Should Online Console Games Have Dedicated Servers?

Thanks to GameSpot for its 'GameSpotting' editorial discussing the problems of online console gaming without dedicated servers. The author points out: "Let's consider the top upcoming shooters on both the PS2 and the Xbox: Killzone and Halo 2... the cold, hard fact is that these games will only offer a maximum of 12- and 16-player online multiplayer, respectively. In other words, if you can find a good nearby server, you'll be playing a game that isn't fundamentally different than what we've been playing for about eight years on the PC in Quake 1." He continues by contrasting this to the PC experience: "EA has promised that the upcoming Battlefield 2, currently scheduled to ship in the first part of 2005, will have more than 100 simultaneous players", before suggesting: "The bottom line is that console games need dedicated servers. As it stands today, only individual Xboxes are serving matches while simultaneously allowing the host to play. You simply cannot run a 24- or 32-player game with just a 733MHz processor and 64MB of system RAM available, hooked up to a potentially flaky cable or DSL line."

Comments

should they? yes.

[gl4ss]

of course they should have, especially in cases where the whole game essentially is just for online play.

They should give the server software for people as well to run dedicated servers.. it's the normal way anyways.

Soooo

[Apreche]

The makers of those console games should distribute PC software for linux and windows so that college kids with high bandwidth connections can run servers on the spare pcs they have lying around. That's where all the counterstrike servers come from. If they don't then they are going to have to run their own servers, which might be higher quality but it will cost them more money.

In America, More = Better!

[Anonymous Coward]

With Battlefield 2, I almost feel as if EA is running some kind of brainwashing campaign to convince me that 'more players in a server' means 'more fun.'

Am I the only one who thinks that smaller servers are the most fun? First off, in my experience with games like Day of Defeat and the Battlefield series, larger servers usually equate to laggier servers, no matter what hardware you're running. Second, in team based games, one or two non-cooperative miscreants can ruin the fun for everbody. Let more people in a server, increase the chance that it sucks. Third, why turn a great, teamwork-oriented, strategic experience like you can get in Battlefield into an out-and-out Frag-a-thon by adding 32 players? I have really never, not once, ever, had as much fun in a 32+ person server in Battlefield as I have in an intimate 16-player game with even the most basic kindergarten-level teamwork going on.

I think the console powers-that-be should avoid larger servers at all cost. Don't give in to peer pressure!

Re:In America, More = Better!

[MindStalker]

I think the point is that at 100 players you have something that more resembled an army. The only problem with this is of course. Respawning would make the game hell to complete any sort of mission, and not respawning would make the game boring as the wait between games would have to be longer.

Re:In America, More = Better!

[KDR_11k]

I agree, even though for different reasons. See, when I get together with friends to play games over LAN, we're maybe 4 or 5 people, sometimes only 2 or 3 meet. That means we cannot play most team games. UT2004 Onslaught would have been impossible without bots and most teamplay based games/mods don't have that good of a bot support.
With the attempt of having more players on a server, the gameplay gets adjusted to require more players (ever tried to play a duel in RTCW?). This usually results in larger maps and vehicles that require more people to control. In UT2004 you have vehicles that can be controlled by a single person, but most games attempt to differentiate between driver and gunner(s) to "encourage team play".
Sometimes I wish for the days of Doom with four players max to return. Doom 3 seems to do that, but I expect people to prefer modding HL2 instead so they can continue making "truly teamplay dependant" mods.

Re:In America, More = Better!

[MindStalker]

Well they could impliment a master server honor system also Americas Army. Hopefully they will.
For the uninitiated, basically you create characters and have to go through a single player training exercise in order to play at all. And the better you do on training and the more training you do (there is optional additional training for medic and special ops and such) the more abilities you have in the game. This makes it harder to have throwaway identities. Also you start out with 10 honor points, you if you go under 9 points you have to goto special low honor servers which are basically group training exercises. And as you gain honor for playig well you get more rank and ability to command.

Re:In America, More = Better!

[BenjyD]

Yes, the really large, official servers suck big time. The EA 64 player servers are mostly too laggy to play on when full - updating once or twice a second is not exactly good for aiming.
That said, on maps with a well defined structure like Tobruk and Battle of the Bulge, I find large games (~40-50 players) can be great fun. The structure of the map encourages some limited team work, so you end up with large-scale gunfights and semi-coordinated attacks.
Of course, large servers with stupid maps like Stalingrad and Berlin aren't worth playing on.

Re:In America, More = Better!

[Quikah]

most of the maps on battlefield are way too big for only 16 players. I have never had a laggy experience on the couple of 48 player servers I have played on. The 64 player servers can get slightly laggy at times, but sticking to only green servers has kept the lag to a minimum for me.

Re:In America, More = Better!

[bigman2003]

America's Army- which has been used as an example a lot in this discussion...used to drive me nuts with the 'no respawn'.

Actually, what they did made sense. Once you died, you didn't respawn, and you had to wait until someone either won, or the time ran out. Usually the timer was somewhere in the 8:00 range.

Sometimes you could die in the first 30 seconds. Or even the first 10 seconds if you were trying something new. And then you had to wait...7 minutes plus...to play again for another 30 seconds. This really sucked sometimes.

