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John Carmack Says No Dedicated Servers For Rage
AndrewDBarker writes "Modern Warfare 2 will use a matchmaking setup powered by IWNet for online play (as we've discussed). It's too early to say what Rage will use, but Carmack indicated he believed the servers are something of a remnant of the early days of PC gaming. That said, he realizes the affinity many PC gamers have for them — and is glad Rage won't be leading the charge away from them. 'The great thing is we won't have to be a pioneer on that,' he says. 'We'll see how it works out for everyone else.'"
Thanks game devs for getting those with only lan access in moms baement the shaft.
But given the mess that has grown up around MW2, it should be pretty clear that the attempt to leave dedicated servers behind is not being taken well. The mechanism in use there seems destined to cause problems for users, and the fluidity available from dedicated servers can't be easily replaced by any system that has users hosting servers. It may be that hordes of virtual servers are the future of dedicated servers, but that's still a far better option than things like a five-second pause while the players' systems figure out who is taking over next.
If there's anyone that I trust to come up with a workable technical solution, it's John Carmack, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good idea.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I wouldn't call ~200,000 people a day between only three games from ONE COMPANY when the most populous of those three games averages ~80-90K a day peak users despite being about 5 years old a remnant of the early days of PC gaming. I'd call that proof of how important dedicated servers and proper mod support are.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Battlefield Heroes uses a similar setup and for the most part servers are a nebulous thing the match making servers put you on. Because for the most part real people don't run the servers admins are less common. There's less incentive to rent a servers (through approved resellers) because the communities that usually grow up around more active servers or more skilled players don't really form. My friends might be good but when we join a game it could be just about anywhere, if we even bother to join. One way I could think of to compensate for all this would be strong team/clan tools because they would cause little communities and host servers their players would spend more time on, but honestly I haven't seen any games with something decent since Tribes 2 (invite system, team management, tag controls, even a messaging system!).
I don't love or hate the matchmaking system, but I would like to see them find a way to do it that doesn't impact the gaming community so much. Until then I'll miss my server browser.
Quack, quack.
I'd rather deal with the occasional cheater than suddenly lose multiplayer because the publisher decided the servers were no longer financially viable. This is really about making games disposable, which, for me at least, negates any inherent value received at purchase.
Anyone remember the days before dedicated gaming and reliable, integrated server browsers? Remember not too long ago when Gamespy was just being started and provided the revolutionary service or helping people connect to servers, but had to be run outside the game and started the game?
Think back even further. Remember trying to set up peer to peer games? Yeah, I'd almost forgotten about it to.
That is until Borderlands came out. This game is a wretched reminder of the 'bad old days'. I spent hours scouring forums and search engines, fiddling with my router, and trying to set it up so that I could host a game for my friend. No dice. Even setting my computer as the DMZ host didn't help. The only way myself and another friend were able to play was through a third friend who didn't have any issues.
Meanwhile, games like UT3 and TF2 work like a charm. Not to mention it's frankly a really cool social experience of having a server you frequent and getting to know the other people who frequent it rather than only ever getting to see the friends you've already got or a continuous parade of people you play with once and then never see again.
With all due respect to a man who is, frankly, one of the forefathers of modern gaming, saying that dedicated servers are an artifact of the past is just a blatantly stupid assertion to make. He should stick to coding and leave the design to someone who has some idea of what gamers want.
And id won't care. The "sales" they would lose to this would primarily be the people who used to pirate the game.
Dedicated servers are the shit.
Remember when gamespy was quakespy? And there was Mplayer?
I used to play q2 tournaments on Mplayer. But all the mods rolled on Quakespy/Gamespy. It gave people from such communities as the Action Quake/Quake 2 group some exposure.
More recently a great example of such a contrast is the early release of Halo 2 and even the lack of multiplayer support in the Original Halo in the beginning.
Before xbox live we had Xbox Connect which allowed me to play online before xbox live was mainstream. Furthermore it allowed for the playing of Halo 2, online, months before it came out.
This includes modified versions of Halo and Halo 2 that would never be realized without dedicated servers.
This culture is not even recognized by the noob gamers that started playing games online through a console portal.
Definitely worth fighting for.
You can all thank Microsoft and Xbox Lives reliance on laggy P2P networking for this. Any multiplatform titles that includes Xbox360, will mean all the other platforms that usually have dedicated servers (PC and PS3) will get gimped due to the Xbox's limitations.
The only reason to get rid of dedicated servers is to kill the community when you want and force people to move on your next game.
Wooden barrels.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You fit your sig all to well.
Gaming companies don't use millions of dollars and hundreds of people working. They spend millions of dollars to get hundreds of people working for them. Open Source have people volunteer to do the work for free because they enjoy it. What, do you think game companies spend those millions on bricks and steel and machinery and sets for actors?
The main problem with OSS games has been there haven't been enough creative and graphic design people helping out. Have you seen what the modders do? Plenty of them produce similar quality work as game companies, but they also have a more creative edge because they are doing what they think is cool and what they want, not what they think will deliver repeatable profits.
Essentially what modern game companies put out are just crappy FPSs that have had lots of graphic and sound work done on them to make them look really nice and require the most expensive latest and greatest hardware.
It seems great to a superficial person, but normal people think it is stupid and undesirable. They want games which are actually fun, and many of them don't want to spend thousands of dollars every year just so they can play video games. Contrary to what Hollywood says, looks aren't really important.
Almost all the games coming out of the big companies are the same sort of crap in low grade action movies where they end up in the bargain bin a few months after being released to DVD. After which, they disappear into the void never to be seen on store shelves. I suppose this is why if you wait a few months after release, you can't buy the game anymore...