The Star Citizen Thread V2.0

Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
The big difference is that SC instances will be hosted by a dedicated server in a data center with performant connectivity.

ED's P2P model means you're at the mercy of whatever bean-tins-on-a-string network connection your peers are on. The experience hasn't improved since PB1, sometimes it's fine, but enough times the game becomes unplayable and you have to log out and try a new instance.

You'll be at the mercy of the FD system that matches peers which isn't live yet. Hopefully it's coming soon. Hopefully it'll make people in Utah on dial-up play with them self.

Pun intended.
 
The big difference is that SC instances will be hosted by a dedicated server in a data center with performant connectivity.

ED's P2P model means you're at the mercy of whatever bean-tins-on-a-string network connection your peers are on. The experience hasn't improved since PB1, sometimes it's fine, but enough times the game becomes unplayable and you have to log out and try a new instance.

The P2P arch limits instance sizes and make instancing more a hit-and-miss affair in comparison to centralized servers. Those restrictions will definitely hold back the immersion and interactivity in multiplayer.
 
The P2P arch limits instance sizes and make instancing more a hit-and-miss affair in comparison to centralized servers. Those restrictions will definitely hold back the immersion and interactivity in multiplayer.

Well, kindof.

Personally, I would like to see ED offer an optional subscription for a "server slot", as the 'hang' I get for SC transition in multiplayer is the reason I'm playing in solo mode.

(providing frontier created the software, I assume multiplay/whoever could run the servers/take the money etc)
 
I've said the same, I'd pay a small sub for a slot on a dedicated server instance. Unlikely it will happen though unless it's a big issue for a significant number of people. It's going to be more of an issue for players living geographically distant from the main UK player base. Presumably the enhanced matchmaking will also prevent peers with high mutual latency from matching, which is going to make the wider universe even more sparsely populated for them.

I think my ED time is going to be mostly exploring in the online group, with very, very rare PC interactions. That's cool, but I'd like another space sim experience that involves mingling with players more, which the more compact SC world should provide.

As to the SC combat....I'll give it a go when I get home :) I will be sad to not be able to use the ED combat mechanics (because I do really like the flight model in ED) in a more interaction-centric multiplayer environment, but we can't all have our own perfect game.
 
I've said the same, I'd pay a small sub for a slot on a dedicated server instance. Unlikely it will happen though unless it's a big issue for a significant number of people. It's going to be more of an issue for players living geographically distant from the main UK player base. Presumably the enhanced matchmaking will also prevent peers with high mutual latency from matching, which is going to make the wider universe even more sparsely populated for them.

I think my ED time is going to be mostly exploring in the online group, with very, very rare PC interactions. That's cool, but I'd like another space sim experience that involves mingling with players more, which the more compact SC world should provide.

As to the SC combat....I'll give it a go when I get home :) I will be sad to not be able to use the ED combat mechanics (because I do really like the flight model in ED) in a more interaction-centric multiplayer environment, but we can't all have our own perfect game.

Seems fair enough. I like the idea in Elite that meeting real people will be rare when you are on the frontier. It should feel like a vast empty...space.
 

Bains

Banned
Well, on the whole multiplayer subject. Right now I have no connectivity or lag issues living in London and enjoying a killer 100 meg fiber service, up and down with a ping of 1 on a good day, 4 on a bad day (Hyperoptic). However, in three months I become an Expat living in a Gurgoan, a city in India.

I'm guessing in comparison to my current connection I will be reduced to smoke signals. All my multiplayer gaming will take a big fat hit. On the upside I will be regularly holidaying here

But what do you guys think this will mean for me playing ED multiplayer? Will I be reduced to offline play?
 
Last edited:
Well, on the whole multiplayer subject. Right now I have no connectivity or lag issues living in London and enjoying a killer 100 meg fiber service, up and down with a ping of 1 on a good day, 4 on a bad day (Hyperoptic). However, in three months I become an Expat living in a Gurgoan, a city in India.

I'm guessing in comparison to my current connection I will be reduced to smoke signals. All my multiplayer gaming will take a big fat hit. On the upside I will be regularly holidaying here

But what do you guys think this will mean for me playing ED multiplayer? Will I be reduced to offline play?

I don't know but maybe you should ask some Aussies what their experience is like now - that's pretty much the extreme distance away from any UK server. If they can play ok, I'd say you'd be ok, assuming you have a decent ISP there (could be dodgey).
 

Bains

Banned
I don't know but maybe you should ask some Aussies what their experience is like now - that's pretty much the extreme distance away from any UK server. If they can play ok, I'd say you'd be ok, assuming you have a decent ISP there (could be dodgey).

Good point. India is around the corner as compared to Oz. Maybe there's hope for me yet.
 
Kind of random but a guy from VoidAlpha checked in to my LinkedIn profile today. VoidAlpha is one of the contractors for CIG. Anyway any idea what is on the next ATV episode today?

Also I invite you all to StarCast tonight which Geekdomo will be hosting, my friend WTFOSAURUS will be on the stream too. If you like to join you are well appreciated. Nearly all the people at StarCast tried ED too.

http://www.twitch.tv/geekdomo
 
Last edited:
Kind of random but a guy from VoidAlpha checked in to my LinkedIn profile today. VoidAlpha is one of the contractors for CIG. Anyway any idea what is on the next ATV episode today?

