6 ms·

That is a supremely cherry picked list. GTA4 was a single player game with some thrown in "community" features. Fallout 3 was a single player game. You see..

by cwhiz 6y ago

That is a supremely cherry picked list. GTA4 was a single player game with some thrown in "community" features. Fallout 3 was a single player game. You see... we didn't ask for you all to ban dedicated servers and take on the cost of official servers. You did that to us against our objections so that you could extract more money from us. PC gamers would be perfectly happy playing Modern Warfare on dedicated servers. We don't have that option. We are forced to play on official servers and then you whine about the cost of doing that. That was YOUR decision! You can't force players to play on official servers and also whine about the cost of official servers. You have created this problem! If it is too expensive to host official servers then let the community host them like we used to. >I did warn you that you wouldn't like it. We don't like being patronized. It is peak irony for game developers to lament the cost of official servers when official servers were something they forced on the community so that they could sell more hats.

aaomidi 6y ago
I absolutely love how you're nailing this on the head. This is a completely manufactured problem. The best part is they could've kept their money making cosmetics but still let people self host servers.
dijit 6y ago
I know you hate me, frankly I don't really care at this point. I've been in the industry 6 years and I'm so utterly and completely burned out by being "a patronising and evil" presence when I make the mistake of trying to actually confer real information to people. Everyone complains that the game companies are ivory towers and that their voices aren't heard: we hear you. But you don't want what you think you want and I'm not trying to patronise you by saying that. Additionally, I didn't cherry pick the list I intentionally grabbed the first ones that had networking, almost no cross platform games from 2008 were heavily networked. (Fallout 3 was an oversight, I meant far-cry 3). As I've stated repeatedly in this thread: Self-hosting servers only works for session based games. Even then, those sessions can leave players with a very mixed experience (weird rules, mods, someone might have made themselves "god", it opens up the client to be exploited by the server). Weird latency issues and connection drops not withstanding. If it's dedicated servers that you rent from us as a company then: it can be expensive for you, if it's too expensive, less people do it, less people do it, the more expensive it becomes to maintain the provisioning/admin tools and it's amortised across much less players so the price goes _even higher_. Then there's the server list fiasco. Where do you connect? * XxXxBubBas-BayxxXx--freelootlvl25OnlY!?1 * 174.255.121.2:5543 * bit.ly/free-nudes We listened to the community before, many times, sometimes people are so outspoken that we really believe we'll have competitive edge if we're the ones to "listen" and every fucking time we get burned by it. So I don't blame anyone in the industry for listening to their CMK department more than the hardcore PC Master Race. The Hardcore PC Master Race do not represent all gamers.
- fsociety 6y ago
  I think stop paying attention to the hate is the best thing to do. There is a mindset right now to think of these problems as completely technical ones, I.e. “it’s easy to do server validation and anyone who doesn’t do it is a dumbass”, but there are very real limitations in regards to money and time. It’s like some engineers are forgetting that most problems faced when programming are not technical. I started my career developing on a real time OS, learning from people in industry for 20-30 years. I’ve since transitioned you something “higher level” and more web/server focused and a lot of the foo spat out like this is complete BS. When developing on a real-time OS the only problems I faced was a simple product story (we are building this to solve X problem), and a simple technical problem (build a system which uses under 1% CPU to do X). When developing these other products though suddenly there are many other considerations to take into place. I appreciate that you bring up latency concerns in multiplayer games, it can be the biggest downer to play a competitive FPS game where players have wildly different pings. There is truth that we’ve coded ourselves into a corner of complexity and that we there are much efficiency gains to have in terms of output and program efficiency. But it’s willful ignorance to think that is the only problem or that it is trivial to solve, or even that the people involved in a project don’t think about this all the time.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  >I'm so utterly and completely burned out by being "a patronising and evil" presence when I make the mistake of trying to actually confer real information to people. Step down from your high horse. You're just parroting PR talking points that are totally nonsensical. If game studios could save money by offering dedicated servers they would do it. They switched to official servers not because they care about the experience but because it allowed them to monetize online play better. You can't sell hats when players can host their own servers and mod it however they wish. Why would I buy a hat from Infinity Ward when I can just mod myself a hat on my dedicated server? >If it's dedicated servers that you rent from us as a company then: it can be expensive for you, if it's too expensive, less people do it, less people do it, the more expensive it becomes to maintain the provisioning/admin tools and it's amortised across much less players so the price goes _even higher_. Again, if it were possible for game studios to make more money by offering dedicated servers, they would do it. You are inventing problems with dedicated servers so that you can ride in and be the hero when you solve them. These aren't actual, real, problems. These are just PR talking points to justify forcing official servers so that game studio have better monetization paths. >As I've stated repeatedly in this thread: Self-hosting servers only works for session based games. No, it doesn't. That is a limitation you (game studios) have invented. There are dedicated servers for World of Warcraft. >But you don't want what you think you want and I'm not trying to patronise you by saying that. Ah yes the ole "I know best." The final landing spot of ridiculous arguments.

