Suggestion:Host suitability score

[Ulfhednar9]

Perhaps DE could create a small tool, that we run on our systems, that would generate a "Host Suitability Score", checking factors like ram, CPU, GPU, etc.  that would then be consulted by the netcode during matchmaking for purposes of host selection.  Latency alone is far too simplistic, resulting in hosts that handle hosting 3 other players rather badly, in many cases despite a low ping.  This would be a great deal less resource intensive for DE than dedicated servers, and very well might ameliorate many of the existing peer to peer issues.

Edited November 4, 2018 by Ulfhednar9
Grammar

[ZeroTwowo]

The tool should only check the ping, cause your CPU, GPU, etc and stuff doesn't change your Ping.

[Artekkor]

1 минуту назад, xKoobo сказал:

The tool should only check the ping, cause your CPU, GPU, etc and stuff doesn't change your Ping.

It does affects one's stability as a host. You lose a bounch of FPS on weaker systems - that's something i know first hand. Dont know how that affects the clients though... Need some research on that. But i'm not doing it...

[Ulfhednar9]

7 minutes ago, xKoobo said:

The tool should only check the ping, cause your CPU, GPU, etc and stuff doesn't change your Ping.

Um.......but the GPU CPU, RAM, etc, DOES affect the ability of the host to run the mission for 3 other players.  Part of the issue is that the ping (latency) is simply not an adequate indicator of a system to be a suitable host for the mission.

Edited November 4, 2018 by Ulfhednar9
Grammar

[Jezs]

A simple bandwidth check would probably do the trick, and/or automatically flagging people when they have problems hosting

[Ulfhednar9]

Just now, Jezs said:

A simple bandwidth check would probably do the trick, and/or automatically flagging people when they have problems hosting

Like latency, bandwidth might be an indicator of the suitability of the connection for hosting, but not the suitability of the system to process all that data coming in.  Put a very low-end system on a fiber connection, and it can still run online games poorly.  Even if the system in question is adequate for running the mission for the host themselves, it may not be for the host plus 3 others.

[ScribbleClash]

To those claiming only ping matters: You're a server when hosting for other players. This means that apart from a stable ethernet connection your processing power (CPU/RAM) will be important to the performance.

What I want to see is the possibility of dedicated hosting. We've got it for conclave - so we should have at least some data to check if it would be viable.

[Ulfhednar9]

Essentially I'd like the tool to end up with a simple score.  Then a DE developed algorithm would combine that with latency to decide who amongst the squad would host.  This would perhaps add a small amount of delay to the start of the mission, but would hopefully result in a better, more consistent experience for everyone.

[KIREEK]

Would be nice if it could pull up your quit rate in warframe, to check the reliability of the player aswell.

Just saying.

[mrbubblepants]

7 minutes ago, KIREEK said:

Would be nice if it could pull up your quit rate in warframe, to check the reliability of the player aswell.

Just saying.

Only issue with that is it would negatively affect people with unreliable internet service and they would be flagged for something they cant control. Granted a small percentage of the overall population, but i dont believe we should sacrifice the few for the many so to speak.

[iHaku]

4 hours ago, mrbubblepants said:

Only issue with that is it would negatively affect people with unreliable internet service and they would be flagged for something they cant control. Granted a small percentage of the overall population, but i dont believe we should sacrifice the few for the many so to speak.

that whould just mean that those flagged players whouldnt host. the lower your score, the less likely you're going to be to be selected as host in a 4 man public party.

this isnt a discussion wether or not people with bad ping should be able to play multiplayer, they are still going to be able to participate normally. this is a discussion about wether or not warframe should grant host to someone who is better suited to do so, which even many people with absolute garbage tier connections whould love to have, because let me tell you: people with bad ping dont like being called out every-single-time they play and are forced to host making everyonebody elses enjoyment of the game worse.

People with amazing internet connections (like i am currently happy to be able to enjoy) and people with really bad connections (like some of my friends) whould profit from this equally.

Edited November 5, 2018 by iHaku

[Dabnician]

They need to check hosts while the match is going on too, I had a dude playing in a mission downloading something and everyone called him out on it, he stopped the download but I imagine I can start up a torrent and screw with people if I wanted. I've resorted to setting my match making to 100ping for the time being.

