Warframe surpassed CS:GO and became the Most Profitable F2P game on Steam, this is the time to talk about Dedicated Servers

[Roble_Viejo]

I wrote a lengthy Post detailing how the Peer-to-Peer system works (EE.log, Host's FPS limiting other
Players Log Rate, which can lower your DMG if you play Mesa for example) and why is becoming
unsustainable because of Cross Save and Cross Play but ended up deleting it, Im gonna make it simple

All you need to know is this:
- Warframe doesn't have Servers, the "Server" is the Host's PC
This is single-handedly the reason why Host Migration exists.
- Warframe now has Cross Save and Cross Play, meaning the
"server" you are playing in is a PC, a Console or even a Switch.
- Warframe is also launching on Mobiles this year, meaning the
session you're playing in might be hosted in a Phone over wi-fi.
- Everything in Warframe, down to your DPS when playing Mesa
for example, is based on this system. If the Host has low FPS or
a laggy internet the whole Squad will be negatively affected.

If you think Host Migration is a core issue that should be addressed, the time to voice your concerns
and suggestions is now, because once Warframe launches on Mobile this problem will get much worse

Im posting this now at the start of 2024, because Warframe has now broken record profits, which
means the money to stablish Dedicated Servers and fix all of these core problems is right there

As always I wanna clarify I LOVE Warframe, I think it's the best F2P Game EVER and I will always praise DE and how they handle its development, that's
exactly why I wish to see these core issues that have been a problem for over a decade now get addressed, so we can have 10 more years of Warframe

Thanks for reading and have a nice day Tenno 🙏

[Nekomian]

This gets brought up over and over by users implying it's some "fix all" for the issues players encounter - it is not. It would resolve problems of host migration or niche scenarios where some host has 2 FPS, and introduce entirely new problems that the existing system did not have (added latency to central servers, server overload causing mission loss, increased cost of operations due to scale, etc.).

Just going to link my response to the previous one of very many threads of this: 

 

[Joezone619]

Nice as they would be, we didn't need em to get here, we don't need em now.

[Pakaku]

36 minutes ago, Roble_Viejo said:

Im posting this now at the start of 2024, because Warframe has now broken record profits, which means the money to stablish Dedicated Servers and fix all of these core problems is right there

Having money and throwing money at a problem doesn't magically solve said problem

Also consider that servers may not always be running, or Warframe may not always be profitable. 2023 may have been a good year, but profits aren't guaranteed every upcoming year. What do you do when you can't pay for your servers? Do you shut them down and make your game unplayable? Or do you default your game back to P2P again and annoy the players who insist that server-based hosting is the one-and-only solution

 

36 minutes ago, Roble_Viejo said:

- Warframe doesn't have Servers, the "Server" is the Host's PC. This is single-handedly the reason why Host Migration exists.

This is almost always the biggest reason people want servers. Perfectly understandable. But instead of working to convert the entire online infrastructure from P2P to servers, the devs would probably have an easier time finding ways to handle host migrations more gracefully. Plenty of ideas are out there, whether I agree with them or not, like more ways of retaining loot even after a migration. If you're guaranteed to hold onto your loot, then a host migration is effectively harmless.

 

36 minutes ago, Roble_Viejo said:

- Warframe now has Cross Save and Cross Play, meaning the "server" you are playing in is a PC, a Console or even a Switch. Warframe is also launching on Mobiles this year, meaning the session you're playing in might be hosted in a Phone over wi-fi.

Matchmaking could be improved to prioritize PC hardware over console over mobile, although I feel like mobile phone hardware is surprisingly capable these days.

 

36 minutes ago, Roble_Viejo said:

- Everything in Warframe, down to your DPS when playing Mesa for example, is based on this system. If the Host has low FPS or a laggy internet the whole Squad will be negatively affected.

And if a server is having issues, like overload, then you run into the same set of issues, among others

Edited February 11 by Pakaku

[Venus-Venera]

ded server would mean that a lot of money would be spent on internet traffic. This money will be missing for development.
In the end there are only ridiculous "updates" like for Path of Exile. So absolutely unworthy content that can be developed by a few students.

