vjek said:disposalist said:I believe it's not just about technical limitations (excess connections causing bad performance), but is about needless cost. It might well be that home users can push around hundreds of MB/s for a low monthly fee, but cloud computing tends to cost more and cost per activity. ...
IMO:
From here, today.. (for example, using us-central1 as the gcp hosting location)
The cost goes down, the more you use. Take a look at the Premium Tier Pricing and the Standard Tier Pricing..
Price per GigaBYTE is either $0.085 (as in 8.5 cents per GigaBYTE) or 12 cents per GigaBYTE, and gets cheaper from there.
Network fees should be among the last operational costs to consider, given the extraordinarily modest client-server bandwidth requirements for a well-written/efficient MMO.
Disclaimer: Both my company and I use these services, and I receive the monthly network bills, directly, for my own private VPC and have for several years.
I have personally transferred hundreds of TeraBYTES per month both in-continent and continent-to-continent, all with Internet egress/ingress and not even noticed it in the overall monthly bill.
Thanks for the info - so much to look through (our company uses Azure, and I know it can be a task just to get the pricing info).
How about storage, though? It is a persistant world. It is a vague recollection, but the reason I highlighted storage is I remember being shocked to be charged so much for transactions to virtual storage.
Let us just put things in perspective a sec. Just because a character is not doing anything, it does not mean that there is no communication between the client and the server. The client still sends a message back to the server stating its location and direction and the fact it is idle. The server still sends a lot of details back to the client such as time of day, weather conditions (if any), forage node positions that in range along with their status, animal positions, any UI special effects required, other player character positions and actions, mob positions and action, etc, etc, etc. It is totally incorrect to state that no server time is allocated to an afk character. Server resources are most definitely used by afk characters.
There will also be a maximum number of characters the server can comfortably handle in any one area regardless of whether they are idle or active. So, getting rid of afk characters from a zone in favour of active players is a small price to pay for a smooth zone.
I would like to see something like 15 minutes for an underpopulated zone and reduce from there depending on how active the zone is. The more players in the zone, the shorter the allowed afk. It is not much of an ask to find your character back at the selection screen if you have not moved in the game for 15 minutes or longer.
Addition: One other thing that struck me with one of the above posts is that a non-moving character does not mean an idle character. If you move the mouse or press a key or open a dialogue window or scan sale prices, you are not idle and thus would not get kicked to the character select screen. Idle means no interaction with the character at all.
disposalist said:Thanks for the info - so much to look through (our company uses Azure, and I know it can be a task just to get the pricing info).
How about storage, though? It is a persistant world. It is a vague recollection, but the reason I highlighted storage is I remember being shocked to be charged so much for transactions to virtual storage.
IMO:
Well, they have yet to demonstrate true 24x7, always on, long-term persistence. Hopefully that comes in Alpha. A concurrent session-only shared scene is.. not the same thing, and your question about transactions is the key point. Choosing what to store in a database, persistently, regarding important transactions, has a cost. And not in the charged-per-transaction sense, but in computer time, memory, disk, network, and CPU. EQ1 did all of this in two ways, what would be called layers by todays description. Only when a character performed a transaction with an NPC or obtained something that adjusted their inventory was there a commit to disk of that event, and then only at a particular interval.
It remains to be seen what Visionary Realms considers important enough to commit to the long-term persistence layer, with respect to transactions. While it is technically possible to commit every combat action in near real time with today's technology, that's not always the best choice when it comes to concurrent network session performance, depending on how your IO is written or what methods or systems are in use (multi-threaded/not, blocking/not, semaphore/not).
Today, compared to the 90's, IOPS are literally 8,000-10,000 times greater. Modern PCIE4 M.2 NVME storage can process 1 million completed input/output operations per second. That was in the 100-150 range in 97-99 when EQ1 was in development, per drive. If you host that storage yourself ( USD$200 for a 1 TB Samsung 980 Pro) and your own hardware, then all you care about are egress/ingress network fees, which can be very modest. Personally, I wouldn't pay for high latency database hosting when consumer hardware does it better, but that's just me. Modern hardware permits developers to be extremely lazy and still be "successful". Packet sizes remain the same since EQ1, yet, some developers do not understand encoding 8 boolean values in one byte versus sending 8 lines of JSON/XML with full Boolean variable context/names are not the same thing when it comes to bandwidth & latency.
What this ultimately comes down to is fundamental design decisions that have yet to be shared with the crowd-funded community, but some of which are inherent in the choice of Unity. Tick rate, when and what types of events or transactions are pushed to the database, when and what are simply maintained in memory on the session server. All of these things normally would have been worked out back in 2014, had they not been hardcoding so much into the client. With a true client<->server<->persistence model, all of these decisions are made first, and then you build. Architecture before implementation. :)
Putting it into terms you're likely familiar with, a LAMP architecture has the web client<->web server<->sql database. Certain aspects of the client-server communication are never written to the database, there's just no point. For characters in an MMO, the fundamental design decisions ultimately create the temporal deltas of: When a zone crashes, how far does the rollback go? Is my character position part of session persistence, or long-term persistence? Was the zone flushed to disk recently? Did a zone-wide commit occur in the past few minutes?
