Almost a year later, Multiplayer is still a mess

[Esvandiary]

Wouldn't they run out of hosted instances pretty quickly? The game creates instances for each system's super cruise and anywhere a player drops out. So even if you had a few thousand hosted instances the majority of players would still experience P2P while travelling around and I'm sure they wouldn't think the experience was any better overall.

Using a dedicated server for CQC makes sense, but its hard to imagine the amount of work & resources that would be required to support it in the main game.

If anything, CQC is one place where it doesn't make that much sense - relatively small (and mostly static) player counts, constrained environments, etc. I guess it'd be a boon for tournaments/competitive play though.

As for running out of hosted instances: not if they did it smart. I don't think Toumal was suggesting that every instance could/should be server-backed, since a huge amount of locations just have 1-2 people; I read it to mean that any instances which got large enough (or places which got busy enough) could have a server-backed instance automatically started up, and people migrated to it over time, allowing for those numbers to continue growing. That's how I read it, anyway.

 

[ZeeWolf]

If anything, CQC is one place where it doesn't make that much sense - relatively small (and mostly static) player counts, constrained environments, etc. I guess it'd be a boon for tournaments/competitive play though.

As for running out of hosted instances: not if they did it smart. I don't think Toumal was suggesting that every instance could/should be server-backed (since a huge amount of locations just have 1-2 people); I read it to mean that any instances which got large enough (or places which got busy enough) could have a server-backed instance automatically started up, and people migrated to it over time, allowing for those numbers to continue growing. That's how I read it, anyway.

But most people would still experience P2P for the majority of their game time (travelling between systems) and it wouldn't fix instancing issues for those travelling in wings. They would still be back on the forum telling us how EvE does it all just fine So I wonder what the payoff would be and the return for Frontier vs the cost of implementing & maintenance?

 

[Esvandiary]

But most people would still experience P2P for the majority of their game time (travelling between systems) and it wouldn't fix instancing issues for those travelling in wings. They would still be back on the forum telling us how EvE does it all just fine So I wonder what the payoff would be and the return for Frontier vs the cost of implementing & maintenance?

The payoff would be the ability to have large-scale battles/events, at all. The chances of the 32-player limit being significantly increased under P2P is pretty low IMO (honestly I'm pretty impressed that it works as well as it does at those numbers).

At the moment, there's no possibility of a realtime event with large numbers of people around stations, in CZs, etc. Capital Ship battles is another example I've seen elsewhere in this thread: imagine those sort of player battles, at scale, rather than mostly being NPCs flying into you, each other, and rocks. I appreciate that's not for everyone, which is why I personally am not suggesting that all CZs should get that treatment (again, likely not doable within FD's budget anyway).
That's only mentioning combat CGs, too - imagine trade CGs where the stations are reliably bustling with players coming in and out, rather than "sometimes" - to me that would really add to the immersion/buzz of it. Call me weird, but every once in a while I'd actually like to arrive at a Coriolis only to be told "sorry, no landing pads available." Those sorts of traffic levels would definitely teach lazy traders better docking etiquette, too

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

last night i had yet more confirmation why servers are not always good.

logged into ridgeracer unbounded for a bit of a multiplayer bash with a mate, and.................................. servers are now offline!. (i have had the game sitting there un played for years and it was canned back at the start of 2015)

so, as much as servers may be better in some instances, I would actually come from the opposite direction and moan that, imo all games should have P2P as a fallback so that when the devs invariably turn them off, then you can still play online in one way or another.

 

[Esvandiary]

so, as much as servers may be better in some instances, I would actually come from the opposite direction and moan that, imo all games should have P2P as a fallback so that when the devs invariably turn them off, then you can still play online in one way or another.

That wouldn't help. Even with the P2P setup as it is now, you still need to connect to the matchmaking servers to join an instance or travel anywhere (enter/exit SC or jump); you also need to connect to other servers to be able to do other things such as trading, mining, collecting bounties, exploring systems etc.
So, as long as you're already sat in an instance with your friend when the servers go down, and don't intend to go anywhere or do anything while they're down... yeah, P2P will help you.

 

[Jex =TE=]

1upped for the Joint Operations reference. Back in the day I acted as spotter for the boat artillery. You could walk the rounds in on top of campy snipers. Fun times. Multi-day matches!

