16 replies to this topic

[Serpentbane]

I might have used the wrong description on the solution I’m suggesting here. P2P as I initially used seems to be all players computers are communicating with all players’ computers. This would rely less on one of the players computers, but I guess it would be a rather different solution than the existing one.

What I meant was Player side Hosting. Where a single computer of the 2 to 12 participating players computers takes the role as the host, instead of one of PGIs servers.
Sorry for this. I have Updated the original post and switched P2P hosting with Player side hosting.

So, I recently built a gaming rig for my 7yo kid who loves MWO. However, I quickly realized that there would be no playing MWO together. Obviously, he is not able to participate in the open matches, and even if I would buy both mech bays and mechs for him, I would not buy or use premium time to play 1vs1 with him.

I also have friends who could do with some training outside the open servers. But at this point they do not want to spend money on PT. I can't imagine PT is the first thing new players spend money on.

I do however realize why PGI is charging PT for private matches as hosting a game with two player is not very efficient as this also use server resources. Nevertheless, this option is also needed for the players that are not hard-core. Like new players training and parents with their youngsters.

Now, when I complain I also need a solution.

Many games uses Player side hosting. In short, instead of having dedicated servers with PGI one of the participating player’s computer take the role as the host. In general, I find dedicated servers to be the best solution for online gaming; however, this could be one area where Player side is a good option.

I suggest PGI let players choose to run dedicated servers with Premium time like today, with all the benefits for those servers in an online game. In addition, you could let people choose to use Player side hosting without Premium Time, with the potential downsides this brings. Playing with my kid(s), this would be sufficient.

Some argue this would take players away from the open online games, but I do not think it would. I could list some reasons why. Some of those may already apply, some do not.

- Players do not earn XP, pilot or mech.

- Players do not earn CB.

- Players do not rank up/down.

- No stats are saved.

- In short, no scores are saved.

In addition, Player side hosting have further downsides

- If hosting player quits, all players looses connection.

- The quality of the host is determined by the hosting players’ internet connection and computer.

- Playing on the host computer could give benefits, and there could be more desync between players.

- Only Quick drop maps available or other limits that would require PT.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think this would be a awful lot of work to do. It’s “just” about moving the hosting platform into the client, or have this as a client add on.
I think lots of people would appreciate this. Moreover, as I wrote I might not by PT for my kid. However, If I get to play I might actually buy in game stuff for him, like mech bays and mechs.

Edited by Serpentbane, 10 February 2016 - 12:26 PM.

[Khosumi]

I can't vote on your poll because there is no "No, this is a bad idea". Private matches don't pull that bad on server resources.

[Hawk_eye]

Ethak, on 09 February 2016 - 11:20 AM, said:

I can't vote on your poll because there is no "No, this is a bad idea". Private matches don't pull that bad on server resources.

Well, that was the reason people told the OP when he asked why he needed to have premium time for private matches when he asked in, don´t remember if General or New Player forum.

So either private matches are no burden to the servers and thus could easily be for free or they _do_ strain the servers and then PGI could enable P2P.

[Khosumi]

Antecursor Venatus, on 09 February 2016 - 11:32 AM, said:

So either private matches are no burden to the servers and thus could easily be for free or they _do_ strain the servers and then PGI could enable P2P.

They could be done for free.

[Hawk_eye]

Ethak, on 09 February 2016 - 11:48 AM, said:

They could be done for free.

That´s what I´d like the most too, but I also understand that even if it´s only a small burden on their servers it would cost them some money, thus enabling P2P sounds like a good solution.

Of course, enabling P2P also means PGI loses some control. As long as everyone can only play on their servers, they can have everything under control, once you enable P2P, people can do all kind of stuff (just imagine a good team of modders doing all the stuff PGI tells his player-base can´t be done )

[Pskonejott]

Russ stated in the last town hall that a 1v1 private match consumes an entire dedicated server, the same as a 12v12 match. So, any match, regardless of number of players consumes the same amount of server resources. This is why the premium requirement is there.

As for P2P, MWO does not use a P2P topology, it's server side authoritative. I have no idea what sort of server resources you'd need to run a MWO server, but I strongly suspect you'd have no chance of running the server on your gaming machine while running the client and playing at the same time.

Of course, if the MWO server was released into the wild it'd open all sorts of doors to setting up paid services in competition with PGI, hack in various things, change maps, change quirks, IS only servers, fork off CW from PGI with groups own views on what would be best for it etc.

In short it's one of those things that's never going to happen...

[Serpentbane]

Ethak, on 09 February 2016 - 11:20 AM, said:

I can't vote on your poll because there is no "No, this is a bad idea". Private matches don't pull that bad on server resources.

There you go, but do tell why you think this is a bad idea.

