I challenge Frontier Developements!

[Steve50]

Waaaaaaaaay back pre-Alpha we made lots of threads and told them going p2p was a dumb mistake and would have all kinds of issues, from these network issues to utter lack of security re:- cheating etc. ...and we were ignored and now its way too late to change it so we have all got to suffer for FD's blunder.

 

[Asp Explorer]

On a lan, P2P traffic would (ideally) all be at the lowest latency your gear could handle, if you are all willing to just have you all in Private Group for pew-pew fun.

Playing all in Open on that lab would offer a different set of challenges - your latency would be great to each other, and to ED's servers - but your groups latency to other players would vary by their connection to you, and there would be a considerable bandwidth and switching cost. Not to mention your ISP might consider the traffic on one public IP to be a DOS attack and shut you off, or routers at any point in the connection having a panic attack and choking on their own tables

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Waaaaaaaaay back pre-Alpha we made lots of threads and told them going p2p was a dumb mistake and would have all kinds of issues, from these network issues to utter lack of security re:- cheating etc. ...and we were ignored and now its way too late to change it so we have all got to suffer for FD's blunder.

I'll take P2P over monthly subscription fees though.

And C/S doesn't solve lag. Played plenty of games with C/S architectures where lag has been an issue.

Advantage of P2P, you usually get good connections with those phyiscally close to you. Good for connecting with people in your own area. Not so good with connecting with people on the other side of the world though.

With C/S, it requires a good global network of servers to stand a chance of having low latency with everyone. Quite costly. If that was out of FD's budget, and they were limited to servers in a single location, or couldn't afford high speed connections between servers, then you'd be getting lag potentially with people close to you.

P2P has its issues, but its not all sunshine and light in C/S land either. It has its own costs.

 

[kofeyh]

FD have let's call it a slider. They can move it one way or the other. This determines how lax or tight the instance matchmaker is.

If its loose, you see more people in your instance, but accept lag as part of the game. If its tight, Open and groups move more towards a solo experience, where you only meet those with low pings.

If you want as little lag as possible, then be prepared for an Open experience that's very close to solo.

It already is for Australian and Asia Pacific players. I cannot instance with any American, at any time, at any location. Unless I enable a VPN service into my own dedicated physical server in San Jose. Matchmaking is entirely queued over PVP and whilst the peering makes sense over p2p, the initial handshake definitely shouldn't be.

I can flick the VPN tunnel on and off at a busy station with a dozen commanders docked and as soon as it's off, all bar one or two disappear; reconnect over VPN, boom suddenly the station is crawling with commanders again. I can see the IP's drop out in p2p connection info and pop right back as soon as I "appear" to be in the US. That is a little bit obviously matchmaking being zealous about who can be friends.

I do not understand why wing invites and wing formation needs to exist outside of the servers we all connect to, as well as open itself, now; sure use p2p to help inter-commander communication but the creation and linking of commanders over p2p is just not working. Open ceases to make sense when it's a solo experience; ask anyone in Australia, New Zealand, and in fact a number of other locations. They can't wing up with a sizable chunk of the community. Or even see them.

Which is why I have hysterics when people scream about open being 24/7 PVP kill fest. No it isn't. It hasn't been since 1.5 and 2.0; when the wing changes were implemented that has segmented large portions of the community. Because half of the general population pretty much can't see the other half.

One of the huge things Elite had going for it was the wings and being able to instance and wing up with friends; that doesn't work for an increasing number of people. I don't really think pretending that's okay because at least it isn't client-server pretty much misses the point entirely.

Really I don't actually care what is used. As long as it mostly works. And mostly right now? It doesn't.

 

[kofeyh]

I'll take P2P over monthly subscription fees though.

And C/S doesn't solve lag. Played plenty of games with C/S architectures where lag has been an issue.

Advantage of P2P, you usually get good connections with those phyiscally close to you. Good for connecting with people in your own area. Not so good with connecting with people on the other side of the world though.

With C/S, it requires a good global network of servers to stand a chance of having low latency with everyone. Quite costly. If that was out of FD's budget, and they were limited to servers in a single location, or couldn't afford high speed connections between servers, then you'd be getting lag potentially with people close to you.

P2P has its issues, but its not all sunshine and light in C/S land either. It has its own costs.

Rockstar has probably one of the worst netcode implementations I've ever seen. Nothing else takes 2+ minutes to sort out connecting to an online server. And yet? I can go heist with a bunch of people wherever they are. You can't cheat physics, lag will always exist.