Rainbow Six 3 is a similar game, but usually each round only lasts 2-3 minutes. Probably because the maps are smaller (although some of them are fairly large). On some maps, team A can be at team B's spawn point in less than 10 seconds. This means that the tactics you use probably won't be as sophisticated, but the game plays a little faster, and is more fun.

That's my opinion. Others may enjoy the more drawn out process, but I prefer the action.

Re:In America, More = Better!

[Captain Splendid]

IMO, the spawning problem can be solved with limited lives. Tweak it so that it provides a medium-skilled player just enough lives to complete the given map in the given time. That way, you have several chances, but you still have to make each life count (because it does.)

For example, my FPS of choice at the moment, Enemy Territory, has the option for limited lives. Once you've tried it, going back to unlimited lives anything is like being a Sumo wrestler beating up first graders: It's boring and far too easy.

This is why...

[hookedup]

I've taken to playing FP shooters on PC like Battlefield Vietnam. Last night I played on an official EA games server with 52 people.

Let me tell you, there's no better way to play an online shooter than with 26 teammates..

Microsoft reneging

[GeorgeH]

Part of the deal with XBox live was that you were paying for a superior online experience. Why would I spend $70/yr to play a game on someone's laggy cable modem? I can get that for free with the PS2 online or a PC.

Basically it's paying for developers who are too lazy to impliment Jabber as a standard presence protocol for online gaming.

Easy answer , Yes.

[curtisk]

Hard Answer, well......

In an ideal world, this question should answer itself. The problems are simple, how many servers? You don't want to buy and implement 200 servers, when the game turns out to be received luke-warmly (LOL luke-warmly) it can easily turn into a huge time/resource waste. But if you don't have enough servers to meet demand, people get pissy quick and write off trying to play. Maybe they'll come back when you have more servers, maybe not.

Another poster had a great suggestion to allow the server software to be released, which seems like an easy answer as well. But, what will it take, 2 days before a hacked server first appears, then you opening up your customers to an experience that is out of your control and usually unpleasant. They would have to have some serious code verification to validate the server code when clients connect to make sure everything is (still) on the up and up.

Ideally yes, they should host the servers, but it would be with alot of risk

The author seems to be jumping to conclusions

[Slyght]

The author seems to feel because Halo 2 is only going to have 16 people in a game at once, it's on the same level of Quake. I guess he's right, when you look past the better graphics, ability to wield two weapons at once, grenades, vehicles, and voice support, then yeah, I guess they are exactly the same game.

Re:The author seems to be jumping to conclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

he didn't say it was the same game, he was making point although games have come along way since quake, halo 2 still is constricted to only 16 players like quake was. Except Quake was released in 1996 and multiplay wasn't as widespread back then so it made sense. Today we have Battlefield, UT2004, CS, etc...and oh yes all of which have superior graphics, ability to yield two weapons at once(ut) grenades vehicles and voice support(socom2). And these are the games halo 2 should be on par with inch for inch, but yet it's still limited to 16 players. That's the point he was driving.

and oh in terms of ingenuity,whether you like it or not, when Quake came out it was innovative and highly regarded,(half life borrowed from Q1 and Q2).
Halo as popular as it was, was just another fps. As Halo 2 will be.

More players does not equal better

[superultra]

I played Planetside with at least 60 people in the same area and I was not impressed. Factor in that at least 25% of (and I'm being very conservative) are morons, another 25% are jerks, and really you've got 30 players who hampered by poor CPU performance and the presence of morons and jerks. Realistically, there's probably only about 10-25% that are really wanting to play well and on a team. Besides, how many games can perform effectively with 60+ enemies on the screen at one time?

I think we'd all agree that the constraints of previous systems actually meant that companies had to be more creative. The same is true here. I've had far more fun with the four player Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow than nearly any other online game. I'm not saying I don't run across my share of stupid people, but it's far easier to find 4 good people than it is 60-100. When you do find people that play fair, that don't camp, that play as a team, SCPT is an amazing multiplayer game - and usually lagless. I'm all up for more creative gameplay with what we have, not just adding more players.

Distributed Server

[Anonymous Coward]

Has any game got some kind of 'distributed server', such that no one computer has total control and there will always be a random 'server' even as people leave?

This may also be good for cheat detection as fragments of binary can be exchanged and compared (most matches is true code, no match == kick).

Downside: Bandwidth?

Patent this now! :)

The problem with dedicated servers.

[Yaztromo]

The big problem I have with dedicated servers is this: are the game development companies goin to still be running them years from now? 5? 10?

Probably not. However, what if I and a friend enjoy that game and want to continue playing online against each other past the date when the vendor decides to take their servers offline for a given game? We'd be SOL.

The big advantage of being able to run your own servers in such games is that you don't have to worry about such obscelesence. If five years from now I want to play Doom against my brother across town, we can do so. But if we want to play Amplitude or SSX 3? Probably not.

Yaz.

Re:The problem with dedicated servers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy solution to that. The game makers can distrubute dedicated server software for the game for windows and linux. You can now set up or rent your very own dedicated server. On top of that they can still allow clients to double as servers.

