28 replies to this topic

[Gierling]

There was a question about the possibility of setting up Servers for the Euro and Australian players during the townhall. In which Russ expressed some fear that the matchmaker would not work if you split the server populations.

This can be easily circumvented as a problem by allowing dedicated servers ala earlier MW titles.

We can avoid the matchmaker problem by just letting people join the servers they want and play with the people they want to.

[El Bandito]

But then I will miss killing the Aussies.

EU server is fine, as it will allow me to have lower ping, but dividing the community even further is not ideal for current level of population.

[EgoSlayer]

Gierling, on 08 September 2014 - 06:53 PM, said:

There was a question about the possibility of setting up Servers for the Euro and Australian players during the townhall. In which Russ expressed some fear that the matchmaker would not work if you split the server populations.

This can be easily circumvented as a problem by allowing dedicated servers ala earlier MW titles.

We can avoid the matchmaker problem by just letting people join the servers they want and play with the people they want to.

I am not sure you understand the issue - the match maker not working would be caused by too small a player base to create the matches from.

As to (I assume you mean private) dedicated servers - PGI is not going to release their back-end server code for people to run their own servers. Not going to happen - they would get no money.

[Lily from animove]

Gierling, on 08 September 2014 - 06:53 PM, said:

There was a question about the possibility of setting up Servers for the Euro and Australian players during the townhall. In which Russ expressed some fear that the matchmaker would not work if you split the server populations.

This can be easily circumvented as a problem by allowing dedicated servers ala earlier MW titles.

We can avoid the matchmaker problem by just letting people join the servers they want and play with the people they want to.

Well, Rus sis right here, but why splitting the population?
They shoudl think in new ways.

set up a match-server in the west US, and one in EU. Then initiate the MM o primarily trying to match people of the same region/latency. If not enough are available, create a match with cross region queuend people.

There is no need to split population, the mechlab can be ona central server for everyone, and matches will then just take place on any of the servers. Priorising to keep the latency low for people near the server. If population at offtimes is too low, let them play on the US east again.

I mean team fortress 2 has a same model, your laodout is in the steam cloud. And you play on dedicated servers close to you.
Instead of dedicated servers, PGI would just run some unlocalised serverclusters. There is rarely a real need for the "mechlab server" to be on the same server where the match takes place.

[FlipOver]

Well, its always funny for me in a 140 ping to find enemies with 10 (!!!) ping.
Yeah, it's going to be a funny fight when that enemy finds me, and I can't imagine how it is with people with pings over 250.

Something needs to be done about this.

[Lynx7725]

Lily from animove, on 09 September 2014 - 01:06 AM, said:

set up a match-server in the west US, and one in EU. Then initiate the MM o primarily trying to match people of the same region/latency. If not enough are available, create a match with cross region queuend people.

Interesting concept. You do know that latency is based on route from requester source to destination and not distance, right? So if you have your Maggie (matchmaking) server, and a EU and a NA server, Maggie have to know the latency of the requester to both the EU and NA server, which may not be his latency to Maggie. Since each requester can have a different route to the server, it can get rather interesting.

Not impossible, just interesting.

[drinniol]

FlipOver, on 09 September 2014 - 01:09 AM, said:

Well, its always funny for me in a 140 ping to find enemies with 10 (!!!) ping.
Yeah, it's going to be a funny fight when that enemy finds me, and I can't imagine how it is with people with pings over 250.

Something needs to be done about this.

There was. Host state rewind. 130ms is just over half the average human reaction time, so unless you stumble into his crosshairs from behind a building or something the impact is negligible. To be frank MWO isn't a game where low ping gives an advantage.

[Lily from animove]

Lynx7725, on 09 September 2014 - 01:14 AM, said:

[/size]
Interesting concept. You do know that latency is based on route from requester source to destination and not distance, right? So if you have your Maggie (matchmaking) server, and a EU and a NA server, Maggie have to know the latency of the requester to both the EU and NA server, which may not be his latency to Maggie. Since each requester can have a different route to the server, it can get rather interesting.

