What would really make a difference: the client-server model

[TheSynopticVision]

Here's a short list of issues we often complain about:

- Lack of persistent NPCs
- Random, RNG-generated spawning of USSs
- Instancing problems
- Combat Logging

My guess is that a lot of these issues would be either resolved or made much easier to resolve if Elite was to ever abandon the P2P architecture, in favour of a client-server model.

It is my guess that the P2P solution was an obvious choice at the time of the Kickstarter, when Frontier was still a "small indie developer", and the game (and its future) was still at an hypothetical stage, since going for P2P is a good way to cut costs.

But now, with Frontier growing into a major AAA developer (and doing very well financially) and Elite being a well-known and fairly healthy game with a large user-base, is it reasonable for us to hope that they'll ever decide to migrate to a proper client-server model?

Yesterday I was trying to instance with some 6/7 other players. It took several attempts and over 30 minutes to get everyone in the same instance. With the forthcoming focused feedback forum dedicated to Squadrons (a feature for which -- I assume -- good instancing will be an absolute necessity), would it not be a good time for us to try and lobby for dedicated servers? Do you reckon there is a chance that they'll ever consider it?

 

[Patrick_68000]

I wonder that it would be the amount of work to move to a client / server model ?

 

[TheSynopticVision]

I wonder that it would be the amount of work to move to a client / server model ?

Yes well, of course it would be a lot of work for the servers team and an extra cost for the company to rent servers. But well, it looks like they could afford it now...

 

[Koen]

Perhaps in Elite: Deadly, with a monthly subscription?

Yesterday I was trying to instance with some 6/7 other players. It took several attempts and over 30 minutes to get everyone in the same instance. With the forthcoming focused feedback forum dedicated to Squadrons (a feature for which -- I assume -- good instancing will be an absolute necessity), would it not be a good time for us to try and lobby for dedicated servers? Do you reckon there is a chance that they'll ever consider it?

I'd like a model where Frontier provides servers which can be rented by groups of players who can then set their own policies on those.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Yes well, of course it would be a lot of work for the servers team and an extra cost for the company to rent servers. But well, it looks like they could afford it now...

Yes, but the rewriting of the code (or its adaptation) is it only possible ?

 

[Imo]

You are right. I already reported Cmdr Frontier Developments for logging me off during combat again and again. That is not accepable. [mad]

 

[xondk]

Here's a short list of issues we often complain about:

- Lack of persistent NPCs
- Random, RNG-generated spawning of USSs
- Instancing problems
- Combat Logging

My guess is that a lot of these issues would be either resolved or made much easier to resolve if Elite was to ever abandon the P2P architecture, in favour of a client-server model.

It is my guess that the P2P solution was an obvious choice at the time of the Kickstarter, when Frontier was still a "small indie developer", and the game (and its future) was still at an hypothetical stage, since going for P2P is a good way to cut costs.

But now, with Frontier growing into a major AAA developer (and doing very well financially) and Elite being a well-known and fairly healthy game with a large user-base, is it reasonable for us to hope that they'll ever decide to migrate to a proper client-server model?

Yesterday I was trying to instance with some 6/7 other players. It took several attempts and over 30 minutes to get everyone in the same instance. With the forthcoming focused feedback forum dedicated to Squadrons (a feature for which -- I assume -- good instancing will be an absolute necessity), would it not be a good time for us to try and lobby for dedicated servers? Do you reckon there is a chance that they'll ever consider it?

Ok this really needs to be cleared up.

- Persistent NPC's: can be done regardless of server model, by simply communicating the relevant info.
- random generation: has absolutely nothing to do with the server model, there are plenty of serverside games based on RNG, its a gameplay element nothing server related.
- Instancing: while this maybe would be fixed, the problem is also that servers do not have infinitive capacity, so they will end up with a limited number of players per server, so it will give similar issues with people not being able to find 'everyone' or maybe server is full so you can't join your friends, servers are not without limitations, and come at a cost, is that cost worth it?
- Combat logging: This is the only thing of what you mention that would likely be fixed, and the big question is, is it actually an issue? if someone combat logged you've already won? laugh at those that combat log, instead of getting upset and basically giving them a win? what are they going to brag about, that you didn't 'kill' them? when they resorted to turning off computer/network or similar?