Because updates for Warframe are hardcore, very well done and have real content. Something like that costs a lot of money

[Roble_Viejo]

hace 20 minutos, Joezone619 dijo:

Nice as they would be

Its not "nice", is necessary

hace 21 minutos, Joezone619 dijo:

we didn't need em to get here, we don't need em now

We didn't have Cross Play and Cross Save, we have them now


As I said: Peer-to-Peer is a MASSIVE issue for a Co-op game
that can be played (and thus hosted) on ANY platform, this
was bearable until now, once Mobile launches it will not be

Is this a problem that can be fixed? Yes
Does DE have the money to fix it? Yes

If there was a moment to ask for Dedicated Servers, it is right now

 

[trst]

The dedicated server question has never actually been about the cost of doing it but the return on the investment.

And considering that the average mission time is around 5 minutes and most players don't experience host/migration issues often (or in some cases they never experience them) there's simply no reason for DE to make such an investment. It'd be DE throwing money at a niche problem that'll cause entirely new problems (for players and DE) all for no return.

 

Also dedicated servers aren't some magic bullet for connection issues anyways. Yeah you might get fewer/no migrations but you're then taking on entirely new problems. Like needing to connect to the nearest server instead of the nearest host meaning for plenty of players connection qualities could get considerably worse. The servers needing to go down entirely when updates get pushed (no more sitting in a mission while an update deploys). And server downtime when back-end maintenance is required.

[BroDutt]

16 minutes ago, Roble_Viejo said:

As I said: Peer-to-Peer is a MASSIVE issue for a Co-op game
that can be played (and thus hosted) on ANY platform, this
was bearable until now, once Mobile launches it will not be

Is this a problem that can be fixed? Yes
Does DE have the money to fix it? Yes

Unfortunately Dedicated Server didn't solve all those issue. Regular maintenance and update still required. And considering the base player keep expanding none of that sustainable for the next 5 years.

And those revenue mostly went to investor (Tencent, etc), daily operation and future development. Unless they hit 1 billion dollars net profit, it's not sustainable. 

However if Steve can convinced Tencent to use Tencent owned established dedicated server (probably get mocked on Investor gathering), it's still a steep hill to die for.

Edited February 11 by BroDutt

[DrivaMain]

Let me guess, you experienced too many failed host migrations today so you, in this moment of bad mood, went ahead and made this thread?

Instead of asking for a dedicated server, how about asking for a "force host" option? You don't have to deal with the dreaded host migrations because you will always be the host.

[Roble_Viejo]

hace 1 hora, DrivaMain dijo:

Let me guess, you experienced too many failed host migrations today so you, in this moment of bad mood, went ahead and made this thread?

The Peer-to-Peer System has been serviceable so far but with PC, Consoles,
Switch and Mobile Cross-Play and Cross-Save it will definitely not be.
This is a decade long issue that has been brought up many many times so
no, this is not a moment of "bad mood", actually Im ecstatic with Warframe
surpassing CS:GO on Steam, like Im literally very happy about this.
Im posting this now because Im a 10 year player who plans on sticking around
one more decade (if possible). I truly love Warframe and Digital Extremes.

So in this moment of record profits, Im suggesting something that
would truly show how respected and loved Warframe's Community is: 
- The Patch that would end Host Migration


Regardless of any of this, a Multi-Platform, Cross-Play and Cross-Save Coop Game
in 2024 should not, under any circumstances, use the Peer-to-Peer Systems, specially
when the developers have the budget for hosting their own Dedicated Servers.

Servers are not even that expensive and Warframe is already partitioned in Regions
you can change in the Settings, this could be done gradually or even optionally.
 

[Aldain]

This thread is coming off less as "Time to talk" and more "Shut up and listen to me" if I'm being honest.

[Numerounius]

People are overestimating the need for dedicated servers, apart from the occasional host migration issues it goes off a lot of time without any issue for me. Even with the abundance of cross-saved hosts it isn't that much of an issue to be worth needing to dedicate to a fully server-based system especially once you consider how many different instances it would have to host.

Like yes it should always be a major point that DE should always be aware about rather than being an issue that pops up after looking at an off-hand statline so this is one area where it helps to be proactive in.

There might be stuff like dps checks as Mesa or requiem glyphs not showing up as clients or rewards not showing up as clients but these issues related to servers are very minor in the grand scheme of things and I'm sure if there was a major issue like phone hosts causing game instances to be dropping like flies then I am confident that DE will swoop in and provide an intermittent fix.

