Message to FD from everyone in Open. Please stop everything and fix instancing/matchmaking first.

[Surly_Badger]

There is a physical (hardware) limit of 32 simultaneous connections with Peer 2 Peer networking. This may change in the future (as hardware manufacturers see a demand for a higher numbers).

What on earth "hardware" imposes this limit? We are talking TCP/IP networking here, right? There's kernel-level limits on the number of connected sockets you can have but it's on the order of thousands. With UDP it's likewise, but the limit is based on the size of the file descriptor table. More to the point, back in the late 1980s I was coding systems that regularly used hundreds (on the order of 250-500) of active connections at a time - have you ever heard of a "firewall"? Yeah, nowadays those munch tens of thousands of connections with no problem at all.

There is no networking hardware limit I am aware of, let alone one as low as 32. Perhaps there is some badly coded gunk in the guts of some P2P library but that's just an example of crappy coding, not a limitation.

The only problem I can imagine would limit the number of connections that could be done simultaneously would be the output packet queue on some network cards; but that can be resolved in higher level software (and by not using UDP). Again... Just bad programming. If that's really an issue with Elite, my respect for Frontier's coders just dropped a couple notches, to the point where I'd be shocked that they managed to code Elite at all, being such n00bs.

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[Sysmon]

AS for the polls and any form of democracy on this forums it is non-existent. FD is afraid of the vox populi. Moderators rule with the Iron fist reminiscent of the Inquisition while hackers and cheaters are safeguarded.

Why would FD care about the popular voice on the forum? They are developing the game, we are not. That is the one major issue with any kind of crowd-funding; it seems like everybody feels entitled in having a say on how the game ends up. We paid them to realise THEIR dream of the game. Not ours. We can disagree with them, but they don't have to listen.

S

 

[MJC]

We paid them to realise THEIR dream of the game. Not ours.

Dream? Seems more like a nightmare to me.

Good night from a KS backer. I'll be having sweet dreams not thinking about this game.

FD will have their wake up call soon.

 

[Derthek]

[redacted]

 

[Alonzo Solace]

I'd like to add my hat in the ring as someone who strongly thinks FD should address the networking issues as soon as they can. The current experiences are pretty crappy (detailed above) and certainly don't make space feel as heavily populated as it should. That's a shame, because it's a popular game and it would be great to see other players more often.

I'm not sure why the decision was originally made to make this P2P architecture. I guess it gives global reach (in theory) with less expense to Frontier. But the game is a success now, so surely the right thing would be to improve players' experience?

Seems to me that some kind of "supernode" mechanism would be the easiest fix. Frontier hosts clusters of servers in various locations geographically (maybe only popular geographies to begin with) and they run dedicated instances. Maybe we still have a 32 player limit, but the instances recycle less often so there's a higher chance of players finding each other. The client code is largely unchanged -- instead of the central server creating a P2P player hosted instance, it directs the player to a centrally managed one.

I also think you'll need to optimize your network code to achieve this. Last night in supercruise with a 4-player wing and maybe a dozen NPCs I saw the in-game network indicator spiking at 40 KB/sec. If the game requires 320 KB/sec for a 32-player instance, that's quite a lot to ask.

I wondered if the XBox One release would help or hinder, and although XBone supports P2P, I found this gem in a press release from 2013:

There's nothing that showcases the power of the cloud quite like Xbox One, and multiplayer gaming is where that power really takes off. With over 300,000 servers, Xbox Live is more impressive than it's ever been, and games like Forza 5 are truly taking advantage of this by using the cloud to build AI with human intelligence.
With server-based gaming, not only can you have more players in on the action but everything is much more reliable. None of the interruptions and problems you get with peer-to-peer gameplay - just smooth sailing all the way.

 

[medwyn]

Why would FD care about the popular voice on the forum? They are developing the game, we are not. That is the one major issue with any kind of crowd-funding; it seems like everybody feels entitled in having a say on how the game ends up. We paid them to realise THEIR dream of the game. Not ours. We can disagree with them, but they don't have to listen.

S

LOL
This made me laugh and hardly can stop. Tell me there's a thargoid serum in your blood which makes you saying these