Re: Dodgy servers

@DoYaSeeMe Battlefield Heroes had both a ''play now'' button and server selection that didn't negatively effect player retention. In fact, it was hugely popular over 6+ year lifespan and successful both with the amount of engagement from users during events but also the amount they earnt through cosmetic microtransactions from those events. This has been proven to work.

On a side note.. Price shouldn't be compared nowadays but players from BFH would spend 5 bucks back then dressing your character with millions of combinations making your hero completely unique.. with an average user spending $20 (4 characters) unlike your current Apex model of 20 bucks for one which you get a set outfit from about 50 options, excluding recolours, with everyone still looking the same. It's just lazy of Respawn, especially when cosmetics are their main content. Anyway, back to the server points.. xD

If there are to many people on the closest server then you could either wait or join the next closest to you. Again, that's your choice. I would also argue that when you meet players in specific regions knowing where they're from (very likely closer to you than the current method) you'll not be in the closest server all the time when playing with friends with all of you making compromises. MY and THEIR compromise, not some algorithm fudging it for all like sticking at home Russians, Turkish, frankly all over.. on my team when i'm in UK.. Either the game is dead (apparently not the case) or their algorithm isn't perfect leading to a bad experience. So let me make the decision and give the power to the user.

Where's the source that the dedicated servers are increasing? I also think having people stay in the server 24/7 is just a bad excuse. While it's possible, in thousands of hours playing both BFH and DirtyBomb, i have never once encountered someone staying in a server 24/7. You'll surely get the regulars there but unlike crafting and such in an mmo there's no reason to be logged in when you sleep and if those dedicated to the game are grinding higher ranks 8hrs a day compared to your casual 1 hour a week player then give them the slightly better ping if they're prepared to wait for it... One size obv doesn't fit all when everyone complains about servers.

Who will likely notice? The guy who lives and breaths the game 12 hrs straight grinding pred or some guy playing 30 mins a month? Keep the automation there for the casuals but SBMM or no SBMM, ranked specific and normal servers could benefit us all. Not likely given Respawns history of implementing new things.. 

@DoYaSeeMeBahrain complaints don't make sense as i have London selected and still get connected to other data centers after a small wait.. Germany often.

I'm just using BFH as an example and there are plenty of others that were successful but if using both instant and server select worked then and on more recent titles then it should now as it's using the exact same method of combining different ways to join the same servers. Nothing really difficult for them to do.

If anything, automated should be improved with more players to draw from and it should be in a better position to give a more stable experience overall. This can also be said with broken rank mix we currently have.

Which then begs the question, why is it so crap for most now?

Also why does it matter what computer power is needed to run the game? I'm not just talking about dedicated servers (there are various ways to cover that cost anyway) but what about manually selecting servers?

So not having a server select is a core part of the game that can't be touched now?

@DoYaSeeMe You said it yourself. ''game servers don't waste resources on handling lobby stuff and matchmaking, they need all the power to process the matches they hold''.

It would be interesting to see these articles of how not having a server selection (with the current automated system still in place too) leads to a better experience and if they need updating that with our team mates missing or high ping players in match, general stability ect.. The only thing that could be said from the users point is increased engagement but engagement and enjoyable engagement are two very different things.. Just look at our quests or ranked splits.

So far, you said having it will mean separate ques - I have given an example how that's not the case.

Lead to a bad experience - Will generally make it better with closer proximity players.

Cost of servers - I know ways they can cover that cost so you should know more than i and it's not like they're begging for change here if they have to fork some of that themselves.

People exploiting staying in the same server 24/7 - There is no need or benefit in Apex unlike other games.

Increased waiting times leading to less engagement and ultimately less money spent on passes and content. - I gave you an example of how that's not the case, actually quite the opposite.

Most important part.. People will have to wait - Only if they choose to.

There are also potential fixes to problems i outlined earlier like ranked and SBMM giving user a choice how they want to play.

That last part of it being a core part of the game they can't touch now is rubbish. They won't, not can't..

I have shown every excuse you made to not be the case but not once have you come up with a solution yourself. All we get is ''It's fine, they made the best compromise..'' and why people understandably get frustrated when it's clearly not fine and the person who advertises himself as being knowledgeable on such matters comes up empty handed with just reasons as to why they can't when time tested examples prove otherwise.