[OniDax]

Quote

Warframe surpassed CSGO and becames the most profitable F2P game on Steam

What, for one day, because DE sells $70 - $140 downloadable content? Any other game selling content for that much money would be criticized.

That said, yes, DE should be able to afford dedicated servers. It won't fix every issue, but they should be able to afford it.

[0_The_F00l]

I do share the OPs concern for mobiles being hosts (there is no way it will not impact the rest of the clients if that is actually what is going to happen)

But I also feel the mobile options will not be an exact replica of the architecture we have right now.

So there is no immediate need for doom saying , but I am curious to see what happens.

We do definitely need a more graceful way to have host migrations or choosing the right host in a group.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

Guess we're not ready, according to these answers and the ones on reddit. 

Unless you got the money to cough up yourself I guess try asking again in 4 more years lol.

[rockscl]

Aint that a non sequitur tho? 

Like what is the concatenation between profit and dedicated hosting, the pve side of the game has been pver p2p for literally a decade now

[CrownOfShadows]

I don't think people realize that DE already has dedicated servers. The reason you don't have host migrations on open world hubs & relays is because those are dedicated servers. (LOL imagine the host migration nightmare that would be).

The problem is the sheer size of the playerbase makes implementing this for every launched mission a titanic, intimidating endeavor. Hosting hundreds of thousands of players, or theoretically millions of them all at once is a huge overhead. I honestly couldn't even guess how many concurrent missions are running on average, that would be an interesting statistic that would greatly inform this discussion.

While I also share concerns over mobile - and honestly Switch too, although that seems to be working out? - being hosts (although internet connectivity is pretty insane these days), I think that fixing that one issue (host migrations) is not worth the network overhaul and expense that dedicated servers would bring. And I'd be willing to bet that tons of things have special hosting code too (RJ in particular omg) which would have to be completely redesigned and rebuilt and re-deployed.

I think the only real true reason for switching to dedicated servers would be if they made a pvp game mode that caught on really well, or were hoping to make one, but even then they would most likely leave the rest of the game as p2p and have the pvp be dedicated.

One way they could do this though, and the way I would do it if I was them and really wanted it, would be to start really small and and just slowly ramp up it up over time until eventually the whole game was converted. Like you can't just drop dedicated servers in on a game this size, but you could develop a plan and slowly convert it over like 5 or 6 years. They would probably want to offload the cost of that to players though, which means more aggressive marketing tactics... eh, eeeee yeah ima have to agree with some of the others here we might be better off skipping that improvement.

[Aerikx]

I'll just say what I always say when dedicated servers comes up as a topic...

When a company gets dedicated servers, prepare to pay:

A. A Monthly Sub

B. A Monthly Battle pass

C. Some kind of Premium Access Feature

Dedicated Servers are insanely expensive, and for a game like Warframe they'd need to have a static/reliable budget to keep them running.

The problem with Warframe being Free to Play and THE sole fairest Freemium games on the market is that it's profits are a rollercoaster. The amount of guaranteed revenue they bank on for development is far lower than subscription games. 

The community loves throwing a fit over stuff like the Heirloom Collections, paid story skips, and etc. And while I wasn't a fan of the ideas, I 100% understood the thinking.

(Tip: You don't have to agree or like something to understand it. Also, understanding something doesn't mean you are aligned/okay with it.)

1. DE is looking for other avenues to increase profits to account for their bad months.

2. DE is looking for ways to get people into the game and into advertised content faster so they become dedicated and spend money. 

Therefore, if DE were to purchase or rent the ungodly amount of servers a cross platform game like Warframe would need...

Expect to see Nightwave gets a "Paid"/"Premium" tier reward list, and/or some kind of "Zariman's Elite" subscription that gives all boosters, monthly or weekly plat, and exclusive rewards to those willing to pay monthly for it. 

Saw this very thing happen with Elder Scrolls Online, Phantasy Star, and other games...

Remember, DE is owned by Tencent. Dedicated Servers is just the excuse Tencent would need to squeeze money out of Warframe players.

[Slayer-.]

Dedicated servers won't fix much, and players around the world will still have crap internet and drop now and then, only time I drop connections is a power outage.

I like it when I'm the host with my super fast reliable internet connection.