You may recall that in EQ1, unless certain events occured, player data wasn't committed to disk, even when the temporal commit points were reached. Players learned that applying buffs, trading, buying/selling or looting would trigger disk writes of these events at the next commit point, whereas just running through a zone would not. Hence the often-bemoaned state of "Now I have to run across west karana again!" because the last server side transaction committed to disk was zoning, and the zone crashed while the player was running along the southern shore, never interacting with anything.
Even things like what happens to a zone when it does crash or get reset? Do all the mobs respawn? If I am at risk of getting kicked from being AFK waiting on a spawn.. maybe it would be better (more efficient for me/my guild) to just crash the zone because when it comes back up, everything will be respawned, and there's a greater than even odds chance the named/quest/epic mob I want will be up.. All of these things can be related, depending on how things are implemented.
((maybe it would be better (more efficient for me/my guild) to just crash the zone because when it comes back up, everything will be respawned, and there's a greater than even odds chance the named/quest/epic mob I want will be up.. ))
Then again - maybe a good design will prevent players from deliberately crashing a zone - or maybe if you do and get caught there will be a 30 day suspension (more for a second offense) for every account that VR concludes did it on purpose.
Kilsin said:Community Debate - AFK Kicked - How long do you think a game should allow you to remain logged in and idle before kicking you back to the character select or login screen and why? (Keeping in mind things like server performance, costs etc.) #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
From a technical perspective, I think this is best and possibly only answered by VR. From my perspective, approximately an hour unless you are in some type of "mode" or "selection" that allows you to stay in longer. Potential example of this would be a vendor mode.
30mins if there is a decent LFG system. If someone is legit Away From their Keyboard for more than 30mins then they are taking care of something else that needs their attention and can simply log back in when they're done dealing with their issue. If they are sitting in front of their keyboard, but maybe just not moving because they're just chatting or something similar - an option to enable/disable a prompt on their screen (with maybe an audible alert for those falling asleep in a raid or something) that clearly notified a removal from the server in X seconds if they don't interact with the notification or move, I think would suffice.
I'm also assuming that server capacities won't be an issue due to great testing and planning.
I would say nothing less than 30 minutes at the minimum, nothing more than 60 minutes at the maximum, and the 45-minute mark would be the optimal cut-off point.
I feel like 30 minutes gives most people enough time to use the restroom, take a smoke break, and grab some food. I think that after the 30-minute mark the chances of a player returning grow slimmer by the minute. Personally, if a player is gone for an hour I would assume that something has come up and they aren't coming back. I think the 45-minute mark is a decent cut-off point because this is the point where I would say "Yeah, they are probably not coming back.".
I like the idea of AFK kicks because it removes useless bodies of the world. Not for the server, but for me. The world doesn't need to be full of useless bodies I can't interact with.
So I agree with the at most 1 hour ideas set forward above.
We have auction houses so people shouldn't be sitting around just watching the game for that long.
Kilsin said:Community Debate - AFK Kicked - How long do you think a game should allow you to remain logged in and idle before kicking you back to the character select or login screen and why? (Keeping in mind things like server performance, costs etc.) #MMORPG #CommunityMatters
Im guessing here but maybe 30 minutes of inactivity. My question is thought just to play devils advocate here ...if its not affecting the server in any way do we really need to kick?
Forced into /afk after 5 minutes, kicked after another 25. I think that's quite generous.
However, this depends on the inputs you receive from the client machine. In my work I actually have an automation bot that performs routine tasks for me - click this, paste that, select these dropdowns - so that I can use my second computer while the first one is doing the boring routine emails and forms.
Now, I'm a responsible gamer, so I realise that using a bot to play a game is self-defeating and stupid, entirely undermining the whole point of playing a game... But I know that other people view bots as a tool to "get ahead" or "beat" the "competition". It'd be trivial to set up my work bot to run on my client if I wanted to stay on the server forever.
If i am paying a subscription there should be no AFK kick. Sometimes i just sit a wait for a spawn i am watching the screen but not necessarily doing anything else. How can the system know i was actually AFK or waiting on something to occur?
Not a fan of the so called auto kick. Perhaps inside a bank or city but not out in the environment. Roaming monsters should take care of anyone truely afk in the wilds. Perhaps if you die and still have not put any input for a period of time you get auto kicked.
20 years ago I used to play for hours on end with only breaks for refreshments and other essential....If I went further than the fridge, I always let the folks know. I thought even then that the afk flag was just good communication..I don't recall ever running into an auto kick timer..
Now, with a family, I have to schedule my game time And I probably get interrupted more often..