[Serpentbane]

Well, many games use P2P game hosting. This have some benefits for the developer, but also some challenges regarding player synchronization and stability etc. There are also some other downsides for the user, some of which I mentioned in my first post, and this is also why I prefer dedicated servers.

However, in a non competitive private training match, or playing with gamers not fit for open games, those downsides would matter less.

As other games host P2P while still working fairly well, I don’t see why this would not be the case with MWO. Even with a little more server side calculations, hosting MWO would not be all that much harder than hosting CoD or any other P2P hosted games. I would believe the biggest problem getting P2P hosting on private matches would be PGI placing resources on development of the hosting client.

We are all assuming and guessing here. Only PGI knows how much work this is, if it can be done. I see little point in us discussing this further. The point of this thread is to see if P2P is something people would like to have, and then PGI need to decide if they want to do.

Edited by Serpentbane, 10 February 2016 - 12:03 AM.

[Pskonejott]

Well, if you are talking about actually implementing a new P2P networking topology for MWO:

It would never replace the current server authoritative system. Look at the games that do it, or do hybrid systems, even games backed by hundreds of millions of dollars like BF4. Shooting through walls etc. The decision was made that MWO is server authoritative very early on in development, it's proved a very good choice for PGI, and they have spoken on this many times.

If this was governed by PGI and mods were prohibited, there is no real benefit at all from playing in a premium time to play P2P game. You get a lesser experience for your money.

So now we're looking at maintaining two systems, one of which is aimed at people that want to play offline and don't generate any income for PGI. This is a 6 or 7 figure piece of work by the way, It costs them something like $250k to create a single map in MWO. Look at how much money was spent on the MWO HSRW, they'd need to do it all again for any reasonable MWO P2P experience.

People wanting this or not is really a moot point, it's in no way feasible that it would ever happen unless there were financial incentives for PGI to do so, and the demand for the feature is so people do not have to buy premium time for a duplicate feature that is already in MWO.

Edited by Pskonejott, 10 February 2016 - 12:17 AM.

[Serpentbane]

Pskonejott, on 10 February 2016 - 12:16 AM, said:

Well, if you are talking about actually implementing a new P2P networking topology for MWO:

It would never replace the current server authoritative system. Look at the games that do it, or do hybrid systems, even games backed by hundreds of millions of dollars like BF4. Shooting through walls etc. The decision was made that MWO is server authoritative very early on in development, it's proved a very good choice for PGI, and they have spoken on this many times.

If this was governed by PGI and mods were prohibited, there is no real benefit at all from playing in a premium time to play P2P game. You get a lesser experience for your money.

So now we're looking at maintaining two systems, one of which is aimed at people that want to play offline and don't generate any income for PGI. This is a 6 or 7 figure piece of work by the way, It costs them something like $250k to create a single map in MWO. Look at how much money was spent on the MWO HSRW, they'd need to do it all again for any reasonable MWO P2P experience.

People wanting this or not is really a moot point, it's in no way feasible that it would ever happen unless there were financial incentives for PGI to do so, and the demand for the feature is so people do not have to buy premium time for a duplicate feature that is already in MWO.

First off I must say I might have used P2P wrong, I was thinking about Player side hosting. Instead of having all players computers communicating with all players computers like I now believe P2P hosting is, my suggestion as I described it is having one computer acting as server host for all players in the game. So, if this made people misunderstand, I’m sorry. Updating the post.

I never said it should replace dedicated servers. I even wrote that I think dedicated servers are the best solution. I also wrote that there are some development challenges regarding P2P hosting, although this is for the most part related to player desync and reliability related to host internet connection and system specs. If you read my initial post you can see me setting up both those points at the downsides of using the Player side hosting choice.

But PGI would not need to do any changes to any maps to implement Player side hosting for private matches. For this to work PGI only need to make a hosting client on the computer hosting the match that works in the same way as their own hosting servers, and then to point connected computers to this host rather than their own servers. All in all, this should be relatively easy to set up, it is after all well used solution used by many games.

So, who are using the private match functionality today? I would say experienced players, larger teams training. Or should I say more Hard Core players that already play this game a lot. There would be exceptions, I’m sure, but my guess would be this. Players who perhaps already use PT in the game.

There are however lots of people playing this game without buying PT. Some only play for free, some use lots of money on this game, but chooses not to use money on PT. I have 224 days banked PT myself, and I have used 55$ so far this year and I have no clue how much I have spent overall, it’s allot. But I’m not going to buy PT for my kid.

The PT for PM system means there are no real training grounds for new players not putting money into PT. There are no options for those who for reason X are not fit to play open online matches. Some of those who fail hard online could make use of private matches to get a hang of the game, and practice with more experienced players without getting a mouth full of led and a laser vomit up their arse during the first minute of every fight. I’d gladly use some of my time to help new players if they did a request on the forums.

