Aussies in the Alpha - Ping/Lag issues ?

Hi,

I'm close to getting the Alpha, I was wondering what the experience has been like for folks in Australia or far away from wherever the servers are located - has it been very laggy? Noticeably bad?

Thanks, Adam
 
I'm concerned about this too. I hope there is decent lag compensation in place because I doubt we'll ever see regional servers.
 
Hi,

I'm close to getting the Alpha, I was wondering what the experience has been like for folks in Australia or far away from wherever the servers are located - has it been very laggy? Noticeably bad?

Thanks, Adam

The experience is pretty mixed everywhere, not just in Oz. It can depend as much on your hardware as on latency. Most problems so far in alpha have been experienced by people with certain routers/router setups, or with a video card that does not use an nVidea chip (but this has been pretty much patched now, I believe).

I'm fortunate because my rig has never had connection issues - it takes a second or two to find a server and then all seems OK - until it crashes :) but I don't think I've had more than the average crash rate. I'm using an nVidea GTX780 card and a Netgear N600 wireless modem/router. I'm in Sydney and connecting via ADSL2+, and an N wireless network internally.

It's hard to tell what sort of latency problems might be happening because the game is not played from servers as such. There are central servers, but they hold the persistent universe data and I believe do some coordination of the networking. The actual instances are hosted on player's computers.

I have seen some stuttering and had some odd things happen, but no more than guys in the US or UK. I do, however, hardly ever see another player but whether it is due to latency or simply the time I connect (early morning GMT) I don't know. It is not unusual since alpha 2.02 - many people have commented that space seems completely deserted.

My best guess is that there are far more problems due to program glitches and oddities arising from peer-to-peer networking than there are latency issues due to us being on the other side of the planet. I don't know what my ping is to the servers, but in most other games where I connect to Europe or the States it's around 120-160ms, which is acceptable if not brilliant. It's been fine for all the other online games I play.

As for alpha, no one knows for sure but the money seems to be on another 6-8 weeks of alpha testing. The current build has lots of issues, but hopefully the next, due in a fortnight, will be a lot better and will finally have content other than combat. If I wasn't already in the alpha I'd have to think real hard about whether it is worth forking out that much money at this point for a few weeks of advance testing access, or whether to just wait for beta 1 when it is all there and stable.

Hope that helps.
 
Thanks for the detailed reply.

I didn't know about the peer-to-peer aspect, I'll need to find/read the design docs.

Several people have mentioned not seeing other people - certainly in the final game, with such a large universe, I imagine being alone is going to be the norm - it's something to consider as to whether that is the experience one is looking for in their space game - although it is 'Multiplayer' the multi may not happen that much, I think I am going to change my way of thinking about this game to accept it will be more of a Single Player game...

A question re the peer-to-peer networking - does anyone know if there some 'regionality' aspect to whether other players are detected. eg. If 2 players are in the same space at moon xyz, are they guaranteed to encounter each other? or will they only encounter each other if they are both in the same real-world region eg. Both in UK ==they envcounter each other, but one in UK and one in AUS and they do not?


Cheers, Adam
 
I'm in Melbourne.

Bought a beastly gaming rig.

Game runs perfectly smoothly with everything maxed out.

I am however in the category of never seeing another human player and not sure why.
I can access the multiplayer missions but other humans just aren't there.
I've followed all the troubleshooting instructions but still nothing.

....game runs great though and there are more than enough NPCs to keep me entertained while I continue to look into issues.

And as others have said, this isn't really like other MMOs in its setup so I don't believe lag should be an issue.
 
A question re the peer-to-peer networking - does anyone know if there some 'regionality' aspect to whether other players are detected. eg. If 2 players are in the same space at moon xyz, are they guaranteed to encounter each other? or will they only encounter each other if they are both in the same real-world region eg. Both in UK ==they envcounter each other, but one in UK and one in AUS and they do not?

Short answer - I'm not sure. I would not be surprised if latency was considered as part of the instancing system, but that's purely a guess on my part. I've seen more players (on the rare occasions I see any at all) from the UK than any other area, but once there are more people actually playing it might be different.
 
this is just from everything that I've read - other players comments etc, and footage that I've watched..........

I think that you'll find that not seeing other players - or very few - in a server is something that's happened since the 2.2 build went live.

before then everything seem ok, except that from what I've watched of kerrash's youtube streaming, a players game would crash if they tried getting up close to each other.

it has me in a mind that its something behind the scenes that frontier have changed, or are working on addressing some type of bug.
 
I just got the alpha :) Is there any special forums for alpha folks to post alpha specific questions?

Hi Adam

Please click on the link at the bottom of my sig, there will be info there on what you need to do if you can't see the Alpha Forum access area. When you do see it, it will just appear just as the general area, gameplay area appear

:)
 
Several people have mentioned not seeing other people - certainly in the final game, with such a large universe, I imagine being alone is going to be the norm - it's something to consider as to whether that is the experience one is looking for in their space game - although it is 'Multiplayer' the multi may not happen that much, I think I am going to change my way of thinking about this game to accept it will be more of a Single Player game...

I think the "core" worlds will have a highly "unfair share" of the player population, so the fact that it's a vast universe doesn't in itself mean it will feel like SP.
 
Several people have mentioned not seeing other people - certainly in the final game, with such a large universe, I imagine being alone is going to be the norm - it's something to consider as to whether that is the experience one is looking for in their space game - although it is 'Multiplayer' the multi may not happen that much, I think I am going to change my way of thinking about this game to accept it will be more of a Single Player game...

Not necessarily single player, although that is certainly the preferred form of play for many backers. If you start in the safe core systems, trading along established trade routes, you'll no doubt meet many other players. If you are a social player then building a large list of friends to enable group creation on the fly as you explore further will be important. I can definitely see players naturally forming into small groups over time and exploring, trading or whatever together as a semi-permanent arrangement.
 
It won't be single player at all and you will be able to join up with your friends and have them in a list.
You could compare ED torrent engine where every single computer is connected to each other.
Obviously Australia will connect to a nearby neighbour first but it doesn't mean you won't get to meet other players from elsewhere.
Don't forget were still early days.
If you want a single player game that will be done as well.
As you can imagine thatsy fairly easy to do.
At the moment I do meet up with often the same player's that's tru. But no conclusion can be made out of that.
I live in Holland but mostly I meet Scottish not other dutch and I haven't met my brother at all yet.
Just come and join
The flight engine is awesome already
 
i am in the UK and i rarely see other players, not sure why but its common for me to log in any given evening and on team speak hear everyone managing to land in the same session, and sometimes I get there.

Very rarely there can be some jitters but its extremely rare... and I don't mind the odd NPC busting.

Love the game so far........can't wait to get out into the WILDS!
 
I am in London and have the same problem.

Edit: last night I was playing with people based in Sicily and Spain.
 
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