I wonder that it would be the amount of work to move to a client / server model ?

P2P itself is fairly easy to migrate towards that, but servers will add a server cost, and how will that be covered?

 

[TheSynopticVision]

Ok this really needs to be cleared up.

- Persistent NPC's: can be done regardless of server model, by simply communicating the relevant info.
- random generation: has absolutely nothing to do with the server model, there are plenty of serverside games based on RNG, its a gameplay element nothing server related.
- Instancing: while this maybe would be fixed, the problem is also that servers do not have infinitive capacity, so they will end up with a limited number of players per server, so it will give similar issues with people not being able to find 'everyone' or maybe server is full so you can't join your friends, servers are not without limitations, and come at a cost, is that cost worth it?
- Combat logging: This is the only thing of what you mention that would likely be fixed, and the big question is, is it actually an issue? if someone combat logged you've already won? laugh at those that combat log, instead of getting upset and basically giving them a win? what are they going to brag about, that you didn't 'kill' them? when they resorted to turning off computer/network or similar?


P2P itself is fairly easy to migrate towards that, but servers will add a server cost, and how will that be covered?

You might be right here, but I think that there are several other less-than-intuitive issues that would be somewhat ameliorated by a server-client model. As for "how will that be covered", well, as I said above, Frontier is doing pretty well financially, and will do much better after JWE comes out this summer. I understand that it can be considered a superfluous expense now ("they are playing the game anyway, who cares"), but still I don't think that "we cannot afford it" can be an answer anymore.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

it doesn't need to switch to client2server totally
the server just needs to take over a little bit more work then it does now, (persistant npcs)

and in very high traffic systems it should switch dynamically to C2S, so clients do not need to communicate with each other.
so you don't need millions of persistant server instances, just a few hundred where player traffic demands it.

and yes, combat logging is also such a situation.
if the server gets the signal that player combat each other, it could take over the instance and as such keep combat logging ships in it.
the peer2peer dilemma that prevents any reasonable and fair solutions to that issue would then not exist anymore.

 

[Surprised Brony]

I've seen a few games move from P2P to client-server. It is very possible, but might only marginally help instancing. It won't magically make it all better. If someone's connection can hardly communicate with others, it'll hardly communicate to a server as well. Everything else is fixable without the need for dedicated servers.

Still, it'll help connections that only have problems with each other, but that's not always the problem.

 

[Shadowdancer]

- Instancing problems

Call your ISP today and tell them to suck less.

- Combat Logging

How would that be helped in any way?

 

[Wolf Starslayer]

Not keen on the idea of severs for a couple of reasons:

1 Don't want to pay a monthly sub.

2 No guarantee a server would improve connectivity issues in fact may worsen issues for the many. You were attempting a small instance and kept losing people for a while but it only affected small group where as too much traffic in a client-server model would likely crash a node dropping many more players from connection.

3 Time-dilation is something I would hate to see in busy area's and would ruin any idea of 'fleet battles' some folk seem to have ( Eve couldn't even manage moderate sized battles without time-dilation and it would effect this flight-fight model far more than Eve's point and click management of ships).

 

[Arthur Shappey]

Perhaps FDev should have had the spine to go for client-server originally, for a monthly fee - and it would almost certainly require some for of subscription service. All the life-time buyers would get a free pass (and therefore actually get their value).

BUT would enough players subscribe? Would £2 or £3/month be palatable? What about all the "players" on this forum who claim not to have touched the game for months? What happens if you skipped your subscription for a month or two? Would you lose your character?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Here's a short list of issues we often complain about:

- Lack of persistent NPCs
- Random, RNG-generated spawning of USSs
- Instancing problems
- Combat Logging

My guess is that a lot of these issues would be either resolved or made much easier to resolve if Elite was to ever abandon the P2P architecture, in favour of a client-server model.

