Almost a year later, Multiplayer is still a mess

[Alric]

Plenty of good points, but on the other hand:
- Client/Server is not required for multiplayer that I enjoy, and the current model is very much better than it being a single player game in my opinion.
- Which is important because client/server is not going to happen, I would guess.

 

[Lobstris]

Great topic.
Here I thought I was the only person who knew the game Joint Operations.

Do people still play Joint Operations? Eeeee' That were a fun Battlefield substitute back in t'day. Huge maps and a mental player limit (100? 150?).

 

[pryzm]

Good post, you obviously know your stuff. Don't listen to the trolls, they have obviously never tried playing in a wing.

I was watching a live stream with Karesh landing last night where he dropped out at a salvageable wreck site his wingman was at, but he could not see the wreck although his wingman could... Very clearly demonstrated the problems in a fairly embarrassing way for FD considering he is one of their ambassadors and had a lot of viewers.

I love this game, but I can only imagine the types of problems coming in horizons with this networking
,

 

[LuciusEsox]

People making negative comments about multiplayer games in general at the moment saying the technology is not "there" yet.

I don't know if this game attracted a lot of players who don't/never have played mmo's or mp games before or have had little experience with them but saying it is not possible to have a smooth crash free experience with todays kit is totally WRONG,,

Sorry to sound kinda rc about that but it is true.

I am no expert but the only thing I can see different about this game is the sheer size of the playing area, does that make it impossible ?

Also, has FD ever properly explained the reasons why they went the way they did as someone above seemed to be saying that p2p makes players less reliant on others connections ?

Many many other games do it very successfully, why not ED ?

I would love to see a valid reason (other than cost) for the reasons they went the way they did and if the explanation is accepted by the great and wise I will wind my neck in and buy a DB Bobblehead

 

[aRtFuL]

Star Citizen will be better no doubt!

Star Citizen ain't even close to coming out, keep waiting and hoping buddy.

Meanwhile, ED is already on it's way to first add-on and No Man's Sky is almost ready to be released.

Also, multiplayer was never ED's focus. Space is.

 

[Toumal]

Star Citizen has multiplayer?

Anyway, just today I tried to join some friends who were in a wing, and they were the only guys in an instance - but when I dropped out at their location (not part of their wing), I did not get into their instance.

There was just no reason for this. And it was again very disappointing. "Hey where are you guys?" "Guess you need to be part of the wing to even see us", etc.

 

[Fire70]

OP, the drum about P2P vs C/S has been banged to death. Even should FD decide they wanted to do it, it would require a massive effort at this stage, and delaying other plans. Not to mention a load of refinement and testing of the changed network code which would leave months of new bugs.

On top of that, it works "good enough" for most people for most of the time. There is little incentive to actually change.

Finally, C/S is not the panecea that some people seem to believe. Sure, there are some advantages, including making the game a little harder to hack, but you point to lag as being a problem of P2P, but C/S is also likely to have lag, perhaps worse lag. You want larger instances with a C/S architecture, you're actually asking for lots of lag.

And of course the big one - server costs. Then we start looking at monthly fees. I bought a game that didn't have monthly fees. It was a big selling point for me.

You might as well drop it, the drum has been well and truly banged over the months.

There are plenty of games who use central servers and don't have monthly subscriptions. Server infrastructure isn't that expensive or hard to set up but this game was done on a shoe string and it suffers for it..

Nothing will drive me from open faster than a switch to a central server approach (except maybe hackers I suppose). Fine if you live relatively close to the server location, but unless Frontier would be prepared to host multiple servers in varied locations in multiple countries, a fully server-based approach will disadvantage those who live furthest away, due to latency. Against NPCs that ain't so bad, but terrible in multiplayer. From where I sit, P2P matchmaking is the better option as I'm in Australa - better than the latency I'd have to put up with connecting to a central server in the UK (sheesh, playing on a US-based multiplayer server is bad enough in most games, particularly with high player numbers). Some people need to realise it's not all about them, but rather trying to compromise so that everyone has a chance of good connectivity with the players they meet. P2P ain't perfect but I'll take it over a UK server-based approach thanks (unless Frontier put a server in Sydney lol).

Central servers would do more to prevent hacking than anything FD could come up with now (i.e. nothing). I am also from Australia and I find that most of the time I am in with players from all over the world (when I ask) so more often or not the instance you are in won't be just a local one.

Plus this isn't a twitch game like Battlefield COD etc so ping time are not as important, packet loss is important though.

This game has the potential to be great but because FD went about it on the cheap it is still a pretty flawed game and the P2P option is just another example of it..

