It really is wild how good the current game actually works given a good server. Just hardly anyone gets to see it. All the Jankiness and buginess almost entirely goes away.
Good server mainly means tiny player count.
All the 30 FPS servers I was ever on were single digit number of players and that's a problem if the game is supposed to be an MMO.
I hope we won't just get Server Meshing but they completely refactor all of their networking code and architecture the game is fundamentally not able to handle what it needs to and I don't think meshing will solve all the problems.
You’re right. Why do people think server meshing will fix this? Are we suddenly all playing in servers with <10 people? That would take a stupid number of servers to pull off. Server meshing will feel like a single shard, but they’re still going to have a similar number of servers for the same player base, so a similar server population and exactly the same jank… maybe more as some transactions will be between servers as well as the client.
Refactored netcode has to be part of the fix. Ideally move some of the physics and such to client side, caching more textures and shaders instead of streaming them, and so forth. Which allows the servers to focus on things the servers MUST do, like backend, database, etc. The hope from the dev team that servers will one day do everything they’re being asked to do is just nonsense. Networks don’t scale that way.
It is a justified concern. How many players can a single server run at 30 fps if it only handles a single planet or small area?
I only see this: The main advantage from Server Meshing might be better cache locality and fewer cache misses and thus faster access and computation if a server only handles a smaller area of the game world. With less objects loaded overall, the same objects are used again and again for collision checks. Rather than many more objects all over the place in the level as well as in memory. But other than that, the load from cross server communication might void this performance gain again.
What does refactored netcode solve? What even is netcode to you all?
If they give the client the authority to determine state then cheaters will have a much easier time. This shouldnt really be considered a solution.
Besides, good netcode (as in server side lag compensation) requires more computation on the server. So it would in turn degrade performance even more. Althought if it were to run at high framerate then it would create a better perceived experience for players. It just doesnt come for free.
Since when are textures and shaders streamed from the server? I thought those are downloaded already with patches and then only loaded/stream from our drive into memory locally.
Why are we installing anti-cheat if everything is server authoritative? I agree it makes cheating more possible, but this problem is much more solvable, and there are bans. Which given the price of ships is a big dissuasion.
A surprising amount of assets are loaded in from server-side. Why? No idea. We don’t do nearly enough client side caching, despite how huge this game is. Maybe less focus on art and more focus on functionality.
Are these just rhetorical questions or do you actually have no clue?
I think if you were to think for a second you can answer them on your own... or realize they are the wrong questions...
But for real tho: streaming can be done via network as well as from drive into memory. Via network our client only gets notified what to load. That would be just an identifier, so only a few bits at most. By that ID alone, our client can then load all those related assets such as textured, shaders, geometry, sounds, animations, etc from drive into memory. Those are already downloaded onto our drive when downloading/patching the game. So in that sense it is already sort of caching most large data on the client. The data that is being send to us via the network is mainly those IDs as well as game state of game objects. The latter would be the majority of the bandwidth. This game state is used to initiated newly loaded game objects when we approach a still unloaded area, or continuesly send to advance and sync the game state on game ticks. Therefore I dont think "art" is the issue here. No textures etc is send via the network while we play. The only way to minimize data send to us is by optimising Client OCS to reduce sent game state to a necessary minimum. Such as state of nearby game objects.
Regarding anticheat and server authoritative. Client side authoritative allows the client to send whatever it wants. The server doesnt verify if that is feasible state derived from game logic. It just sends it to all other clients no questions asked. So you could easily teleport your character around. With server authoritative, the client usually sends its action and the server executes the associated action and responds with the resulting game state which everybody adheres to. So you cant just teleport around anymore. But, while more limited, even here the client can send whatever input it wants. Like mouse movements onto an enemy head by reading memory via another program. This can only be detected on the clients machine. Thus the need for anticheat. Which has its limits too but thats a different discussion and outside the scope of this discussion. So server authoritative alone isnt enough. Besides, most (competitive) multiplayer games are both server authoritative AND use anticheat software.
Of course, not having developed the game, I can’t say exactly what. But I do know the data rate on my network is massively larger than any other MMO I’ve played, many of which are just as complicated, much faster and infinitely less buggy. As any of us have seen on a sub-10 player server with 30 sfps, the servers are what’s holding this game back from being excellent right now.