It is my guess that the P2P solution was an obvious choice at the time of the Kickstarter, when Frontier was still a "small indie developer", and the game (and its future) was still at an hypothetical stage, since going for P2P is a good way to cut costs.

But now, with Frontier growing into a major AAA developer (and doing very well financially) and Elite being a well-known and fairly healthy game with a large user-base, is it reasonable for us to hope that they'll ever decide to migrate to a proper client-server model?

Yesterday I was trying to instance with some 6/7 other players. It took several attempts and over 30 minutes to get everyone in the same instance. With the forthcoming focused feedback forum dedicated to Squadrons (a feature for which -- I assume -- good instancing will be an absolute necessity), would it not be a good time for us to try and lobby for dedicated servers? Do you reckon there is a chance that they'll ever consider it?

Persistent NPCs can be done with a peer to peer system.

USS's has nothing to do with a peer to peer system.

You can get instancing issues with client to server games too.

Yes it could help with combat logging, but I can't see that as a major issue anyway.

 

[CMDR Cylixx]

Persistent NPCs can be done with a peer to peer system.

"Can", haven't. Are not.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

"Can", haven't. Are not.

They can be, they just haven't done it yet. Also client server system also has loads of other issues that a Peer to Peer system won't or lessons.

Basically there are pros and cons of both systems.

 

[varonica]

You might be right here, but I think that there are several other less-than-intuitive issues that would be somewhat ameliorated by a server-client model. As for "how will that be covered", well, as I said above, Frontier is doing pretty well financially, and will do much better after JWE comes out this summer. I understand that it can be considered a superfluous expense now ("they are playing the game anyway, who cares"), but still I don't think that "we cannot afford it" can be an answer anymore.

Hang on are you actually suggesting they use the profit from another successful game to support spending more money on ED to go client server? It wasn't long ago I was reading a thread complaining because money being made on ED was being spent on developing other titles. Each title needs to stand as a successful product in itself. Ok that's probably not what you are suggesting, but it sure comes across like it.

I'm not sure what percentage of game revenue is profit, and how much of that would be chewed up going client/server, and I don't know if it would be worth it to address the perceived problems, but one thing it might very well do though is resolve the combat logging problem because if they went client/server they could forget all about this C&P stuff and just have dedicated PvE and PvP servers. That way no PvE players would have to CL to get away from massively superior and overpowered gank tanks, and of course no PvP player would ever CL against another PvP player....right?..............right?

 

[RamirezKurita]

Implementing little things like persistent NPCs doesn't require a full server model, it can still be kept as the P2P design while the servers just keep track of important points. Not even all NPCs need to be persistent, just ones we have directly interacted with. Alternatively, our clients can just be much smarter about also simulating stuff outside our instance ourselves, but I don't know how nicely that will play with the multiplayer side of things.

 

[Crank Larson]

Of course, instead of posting a new thread about this oft raised topic, you could search the forums for the previous discussions to realise that client-server is never going to happen. More to the point, it wouldn't necessarily solve the problems you think it will. Persistent NPCs don't need a particular architecture, just as random USSs don't.

 

[kilvenny]

People don't want to buy expansions, so why would they want a subscription model which is what client server would need. It doesn't matter whether FD are a AAA developer or not, it's about profit. Committing to client server would add a heavy on going cost for limited benefit and would almost inevitably force a subscription model. My personal take is that a client server subscription model would kill the game in two years. What I see is a lot of players who play, get bored and come back and who want a low cost base. I don't think I have ever seen a game where people complain so much about the cost of a game compared to the amount of hours they have played it for. Due to the grind you get burn out, if you get burn out subscription models are not a great idea.

I suspect ED will eventually go to a subscription model to pay for the galaxy and match making servers.

Art the end of the day most of the issues and limitations come down to long ping times or poor network speeds on the clients.