When will the game no longer need a internet connection?

tatsujb · August 25, 2014

jendrykgaming said: ↑

From the Kickstarter page, circa 2012:

"Offline / LAN play support
By popular demand we are happy to announce that we will support LAN play and running your own servers! There will be elements of the game that are online only and will only be available when connected. For example things like player stats, auto-updating, metagame etc. However, we feel it’s important to be able to have an offline experience as well.

DRM-Free
For offline play, the game will be DRM free. For online play that gives you access to the global community and social features, you will need to be logged in. "

I would have never bought into early access if I'd known that two years later I'd be required to be constantly online and suffer critical performance problems due to server lag. My internet connection isn't terrible, and I've even upgraded but it doesn't seem to matter. It's the servers. A long or large game is pretty much pointless unless you want a slideshow.

I could care less about the DRM at this point, and could even accept always online requirements so long as it wasn't the current iteration that makes performance so heavily dependent on factors entirely beyond the player's control.

The game shows promise, but I've basically given up playing it do to performance issues, and getting the line "when it's ready" is just unacceptable at this point. Every time I come back to the game after waiting for more updates, I still experience the same horrific server lag that ruins it for me.

I'm really disappointed there's been no fix for this after all this time, because it's made me stop playing a game I know I'd otherwise really enjoy.
Click to expand...

jendrykgaming said: ↑

Early access or not, this is a core, critical, and fundamental issue that has existed since the earliest of access was possible. There is no way this could not have been foreseen, is the most demanded feature from the player base, and is absolutely central to any notion of acceptable gameplay. The TA, SC, and PA games are all predicated on the concept of massive conflicts and intensive macro gameplay. This is simply not feasible in the game currently available.

Multi-planet games are virtually pointless, as is the mechanic of utilizing moons as weapons, since the time required to build up to a point where your economy and strategic situation make such things possible, the simulation has become unbearable to deal with.

At this point, the game would be more aptly advertised as a single planet, small scale RTS. Galactic Warfare and many other additions are fine, but I think the vast majority of players would be gleefully discard all of these just to be able to play out a game to its acceptable conclusion.
Click to expand...

I still have hopes that UBER will make a push for this Soon™ otherwise they will loose a huge amount of customers.

kjotak109 · August 25, 2014

tatsujb said: ↑

I still have hopes that UBER will make a push for this Soon™ otherwise they will loose a huge amount of customers.
Click to expand...

And if Uber loses a huge amount of customers (people stop playing PA, people refuse to buy PA, etc.), it runs a huge risk of going bankrupt.

Deciding whether a game should be always-online on launch or not may be the last decision that a game company makes.

thetrophysystem · August 25, 2014

kjotak109 said: ↑

tatsujb said: ↑

I still have hopes that UBER will make a push for this Soon™ otherwise they will loose a huge amount of customers.
Click to expand...

And if Uber loses a huge amount of customers (people stop playing PA, people refuse to buy PA, etc.), it runs a huge risk of going bankrupt.

Deciding whether a game should be always-online on launch or not may be the last decision that a game company makes.
Click to expand...

I don't even feel this to be true. Deciding if it is or not period can be. Games like Planetside2 are built like they will never see a day where it isn't locked on their side. Games like this however are building the server for end-use of the customer. The server isn't something just the devs can use. It is already probably designed around simple user interface. So whether it is at launch or not, it's intent is as soon as possible. It was always in the plans for that to ship. So it is a matter of when, not if.

If it were a matter of if, as though they were going to keep it serverside and milk it or something, then it would be a double edged blade.

donut64 · August 25, 2014

cdrkf said: ↑

donut64 said: ↑

squishypon3 said: ↑

donut64 said: ↑

Not only that, but if either server performance is not increased or a reasonable unit/planet cap is not enforced then this game will get torn apart at the polls regardless of its potential.
Click to expand...

Server performance is bad because it's not running to full potential, multiple servers are being hosted from one computer I believe. Also, there will be no forced unit cap- it's a big premise of the game. I'm going to guess there will be optional unit caps in the future however.
Click to expand...