 

[Cmdr Centurian1225]

Understand that P2P is necessary s a cost saving measure when frontier pushed on from kick-starter into release they cut all funding for the project that is not sales related. I love the game Warts and all show me a game that is perfect there is not one. to fund extra serves to do what is proposed in thread suddenly the game has to be subscription based and having forked out over 200 Euro already i don't fancy paying every month on top of that. id rather the money earned by Frontier go to the Dev team to create more and more content. As far as multi player goes i'm not a fan of PVP for that i go to CQC, so already in place is the other option to use closed game with people invite only for all your WING needs i truly understand that some people who are new to the game what to meet new players make friends and such but there are numerous player groups you can join where you will meet players to wing up with if you don't want to join one of them visit twitch and see if any streamer wouldn't mind a tag along i very often take viewers into my stream and i know of a few more streamers who do the same. Finally there is this forum what to find players to form a trade wing or go do some PP undermining post a thread here say when you are available and what you would like to do, someone or a few people will respond just don't expect instant gratification it might take you a couple of weeks to find a regular wing this way but your experience will be all the better for the wait. In response to previous message about Central servers being used regularly in games i say this Most games don't have to cope with millions of systems so potential instances with hundreds of thousands of players in one yes one persistent Galaxy i can only guess the the infrastructure to set up central severs for this type of game would be costly which is why frontier opted for a P2P option in the first place.

 

[LasherX5]

The only thing keeping me from playing this game more is the fact that right now its basically a Single player Experience. Once Ive tested out the content in each patch there is nothing to keep me engaged in the game. Earning credits and testing out each patch content is fun for about 3 weeks, then I shelve the game again and wait for the next patch.

If there were more things to do with friends I'd surely play alot more often.

I am praying that Horizons addresses some of the Lacking multiplayer content because I really like this game and I want to see it become huge.

 

[Evil]

I think P2P is here to stay for the general universe, and most of these issues can be resolved by server-moderation, just like they did with the landing pad assignments and the refinery. The point of truth is no longer one of the peers but a central server. Using a lightweight backend, for example nodejs with redis as storage, will support tens of thousands of clients per server, and you can scale that out if you're choosing the right way to do the business transactions (idempotent operations, optimistic locking, etc)

But for central areas of the game, we absolutely need client/server. This doesn't mean Frontier should host thousands of game servers - just a couple dozen would suffice. These servers could host client/server sessions for warzones, Sol, Eravate, and other well-frequented systems and places. These client/server sessions could be used for all parts of the game: Supercruise, normal flight, you name it. They could be assigned dynamically and support a large number of players (128, 256, maybe even 500 or more). If a server is full or not available, the game could just fall back to P2P.

This would allow for...


1) Giant warzones that really do feel like there's a war going on

2) Systems that feel alive and buzzing with human traffic

3) Much more interaction and communication between commanders, something Elite more or less completely lacks atm.

Yeah, I've mentioned this before, a dynamic system that provides typical client/server tech, but I don't think it should be constant in any systems, even the home worlds, it needs to switch when required.
There's several issues with this, as there is with P2P (performance limitations etc..), but what the system could do is detect players in low space instances (ie for things like interdictions) or number of players in a RES, the main point of doing this kind of dynamic system is to provide stability for PvP and allow for larger numbers within that instance, for everything else the current P2P can be used.

What I find funny is they decided to go with P2P for CQC, even personal dedicated servers would have been a better choice.

 

[SoulTechnology]

thought this was going to be another mindless rant about EDS offline modes (which i agree area bit ) but turned out to be an extraordinary concept supported by fact and would help this agem out indefinitely. although you might want to remove the rant bit at the beginning about how star citizen is better otherwise nobody's going to read past that.

 

[jimbeau1571]

The OP and a few following have made some great posts here, with arguements for both sides being made.
Some would like the huge MP experience, some wouldn't (the Guild of Griefers arguement being one reason I suspect).

In my humble opinion, and it is just that, humble (without added pie) I thinks it tends to be what you were/you are expecting from the game.
And therein lies the problem. Sandbox. One game living in a world (or universe in the case!) of endless possibilites and different ways of playing.
Some want client servers as it will help there game, some don't and prefer P2P to remove the latency issue.

But the big issue as far as I can see. Connection speeds. Youll never get all working at a reasonable speed. The slow now, invariably will always be the slow because as they get faster, the faster wil get even faster still.

And the circle is complete. We are back at the first issue. Sandbox.