If I want to 1 on 1 with a buddy in UT2K4 either of us can use our systems as the client and server. If we want to go head first into a battlefield with two dozen people I can join one of the many dedicated servers up already. Most PC FPS have acted like this since forever and it works out great.

What are you talking about?

[*weasel]

With the PS2 or PC you get the privilege of playing on people's laggy analog modems - along with poorly secured protocols that can, and have been, repeatedly hacked. Sure PC internet gaming can have good servers and good connections -- but it comes with a PITA I don't have to deal with.

Consoles should have seperate servers because a console can ensure the integrity of the experience. I get no HPBs, headshot scripts, wallhacks when I play counterstrike on XBL.

I can get out-of-game invites that don't cause compatability problems or suck performance like Gamespy does.

I get voice comm in every title.
Then there's a myriad of new and smaller bells and whistles it's got - but those weren't there when I made my purchasing decision, and frankly - they're insignificant compared to the big 3 of quality/security, out-of-game invites, and voice comm.

That's the quality of service I pay $50 a year for. If you're going to slam the service, apparently without ever having tried it, or knowing much about it, you could at least get the numbers accurate.

Re:What are you talking about?

[*weasel]

Neither of these things require a centralized service and both can be run by publishers.

And yet no PS2 game offers anything of the sort.
It can be done - but it hasn't. They haven't even tried.

In the meantime, the service means alot to me, the gamer - and I'm willing to pay for it. I don't particularly care who's delivering cheat-free gaming. All that matters is that it only exists on one platform today, that platform has games I want to play, and the price for the service is extremely reasonable.

If they implemented an open standandard (or even a closed standard like Oscar) to provide between-game communication they could provide decentralized presence and allow out-of-game invites.

Once again, sure, it's something publishers could do - but they don't. Hell, how many PC games have shipped with native voicecomm support? Someone could do it - but they don't. In the meantime, I'm playing with voicecomm in every title by default. I'm not firing up firetalk or teamspeak or whatever 3rd party product fills that gaping hole in the PC multiplayer experience today.

Again, I don't care who is providing the service. There's a platform that delivers it as a default feature for a reasonable price. The PS2 provides voicecomm as a default and should be commended (over PC internet gaming) for it. With some effort by Sony it could easily be just about as good. But it isn't.

I attacked the quality factor, but none of those need to be exclusive to XBox.

Of course they needn't be exclusive. But MS is the only one who has sacked-up and provided gamers with internet play the way it should be. For that, I gladly pay them $50 per year. They have their online shit together more than any other platform - period; and they deserve to be rewarded and acknowledged for that.

The one aspect of XBL that you can reasonably gripe about - is those high performance servers. MS did promise it, and at least one of the early titles did deliver MS-hosted servers with higher player-counts. (Unreal championship notably had dedicated servers allowing 32 player matches).

Thing is: this is the one promised feature of XBL that MS left up to the individual publishers to follow through on. And none of them have opted to implement it.

So when a first-party game doesn't have MS-hosted dedicated servers, there isn't really much of an excuse -- MS did say one thing and fail to deliver on it consistantly across its titles.

But that becomes a fairly minor quibble when the rest of the service is weighed against the cost. The rest of the system is still worth $50 to me - because it exists, and it works, the right way, right now.

Yes, for fair play reasons

[Jahf]

Remember that when playing an online "twitch" game, if the host is also a player they have an immediate advantage over the other players by getting a 0 latency connection.

So yes, there should be dedicated servers. This doesn't mean it needs to be run by the company that sells the game (in fact, unless that company will guarantee X number of years of running the server, I would be worried if it did). You can distribute the dedicated server as part of the game.

Make the dedicated server more interesting than a terminal window. Allow the host to view players and chat as if he was in "observe" mode. Perhaps have an opt-in system where anyone who connects to the game and meets the pre-defined Hosting parameters can become part of a Hosting round-robin so that the hosts have the option of playing (sort of like moving the dealer button around in Poker). Perhaps find a way to give some sort of reward to the host (in a team-game you could allow someone who had just hosted to have their first pick in what class they want to play, in a single-player game the past-host might enter the game with X seconds of invulnerability, etc).

Besides, some people just like to watch. While you might not have enough people in this category, you would surely have -some- that would log in just to serve as the host. Especially if the game allowed the host to interact in some fundamental but non-player role (like a dungeon master).

I also think people are starting to see why the cell/grid technology folks like Sony have been positing could be a big step forward. Someone would still need to be the aggregation host, but all parties could assist in the processing. Might not be as useful in a traditional FPS, but I think the FPS has been fleshed out pretty well, time for the next round.

Re:Actually XBox does use dedicated servers of a s

[drewmca]

Wrong. When you host a game on xbox live, you are hosting it on your machine. If you select the "dedicated" option available in most games, then your machine becomes a dedicated server and you can't actually play yourself. In some games, like Unreal Championship, Microsoft provides their own dedicated servers, but as far as I know, those are just dedicated xboxes. Either way, they're few and far between, and only on some games. 90% of the time when you are playing on xbox live, it is a game actually hosted on another person's machine. Do the research and you'll see it's true.