On the subject of server merges...

[Sophiie 50]

Has Little Orbit considered merging Citadel and Jericho? At times, one of these servers is unplayable in specific districts due to lack of population, and players are forced to go to the other server with horrible ping and a character they don't own. It is completely unfair to players who want to play in off-hours, or might work a night shift, to be forced to play on a different server.

 

Additionally, it looks bad on the game if there's only 300 people playing on US, and 500 on EU. Imagine if they had a player pool that could be expanded. Some of those players might get horrible ping, but it's better than getting no matches at all. And especially with Riot's release, that may be a legitimate concern for those trying to progress.

 

To this extent, the proposal would also place the district servers in their own geographic locations. NA/EU district servers, as opposed to servers. Players would be placed in the appropriate region based on GeoIP if they quick joined or used DAM in the engine upgrade. They could still manually join a district of the appropriate threat.

 

Now you're thinking, "Maybe MSSQL might not be able to handle that? Wouldn't that cause worldserver issues?"

The server architecture is set up to split district servers into their own datacenter and tunneling / VPN technology has pretty much advanced to the point where this would not cause increased response times between the world and district servers. Additionally, now that you're off Reloaded's old datacenter and stabilized, maybe it's time for a change that would benefit the game?

 

Yes, there would be an incredible amount of name conflicts. There would be some drama about who keeps what name. There's the chance of potential database corruption. There's a possibility that RIOT could explode in popularity or the engine upgrade would cause overpopulation. But I think the positives outweigh the negatives and any architectural issues could be solved quite easily.

 

What do you guys think? Is this something Little Orbit should pursue?

Edited June 6, 2019 by Sophiie

[Seadee 107]

not really a good idea, as the current issue of not having proper match making will not be solved by throwing more people at it, the match making solution didnt work when there were thousands of players, it still wont work now, LO can update, then fix the match making system, and even with 300 people your experience would be much better.

Edit

Misread the post, idea makes sense, what i wrote is true, but the idea isnt what i wrote so its not applicable here.
 

Edited June 6, 2019 by Seadee

[ItzKeppe 22]

+1

/10char

[Sophiie 50]

Just now, Seadee said:

not really a good idea, as the current issue of not having proper match making will not be solved by throwing more people at it, the match making solution didnt work when there were thousands of players, it still wont work now, LO can update, then fix the match making system, and even with 300 people your experience would be much better.
 

Right, this issue isn't to solve the matchmaking issue. This issue is to get a mission in a district you actually want to play in.

 

Both Citadel and Jericho have 'dry hours' where either Financial or Waterfront is completely dead.

 

This is aiming to solve that.

[CookiePuss 5378]

I dont understand a lot of these words.

[Clandestine 390]

This is shooter not MMO RPG. On top of it we have very low TTK and every ms matters. I can't even imagine playing games like ESO with 200.

[Sophiie 50]

9 minutes ago, Clandestine said:

This is shooter not MMO RPG. On top of it we have very low TTK and every ms matters. I can't even imagine playing games like ESO with 200.

See that's the thing; having options is better than not having options. If you re-read my post, I already addressed this: EU districts and NA districts as opposed to EU worlds and NA worlds.

 

The latency to the server most commonly occurs at the district server / UE3 level, not the world server level. Your client is hosting a local Unreal 3 game instance until it hits a district server anyways, and the district server abstracts your connection to the world server - there isn't actually a connection being made to a world server except to authenticate into a district server. The actual communication between world and your client is done via engine-level packets to the district server.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Sophiie

[Clandestine 390]

1 minute ago, Sophiie said:

See that's the thing; having options is better than not having options. If you re-read my post, I already addressed this: EU districts and NA districts as opposed to EU worlds and NA worlds.

 

The latency to the server most commonly occurs at the district server / UE3 level, not the world server level. Your client is hosting a local Unreal 3 game instance until it hits a district server anyways, and the district server abstracts your connection to the world server - there isn't actually a connection being made to a world server except to authenticate into a district server.

Matt said that their ultimate goal is to have single world server and matchmaking will be threat/ping based.

