The game doesn't stop during a host migration. Another reason to support dedicated servers.

[Letter13]

22 minutes ago, Leyers_of_facade said:

Interesting, may I ask where you get these numbers? I have personally been trying to find a good guess of the cost.

----------------

Anyway, if that figure from @Letter13is right, it would most certainly explain why DE (well Leyou) isn't quite willing to implement dedicated servers. 

From Leyou's (DE's parent group) interim report (link: http://leyoutech.com.hk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2019-Inteirm-en.pdf , also yes, they misspelt interim in the hyperlink  ) their EBITDA in the first 6 months of this year is merely 37.785 million USD, so even at 16M/year of upkeep (so lets say 8M/6 months), 8/37.785 = 21.17%, that would be quite a significant cost they will be taking, especially considering how revenue isn't likely going to increase in a similar level.

The numbers are from a ballpark estimate I made a while ago when trying to figure out how much it'd cost to have dedicated servers. The reason for the huge margin is because without concrete data/statistics, I could only work with ballpark numbers--this results in a low confidence of being able to pick an accurate numbers for the cost, however I have a high degree of confidence that the number is non-trivial and would be at least an eight digit number ($10M+), especially given that for my actual day job I do have to generate electrical and hardware engineering BoEs (basis of estimate) for hardware purchases, NRE (noon recurring engineering) tasks and recurring tasks (maintenance). The math that got me to $10M~50M is below, taken from an older post of mine:

Quote

Those numbers are not off. If you're renting a server blade (dedicated server, rather than an allocated VM) you're pretty much paying anywhere from $1,000 USD to $4,000 USD per year. That money goes towards the company who buys, installs and maintains the hardware. You're paying for an IT employee (or team) to be on call to troubleshoot any issues the server(s) have, the ludicrously high-speed internet the server is hooked up to (Multiple gigabit upload speeds, this will usually run $50~300 USD/month depending on the speed), and insurance so that if the hardware fails the company will set you up with a new server blade at no additional cost.

Now, considering how many players there are at any given point, you're probably looking at well well over 1,000 servers. Steam charts have shown Warframe running a peak of 131,000 players simultaneously at one point; let's say the total PC players are 1.5x that number (assuming 2/3rds play on Steam and not the standalone launcher), you're looking at about 200,000 active players on PC. Let's assume that PS4 and XB1 are 75% of that number for each platform, you're now up to 500,000 players. Let's say Nintendo Switch is 25%, that adds it all up to 550,000 active players at any given time. 

I'm an engineer though, and we like to add an additional 50% on to our tolerance limits to reduce risk of redlining our stuff, so we'll design it for 825,000 simultaneous players just in case. Now, if each server blade can support a single 64 player instance (or 16 4-player instances), you're looking at a shave under 13,000 dedicated server blades, distributed around the world. Assume we're using the cheapest $1,000/blade and voila it's a $13,000,000 yearly expense for DE. If you use better servers (up to $4,000/year/blade), you're looking at up to $52,000,000 per year of expenses... And probably some more than that due to renting servers in foreign countries.

 

Now, although DE doesn't make their financial information public, I have a sneaking suspicion that after costs (renting their office space, advertisements, licenses for software, insurance, overhead, employee salary, etc) that they do not have $13,000,000 ~ $52,000,000 available to spend on dedicated servers.

 

[Talinthis]

well that covers it then. i figured about a million a month and i know nothing about anything, guess i wasnt too far off.

[Yamazuki]

2 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

I am, if given the chance to. I'd rather get reliable but paid than crappy but free.

Also, if you do not want to pay, you would not have to if it's an opt-in toggle as I proposed in my opening post.

Dedicated servers aren't problem free. I've played enough games over more than 10 years to know dedicated servers aren't really much better, especially if you live thousands of miles away from them.

All dedicated servers solve is the issue of a Host deciding to quit, but it will not solve any issues related to people in the squad randomly leaving due to connection/routing problems. Host that quit often simply should be penalized into no longer being allowed to host.

Since you want to play with a squad, dedicated servers fragment the player base the same way limiting your ping would, because DE would need individual servers for major regions, so whether you limit your ping, or played on a dedicated server, you would be limiting yourself to people playing in your region regardless. If you make dedicated servers an optional setting, you then fragment the player base even further because you now limited the possible people to be matched with to those who are not only within your region, but also choose to play on dedicated servers.

Forced dedicated servers then come with major drawbacks for anyone who doesn't play in a region populated enough to justify a dedicated server, so someone from Australia for example would be stuck connecting to Eu, NA or an Asian server, as is the case for most games. Then there's the drawbacks for massive regions like NA, where servers now a days are located on the East Coast, leaving anyone on the West stuck with anywhere from 100 to 150 ping or more. Even if they went with Chicago, a best case scenario would be 80-120 ping. This is before taking into account any routing issues that are not solved with dedicated servers.

[EmberStar]

5 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

 

That post and those costs are only relevant when considering the total number of Warframe players, not those only playing Arbitrations.