Mobiles as hosts, hmmm not thrilled. I just keep my PC ping at 225 in the game settings I don't know if that makes any difference, but probably not, might need to be lower.

Bringing in dedicated servers would seriously hurt the free-to-play because then new content would need to be paid for to keep the upkeep of the servers for the ever expanding content being released, they are not cheap to run or house in server farms let alone the cost to pay someone to monitor and maintain them and keep them running, I've been there done that in the past not worth the hassle.

[stormy505]

The current system already struggles when a switch or old gen console hosts. It's going to get so much worse when Warframe goes to mobile.

I'm not sure if dedicated servers are the answer. Although the default answer of "it's too much money" really falls apart when you look at how much money warframe brings in, above other games with dedicated servers... but something needs to absolutely change before the mobile launch.

[Loza03]

Monster Hunter has historically used Peer-to-Peer servers for around 10 years now, with the last game to use Servers being Monster Hunter 3. Its online has always been great, with Rise even being noted to be substantially better than the rest of the Online available to Nintendo games, precisely because it doesn't use Nintendo's servers.

Warframe also releases new updates without load-based crashes. Granted sometimes it has every other form of bug or crash (cough empyrean cough), but never load-based, because Peer-to-Peer isn't susceptible to that.

 

Peer-to-Peer isn't the problem, it never has been, and never will be. DE's netcode and multiplayer framework is a more probable culprit, but I also don't see how that'd change if DE switched to servers.

[SDGDen]

alright so.

number 1: there's no reason for DE to do this, considering they don't stand to gain anything from it. 

number 2: there are some major issues with dedicated server implementations.

 

when working with peer-to-peer, as you said, a poor host can mean a poor experience, HOWEVER, the great thing about peer-to-peer is that in most scenario's, there will be a host physically close to you, this means your latency wont be that high and as long as the host has a decent machine your experience will be great too. 

switching to dedicated hosting will make that good experience more consistently available to those with decent latency to the dedicated servers, however, to get good latency for *everyone* that plays the game, you'd need to place *a lot* of servers all around the world.

most dedicated hosting games actually ditch a decent chunk of the world, focussing only on europe, the USA and MAYBE asia. usually users in african countries end up with latency of 1 second or higher.

currently, those players simply play with eachother, with relatively low latency. forcing them into using dedicated hosting would permanently ruin the game for them.

switching to dedicated hosting will also mean that at the games EOL, it'll be more difficult to cut the game loose from DE's servers. AFAIK steve has said in the past that should DE go under, they'll ensure the playerbase can continue playing warframe through self-hosting things like the account server (which is what DE currently runs)

 

there's other implementations that would actually work a lot better. one big thing DE could do is to add matchmaking options for "public - host only" and "public - client only", as well as allow players to opt-out of hosting through settings (imho players that have consistently poor performance should be automatically opted out of hosting public missions)

there's also the option of a hybrid setup, similar to what destiny 2 uses. 

destiny 2 avoids host migrations by splitting the tasks between a peer2peer system and a dedicated system. they actually have three: mission host, bubble host and physics host.

mission and bubble host are two sides of the same coin, they're hosted on a bungie server. mission host for missions, bubble host for openworlds and social spaces

the physics host meanwhile is a player.

the mission/bubble host only handles some higher-level stuff, for example scoreboards, checkpoints, who's in the mission, etc. it usually runs at around 5 ticks per second (which is quite low) and doesnt handle ANYTHING super time sensitive. it knows aproximately where players and enemies are but that's about it.

the physics host knows the exact location of every player, every enemy, what they're doing, what buffs and debuffs they have etcetera.

every player actually does their own physics and AI simulation, and checks back with the physics host to see if there are any differences, if there are, the physics host is considered authoritative (meaning their version is considered the "true" one.) with one exception: every player is authoritative over their own movement (this is to prevent rubberbanding) 

because every player is running the whole physics and AI simulation, the only thing that needs to happen for a host migration in destiny 2 is for the mission or bubble host to assign a new physics host, from then on that player's simulation is considered "authoritative". 

this makes it *a lot* easier to swap hosts, and because the mission/bubble hosts are not time-sensitive (it's fine if it takes a second for the scoreboard, checkpoint or mission objective to update) latency to bungie servers isn't a big deal within this setup.

