Instancing

[gundofox]

Morning all...

Ive had a search but not found anything so apologies if this is covered already somewhere else.

Does anyone know whether the instancing mechanic has been changed recently? I read somewhere how it prioritises which instance to put you in based on friends online etc...

Last week when 2 of us were playing in online open play together, we seemed to be on the same instance all the time - at the Fed distress signal at Erannin 2 aswell as outside any spaceports...

The last 2 nights we have tried several times to play together but no matter how many times we log out / in or SC to a new location we just cant seem to get put together. Even when there are no other players around.

Has it always been like this (Ive only been in beta for a few weeks) or has it just recently got worse somehow?

If anyone has any tips for making sure you can hook up with friends Id be grateful. All we did last night in our 2 hour play session was try and meet up!

I really hope this is something they address whenver the next update / build may be.

Cheers,
gundofox

 

[bassman]

Morning all...

Ive had a search but not found anything so apologies if this is covered already somewhere else.

Does anyone know whether the instancing mechanic has been changed recently? I read somewhere how it prioritises which instance to put you in based on friends online etc...

Last week when 2 of us were playing in online open play together, we seemed to be on the same instance all the time - at the Fed distress signal at Erannin 2 aswell as outside any spaceports...

The last 2 nights we have tried several times to play together but no matter how many times we log out / in or SC to a new location we just cant seem to get put together. Even when there are no other players around.

Has it always been like this (Ive only been in beta for a few weeks) or has it just recently got worse somehow?

If anyone has any tips for making sure you can hook up with friends Id be grateful. All we did last night in our 2 hour play session was try and meet up!

I really hope this is something they address whenver the next update / build may be.

Cheers,
gundofox

It seems all over the place, and I for one am getting very very annoyed with the inconsistency of it. I can pretty much handle any other problem with ED philosophically and patiently but this whole instance lottery thing is really getting my goat.

IMO FD have simply bitten off too complex a problem to solve, there are just too many variables at play to get this sort of approach working in a way that meets people expectation of how a modern multiplayer game should behave i.e. I go to some place and by default always see another player who is there unless some max-simultaneous-players limit is exceeded.

Without that the whole illusion of taking part in a single coherent universe is broken and ED remains a "single player game with random occasional multiplayer encounters" game rather than a true multiplayer game.

I'd rather pay a sub, say £5 a month, and have a proper client server architecture which with modern advancements should be able to handle 100+ players in one place no problem.

 

[gundofox]

Thanks for easing my mind ...

I know its early days and its beta, but I hope that some day in the future FD will at least consider ditching this whole mechanic in favour of online open play being truly a 'single shard' experience.

Im guessing this may have been discussed in the early alpha stages?

 

[bassman]

Thanks for easing my mind ...

I know its early days and its beta, but I hope that some day in the future FD will at least consider ditching this whole mechanic in favour of online open play being truly a 'single shard' experience.

Im guessing this may have been discussed in the early alpha stages?

To my knowledge FD have never asked for expernal opinion on this, had they done done so I would given a very forthright one

10 years ago Planetside significantly upped the ante with multiplayer combat games with 100's of players on a battle field including ships with half a dozen other players in turret position, it worked flawlessly (at least the MP part). Its a solved problem in this day and age. Why FD decide to "unsolve" it dont know.

 

[Tinman]

The most recent Dev respond (4 days ago) about the state of the netcode is this:

Yes, we are aware of the issue. There was a small change to the server load-balancing code last week (11th Aug) which should improve the chances of meeting other players in busy locations when playing in the "All" group.

Currently, players are divided into geographical regions for Europe, America, and Australasia. The number of live servers varies depending on demand.

P2P connections will be routed via a Turn server if routers and firewalls make it impossible to set up a direct udp hole-punch connection. (ie if both are symmetric routers, or one router is symmetric and one is port-restricted)

There is further ongoing work to improve the way the players are assigned to servers, in order to improve matchmaking, and also improving server performance to handle more players per server. There is also a known bug relating to private group matchmaking, which has been fixed. I don't know yet when these changes will go live.

Also, "wings" haven't been implemented yet which would be what friends playing together will use to ensure meeting up.

 

[VR Mr Teatime]

It seems all over the place, and I for one am getting very very annoyed with the inconsistency of it. I can pretty much handle any other problem with ED philosophically and patiently but this whole instance lottery thing is really getting my goat.

IMO FD have simply bitten off too complex a problem to solve, there are just too many variables at play to get this sort of approach working in a way that meets people expectation of how a modern multiplayer game should behave i.e. I go to some place and by default always see another player who is there unless some max-simultaneous-players limit is exceeded.

Without that the whole illusion of taking part in a single coherent universe is broken and ED remains a "single player game with random occasional multiplayer encounters" game rather than a true multiplayer game.

I'd rather pay a sub, say £5 a month, and have a proper client server architecture which with modern advancements should be able to handle 100+ players in one place no problem.

There is tuning being made on both the backend and I expect in future client updates to help with matchmaking friends together, as currently there are several mechanisms recently introduced, which will prevent players from seeing each other i.e. there's a geographical weighting based on continents and other weightings to that measurement.