As per Steam achievement stats, only 5.3% of players have completed The Sacrifice. Without completing The Sacrifice, you can not fight the Ropalolyst, so it can be used as a baseline to measure how many players have cleared the entire Star Chart and have unlocked Arbitrations. Using stats for the average number of unique peak last month (80,466), we can infer that, at the very top (Assuming the absolute best-case scenario of 5.3% of players having unlocked Arbitrations) that's only 4,023 players.

I seriously doubt that Steam has fewer active players than the stand-alone version, and even then, I also doubt that they are more active than Steam players. Entertaining this idea with a generous 50% split, we are now only dealing with 8,046 players.

Let's add consoles now.

Xbox (Trueachievements) - 6,749 players have completed The Sacrifice (6% of tracked players).

PS4: No reliable data. Let's assume 20% more than XBox =  8,098

Switch: No reliable data. Let's assume 60% less than Xbox: = 2.699

Those are such tiny numbers that the upkeep costs for the pricing breakdown that floats around this board is so far away that it becomes meaningless. More so considering those players like me who would be willing to pay for dedicated servers, so it would not be on DE's sole pocket.

That could certainly help, yes. That is, assuming that the game holds a "snapshot" of how it was before the migration so you can also keep your Arbitration bonus.

I don't think players who have distance-related connectivity issues would choose to opt-in to an optional, toggable dedicated server option that is only available if you're paying for it. That's a non-issue. As for the rest? If I know my connection is stable-enough and fast-enough that I rarely get disconnected on my end, then it would certainly improve my experience by a noticeable margin.

And of those numbers (which might as well be pulled from thin air) how many are the type of player that prides themselves on NEVER spending their own money in a free-to-play game?  How many would quit instantly if the game switched to needing a subscription fee?  And most importantly, why would DE even consider upending the entire game to add dedicated servers (at HUGE cost to themselves which they might not be able to recover using the current monetization) for the benefit of less than 10% of the people who have ever played the game?

What I take from those figures is that DE needs to do *WAY* better at the new player experience, and player retention.  I see a figure like "6% have completed The Sacrifice" and I don't think "Oh, Warframe has a huge playerbase that isn't to 'endgame' yet."  I think "Oh.  Warframe has a tiny percentage of players who don't quit long before they could even see the potential of playing the game *at all.*

Personally:  I already support the game more than enough, thanks.  I don't need or want to pay more than I already do.  (And since I got a founders pack and at least some level of most Prime Access, many people would feel that I spend a stupid amount to begin with.)  I have no interest in Arbitrations.  I think it would be nice if DE could fix some of the problems with it.  And adding the "hated" revive mechanic *was* an attempt to fix the specific problem of "Host gets killed, has no reason to stay so quits and Host Migrates everyone."

Dedicated servers also aren't an instant cure-all.  Depending on where they are located, ping might actually go up dramatically.  (Another game I used to play switched from having servers for the Oceanic (Pacific) region, both east and west coast USA, and several locations in Europe to one server cluster for the USA (east coast only) and one in Europe.  The result was that for nearly everyone ping went way up.  Oceanic players who still play at all have to connect to a server basically halfway around the planet.  My ping went from "normal for me" at about 120 ms to pretty bad at about 200ms.  (My DSL adds 80ms of ping to even be online since I apparently have to relay through a server on the far side of the state, in the *opposite* direction of almost anyone I'd want to connect to.  My ISP did this because... servers are expensive, and they wanted to cut costs more than provide good service.)

Dedicated servers also provide a central target for fun things like DDOS attacks.  I'm not claiming the game is immune to them now, but the impact (and lulz value) of launching them is lessened when the main effect is to prevent people from getting their mission rewards recorded reliably, rather than blockading them from playing at all.

[Llamatronian]

I don't think Warframe needs dedicated servers. I do think it needs better net code. Host migration does not have to destroy all your loot when it fails. The game does not need to keep running during migration, leading to you loading in dead or with the mission failed. Race conditions can be fixed. Code can be made fault tolerant. Warframe just ... doesn't do that.

[Jarriaga]

39 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

Dedicated servers aren't problem free. I've played enough games over more than 10 years to know dedicated servers aren't really much better, especially if you live thousands of miles away from them.

No one is under the delusion that they are 100% problem-free. It's just that the problems that they do have are still a lot more acceptable than dying during a host migration because the host left.

39 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

will not solve any issues related to people in the squad randomly leaving due to connection/routing problems.

They don't have to. Your end of the pipeline still means you need a good stable connection. I have one. I often host and players have even asked about my Internet connection speed or ISP because of the low latency. That doesn't help one bit when the game decides someone else happens to have a better connection, and they leave. I can't control that.

39 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

Host that quit often simply should be penalized into no longer being allowed to host.

I actually like this idea as long as the punishment for repeated offense is severe-enough to minimize that behavior. A slap in the wrist would do nothing.

Still, DE would need to solve the problem of the game still running when a migration does happen for XYZ reason. 

 

45 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

Since you want to play with a squad, dedicated servers fragment the player base the same way limiting your ping would, because DE would need individual servers for major regions, so whether you limit your ping, or played on a dedicated server, you would be limiting yourself to people playing in your region regardless.

