I agree, this is an issue that needs to be resolved prior to domain selection.
I agree, this is an issue that needs to be resolved prior to domain selection.
Absolutely. Something that would be nice to have clarification on. Nobody is going to want to stay on a server they have terrible latency on, which would then lead them to a server that they have no connections on.
Go here and test ping to the US servers, Europe servers and Asia(Sydney): http://www.cloudping.info/
Will at least give a basic understanding of playabiliy for you. below 100 pretty good. 100-200 doable but not great, 200+ probably not gonna be too fun. Just my personal rough guide from my tastes
KoE and the MUD simply will not work if you do not do land selection first. So at land selection you lock in. Simple as that. Use http://www.cloudping.info/ and you'll get a good enough idea to make your choice.
I've done all the approximate. Which is exactly that, an approximation. I live on the edge of the world and would like a concrete answer so I'm not waiting all I've backed to go up in smoke.
I know there are EU folks who want to go to NA-W and AUS folks who want to play NA-E, so there is certainly a market that would benefit from this information.
Well, to be honest this is why you test connectivity with Cloudping. This is what SBS has told people to do to see what servers they can play on.
Now, if you don't mind not really being able to do any combat, then it won't matter too much as long as your ping isn't over 300, imo.
But for combat stuff, you want to be below 100 ping for sure.
Caspian has said (If I remember correctly) that people can go to servers outside of their region but it isn't recommended and that your game play may suffer for it, if you're okay with that then its up to you.
Again, that is why people use the Cloudping service, because realistically that is what we will be getting for when we are in game.
land selection is integral to the prealpha experience and has been stated to be first since kickstarter. changing that isnt gonna happen.
this is taken from an apac server vs us discussion and what Till Death is referencing I believe.
tldr: basically play on the closest server for best gameplay experience. If you play on another server for other reasons (friends, more population, etc) than thats your choice.
Posted By Caspian at 1/27/2017 5:58:05 AM
One of the main reasons we're opening an APAC server is because latency and streaming will be huge issues for those in Australia.
We're basing our animations and combat system on an environment where latency is less than 100ms. Go more than that consistently and you're likely to notice animation popping and even find combat a bit more challenging.
Go all the way to 300ms and you may simply find that in combat you're getting hit before you're even notified of the attack. In a skill-based game of anticipation and reflexes, that'll make combat virtually un-winnable.
If that's not bad enough, consider this: The starting content is well over 25,000 km2. If you assume that's 5,120m x 5,120m and there's maybe 4 vertices per meter, that means there's a minimum of 419 MILLION vertices.
Assume we're talking about position data, normals, a couple different texture channels and each vertex could be several bytes long. Let's assume a pretty hefty 128 bytes per vertex. So now we're talking 419,430,400 vertices x 128 bytes.
We're talking about 53 GB of terrain data to explore the entire continent... And that's not counting all the positional data of every bush, tree, animal, resource, or persistent object in the world.
What's my point? CoE - even with compression and caching is going to be streaming a fair amount of data to your machine. You don't want to be attempting that over a 300ms connection.
So what's my overall purpose in making these statements? If Australians want to play CoE - they're likely going to have to play on the APAC server for any kind of worthwhile experience.
I could be wrong, and only time will tell, but I strongly discourage aussies from attempting an NA server. Which is doubly sad as I'm hearing more and more aussies say they'd rather we close the APAC server
interesting... i see where the concern is but i wonder what the best solution to solve the problem is.
Posted By Captain Alvord at 1:45 PM - Fri Feb 24 2017
Go here and test ping to the US servers, Europe servers and Asia(Sydney): http://www.cloudping.info/
Will at least give a basic understanding of playabiliy for you. below 100 pretty good. 100-200 doable but not great, 200+ probably not gonna be too fun. Just my personal rough guide from my tastes
Actually, it's no longer on Amazon, it's now on Google Cloud (check the ping here : https://cloudharmony.com/speedtest-for-google), as per the previous SpatialOS announcement.
And it's also really hard to say, in actuality, what it will mean gameplay-wise. Even Caspian says it was pretty much guesswork at this point, besides guesstimates in his post below.
Posted By Captain Alvord at 2:55 PM - Fri Feb 24 2017
land selection is integral to the prealpha experience and has been stated to be first since kickstarter. changing that isnt gonna happen.
this is taken from an apac server vs us discussion and what Till Death is referencing I believe.
tldr: basically play on the closest server for best gameplay experience. If you play on another server for other reasons (friends, more population, etc) than thats your choice.
Obviously, yes, that's their choice, but when you put down $350 on the game and you have a bunch of friends playing in a different region, it is a very tough call to make, and moreso because it is kind of irreversible.
Posted By Caspian at 1/27/2017 5:58:05 AM
[...]
We're basing our animations and combat system on an environment where latency is less than 100ms. Go more than that consistently and you're likely to notice animation popping and even find combat a bit more challenging.
Go all the way to 300ms and you may simply find that in combat you're getting hit before you're even notified of the attack. In a skill-based game of anticipation and reflexes, that'll make combat virtually un-winnable.
[...]
What's my point? CoE - even with compression and caching is going to be streaming a fair amount of data to your machine. You don't want to be attempting that over a 300ms connection.
[...]
I could be wrong, and only time will tell, [...]
What I understand from Caspian's post is that :
So there's clearly this fudge factor that "maybe" it could work, if you're a crafter or a politician, basically someone not involved in PVP fights.
Now the problem with testing the ping with the link above (or any such service) is that Google Cloud or AWS won't let you ping the actual servers; it's just a front-end, likely running a low-priority service, for the purpose of estimating. We also have no idea what kind of weight the server overhead (there's always one, to some extent) will have on the definitive ping you'll have to CoE's server.
