Physical/regional servers FINALLY confirmed ??! (Y)

[Duelle]

Holy words. But ppl still not understand this... :/

Unfortunately, some people understand it but don't care. I'm beginning to think that silly "identity" thing is rearing its head again.

I put game performance over anything else, because my friends in Europe are not going to prevent a wipe at a boss fight caused by latency because the environmental mechanic procced and didn't show up on anyone's screen. Diabolos was pretty nasty with this in CoP, and WoW had its own woes with stuff like Heigan the Unclean and Thaddius.

[Jynx]

I put game performance over anything else, because my friends in Europe are not going to prevent a wipe at a boss fight caused by latency because the environmental mechanic procced and didn't show up on anyone's screen.

I imagine they would just not implement twitch based mechanics, how about when a effect hits the screen it doesn't go off right away?

Even with a 3 second delay our worst friends from the EU would still have well over 2 seconds to GTFO of the way, proper servers and designs could put this delay well near half a second as well not a measurement of time that ruins raids.

[Jinko]

I imagine they would just not implement twitch based mechanics, how about when a effect hits the screen it doesn't go off right away?

Even with a 3 second delay our worst friends from the EU would still have well over 2 seconds to GTFO of the way, proper servers and designs could put this delay well near half a second as well not a measurement of time that ruins raids.

Hmm I don't think this would be a very good idea, it would ultimately limit the dev team what they could do with future content as far as boss encounters goes.

People can say what they want about WoW but some of the fights are extremely well done, as Duelle said Hiegen the Unclean and Theduis which are fairly old now are good examples of needing pin sharp reactions and timing, something like that could never work with 300ms latency.

[Valmonte]

One way is to design a relay server for the primary server and stick them in each region, depending on the speed of the relay server you could cut transmission times in half. the other is to Contact ISP's, establish Relations with those ISP's and have the ISP's Relay all Server Transmissions along the quickest path possible which would help EU players more than anyone.

sure both cost money, but they are viable options. then again so are regional servers, why spend money when you already have the equipment to make the regionals

[Antipika]

Even if you go straight from A to B, improving the pathing, you will still have a bad latency for EU. Especially EU to Japan, way more difficult route than EU to US.

As for other companies, all of them had foreign HQ before their EU HQ... So they did spend money to get that equipment and have regional servers. Regarding establishing relations with ISP seriously lol, for a game like XIV, with a laughable amount of total subscribers, let alone EU... ISPs wouldn't bother have any deal with SE.

[viion]

Valmonte if Blizzard, probably one of the richest mmo companies out there still have regional specifics for WoW (even with its realm into realm functions) and have regional servers for D3, i dont think your idea work very well otherwise they would of gone with it.

[Valmonte]

Valmonte if Blizzard, probably one of the richest mmo companies out there still have regional specifics for WoW (even with its realm into realm functions) and have regional servers for D3, i dont think your idea work very well otherwise they would of gone with it.

Rich and Give Shit don't usually go hand in hand, besides there working with what they know works and for Blizzard that's Regional. Relay Servers are a good option For SE however like blizzard there only goal is making money, not spending it making a Relay infrastructure for a few thousand players that may or may not increase.

[Antipika]

Then you just make the gameplay incredibly easy for JP players and easy for NA... I don't want encounters where I have 3+ seconds to react. Gameplay shouldn't be made easier just because some players have a really bad latency. (and I'm EU :d). What's next after that? Players in South Africa or something will start asking to have encounters tailored for them so they can complete them fine with their latency? No thanks.

Just do like every other company around is doing, have localized servers and have a gameplay that rely on mechanisms that require tight timings.

Rich and Give Shit don't usually go hand in hand, besides there working with what they know works and for Blizzard that's Regional. Relay Servers are a good option For SE however like blizzard there only goal is making money, not spending it making a Relay infrastructure for a few thousand players that may or may not increase.