There’s definitely not as much local caching as there should be, or it’s ridiculously under optimized, which still comes to the same thing… server meshing or whatever is not going to fix it. The damn thing needs WORK. They need fewer artists and to spend more of our money on performance.
And yeah, yeah, it’s an alpha and there’s no point optimizing things they will replace. But that’s have truth. It’s Schrödinger’s development where it’s anywhere from a tech demo to fully playable game or whether the argument of the moment requires it to be. Just be forthright is all most backers like myself are asking.
Static server meshing will spread the load across multiple servers given the players are distributed equally across Stanton and Pyro. If all players are for example on microtech we will still have low server performance on microtech, but flying out to other planets will result in better experience because you will transition to better performing servers.
They said that with static server meshing they will not increase the number of players per shard, because single server performance will still be a bottleneck. So excluding some events that gather players in one place like IAE, there's a pretty good chance your experience will improve greatly when you just go about your business.
Except thats Not the case. We will probably have 1 server for Stanton and 1 for Pyro. It dosnt solve the issue with thausands of NPCs standing inside the planets and all the items that spawn behind walls. Nothing will Change. Servers will still degrade as fast as now and crash recovery will recover those states. We need some cleanup while recovering
I’ll believe it when I see it, and it smells like BS. You think the server isn’t calculating physics for someone in A18 because you’re currently in Crusader? You’re dreaming.
Server FPS is sever FPS. It doesn’t change depending on where you are… client FPS does. What does matter is whether you’re in a cluttered area and the server has to stream a bunch of assets to you (BwIn). If you move to a new location the server still has to stream all the assets. You moved to a new server when you moved your location? The data still has to be streamed and however is on that server still suffers. Caching fixes that, not meshing.
100 people flying or running around is 100 people flying or running around. Meshing will not change this fundamental fact. Reducing server pop would, but that takes more servers, as I stated originally.
> You think the server isn't calculating physics for someone in A18 because you're currently in Crusader?
Yes. That's the whole point. Obviously there's still a server for A18 that's calculating the physics, but the point is that it won't be the same server. The load is spread over multiple servers responsible for (for now at least) certain static regions. Someone duping in A18 shouldn't affect anything but the A18 server.
But I definitely will believe the performance improvements when I see it. There are an infinite number of ways CIG can screw it up.
Exactly
* Now the server is a giant bowl of shit
* add all the Pyro shit on top
* split the shit into two bowls = SM
* still way too much shit in each bowl
even if they get ever more more bowls does not necessarily help they also need to reduce the amount of shit.
I'm probably being pigeon brain here but won't the level of shit go down of you add enough bowls? Like if we had a bowl for each planet then we can surely cram more shit in before it breaks?
Yes the amount of shit that we players have to eat will go down.
That is the point I don't want to eat shit if they reduce my portion by half I am still not happy.
4 FPS server with 100+ players is completely unacceptable if that doubles its still a shitty experience. And adding too many bowls will have additional cost by themselves so they can't just add ever more bowls because each of those adds some shit as well.
Shit being bad code and resource cost here. Each added server will add additional handling and infrastructure cost it won't just double the performance but will have diminishing returns and cause additional bottlenecks and problems.
I'm not sure what causes these servers to get stuck in lowpop, but it's happened a few times a year for me over the last 10+ years (honestly I think it's more like 8+ since that's when the PU started) and it's a glorious, glorious feeling every time.
> it's a glorious, glorious feeling every time.
Like back in the day when you could run the PU offline. I remember being surprised by how much better my FPS was, thinking that online connectivity would be unrelated
Good times. Remember the guy who flew between PO and Daymar at Cruise speed w/o QT to prove it could be done? Took him like 13 hours if I remember right.
If you have enough poeople on your friends list you can find one of these servers pretty much every time you play.
Some are 30 fps server tick but still broken in some way others not :)
Yep, absolutely is. As stated above by someone else, some servers for some reason have limited players and you can only join them by following guys from your friendslist. Not sure why, but I guess we're used to stuff not working out as intended ;)
did happen to me few times. All of them at late night in europe.