Also I invite you all to StarCast tonight which Geekdomo will be hosting, my friend WTFOSAURUS will be on the stream too. If you like to join you are well appreciated. Nearly all the people at StarCast tried ED too.

http://www.twitch.tv/geekdomo

Was it Gabriel Galaz?
 
Well, kindof.

Personally, I would like to see ED offer an optional subscription for a "server slot", as the 'hang' I get for SC transition in multiplayer is the reason I'm playing in solo mode.

(providing frontier created the software, I assume multiplay/whoever could run the servers/take the money etc)

I would definitely pay a small sub fee for dedicated servers, only online group and larger more robust instances.
 
The general bugs have improved for me yes, but the performance isn't really acceptable enough to make multiplayer combat feasible, too risky.

The pausing as you drop out of SC is really annoying....I don't see any way around that as the P2P model means you have to hunt around matchmaking everytime you drop out. You can hide it with a client side transition, but it's always going to be there.

But y'know, SC has a lot more money behind it, and can afford the luxury of hosted servers. I don't want to beat on ED, it's going to be great exploring the galaxy, I'm just going to save my pew-pew for somewhere I've got a better QoS guarantee on the network side.

Edit : where I live, the majority of people are on the same ISP which offers great download speeds, but awful upload. I suspect this is having an impact on my network experience.

SC will also have to hunt around for matchmaking as well (lots of people seem to forget that SC has matchmaking and instants caps), it will function much the same as ED in that regard. You are also judging ED on beta to a mythical perfect SC. I would like to remind you that just about all xbox PVP is done of P2P, and seems like millions of people have fun playing over P2P system. SC is doing a multiple server system that matches people in the local area to a local server, then transfers that information to the main server, its not much different than a P2P system other than its a local server (google server) that is handling the connection.

The pausing coming out of SC is bad at the moment, it seemed to have gotten worse since PB, but FD have also said that they are working on improving it.

Just seems odd that you are so quick to dismiss a game that is still a work in progress for a game that has 1+ years before you even see how its PU will work.
 
SC will also have to hunt around for matchmaking as well (lots of people seem to forget that SC has matchmaking and instants caps), it will function much the same as ED in that regard. You are also judging ED on beta to a mythical perfect SC. I would like to remind you that just about all xbox PVP is done of P2P, and seems like millions of people have fun playing over P2P system. SC is doing a multiple server system that matches people in the local area to a local server, then transfers that information to the main server, its not much different than a P2P system other than its a local server (google server) that is handling the connection.

The pausing coming out of SC is bad at the moment, it seemed to have gotten worse since PB, but FD have also said that they are working on improving it.

Just seems odd that you are so quick to dismiss a game that is still a work in progress for a game that has 1+ years before you even see how its PU will work.

P2P on a shooter where dying every few minutes is a standard feature of gameplay is a TOTALLY different thing to P2P in a game where a moment's disruption can flush hours of gameplay effort down the toilet. I can't think of any other persistent world MMOs that use a P2P model.

Not sure what you are saying about SC servers (google? what?). They are (will be) hosted dedicated servers. The quality of service available from a proper hosted dedicated server box can never, ever be replicated in a P2P set up. Matchmaking will be much faster. FYI some xbox games amy be P2P but many are client/server, particularly with MS pushing moving game services into Azure hard (titanfall 'instances' are run in Azure I believe).

I'm not dismissing ED at all, I'm looking forward to playing it more. I just don't think it's going to offer the multiplayer combat element that I'd like, lucky I can get that fix somewhere else :)
 
Last edited:

Bains

Banned
P2P on a shooter where dying every few minutes is a standard feature of gameplay is a TOTALLY different thing to P2P in a game where a moment's disruption can flush hours of gameplay effort down the toilet. I can't think of any other persistent world MMOs that use a P2P model.

Not sure what you are saying about SC servers (google? what?). They are (will be) hosted dedicated servers. The quality of service available from a proper hosted dedicated server box can never, ever be replicated in a P2P set up. Matchmaking will be much faster. FYI some xbox games amy be P2P but many are client/server, particularly with MS pushing moving game services into Azure hard (titanfall 'instances' are run in Azure I believe).

I'm not dismissing ED at all, I'm looking forward to playing it more. I just don't think it's going to offer the multiplayer combat element that I'd like, lucky I can get that fix somewhere else :)

Surely you hope, you mean. Seems odd that I must remind you that you say you've yet to try out AC, nevertheless I can inform you right now all you will find is pretty turrets flying around in a fishbowl with point and click adventure game controls. See for yourself when you try it out tonight and discover that rather than your space sim skills, it is your Secret of Monkey Island skills that are called upon.

Here's a little preview for you. Note that I was thoughtful enough to select a sexy french language SC video in the hope it would add some much needed interest and combat the yawn factor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf_eBHtqgkg
 
Last edited:
P2P on a shooter where dying every few minutes is a standard feature of gameplay is a TOTALLY different thing to P2P in a game where a moment's disruption can flush hours of gameplay effort down the toilet. I can't think of any other persistent world MMOs that use a P2P model.

