No client can be trusted to arbitrate. If the instance host is able to unilaterally dictate the outcome of any encounter it would be exploitable. All clients need to agree on the events, if one is disconnected they clearly cannot agree on what happened after the disconnect.
What would really make a difference: the client-server model
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No client can be trusted to arbitrate. If the instance host is able to unilaterally dictate the outcome of any encounter it would be exploitable. All clients need to agree on the events, if one is disconnected they clearly cannot agree on what happened after the disconnect.
Already done... otherwise I would have stopped playing long ago. Would still be nice, if the rampant cheating was taken care of.
Nope, it's not a small issue... it's plain cheating, and that's something which cannot be tolerated in any online game.
It could definetely solve the combat logging problem, though.
If you ever followed an NPC high wake you kind of have the short time persistence there. Adding them to the server? Well, there is the lave radio sidewinder, which is also a kind of persistent NPC example. see? p2p can have them, and ED has them.
You are underestimating the PVE combat logging by far too much. Go to a RES, kill as much as you can and right before you are about to die, hard-wire disconnect from the server and login again, you will have 100% hull, all your ammo etc there.
CL is cheating no matter how many people complains.
I fully support the OP. Perhaps a manageable transition would be to limit the client servers to CGs, Thargoid warfronts, or very popular systems (Founder's for example). There are many examples of pvp and wvw client instancing out there. Yes there are exploits, bots, and hacks with clients, but they are a bit easier to detect - and watching someone get banned in real time through some sort of game animation is joyous epic fun.
Not this thread here, please.
First of all, persistence has little to do with networking model. Way NPCs are 'transfered' between hosts who support peer to peer sessions you can as much persistence as you want - for you locally. Issue however is that you have to switch between modes and have to carry NPCs over which becomes tricky very quickly. But it is possible. It is a lot of work.
No game offers world wide persistent NPCs (proper NPCs, not mobs).
" - Random, RNG-generated spawning of USSs"
Nothing to do with server/client. It is not random. It is context, background generated. It still will be random in a way that game wants something to discover for each player.
" - Instancing problems"
Server/client system still will be instanced. No real time game can have huge shard games without instancing. Instancing problems are down to code and people having bad internet connections.
" - Combat Logging"
Not solving this one either.
but you guys know ED is working both ways p2p and client-server way, right? all transactional events go through the server, I don't really see how client-server only would make this great difference you guys talk about.
Except they are. FD clearly trusts them and player machines host NPCs, not some server.
Question is how big this trust can be. But certainly trust is there.
None of these questions causes issues for peer to peer system. You will trade off one type lag or rubber banding with other type. Peer to peer is a bit complex system yes, but people really don't understand gains of such system - and only one of them is cost.
Have you played Guild Wars 2 or Elderscrolls online?
I absolutely have been in instances with numbers approaching 100 players in those games with very complicated graphics, unique skins for every player, sophisticated particle effects, combo fields, damage values (of multiple types), names, states, etc. all displayed in real time with twitch based combat mechanics and experienced zero lag or rubber banding. Suggesting you have the same instancing problems with client server as p2p is just not supported by game play evidence.
They aren't, the transaction server handles that (noting the event, not hosting the actual NPCs). We also have the watchdog & other stuff to close the more obvious loopholes. Having the instance host arbitrate would be an obvious loophole open to exploitation. We don't want to make the problem worse
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It would be nice but cheaters are going to cheat one way or another and there's very little you can do to stop them except to ignore them and play your own game.
No, it really is a small issue. It's the talking it up that is the problem. The only person that gets cheated in Elite is the person doing the cheating.
Possibly, but any proposed "solution" that leaves the system with a bigger problem is no solution at all. Here's a demonstration. Shut down the game completely. That's it, no more Elite. Stopped the combat logging problem right there. Definitely. Cannot possibly happen anymore. Permanent solution, right?
But....
The problem is now that you don't have Elite to play any more. Shutting down the game is not a solution.
Extreme example, yes, but a useful demonstration.
Very relevant point that. The real issue with costs in switching away from the P2P model isn't the initial development time spent on reworking the code (although that would no doubt be significant in itself) it's the fact that they have to either buy the physical hardware (the cost of which would be included in the accounts over a number of years) and also absorb the non-trivial associated running and maintenance costs, or they could rent which avoids the capital expenditure but increases the ongoing costs.