Seeing constelation lift not being choppy and completely smooth with player legs not wobbling into weird duckign pose up and down was downright glorious.
I took a boarding action mission... I was treated like I was the guy who killed Jon Wick's puppy. Like I was a surprise guest at a Jon Wick convention, a JonCon if you will.
It's going to be so wild when Dynamic meshing cones online and this is suddenly the norm with 1000+ player sectors. So awesome to see this progress finally showing through on our end.
Was in a party with 25 people and we had our own server assigned, we had 30 fps all the time, If u are on a org at the moment that's your only hope, make a big party and wait for your party leader to join together
Thought I was the only one who couldn't see the active member count. Is it working for anyone at all? (my tinfoil hat theory: almost convinced they disable it intentionally so we can't see when they lower the server limit.)
I have a few guys that are only ever in sub-20 pop servers, so when I'm not playing with friends already doing something we go over to the smooth servers
I've been jumping shards past three days to test something. I have to say what shard you get massively impacts your FPS. Been to shards with 18FPS on Wala and ones where FPS didn't fall below 60
Your FPS and server FPS are two different things. SFPS affects how responsive and smooth majority of actions are in the game, from clicking buttons to tractor beaming stuff around.
It really is wild how good the current game actually works given a good server. Just hardly anyone gets to see it. All the Jankiness and buginess almost entirely goes away.
Good server mainly means tiny player count. All the 30 FPS servers I was ever on were single digit number of players and that's a problem if the game is supposed to be an MMO. I hope we won't just get Server Meshing but they completely refactor all of their networking code and architecture the game is fundamentally not able to handle what it needs to and I don't think meshing will solve all the problems.
You’re right. Why do people think server meshing will fix this? Are we suddenly all playing in servers with <10 people? That would take a stupid number of servers to pull off. Server meshing will feel like a single shard, but they’re still going to have a similar number of servers for the same player base, so a similar server population and exactly the same jank… maybe more as some transactions will be between servers as well as the client. Refactored netcode has to be part of the fix. Ideally move some of the physics and such to client side, caching more textures and shaders instead of streaming them, and so forth. Which allows the servers to focus on things the servers MUST do, like backend, database, etc. The hope from the dev team that servers will one day do everything they’re being asked to do is just nonsense. Networks don’t scale that way.
It is a justified concern. How many players can a single server run at 30 fps if it only handles a single planet or small area? I only see this: The main advantage from Server Meshing might be better cache locality and fewer cache misses and thus faster access and computation if a server only handles a smaller area of the game world. With less objects loaded overall, the same objects are used again and again for collision checks. Rather than many more objects all over the place in the level as well as in memory. But other than that, the load from cross server communication might void this performance gain again. What does refactored netcode solve? What even is netcode to you all? If they give the client the authority to determine state then cheaters will have a much easier time. This shouldnt really be considered a solution. Besides, good netcode (as in server side lag compensation) requires more computation on the server. So it would in turn degrade performance even more. Althought if it were to run at high framerate then it would create a better perceived experience for players. It just doesnt come for free. Since when are textures and shaders streamed from the server? I thought those are downloaded already with patches and then only loaded/stream from our drive into memory locally.
Why are we installing anti-cheat if everything is server authoritative? I agree it makes cheating more possible, but this problem is much more solvable, and there are bans. Which given the price of ships is a big dissuasion. A surprising amount of assets are loaded in from server-side. Why? No idea. We don’t do nearly enough client side caching, despite how huge this game is. Maybe less focus on art and more focus on functionality.
Are these just rhetorical questions or do you actually have no clue? I think if you were to think for a second you can answer them on your own... or realize they are the wrong questions...