They're just going for what's logical for any MMO company out there, have servers next to where most of your customers are. Improving pathing, again, will never provide the same results as having localized servers. I really would like you to find me some facts where latency from Western Europe > Tokyo can be reduced below 150ms, at an affordable cost.

Best figures I have found are 170ms from London to Tokyo, and that stuff is mostly dedicated for traders... Not for a video game company having customers that pays £10 a month and want to defeat virtual monsters more efficiently. We're talking money here.

Then you will have to add the latency from [EU customer home] to London. For a Londonian, that could be as low as 10ms. Roughly add 20~50ms for someone in the UK (outside London) to most of Western Europe (Paris, Berlin, etc.).

So at best latency would be reduced roughly by 100ms by using this technique (I currently have ~280ms from London to Tokyo). I don't even see the point, even having servers on US West Coast would yield better results for any EU players (and at least provide low latency to NA players :d).

[Duelle]

They're just going for what's logical for any MMO company out there, have servers next to where most of your customers are. Improving pathing, again, will never provide the same results as having localized servers. I really would like to find me some facts where latency from Western Europe > Tokyo can be reduced below 150ms, at an affordable cost.

Best figures I have found are 170ms from London to Tokyo, and that stuff is mostly dedicated for traders... Not for a video game company having customers that pays £10 a month and want to defeat virtual monsters more efficiently. We're talking money here.

Then you will have to add the latency from [EU customer home] to London. For a Londonian, that could be as low as 10ms. Roughly add 20~50ms for someone in the UK (outside London) to most of Western Europe (Paris, Berlin, etc.).

So at best latency would be reduced roughly by 100ms by using this technique (I currently have ~280ms from London to Tokyo). I don't even see the point, even having servers on US West Coast would yield better results for any EU players (and at least provide low latency to NA players :d).

Ah, so you're from London. I have a good idea of how latency can get from the US to a European server, and I can only imagine what it would be like from London to Tokyo. There's a reason other companies establish regional servers, even if you can technically still roll characters on them.

PS: You put me to shame with that Imperishable Night clear. >.>;;;

I imagine they would just not implement twitch based mechanics, how about when a effect hits the screen it doesn't go off right away?

Diabolos' only twitch mechanic was having your finger on a Stun macro to stop Nightmare. And even then the cast time didn't make it possible to stun him every time he tried to use it. In WoW, Heigan's problem was the fact that the poison walls during the safety dance were timed and would one-shot you back when it was relevant content, which screwed over EU and Oceania players. Thaddius' problem was slightly worse, because his static charge mechanic affected the whole raid and if badly timed could easily lead to a wipe due to how a player of the opposite charge could inadvertently damage everyone around them.

[Valmonte]

Then you just make the gameplay incredibly easy for JP players and easy for NA... I don't want encounters where I have 3+ seconds to react. Gameplay shouldn't be made easier just because some players have a really bad latency. (and I'm EU :d). What's next after that? Players in South Africa or something will start asking to have encounters tailored for them so they can complete them fine with their latency? No thanks.

Just do like every other company around is doing, have localized servers and have a gameplay that rely on mechanisms that require tight timings.



They're just going for what's logical for any MMO company out there, have servers next to where most of your customers are. Improving pathing, again, will never provide the same results as having localized servers. I really would like you to find me some facts where latency from Western Europe > Tokyo can be reduced below 150ms, at an affordable cost.

Best figures I have found are 170ms from London to Tokyo, and that stuff is mostly dedicated for traders... Not for a video game company having customers that pays £10 a month and want to defeat virtual monsters more efficiently. We're talking money here.

Then you will have to add the latency from [EU customer home] to London. For a Londonian, that could be as low as 10ms. Roughly add 20~50ms for someone in the UK (outside London) to most of Western Europe (Paris, Berlin, etc.).

So at best latency would be reduced roughly by 100ms by using this technique (I currently have ~280ms from London to Tokyo). I don't even see the point, even having servers on US West Coast would yield better results for any EU players (and at least provide low latency to NA players :d).

Plus whatever improvements come with the new servers and clients, that could very easily push you below a latency of 150.