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Only US westcoast servers?
Yalexy
Member UncommonPosts: 1,058
OK, so after I've read the official forums for the last two days to gather more detailed informations I came across the fact, that so far there's no other servers planned then on the US-westcoast (Phoenix, Arizona) as the developers want to have physical access. As they're a small studio, they don't think about placing servers anwhere else.
This is really bad news for EU-players, as this game won't have autofire so ping-times are very cruicial, especially when we're talking about a PvP-oriented game with mass-combat in mind.
How do you feel about this issue? Do you think they should look straight away for an EU-publisher to setup EU-servers, or will you happily live with the big drawback of being uncompetitive against players that happen to live in the US?
This really is a huge letdown for me.
Comments
Hmm, I reside in Europe, but I play Global Agenda on NA server, because there are more ppl, and I've never had any problem with ping... There is 21st century outdoors, I don't think it makes much difference where you reside...
dont think you need to worry to much this isnt a fps
Where were the DAoC servers based?
Edit: I'd play US servers and I'm based in the UK simply because there will be more English speaking players
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c('')('')
16MBit here, still the ping to US westcoast is a massive 250ms. To the hosts in EU (London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam) it's only 50ms. That's a huge difference actually, especially when it comes down to a fast-paced combat-system.
Global Agenda is heavily instanced with only 10 players per map, and it's netcode isn't server-based. That's why it works there, just like it works in most shooters. In a MMO tho, where there's server-calculated dice-rolls this isn't working very well.
DAoC had seperate EU-servers until 2010. GOA was hosting them. In Feb 2010 Mythic took over and wiped all but one EU-server. RIP Camlann
plus i think server in us are until they get the game off the ground
Actually I think it is going to be more of a disadvantage to the players with a better ping when they are fighting a higher ping player. Because while the higher ping players gun shaped wand that is basically a spell dispenser might take a bit longer to cast each spell the damage applied will be applied faster on the lower ping player than his damage to the higher ping players will be.
But because this is not a shooter and thereby ping really is not as big a factor. Just because you have to actively cast each spell instead of each spell being autocast I dont think it will be any different.Every other mmo you have to actively cast spells as well they dont just auto cast and just because they shaped their wands like guns doesnt make it a shooter.
You can name any tab-targetting MMO where there's no autofire and those with the higher ping will be the loosers in duels.
The reason for this is, that your keystrokes need (in the example of EU vs US with 50ms vs 200ms) four times aslong to be acknowledged by the server. Your movement aswell as your attacks are not as timed as the ones from the US-player etc. And damage isn't coming to the US player first or faster, as it's serverbased the damage is just as fast applied to both players, but the EU-player gets the message later, having less time to react to it.
You need to learn alot about server-sided gamesystems apparently. Damage, movement, etc is all calculated on the server and not on the client and your ping is cruicial to be as low as possible to not have a lag in communication between server and client. There's no direct communication between clients like in most FPS-games.
actually there is a slight bonus to being laggy in a battle, while the lower ping player has already moved, your higher ping will show him at his old spot, causing you to beable to shoot his "ghost" most of the time. while net speeds and lag have come along way since games like counter strike. cheating with lag pings is still pretty popular in most video games. hell its still done in counter strike.
while having as low a ping as possible is the best, some times it really doesnt make a huge differance, i have also seem some servers give rather decent pings out of their local. so i would hold off freaking out over pings until the actual server is active with its avarage load. only then will you beable to tell if the west coast only server effects your game play to a massive extent.
you could very well have a 200ms ping while not really being all that effected, comes down to their coding and how they stream line the server cluster.
I think it's smarter to start smaller with something you know you can manage. They can get the launch kinks worked out, get an idea of what they're in for and then add a European server farm later.
So long as they make it clear to European players that their game play could be impacted by playing from Europe and they are playing 'at their own risk' it's fine. If there are enough European players to support a set of European servers, and they want to increase their player base, they'll add some European servers.
I'm not sure how that will work with the 'one world' type of game though. Maybe you get a really, really good connection between the European servers and the master servers living in the U.S.? Dunno.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
So having planned only US servers as an independant small studio that has no clue yet what customer numbers are to be expected is a problem? It's the only reasonable way at this moment. If the game is successful you can ask the question again.
The reasonable way would be to put the servers on the eastcoast atleast, where EU-players still have a decent ping compared to the US-westcoast.
The more locations the better as obviously you want people all over the globe to have a good experience. But if they have to start small for budgetary reasons, that sucks but I would hope if enough of you (from wherever) sign up and try it, you can petition for it, and they'd listen if they have the numbers.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Im a little disapointed by them only haveing servers local to their office, but understand the reason. On their Ustream vids they do say they are gertting good pings from all over. Just have to wait and see.
All I heard was... "Well aren't you just a little lolly pop triple dipped in psycho."
You are correct in that I dont understand it then hehe,because I was thinking that your character still had to communicate with the server that it was being hit and it would seem that higher ping would also lag that "I am getting hit" info as well as the "I am firing" info.My bad sorry.
Ping isn't that big a deal with tab target games anyway.
Incognito
www.incognito-gaming.us
"You're either with us or against us"
In one of their ustream videos they said they have someone from England in their beta test and they had a good ping.
I've been playing a game for the last year where the server is in Germany. I have no problems from the west coast USA. When there has been lag usually it effects everyone.
When I played DAoC for many years, I had many Euro friends that played on the USA servers with me. They were less happy with LOTRO seperating their servers between the continents and not letting players decide which servers they wanted to play on. Things like that keep friends I have made online from playing with each other in some games.
Waiting for Camelot Unchained
The reason of them wanting physical access to the servers is ridiculous at best and a cover up argument hiding the truth!
It has more likely to do with the fact that they appearently cannot afford hosting their hardware in a Datacenter and run it in their backroom on their local internet connection, like the devs of Earthrise and Perpetuum.
And that is gonna bite them in the butt, as they will soon find out, that if there is a slight interest in the game and enough players try play this game, they will run into serious bandwith issues real fast! Which became all too clear with the launch of Perpetuum Online!
When you host your hardware in a Datacenter, you get enough access to manage your whole server and your game, just like any other MMO company is doing.
And thus you don't need to have your servers located on the Westcoast, but can place them on the Eastcoast instead.
Just my 2 cents.
The biggest impact physical distance has is directly related to the cost of negotiating TCP sessions. A 200 ping is definately playable if there are not large numbers of people in the area (IE big PvP battle). One way to mitigate this is to use a local or reasonbly local proxy. At this stage I'm sure it has not been tested and until they are on production servers and doing perfomance testing of the area servers (hero engine) it's not even worth speculating about. As long as server performance is good, this game should be very playable in europe with the backbone we have spanning the pond.
Apotheos
They are not a fly by night, backroom operation. They are using the highwinds CDN, The Hero Blade system and are in a peer rich datacenter.
Apotheos
Or you know, they just could want access to their servers to start out. Remember, this is a small, independant studio, money doesn't grow on trees. Perhaps if people are so gung ho on server farms being placed everywhere, they should offer to fund them?
Would be great if they could make a deal with someone with hosting (for the love of all that is holy though not goa)