I agree automating as many steps as possible is generally a good thing but when it's the ONLY option to play.. one size doesn't fit all and is by far the most common complaint for this game.. servers and stability. Excluding audio.. 😛

Well, what I think happens is that when lobby servers are at maximum capacity, they pass new players / queues to the closest data center, which also needs to be under a certain ping value (e.g. 100ms). Bahrain is probably too far away from all the others, so players there have to wait or manually connect to other data centers. London is probably a couple of ms away from Frankfurt and these 2 are some of the biggest and busiest data centers in Europe. Probably the same can be said about the US data centres, that's why you end up playing in different locations.

@DoYaSeeMe I'm not meaning to vent or debate with you trying to prove you wrong.. I would just like to find a different way we can get a better experience and have you suggest something that's different instead of ''this is what we got and it's good enough'' as you do that a lot when imo many improvements could actually be made on a few things. As much as i like a good debate. 😛

Educating myself on code and networking is boring as hell..   I tired many times but I'll check those out and might post something about it after here. If you don't want to reply then that's fine but i would welcome your input.  Enjoy your games. 🙂

@apostolateofDOOM it automatically  tries to put me to Amsterdam all the time even if my best ping and pl is London. I always go in and change it back to London. 

I live in Western Australia but play on different servers all the time. I play Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Salt Lake City and Oregon. My problem is that the ping on the server select screen is hugely different to the in game ping. Sometimes Frankfurt indicates as 218ms but when I join and start a game, it says 290? That is a huge difference. I don't mind playing at 220-240 but above that, it is hard. 

It's just bad, I choose Frankfurt (Germany), play with random players, but then end up in a round where people come from Turkey, Norway, Russia, France....
they didn't even choose Frankfurt, the guy from Turkey probably chose Amsterdam... to Amsterdam I basically always have ~ 2% packet loss.

Also confusing to me is, i have a ping ~ 20 to Frankfurt, but my Ingame Ping increase sometimes up to ~150.

Last but not least, the packages In & Out, together show the Server Hz?
Sometimes I have ~ 90 ... then suddenly it crashes to ~ 20, the whole game no longer runs smoothly at such moments.

Finally stop those cross-server games ... 😢

@DoYaSeeMeBumping this just so i don't forget.

I personally don't think it's just the servers, although i think this can be improved from what i read previously but i'll come back to that after i check the links you provided.

Common issues i experience now i didn't have when i first started playing with being shot through doors often or abilities not activating. It was all much much sharper back then and the game just feels bloated now. The delay in both abilities and response to what's happening on my screen now is aweful compared to before. Some of this is intentional for balancing (which i can't stand) but as for the rest..

I activate lifeline drone and get the beginning of the animation and audio cue but it's as if i press the button to fast for the game to respond and gets cancelled. I can shut a door and have lifeline almost finish a quip only to have bullets come through the door after.

That's why i suggested server selection to remove one of the potential problems it could be, not necessarily meaning it's the cause.

@apostolateofDOOMWell, what you describe points towards performance issues. I noticed this happening too, I have a pretty awful input lag on my weaker PC lately. I did expect this to happen though, as they keep adding more and more stuff.

Not fast and easy things to do server side . Upgrading servers is super expensive and takes a lot of time. Upgrading network for better stability is even worse. Reducing the number of matches / core can lead to huge jumps in expenses (not sure, but if, for example, there are 2 matches processed per core, the only step below is 1 match / core, and that would mean straight up doubling the server capacity). It's unclear how much more performance can be obtained from optimizing the code further, and if the limits of the currently used engines are almost reached, it takes years to make new engines.

Even if serverside things would be perfect, a client that's not performing well becomes a problem, so optimizations are needed on this end, too. The problem is when hardware limitations are reached, because upgrades are expensive on PC and very limited on consoles.

@DoYaSeeMe They're making plenty of money so they can easily fork some dough out to at least maintain the experience they were providing instead of letting it degrade as fast as they have..😛

I doubt it's a hardware issue on my end as i have an i9, 32gb ram and rtx on a 144hz monitor with every other game running smooth as butter, including CP2077. I have the closest possible data center selected (which doesn't matter anyway apparently) although i have changed it round and have done checks with my isp with hours going through troubleshooting to optimise it on my end. It's definitely playable but not clean enough to want to practice for ALGS or the like.

Problems mainly started from around S3 and others who i played with noticed issues around then too and have just got worse as time went on. Things like the lifeline delay only started happening after her rework so i' assume it's partly code, servers and/or any number of the @GRiPSViGiLs highlighted issues that were meant to have been improved but evidently not.

@DoYaSeeMe I'm sure it usually will do but what i meant is it's not exclusively to that data center, because of que times or whatever reason.

