Get Servers or Optimize the P2P connection

[mega_lova_nia]

I have been asking around about how players connect to each other in warframe PC. If from what im hearing is true where us pc players are the ones hosting, is it possible that due to the immense data traffic between players and between squads, we players experience ultra lag which causes data to be not in sync?

If so, then please either rent server nodes to contain all of this data or brutally optimize the data being sent between players to maximize traffic flow and decrease the bugs caused by desynchronizations like players freezing, not loading into the level, or like in scarlet spear, kill codes being not sent for long periods of time.

[WhiteMarker]

But servers wouldn't help with all the issues we are facing because of covid-19.
Connections between players are bad. Why would a connection to a server be any better?

[Liam]

Well yes it would be better if there was specific servers, and not the host that are the "server" but dont think DE will be able to afford it. 

[AdunSaveMe]

It's not even just a matter of affording it. It is a HUGE undertaking. You can't simply switch on dedicated servers overnight.

[prodi1600]

I hope they address this, and change to dedicated servers, it will solve soo many stability issues

.

[WhiteMarker]

1 minute ago, prodi1600 said:

I hope they address this, and change to dedicated servers, it will solve soo many stability issues

.

And bring up other issues.
Where would these servers be located? At Canada where DE is. All over the world? How do they pay for the servers? How is decided to which server you connect? How would you play with the people you want to play with?
If I wanted to play with my brother in the same building, the ping would be perfect. But if we first had to connect to a server in, let's say, spain, the ping wouldn't be as good.

[DrakeWurrum]

32 minutes ago, WhiteMarker said:

Connections between players are bad. Why would a connection to a server be any better?

Because with a dedicated server hosting the data, you don't have to worry about things like host migrations, or hosts with PCs who cannot process the data. And if a player has a bad connection, it only affects them, not you.

2 minutes ago, WhiteMarker said:

Where would these servers be located? At Canada where DE is. All over the world? How do they pay for the servers? How is decided to which server you connect?

There are server hosting companies specifically for this sort of thing, used by all sorts of different companies.

And what do you mean how would they pay for it? DE makes a ton of money. They're one of the top sellers on Steam. They can easily afford dedicated servers without changing up their business model.

Being free2play doesn't mean they're poor.

Edited March 27, 2020 by DrakeWurrum

[WhiteMarker]

1 minute ago, DrakeWurrum said:

Because with a dedicated server hosting the data, you don't have to worry about things like host migrations, or hosts with PCs who cannot process the data. And if a player has a bad connection, it only affects them, not you.

And if the server had issues, and went offline, would you just be unable to play? Or would you have to use a server located somewhere far away?
Sure, servers are awesome. They solve every problem possible...

[DrakeWurrum]

Just now, WhiteMarker said:

And if the server had issues, and went offline, would you just be unable to play? Or would you have to use a server located somewhere far away?
Sure, servers are awesome. They solve every problem possible...

The servers are dramatically superior to the setup we have now.

It's also already the case that the Warframe servers we do have could be offline for various reasons - being p2p oriented doesn't stop that.

[WhiteMarker]

1 minute ago, DrakeWurrum said:

The servers are dramatically superior to the setup we have now.

It's also already the case that the Warframe servers we do have could be offline for various reasons - being p2p oriented doesn't stop that.

Sure, but how to solve all the issues that come with servers?
People tend to sound as if servers had no issues at all. But that's far from reality...

[DrakeWurrum]

3 minutes ago, WhiteMarker said:

Sure, but how to solve all the issues that come with servers?
People tend to sound as if servers had no issues at all. But that's far from reality...

You're right, servers can have issues. Sadly, reality is never perfect, and the concerns you have are literally impossible to ever fully resolve. Just like laws don't stop all crime, it's impossible to stop all connectivity issues.

But dedicated servers are still dramatically superior to our current P2P method. They're much more stable and reliable and can process things much more effectively. They would provide an overall better game performance than having to directly connect to somebody across the ocean just so we can play in a mission together - even their network performance would be superior, because of how the connections are formed.

You sound like somebody who has never had to work in anything even close to IT. Is your argument "it's not flawless, so better not do it" or are you just being facetious?

Edited March 27, 2020 by DrakeWurrum

[WhiteMarker]

2 minutes ago, DrakeWurrum said:

You sound like somebody who has never had to work in anything even close to IT. Is your argument "it's not flawless, so better not do it" or are you just being facetious?

Yes, I never worked in IT. I'm not one of these guys on the internet that pretends to work in IT.
The thing is, servers are expensive. With servers added DE won't make more money. They will just have to spend money.