That's a non-issue since I don't care about the region of players I'm playing with. I am currently limited to North America anyway due to my extremely low PING limit settings so I can try to host as many times as possible, so I don't care if I can't play with people from Europe.  

48 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

If you make dedicated servers an optional setting, you then fragment the player base even further because you now limited the possible people to be matched with to those who are not only within your region, but also choose to play on dedicated servers.

That's also a non-issue unless you happen to believe the number of people who want dedicated servers (Even if paid) is large-enough as to cause a noticeable split in the playerbase.  And if that's the case, then the problems caused by P2P connections are not trivial. Otherwise, dedicated server players (Particularly if the service is exclusive to Arbitrations as I propose) would amount to a tiny minority.

50 minutes ago, Yamazuki said:

Forced dedicated servers

Never even mentioned. Not once. I mentioned optional, selectable as a toggle with an opt-in server upkeep fee for those who do want it. No need to mention scenarios that directly contradict the proposal. My proposal is an optional setting in your matchmaking menu that explicitly says "Dedicated Server". If you don't choose this option and instead select "Public", you use the current P2P system.

 

[Rawbeard]

1 hour ago, XenMaster said:

All those with jobs can.

so you want to exclude anyone without a job from playing Warframe? interesting move

[Jarriaga]

57 minutes ago, EmberStar said:

And of those numbers (which might as well be pulled from thin air)

I gave you the sources of those numbers in the very post you quoted. If you have a problem with them and think that they were pulled out of thin air then either bring a better source and correct those numbers, or take it Valve and how they track achievement unlocks per game per registered player. Otherwise it would seem you are disregarding them simply because you don't like them regardless of accuracy if you can not provide a source that would not be described as "thin air" by you.

57 minutes ago, EmberStar said:

ow many are the type of player that prides themselves on NEVER spending their own money in a free-to-play game?  How many would quit instantly if the game switched to needing a subscription fee? 

No idea, but that is an irrelevant argument considering the many times I have specified this would be an optional opt-in fee explicitly for those who do want it. "Optional payment" and "needing to pay" are incompatible terms.

57 minutes ago, EmberStar said:

And most importantly, why would DE even consider upending the entire game to add dedicated servers (at HUGE cost to themselves which they might not be able to recover using the current monetization) for the benefit of less than 10% of the people who have ever played the game?

They can make a market study based on those players who would be willing to pay and measure their in-game spending habits to see if they are enough to sustain themselves. If we want to pay and offset the costs, let us pay and offset the costs. Let us be more than a "vocal minority" and actually speak with our wallets.

57 minutes ago, EmberStar said:

What I take from those figures is that DE needs to do *WAY* better at the new player experience, and player retention.  I see a figure like "6% have completed The Sacrifice" and I don't think "Oh, Warframe has a huge playerbase that isn't to 'endgame' yet."  I think "Oh.  Warframe has a tiny percentage of players who don't quit long before they could even see the potential of playing the game *at all.*

That's off-topic. We are not discussing why players have not progressed enough. We are simply taking the number as a reference in order to counter the investment costs that take the entire playerbase into account rather than those players who would explicitly choose to pay for the service in a game mode that has been gutted due to host migration issues (DE explicitly said that they introduced the rivival system in Arbitrations because of hosts leaving after dying) and can get you killed or a mission failed state during the migration process, which is unacceptable to me and many others.

57 minutes ago, EmberStar said:

Personally:  I already support the game more than enough, thanks.  I don't need or want to pay more than I already do. 

Then don't. If the system I propose is implemented, you would not need to pay a cent unless you willingly change your matchmaking settings from "Public" to "Dedicated Server", which I am certain you won't ever do considering you have made it clear it is not for you or those who think like you.

57 minutes ago, EmberStar said:

I have no interest in Arbitrations

That's fine. I have no interest in Conclave.

57 minutes ago, EmberStar said:

And adding the "hated" revive mechanic *was* an attempt to fix the specific problem of "Host gets killed, has no reason to stay so quits and Host Migrates everyone."

And not only did it fix nothing because the game keeps running and you can die while the migration happens, you now have a system in which your chances of dying increase if someone other than you actually dies because of the revive tokens work like Index points likely as a way to push you to get rid of those revive tokens instead of hording them while ignoring the dead player (I would certainly do that if it didn't affect me).

57 minutes ago, EmberStar said:

Dedicated servers also aren't an instant cure-all. 

No one said that they are. It's just that not being at the mercy of another player that can leave at any time is a worse option than a server that would only kick me out when it is experiencing an actual problem.

I've picked my poison.

57 minutes ago, EmberStar said:

Dedicated servers also provide a central target for fun things like DDOS attacks. 

I don't think this would be an issue if the servers would only accept connection requests from players who have unlocked Arbitrations. Otherwise you are proposing the absurd scenario that a player would clear the entire Star Chart only to DDoS DE and get themselves banned.

I am not proposing dedicated servers for the entire game.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Jarriaga

[Jarriaga]

34 minutes ago, Llamatronian said:

I don't think Warframe needs dedicated servers. I do think it needs better net code. Host migration does not have to destroy all your loot when it fails. The game does not need to keep running during migration, leading to you loading in dead or with the mission failed. Race conditions can be fixed. Code can be made fault tolerant. Warframe just ... doesn't do that.