All that to say, the tools and guesstimates provided here are useful to establish which server would provide you with the lowest ping, but is in no way sufficient to truly get a sense of the gameplay experience you would have.
Some potential solutions I can think of :
Curious to know what SS has in mind to mitigate the risks associated to this.
Posted By Drefan at 2:58 PM - Fri Feb 24 2017
Yeah this needs to be looked at more
Not really. He has said many times to play on your home server. Just because people ignore the warning doesn't mean it hasn't been looked at.
That's like seeing a wet floor sign, Walking directly next to it, slipping then saying that someone needs to do something about that.
This is yet another reason they didn't design for players to start community building. Use the cloud ping, add 20ms, if you don't like the number then don't play on that server.
NA-E to NA-W should expect ~60+
EU to NA - E should expect ~150+.
EU to NA-W should expect ~240+
APAC to NA-W should expect ~250+
APAC to NA-E should expect not to play.
Taking those pings seems ridiculous when I can just take my home ping of 32.
I don't know anymore.
Posted By Wicked FlamezZ at 8:52 PM - Fri Feb 24 2017
Posted By Drefan at 2:58 PM - Fri Feb 24 2017
Yeah this needs to be looked at more
Not really. He has said many times to play on your home server. Just because people ignore the warning doesn't mean it hasn't been looked at.
If you take a look at the above Caspian quote, that's not what he said. A lot more nuanced.
It's also fairly common in MMO that people play in other regions than their home one, to play with friends or relatives. They can usually try the game and then go play on another (or their regional) server if the performance isn't working for their playstyle.
That's very different here. Some folks are asked to make a call on whether to play with their friends and family or not, and "irreversibly" so (given that they could be sinking hundreds of dollars in their decision).
Use the cloud ping, add 20ms, if you don't like the number then don't play on that server.
No.
First, CloudPing is for AWS but the game is not on AWS, it's on Google Cloud.
Second, your 20ms is completely arbitrary because you (we) have never played a SpatialOS game implemented via UE4 on Google Cloud Engine.
Third, because Caspian himself said (see above quote) that it will depend on playstyle and that it is pretty much guesswork because he "could be wrong, and only time will tell".
So if we could please focus on actual solutions instead of trying to dismiss people's concern, I think that would be more useful.
Posted By Wicked FlamezZ at 8:52 PM - Fri Feb 24 2017
Posted By Drefan at 2:58 PM - Fri Feb 24 2017
Yeah this needs to be looked at more
Not really. He has said many times to play on your home server. Just because people ignore the warning doesn't mean it hasn't been looked at.
That's like seeing a wet floor sign, Walking directly next to it, slipping then saying that someone needs to do something about that.
This is yet another reason they didn't design for players to start community building. Use the cloud ping, add 20ms, if you don't like the number then don't play on that server.
NA-E to NA-W should expect ~60+
EU to NA - E should expect ~150+.
EU to NA-W should expect ~240+
APAC to NA-W should expect ~250+
APAC to NA-E should expect not to play.
Taking those pings seems ridiculous when I can just take my home ping of 32.
also adding on to the post after yours, you do not know the OP's location. He could be smack dab in the middle of NA, or not even in any of the major regions anyway? Players in Africa might use NA-E, EU, or APAC depending on where they are, its important for them to be able to figure out exactly what kind of latency they will get before they make a very permanent choice.
Posted By Hakeem the Dreamcrafter at 06:18 AM - Sat Feb 25 2017
I've done all the approximate. Which is exactly that, an approximation. I live on the edge of the world and would like a concrete answer so I'm not waiting all I've backed to go up in smoke.
I am curious where you are in the world. Since "live on the edge" could mean basically anything.
But I'm assuming playing on your closest server is best, if you really want to do combat. There are people within the US playing on their own servers that get terrible ping, cause they can't get anything better.
Posted By HolyAvengerOne at 12:32 AM - Sat Feb 25 2017
Posted By Wicked FlamezZ at 8:52 PM - Fri Feb 24 2017
Posted By Drefan at 2:58 PM - Fri Feb 24 2017
Yeah this needs to be looked at more
Not really. He has said many times to play on your home server. Just because people ignore the warning doesn't mean it hasn't been looked at.
If you take a look at the above Caspian quote, that's not what he said. A lot more nuanced.
It's also fairly common in MMO that people play in other regions than their home one, to play with friends or relatives. They can usually try the game and then go play on another (or their regional) server if the performance isn't working for their playstyle.
That's very different here. Some folks are asked to make a call on whether to play with their friends and family or not, and "irreversibly" so (given that they could be sinking hundreds of dollars in their decision).
Use the cloud ping, add 20ms, if you don't like the number then don't play on that server.
No.
First, CloudPing is for AWS but the game is not on AWS, it's on Google Cloud.
Second, your 20ms is completely arbitrary because you (we) have never played a SpatialOS game implemented via UE4 on Google Cloud Engine.
Third, because Caspian himself said (see above quote) that it will depend on playstyle and that it is pretty much guesswork because he "could be wrong, and only time will tell".
So if we could please focus on actual solutions instead of trying to dismiss people's concern, I think that would be more useful.
Your looking at the sugar coated response after he quite simply said NO. Of course people don't like being told no so backlash = sugar coated response. If you go to the original post BEFORE APAC vs USA he said like 3 different times "No", "Don't do it" or other phrases like.
So again, he has said no.... plain and simple fact. Whether you like it or not sucks for you.
I don't know anymore.