Client Server will not work without a substantial subscription, as the galaxy is 400 billion star systems i.e. huge and dependant on the expected player concurrency level the number of servers needed would be equally huge (even for cloud). The most cost effective mechanism therefore, is to use player's machines as "servers" in P2P.

Oh another factor is that in a real time 3D simulation and especially in one that involves dogfighting, there is always a reference 0,0,0 point in space somewhere and player/NPC objects are measured from that point. As you move away from that point, rounding errors get introduced into the coordinates, which can express itself in warp and jittering on screen. There are tricks that can help here and FDev do use them, but there are limits. The limits in E-D are overcome by using the P2P and bubble related technologies.

An alternative would be to use an Eve cluster model, but that would limit the galaxy to say <10,000 star systems and concurrency could even then be a problem (as it is for Eve in large space battles).

So casually tossing out requests for Client-Server (the persistent part of E-D already uses this but not for frantic space combat) and "I'll pay a subscription" whilst seemingly helpful are not likely to happen, unless there is a radical decrease in star systems and a reduction in expected player numbers i.e. changing the fundamental design goals of the game.

 

[gundofox]

Thanks for the replies an insightful info...

Im glad FD have recently been looking at this and lets hope that when the fix is deployed we see some improvements until the wing mechanics arrive.

Appreciate what you are saying regarding the game world being too big for a single shard - doesnt stop me wishing though - if in the future people want to have fleet battles, then 30 players per session + having to all be friends upfront could really hamper that sort of gameplay, which seems a shame to me - although appreicate that not everyone wants to see ED take off to that scale.
Hopefully a genius will be able to figure out how to make this vision possible so it could at least be considered!

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

You will never see all players all the time. First, people are segmented geographically at the moment, second, there will be always someone with bad connection not being able to play with others.

What FD can and will do is try to reach as best level as they can.

Regarding server infrastructure and sub it has been all said and done.

 

[Skaldy]

If I was implementing it, I'd have multiple P2P sessions connected. Several two-player sessions, one for each of your friends at that location, and one session for all other non-friend players (same as the current instancing). That way you'll always be able to see all of your friends regardless.

I used to do a bit of network programming

 

[Coolts]

Grouping was working last week for me but for the past week, nothing we do makes it work. Well and truly borked till the next update, (we are in the same city).

 

[bassman]

Client Server will not work without a substantial subscription, as the galaxy is 400 billion star systems i.e. huge and dependant on the expected player concurrency level the number of servers needed would be equally huge (even for cloud). The most cost effective mechanism therefore, is to use player's machines as "servers" in P2P.

Oh another factor is that in a real time 3D simulation and especially in one that involves dogfighting, there is always a reference 0,0,0 point in space somewhere and player/NPC objects are measured from that point. As you move away from that point, rounding errors get introduced into the coordinates, which can express itself in warp and jittering on screen.

Why use and angular/vector positioning system though ? - in the games I have some technical familiarity with (which arn't that many admittedly ...) position is represented as linear integer x/y/z grid and three 64 bit integers could represent any point in a cubic lightyear down to 1/10th mm resolution. Surely all you need is to be able to represent a space big enough to be able to split and merge instances (i.e. big enough to fit 2 adjacent instances in) and even 32 bit coordinates could represent a 2000 km cubic space to sub mm resolution.

Given that the current server system already has the logic to create/merge/split instances, the additional bit to make it client/server is be able to dynamically allocate some server resource e.g. a thread/sub-process to be the authority for everything in that instance for as long as it exists rather than handing it off to clients thus I'm not seeing how that changes the basic way in which the galaxy is represented or affects the number representable star systems. Of course its a potentially significant amount of additional computing resource and yes that does cost money which would realistically require a subscription.

The benefit is that instances can be much more tolerant of individual client connection quality since clients are no longer controlling any game objects apart from the actual player ship. It also scales much better for larger player-per-instance counts.

So casually tossing out requests for Client-Server (the persistent part of E-D already uses this but not for frantic space combat) and "I'll pay a subscription" whilst seemingly helpful are not likely to happen, unless there is a radical decrease in star systems and a reduction in expected player numbers i.e. changing the fundamental design goals of the game.

Many of the things that David Braben has been banging on about for years, such as player ship raiding and various other forms of intricate player interactivity require a fidelity of multiplayer matching/instancing stability that we seem currently nowhere close to achieving. For example, in one interview DB game an example of one player getting a mission to transport a VIP to a station and another player a mission assassinate the vip, how is that going to work if the first player can fly straight past the second one because he happens to end up in a different instance ? - this surely set the clear expectation that there needs to be a single cohesive universe, and that is what I'm holding FD to account for.

If FD cannot provide both a huge universe and a cohesive one then one set of customers or other is going to be disappointing, but ED have clearly set both (IMO) expectations and taken money on that basis and they should expect to held accountable for it.

 

[VR Mr Teatime]

All very good points, but you have to consider the overall big picture (or galactic picture) and factor in the expected player concurrency.