Those people would benefit from a Player side hosted private match system, even if it have some glitches with player desyncs. Those would usually be milliseconds, fatal in CoD or BF, but doing some casual training in MWO it would mean nothing. Having the match just end if the host quits would also be ok, no need for host migration. Also, if need be, the player making the lobby could automatically become the host, no need to do player system evaluation to find the best host.

The more hard core players who use private matches today could still continue using the dedicated servers with PT, just as they do today, and avoid all potential issues related to the Player side hosting selection.

Edited by Serpentbane, 10 February 2016 - 10:32 AM.

[Jiyu Mononoke]

Peer to peer is a really good idea. Allows the resources to be absorbed by our systems more than PGI’s. I do understand that the system as a whole doesn't support it - however, the concept is what I like. If there was a way to feed it through the MWO servers, but utilize resources from our PC, kinda like an assist, then maybe it'd work - not sure of the tech stuff here.

In short, the more people you get interested and playing, the more they will spend money when they get good enough to warrant it. Giving players options encourages them to spend more time gaming, and those people will naturally want cooler toys, thus mech-packages, mc, premium time etc. become a better flowing product. There could also be a better usage of MC and premium time that enables players to use it more, thus buying it more. Example” I have almost 4,000 hours of banked premium time. I will probably never use it because there is no point in me activating a 30 day block, when I am usually lucky to get an hour a day/few days a week to play. In contrast, if I could activate 24 hours at a time, OR if that 30 day window only used hours that I was actively logged on to the UI, then I’d use it, and thus run out over time, and want to purchase more to level mechs or build MC. As it sits currently, there is just no incentive for me to use my premium time. I do however buy a mech here and there, and better play options would encourage more usage of all that stuff.

- So “YES” I am an advocate for free game play that allows me to train, coach, teach my friends – or to battle for positions, team and one vs. one practice etc. – those free things encourage me to spend more elsewhere.

Edited by Freebrth, 10 February 2016 - 10:50 AM.

[Pskonejott]

Really, what this boils down to is should PGI do a bunch of development work and release their server into the wild posing a huge security concern so groups less than 24 players do not need 2 players to spend 10 cents a day to host those matches (mc 25% sale and premium time purchased during a 50% off period).

Personally, 10 cents a day, meh. Less than $1 per week, meh. $3 per month, meh. $35 per year, meh, that's half of a AAA game. When you think about it , even if you only get 7 hours in a week, that's still 10 cents per hour and that's cheap entertainment. The gotcha with this argument is of course that buying PT at that rate does require a largish up front investment that newer players can't reasonably be expected to make in a F2P game, but again, that's only really valid for very small groups that have less than 2 invested players.

This is really just an artificial problem, there is no great need for players to host servers. PGI is a business and they need to make money to stay in business. Most of the arguments for this idea are along the lines of get people playing and let them do what they want and they'll purchase. My counter proposal is that PGI allow players to host private matches for some period after the purchase of a mech pack, with no other premium time benefits. Players make a purchase and as long as 2 in the group have purchased in some time frame they can play among themselves. Or even just create "Private Match Time" that's much cheaper than premium time but it allows you to kick off private matches. Still, we're talking about a cheaper alternative to a currently implemented feature requiring cents a day from 2 players in the group, whatever would be done would need thousands of groups willing to buy in to even remotely make it financially viable.

[Serpentbane]

Pskonejott, on 10 February 2016 - 08:48 PM, said:

Really, what this boils down to is should PGI do a bunch of development work and release their server into the wild posing a huge security concern so groups less than 24 players do not need 2 players to spend 10 cents a day to host those matches (mc 25% sale and premium time purchased during a 50% off period).

Personally, 10 cents a day, meh. Less than $1 per week, meh. $3 per month, meh. $35 per year, meh, that's half of a AAA game. When you think about it , even if you only get 7 hours in a week, that's still 10 cents per hour and that's cheap entertainment. The gotcha with this argument is of course that buying PT at that rate does require a largish up front investment that newer players can't reasonably be expected to make in a F2P game, but again, that's only really valid for very small groups that have less than 2 invested players.

This is really just an artificial problem, there is no great need for players to host servers. PGI is a business and they need to make money to stay in business. Most of the arguments for this idea are along the lines of get people playing and let them do what they want and they'll purchase. My counter proposal is that PGI allow players to host private matches for some period after the purchase of a mech pack, with no other premium time benefits. Players make a purchase and as long as 2 in the group have purchased in some time frame they can play among themselves. Or even just create "Private Match Time" that's much cheaper than premium time but it allows you to kick off private matches. Still, we're talking about a cheaper alternative to a currently implemented feature requiring cents a day from 2 players in the group, whatever would be done would need thousands of groups willing to buy in to even remotely make it financially viable.