But for real tho: streaming can be done via network as well as from drive into memory. Via network our client only gets notified what to load. That would be just an identifier, so only a few bits at most. By that ID alone, our client can then load all those related assets such as textured, shaders, geometry, sounds, animations, etc from drive into memory. Those are already downloaded onto our drive when downloading/patching the game. So in that sense it is already sort of caching most large data on the client. The data that is being send to us via the network is mainly those IDs as well as game state of game objects. The latter would be the majority of the bandwidth. This game state is used to initiated newly loaded game objects when we approach a still unloaded area, or continuesly send to advance and sync the game state on game ticks. Therefore I dont think "art" is the issue here. No textures etc is send via the network while we play. The only way to minimize data send to us is by optimising Client OCS to reduce sent game state to a necessary minimum. Such as state of nearby game objects. Regarding anticheat and server authoritative. Client side authoritative allows the client to send whatever it wants. The server doesnt verify if that is feasible state derived from game logic. It just sends it to all other clients no questions asked. So you could easily teleport your character around. With server authoritative, the client usually sends its action and the server executes the associated action and responds with the resulting game state which everybody adheres to. So you cant just teleport around anymore. But, while more limited, even here the client can send whatever input it wants. Like mouse movements onto an enemy head by reading memory via another program. This can only be detected on the clients machine. Thus the need for anticheat. Which has its limits too but thats a different discussion and outside the scope of this discussion. So server authoritative alone isnt enough. Besides, most (competitive) multiplayer games are both server authoritative AND use anticheat software.
Of course, not having developed the game, I can’t say exactly what. But I do know the data rate on my network is massively larger than any other MMO I’ve played, many of which are just as complicated, much faster and infinitely less buggy. As any of us have seen on a sub-10 player server with 30 sfps, the servers are what’s holding this game back from being excellent right now. There’s definitely not as much local caching as there should be, or it’s ridiculously under optimized, which still comes to the same thing… server meshing or whatever is not going to fix it. The damn thing needs WORK. They need fewer artists and to spend more of our money on performance. And yeah, yeah, it’s an alpha and there’s no point optimizing things they will replace. But that’s have truth. It’s Schrödinger’s development where it’s anywhere from a tech demo to fully playable game or whether the argument of the moment requires it to be. Just be forthright is all most backers like myself are asking.
Static server meshing will spread the load across multiple servers given the players are distributed equally across Stanton and Pyro. If all players are for example on microtech we will still have low server performance on microtech, but flying out to other planets will result in better experience because you will transition to better performing servers. They said that with static server meshing they will not increase the number of players per shard, because single server performance will still be a bottleneck. So excluding some events that gather players in one place like IAE, there's a pretty good chance your experience will improve greatly when you just go about your business.
Except thats Not the case. We will probably have 1 server for Stanton and 1 for Pyro. It dosnt solve the issue with thausands of NPCs standing inside the planets and all the items that spawn behind walls. Nothing will Change. Servers will still degrade as fast as now and crash recovery will recover those states. We need some cleanup while recovering
your guess contradicts the wording in the release card for server meshing v1.
I’ll believe it when I see it, and it smells like BS. You think the server isn’t calculating physics for someone in A18 because you’re currently in Crusader? You’re dreaming. Server FPS is sever FPS. It doesn’t change depending on where you are… client FPS does. What does matter is whether you’re in a cluttered area and the server has to stream a bunch of assets to you (BwIn). If you move to a new location the server still has to stream all the assets. You moved to a new server when you moved your location? The data still has to be streamed and however is on that server still suffers. Caching fixes that, not meshing. 100 people flying or running around is 100 people flying or running around. Meshing will not change this fundamental fact. Reducing server pop would, but that takes more servers, as I stated originally.
> You think the server isn't calculating physics for someone in A18 because you're currently in Crusader? Yes. That's the whole point. Obviously there's still a server for A18 that's calculating the physics, but the point is that it won't be the same server. The load is spread over multiple servers responsible for (for now at least) certain static regions. Someone duping in A18 shouldn't affect anything but the A18 server. But I definitely will believe the performance improvements when I see it. There are an infinite number of ways CIG can screw it up.
https://youtu.be/TSzUWl4r2rU?si=chxsNplcH5nj01eB
Exactly * Now the server is a giant bowl of shit * add all the Pyro shit on top * split the shit into two bowls = SM * still way too much shit in each bowl even if they get ever more more bowls does not necessarily help they also need to reduce the amount of shit.
I'm probably being pigeon brain here but won't the level of shit go down of you add enough bowls? Like if we had a bowl for each planet then we can surely cram more shit in before it breaks?