While that is certainly good to hear, critics don't care how they do it. They just care about the results.
If there has to be a unit cap to keep the game running smoothly all the time, it should be done.

I'm not speaking about this from my personal perspective. I can handle some slowdowns. I'm trying to speak from the perspective of someone completely new to PA who comes in not giving a flying **** about it and is just here to have fun and rate the fun they have with the intention of explaining why or why not they are having fun.

It seems a much better option to instead have the unit cap optional to turn OFF rather than turn ON.
Click to expand...

Where the performance of the game is concerned, it was running much faster in earlier builds.

There are a few things that have caused the recent server lag:
1: Re-balance of dox inflating unit count more quickly
2: New path-finding system still needing work
3: Problems with area patrols.

Essentially what kills the perf is large numbers of units going on area patrols (it's ok for air / orbital but area patrols on the ground take alot of computation to avoid obstacles)- and what do people do when the invade planet with 5k doxes?

Hence the problems- I'm certain Uber are fully aware of the issue and know the level of performance they want for release.

As for offline- they've made it very clear that it is being worked on and will be available soon, and I for one would rather they had the time to ensure it was as stable as possible before releasing it so I'm not overly concerned if this is just after the 1.0 release, on the understanding that the server issues will be resolved by then (whenever then is- there is no officially confirmed date as of yet).
Click to expand...

I noticed this.

Early in the game, maybe when it just got into "beta", the server-side was quite smooth. I got 100 hours clocked in then.

nofear1299 · August 25, 2014

I find I have most of my problems at peak times. Off peak and I have nearly perfect games.

Server is coming though, don't stress guys. Bitching about it every second day is not going to change anything, just aggravate the devs, and unhappy devs = slower devs

brianpurkiss · August 25, 2014

thetrophysystem said: ↑

brianpurkiss said: ↑

temeter said: ↑

Doesn't an online match generally run on a single core of an octo-core server?

I have my doubts that CPU-occupancy will be an issue when going offline. The game itself runs perfectly fine fps-wise, at least for me. So it will rather get better than worse.
Click to expand...

Uber hasn't told us much about the server requirements. :-(
Click to expand...

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/server-question.54087/#post-826879

Found via:
https://forums.uberent.com/search/418060/?q=current server&o=date&c[user][0]=1773902&c[user][1]=1956172&c[user][2]=53

I specify this to a LOT of ****-talkers about the game's performance. They want to be correct when they tell people that these system specs will run a game, so they make sure the "test environment" is similar to make sure "these poor specs will still achieve this minimum playability", and honestly it is very playable considering what they are testing it on.

The devs occasionally talk about firing it up in their personal time on their own machines, since -devmode will display a "local play" option at the main menu and that they have the server files for the game to use to launch a local game (but we don't so it doesn't work for us). They say occasionally how it runs on their machines which are more average for a gamer dedicated computer specs.

Honestly, if that was released to us, spec-buffs would probably muscle the game up to great performance. Great, possibly not excellent yet, and they would probably nag it doesn't quite reach 60fps or that it drops late game to 20 even though 5 planets and 8 AI.

But really, they are right. As far as testing, you need to test on single cores, 2g ram just for server, and 2mb data cap, because each or all of these things are what people might try to play on and it should marginally work for them.
Click to expand...

Hmm... That's encouraging... That's going to work rather well... this means I'm gonna have some super awesome servers available for rental!!! :-D

When will the game no longer need a internet connection?

tatsujb Post Master General

kjotak109 Well-Known Member

thetrophysystem Post Master General

donut64 Member

nofear1299 Active Member

brianpurkiss Post Master General

Share This Page

When will the game no longer need a internet connection?

tatsujb Post Master General

kjotak109 Well-Known Member

thetrophysystem Post Master General

donut64 Member

nofear1299 Active Member

brianpurkiss Post Master General

Share This Page

Useful Searches