Proposal Discussion I sure hope frontier has the Capacity from day one!

[Sav112]

Lesson learned with needing a constant online connection with the disaster that was Simcity there. People having paid good money in fact over the odd’s for the game left looking at a screen saying sorry EA has not got the capacity to let you play right now.

Doh!!!!!!


I sure hope frontier has the Capacity from day one!

 

[Penthux]

I think FD might already be aware there could be a potential 25,681 players wanting to log in to E: D if it was available right now. That will be more by the time it is released to the public, I'm sure.

Just look at the E: D kickstarter backers total amount and take a guess.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Easy to Frontier. They rented a server Titan

560,640 processors, more than 260,000 hearts Nvidia K20x (18,688 Tesla GPU accelerators)

 

[Patrick_68000]

I think FD might already be aware there could be a potential 25,681 players wanting to log in to E: D if it was available right now. That will be more by the time it is released to the public, I'm sure.

Just look at the E: D kickstarter backers total amount and take a guess.

27107 donors now with Paypal App on web Frontier

 

[Karl]

Initial low bandwidth intensive authentication within 7 days of installing the game (allows a unexpected hickup to be fixed). After that, let me choose when I want to resync server (galaxy status) data. Sure, make it pay to stay updated within reasonable time, but don't *force* it to enable SP gaming (I may not be connected always).

 

[CmdrBond]

Initial low bandwidth intensive authentication within 7 days of installing the game (allows a unexpected hickup to be fixed). After that, let me choose when I want to resync server (galaxy status) data. Sure, make it pay to stay updated within reasonable time, but don't *force* it to enable SP gaming (I may not be connected always).

You don't ever have to connect if you don't want to.

 

[Mobius]

I think it would be wise to expect issues with Elite online, even to the extent of having your commander reset, keep in mind that this is a crowd funded game and with any online game there are always teething troubles.

On the other hand everything may go without a hitch but my advice is to prepare yourselves for the worst even if it never happens.

 

[OneoftheLost]

On the other hand everything may go without a hitch but my advice is to prepare yourselves for the worst even if it never happens.

Heh, most of us are seasoned Elite veterans, so I think this just goes without saying.


I think FD is going to get hammered. Last I knew they had little to no experience with online games, and that is going to bite them, no matter how prepared they think they are. Take a look at any MMO launch in the last ten years, or Diablo 3's/Sim City/Planetside 2/etc. etc. etc. No company has the slightest clue how launch will go until after its tanking and all the servers have crashed.

I've never seen a successful online launch. It just doesn't happen. So don't be surprised when you go to log on to the online portion of the game and get the dreaded 'server error.'

That is just how online games launch.

 

[ParaSitius]

This is where the Alpha and Beta testers get to help in a small way, if several stress test can be done it will give FD an small idea of what to expect. It probably won't help in the end but at least it could make the difference in how quickly they can react and get things up and running again.

What I think could be a half decent way to solving this is to create a small client that simulates a player logging in and playing the game. It sends and receives random bits of data equivalent to what the end game will do and this could be sent out to all 27 thousand KS'ers. Then pick a date for a stress test and see what happens.

Probably not ideal or feasible as it takes time away from developing the main game but I really want to try and help minimise any potential backlash the likes of Diablo 3 and SimCity got on their release days.

 

[Sav112]

Head woman on Simcity put the spin on it that they had not understood through testing how people would play this game and the spin being people are enjoying if for longer per session than we thought. I think they thought everyone would play in nice half hour to an hour units. This as we know does not happen, people get into a game and if they have the free time can play for hours straight.

I think Elite has more scope early on for players to play silly hours, The first weeks and even months could be very stressful for the System how ever it works distributing the online play. At least Single player is in there but I planned to really get out in multiplayer right away.

 

[kenwshmt]

Did none of you change your bid in the last minute on the kick start?

If they don't have at least that much capacity, then it will be simcity.

The kick start server was very laggy the last few minutes, hardly adequate for a real time game.

 

[Commander Thane]

Did none of you change your bid in the last minute on the kick start?

If they don't have at least that much capacity, then it will be simcity.

The kick start server was very laggy the last few minutes, hardly adequate for a real time game.

But... but... FD don't host the Kickstarter web pages, as far as I know...? :S

They've got some smart maths brains at FD, I think they'll have the server capacity in hand.

More likely is that there will be unforseen actions by one player in a thousand that wasn't an action that occurred to any of the testers. That's the sort of thing that will only come out in the first week or so of release.

 

[kenwshmt]

But... but... FD don't host the Kickstarter web pages, as far as I know...? :S

no, but it is perhaps representative, those who could watch, were.

 

[acr0b3rts]

I'm also sceptical about FD's ability to provide the capacity to enable fluid multiplayer. One thing is experience with technology, another is technical capacity (servers, bandwidth, etc.) and a whole other thing is the cost associated with keeping the servers and the bandwidth up.

Somebody mentioned that test clients would detract from the development of the main game but some sort of widespread test (more than a limited alpha or beta test) should have already been factored into the 1 year development cycle and costing.

The easiest way to stress test the system is to make a free limited demo available and let everybody have a go. The experience learned from that would be invaluable but it has to happen early enough in the project to allow the necessary changes it will surely lead to.

It would be a damned shame if FD made a fantastic game that was crippled by infrastructure problems (at least with regard to multiplayer).

 

[Davidtq]

I would be surprised if there werent launch day issues. They are prety much the norm for online games...

 

[Ian Phillips]

I would be surprised if there werent launch day issues. They are prety much the norm for online games...

Once, in a thread long ago.....it was mentioned that maybe backers could login to the game a day or so before the official release and Michael commented that it might be a good idea.

 

[acr0b3rts]

Once, in a thread long ago.....it was mentioned that maybe backers could login to the game a day or so before the official release and Michael commented that it might be a good idea.

That is nowhere near enough time to fix up serious capacity issues and you definately don't want to be doing code changes 2 days prior to release...

DOES FD have a plan for this?

 

[Sav112]

As my PC came out the Ark I only watch the new games on twich. Just had it on and a guy playing a huge City got kicked out of the game, told there was an update, did the update, started up again and then came up no Servers available and give him a 20 minute timer. He dropped out what ever server he was on and got on one with only a ten minute wait……

So Sim City is still a joke!

I can think of nothing worse than getting a craving for some Elite to sit through screen after screen saying sorry please wait!

 

[Capn Tucker]

I don't think it will be nearly as bad as many think. Yeah, games like Sim City, D3, WoW etc in the early days had problems, but you had hundreds of thousands or even millions of people playing.
If every last ED backer logged on at once, it's a whopping 27,146 people (at the moment). And of those 27,100-odd players, quite a few will probably be playing off-line. Even a year from now I doubt there will be a huge difference in the numbers. Compared to other games, Elite Dangerous is and will continue (IMO) to be a niche product. So unless Frontier has ridiculously small servers and huge multitudes of people buy the game in the next 12 months, I don't foresee a lot of problems from too many people trying to log on at the same time. Beta testing should have most of this sorted out as well by launch time..