Slimebeast said: Okay, why are they doing this then? There must be a good reason.

Having dedicated servers doesn't hurt, they could even have it together with p2p if they wanted to... so I suspect there's no good reason, other than something like "we didn't think it's important enough to bother".

I, however, think dedicated servers are pretty important to build the online community. So I most likely disagree with whatever reason is behind it.

 

Try to think from the company's standpoint. They have some silly notion that no dedicated servers will equal more profit in some manner. They probably figure they did so awesomely with the MW that they can do whatever the hell they want, and people will still flock to the game, which is kind of true. But losing a large portion of their PC customer base just seems silly. Maybe they have something they're keeping from us that would put this all into perspective?

r505Matt said: Try to think from the company's standpoint. They have some silly notion that no dedicated servers will equal more profit in some manner. They probably figure they did so awesomely with the MW that they can do whatever the hell they want, and people will still flock to the game, which is kind of true. But losing a large portion of their PC customer base just seems silly. Maybe they have something they're keeping from us that would put this all into perspective?

This does require a significantly smaller number of servers for them to run.  For any game with dedicated servers, even when the community can host them, the developers need to have a decent number of official ones.  That is a risk for them to say the game supports dedicated servers and then not provide any of their own.

JaggedSac said: r505Matt said: Try to think from the company's standpoint. They have some silly notion that no dedicated servers will equal more profit in some manner. They probably figure they did so awesomely with the MW that they can do whatever the hell they want, and people will still flock to the game, which is kind of true. But losing a large portion of their PC customer base just seems silly. Maybe they have something they're keeping from us that would put this all into perspective? This does require a significantly smaller number of servers for them to run.  For any game with dedicated servers, even when the community can host them, the developers need to have a decent number of official ones.  That is a risk for them to say the game supports dedicated servers and then not provide any of their own.

How many servers does/did iD have for their previous games?

As far as I've seen, the vast majority of servers for online FPS games are not run by the developers or publishers.

 

NJ5 said: JaggedSac said: r505Matt said: Try to think from the company's standpoint. They have some silly notion that no dedicated servers will equal more profit in some manner. They probably figure they did so awesomely with the MW that they can do whatever the hell they want, and people will still flock to the game, which is kind of true. But losing a large portion of their PC customer base just seems silly. Maybe they have something they're keeping from us that would put this all into perspective? This does require a significantly smaller number of servers for them to run.  For any game with dedicated servers, even when the community can host them, the developers need to have a decent number of official ones.  That is a risk for them to say the game supports dedicated servers and then not provide any of their own. How many servers does/did iD have for their previous games? As far as I've seen, the vast majority of servers for online FPS games are not run by the developers or publishers.

Well, Quake Live is pretty much all id servers.  As for the past Quake games, we would need to see some concrete data to make any sort of judgement, for or against my statement.  But anything more than 4 or 5 would be more than the needs for a matchmaking infrastructure for only 1 game.

Looks like I'm going to save some money here. A bit sad, considering it was almost a sure buy for me.

@JaggedSac: Quake Live is a browser-based game, a closed system. It's pretty much different.

Zkuq said: Looks like I'm going to save some money here. A bit sad, considering it was almost a sure buy for me. @JaggedSac: Quake Live is a browser-based game, a closed system. It's pretty much different.

In what way is it different.  The only difference is the game is executing the code through a broswer.  Nothing is inherent in that which precludes customers from being able to host servers.  id just doesn't allow it.  They will allow you to rent server time though(through an outside vendor I think), for private match purposes though.

JaggedSac said: NJ5 said: JaggedSac said: r505Matt said: Try to think from the company's standpoint. They have some silly notion that no dedicated servers will equal more profit in some manner. They probably figure they did so awesomely with the MW that they can do whatever the hell they want, and people will still flock to the game, which is kind of true. But losing a large portion of their PC customer base just seems silly. Maybe they have something they're keeping from us that would put this all into perspective? This does require a significantly smaller number of servers for them to run.  For any game with dedicated servers, even when the community can host them, the developers need to have a decent number of official ones.  That is a risk for them to say the game supports dedicated servers and then not provide any of their own. How many servers does/did iD have for their previous games? As far as I've seen, the vast majority of servers for online FPS games are not run by the developers or publishers.   Well, Quake Live is pretty much all id servers.  As for the past Quake games, we would need to see some concrete data to make any sort of judgement, for or against my statement.  But anything more than 4 or 5 would be more than the needs for a matchmaking infrastructure for only 1 game.

Quake Live is the exception, of course.

Still, I don't know what the problem would be with not having any dedicated servers even with dedicated server support. As it stands, they will have neither.

 

Well, the thing is - Quakelive uses dedicated servers.. even though it also has a ranking and tier system, the social networking features, and even a matchmaking service ( that I personally have never used).

Quakelive is actually the best current Pioneer IMO of the direction things need to go, if a retail game worked like Qlive but also offered 3rd parties to rent/operate semi-private dedicated servers that operated within their framework, and support for mods.... I think it would be outstanding.

The core of the issue here, is some businesspeople in the industry have fallen in love with the Xbox live/Halo model... and instead of taking away the good things about that model and applying it to PC sensibilities, and superior PC capabilities... they are abandoning what is good about PC... which makes no sense.

There is absolutely room to improve the PC server-browsing experience, but throwing away the PC server entirely is utterly retarded.

Xelloss said: Well, the thing is - Quakelive uses dedicated servers.. even though it also has a ranking and tier system, the social networking features, and even a matchmaking service ( that I personally have never used). Quakelive is actually the best current Pioneer IMO of the direction things need to go, if a retail game worked like Qlive but also offered 3rd parties to rent/operate semi-private dedicated servers that operated within their framework, and support for mods.... I think it would be outstanding. The core of the issue here, is some businesspeople in the industry have fallen in love with the Xbox live/Halo model... and instead of taking away the good things about that model and applying it to PC sensibilities, and superior PC capabilities... they are abandoning what is good about PC... which makes no sense. There is absolutely room to improve the PC server-browsing experience, but throwing away the PC server entirely is utterly retarded.

Excellent post.

The Live/Halo model of matchmaking is definitely not the only possible solution.  But the Quake Live solution can be expensive.  id has gone on record as saying the ad revenue is not covering the server costs.  There are improvements that could be made to both.