If all of that was implemented then I would not push for dedicated servers. 10-20 seconds of downtime between migrations would not be a problem if all else was solved.

[EmberStar]

22 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

1)  I gave you the sources of those numbers in the very post you quoted. If you have a problem with them and think that they were pulled out of thin air then either bring a better source and correct those numbers, or take it Valve and how they track achievement unlocks per game per registered player. Otherwise it would seem you are disregarding them simply because you don't like them regardless of accuracy if you can not provide a source that would not be described as "thin air" by you.

2)  No idea, but that is an irrelevant argument considering the many times I have specified this would be an optional opt-in fee explicitly for those who do want it. "Optional payment" and "needing to pay" are incompatible terms.

3)  They can make a market study based on those players who would be willing to pay and measure their in-game spending habits to see if they are enough to sustain themselves. If we want to pay and offset the costs, let us pay and offset the costs. Let us be more than a "vocal minority" and actually speak with our wallets.

4)  That's off-topic. We are not discussing why players have not progressed enough. We are simply taking the number as a reference in order to counter the investment costs that take the entire playerbase into account rather than those players who would explicitly choose to pay for the service in a game mode that has been gutted due to host migration issues (DE explicitly said that they introduced the rivival system in Arbitrations because of hosts leaving after dying) and can get you killed or a mission failed state during the migration process, which is unacceptable to me and many others.

5)  Then don't. If the system I propose is implemented, you would not need to pay a cent unless you willingly change your matchmaking settings from "Public" to "Dedicated Server", which I am certain you won't ever do considering you have made it clear it is not for you or those who think like you.

6)  That's fine. I have no interest in Conclave.

7)  And not only did it fix nothing because the game keeps running and you can die while the migration happens, you now have a system in which your chances of dying increase if someone other than you actually dies because of the revive tokens work like Index points likely as a way to push you to get rid of those revive tokens instead of hording them while ignoring the dead player (I would certainly do that if it didn't affect me).

8:  No one said that they are. It's just that not being at the mercy of another player that can leave at any time is a worse option than a server that would only kick me out when it is experiencing an actual problem.

I've picked my poison.

9)  I don't think this would be an issue if the servers would only accept connection requests from players who have unlocked Arbitrations. Otherwise you are proposing the absurd scenario that a player would clear the entire Star Chart only to DDoS DE and get themselves banned.

I am not proposing dedicated servers for the entire game.

1)  You only provided real numbers for Steam and XBox.  You literally pulled numbers from thin air for PS4, Switch and the dedicated launcher.  You also made the somewhat strange assumption that "5% of the playerbase has finished The Sacrifice" means there is a huge number of people playing the game and that this somehow translates to them paying for a "totally optional" fee for a mode they can't possibly access (due to Arbitrations being locked behind a mission that *they haven't finished.*)  I would counter that your figure means that less than 5% of the people who have ever played Warframe are active players, and that the number running Arbitrations is a tiny fraction of that.

2)  It's entirely relevant, because if it's optional (and can presumably only be accessed by paying) then you're proposing splitting the already small number of people who play arbitrations further by locking out the ones who won't pay for the "premium" dedicated servers.

3)  Why would they spend the money to do a market study when the probable results are apparent to almost anyone who isn't delusional?  "Free to play" games that attempt to include subscription models are often accused of double dipping, especially if they lock something actually worth having behind the subscription.  (Or in the case of the war in the stars MMO, break the free version by crippling the UI and drastically limiting how much you can progress in nearly every way.)

4)  Again, it's not off topic to bring up the *active* playerbase.  I would assert that the 5.6% of people who have completed The Sacrifice represent the *entire* active playerbase in any meaningful way.  The ones that haven't finished that mission either tried the game and quit, or simply aren't interested in doing more than logging in and punching some Grineer once in a while.  Either way, the only *possible* portion of the playerbase who would pay for "totally optional dedicated servers" will be a fraction of the already tiny fraction who don't quit before they finish The Sacrifice.  And if Dedicated Servers are only going to be a feature relevant to Arbitrations, you're looking at a very tiny fraction to split the costs.

5)  Again, an optional "opt in" system will divide the matchmaking pool.  This is never an advantage, especially in a mode that likely doesn't have massive participation to begin with.

6)  Good for you.  Although you might want to like it more, since PVP has an even better case for dedicated servers, and you'd likely have to share with them (because they're the only other group who would have any real reason to pay such a fee.)

7)  The playerbase demanded that Arbitrations be a "hardcore" mode.  DE tried to do that by making it as close as they could to a permadeath mode.  That obviously doesn't work in a peer-to-peer hosting system if the host is the first one to die.  You know what would be a better solution than the one they took (and still way cheaper than dedicated servers?)  Walking back the "hardcore" completely, and allowing full revives with no penalty just like in every other mode.  Of course that would completely gut Arbitrations as the "elite" mode, but hey, a mission host who dies six minutes in wouldn't be holding the rest of the team hostage anymore.