For example the game releases with say for ease of math 100,000 copies sold (including pre-orders) on day one, which would be normal for a decent title, if it was going on pure box shipped bricks and mortar channel (outside of the big AAA titles of course and online should mean more than that). Those 100,000 are going to be hitting multiplayer with a vengeance for at least a few weeks, so concurrency could be as high as 50% i.e. 50,000 players. Assuming that sales continue into the 500K to 1mil plus territory, then concurrency could reach over 100,000 and possibly a lot higher.

Even on an optimistic ratio of 100 clients per node/server that's going to mean 500-1,000 servers, plus whatever overhead is required to maintain the backend persistent "clustering" for the market etc. That's way more than Eve has because concurrency is way more than Eve (plus Eve isn't really "real time" in the same way E-D is).

Conversely the current model looks to be using a ratio of around 1000 players per server, which cuts down the AWS requirements by a factor of 10, as it is only doing P2P session brokering and persistence (stations as well I understand).

Even without the concurrency, the galaxy is huge and in theory needs to be able to model interactions at any point within the galactic volume. Using the Eve model again, systems there are carved up between their cluster nodes dependant on popularity (Jita for example has at least one dedicated server/node). So again its fairly easy math (maybe throw in some Erlang if you're feeling clever) to work out that 400 billion star systems is going to mean a huge server population to cater for that even with a modest concurrency.

Take both those factors into account and to a lesser extent, the floating point positional errors and it makes pure client server very expensive. The core of the problem though isn't so much the topology of the networking, but more the reliance on a global network that can't guarantee throughput, routing or latency. That's also made worse when net neutrality issues and other nefarious ISP/telecoms provider practises are taken into account.

FDev are trying to improve the situation by selecting bubbles/instances/P2P network sessions clients join by a number of factors e.g. geographical location, connection health etc. and timing out to your own "instance/P2P network" if those parameters are not met. Whilst this solves the spinning ship SC exit wobbling issues in Alpha and PB, it also means that it sometimes is too aggressive and stops people from joining together who want to be in the same session. Tuning to find the right balance is what FDev are working on and I expect to see improvements, but in all likelihood I doubt that Australian players are going to be mixing with Europeans etc. or even US based players in some cases, just because the internet, rather than the code, doesn't support it.

 

[Fly_Mario]

I dunno, seems a lot of people want them to create a game they were not intending to design.

Eve would lock down sectors sometimes if too many people were in. You have to request if there is to be a big battle so they can shift the load and even in that it would present terrible lag. Anyone remember "Burn Jita"?

Even if they did decide to switch the game to a subscription basis and somehow managed to let all of us into a sector, there are what 400 billion of them? Even at that rate finding PVP might not be as easy as you think.

I will admit however, I was dis-appointed about this whole solo vs bunching everyone together, I have learned to accept the design as it is.

If any of you have been involved in Eve fleet roaming... Imagine that in this game... How many weeks would you have to travel to find something interesting to attack.

 

[GB Paralympian]

Have only recently started flying with friends, but the last 2 nights (of 2 nights!) were fine. I do have one question though:

3 Players A,B,C

A is friends with B but has blocked C (work with me on this)

B is friends with both A and B

How will the instancing work that connundrum out - if B is flying with both A and C, will A see C?

 

[Carcharodon]

Have only recently started flying with friends, but the last 2 nights (of 2 nights!) were fine. I do have one question though:

3 Players A,B,C

A is friends with B but has blocked C (work with me on this)

B is friends with both A and B

How will the instancing work that connundrum out - if B is flying with both A and C, will A see C?

There's a reduced chance C will be instanced with you & B in that case. If they are you should be able to see each other but they won't be able to chat to you etc. though as they're ignored. See http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6300 for more details.

 

[GB Paralympian]

There's a reduced chance C will be instanced with you & B in that case. If they are you should be able to see each other but they won't be able to chat to you etc. though as they're ignored. See http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6300 for more details.

ak ok, cheers!

 

[Kewbie]

3 Players A,B,C

A is friends with B but has blocked C (work with me on this)

B is friends with both A and B

How will the instancing work that connundrum out - if B is flying with both A and C, will A see C?

Currently, you can have instances where player B could see player A & C, while players A & C could only see player B.

Happened to my group when one had a link issue with another. It results in funny glitchy situations where player B could see players A & C chip right into each other.

 

[natte hond]

instancing still not fixed in ED

Currently, you can have instances where player B could see player A & C, while players A & C could only see player B.

Happened to my group when one had a link issue with another. It results in funny glitchy situations where player B could see players A & C chip right into each other.

Now wile its after release and four months later this is still happening.
is this ever going to be fixed ?
Ive seen no builds that had this working entirely.
meanwhile I do not see allot of post of players who are having problems with this.
at first I though it must be my connection but that cannot be.
I have a very low ping and 200 down and 10 up.
the most players Ive seen together is 17 far more than most of you have seen I'm sure.
but still some players just seem to be always invisible to me.

I think most players are not even aware of this problem.
so test this out.