Spiral Knights - So, I was playing warframe the other day, and I realized that a Peer2Peer system would suit SK a lot.

So, I was playing warframe the other day, and I realized that a Peer2Peer system would suit SK a lot.

11 replies [Last post]

Sat, 04/09/2016 - 01:30

Quaquonfaes

To the point where I was wondering, why didn't SK go with this option in the first place?

1.) If you got a bad connection, you can play solo and still be completely lag free.

In warframe, there are no gameplay servers, just 1 item server, how the game works is that your computer is hosting the match for you and your friends, with you being completely lag free and your friends depending on your connection, while the rewards are managed by the item server by occasionally tapping in and checking how its going.

The result of this is that even people with bad connections can play solo if they wish and still enjoy the game completely lag free with no risk of people hacking in rewards.

2.)There's no need to pay for servers.

I mean, yeah, its not secret SK isn't doing great, chopping the quite frankly terrible servers, in exchange for letting players solo completely lag free would be a win win in this sitiuation.

3.) Playing with people who live near you will be possible without suffering the terrible servers first.

I can't imagine the number of times I wanted to play with other people in my house but we were suffering insane lag. This would be a nice fix for this.

Ontop of all that, spiral knights a mission-by-mission type of MMO with only 1-4 players(again like warframe), which means there's even less need to have a server constantly babysit you.

Of course, there would be some specific scenarios where having a gameplay server would benefit, but honestly considering how detrimental the current servers are to the experience and how well this works for wf, I really believe this would do more good than bad, considering that sometimes the game is litteraly unplayable due to lag.

tl;dr Have gameplay be offline, with rewards being handled by a server. This will result in lag free gameplay that is also cheaper than paying for servers with no risk of hackers.

Sat, 04/09/2016 - 01:37

Fehzor

I was wondering, why didn't SK go with this option in the first place?

A peer to peer connection puts the workload on the players, which means that you're at the mercy of some stranger's internet connection, which is often going to be considerably worse than whatever could be provided. By hosting the connection themselves, this burden was moved onto the company- who is at least able to provide the same decentish standard of connection to everyone, regardless of whether they're playing with someone on a toaster.

Sat, 04/09/2016 - 01:53

Quaquonfaes

@Fehzor

Is the connection really decent enough at this point though?

The majority of the time the game is unplayably laggy, compare it to warframe where despite being at the mercy of someone else, most of the time the game is incredibly smooth. Sure, the netcode helps, but it can't alter reality. It's a proof of concept, that, well. P2P works wonders.

At the very least, I would wish for an option to play offline or to host in the way described in the cases where it would be a million times better than the servers.

Sat, 04/09/2016 - 01:56

Putkisen-Seta

Meh.

Mine works fine.

Sat, 04/09/2016 - 02:13

Fehzor

Yeah. That's what people told Nick when the discussion took place as well, but you have to wonder what it was like when they were designing it- it certainly wasn't at this point. It's hard to say.

Sat, 04/09/2016 - 02:36

Quaquonfaes

This has been disscussed before? Where?

Sat, 04/09/2016 - 02:56

Fehzor

Twitter. I'm not going back and finding it.

Tue, 04/12/2016 - 01:31

Burq

In some ways, yes but generally no.

I play Warframe A LOT (sitting at around 3k hours now) and a good chuck of that time has been solo/offline and I have to say, I SERIOUSLY wished Warframe ran on servers instead of a P2P model and here's why:

You are at the mercy of the other player's connection and computer - The main reason why I played solo so much was because a lot of the times, the connection between players was very bad, specially in conclave, and with all the updates, the minimum requirements kept increasons to the point my computer could barely play the game, which made playing with others impossible since the game too so long to load it ended up disconnecting from the other players.

Even after I got a way better computer, the bad connection between players meant that a lot of the time, the lag messed things around a lot and coordination became sort of impossible. And with how the void keys work...

The PvP mode is completely screwed over by relying on player hosting - That is as bad as it sounds.

The Raids, the supposed endgame, is even more screwed up by player hosting - The game is normaly for 4 players, and the Raid are set up for up to 8 players, so the host needs a pretty beefy computer to be able to host without dropping players... and players also need a beefy connection and pc to be able to even play the first mission of the Raids (they are 3 separate missions, ending with a boss fight); if you disconnect or desync at any point, you lose everything and cannot rejoin. Which brings me to my next point...

Disconnection from the host usually means you will lose everything you collect in the mission, even if you already completed the objective - This is currently my biggest problem with the P2P system; you if the connect is lost, you immediately lose everything collected, there's only 1 way around it and it's not something that can be done often and Devs/Support dont recompense for lost items due to disconnections (which do include bugs that force a disconnection). This can also happen if the host loses connection or decides to screw the party over by pulling out of a mission prematurely or the like. This also happens very often if the host was a bad computer that can barely handle the game, which usually makes it safer to just play solo if your computer isn't very strong.

Having a server means players with systems that aren't as powerful or dont have a strong connection can play together a lot better than with a P2P system.

Tue, 04/12/2016 - 01:48

Krakob

Here's a short lived discussion about it from back in the days: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/81246

Tue, 04/12/2016 - 07:51

Petater

@Ellthan

Step 1) Rewrite SK

Tue, 04/12/2016 - 19:12

#10

Autofire

You are experiencing a PICNIC ERROR!

Well my main concern is hacking. While Warframe is made using a very tailored engine which has top-secret code, SK also has a custom engine but it created in Java. I bet you could take apart SK without too much difficulty and tinker with it. The result?

I could skip the first two Danger Mission levels and go straight to the third one, all just by entering GM mode or something like that.

So, no, I don't think it will work unless the developers could somehow pack an extra security measure, but that's easier said than done. And we still have the other issues.

That being said, it sounds like a great idea in theory and I bet there's a nice solution that can deal with a lot of the problems; we just need to find it. ("We", as in a group of people who have a lot more experience with the topic than the rest of us.)

Wed, 04/13/2016 - 17:26

#11

Canine-Vladmir

Replaying my Steam Library gems

My ping on Battlefield 4 is significantly lower than occasional SK games.
I live in East coast USA with Moderate to very Good Internet connection.

Someone, why? Why dis game do dis to me?

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So, I was playing warframe the other day, and I realized that a Peer2Peer system would suit SK a lot.