Yes, it would need some development time, but it is impossible for us to say how much. Only PGI would know. However, Playerside hosting is nothing new, and it’s used in many games. I also cannot see them making a player side host would make a huge difference in security on the server side hosts, even if they play around with the local host.

It’s also not about anyone being cheap. I do as I wrote earlier have 224 days banked premium time. I have spent several hundred dollars on this game already, and 55$ so far this year. But, the 10 cents a day is only valid if you actually play several hours every day and time your purchases. Buying PT for my kid now, we would perhaps play alot some months,or just two hours a month other times. That’s 15$ per hour. If you spend two hours helping a new player get the hang of the game. Another 15$ per hour. Not to mention, you blow off 30 days worth of PT to do so.

Your world do not apply for all others. Many players do not buy or activate PT because they feel they don’t play enough to justify it. Had it been actual playtime this would have been a different discussion. Even then I would be reluctant to buy more PT when my banked time is emptied just to help new players in private matches. I do well enough ingame not to need the PT. CB and XP is not an issue for me. Neither is MC.

There are also lots of new players who could make use of private matches to train a little, either with other new players or more experienced players. Those new players are new to a game that is in fact very unforgiving. If you do wrong, you are punished. Read the forums, and especially the Steam forums. Lots of players complaining one balance, match making, and other factors. However, looking into those cases you’ll discover many of those being players not able to adjust to the game mechanics and dynamics.

Now, if you don’t get the hang of this game fast, it’s like running into a brick wall. How many times would you find that funny? If you don’t learn to climb the wall, you’ll most likely just exit trough the door on the other side. No more MWO for you. Those players, even if they never but PT, could make other players join in, or perhaps they buy mechbays or mech packs.

So, instead of dumbing down the game for them, new players could have an arena to practice before trying that wall again. Make the game more fun for new players right from the start, keeping the players playing the game.

[Pskonejott]

It's only around $3/month, so even 2 hours play time is only $1.50 an hour. That's what, 1/3 the cost of a movie for the same length entertainment. In fact, if the actual cost of premium time was laid out more frequently, and the benefits, and people started using it more for things like hosting private matches, I'm sure it would lead to more participation in quick play, and I'd wager more so than providing free private matches. It's just a mindset, people feel they are not getting value from premium time unless they spend more than x hours in game, but in reality it's still very good value in terms of cheap entertainment, ESPECIALLY if you enjoy playing in private matches often.

The 10 cents/DAY is valid regardless of hours spent per day. Play 30 minutes, 20 cents an hour. Play 2 hours, 5 cents an hour, play 8 hours on saturday, 1.25 cents an hour etc.

If the server code were released to the general public it would lead to more exploits and cheats. There was a bunch of bans a while ago, there is currently an active cheat program out there that PGI can detect and they're collecting names and there will be another ban wave soon. But as was discussed at the last town hall, each time PGI decide to chase an active cheat tool or exploit it costs them money, we do enjoy a relatively cheat free environment here compared to a lot of other games. The point being is that it is completely unacceptable for that to change so it would cost money ongoing to keep things at this level.

I put forth a couple of other ideas that weren't addressed. Is this strictly a case of if it's not free it's not acceptable?

[Hawk_eye]

Something just occurred to me:
How about a buy-able "private match token".
In the same way you buy mechbays, just let people buy private match tokens, like 10 private matches 300 MC, for example. Only the one setting up the match needs a token, and this, in essence, pays for the server.

And similar to how larger batches of PT are cheaper than smaller ones, larger batches of private matches get more cheaper, like

50 tokens --> 1250 MC
100 tokens --> 2100 MC
and so on

The main advantage of this over the PT thing is, that you can use each token when you need it, instead of PT, which just keeps running, no matter if you are playing or not.

Note: Prices are pulled out of my backside, just to illustrate my suggestion and totally up for discussion.

Note2: This is _not_ to replace PT-private matches, but to _supplement_ those.

[Shirow]

P2P hosting well I would say no, that's why I left COD when they started doing that. I would rather have a server list.

[Arle Vox]

... Hosting private matches IS a thing that can already occur... so I'm not sure what you're asking.

If you're asking to be able to host your own server for LAN play without internet connectivity then this is a bad idea. This encourages reverse-engineering of server code and this leads to hacks (more easily than with only having client-side code). Secondly, the software package for hosting a server would be a lot more hard drive space needed than only the client. Lastly, this just breaks the model for a Free To Play game - most people don't care about LAN play, and have an internet connection available so its functions are unnecessary.

Edited by Arle Vox, 25 March 2018 - 10:53 AM.