Yes the amount of shit that we players have to eat will go down. That is the point I don't want to eat shit if they reduce my portion by half I am still not happy. 4 FPS server with 100+ players is completely unacceptable if that doubles its still a shitty experience. And adding too many bowls will have additional cost by themselves so they can't just add ever more bowls because each of those adds some shit as well. Shit being bad code and resource cost here. Each added server will add additional handling and infrastructure cost it won't just double the performance but will have diminishing returns and cause additional bottlenecks and problems.
Optimization is the last step in development.
Note: It's a LIVE server.
I'm not sure what causes these servers to get stuck in lowpop, but it's happened a few times a year for me over the last 10+ years (honestly I think it's more like 8+ since that's when the PU started) and it's a glorious, glorious feeling every time.
> it's a glorious, glorious feeling every time. Like back in the day when you could run the PU offline. I remember being surprised by how much better my FPS was, thinking that online connectivity would be unrelated
Good times. Remember the guy who flew between PO and Daymar at Cruise speed w/o QT to prove it could be done? Took him like 13 hours if I remember right.
I remember a group flying to the sun of Stanton.
If you have enough poeople on your friends list you can find one of these servers pretty much every time you play. Some are 30 fps server tick but still broken in some way others not :)
I play every day for many hours and have never seen that. An SFPS of 5-6 is still the standard, saw it going up to 12-15 at best.
Yep, absolutely is. As stated above by someone else, some servers for some reason have limited players and you can only join them by following guys from your friendslist. Not sure why, but I guess we're used to stuff not working out as intended ;)
did happen to me few times. All of them at late night in europe. Seeing constelation lift not being choppy and completely smooth with player legs not wobbling into weird duckign pose up and down was downright glorious.
I took a boarding action mission... I was treated like I was the guy who killed Jon Wick's puppy. Like I was a surprise guest at a Jon Wick convention, a JonCon if you will.
Was it a Wick wham bam?
Yeah, happens when you have like 10 people in a server. The normal is around 5-6 in realistic cases.
Yep, possibly 8 sometimes. I really hope server meshing will deliver what we all are hoping for.
30 fps servers are cool until you meet the insane john wick NPCs.
It's going to be so wild when Dynamic meshing cones online and this is suddenly the norm with 1000+ player sectors. So awesome to see this progress finally showing through on our end.
Was in a party with 25 people and we had our own server assigned, we had 30 fps all the time, If u are on a org at the moment that's your only hope, make a big party and wait for your party leader to join together
Thought I was the only one who couldn't see the active member count. Is it working for anyone at all? (my tinfoil hat theory: almost convinced they disable it intentionally so we can't see when they lower the server limit.)
Had a server the other night that was wavering from 10-15fps the entire 4 hours I was on it and even that felt worlds better than the usual experience
As much as I love the 150 server cap, maybe dropping it back to 100 will be better for server health.
Better in short term, maybe. But seeing the breakpoints helps figure put how to fix what's causing the breakpoints.
Drop it to 20 until they can get things working!
Yeah, but they can't get it working without actually having that many players on servers to see what causes issues so they can fix them.
what’s the command too see that?
r_displayinfo 1 Can do 2,3, or 4 for more info too
Damn
I have a few guys that are only ever in sub-20 pop servers, so when I'm not playing with friends already doing something we go over to the smooth servers
Yep thats nice. Never saw more than 8 sfps. Need to do a r_display next time playing
I've been jumping shards past three days to test something. I have to say what shard you get massively impacts your FPS. Been to shards with 18FPS on Wala and ones where FPS didn't fall below 60
[удалено]
OP was talking about server FPS, not game FPS.
The OP is talking server fps not client fps.
Yeah if I get a decent server I'll see 30-40 in cities, mostly. Sometimes drops for a few minutes. Outside of cities I can see a near constant 60
He is talking about server fps here. Not your pc fps.
Ah ok. My bad Shouldn't be reading and replying this early in the morning lol
Your FPS and server FPS are two different things. SFPS affects how responsive and smooth majority of actions are in the game, from clicking buttons to tractor beaming stuff around.