Plans for US/Asian Server?

[Flame303]

G'day guys,
As an Australian, i am well used to high pings in multiplayer games. The amount of Australian and Asian backers complaining on the forums about bad game performance due to ping and inability to log in has me reluctant to buy into the beta. Therefore, does anyone know of if Frontier has plans to set up servers in the USA or Asia when the game launches?
Any knowledge will be of great help.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Borgkube]

The current servers are in Ireland. I can't imagine that FD is not planning to set up mirrors in the U.S. and Australia. That is pretty much the standard for games like this! Having said that, I no actual information to share.

 

[Binky]

G'day mate Fellow Aussie here.
Since the latest beta 3 updates, the network issues for me seem to have all disappeared. I'm running about in Open play for the first time in ages. I still get the occasional stutter when SC'ing to a station, but that may well be my old dodgy pc not keeping up more than anything.

 

[Bernie65]

G'day mate Fellow Aussie here.
Since the latest beta 3 updates, the network issues for me seem to have all disappeared. I'm running about in Open play for the first time in ages. I still get the occasional stutter when SC'ing to a station, but that may well be my old dodgy pc not keeping up more than anything.

Same from Taiwan. Login takes a few seconds only to a private group and I had only a single message about a bulletin board transaction not available in several hours of play, which was resolved with a new login. Only have mild temporarily slowdown on framerate when approaching stations. But I might be as well the only human being on my treasure island.

 

[Borgkube]

I am in the Western U.S. and I have had no real performance issues to speak of. Beta 3 has this frame rate problem, but that is graphics related it has nothing to do network performance. The trick is to keep the number of players in an instance to level that your network design can manage. If you have 3 players in an instance, it will run great, but there won't be much player interaction. If you have hundreds of players in an instance you can have lots of interaction but terrible network lag. Balance, balance....

 

[Mr.C]

Hey mate, not having many problems with connection since B3.
Although other people in the group were having some problems i think they're fixed now.
The only real slowdown i noticed is when the UK/Europe players wake up and get online.
Other than that it's fine.
C.

 

[Binky]

Hey mate, not having many problems with connection since B3.
Although other people in the group were having some problems i think they're fixed now.
The only real slowdown i noticed is when the UK/Europe players wake up and get online.
Other than that it's fine.
C.

Bloody Europeans... comin' over here, taking our bandwidths!

 

[GiantCorn]

Hi all, I'm in japan and have occasional stuttering in game too. No idea if it's due to ping or whatever but if so an Asian server would be good for me too

 

[Gortron]

I'm probably talking out of my backside here but I thought I read (somewhere) they are renting virtual servers from Amazon (Amazon cloud or the like). It would kind of make sense that they are physically located in Ireland if that is the case (low corporation tax within the EU and so forth).

I also thought that the servers were more about transactions and match making... So if you guys are only really having problems when the UK/Europe is awake, I'm wondering if that is because you are being put into instances with European players to make up the numbers in an instance... if that makes sense? The lag would come from the ping between computers in an instance rather than the location of the server.

I'm sort of thinking out loud so probably make no sense but there probably aren't many players atm in say, Japan. The servers probably try to match make based on ping before filling an island and if there aren't enough people with a similar ping to bunch together it plonks them in with people that are a very long way away instead. If any of what I am trying to say is correct, then adding regional servers wouldn't make much difference but as the game grows in popularity it might actually help fix itself.

 

[Draggin]

I'm probably talking out of my backside here but I thought I read (somewhere) they are renting virtual servers from Amazon (Amazon cloud or the like). It would kind of make sense that they are physically located in Ireland if that is the case (low corporation tax within the EU and so forth).

I also thought that the servers were more about transactions and match making... So if you guys are only really having problems when the UK/Europe is awake, I'm wondering if that is because you are being put into instances with European players to make up the numbers in an instance... if that makes sense? The lag would come from the ping between computers in an instance rather than the location of the server.