Not impossible, just interesting.

by physical and regular connection an EU inhabitant would nearly always have a lower latency to an EU server than to an US server. Except routing would be totally crappy at all.
The client only would need to ping all the servers available, and send this to the MM. Then the MM would know to which server he has the lowest latency. And this will in nearly all cases be closets one.

drinniol, on 09 September 2014 - 01:20 AM, said:

There was. Host state rewind. 130ms is just over half the average human reaction time, so unless you stumble into his crosshairs from behind a building or something the impact is negligible. To be frank MWO isn't a game where low ping gives an advantage.

it's not negliable, two people meet each other suddenly, and the one unlaoding his damage first will probably have god bunch of advatanage. Especially high damage builds will make a difference here. And especially vs lights this is lot of a difference. It is definately a difference, but its not unplyable or such.

[Fooooo]

What about setting up say 2 or 3 servers in aus (ok probably more ) and a ton in euro (well whatever it will support.)

BUT

Give the MM a new function in that it can now choose a server based on the players locations in the match. (you may also have to make it "prefer" trying to match same region players to give the servers enough use)

IE.

If 22 of 24 players selected for the match are in australia, then the australian server is used as the host.
2 players from outside aus are going to be playing on an aus server then. (and basically experience what we experience already.....)

So im not sure it would be terrible if done like that (as it restricts costs as your not trying to host a ton of oceania servers and restrict the MM to only that region by ppl ticking oceania only etc) as the times when the MM would pick those servers would only generally be in oceania prime time.

(same with if they did a euro one, if not enough euros are on then US servers will be where most euros / oceania end up etc etc)


For private matches this should probably happen anyway, have a few servers in aus / oceania that come online when a group of ppl in oceania want to start a private match etc, or let the host select preferd etc.

Edited by Fooooo, 09 September 2014 - 03:09 AM.

[Motroid]

EU servers now!
You promised them when you were trying to sell your Founder packs. It was the most important info for me since i know that realtime online games are not to be taken serious with triple digit pings from all over the world. EU servers on release made me buy this founders pack and sucked me in....
This is no minor issue. In fact it is next to fraud.
It's like preordering a mustang muscle car and getting delivered a hilux pickup. This is pathetic. If your playerbase doesn't allow for splitting servers due to too little players then release on steam or something else....but companies need to stick to their promises.
That companies still get trough with things like this is beyond my understanding.....

[N0MAD]

El Bandito, on 08 September 2014 - 07:00 PM, said:

But then I will miss killing the Aussies.

EU server is fine, as it will allow me to have lower ping, but dividing the community even further is not ideal for current level of population.

Im led to believe that we already have MWO being hosted in EU, or at the very least being broadcast from there...

[Savage Wolf]

Lily from animove, on 09 September 2014 - 01:06 AM, said:

set up a match-server in the west US, and one in EU. Then initiate the MM o primarily trying to match people of the same region/latency. If not enough are available, create a match with cross region queuend people.

Something like that would be incredibly difficult to construct in any way that would actually improve the experience and I'm not even sure that it can be done.
And if it was possible and achievable then someone would a lot more resources and manpower would have already done this. There are so many MOBAs and MMOs out there with the same problem and yet they went for the lot simpler approach of just making another server.
And if they have more than one server it's only because their population is big enough to support that.

[Lily from animove]

Savage Wolf, on 09 September 2014 - 03:51 AM, said:

Something like that would be incredibly difficult to construct in any way that would actually improve the experience and I'm not even sure that it can be done.
And if it was possible and achievable then someone would a lot more resources and manpower would have already done this. There are so many MOBAs and MMOs out there with the same problem and yet they went for the lot simpler approach of just making another server.
And if they have more than one server it's only because their population is big enough to support that.

Well, those MMO's do it mostly for performance reaons. MMO's are item heavy games, loot and such, inventory access and such. And so have a lot heavier database usage. But MWO basically only uses the database when you are in the mechlab and at the beginning of the game when you would transmit your Mechinfo to the loca server the instanced mission takes place. And at the end for delivering the results abck to the Database. And because of those instanced mission, no giant servers are neaded running a whole consistent world. It's just a lot small battlefields. So thousends of players acting in the same world accessing the database + calculating thousends of KI controlled Mobs is a completely different architecture thats required. TF2 is the aboslute counter example that shows it does work. Valve just doens't host servers, because why running servers when people pay for them? xD The only difference is, you manually choose the server.

