id: Probably No Dedicated Servers for Rage

[peewee_RotA]

id Software's John Carmack is mindful of the anger over Modern Warfare 2 dropping dedicated server support. That's why he's glad Infinity Ward is going first, because he plans to do the same thing with Rage.
http://kotaku.com/5398270/id-probably-no-dedicated-servers-for-rage


One of the comments:

"Et tu Carmack?"
 

[Whirlingdervish]

..and people still try to say that pandering to consoles isn't fucking up PC gaming.

the worst part is, this will really bone the ability to make custom mods and have people actually play on servers for them regularly.

I don't see zenimax letting iD release the engine source ever, since they're all about profit, so we're all stuck with the matchmaking bullshit instead of being able to code our own dedicated server.
Doing free shit like releasing the source and having their child companies actually release patches for their games doesn't make them money, and they are showing day by day that they don't give a shit about the PC because it doesn't produce the profit margins that cranking out crap games and dlc for 2 different consoles does.

 

The next step is designing games for the xbox360 then porting them poorly to PC.
wait bethesda does that currently..

[[BTF]Sigma]

Dead Space was like that too. What i'd like to see is being able to run a server on a pc and linking to it from a console. There were a couple console games that ran as a dedicated server and it was great. I think it was one of the Tom Clancey.

[peewee_RotA]

Dead Space was like that too. What i'd like to see is being able to run a server on a pc and linking to it from a console. There were a couple console games that ran as a dedicated server and it was great. I think it was one of the Tom Clancey.

Doesn't Home Brew for DS, PSP, and Wii allow that with the quake ports and the like?

I would be willing to bet that Carmack will shelve the idea of including dedicated support until after the shelf-life expires (about 6 months) and then add support in a patch.

Remember when peer-to-peer only connections worked for Duke 3d and it still has a thriving and vibrant deathmatch community. Oh wait... 

[The Happy Friar]

warcraft 3 is peer to peer & people still play that.  More then Quake 1, 2, 3, 4 & doom 1,2 ,3 combined.   

peer to peer's great in many circumstances but I don't see this being like peer to peer for doom, I see it more about being in control of the multiplayer.

[peewee_RotA]

warcraft 3 is peer to peer & people still play that.  More then Quake 1, 2, 3, 4 & doom 1,2 ,3 combined.   

peer to peer's great in many circumstances but I don't see this being like peer to peer for doom, I see it more about being in control of the multiplayer.

I had a long conversation with the buddy of mine that send me this article. Diablo 3 came up in the conversation as it will also be a p2p connection. However Battle.net is not known for ever functioning reliably... EVER... so I feel that blizzard products can safely be the exception to this rule.

(also StarCraft still has a HUGE following)

The problems are 2 fold however. Part of the championing of mod support that id provided was due to the client/server architecture. Modders can set up their own servers any time to test and share their content. Communities that enjoy that content can easily connect to an already configured (with the most popular settings) mod. In P2P the leader of the game has to set this stuff on the fly. This adds a previously non-existent barrier of entry... Like was the case in Duke3d.

The second problem is that if the p2p service relies on a the developer/publisher/3rd party affiliate then the life of the product is literally determined by it's creator and not the community. Quake was not made to last a decade and a half. It was made to sell and then replaced 2 years later. Nobody ever expected it to live on, and regardless of the fact that it did, it doesn't make them any more money. So no developer has any vested interest in supporting old products like that. Bungee is probably the most active studio as far as community interaction is concerned, and their famed vidmaster promo's do not target their older games. In fact in the past few jumped from halo 2, to halo 3, then straight to ODST. So currently shelflife of a game determines how much money the company can make. What we're flirting with now is the shelf-life determining how long you are allowed to play the game before it gets abandoned.

Yes, games with p2p and matchmaking still thrive. Yes older games other than quake have thrived. Yes people EVENTUALLY updated netcode for things like duke3d so that you can play them easily in todays world. But the difference with id is that this goes against industry standards that this company all but invented. Even carmack used a version of quake 2 to make his wolfenstein port because of these very things. So we're looking at the end of an era with this. All while the UT3 SDK was just released to indy (non commercial) developers. A very telling coincidence if you ask me.

[The Happy Friar]

I won't argue id seems to be running off in left field while they're up to bat....

but many of the cases where id used server-client are now obsolete.  IE Doom 3 & Quake 4 pretty much killed everything content-downloadable wise, in the name of "security" (I guess it's good security if nobody plays...).  The new Wolf, which id PRODUCED (it wasn't a hand off like Prey) basically has no mod support.  Q4's MP was Q3A, with crappier net code, nicer graphics/uglier graphics, no content support.  ETQW is the only thing with the id name on it that makes distributing custom content relatively easy, but they forgot (on purpose??) megatexture distribution built in.  Basically, id, in a single engine (and it's changeable in the mod SDK code, so it's something they purposely didn't do, and admitted didn't do) killed easy content distribution, the whole big advantage of the server-client idea.

now, if id does what we're assuming is going to happen with MW2 & does happen with Blizzard's games, where the dev/publisher control all aspects of MP then it could really really suck.  If you need to log on to their server to find other players, that's horrible.  Normally then you're not even allowed to direct tcip connections then.  However, if they allow people to make their own "master" servers where people can find others, and you can direct join, I don't see any difference then now.  I don't see an issue with content either.  Just torrent it to the players.  You can, they're all connected.  If there 4 people playing & person A has the mod and started the game, he torrents to the second person playing.  The third gets it from the first & second.  Fourth from previous three.  Etc.  (in theory, they would all be at slightly different points in the download).