[mrbubblepants]

On 2018-11-04 at 9:42 PM, iHaku said:

that whould just mean that those flagged players whouldnt host. the lower your score, the less likely you're going to be to be selected as host in a 4 man public party.

this isnt a discussion wether or not people with bad ping should be able to play multiplayer, they are still going to be able to participate normally. this is a discussion about wether or not warframe should grant host to someone who is better suited to do so, which even many people with absolute garbage tier connections whould love to have, because let me tell you: people with bad ping dont like being called out every-single-time they play and are forced to host making everyonebody elses enjoyment of the game worse.

People with amazing internet connections (like i am currently happy to be able to enjoy) and people with really bad connections (like some of my friends) whould profit from this equally.

Thank you for the clarification. I agree with you, I didnt think of it in that way.

[(XBOX)EPOSSTYLE]

Just put a notation of who's host so when they leave, so I can leave too bcuz the game can't host migrate properly? So sick of losing my earnings!!

[trndr]

On 2018-11-04 at 8:35 PM, xKoobo said:

The tool should only check the ping, cause your CPU, GPU, etc and stuff doesn't change your Ping.

CPU matters, have you ever noticed ping changes by the ammount of mobs? That's the game AI using too much of the CPU to handle the other tasks such as packets to and from the clients.

11 hours ago, (XB1)EPOSSTYLE said:

Just put a notation of who's host so when they leave, so I can leave too bcuz the game can't host migrate properly? So sick of losing my earnings!!

On pc at least, we have have the option to turn on player list. The one with the number 1 is the host.

[Invictus13307]

On 2018-11-04 at 8:53 PM, Dabnician said:

They need to check hosts while the match is going on too, I had a dude playing in a mission downloading something and everyone called him out on it, he stopped the download but I imagine I can start up a torrent and screw with people if I wanted. I've resorted to setting my match making to 100ping for the time being.

I feel like in-match monitoring would be the next step after host benchmarking.  Keep an eye on things, and if host quality drops below a certain point, migrate to another host before the first one drops completely.  Might even help with some of the migration issues that keep cropping up, since it's a controlled process instead of an emergency reaction.

[uxx0]

Ping is affected by host fps, as are certain other things like enemy spawns and some reset zones. So yes, that certainly plays a role here.

Some things are not easy to measure however, mainly jitter/spikes because that can only be detected when testing for a longer period of time. DE would have to set up servers in key locations to test those things with. Then there might be cases of routing issues, making the test appear okay, while having problems with the one specific network a client is in.

As for in-game monitoring: Ratings by clients can't be trusted, so you could only really test against DEs servers. Then there is the issue of in-game host migrations, which in its current state should be avoided whenever possible. Meaning this isn't really feasible to do.

All in all while it would certainly be nice to have this host rating it's not worth the hassle. If you go in public matches you shouldn't expect the greatest gameplay experience anyway. And with private matches you can set the host yourself.

Edited November 7, 2018 by uxx0

[Dabnician]

This is the idea i had to work around this issue:

 

[Autongnosis]

Le 04/11/2018 à 23:23, ScribbleClash a dit :

To those claiming only ping matters: You're a server when hosting for other players. This means that apart from a stable ethernet connection your processing power (CPU/RAM) will be important to the performance.

Exactly. Hosting with a 100Mbps fiber optics on my toaster (a really bad one) resulted in terrible hosting. My new maching gives sub 100 ping to everyone but cross continent clients, and even then it rarely exceeds 150 and it's really stable. 

Honestly a host suitability score would do imo only good things. Just, do not make it accessible to other players. Leave that info to the netcode and the matchmaking system. 

[GentlePuppet]

The tool op mention could give players a score, then matchmaking would use said scores, choosing the highest rated player, to select a host.

[darthclide]

As a streamer on a very low upload speed, I can't stress how much I need this. It gives my stream a bad look when viewers have to A. See the stream stutter and B. See the squad members complaining about me being host.

The funny part is that I added a bandwidth limiter and set the game to 150 Kbps. You would think this would solve my problem, but no matter what, I still get set as host because DE goes "Your ping is fine! You can be host!" Oh, and the limiter is often times overruled because I still get frame drops to Twitch (just not as bad with it off)