It would also address point eight (which I had to type as 8: because putting a ) after turns it into an emoji.)

9)  Servers don't work like that.  Since you'd have to ping the server to authenticate that you have permission to connect to it - a DDOS attack can flood the server with garbage pings that the server still has to check just in case some of them are valid.  And there are some people on the internet who DDOS something simply because it exists, not because they actually know or care about the specific game or service.  Heck, someone could hire a bot-farm to DDOS the servers because they're pissed at their friend who they know wants to spend an hour playing Arbitrations.  People have recently *DIED* for far more petty reasons than that.  (The man killed in Kansas by police responding to a Swatter hoax wasn't a gamer.  The person who hired the swatter paid less than $20 for it, to "punish" someone he disliked in an online shooter game.)

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

1 hour ago, Jarriaga said:

That's a non-issue since I don't care about the region of players I'm playing with. I am currently limited to North America anyway due to my extremely low PING limit settings so I can try to host as many times as possible, so I don't care if I can't play with people from Europe.  

Sorry but that not caring about the region of players is a major issue. It explains why you think that dedicated servers are a solution.

You think that the server will be in your back yard and your ping times will be negligible. It'd be a vastly different tune, I suspect, if you lived in a developing country, out in the third world, on a tiny, fly speck of an island. Or on Australia which due to the sheer distance from every other continent makes for much more significant pings. Or even on the opposite side of a continent from the dedicated server that you've convinced yourself will be thee solution to all your woes. 

 

[Jarriaga]

49 minutes ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Sorry but that not caring about the region of players is a major issue. It explains why you think that dedicated servers are a solution.

You think that the server will be in your back yard and your ping times will be negligible. It'd be a vastly different tune, I suspect, if you lived in a developing country, out in the third world, on a tiny, fly speck of an island. Or on Australia which due to the sheer distance from every other continent makes for much more significant pings. Or even on the opposite side of a continent from the dedicated server that you've convinced yourself will be thee solution to all your woes. 

 

I live in the Dominican Republic, which, mind you,  it actually is a third world country fly speck of an island in the Caribbean. You couldn't have chosen a worse possible reference in order to sustain your argument. It's even funny how accurate you were. 

I'm in the Caribbean in one of the poorest countries of the zone with an ISP duopoly of the worst of the region (Claro vs Altice) and still I experience low PING due to my hardware, optimizations and settings.

I have 4MB/s download (40Mb/s) and 1MB (10Mb/s) upload. 

The reason why I'm locked to NA is because I have chosen NA as my region and have the English version of the game and the CLOSEST players that meet my in-game PING limit criteria happen to be in NA. 

Heck, I can even test my connection from a server in London, Ontario where DE is based 1800 miles away and STILL my PING does not reach 100.

Why? Because your hardware matters as much as your connection. I'm not on a potato. I have a decent gaming rig (i7-4790K @ 4.6 on all cores / GTX 1070 / Asus Z87i-Deluxe) and a hardwired Gigabit connection directly to a serviceable Nighthawk router. Addressing connectivity bottlenecks on my end is, well, on me.

My network experience from this third world country is smooth when playing with other players from the US. ON THE OTHER HAND, I have a horrible time when my local friends in my own country are hosting. 

Edited October 15, 2019 by Jarriaga

[Diavoros]

Dedicated servers would be great but...they are expensive and require maintenance, so if we were to get them, DE would be most likely forced to implement unsavory monetization into the game + whenever we had hotfixes or updates, the servers would be brought down for an hour or hours.

[Chaincat]

8 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

 

That post and those costs are only relevant when considering the total number of Warframe players, not those only playing Arbitrations.

As per Steam achievement stats, only 5.3% of players have completed The Sacrifice. Without completing The Sacrifice, you can not fight the Ropalolyst, so it can be used as a baseline to measure how many players have cleared the entire Star Chart and have unlocked Arbitrations. Using stats for the average number of unique peak last month (80,466), we can infer that, at the very top (Assuming the absolute best-case scenario of 5.3% of players having unlocked Arbitrations) that's only 4,023 players.

 

Steam achievements aren't reliable. They bug out with warframe a lot, and if you completed an achievement on the standalone then moved over to steam, that achievement is permanently lost to your steam account. Furthermore, Arbitrations are not a very major focal point for most players, if we're being honest, and host migrations cause problems like lost loot and failed missions in "easier" missions. I don't suppose you'd want to lose your lua lens because a host migration booted you back to liset, would you?

[XenMaster]

2 hours ago, Rawbeard said:

so you want to exclude anyone without a job from playing Warframe? interesting move

Who plays an online game that cost you to buy internet without  part/full time job?

 

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

1 hour ago, Jarriaga said:

I live in the Dominican Republic, which, mind you,  it actually is a third world country fly speck of an island in the Caribbean. You couldn't have chosen a worse possible reference in order to sustain your argument. It's even funny how accurate you were. 

Got news for you, boyo. I'm in Trinidad. You know, the opposite end of the the chain. Hispanola is huge compared to us, and I suspect, a mere stone's throw from North America along the Amx undersea cable unless you picked up and moved your island recently. So you sure you want to compare island sizes between the Greater Antilles and the Lesser Antilles? Or connections? That won't go as well as you think. 

