether a player combat logged or their connection has dropped for some other reason and also introducing an impartial third party (as other game clients in the instance cannot be trusted) method of handling the "lost" ship as an NPC (which would presumably try to evade attackers and leave the instance through hyper-jump or jump to SC then vanish), I don't see how the effects of Combat Logging can be lessened.

By banning the people who get caught doing it

 

[Henji Shizuka]

^
That too.

 

[ZeeWolf]

You can't just "stop everything" a 100+ strong development team is doing to fix specialist issues around networking.

In a games studio you have developers of all kinds of experiences working on various kinds of sub projects. Programmers are not robots you can't assign 50 of them to essentially "improving networking" issues. Aside from about half of them leaving, the remaining developers probably won't work very efficiently.

You have to have a clear strategy. Those kinds of core issues are generally solved given the right time and the right people coupled with the right data. Anyone that's ever fixed bugs knows how impossible it is to make progress if you don't have a clear understanding of what is actually going wrong and when.

If you care enough about the problem, you can go to the 'issues' forum where there are instructions on switching on debug logging for network. You can send that data to Frontier to help them out.

 

[Mr_Blastman]

I wonder sometimes lately... the 32-player limit, does it include AI ships, too?

The reason I wonder this is because in systems that are typically slow with very few AI, when I interdict someone and they FSD back out, most of the time I see them again in the instance and can re-interdict them. But, in busy systems like Eravate (it is REALLY busy with AI), 90% of the time when I interdict, they FSD out and I try and chase, they vanish and I'm stuck in a separate instance.

Eravate is an extreme example, too. That system gets crazy busy, which is fine, it is part of its charm. But it is damn near impossible to follow someone out of normal space back into supercruise. The OP is right about having to enter/exit over and over just to see other players there, too. But this isn't limited to Eravate. I'm finding more and more often in other systems, too.

Which leads me to wonder... does instancing consider AI as part of that 32 player limit? That might provide some explanation.

 

[ZeeWolf]

I wonder sometimes lately... the 32-player limit, does it include AI ships, too?

The reason I wonder this is because in systems that are typically slow with very few AI, when I interdict someone and they FSD back out, most of the time I see them again in the instance and can re-interdict them. But, in busy systems like Eravate (it is REALLY busy with AI), 90% of the time when I interdict, they FSD out and I try and chase, they vanish and I'm stuck in a separate instance.

Eravate is an extreme example, too. That system gets crazy busy, which is fine, it is part of its charm. But it is damn near impossible to follow someone out of normal space back into supercruise. The OP is right about having to enter/exit over and over just to see other players there, too. But this isn't limited to Eravate. I'm finding more and more often in other systems, too.

Which leads me to wonder... does instancing consider AI as part of that 32 player limit? That might provide some explanation.

It doesn't include NPCs

 

[Merriweather]

*Violent Protest!!*

I too empathize with the OP as it can be very frustrating to deal with networking issues like failing to see your friend who is at the same station, failing to see a single other player in the instance when you winged up to have some PvP, etc. Sure there are other things to do in-game but when it's time for a social, it's really poor consolation to cooperatively trade metal!!

 

[Robert Maynard]

Simple enough. Make the timer 30 seconds or more, like other mmo's and make it visible if the player is logging out with a symbol of some kind on the ship. That would help a big deal on people who is fleeing from a fight or a pirate by logging out.

You are not referring to Combat Logging as defined by Frontier (Sandro) in the OP of this thread. What you are talking about here is graceful exit from the game when the ship is in danger (which incurs the 15 second delay timer). If Frontier didn't want to allow players to do this, it would not be an option on the exit menu when the ship is in danger.

 

[Robert Maynard]

By banning the people who get caught doing it

Proving it definitively will, presumably take time and effort, but yes - that's what is suggested will happen to players that engage in Combat Logging (again, as defined in Sandro's OP).

 

[Asp Explorer]

A possible workaround (not solution) for instancing would be a dedicated point client, running on a different machine to the game client. It would take login credentials, find players current location, check for presence of island ownership, if none present then set itself up as owner. If already present, then select players destination for island, repeat until it is established.

This point client would then keep track of other point clients and negotiate with them until each point is running a unique island. Players logging in will use these islands preferentially, but if no island exists for their location then they generate their own as currently happens, this gets sent to the points.

Point client would be very lightweight, it only has to handle island requests, and can be left running all the time on a spare machine. It would simply generate persistent islands, and can be signaled to reset or move location by other points, or FD's servers. Just an idea.

 

[FuzzySpider]

I play in Open, and I do not agree with the op.

I think there are more pressing issues.

I'd say do this first.

The ranking system, more federation ships, and an improvement for the miners out there are all second priority as far I as am concerned.

Then something for the explorers, and improve the limpet functionality for pirates to they can steal cargo without having to destroy their prey.

 

[ZeeWolf]

A possible workaround (not solution) for instancing would be a dedicated point client, running on a different machine to the game client. It would take login credentials, find players current location, check for presence of island ownership, if none present then set itself up as owner. If already present, then select players destination for island, repeat until it is established.

This point client would then keep track of other point clients and negotiate with them until each point is running a unique island. Players logging in will use these islands preferentially, but if no island exists for their location then they generate their own as currently happens, this gets sent to the points.

Point client would be very lightweight, it only has to handle island requests, and can be left running all the time on a spare machine. It would simply generate persistent islands, and can be signaled to reset or move location by other points, or FD's servers. Just an idea.

ok I'll bite.

Where does point client live? Do we all need to have one? Or does it live in the cloud in which case it's going to have to handle a massive amount of data for each potential instance. That would make it a server wouldn't it?

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

I can agree that seeing no traders in Supercruise while the station is chock full can be pretty annoying, but dropping everything for that is ridiculous. There's so much more that needs to be added.

-Powerplay needs fleshing out
-PvE piracy needs to become worthwhile
-Smuggling needs a small boost
-Outfitting needs to be reworked and more weapons added
-Passenger missions need to exist
-Exploration needs fixing
-Mining needs a considerable boost

And more.