Those costs are there forever i.e. for the whole lifespan of the game.
Increased costs aren't a bad thing in and of themselves, as long as there is sufficient income to cover them. That's where the problem may arise because although I have approaching 3,000 hours in this game and have no plans to stop playing it any time soon, the last time FDev sold me a game was in December 2015 when I pre-ordered Horizons.
Sure I've bought entirely optional paintjobs since then but in terms of money spent on the game and updates, which is the only guaranteed income they have from someone who requires access to the server to play the game, is the money paid for the game itself. In my case that's £17.99 for the base game (bought 25 September 2015) and £29.99 for Horizons (bought 10 December 2015).
Firstly, that's only £47.98 in total to play the game from September 2015 to February 2018, which works out at about £1.60 per month. Compare that to (for example) an Eve subscription, which even on a 12 month package works out at £7.50 per month and you have one issue right away. It's not the biggest one though; for that you need to look at the dates again.
My spending has been heavily front-loaded because although I've played for 30 months, I spent all of the money that I needed to spend in order to do so within the first four months. It's over two years since I paid a penny just to access the game and from the perspective of the company accounts, that means that after the accounting year in which I spent my £47.98, the income they have received from me to set against the increased costs that would have been incurred in providing a full client/server model is nil.
Based on what they've told us so far, the additional income they could anticipate from me between now and December 2018 is also nil because although there may be some additional paid content coming during 'Beyond' there is no indication that it will be a required purchase to continue playing and as long as I'm playing I'm using server bandwidth. Strictly we shouldn't even be including the £29.99 I paid for Horizons in the figures because that also wasn't a required purchase - strip that out and the minimum spend I actually needed to make to play the game from September 2015 to December 2018 would be the £17.99 I paid for the base game.
There isn't a game company on Earth that could afford to operate that business model. As such, there are only really two options if a change away from P2P was to be made. One is to make updates far more frequent and to charge for all of them and even then they still wouldn't be getting any additional revenue from LEP holders. The other would be a subscription. A subscription would likely see the number of active players drop off a cliff because although someone who plays for four hours a day may consider it to be worthwhile, someone who plays for four hours a week probably wouldn't and someone who plays for four hours a month wouldn't even consider it.
That's without even getting into the fact that charging a subscription for content delivered at the pace of Season 2 would be an interesting proposition commercially. The pacing of Beyond looks to be more in line with what you would expect, but a lot of Beyond is based around reworking existing content which diminishes its value as a motivator for paying a sub. Ramping up the amount of content and the delivery timetable inherently increases costs because dev hours don't just appear, you have to pay for them, which increases the costs still further and starts another iteration of the cycle.
I really don't see this game as ever being commercially viable running a subscription model. Maybe it could have been if it had been set up that way from day one but after three years that horse has bolted long ago.
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oh wow, really we are going to the semantics? ok. let me reword it:
CL is NOT a small problem of a small vocal minority one should just get over it and let it go. "The problem with combat logging is that a small vocal minority of people just can't get over it", no sir, this is not the problem.
Lies! Everyone knows that when a player combats logs in PvE, a cute harmless kitten dies somewhere back in the real world.
I believe CLogging (and other less well defined cheating) to be the most important, most urgent outstanding issue with the game. And I don't see changing to a client/server model as a worthwhile solution when there are simpler solutions available.
However IME the community in general does not see it as a priority at all.
Seriously, do you really have a problem with English?
At what point in my post did I say that combat logging was not cheating? That has nothing to do with semantics.
My opinion based on reading the posts about combat logging on this forum since I joined is that it is a small problem posted by a vocal minority of players. Actually, that might be wrong. It's a vocal minority of posters on the forum, there's not much to indicate that any of them play Elite, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt even though some of them have admitted that they do not play, or don't play anymore.
Still, the same people keep on popping up post after post saying the same thing about how big problem it is. Now, if there were a lot of different people posting about the problems of combat logging then I would agree but there do not seem to be that many. So, a minority and they are certainly vociferous. Some of them might even be called rabid and insulting. But that's another matter entirely.
We agree in that.
Take a tea, seriously, I reworded my post to specifically change and remove the 'cheating' word and you still keep arguing about it, oh and yes, I'm not a native english speaker, does it also offend anyone now?
Your impression on the forum doesn't add or remove weight to how big the CL problem is in ED, so being it in open PVP or PVE in solo.
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