That Amx cable is also probably why you have lower latency between the Americans and yourself than to the other Tenno in the DR. I have the same problem, but a much longer pipeline via Americas 1/Americas 2, before I can find a point in common with other Trini Tenno, somewhere up in Florida or wherever despite being able to walk to their houses in a reasonable amount of time. 

[RX-3DR]

2 hours ago, Jarriaga said:

I live in the Dominican Republic, which, mind you,  it actually is a third world country fly speck of an island in the Caribbean. You couldn't have chosen a worse possible reference in order to sustain your argument. It's even funny how accurate you were. 

I'm in the Caribbean in one of the poorest countries of the zone with an ISP duopoly of the worst of the region (Claro vs Altice) and still I experience low PING due to my hardware, optimizations and settings.

Therefore, your point is that because you don't have connectivity issues to another region, most likely due to good routing, that all other region will be just as good? That's not how it works, connectivity is not completely tied to geography, you can't just look at the distance and latency and say that 10km is 10ms and blame everyone not achieving that as a problem of poor hardware.

Here's an example of my case. Geographically, Australia is closer to me than west coast of USA but due to the routing, my latency to Australia is higher than the west coast of USA. A friend who lives in the same country on a different ISP gets a vastly different latency and has lower latency to Australia. If you want more examples, the SEA region is generally a very good case study on weird routing and vastly different local infrastructure all within a small region. You will see plenty of cases where two same distances can have vastly different latency due to the difference is routing. In this situation, you would completely screw maybe 1/3 of the people in that region with a fixed high latency that they can never avoid.

Ultimately, your solution will throw plenty of people under the bus but I suppose it's not your problem so it's fine? Dedicated servers will also cost time and money to implement into the system. It's not just flipping a switch, especially if you're keeping the old system alongside. It's just not really a good venture as opposed to doing better on host migration.

Edited October 15, 2019 by RX-3DR

[Fallen77]

Ooh Sh.. Here we go again...

[0_The_F00l]

They should implement block chain 😛

[ILOHARTA]

considering the colossal investment it would require, I believe dedicated servers are just a dream

[Jarriaga]

12 hours ago, EmberStar said:

1)  You only provided real numbers for Steam and XBox.  You literally pulled numbers from thin air for PS4, Switch and the dedicated launcher.  You also made the somewhat strange assumption that "5% of the playerbase has finished The Sacrifice" means there is a huge number of people playing the game and that this somehow translates to them paying for a "totally optional" fee for a mode they can't possibly access (due to Arbitrations being locked behind a mission that *they haven't finished.*)  I would counter that your figure means that less than 5% of the people who have ever played Warframe are active players, and that the number running Arbitrations is a tiny fraction of that.

There are no concrete numbers for PS4 because the most up-to-date trophy tracker per player hasn't been updated in almost 3 years and doesn't include The Sacrifice. The PS4 playerbase is larger than the Xbox 1 in general, so it is a safe assumption that there are more PS4 Warframe players than XB1 WF players, hence the larger number. Also, PS as a platform on average has a lower trophy completion rate vs. their Xbox equivalents in multi-platform titles because achievement hunting is Xbox culture while trophies were created as a response to this, so the number of players who have completed The Sacrifice in PS4 shouldn't be that much more higher than XB1 players despite the differences in total player base.

I also seriously doubt the number of direct launcher players is anywhere close to Steam numbers based on average player library integration behavior and their aversion to having multiple launchers split across multiple different publisher-specific or developer-specific clients. So even that number was generous.

As for Switch, WF hasn't been on it for even a year, so assuming a low endgame level playerbase is not out of the question.

Sure I literally pulled those numbers out of thin air. They still work as points of reference when considering player behavior and distribution per platform.

Beyond that, no reason why the option to choose dedicated server in your matchmaking setting should be unlocked and unused before Arbitrations are unlocked. Easily solved by an in-game message or prompt displayed the first time you try to access Arbitrations explaining the differences so you can choose if you want to go public (P2P) or pay to unlock Arbitration DS.

Win-win.

12 hours ago, EmberStar said:

2)  It's entirely relevant, because if it's optional (and can presumably only be accessed by paying) then you're proposing splitting the already small number of people who play arbitrations further by locking out the ones who won't pay for the "premium" dedicated servers.

It would not be locking out anyone. Please stop ignoring the many times I have posted that if you choose "public" instead of "Dedicated Server" in your matchmaking settings, you still play using the current P2P system. If you can only sustain an argument by ignoring information that completely contradicts what you are saying then you do not have an argument at all.

As for splitting the playerbase, that is a non-issue unless you happen to believe the number of people who want dedicated servers (Even if paid) is large-enough as to cause a noticeable split in the playerbase.  And if that's the case, then the problems caused by P2P connections are not trivial. Otherwise, dedicated server players (Particularly if the service is exclusive to Arbitrations as I propose) would amount to a tiny minority that might as well be invisible to the rest of the community.