 

[America Shaftoe]

E consistently struggles forming a wing with mates (typically private group) in the same town on the same ISP. Sometimes it just puts us in a wing. Other times we do the E Wing Shuffle:
-Warp to same planet-reinvite=intermittently winged up
-Warp to same station undocked= sometimes winged up
-Dock in same station = most frequent case of winging up
-Logoff to main menu and back to same docked station- When all else still fails this wings up MOST of the time.

Adding Wings (patch/update) and still not being able to connect consistently is a very saddening outcome. Hell I even bought Lifetime because I support the way they are going (there are definitely CORE areas that need completion/polish) ...months after a wing patch and still not consistently winging up is...unfortunate.

Edit: I veered from the initial post but it is multiplayer related (at least how I do my E multiplayer) I add that the technical discussions aside THIS should work flawlessly (especially months after the wing update).

 

[Roybe]

I'm not disagreeing with the points you raise (and it's good to see a well-written and argued post). A hybrid system would be an interesting idea, if it were necessary.

However, I don't think Elite is, at its core, a multiplayer PVP game, with all the demands for improved connection performance that brings. People want it to be, but it's not. It's a co-op game. All of the patches and tweaks have been focused around that - I would even argue that this is why CQC exists: It's a low-cost PVP arena for straight-up guns-out "interaction" between CMDRs. In the base game, with the three network flags, the only constant point of interaction between CMDRs is the abstract background simulation. A great many players ignore the BGS, but perhaps it's actually more important in terms of the design philosophy of the game than people realise. It seems to me that the game is built around the BGS, and PVP is a secondary concern. The co-op tools in the game - friendslists and wings influencing instancing, for example - work pretty well for me. I've only seen one issue in the last few months, and it was solved by the player logging out and logging in again. Perhaps our Princess is in another castle?

Incidentally, the interdiction tunnel jumps around even when you're the instance owner alone in a system.

I have been saying this since the BGS has come out. The BGS IS the game. PVP is between groups of players outcollecting each other over PVE trophies. PVP pew pew is for Role Play purposes only.
Power Play is an abstraction of the BGS...similar in nature...different function.

Welcome to E: D! ;P

On topic...My understanding of the main reason for P2P is the scale, speed, and distances involved would make C/S impossible. With basic lag within the internet being what it is..your ships would rubber band around a lot worse than what they do now....

I am not a programmer...but this makes sense....

 

[Starender]

Star Citizen will be better no doubt!

this is the perfect beginning to be sure that no DEV will ever read this post.

 

[jprelph]

1) Low player numbers per instance.
That's because P2P degrades for everyone when one participant with a bad connection joins. This is terrible for Elite because that's the reason why you often can't see your wingmate. Either he or you just happened to be put into an instance with an already low health, and it won't take both of you. There's no solution for this within P2P. This is the biggest issue with Elite at the moment.

2) Bad performance.
Look around in supercruise. Often times you can see ship trails jump and shudder around. Worse, interdictions get unfair because of the shudders and jerking around. One bad client ruins the entire instance for everyone in it. Dogfights work perfectly fine, but then everything goes to hell if one other player with a bad connection joins. Proper matchmaking can only help to a certain degree here.

3) Inconsistent world state.
Allegedly, Jesus said to Pontius Pilate: "What is truth?"
I am certain that he was a programmer of distributed systems, because that question is fundamental for a working multiplayer game. Elite currently "mostly" works. Mostly. It utterly fails when the situation isn't perfect. A few examples: You can duplicate mining fragments if there's more than one client in the instance. You might see cargo that your wingman can't. You can have visible cargo that you can't scoop up (also only when more than 1 player in that instance). You can see different elements in asteroids than your wingman. A wingman shooting a mining laser which you have placed prospector drone on will find that it will spew fragments indefinitely, even after the asteroid has been depleted.


I think P2P is here to stay for the general universe, and most of these issues can be resolved by server-moderation, just like they did with the landing pad assignments and the refinery. The point of truth is no longer one of the peers but a central server. Using a lightweight backend, for example nodejs with redis as storage, will support tens of thousands of clients per server, and you can scale that out if you're choosing the right way to do the business transactions (idempotent operations, optimistic locking, etc)

But for central areas of the game, we absolutely need client/server. This doesn't mean Frontier should host thousands of game servers - just a couple dozen would suffice. These servers could host client/server sessions for warzones, Sol, Eravate, and other well-frequented systems and places. These client/server sessions could be used for all parts of the game: Supercruise, normal flight, you name it. They could be assigned dynamically and support a large number of players (128, 256, maybe even 500 or more). If a server is full or not available, the game could just fall back to P2P.

This would allow for...


1) Giant warzones that really do feel like there's a war going on

2) Systems that feel alive and buzzing with human traffic

3) Much more interaction and communication between commanders, something Elite more or less completely lacks atm.