Anyway I still think manual /afk flags are helpful for communicating to other people that I'm away...but I use the manual flag. Now also with discord there can be a lot going on that's not running through the client so, to me, the auto-afk flag seems like it would be annoying at less than 10minutes... I would think 10+ minutes is reasonable for an auto afk flag.
If I'm waiting on team members, sometimes I will choose to go afk for several minutes while we wait on that last person to do the dungeon quest.. sometimes the crew alternates afk for several minutes or does other things while we wait. Thus, a short period kick seems prohibitive...I think a warning at 20 minutes and a kick at 30 minutes is reasonable if I'm not in a group. I don't think I would support an auto kick if I'm in a group.
Bradley said: If you’re paying a sub you should be allowed to do whatever you’d like on the servers while they are up including staring at a wall for 8 hours. AFK time out is a bad idea
If there is a limitation to the amount of players that can be logged onto a server at once, then I think there has to be a kick timer.
If the server is not 100% full (ie there are no queue times to login), then no one should be kicked for afk, but as soon as the server maxes out... boom! afk's need to start going. I also could see players being kicked if a specific zone is overburdened. 15 to 20 minutes seems reasonable and each scenario could be handled case by case, but I could see a tad more ecsepcially if you self flag. If the server is not full, then it's a 10-30 sec inconvenience to log back in?... I really don't see why everyone feels they should be able to afk for hours. It's 2021, so therefor technological limitations/performance no longer exist? ... lol
The players logging in are also paying customers, and you shouldn't feel so entitled to afk for 8 hours staring at a wall while your fellow players are in queue waiting to login.
Flagged AFK after 5-10 minutes so people can see you are AFK and don't continue to try and talking to you when your not around to respond. Kicked from game and sent to character screen after 45-60 min of AFK in game. Also need the ability to demote group leader after 5 min AFK, we all know emergencies pop up.
Assuming there won't be an offline/automatic market where we can tag items we have for sale and it'll be sold regardless of our in game status - i hope there wont be any afk kicks - when i'm playing the game I like to be able to "venture forth" into the world, not wasting time TRYING to sell my goodies and earning little bit of currency- therefore i'd like to be able to leave my shop open when I go to sleep/to work and be sure that it won't get closed till i get back.
You should never be booted. You are not subscribing to the game by the hour. Maybe you like watching the screen for hours looking for someone to auction off a specific item or invite you to a particular raid or like starring at a waterfall you discovered and don't feel like moving your character every 15 mintues. You pay for the game, you get to enjoy it as you wish.
Depends.
If a server is full to the point that there are queue times to get in or the server starts dropping in performance, then I'd say about 15-30 minutes is reasonable. Otherwise the people that get in will never log out in order to circumvent queue times at the expense of everyone else, and the overall experience would be worse for those that don't afk for long periods.
If a server is well within operating load, then never. It actually makes the game feel more lively to see people hanging around, even if they're just afk. MMOs live and die by their player-base, and nobody wants to play an MMO that feels empty.
I'm not sure if servers can be programmed to react dynamically to their respective demands, but I think it would best.
I'm very much against AFK kicking. For many of the reasons listed above and if not just for the ambience. Our gaming desk is viewable from most of our house so being able to see what's going on in pantheon while we are just sitting chatting with friends on discord, or nearby cooking dinner in the kitchen, etc. It's a big deal to me that I dont have to worry about being removed from a world I will call home.
In the ideal world, afk people will not noticably degrade server performance. In the ideal world people will not be locked out of playing because the server has hit its maximum number of logged in characters. In this ideal world there should be no afk kicking. I too have no fondness for having to go through the log-in process again because lunch ran too long or someone that I couldn't get rid of quickly came to the door.
I think almost all of us will agree that we do not like afk kicking. I think almost all of us will agree that we do not like lag. I think almost all of us will agree that we do not like waiting in queues to log-in.
I think none of us is in a position to balance the harm of one thing against the harm of another since we do not know how far from the ideal world will be the world Pantheon's servers will operate in.
I really hope that VR are using cloud capabilities to enable:
- Flex up / down server capacity in near realtime as server goes through peaks and troughs.
- Easy DR
- Ability to spin up new servers in nearly any geography with little pain
- No costs on hiring guys to look after the server
Honestly on prem is dead or dying in most big business for a reason.
If it is on cloud, then barring code issues the server will be efectivly unlimited.
This doesn't mean AFK should not be kicked. Because:
1) Account security (My brother / housemate / other stole my gear whilst I was AFK and left my PC on)
2) System requirments (I can't visit PopularTown because there are 500 players at the bank and my PC crashes)
3) Although server unlimited , VR still have to pay for capacity.
Sure, give a warning (audio and text) but if you cannot touch the A or D key once every 30 mins , then you are not playing... sorry.
This is from someone whom did an 18 hour stormfeather camp whilst reading a book, watching TV, reading another book, watching the sun rise....