I spoke to someone on AHQ about them wanting to upgrade from a 60 to 144hz and joked but meant seriously that it wouldn't drastically change their gameplay as the servers couldn't keep up.

I have most graphics set on low excluding a couple of things and run constant 144, I'm not saying there hasn't ever been drops below that but i've never noticed and the counter's always up.

Approving actions instead of acknowledging.. I don't like the sound of this as they have taken something which worked pretty well and effectively broke it. Is there no way they can reduce this delay (spending some money on higher tick servers instead of the 20hz it's been tested as having and known not to be ideal) because hitting a button should give ample time for it to know (if we're talking ms) compared to holding it down and waiting for that visual confirmation on top of the servers and already declared audio and initial animation.. I'll get beamed by an r99 equipped pred in the time it takes for me to know i can pop a bat while my drones out. I want to push a button and know it's going to work. Same with the delay and the door. If that doors shut i don't want to be half way through a bat to be knocked. If that door is shut then i expect maybe a couple ms difference for server and client to send the pidgeons but when it's over a full whole second to finish a quip before the shot comes through, that say's to me something (i don't know exactly what) is really sub par for an FPS and it's not a bottleneck on my end.

Some of these things might not be noticeable to a very casual or even possibly console players on a much lower framerate but it's noticeable on higher end hardware in tougher lobbies. I rarely watch streams but see them have the same problem and with many other complaints i think it's safe to say it's not just me.

@apostolateofDOOMDoesn't sound good, but many hacks and exploits work because the server doesn't do extra checks to prevent them.

To increase the server tickrate from 20Hz to 60Hz simply means to be able to process updates 3 times faster. If Apex would be running on dedicated servers only, this would imply at least tripling the hosting expenses. That would be way too much. For the current hybrid cloud solution that they use now, this would mean requesting way more servers, which would just lead to borrowing them from other data centers a lot more, so much higher average lag. Pretty crappy compromise.

As for server upgrades, we don't know how good or bad they are. The problem is that the better they are, the harder and more expensive it gets to upgrade them. Here's a rough example: you have a 2,000$ PC that can run a game at 120fps tops. Its's highly likely that a 6,000$ PC won't get you to 360 fps and in some cases even spending 60,000 on customization, overclocking and other enhancements won't probably bring it there.

@DoYaSeeMe If the information was being sent one way to confirm an action but now has to send it back and forth leading to a delay and slow response then surely you'd increase the speed in which the information is sent backend as best you could and possible in their power (within acceptable costs) if it's negatively effecting gameplay to a lot of users. It's not exactly a silent issue and i'm sure future updates will continue to add to the problem.

There comes a point if you're a streamer where your old gtx550ti isn't running things smoothly and you know that your hardware can't run a game properly even on low settings anymore and time to fork out a few hundred bucks to upgrade because people don't want to watch a stream at 10fps.. Same can be said of normal users but streamers have an audience just like this game.

They said themselves they expected 200k players but have millions with enough data over past 2 years to know the flow of concurrent and returning players each season. Surely they could say they're aware of these issues and do something to provide a better experience as it's also effecting them in advertisement too with most PC streamers i know of and those that compete in ALGS often showing the problems i mentioned and put others off from investing in the game. It's why i put that upgrade thread up because i personally know hundreds who would love to actually hear that from them, and very likely many, many thousands in all. I even got @MandatoryIDtag with it! (proud moment and salt in old wound) 😛

With such aggressive monetisation that's obviously successful and they still persist in shoving down our throats every collection event which comes across as their main focus with lack of content updates since launch, excluding those few and far between and minor changes, i don't think it's unreasonable to expect a half decent service when just one cosmetic item cost 3/4x the price of a AAA game and the average at nearly 20 bucks that they're obviously selling pretty well, let alone all the rest. Cost and compromise, sure.. but it needs doing now imo.

@apostolateofDOOM playing gold  ranked with youngtree over the last few days on the London server and the lag was horrible at the start of most matches until numbers were down to about 10 squads. It was consistently odd.

Yt was on pc and on my xbox I was getting at least 4 of the red warning indicators.

There was no issue with my Internet speeds! 

@OldTreeCreeper Maybe you had mainland European players on the server and experiencing packet delays on the border due to brexit? 😛

My solo rank grind was awful this season. At times it's reasonable playable but the game just feels sluggish, bloated and frankly horrendous on the whole now. I honestly don't mind these things in most genres but FPS i want quality and responsiveness above anything pretty and shiny.