[Seadee 107]

59 minutes ago, Sophiie said:

Right, this issue isn't to solve the matchmaking issue. This issue is to get a mission in a district you actually want to play in.

 

Both Citadel and Jericho have 'dry hours' where either Financial or Waterfront is completely dead.

 

This is aiming to solve that.

but you wont get that, you will get a district with random people in that you definitely don't want to play against, exactly the same problem that has plagued the game from day 1.

but having reread what you are saying.

1 single log on server, where we have access to all region districts rather than just EU or NA makes more sense, like the old EU servers where they were language based, but actually also be location based as well. 

that makes more sense.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Seadee

[Sophiie 50]

5 minutes ago, Clandestine said:

Matt said that their ultimate goal is to have single world server and matchmaking will be threat/ping based.

That's great and all, but why not do it now if that's their ultimate goal with the engine upgrade?

 

I am very well of Dedicated Automatic Matchmaking (DAM) and how it works on consoles and how it will work in the engine upgrade. That being said, it would be a quality of life improvement for the players now and in the future to have the worlds merged prior to the engine upgrade. And I can almost guarantee that DAM won't come until the upgrade. This would be a quality of life adjustment before the upgrade and will set up server topology to make the transition to DAM easier.

2 minutes ago, Seadee said:

but you wont get that, you will get a district with random people in that you definitely don't want to play against, exactly the same problem that has plagued the game from day 1.

I'd rather have a district with people to play against than having no districts at all available of the type I wish to play in. What aren't you understanding about "some people cannot play the game at certain hours to progress"? The issue isn't matchmaking here, it's that there are no matches to even matchmake into.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Sophiie

[Acornie 490]

Yes, they have already considered this, it's been quite awhile but Matt has stated the idea to have a unified server with action districts in different regions was their plan in the future, but a normal ol' merge is obviously a nono (and why that is doesn't need to be elaborated upon).

 

I personally look forward to a one 'world' system, if it ever comes, being on Jericho the marketplace is not exactly poppin'

[Seadee 107]

3 minutes ago, Sophiie said:

I'd rather have a district with people to play against than having no districts at all available of the type I wish to play in. What aren't you understanding about "some people cannot play the game at certain hours to progress"?

edited my reply as you were writing your response, your idea makes more sense now that i have read it properly.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Seadee

[Sophiie 50]

4 minutes ago, Acornie said:

Yes, they have already considered this, it's been quite awhile but Matt has stated the idea to have a unified server with action districts in different regions was their plan in the future, but a normal ol' merge is obviously a nono (and why that is doesn't need to be elaborated upon).

 

I personally look forward to a one 'world' system, if it ever comes, being on Jericho the marketplace is not exactly poppin'

Delaying a server merge will only delay the inevitable; at some point names will have to be resolved. They are engrained in too many systems (friends, ignore list, character profile XML blob, ownership to be able to customize clothing, etc) and the GamersFirst backend for ARMAS. There are no other issues preventing the merge beyond having a working server topology.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Sophiie

[Acornie 490]

2 minutes ago, Sophiie said:

Delaying a server merge will only delay the inevitable

I wrote this before the other replies were shown, I didn't know you meant you wanted this before LO seemed to envision this happening after 3.5 and threat/phasing changes. I don't think we're gonna convince LO to do it sooner than they planned

[TheMessiah 430]

1 hour ago, Seadee said:

not really a good idea, as the current issue of not having proper match making will not be solved by throwing more people at it

Not only that.Population will keep being low till something significant happen in the game like 3.5,new matchmaking or just any worthy playn new content.Makes no sense to merge US and EU server and people playn with crazy pings.Problem is in lack of new content and not reform current systems

[Fortune Runner 796]

1 hour ago, Sophiie said:

Has Little Orbit considered merging Citadel and Jericho? At times, one of these servers is unplayable in specific districts due to lack of population, and players are forced to go to the other server with horrible ping and a character they don't own. It is completely unfair to players who want to play in off-hours, or might work a night shift, to be forced to play on a different server.