 

such a hybrid setup would be a much better solution for warframe than a fully dedicated setup imho. 

 

 

[(PSN)robotwars7]

DE:

just because the game made bank doesn't mean DE have any obligation to spend the Grofit on dedicated servers, especially when the change is that drastic. given how long and how difficult the cross-save process thing has been for them, there's no way they'd want to up-end all of their progress and have to work on it from scratch again just for dedicated servers, that honestly wouldn't solve issues, as much as trade them for new ones.

I'm under no illusions that mobile hosts are gonna be atrocious, I would never have taken warframe to mobile if it were down to me, but it isn't; DE wants the game to run on just about anything, and P2P is the more cost-effective way to make that happen. 

 

[Tsukinoki]

And what, are dedicated servers going to fix every single issue warframe faces?

Because news flash: It's not.

 

You'll still have bad connections.
You'll still have people drop out (and if it was a mission that required a key and the key holder dropped out then you'll still be kicked out)

And you'll have all sorts of new issues to deal with:
Long queues to join the game when events and updates happen, just like most other games with dedicated servers.
Depending on where you live you may now have large amounts of lag for no fault of your own, just that your connection to the server isn't good.....and you have no way around this now!
When an update  is launched you'll be kicked out of your mission immediately so that they can deploy the update, and who cares if you were one minute away from a rotation C reward?

 

And beyond that it all comes at the low, low cost of completely delaying any and all updates for at least half a year so that they can retool their entire netcode to work with dedicated servers!

 

I mean who doesn't see that list of cons and go "By god, I must have dedicated servers now, all of that is worth not having an uncommon host migration!"

11 hours ago, Roble_Viejo said:

So in this moment of record profits, Im suggesting something that
would truly show how respected and loved Warframe's Community is: 
- The Patch that would end Host Migration

Ah yes, lets completely stop any and all warframe development for at least 6 months so that they can retool their entire netcode....that'll surely work great!  I mean it's not like this game has proven time and again that when DE doesn't get content out its playerbase and profits plummet like a rock.....right?

You are severely underestimating how long it would take to:
-Rip out all of the current netcode
-Put new netcode in place
-Test it (even with DE's general lack of testing this would be the one thing they would have to otherwise it wouldn't be possible to play the game)
-Fix major bugs
-Retest it
-Repeat until it's ready to put into players hands.

And even after all that the playerbase would be left with a massive slew of new errors and issues while playing the game....

Again, I can see the one positive of this (avoiding host migrations) but the list of cons is just a bit too much.

 

And meanwhile they can't do much else in development because of how deeply embedded in anything netocde is, so it would essentially be a moratorium on any other updates as it would be all hands just to replace the netcode.

 

And how well do you think the playerbase would take the news of that happening?
I mean did you see what happened to the playerbase during the "year of quality" DE tried a few years ago?  And this would be only a single update that would take about as long....

Edited February 12 by Tsukinoki

[Aerikx]

3 hours ago, stormy505 said:

I'm not sure if dedicated servers are the answer. Although the default answer of "it's too much money" really falls apart when you look at how much money warframe brings in, above other games with dedicated servers... but something needs to absolutely change before the mobile launch.

Warframe brings in a lot of money yes but not consistently. Microtransaction reliance is chaotic and frighteningly fragile.

Example/Context:

FF14 has an very large player count, so once they had a figure that it never dips below, Squarenix was able to create a reliable static budget.

Hence the quarterly update cycle they adhere too with extreme comfortability.

Warframe is entirely dependent on how well the prime access and current update's merch (weapons, equipment, cosmetics) is selling / effecting the game economy (Forma, Catalysts, Reactors, Adapters, etc)

For a game like FF14, a static expense like that is feasible. For Warframe who's month to month is far from reliable it's insane. 

The game is making a profit, now...

But let's not forget, it was fluctuating between breaking even and barely making profit in 2020-2021, 2022 was a roller coaster. 2023 was an overall good year despite a shakey/rough start. 

So far 2024 has been great but we're only a little over a month into it. 

That said...

I am with the majority on Mobile hosting concerns. 

I feel like a bandaid fix is for the lobby to default to Console & PC as host unless the lobby is all Mobile players. 

Man...Mobile is going to be a trip...and bad for my Lunch breaks...