But I will take a slightly laggy experience and actually be able to join friends in game, any day of the week, versus literally not being able to at all. This isn't a great thing to aspire to. Pockets of commanders who can sometimes wing up but only on tuesdays if the internet winds are in a favourable direction.

p2p in it's current form doesn't work. It just doesn't. This is an ongoing thing that frontier need to work on. And not just because it should work, but because of upcoming mult-commander ship control.

How on earth am I supposed to have fellow commanders in my ship tomorrow, if I cannot even form a wing, today???

This has been raised as an issue by multiple people and there's zero traction with frontier.

 

[kofeyh]

I challenge Frontier developements to provide a multiplayer experience with a ping of 100ms or better (less).

Just had a cool match with another commander in triple-dumbfire eagles and it was a combination of stupidity, frustration as well as laughter and fun but in the end it turned into sadness

The results were clear. The missiles fly past you, then you get damage and THEN the missiles explode. By all kinds of immersion, this is simply a crystal clear example of how multiplayer should NOT work


But in all seriousness. Do something about that please, Frontier. Yes you have claimed that your multiplayer experience isn't really ... well ... existing but that isn't an excuse to provide us with such an inefficient architecture. Go work on it until you achieve an average ping of 100ms (which still is ALOT) atleast for local players (US - US | UK - UK | France - Germany | Italy - Austria | etc.). But 2000ms (aka 2 seconds) is simply unacceptable long term and Elite has been released almost one and a half year ago.

Not to mention parallel universes or as we call it: instancing.

You have managed to balance SCBs, get rid of the stutter on planets (atleast for me), fixed the instancing right after the release and I have no doubt that you can provide a multipalyer experience similar to any other given multiplayer game.

I don't even care if it is P2P, a server or anything else as long as the ping stays below 100ms.
Oh, and pwetty pwease. If one commander is near the station, I want to see him, regardless of his location, skill level or whatnot. No more than one instance per location please. Let's say until September?

I give your graphics 9/10 (10/10 if asteorids fog returns and texture details don't disappear at 200 meters and further).
But I give you 3/10 for multiplayer experience. It works, but that's all. :/


Thanks

Hi, have you heard of physics. There's this thing where electrical signals can only propagate so fast over copper. Also light can only go so fast through fibre. The problem is that you aren't physically close enough to everyone else. So just skootch in a little. You know just pick up your PC and drive like 3000k to the other guy. Then you'll be under 100ms.

I have an ~190ms return ping best case scenario to the first server I can hit in the US, from Australia. I would upend entire galaxies to actually even be able to wing up with people in the US, let alone have "my immersion" feels about a weapon dynamics in a multiplayer scenario with variable latency.

 

[Asp Explorer]

How on earth am I supposed to have fellow commanders in my ship tomorrow, if I cannot even form a wing, today???

This has been raised as an issue by multiple people and there's zero traction with frontier.

Depending on how they implement multi-crew, it will either be quite simple to have people manning turrets etc as a "phased stream" to the ship owners instance where everyone in ships other than the one you are in sees all the actions of everyone on that ship, or it will be a "absolute stream" of every action of every player on that ship broadcast as separate actions to everyone else in the instance.

I'm really bad at describing this - sorry I can't be more precise.

 

[aRtFuL]

So, sword or musket sir?

 

[hunvagy]

Oh look, the server/client discussion again. You do realize OP that having "a" server wouldn't solve squat, right? Where do you put it? In the US, so EU and SEA regions have abyssmal ping to it? To the EU to mess with the other two main regions? Which means you'd need at least one server per region. And if any other MMO is any indication, that means that the regions would be segragated from each other, unless someone actively jumps on the US server from SEA or EU. Which means they are back at the current situation, where they have bad ping and unbearable latency, while the US players don'T experience it. How would that be any better then the current situation? Server/Client wouldn't solve anything without the people having good connections.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

FD have let's call it a slider. They can move it one way or the other. This determines how lax or tight the instance matchmaker is.

If its loose, you see more people in your instance, but accept lag as part of the game. If its tight, Open and groups move more towards a solo experience, where you only meet those with low pings.

If you want as little lag as possible, then be prepared for an Open experience that's very close to solo.

If games like Battlefield 3/4 can handle 64 players with all bullets and environmemt destruction at an average of 100ms then ED should be able to handle two players in one instance with 100ms as well but not 2000. There is no slider.

It simoky is possible to play with more players together at a decent ping rate. The slider is more like a mathmatical curve and expanding the curve means (economical) growth. Frintiers muktiplayer slide is pretty small tho at this moment

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So, sword or musket sir?