by cwhiz 6y ago

aaomidi 6y ago

I absolutely love how you're nailing this on the head. This is a completely manufactured problem. The best part is they could've kept their money making cosmetics but still let people self host servers.

dijit 6y ago

I know you hate me, frankly I don't really care at this point. I've been in the industry 6 years and I'm so utterly and completely burned out by being "a patronising and evil" presence when I make the mistake of trying to actually confer real information to people. Everyone complains that the game companies are ivory towers and that their voices aren't heard: we hear you. But you don't want what you think you want and I'm not trying to patronise you by saying that. Additionally, I didn't cherry pick the list I intentionally grabbed the first ones that had networking, almost no cross platform games from 2008 were heavily networked. (Fallout 3 was an oversight, I meant far-cry 3). As I've stated repeatedly in this thread: Self-hosting servers only works for session based games. Even then, those sessions can leave players with a very mixed experience (weird rules, mods, someone might have made themselves "god", it opens up the client to be exploited by the server). Weird latency issues and connection drops not withstanding. If it's dedicated servers that you rent from us as a company then: it can be expensive for you, if it's too expensive, less people do it, less people do it, the more expensive it becomes to maintain the provisioning/admin tools and it's amortised across much less players so the price goes _even higher_. Then there's the server list fiasco. Where do you connect? * XxXxBubBas-BayxxXx--freelootlvl25OnlY!?1 * 174.255.121.2:5543 * bit.ly/free-nudes We listened to the community before, many times, sometimes people are so outspoken that we really believe we'll have competitive edge if we're the ones to "listen" and every fucking time we get burned by it. So I don't blame anyone in the industry for listening to their CMK department more than the hardcore PC Master Race. The Hardcore PC Master Race do not represent all gamers.

fsociety 6y ago
I think stop paying attention to the hate is the best thing to do. There is a mindset right now to think of these problems as completely technical ones, I.e. “it’s easy to do server validation and anyone who doesn’t do it is a dumbass”, but there are very real limitations in regards to money and time. It’s like some engineers are forgetting that most problems faced when programming are not technical. I started my career developing on a real time OS, learning from people in industry for 20-30 years. I’ve since transitioned you something “higher level” and more web/server focused and a lot of the foo spat out like this is complete BS. When developing on a real-time OS the only problems I faced was a simple product story (we are building this to solve X problem), and a simple technical problem (build a system which uses under 1% CPU to do X). When developing these other products though suddenly there are many other considerations to take into place. I appreciate that you bring up latency concerns in multiplayer games, it can be the biggest downer to play a competitive FPS game where players have wildly different pings. There is truth that we’ve coded ourselves into a corner of complexity and that we there are much efficiency gains to have in terms of output and program efficiency. But it’s willful ignorance to think that is the only problem or that it is trivial to solve, or even that the people involved in a project don’t think about this all the time.
cwhiz 6y ago
>I'm so utterly and completely burned out by being "a patronising and evil" presence when I make the mistake of trying to actually confer real information to people. Step down from your high horse. You're just parroting PR talking points that are totally nonsensical. If game studios could save money by offering dedicated servers they would do it. They switched to official servers not because they care about the experience but because it allowed them to monetize online play better. You can't sell hats when players can host their own servers and mod it however they wish. Why would I buy a hat from Infinity Ward when I can just mod myself a hat on my dedicated server? >If it's dedicated servers that you rent from us as a company then: it can be expensive for you, if it's too expensive, less people do it, less people do it, the more expensive it becomes to maintain the provisioning/admin tools and it's amortised across much less players so the price goes _even higher_. Again, if it were possible for game studios to make more money by offering dedicated servers, they would do it. You are inventing problems with dedicated servers so that you can ride in and be the hero when you solve them. These aren't actual, real, problems. These are just PR talking points to justify forcing official servers so that game studio have better monetization paths. >As I've stated repeatedly in this thread: Self-hosting servers only works for session based games. No, it doesn't. That is a limitation you (game studios) have invented. There are dedicated servers for World of Warcraft. >But you don't want what you think you want and I'm not trying to patronise you by saying that. Ah yes the ole "I know best." The final landing spot of ridiculous arguments.