No Guts No Galaxy Podcast #88 (9/5/2013)

[cyberstrabadi]

The only real advantage for us, as I see it, would be if they installed a server on Hallgeir´s ship.

FREEDOM TO THE CAPTAIN!!!!!!

[Javenri]

The only other topic that sounds like it might have an impact on our gaming in part 3 are regional servers. It would definately be a tool to widen the playerbase, as people living in remote areas, as Australia which was mentioned a couple of times, might be able to really participate in a game that lives and dies with FPS, which is a good thing. Considering that I will most likely stay on the north american servers, as I play with you guys, I don´t see any changes for me personally.
The only real advantage for us, as I see it, would be if they installed a server on Hallgeir´s ship.

The problem that regional servers solve for the general player base but possibly complicate for us is the fixed time events. When CW comes, there will probably set specific date and time for certain large scale activities (like attempt to capture a planet). In that case geograpgic location is a major factor for victory or loss since there can't be found an ideal time for players ranging from US Western coast to Eastern Europe to participate. Sadly I had this exact problem with other MMORPG I have played and there is no easy solution.

[Molossian Dog]

Sleep deprivation is always an option.

Have a look at the fineprint in your contract with the 4th...

And if you were going to say "what contract", I pity you naive buggers even more.

[Fox Parker]

Fixed time events are exactly why I aimed to recruit an international team.

The biggest problem will be if we have mixed defined lances.

The ideal would be that when an event is going on aimed at GMT +1, we have a lance available to combat there. GMT -5 events, maybe a lance of East Coast US players. And so on. This leaves our biggest gap in Oceania. Tried to pick up Archangelwlf for this, but he became a Reserve. ;P

[Javenri]

Fixed time events are exactly why I aimed to recruit an international team.

The biggest problem will be if we have mixed defined lances.

The ideal would be that when an event is going on aimed at GMT +1, we have a lance available to combat there. GMT -5 events, maybe a lance of East Coast US players. And so on. This leaves our biggest gap in Oceania. Tried to pick up Archangelwlf for this, but he became a Reserve. ;P

Hmmm, I think that I understand the concept of "localized server" different from what you write Fox. Let's clear this up. From what I understand (using my experience in other games), localized servers are completely isolated from each other. Each server has its own community (player base), not shared among servers. If I log from a European server and you log from a US one, we can never play together. Each server has events timed suitable for for its own time zone and communities are apart (this was the case in 3 MMO's that I have played).

In your post you imply that locoalized servers are simply different locations to log on from and there is a singular community (player base) accross servers. Are you sure that this is how they mean it?

[cyberstrabadi]

Jav noone knows what they really mean since there is no clarification on that.Either way if they are goin to be a "different world servers" wich they don`t interact then we will still be playing on north America ones with our guys.If on the other hand they make a "network" of servers around the world so that there will be no more nagging about the ping times , though this is extremely hard for a number of reasons , we may benefit from the ping time drop.
Either way to me is not such a big matter.
I beleive though that our unit is goin to be very succefull on carrying its weight on the upcomming warfare changes because we have a number of players that are very active in both continents so i think we will have no prob to operate together covering most of the day.

[Tomman]

Actually Cyber PGi/IGP has answered this one.....

With localized servers each server will have an isolated galaxy attached...
The only real issue with this is that you will also have isolated accounts on each server... meaning if you grind C-bills on the US server those C-bills will not transfer to any other server. So basically you will have to choose whether to continue dropping on the US servers or switch to EU servers.

[Molossian Dog]

Which

a) sucks (for us) and
b) kind of levers out what Community Warfare was all about.

[Fox Parker]

Actually Cyber PGi/IGP has answered this one.....

With localized servers each server will have an isolated galaxy attached...
The only real issue with this is that you will also have isolated accounts on each server... meaning if you grind C-bills on the US server those C-bills will not transfer to any other server. So basically you will have to choose whether to continue dropping on the US servers or switch to EU servers.

Tom, listen again to this very Podcast. This is covered.

They *want* to have the overall game data centralized, but actual *match servers* localized. Meaning we all still play in the same universe, but when you hit that launch button, if you're in an all, say German lance, you'd drop on German servers with a German queue.

This could be automatic, as in it estimates what the best server set is based on the average ping of the group.
Or it could be a drop down of what servers you want to drop on intentionally.

Now he did state that this is how they *want* to do it and whether or not they can depends on if they can reliably transmit the account/auth data from the central database to the outlying data centers around the world.

From a redundancy in design stand point, the way I'd do it is have one master system and multiple satellites around the world. Each satellite will have a full copy of what is on the master system which is then synch'd regularly. Or maybe always loading from the master system and only switching to the local copy if the master goes down. With this design any one of the world-wide servers could go offline, but no one playing around the world would be without the ability to drop as they'd just drop on a different server set.

Just for the record, this is NOT A TRADITIONAL MMO. MWO falls somewhere between your traditional FPS with dedicated servers, and the MMO segment. Another game that falls in this area is World of Tanks, and I'm told WoT is an example of a game where you all have the same basic service, but there are regional "drop servers". It is not impossible. It is in fact very possible and will largely come down to their network team and realities of how long it takes to synch data between remote locations.

[devilcrayon]

He also talks about how that might not be possible because some regionalities, particular Russia, want to have everything in Russia, including payment systems and accounts which might lead at actually fragmented user-base. But lots of "If"s surround all the regional stuff still. Like everything else.