[CharlieChap]

The problems with doing this don't really sound insurmountable....

1stly if the game plays better for people in a particular region , more people are likely to play it....

2ndly if the problem with a low population region is the matchmaker..change the matchmaker slightly for that region.....

3rdly Throttling up or down regional servers or turning them off at off peak times for low population places so as not to fragment the player base too much is a relatively simple , low tech option isn't it and again sidesteps the concern.

[Savage Wolf]

Lily from animove, on 09 September 2014 - 05:01 AM, said:

Well, those MMO's do it mostly for performance reaons. MMO's are item heavy games, loot and such, inventory access and such. And so have a lot heavier database usage. But MWO basically only uses the database when you are in the mechlab and at the beginning of the game when you would transmit your Mechinfo to the loca server the instanced mission takes place. And at the end for delivering the results abck to the Database. And because of those instanced mission, no giant servers are neaded running a whole consistent world. It's just a lot small battlefields. So thousends of players acting in the same world accessing the database + calculating thousends of KI controlled Mobs is a completely different architecture thats required. TF2 is the aboslute counter example that shows it does work. Valve just doens't host servers, because why running servers when people pay for them? xD The only difference is, you manually choose the server.

MWO is a hell of a lot more item heavy than TF2 and can easily compare to MMOs. There are more crit slots on a mech than there are item slots on a character in an MMO.
And don't forget that all the combat is also done on the server for anti-cheat reasons. If it could be done for MWO it would already have been done for League of Legends who have all the same problems.

[NextGame]

its too late for eu servers, as much as I would enjoy seeing my ping halved.

[nonnex]

No, when the whole community would be splitted too. I like to know the people who I'm playing MWO with, no matter where they live and not just one part of the community.

Yes, if the servers working as a cluster and we can have the better performance and one single universe together.

One single universe or notin'

[Zuesacoatl]

I feel bad for eu/aus players, but there is no way they are going to split the community. It was never promised during founders packs. It has always been stated that they will look into it but never promised.

[Solomon Ward]

I would love to have a better ping, but not at the cost of waiting an eternity for a match.

So a No from me with the current population.

[Lily from animove]

Savage Wolf, on 09 September 2014 - 05:19 AM, said:

MWO is a hell of a lot more item heavy than TF2 and can easily compare to MMOs.

? do you think every single item in a mech is transmitted? you transmit mechdata, which is probably only some short code like "dlkjch28349pcrzirh23poi4u10cu4n1p9cub41ü9b4ß972zuv5ß23vz" if even that long at all.

Quote

There are more crit slots on a mech than there are item slots on a character in an MMO.

This is totally wrong, I bet the todays standard MMO has more slots in a characters backpack than a mech has slots. When did you played an MMO last time?

Spoiler

And further than this, you only laod a mech data to the battlefield server. Thats all. Nothing that happens on the battlfield alters the database information of the mechs loadout, they will be in a runtime component. But in an MMO, everytime you loot something a databse connection is made altering the amount of your gold or backpack loadout.
Battle does not have any influence on the databse unless the databse is instantly altered with kills and stuff a person does. But this wouldn't be necessary, because you basically:

step 1: Matchmaker all 24 people to the server
step 2: transmit mechdata (which is a very small datastring)
step 3: let em battle
step 4: transmit the results at the end of a mech to the database.

This requires a minimum of databse transaction. And I guess a single character in any MMO playing for 15 minutes creates more databse alterations than a whole MWO battle.
The amount of database access compared to a classic MMO is negliable.

Quote

And don't forget that all the combat is also done on the server for anti-cheat reasons. If it could be done for MWO it would already have been done for League of Legends who have all the same problems.

And what has anticheat to do with IGP running one server in the US or mutliple battlefield calculating servers in different locations? NOTHING.

Edited by Lily from animove, 09 September 2014 - 05:45 AM.