I'd take Plasma Accelerator or Railgun instead. Sword or musket are old and ineffective today

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Rockstar has probably one of the worst netcode implementations I've ever seen. Nothing else takes 2+ minutes to sort out connecting to an online server. And yet? I can go heist with a bunch of people wherever they are. You can't cheat physics, lag will always exist.

But I will take a slightly laggy experience and actually be able to join friends in game, any day of the week, versus literally not being able to at all. This isn't a great thing to aspire to. Pockets of commanders who can sometimes wing up but only on tuesdays if the internet winds are in a favourable direction.

p2p in it's current form doesn't work. It just doesn't. This is an ongoing thing that frontier need to work on. And not just because it should work, but because of upcoming mult-commander ship control.

How on earth am I supposed to have fellow commanders in my ship tomorrow, if I cannot even form a wing, today???

This has been raised as an issue by multiple people and there's zero traction with frontier.

Ugh, don't talk to me about Rockstar and GTA5. When i first started playing, i was trying to connect with my daughter in the next room on the same lan, we couldn't connect (possibly due to NAT and stuff). I switched over to a different LAN, and it took a while, but we could connect. Now we get it working fairly well and can connect without a problem between us. But often when i go online and try playing with random people i'm suffering major lag at times, and then at other times its absolotuely fine.

Anyway, that's an example of P2P as well.

Just keep in mind all those times you played C/S games where you complained about lag. No problems with matchmaking, but you experienced terrible lag at times right? I'm sure everyone who plays online games has.

Could FD make improvements, well, sure, probably. FD have said multiple times they continue to work on the code behind the matchmaking. Why some people seem to assume that FD are sitting twiddling their thumbs and doing nothing is beyond me. There is no need to "challenge" them. They are being challenged every day they go into the office with an array of issues they need to work on. For the guys responsible for network code, this is their particular challenge.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

Do you know how long you'd be waiting for a docking slot at a CG? Hope you like to hear "docking request denied".

This is whywe have solo, no?

 

[Gimi]

interested! back to good! for me, who always needs a NW-lesson, in my understanding even a LAN party wouldn't make latency in ED better, would it?

With a caveat, yes it would. It would not improve the connection to the Frontier server cloud (hosted by Amazon), but if the people on the LAN friend up, create a group and/or wing up they are more likely to go into the same instance, the P2P part of ED networking would speed up tremendously. You would still be limited by any person outside of the LAN party that is in your instance, but chances are (if I understand ED networking correctly) that you would get an instance of your own. This is up to the FD instancing servers though, and outside of player control.

 

[tawittle]

frontier has already said that they can't afford new servers and that there is nothing they can do to improve the current situation without a serious investment.

In other words, FD has already said that laggy multiplayer and non-functioning instances are here to stay.

But sometimes I wonder. How did distant worlds get 100 CMDR in the same instance? Why can no one show a screenshot of more than 30 people in the same instance in open play? Sometimes I honestly think FD chooses to mess up instancing in open play for the benefit of private group. I have no way to prove it, just seems suspicious to me that no one in mobious ever has instancing issues and can get 100 CMDR in the same instance. meanwhile in open play you are lucky to get 16 people in the same instance, most instances are dead, and you NEVER get more than 30 people in the same instance. IDK.

 

[Gimi]

frontier has already said that they can't afford new servers and that there is nothing they can do to improve the current situation without a serious investment.

In other words, FD has already said that laggy multiplayer and non-functioning instances are here to stay.

They have? Not trying anything here, but I'm genuinely interested. (Do you have any quotes)

I know they have said that the current architecture, with cloud based (Amazon) for non time sensitive transactions and P2P for time sensitive transactions, was chosen to reduce cost and also because P2P is suitable for twitch based combat (even if it has drawbacks). I have never read anything about FDEV not being able to afford new servers or that they have said that "laggy multiplayer and non-functioning instances are here to stay".

Even though the current architecture has limitations, my understanding is that FDEV have quite clearly said that they will continue to improve the current architecture where/when possible. Also, the central server part hosted by Amazon is scaleable, so it scales up under heavy load. This became apparent a while back when we had server instability when the servers did not scale properly/fast enough. According to FDEV support, this was addressed at the time.

Edit: For the more technical minded I recommend this video. FDEV explain parts of the back end server architecture hosted by Amazon. (It's technical, very, you have been warned).
[video=youtube;EvJPyjmfdz0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvJPyjmfdz0[/video]

 

[Julio Montega]

frontier has already said that they can't afford new servers and that there is nothing they can do to improve the current situation without a serious investment.

In other words, FD has already said that laggy multiplayer and non-functioning instances are here to stay.