 

Additionally, it looks bad on the game if there's only 300 people playing on US, and 500 on EU. Imagine if they had a player pool that could be expanded. Some of those players might get horrible ping, but it's better than getting no matches at all. And especially with Riot's release, that may be a legitimate concern for those trying to progress.

 

To this extent, the proposal would also place the district servers in their own geographic locations. NA/EU district servers, as opposed to servers. Players would be placed in the appropriate region based on GeoIP if they quick joined or used DAM in the engine upgrade. They could still manually join a district of the appropriate threat.

 

Now you're thinking, "Maybe MSSQL might not be able to handle that? Wouldn't that cause worldserver issues?"

The server architecture is set up to split district servers into their own datacenter and tunneling / VPN technology has pretty much advanced to the point where this would not cause increased response times between the world and district servers. Additionally, now that you're off Reloaded's old datacenter and stabilized, maybe it's time for a change that would benefit the game?

 

Yes, there would be an incredible amount of name conflicts. There would be some drama about who keeps what name. There's the chance of potential database corruption. There's a possibility that RIOT could explode in popularity or the engine upgrade would cause overpopulation. But I think the positives outweigh the negatives and any architectural issues could be solved quite easily.

 

What do you guys think? Is this something Little Orbit should pursue?

Merging servers ,  with the servers we have , is bad.

The strain would be too much.

Phasing if it goes as planned would merge without merging.

It will take time but after the engine upgrade then phasing is planned along with other components of matchmaking and threat.

[ninjarrrr 255]

u know ur games dead when u have 2 merge eu and us just get players lmfaoooo

[Havana 216]

I'd like to see it only to see what excuse Jericho Golds would conjure up to not play in Gold district. 

[Lato 188]

seems like a desperate move

[Fortune Runner 796]

On Jericho - if all the players who are real golds , real silvers , and real bronzes all came on at once then there would be no reason not to since they could fill one gold one silver and one bronze district.

 

But that's if they all came on at once.

And that would be barely able to be done from just enough population to do that.

And which one do you choose then financial or waterfront?

Someone would still be lacking leveling then.

[Clandestine 390]

2 hours ago, Sophiie said:

That's great and all, but why not do it now if that's their ultimate goal with the engine upgrade?

 

I am very well of Dedicated Automatic Matchmaking (DAM) and how it works on consoles and how it will work in the engine upgrade. That being said, it would be a quality of life improvement for the players now and in the future to have the worlds merged prior to the engine upgrade. And I can almost guarantee that DAM won't come until the upgrade. This would be a quality of life adjustment before the upgrade and will set up server topology to make the transition to DAM easier.

I'd rather have a district with people to play against than having no districts at all available of the type I wish to play in. What aren't you understanding about "some people cannot play the game at certain hours to progress"? The issue isn't matchmaking here, it's that there are no matches to even matchmake into.

Because mixing everyone right now would be just bad ping wise

[vsb 6171]

a unified server with regional instances is already something orbit has stated they’re looking into, and imo it would be pretty helpful for the game 

 

that said idk if i want orbit taking any more projects before the engine upgrade, they’re clearly already struggling with just their current tasks

[Alani 475]

do u not realise that the districts are hosted on the server itself?

 

 

the server is hosted in country X and the district is hosted on that server.

 

ur dream of having NA/EU districts would require the servers to be placed in the atlantic ocean inbetween both the americas and shitty europe.

 

 

gl with that

[vsb 6171]

32 minutes ago, Alani said:

do u not realise that the districts are hosted on the server itself?

 

 

the server is hosted in country X and the district is hosted on that server.

 

ur dream of having NA/EU districts would require the servers to be placed in the atlantic ocean inbetween both the americas and shitty europe.

 

 

gl with that

thats not what op is asking for and it wouldnt require any servers in the ocean, almost every modern game has regional instances

[Alani 475]

15 minutes ago, Glaciers said:

thats not what op is asking for and it wouldnt require any servers in the ocean, almost every modern game has regional instances

the way the net code is for apb 

 

no

 

it wouldnt work

 

u forget apb was made in a time where regional servers were the only thing lol