Toally agree they need some dedicated hardware to build up a core set of systems for multiplayer

Me and my friends used to sneak to the enemy spawn base, the undergrowth made it brilliant for that and we would lay in it just outside. Then we'd take it in turns sneaking in to put a satchel charge on a vehicle (or on the road outside - can't quite remember but I'm sure u could put them on vehicles.) Sneaking in the base and trying to survive was the challenge. I also remember I used to get behing enemy lines and just run with packs of the enemy. They didn't always notice you if you ran with them and didn't shoot LOL)


Aaah, memory lane

 

[who?]

They could never host instances for every system, but Frontier could host a small number of 'super instances' for key systems. Maybe systems like Sol that everyone probably visits at least once; but also any system that has a CG in it. In these hosted systems, the player limit is bumped way up. Systems like Sol should be permanently teeming with activity, not 5-10 ships.

If you have a fast connection and you enter that system... 100 player instance goodness. If you have a slow connection, or the hosted servers have reached capacity, or you're entering a non-hosted system, or if the servers are down - then it's back to normal P2P. Apart from the difference in the number of players - which you might not notice immediately anyway - it'd be completely seamless.

 

[Edith_The_Hutt]

So exactly how difficult is it to switch from Peer to Peer to Server-Client architecture? Everyone seems to be talking about it as if it's a week's worth of work and maybe an extra box in the FDev offices. Are we talking something that simple, or are we talking about re-building the game engine from the ground up?

 

[ZeeWolf]

So exactly how difficult is it to switch from Peer to Peer to Server-Client architecture? Everyone seems to be talking about it as if it's a week's worth of work and maybe an extra box in the FDev offices. Are we talking something that simple, or are we talking about re-building the game engine from the ground up?

Oh I'm sure it's dead easy...one developer a strong cup of tea and you have a perfectly synchronizing 100 concurrent connection client to server solution capable of handing dynamic instances right?

Just look at Star Citizen they got it all working in Arena Commander on day 1 except they didn't

 

[Koen]

Rep+ to the OP.

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

And as i also mentioned: Server costs - are you willing to pay a subscription fee?

And as i also mentioned: C/S brings its own problems. Effectively swapping one set of problems for another.

Well, it does not work for me most of the time - and I do have an excellent internet connection.

I would be most happy to pay FDEV to rent a small dedicated server (like a boosted "private group") where I can meet my friends and enemies in stable instances.

 

[Esvandiary]

So exactly how difficult is it to switch from Peer to Peer to Server-Client architecture? Everyone seems to be talking about it as if it's a week's worth of work and maybe an extra box in the FDev offices. Are we talking something that simple, or are we talking about re-building the game engine from the ground up?

For replacing the existing system? Months, maybe a year, involving entire teams ripping out huge amounts of code and logic that the game is based on. Never going to happen.
For bolting the capability onto the existing system, with some special-case handling? Honestly, probably still months (but way fewer of them), just with fewer teams needing to be involved, and not as much churn and disruption involved in the change.

I don't think anyone's suggesting this could happen overnight (or even particularly soon), just hoping that it might happen at some point down the line.

 

[ZeeWolf]

I think P2P technology could improve considerably in the next few years. It's being used quite seriously now for fast data transfer on financial applications, block chain, bitcoin and obviously file sharing. With more games starting to use it, I wouldn't be surprised if router technology starts to provide more support etc. It's a fledgling technology as much as people around here think its some kind of broken nightmare.

 

[Esvandiary]

I think P2P technology could improve considerably in the next few years. It's being used quite seriously now for fast data transfer on financial applications, block chain, bitcoin and obviously file sharing. With more games starting to use it, I wouldn't be surprised if router technology starts to provide more support etc. It's a fledgling technology as much as people around here think its some kind of broken nightmare.

In some ways I'd say yes, in some ways no... One thing that should make the whole shebang a lot easier is IPv6; then we don't need NAT any more and P2P connections become a lot easier to reliably create. Even then it relies on how good the clients' connections are though, which is one problem that won't go away (other than ISPs investing more readily in their infrastr- bahahaha, nope couldn't keep a straight face, sorry).

I really don't think the player limits are going away or rising significantly for a game like E:D any time soon though; the current model relies on all the clients in an instance sharing authority, which means they all need to communicate with many other clients (at least enough to form a sensible-looking spanning tree or similar). The more that number goes up, the more bandwidth and CPU time is required to keep everything looking sane (and the more clients are sharing the instance's state); improvements in P2P tech aren't going to change those variables much.