You don't need to work in IT to see that that's such a huge issue that needs to be solved before they could even think about servers.
Or let me phrase it differently: Do you really think DE wouldn't already have added servers if it was such an easy task? Do you think you guys are geniuses to come up with something like dedicated servers?

[mega_lova_nia]

Quote

You don't need to work in IT to see that that's such a huge issue that needs to be solved before they could even think about servers.
Or let me phrase it differently: Do you really think DE wouldn't already have added servers if it was such an easy task? Do you think you guys are geniuses to come up with something like dedicated servers?

Which is why this is put in the feedback section don't you think? We all know servers will still have flaws and it is a huge undertaking to be done in one night, but if they succeeded in renting a server in the future, this will help with the data flow and fix the desyncing bugs of warframe, because from my observation, most problems that occur in warframe is due to people not in sync because of far away pings. I'm not forcing them to do this quickly, but im suggesting a possibility to fix the bugs that has been occuring in warframe for a long time.

Since renting a server is a long process, i offered another suggestion, which is to brutally optimize the data being sent between players. That way, the data flow will clear up since less data load = less network traffic = speeding up the communication between players = less lag = less bugs.

It's not about being a genius, it's about suggesting a solution

[WhiteMarker]

1 minute ago, mega_lova_nia said:

but if they succeeded in renting a server in the future, this will help with the data flow

A server... too cute...

2 minutes ago, mega_lova_nia said:

It's not about being a genius, it's about suggesting a solution

But you didn't suggest a solution. You suggested more issues that need to be adressed.

[prodi1600]

40 minutes ago, WhiteMarker said:

And bring up other issues.
Where would these servers be located? At Canada where DE is. All over the world? How do they pay for the servers? How is decided to which server you connect? How would you play with the people you want to play with?
If I wanted to play with my brother in the same building, the ping would be perfect. But if we first had to connect to a server in, let's say, spain, the ping wouldn't be as good.

dude they dont need to house the infrastructure themselves, there its something called infrastructure as a service, they can house servers in multiple locations so its most stable for everyone.

 

There are concepts in IT like redundancy, disaster recovery, avaliability that DE will need to follow, you lack the grasp of basic concepts about datacenter computing so dont go assuming, in resume a server client model hosted by dedicated server will always be better to what we have.

Edited March 27, 2020 by prodi1600

[WhiteMarker]

1 minute ago, prodi1600 said:

dude they dont need to house the infrastructure themselves, there its something called infrastructure as a service, they can house servers in multiple locations so its most stable for everyone.

Which still doesn't solve the cost-issue.
DE won't make more money just because of servers. So where will the additional money come from that they will need to pay for these servers?

[prodi1600]

1 minute ago, WhiteMarker said:

Which still doesn't solve the cost-issue.
DE won't make more money just because of servers. So where will the additional money come from that they will need to pay for these servers?

For a company as DE the money cost should not be no problem, there are lot of F2P games that use that model, dam there are lot of company with less income that use that model.

[WhiteMarker]

1 minute ago, prodi1600 said:

For a company as DE the money cost should not be no problem, there are lot of F2P games that use that model, dam there are lot of company with less income that use that model.

Always fun to see when people know exactly how much money random companies make.

The thing is, DE, as a company, is functioning right now. This means they make money, can spend money on stuff, and they can pay their stuff.
We also know that servers cost money and won't make any money back.
And we know that so far DE didn't make servers happen.

So it's safe to assume that they don't make that much money to easily support servers all over the globe.
But then again, I don't work in IT or at DE like all you guys. So what do I know? XD

[prodi1600]

17 minutes ago, WhiteMarker said:

Always fun to see when people know exactly how much money random companies make.

The thing is, DE, as a company, is functioning right now. This means they make money, can spend money on stuff, and they can pay their stuff.
We also know that servers cost money and won't make any money back.
And we know that so far DE didn't make servers happen.

So it's safe to assume that they don't make that much money to easily support servers all over the globe.
But then again, I don't work in IT or at DE like all you guys. So what do I know? XD

Dude Im actually a Server/Netwokring/Mid range storage engineer for Dell so I know what im talking about lol, its obvious DE need to have his cost as Low as possible thats why instead of housing the solution themselves, just get a nice Platform as a service with a good SLA contract so they don't have to deal with hardware, and only deal with all software related, they can easily get something crazy with ISP around the world for a reasonable budged, warframe as a game already works as a server client model maybe hosted all in Canada, the difference its that for the game sessions a home user PC(mostly potato class) with home Internet plans(from around the mid 90's) its the host that sends and receives data from all the clients(party members) those are things that DE cant control and will always affect the game experience but since you will have dedicated servers those will have Enterprise Symetirc Internet connection HCI clusters will be vastly superior to any home/gaming PC most of us have.