12 hours ago, EmberStar said:

3)  Why would they spend the money to do a market study when the probable results are apparent to almost anyone who isn't delusional?  "Free to play" games that attempt to include subscription models are often accused of double dipping, especially if they lock something actually worth having behind the subscription.  (Or in the case of the war in the stars MMO, break the free version by crippling the UI and drastically limiting how much you can progress in nearly every way.)

They would invest on it because the fact this topic shows up every week speaks for itself. There is a demand. And perception would be meaningless when players lose nothing by choosing not to engage in this optional fee so they can get what they want. If anyone wants to complain about DE listening to the part of the playerbase that is willing to pay for a service that affects NO ONE ELSE if they choose to, then let them. Those people will not care about the context, so no reason to reason with them.

There's no need to keep an active subscription. They can charge the upkeep maintenance fee like an individual 1-month access token per purchase so you can choose if you want to pay again after the "access token" expires without you having to manually unsubscribe.

12 hours ago, EmberStar said:

4)  Again, it's not off topic to bring up the *active* playerbase.  I would assert that the 5.6% of people who have completed The Sacrifice represent the *entire* active playerbase in any meaningful way.  The ones that haven't finished that mission either tried the game and quit, or simply aren't interested in doing more than logging in and punching some Grineer once in a while.  Either way, the only *possible* portion of the playerbase who would pay for "totally optional dedicated servers" will be a fraction of the already tiny fraction who don't quit before they finish The Sacrifice.  And if Dedicated Servers are only going to be a feature relevant to Arbitrations, you're looking at a very tiny fraction to split the costs.

And? If only 100 people want to pay for them, then let DE set 4 32-player racks and shut us up. We don't care about how tiny we are. We care that this is a lot better than being at the mercy of other players. Again: We've picked our poison and decided this is best for us. You have no horse in that race.

12 hours ago, EmberStar said:

5)  Again, an optional "opt in" system will divide the matchmaking pool.  This is never an advantage, especially in a mode that likely doesn't have massive participation to begin with.

See responses to points 2 and 5.

12 hours ago, EmberStar said:

6)  Good for you.  Although you might want to like it more, since PVP has an even better case for dedicated servers, and you'd likely have to share with them (because they're the only other group who would have any real reason to pay such a fee.)

They'd need to rework conclave to make it more even and piss off current Conclave players by taking away their advantages. Until they do, no interest from me.

12 hours ago, EmberStar said:

7)  The playerbase demanded that Arbitrations be a "hardcore" mode.  DE tried to do that by making it as close as they could to a permadeath mode.  That obviously doesn't work in a peer-to-peer hosting system if the host is the first one to die.  You know what would be a better solution than the one they took (and still way cheaper than dedicated servers?)  Walking back the "hardcore" completely, and allowing full revives with no penalty just like in every other mode.  Of course that would completely gut Arbitrations as the "elite" mode, but hey, a mission host who dies six minutes in wouldn't be holding the rest of the team hostage anymore.

Now that's an extremely unpopular opinion you have if you have payed attention to the last 2 Arbitration update threads. People want the additional challenge and having to build for the best they can because otherwise there is no point to play Arbitrations if they just feel like higher-level regular missions. The vast majority of players want the revival system gone and the initial enemy level to be higher. Those who can't handle it should just come back later once they have better gear and weapons to sustain themselves or capitalize on dedicated builds using the extra 300% bonus.

Funny how rather than at least proposing for the P2P matchmaking system to be reworked so it at least freeze the game until all players are connected again and their bonuses are kept (Completely addressing all of my problems and negating the need for dedicated servers) you'd rather they just further destroy a game mode that on their own words as created because of the low mission failure rate and lack of challenge.

12 hours ago, EmberStar said:

9)  Servers don't work like that.  Since you'd have to ping the server to authenticate that you have permission to connect to it - a DDOS attack can flood the server with garbage pings that the server still has to check just in case some of them are valid.  And there are some people on the internet who DDOS something simply because it exists, not because they actually know or care about the specific game or service.  Heck, someone could hire a bot-farm to DDOS the servers because they're pissed at their friend who they know wants to spend an hour playing Arbitrations.  People have recently *DIED* for far more petty reasons than that.  (The man killed in Kansas by police responding to a Swatter hoax wasn't a gamer.  The person who hired the swatter paid less than $20 for it, to "punish" someone he disliked in an online shooter game.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDoS_mitigation

Most DDoS attacks are effective only due to negligence of implementation. The many mitigation techniques and technologies available are the reason why you don't see as many DDoS reports today as in the past.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Jarriaga

[Jarriaga]

10 hours ago, Chaincat said:

Steam achievements aren't reliable. They bug out with warframe a lot, and if you completed an achievement on the standalone then moved over to steam, that achievement is permanently lost to your steam account.

Do you have a better source then? Regardless of how reliable they are, they still are the only point of reference we have.

10 hours ago, Chaincat said:

Arbitrations are not a very major focal point for most players, if we're being honest, and host migrations cause problems like lost loot and failed missions in "easier" missions. I don't suppose you'd want to lose your lua lens because a host migration booted you back to liset, would you?

 

That's a problem I would not experience with dedicated servers unless they are experiencing an actual problem instead of forcing a migration because they died or got bored. I've picked my poison. Not being at the mercy of another player outweighs anything else in my opinion.

