Multiple Servers?

[Troutish]

After playing Rise of Flight recently it occured to me (again), that it is not necessarily a good thing for military sim devs like 777 studios or DCS to not have a dedicated "official" server. I feel sometimes the player-base gets dispersed, even when it does not want to be.

 

With a dedicated official server that is CLEARLY featured as a choice in the server menu, the company takes on more responsibility for ensuring its customers fully enjoy the product. They have to provide either a good mission/map rotation or dynamic campaign, high server quality and availiabilty, no need for people to DL special mods, but best of all, they can concentrate the player base into a single world, thereby creating larger battles and more populated servers 24/7. They also gain vauable data (if they want it) about how customers interact with the product.

 

Squads and individuals could still run their own servers, but they should not be seen as the "bread and butter" of online play -more like an added feature for a smaller segment of people who are particular about how, and with whom, they want to play.

 

Im sure most people here are big advocates of a wide, ungoverned and free server ecology, but what do you think?

 

Trout

[cichlidfan]

That sounds like an investment in time and resources with absolutely no return on the investment. Not exactly ideal for a small company with limited manpower and resources as well as many other bigger issues to attend to.

 

Note, MP is an extremely small part of the customer base so why invest more in it anyway.

[Troutish]

.....well.... the idea is that if you give your customers a better experience they are more likely to buy your products.

 

At least with Rise of Flight (a ww1 flight sim) they provide all sorts of canned missions and campaigns, but the online play is very similar to what DCS offers. In both cases there are frequently times when there are not enough people online.

 

That sounds like an investment in time and resources with absolutely no return on the investment. Not exactly ideal for a small company with limited manpower and resources as well as many other bigger issues to attend to.

 

Note, MP is an extremely small part of the customer base so why invest more in it anyway.

[cichlidfan]

 

At least with Rise of Flight (a ww1 flight sim) they provide all sorts of canned missions and campaigns, but the online play is very similar to what DCS offers. In both cases there are frequently times when there are not enough people online.

 

I am quite familiar with ROF. In their case, as with ED, a significant majority of the customer base could care less about online play. For this reason the investment is not going to provide a valuable enough return.

[ENO]

Note, MP is an extremely small part of the customer base so why invest more in it anyway.

 

 

I know what you're saying here and I'm not doubting it... but when the multiplayer stability was non-existent they did make it a standing priority to get it back on track- so they ARE listening to us and they ARE interested in keeping things running smooth.

 

And while I do agree with what you're saying about the fact that we are a small margin- it will ALWAYS be small if they don't do something to make it more attractive. I don't mean make it a PS3 game... I mean make a realistic and practical investment in throttling up the quality of the multiplayer experience.

 

I'm not sure I want to believe this effort would bring NO return on investment... to be quite honest I think most people stick to single player because they're intimidated by the community. I was very, VERY hesitant to join an MP community because I figured everyone were elitist snobs who were going to heckle me if I didn't know how to cold start. A lot of that came from browsing the community forums and seeing people punch each other in the face with words over whether or not you should leave your anti-collision lights on when you're rearming because in RL it would drive the crew chief crazy (rough example.)

 

As the MP environment becomes more familiar, the people who find themselves getting bored with the SP side of things will come over and, if the experience improves, may develop a much longer love affair with the dynamic aspects provided by MP play.

 

As it is now, however... even the MP side gets a bit stale. I am seeing more new missions developed by the community as the architects get their mojo back... but we do need another boost from the devs to knock the experience out of the ballpark. Connectivity remains a bit of an issue... and while it's being worked on we never really know where it's at.

 

I'm rambling a bit- I guess the short version is I think MP could use a boost and I think if given a nudge in the right place they would get a proportionate level of return on their investment.