Guest Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 I'd like to start by saying I have nothing against the game taking chances and experimenting with features to further its sustainability and development, even when certain features or changes arent communicated to the broad community nor properly informed about how it works and why is it implemented. Following the past few weeks (especially on weekends) I've noticed a fair number of players expressing discontent about this ''feature'' and even got some people asking me directly on what's happening, I felt like I should make a few things clear and make this discussion viable for the people behind it on how they can work this out to serve the needs of the majority of players and the game's growth. The point of this topic is to discuss the current ''server switch'' mutator, players' experience with it and how it could be improved (if it's even possible of course). Before my take on the matter, I'd like to ask people, who plan to contribute to the conversation, to refrain from any baiting comments (making smug/ill-intended comments towards a person or group expecting to get a negative reaction) and make the conversation as constructive as possible. I won't be sitting idly and will ask the moderators to remove baiting, nonconstructive comments/posts from this topic. I'm in no way involved with the FPI server and their team, nor do I want to go on their toes by making the server as an example - the sole reason I bring this up is because they are experimenting with a feature, that forces players to be switched from their European server ( around 1 AM GMT / UK* time) to their other server, based in the United States. While I'm personally against forcing people to be handled this way, I do see, how this might work out for the game better in the long-term. The core issue is that at the moment the only actively managed and staffed servers - which I am aware of - are all exclusively hosted within Europe, so the U.S. and North-American playerbase is left with a bad, 100-200+ ping and therefore a less than perfect game experience. Indeed - the current solution isn't fair and perhaps is not the right way to handle this issue, but as I see it, its a small, bold attempt towards bringing this game one step closer to having both EU and NA players having the best possible game experience as it was meant to be. Considering I'm from the EU, I have almost zero say in this matter, besides the fact of me getting shifted to a server that I didn't choose and which has worse ping for me, but that is easily solved by simply going back to the server I've chosen at the first place with no problems (since the swapping takes place after a match has ended). I would be happy to hear what the community thinks/feels about the current state of the mutator and hopefully provide suggestions and ideas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syntharn Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 I assume that would be the NA FPI server, whats a rough estimate of the playerbase that benefit from moving to that server? Haven't actually experienced or noticed this yet. I see no problem going along with it out of courtesy, we are spoiled enough with our smooth ping. Problem is that when we have a choice not everyone might pick the same, hence why im curious to how many actually benefit. Im sure seeing a populated native server with 40-50 something ping is more inviting than the alternative if you are a new player, even though its almost an unreasonable edge of whether wanting or not wanting to play the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noxidevad Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 (edited) @tonyrolm will be the best person essentially to answer your question @Syntharn Messaged him in fpi discord. He'll respond when hes available. Edited February 20, 2020 by AngryyyDaveee Adding additional text Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crazfulla Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 well I'm not in either the UK or USA so my ping will be horrendous either way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyrolm Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 (edited) A little background on the USA server: The USA server joined the FPI EKT team in January After 1 am GMT time it was apparent that the majority of players were from North America while there were still a few from the EU. With US ping times higher to Germany is was an option to redirect those players to the US We were manually invoking a command to switch over players at the map end, and have since automated based on time. I was even going as far as asking if the majority of the players were in the EU and thus not switching them to US server. “Host: The server will switch at match end.” We saw this as a way to accommodate players by Geographic’s to provide optimal player ping times for the NA players. While I understand this can be seem to be unfair by the EU players but what we found at that time in morning the majority EU players were not playing. The select few EU diehard players are affected. We should be a little more descriptive in our messaging to the players “Host: The server will switch to the USA server at match end.” We were by no means are making users stay in the US if they don’t want to. We could also entertain changing the time to 2 am GMT also. We are currently looking to staff moderators in the US so players can get teams balanced when needed. We meant no malice in choosing to do this, we were simply trying to provide an optimal gaming experience. Tony Edited February 20, 2020 by tonyrolm 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
isupreme Posted February 20, 2020 Share Posted February 20, 2020 as a USA player........Lately, Ive been kinda surprised to find some very active games at times which are late night usa. Good fun. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bred Posted February 21, 2020 Share Posted February 21, 2020 Games need to get staffed real quick for those times, though it's definitely a good effort by fpi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reivax Posted February 21, 2020 Share Posted February 21, 2020 (edited) as EU player i love this idea i'll play with an horrible lag like australians but i don't care about my ping - especially cuz at 1am GMT it's 2am in my country and i'm sleepin' on RenX - if it let US players play for the first time in years with reasonable ping it's a good idea to make EU server switch to US server when it's US "play time" because they should know what pleasure it is to play with 40 ping instead of 200+ Edited February 21, 2020 by Reivax accidentally pushed tab enter instead of shift enter :P 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OTT Posted February 22, 2020 Share Posted February 22, 2020 I'm very much with this I'm neither EU nor US but still closer to EU region,and I'll suffer from worse ping than most EU players when switching to a US server,but still I don't mind 200+ pings if it means more players will get decent ping. Imo it's only fair to switch to a US server when more players than not are NA. and hopefully this will prolong server active hours per day 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suspiria Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 Brilliant. I can see the trouble where americans still playing on EU server when EU has gone asleep. And your communications certainly convey the fact that Totem Arts knows what they're doing. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MammothMKII Posted March 9, 2020 Share Posted March 9, 2020 Thanks for the clarification @tonyrolm! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Totem Arts Staff NodSaibot Posted March 9, 2020 Totem Arts Staff Share Posted March 9, 2020 (edited) Not sure if there was some community backlash to this, or why people think it wasn't "sanctioned" by devs. I personally have been pushing for this and I wrote the first code to do this. It's been a long time since I started that and it was left untouched for a while, though we did try to get it working a couple months ago. https://github.com/sevans045/FPI/blob/master/FPI_ServerTravelMutator.uc 16 months ago at least is when work was being done on this initially Edited March 10, 2020 by Sarie 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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