[Jarriaga]

9 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Got news for you, boyo. I'm in Trinidad. You know, the opposite end of the the chain. Hispanola is huge compared to us, and I suspect, a mere stone's throw from North America along the Amx undersea cable unless you picked up and moved your island recently. So you sure you want to compare island sizes between the Greater Antilles and the Lesser Antilles? Or connections? That won't go as well as you think. 

That Amx cable is also probably why you have lower latency between the Americans and yourself than to the other Tenno in the DR. I have the same problem, but a much longer pipeline via Americas 1/Americas 2, before I can find a point in common with other Trini Tenno, somewhere up in Florida or wherever despite being able to walk to their houses in a reasonable amount of time. 

There's no need to compare because we already fit your extremely convenient worse-case scenario definition: A third world country fly speck of an island. Anything else would be moving the goalpost towards infrastructure development or telecommunications development.

9 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

That Amx cable is also probably why you have lower latency between the Americans and yourself than to the other Tenno in the DR. I have the same problem, but a much longer pipeline via Americas 1/Americas 2, before I can find a point in common with other Trini Tenno, somewhere up in Florida or wherever despite being able to walk to their houses in a reasonable amount of time. 

In my experience, their hardware, data plan and connection type all play a role. They get much better speeds when they visit me and go with a hardwired CAT-6 Gigabit cable. I'm on fiber while most of them are on wireless broadband.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Jarriaga

[Jarriaga]

9 hours ago, RX-3DR said:

Therefore, your point is that because you don't have connectivity issues to another region, most likely due to good routing, that all other region will be just as good? That's not how it works, connectivity is not completely tied to geography, you can't just look at the distance and latency and say that 10km is 10ms and blame everyone not achieving that as a problem of poor hardware.

Here's an example of my case. Geographically, Australia is closer to me than west coast of USA but due to the routing, my latency to Australia is higher than the west coast of USA. A friend who lives in the same country on a different ISP gets a vastly different latency and has lower latency to Australia. If you want more examples, the SEA region is generally a very good case study on weird routing and vastly different local infrastructure all within a small region.

Geography absolutely plays a role because distance is a problem. Even with my connection which can PING to Canada and stay under 100 (84), if I PING Sydney it grows to an absurd 487 and both my upload and download speeds take a massive hit.

And yes, your ISP and routing all play a role as well. Not everyone has the same data plan and connection, yes.

And?

Am I supposed to be an altruistic soul that is considerate of other people on the other side of the world at the cost of my own enjoyment or what? At that point you'd have to be a masochist if you'd be willing to submit yourself to that instead of connecting to your closest servers. Convenience > The rest.

9 hours ago, RX-3DR said:

In this situation, you would completely screw maybe 1/3 of the people in that region with a fixed high latency that they can never avoid.

Not if they still have P2P so they can play with other people outside the dedicated server.

9 hours ago, RX-3DR said:

Ultimately, your solution will throw plenty of people under the bus but I suppose it's not your problem so it's fine?

Again, am I supposed to be an altruistic soul that is considerate of others at the cost of my own enjoyment or what? What do you even expect for the answer to be here when throwing such a virtue-signaling morality appeal? Of course it's not my problem for the exact same reason that they don't have and shouldn't have to care about my problems unless they personally care about me, because we don't know each other and likely never will. I don't lose sleep over people I don't know.

And even then, it would not affect them in the slightest. You keep willingly ignoring the many times I have posted that in my proposal, the existing P2P system would remain for those who don't want to or can't use the dedicated server. It's a hybrid solution.

But go ahead. Keep the faux argument going.

9 hours ago, RX-3DR said:

Dedicated servers will also cost time and money to implement into the system.

Never said it otherwise. I just want to bring it to DE's attention and spark a conversation in the community.

9 hours ago, RX-3DR said:

It's not just flipping a switch, especially if you're keeping the old system alongside.

Why on Earth did you bring up examples that disregard the many times I've mentioned keeping the old system as well for those who need it only to acknowledge it later!? Cognitive dissonace over the need to absolutely refute why some people want dedicated servers? Seriously, why? What was your train of thought there? Why provide worse-case scenario examples of leaving people out in the dust that you yourself undermine later on by acknowledging they would not apply?

9 hours ago, RX-3DR said:

It's just not really a good venture as opposed to doing better on host migration.

If they rework host migrations so the game pauses and you keep all of your bonuses from Arbitration bonus damage to melee combo counter, then I'd agree there would be absolutely no need for dedicated servers because all of the issues people have a problem with inherited from the P2P system (Other than migration downtime) would be addressed. Here, I agree with you.

I have not seen a P2P game connection pausing the game though. Until I do, I'd rather go with personal experience and recommend dedicated servers since I have seen them working that way.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Jarriaga

[Aesthier]

10 hours ago, XenMaster said:

Who plays an online game that cost you to buy internet without  part/full time job?

 

Me. Retired/Fixed income.

However having or not having a job isn't the point; the point is this is a free to play game and assigning a subscription or regular fee to is not something most players would really want.