I guess in summary: I think the reliability of the P2P tech does indeed have the potential to improve over the next few years; the scaling and player count issues, though, I'm a bit less optimistic on.

 

[zzzornbringer]

The network code has improved with various updates. The problem is that there isn't a silver bullet solution. The idea that adding dedicated servers somewhere fixes everything is a bit of a fallacy.

yes, it has been improved through various patches. but it's not noticeable to me. i still see rubberbanding when i see other players during supercruise. sometimes at stations but it's relatively rare. i also sometimes still get stuck in hyperspace. these are problems that i've experienced since i joined the beta.

so, patches don't seem to resolve this. maybe a more drastic step towards client/server is needed. i would certainly appreciate it.

...servers are now offline!

this problem already exists in elite. the game won't run without the server.

if the servers really get shut down some time in the future, i think there's actually a law here in the eu, as far as i know, that says that if a gaming company shuts down their servers for a game, they have to supply dedicated server files, so that the game can continue to run through community servers. i'm not super sure how this law works but i read something about it a while ago. can't remember where though but i'm pretty sure it exists.

 

[ZeeWolf]

yes, it has been improved through various patches. but it's not noticeable to me. i still see rubberbanding when i see other players during supercruise. sometimes at stations but it's relatively rare. i also sometimes still get stuck in hyperspace. these are problems that i've experienced since i joined the beta.

so, patches don't seem to resolve this. maybe a more drastic step towards client/server is needed. i would certainly appreciate it.

As discussed in this thread. There is no "step" where adding client/server fixes the issue you described.

 

[Esvandiary]

As discussed in this thread. There is no "step" where adding client/server fixes the issue you described.

The rubber-banding might be improved in some cases - but definitely not all! - and it would also limit what was affected by the lag (e.g. NPCs owned by other laggy clients, which is still a big cause of jumpy interdictions).
But yeah, things like being stuck in hyperspace would not be solved by going client/server at all; that's already a server problem...

 

[ZeeWolf]

The rubber-banding might be improved in some cases - but definitely not all! - and it would also limit what was affected by the lag (e.g. NPCs owned by other laggy clients, which is still a big cause of jumpy interdictions).
But yeah, things like being stuck in hyperspace would not be solved by going client/server at all; that's already a server problem...

But as we discussed, there just simply wouldn't be any practical way Frontier could host enough servers to provide hosted instances for the entire galaxy and any dynamic instance created within. The entire game would have to be redesigned to provide the experience people seem to think throwing in a server will fix; ie have the same compromises as other games and have a small number of players in a smaller number of static systems.

Having a few battle/community instances might work, but I agree that the amount of time and effort to develop this isn't going to happen overnight and since it wouldn't stop the complaining I can't imagine Frontier have it on the table right now.

 

[Esvandiary]

Having a few battle/community instances might work, but I agree that the amount of time and effort to develop this isn't going to happen overnight and since it wouldn't stop the complaining I can't imagine Frontier have it on the table right now.

That's all I've ever been arguing for in this thread... I think my earlier post pretty much sums it up:

For replacing the existing system? Months, maybe a year, involving entire teams ripping out huge amounts of code and logic that the game is based on. Never going to happen.
For bolting the capability onto the existing system, with some special-case handling? Honestly, probably still months (but way fewer of them), just with fewer teams needing to be involved, and not as much churn and disruption involved in the change.

I don't think anyone's suggesting this could happen overnight (or even particularly soon), just hoping that it might happen at some point down the line.

I agree I don't think this should be a priority any time soon; just noting that one day, seeing the sort of numbers of actual players in one place that (IMO) the current model won't ever allow for, could really add something to the game.
It'd also open up a whole lot more interesting options for CGs, e.g. massive assaults on starports, surface bases, etc. Naturally I'd be talking a long way down the line for that sort of thing, but that's the kind of activities this sort of a "base" might support.

 

[Vingtetun]

Well. On the Hutton convoys we had consistently 25 plus ships in each instance, system by system. Possibly more but I was dodging pirates.

At Hutton itself we had huge queues of ships waiting to unload. Spread over the instances we had between 200 and 300 ships.

So.... I politely disagree. For me it works well with commanders from all over the globe.

 

[andyraptor]

This thread still going?

gotta make some more popcorn