But sometimes I wonder. How did distant worlds get 100 CMDR in the same instance? Why can no one show a screenshot of more than 30 people in the same instance in open play? Sometimes I honestly think FD chooses to mess up instancing in open play for the benefit of private group. I have no way to prove it, just seems suspicious to me that no one in mobious ever has instancing issues and can get 100 CMDR in the same instance. meanwhile in open play you are lucky to get 16 people in the same instance, most instances are dead, and you NEVER get more than 30 people in the same instance. IDK.

Didn't the exploratory group simply start several "wings" as they had some major timezones included?
Within a timezone i think you can have more players joining up with you,
and don't forget out in space rarely NPCs are met.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

frontier has already said that they can't afford new servers and that there is nothing they can do to improve the current situation without a serious investment.

In other words, FD has already said that laggy multiplayer and non-functioning instances are here to stay.

But sometimes I wonder. How did distant worlds get 100 CMDR in the same instance? Why can no one show a screenshot of more than 30 people in the same instance in open play? Sometimes I honestly think FD chooses to mess up instancing in open play for the benefit of private group. I have no way to prove it, just seems suspicious to me that no one in mobious ever has instancing issues and can get 100 CMDR in the same instance. meanwhile in open play you are lucky to get 16 people in the same instance, most instances are dead, and you NEVER get more than 30 people in the same instance. IDK.

My guess, its because those trying in Open are in populated systems, whereas on DW they were in uninhabited space.

Remember, in populated space you have NPCs and lots of other data needing keeping in sync between all clients, such as CMDRs coming and going between the instance. This adds to network overhead. Instancing would fall apart quicker in the bubble simply due to all the extra traffic. On the DW meetups, the traffic was stable with no NPCs around.

Its not a mode thing, its a location thing.

 

[kofeyh]

Just keep in mind all those times you played C/S games where you complained about lag. No problems with matchmaking, but you experienced terrible lag at times right? I'm sure everyone who plays online games has.

Lag is a function of location (latency to end point) and how efficient the in-game message queue is (however it's coded). The issue isn't one of C/S being worse or better than P2P, but that frontier have decided to define who can be in a wing. It's execution in this case, not transport.

Frontier have applied additional rules to matchmaking to prevent wings forming between commanders based on latency; these are trivial to bypass by simply appearing to be in the US (eg via VPN) when winging with US people. This is a blunt-force constraint in matchmaking to mostly respond to people complaining about lag. If you can't wing, you can't complain about latency within the wing.

Apart from some anti-client-server ramble I'm not sure what your point is? Because as much as I really like this game, that doesn't strike me as the optimal way to solve the situation.

Could FD make improvements, well, sure, probably. FD have said multiple times they continue to work on the code behind the matchmaking.

So far the solution has been to reduce the acceptable latency between peers until it's so low that people cannot join a wing in an open sandbox game that is designed for multiplayer and co-op. I'm hoping you spot the disconnect there. So as much as I can understand where the OP is coming from, their experience of wings working as intended (if not sometimes impacted by actual physics of comms equipment and distance) isn't happening for everyone.

And again, is Frontier going to write an entirely new p2p method for multi-crew? Because if they don't, multi-crew is going to be exceedingly broken for a non-zero portion of the community.

Please understand I do love this game. I have two CMDR accounts, because I quite like this game. I absolutely am blown away with what's been done thus far. But that doesn't mean I am going to just ignore the current wings situation and just assume it will all be super fine real soon now. Bugs raised for this since 1.5, 2.0 seem to suggest the love for wings isn't a priority for frontier.

Who knows, maybe it will suddenly become front and center if the exact same p2p method for wings is used. I can really only hope for that at this point.

 

[Talarin]

My guess, its because those trying in Open are in populated systems, whereas on DW they were in uninhabited space.

Remember, in populated space you have NPCs and lots of other data needing keeping in sync between all clients, such as CMDRs coming and going between the instance. This adds to network overhead. Instancing would fall apart quicker in the bubble simply due to all the extra traffic. On the DW meetups, the traffic was stable with no NPCs around.

Its not a mode thing, its a location thing.

I always operated under the assumption that private groups assigned different matchmaking rules to Open. Essentially overriding the different geographic matchmaking server instances. It doesn't solve latency issues, but does allow the members of that group to more consistently see each other in game.

 

[hunvagy]

I always operated under the assumption that private groups assigned different matchmaking rules to Open. Essentially overriding the different geographic matchmaking server instances. It doesn't solve latency issues, but does allow the members of that group to more consistently see each other in game.

That is not the case, which is why after Mobius hit the max player per group limit, it was devided based on geographical location. Now it's Mobius for EUR and Mobius US for NA and territories closer to the US