If they ever get to do the change and do it correctly there will be a noticeable improvement in stability and user experience.

Obviosuly this its not the time for any big change like that but they will get to a point where it will be almost necessary if they will keep in the path of developing the warframe game af they have been doing it.

Edited March 27, 2020 by prodi1600

[Cpl_Facehugger]

2 hours ago, WhiteMarker said:

But servers wouldn't help with all the issues we are facing because of covid-19.
Connections between players are bad. Why would a connection to a server be any better?

Servers are generally a lot more powerful than any individual player host's machine. The connection itself is only part of what drives lag/system instability. Plus, a server would almost certainly have a much better connection than the average home connection, so instead of two bad home connections talking, it'd be one excellent enterprise-level connection and one bad home connection talking.

 

Of course, we do already have some servers - hubs like Cetus and Fortuna are all hosted on servers. Though, extending this to all the game would probably be prohibitively costly since there's some tricks they use in hubs to keep things manageable (ie no pets/animations more complex than walking, no combat, no AI, etc etc etc.)

 

Ultimately tho, DE's been clear that servers are too expensive for them even despite the advantages, and I'm sure they've got better numbers than us players to make that decision with.

Edited March 27, 2020 by Cpl_Facehugger

[mega_lova_nia]

17 minutes ago, Cpl_Facehugger said:

Ultimately tho, DE's been clear that servers are too expensive for them even despite the advantages, and I'm sure they've got better numbers than us players to make that decision with.

if that's the case, let's just hope that in the future, a server would become a possibility. For now, a complete overhaul on the P2P system would be nice.

[Awazx]

En 27/3/2020 a las 9:27, WhiteMarker dijo:

And bring up other issues.
Where would these servers be located? At Canada where DE is. All over the world? How do they pay for the servers? How is decided to which server you connect? How would you play with the people you want to play with?
If I wanted to play with my brother in the same building, the ping would be perfect. But if we first had to connect to a server in, let's say, spain, the ping wouldn't be as good.

It seems as if other gaming companies have never solved the problems you quote.

[Shalath]

You are asking DE to rewrite all of their netcode and then throw away a bunch of their monthly profits to cure the odd host migration. That's a very expensive ask for very little gain (from DE's point of view) and I'm not surprised at all they haven't done this over the last 7 years.

I'm fairly sure that the P2P system is what allows DE to update the game without downtime as well. Dedicated servers would have to be taken offline for patching.

Optimising the P2P isn't really going to work either. Right now the host has most of the session info and in a bad host migration we all know you can lose your rewards. The correct solution would be to un-optimise so all of the squad has the session info so if a migration goes bad the session info is still pesent in whichever squad member takes over as host and rewards aren't lost. That's a 4x increase in session bandwidth which would be a disaster for those that have to pay by the GB for their internet or those with very low bandwidth.

[Yamazuki]

 

48 minutes ago, Shalath said:

You are asking DE to rewrite all of their netcode and then throw away a bunch of their monthly profits to cure the odd host migration. That's a very expensive ask for very little gain (from DE's point of view) and I'm not surprised at all they haven't done this over the last 7 years.

I'm fairly sure that the P2P system is what allows DE to update the game without downtime as well. Dedicated servers would have to be taken offline for patching.

Optimising the P2P isn't really going to work either. Right now the host has most of the session info and in a bad host migration we all know you can lose your rewards. The correct solution would be to un-optimise so all of the squad has the session info so if a migration goes bad the session info is still pesent in whichever squad member takes over as host and rewards aren't lost. That's a 4x increase in session bandwidth which would be a disaster for those that have to pay by the GB for their internet or those with very low bandwidth.

Some games don't go down for patches, Guild Wars 2 for example just requires re-logging like Warframe does. Riot also has started pushing hot fixes and even has been doing live maintenance when needed and only really takes the game down for the usual stuff every other week.

Although, I personally don't care for dedicated servers when it comes to Warframe. Really nt interested in most likely playing the game with 100+ ping indefinitely, and probably with the same packet loss/routing issues that I have to deal with for most other games.

[DrakeWurrum]

On 2020-03-27 at 11:14 AM, WhiteMarker said:

Always fun to see when people know exactly how much money random companies make.

Right right, I forgot that DE is totally too poor to throw money around like that.

It's also weird of you to suggest that DE won't make more money, as if marketing dedicated servers as a feature isn't something that would attract more players and keep more players from quitting the game over host migration issues. You have no idea how big of a deal connection stability can be for the user experience, apparently.

I know damn well that it's expensive, but I also know that DE can afford it. They may not be a AAA developer studio, but they don't need to be. They're making a lot of money off the revenue streams they have.

Edited March 28, 2020 by DrakeWurrum