Best of all, Frontier could scale the available servers up and down depending on current budget and playerbase. They wouldn't lose the flexibility of P2P, but they'd still have the ability to make community goals and warzones actually a giant thing that everyone wants to participate because it's something you experience anywhere else at that time.


I'm posting this in the hopes that this catches the eye of someone at Frontier. But also for everyone to discuss. I know the game works "most of the time" and I'm not saying that they did a bad job. However, before you disagree saying that we don't "need" any of this, I implore you to think about this. For you nothing would change. You don't have to participate in a big warzone. But people who WANT that sort of thing, would then have the option to. At the moment, they don't.

And I really want Elite to become a little... bigger in it's multiplayer ambition


Agreed? Disagreed? Bananas?

How does having a client/server architecture solve the first two? You're still going to get rubber-banding and lag with clients in a client/server architecture if that particular client has a bad connection. That's only going to get worse with scale and obviously if you're relying on (for instance lets take AWS) regional data centres then some people are going to have higher latency to those centres than if they were matched with local players.

 

[Toumal]

Do people still play Joint Operations? Eeeee' That were a fun Battlefield substitute back in t'day. Huge maps and a mental player limit (100? 150?).

I played in IC (International Conflict) and we had 250 player battles.

[video=youtube;_-RIkaJsnbg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-RIkaJsnbg[/video]

 

[cygnusa]

Very well thought out post +rep, and I completely agree with the assessment. But it is one (big) shortcoming of many as far as multiplay is concerned.

Besides the underlying P2P issues, the game lacks effective in-game social mechanics to encourage player grouping/missions. So yes, the game is effectively a single player game with some (semi-functional) multiplayer capability.

Lets draw a comparison: Imagine any current major online MMO game (other than ED) - Imagine such a game with no effective way to group or communicate with others, and if you did manage to find and group with someone... to have their connection be so erratic and inconsistent that you could not effectively play the game. Then take away any in-game benefits of being with others.. such as fair and equitable experience/money/mission sharing. Then ask yourself. What is the purpose of it being an MMO?

I absolutely do think these issues will be greatly improved in time. The devs are doing their darndest, and so far they have done a heck of an excellent job given the time and resources they were able to commit. ED is one large scale and highly ambitious project as it is, so I absolutely give them credit for the amazing game they have created (so far). I am eager to see where things go over the next few years.

My suggestion would be... after Horizons, FD should focus on multiplay heavily. Get it working right. A game with good multiplayer and social mechanics is far more successful in the long run.

How about bars/chat rooms in stations? Station chat. Region chat (adjustable ly range?). Faction chat. All with the ability to click on a CMDR's name to invite/uninvite from a wing. How about a Wing or Group (think guilds) management interface. There are a few ideas for FD to improve the social aspects of this game a little bit.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I really think that switching from a P2P architecture to a client-server one isn't a trivial task. Nor is deciding for an impairment of the development asset in the accounts. So that's likely a "No!" to server - client setup.

 

[Esvandiary]

Nice post OP, pretty well-balanced and realistic.

How does having a client/server architecture solve the first two? You're still going to get rubber-banding and lag with clients in a client/server architecture if that particular client has a bad connection. That's only going to get worse with scale and obviously if you're relying on (for instance lets take AWS) regional data centres then some people are going to have higher latency to those centres than if they were matched with local players.

But in a client-server setup, only the bad client gets the rubber-banding. With P2P, that client shows as laggy, X% of the NPCs in the instance show as laggy (where X depends on how many NPCs that client "owns"), if it's a station instance there's an X% chance that the station will be extremely slow/time out when you request docking clearance...
With client-server the problems are strictly limited to the laggy client, not the entire instance - that's the advantage. As well as the possibility of hosting hundreds of clients per instance rather than tens, as shown by Planetside 2 / EVE.

I really think that switching from a P2P architecture to a client-server one isn't a trivial task. Nor is deciding for an impairment of the development asset in the accounts. So that's likely a "No!" to server - client setup.

Not replacing, adding - Toumal rightly implies that hosting servers for the entire playerbase would probably bankrupt FD before too long. But having a limited client-server setup (possibly by having the server "pretend" it's Just Another Client that everyone else is relaying via) should be feasible.
Would it be quite a lot of effort? Almost definitely. Would it greatly improve the feel of CGs/popular warzones? That's a personal opinion kinda thing, but mine is that yes, it would.
It could also be very useful functionality to have pre-implemented and tested if they want to do something further down the line that requires large numbers to be in the same instance.