I'm sort of thinking out loud so probably make no sense but there probably aren't many players atm in say, Japan. The servers probably try to match make based on ping before filling an island and if there aren't enough people with a similar ping to bunch together it plonks them in with people that are a very long way away instead. If any of what I am trying to say is correct, then adding regional servers wouldn't make much difference but as the game grows in popularity it might actually help fix itself.

Salute folks!

Wow Gortron, that is an incredible theory you came up with there. That never would have occurred to me. I understand completely what you are saying, and that totally throws an new possibility into the mix of regional vs. p2p server playing. Thanks! Have some rep!

I now know that I just have to wait and see what develops from FD.

 

[Hellhawk666]

G'day mate, I was in a private group this morning (our time) with about 25 other players for about 4 hours and had no issues at all that were not the same as those experienced by people from other countries, including the UK. We had players from the UK, Europe, US and Australia and there were no hassles specifically due to latency, at least none that you could immediately point a finger at. My ping is well over 200ms.

The problems people have with ED seem to stem from many causes, and while latency might be one of them, I think it's comparatively at the bottom of the list.

Problems we did encounter included:

* Drop in frame rate to glacial levels around Chu Hub in Styx.
* Asteroids in Shama disappearing completely for one player (a variant of the ghost instance bug?).
* Stuttering near some, but not all planets.
* Some quirkyness with instancing. Some specific players could never see other specific players, but neither had an issue in general. This was not geography based - it was generally guys in the UK.
* A couple of client crashes.

In other words, all the usual stuff. I've never experienced any issues to do with time of day.

I wouldn't let talk about high pings put you off at all

PS - the grouping/friends system is working pretty well now. Still can't slave drives or do some of the more interesting stuff that was promised, but it's feeling "solid" for the first time.

 

[Tettric]

It's important to remember that the game runs on Peer to Peer infrastructure.

This means that (on a very basic level) servers only handle matchmaking and various other bits and bobs such as verifying that you did in fact kill that pirate and can claim his bounty.
In essence if you are experiencing frame rate drops it is either due to your rig or down to issues in client code (which will hopefully be ironed out ready for release). If you find that player ships are rubber-banding allot it is probably due to your connection to them rather than servers because (as I mentioned earlier) they don't handle it. This is generally a problem for those with poor internet connections or those who live in areas with a sparse player base.

Hopefully this is at least semi accurate (it's been a while since the networking module of my course) and is helpful in some way!

 

[Im_Lost]

The server handles the economy and player stats. Most other things are P2P, so the server location won't make much difference.

If you are getting lag in the game it's because of the connection directly between you and the other player.

 

[Gortron]

Salute folks!

Wow Gortron, that is an incredible theory you came up with there. That never would have occurred to me. I understand completely what you are saying, and that totally throws an new possibility into the mix of regional vs. p2p server playing. Thanks! Have some rep!

I now know that I just have to wait and see what develops from FD.

Thanks for the rep I'm not sure what I was saying is right though... But if I am barking up the right tree, the downside is less multiple continent game play. I kind of like it when you find out you are playing in a game with someone from some far flung place you would never have met otherwise.
.

Though I suppose the universe in Elite is going to be so enormous that when you venture outside of the core systems it is far more likely that the islands will have very few people in them; so people from the UK, OZ, Canada and Greenland will end up in the same instance/island if they are all in the same system at the same time.

 

[DonGold]

Same from Taiwan. Login takes a few seconds only to a private group and I had only a single message about a bulletin board transaction not available in several hours of play, which was resolved with a new login. Only have mild temporarily slowdown on framerate when approaching stations. But I might be as well the only human being on my treasure island.

Hi Bernie. Just wondering how you bought the game. Did you have to use a proxy? Frontier developments store simply won't load for me in Taiwan. It had me fearful to buy in case I had to use a proxy to play too. Seemingly not eh?