It's also worth nothing that the extreme other end of the coin is server-client with Valve's system: everyone must use their service, both servers & clients.  So it's just as bad.

[peewee_RotA]

It's also worth nothing that the extreme other end of the coin is server-client with Valve's system: everyone must use their service, both servers & clients.  So it's just as bad.

TRU

This has been a thorn in my side for far too long. (avatar) 

[QwazyWabbit]

The P2P model requires matchmaker servers, the same way torrents need monitor servers. Where does it say the game publishers will keep the matchmakers up for free or for-fee? Will every game player have to open an account with the matchmakers to be able to browse the system? Great revenue concept but do they really think this is a good idea? What happens to the P2P game when the vendor decides they don't want to run the matchmaker servers anymore? Answer: Death.

This is probably logical given the typical revenue curve of release, enthusiasm, disinterest, find something else new and shiny in the marketplace but it certainly doesn't make it any fun for modders and mappers who loved morphing the games in the aftermarket for free. The vendor can track the popularity of his game and when the matchmaker ceases to be profitable, kill it. Quake 2 was probably perfect for those of us who did it part time and it was as much fun tinkering with the game as it was playing it.

The end result is rather than after-market or free servers hosting the game, the game vendors retain the hosting revenue for themselves rather than share infrastructure with third party server vendors and they can terminate the viability of the game whenever they like. Of course that will happen soon after the release of the next new game. Keep the suckers coming back for more.

[The Happy Friar]

while I understand that, a) what's the difference between that & what Valve's doing with Steam & forced updates to run?  b) it's no different then Q2, Q3A, ETQW, Doom 3, etc.  they all call a master server to list servers, if that master server doesn't exist, no servers listed.  Yeah, you can change the master server you look in IN SOME GAMES, but the only thing stopping a peer2peer system from doing that is the dev programming it in.

As it is right now with most games requiring you to get a cdkey check/multiplayer account, it's no different.  Every single bad point of the old P2P system is being adopted for Server/Client.

[[BTF]adam]

warcraft 3 is peer to peer & people still play that.  More then Quake 1, 2, 3, 4 & doom 1,2 ,3 combined.   

peer to peer's great in many circumstances but I don't see this being like peer to peer for doom, I see it more about being in control of the multiplayer.

I had a long conversation with the buddy of mine that send me this article. Diablo 3 came up in the conversation as it will also be a p2p connection. However Battle.net is not known for ever functioning reliably... EVER... so I feel that blizzard products can safely be the exception to this rule.

(also StarCraft still has a HUGE following)

The problems are 2 fold however. Part of the championing of mod support that id provided was due to the client/server architecture. Modders can set up their own servers any time to test and share their content. Communities that enjoy that content can easily connect to an already configured (with the most popular settings) mod. In P2P the leader of the game has to set this stuff on the fly. This adds a previously non-existent barrier of entry... Like was the case in Duke3d.

The second problem is that if the p2p service relies on a the developer/publisher/3rd party affiliate then the life of the product is literally determined by it's creator and not the community. Quake was not made to last a decade and a half. It was made to sell and then replaced 2 years later. Nobody ever expected it to live on, and regardless of the fact that it did, it doesn't make them any more money. So no developer has any vested interest in supporting old products like that. Bungee is probably the most active studio as far as community interaction is concerned, and their famed vidmaster promo's do not target their older games. In fact in the past few jumped from halo 2, to halo 3, then straight to ODST. So currently shelflife of a game determines how much money the company can make. What we're flirting with now is the shelf-life determining how long you are allowed to play the game before it gets abandoned.

Yes, games with p2p and matchmaking still thrive. Yes older games other than quake have thrived. Yes people EVENTUALLY updated netcode for things like duke3d so that you can play them easily in todays world. But the difference with id is that this goes against industry standards that this company all but invented. Even carmack used a version of quake 2 to make his wolfenstein port because of these very things. So we're looking at the end of an era with this. All while the UT3 SDK was just released to indy (non commercial) developers. A very telling coincidence if you ask me.

Battle.net is fucking AWFUL and i'm majorly frustrated with their dick move to force every World of Warcraft player to merge their accounts with Battle.net by the 11th or gtfo basically, since i've done it i've experienced signfiicantly more lag in-game (they change the realmlist or something, loads of people have been reporting this), and haven't been able to log into my account on Battle.net since because the site is down with 404 errors. Furthermore, my fucking login has changed to a simple, 6 letter word to an entire email address! Fucks sake!