Not sure what you are saying about SC servers (google? what?). They are (will be) hosted dedicated servers. The quality of service available from a proper hosted dedicated server box can never, ever be replicated in a P2P set up. Matchmaking will be much faster. FYI some xbox games amy be P2P but many are client/server, particularly with MS pushing moving game services into Azure hard (titanfall 'instances' are run in Azure I believe).

I'm not dismissing ED at all, I'm looking forward to playing it more. I just don't think it's going to offer the multiplayer combat element that I'd like, lucky I can get that fix somewhere else :)

Do you have any proof of disruption in ED? Because I have seen ZERO.

Ah I don't think you understand how SC's servers will work, unlike most MMO's SC will not have a single central server, SC is using Google's cloud servers

https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/134960/google-cloud-instance-servers-what-do-we-know

People in a local area will be connected to that server then that information from all the local servers will be transferred to a main hub, it then shares the different instance information to other servers. So again you will be connected through matchmaking that takes into account what local Google Cloud server you are close too.

Do you have any information that says a Dedicated server box gives a better service than a P2P system? Because I will tell you that is . The reason is that any servers is completely dependent on the quality of the code. All things being equal, do you have any information to back up that statement?

Well ya if all you want is arena style combat you will have lots of fun in AC, when they fix the flight model, controls, increase the MP above 8.
 
P2P on a shooter where dying every few minutes is a standard feature of gameplay is a TOTALLY different thing to P2P in a game where a moment's disruption can flush hours of gameplay effort down the toilet. I can't think of any other persistent world MMOs that use a P2P model.
I think that's where you're misunderstanding. ED's networking is a P2P-server hybrid model where the local instance state is maintained by the P2P network and global persistent state is governed by a server.

Things like system location, ship health, reputation, cargo, vouchers, etc. should be persisted to the global server in real-time, whereas transient stuff like position, thruster power, cargo scoop deployment will be maintained in the local P2P network.

Not sure what you are saying about SC servers (google? what?). They are (will be) hosted dedicated servers. The quality of service available from a proper hosted dedicated server box can never, ever be replicated in a P2P set up. Matchmaking will be much faster. FYI some xbox games amy be P2P but many are client/server, particularly with MS pushing moving game services into Azure hard (titanfall 'instances' are run in Azure I believe).

I'm not dismissing ED at all, I'm looking forward to playing it more. I just don't think it's going to offer the multiplayer combat element that I'd like, lucky I can get that fix somewhere else :)
ED instances are governed by the main server. Matchmaking is done on the main server. Determination of who you can see is done by the main server. Once you've been matched with and joined an instance, the 'twitch' combat is done on the P2P network.

All the problems that I've seen recently boil down to the P2P network taking a long time to sort itself out. I don't see why that should be, so I'm edging towards most of those problems being nasty timing bugs, and when they've been sorted out the overall experience should be a lot nicer (including when the P2P master drops out of the game).
 
All the problems that I've seen recently boil down to the P2P network taking a long time to sort itself out. I don't see why that should be, so I'm edging towards most of those problems being nasty timing bugs, and when they've been sorted out the overall experience should be a lot nicer (including when the P2P master drops out of the game).

P2P is generally not very resilient:
- you are relying on all the network connections between the various clients & servers.
- you are relying on firewall rules etc.
- if there's a master in use, you are heavily reliant on the performance of that system.
- it adds load to the master.
- the master gets 0ms lag.

A dedicated server is a better model, providing you have a decent connection to a server.

(I get the impression people in the ED alpha were highly opposed to any talk of a subscription?)
 
- you are relying on all the network connections between the various clients & servers.
You're pretty reliant on that in the traditional central server model too. All you can guarantee about that setup is that the network local to the data centre should be fairly robust, which is a definite benefit.

- you are relying on firewall rules etc.
True, but FD are using a tried and tested method of punching a hole through the firewall. The central server knows the UDP port numbers that are open for each client, so once the hole has been made, all clients are free to talk.

Since the end of the Alpha I don't think I've seen any threads about players not being able to connect at all, so I'd say it's working pretty well.

- if there's a master in use, you are heavily reliant on the performance of that system.
True, and we've seen the results of that. FD have stated that they're implementing quality detection algorithms for the master, so that the least bad computer in the instance will take the master token.

- it adds load to the master.
True, but it's negligible.

- the master gets 0ms lag.
True. In previous iterations it has been clear when I'm the master and when I'm not. I can't say I've noticed it as of Beta 1, but that might be down to the apparent sparseness of human players.

(I get the impression people in the ED alpha were highly opposed to any talk of a subscription?)
It was stated in the Kickstarter that FD wouldn't be using a subscription model, so it's off the table. FWIW, I think that the majority of Alphans wouldn't have been against it.

FD clearly think they can make the P2P model work, and everything I've seen so far indicates that they're making a good fist of it. It's great to see how flexible they're able to be, in that we've already seen some things move server-side when their reliability on the P2P side was called into question.
 
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom