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Striterax: A response. Please read. Civil Constructive Comments Only
566 postsMember, Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline, Battlefield, Battlefield 1, CTE Member
November 18, 2016 8:34PM
edited December 2016
Striterax wrote earlier:
Striterax,
Firstly let me say that we understand DICE / EAs desire to streamline the server offering for BF1. While we may not agree on its implementation it is understandable from a business and uniformity standpoint. I would simply like to address a few points regarding this.
Point 1) I would argue that the differences between official servers and player run servers are EXACTLY what draws players to the rented servers. The ability to set those funky server settings is why may players, myself included, have never set foot in an official server in the Battlefield franchise. For me I find them exceedingly bland and lack depth as well as a solid community. In fact I joined a clan a few days ago specifically because of the group running the servers and the way they moderated it. DICE servers to be painfully honest draw the dregs of humanity. I routinely see derogatory, racist, ****, misogynist, etc etc text scroll by in every match I play to the point I hide chat, which is detrimental to play or in BF4 find a server who's admins will not stand for it.
What you guys only hear is I was banned from X server for no good reason. You don't have access to the wall of scum usually associated with the banning. Im not going into team killing because that's usually not an outright ban just a kick. I know you are saying that the tools are under development but as a past admin I have to question the sanity of releasing this product without the basic moderation tools. To do so seems a huge mistake.
Point 2) It seems that there is a push to blur the lines between consoles and PC gamers. There is a reason that PC titles that have console co-products have been segregated throughout the years. Servers are only a small piece of the bigger picture. Im not going into issues like Aim Assist vs Mouse and Keyboard etc, as they aren't germane to this discussion but sticking to the subject of the servers. PC titles have always had more granular controls simply because the user interface is more granular. Honestly I have yet to see how the two can be made into one universal server offering. This seems to be the direction the gaming industry is moving in and its disturbing as the two platforms will require differences not only to code but modes of operation.
Point 3) Presets in the past iterations of the rental server program have addressed different modes of operation fairly uniformly. Hardcore for example: Server admins had control over specific variable sets and while there were some pretty messed up servers that were created some very fun servers were designed. Zombie servers, Sniper limited or sniper only depending on your particular preference and many more. This granularity is exactly what draws people to play BF3-4 and to remove this seems very short sighted. While Im sure you aren't seeing huge sales of BF4 I know 3 people who picked it up recently based on my recommendations alone. They also purchased BF1 based on similar recommendations.
My big pet peeve at this point is how in HC instead of using a player health variable to determine a killshot weapon damage was boosted 200%. I fail to see how anyone thought this was a good idea. This simply makes half the weapons in BF1 overpowered and begs players to sit back and snipe from afar. 500+ m bodyshots are now one hit kills if ANY damage has been done to the target and with some rifles its a flat out kill. No one could have tested this and if they did the decision that this was a good thing makes the process look haphazard to say the least.
Another issue is the lack of granularity in the turning on/off certain features. The HUD for instance. I'm not sure you are aware but when this is turned off in HC mode mortars become useless. In BF4 you had the PDA used to aim mortars. In BF1 HUD removal also takes away any and all aiming features of the mortar. Every shot is a max distance poke and hope shot. Likewise the removal of the ability to keep hitmarkers if desired has had an adverse effect. While I don't mind so much during land battles, as the effects are fairly evident, aerial battle and AA rely a lot on hit markers to denote hits as most are at distance. Its very difficult to judge proper leads etc without them. I guess what Im saying is as a former admin I think you had it right in previous versions and respectfully ask that you look at those server models and rethink how you approach configuration options.
Point 4)The last one I promise. The inability to set minimum players needed to start dooms a server to not be seeded and languish not garnering any players. Our clan proved this by setting up a hard core server and joining. we sat there for hours and no one joined and the server could not be seen in the browser. We change the settings back to match the official DICE "easy mode" servers and it was full with a queue in less than 4 min. Couple that with the fact that if you change anything your server is labeled as custom and excluded from the quickmatch join leaves servers not running a preset to die.
I hope you read this, honestly I do, and see that a lot of the ire you see on the forums is not done out of spitefulness. We are a very dedicated community that , despite the multitude of gripes you see on the forums there are countless others that outweigh them who fully enjoy your products and wish to continue to do so. In this gamers opinion the previous rental server products were done well and allowed the fanbase to make a game they love their own. It has drawn like minded people together who would normally never meet and forged bonds that last throughout years and multiple iterations of the game.
While yes there are poor admins/server owners they are by far the minority. The community corrects itself and those servers never last very long. Every clan I have joined in my time playing Battlefield have run their own servers. The reason I have joined them remains constant. They had the power and controls to enforce acceptable behavior, they ran a well configured server, and provided a community that I wanted to be a part of. ALL of this relies on a properly functioning, granular rental server program and to be honest what we have is not it. In a perfect world DICE/EA would say you know give us the time and we will roll it back to what it was in BF4, granular control, allowances for third party apps such as RCON etc, and third party hosts (No offence but the same company hosting the rental servers that had all of their servers nuked into non existence due to DDoS attacks bothers me as if this happens none of the servers will be available) but I don't know if at this point that is a viable strategy however one old admin can hope.
Thanks for all you do and please if you need input do not forget the community that truly enjoys the rental servers and ask we will be more than willing to offer any input that may be required.
Hi,
My name is Alexander Hassoon and I’m the Producer on the Rent-a-Server program in Battlefield 1. I wanted to take some time to talk to you about what we have in store for it in in the near future.
Firstly, I need to cover some history! In previous Battlefield titles, Rent-a-Server was handled in-game on console by EA while PC was handled outside the game client by third-party providers. This setup gave PC server admins a large amount of control on the game server but often at the cost of the overall player experience. The console server admins had very little control, but the player experience was very similar to playing on official servers. We all remember how as a player you would end up on a server that did not allow certainly gameplay elements and you would be kicked or banned immediately by accidentally using one of the restricted items!
So the challenge we set to ourselves at DICE was as follows - How can we increase admin control levels while not sacrificing the player experience?
We started by implementing PC Rent-a-Server to the Battlefield 1 game client with the release of the Nov 15 patch. It was a very tough call to make but we felt it had to be done to offer a consistent experience for all players and allowed us control of the admin options there are.
We added a lot of customization options that were not natively available in the game client before, features such as Class Restrictions, Weapon Class Restriction and Explosives Restrictions. Server admins in Battlefield 1 can now control all these options while the players won’t be punished for using them by mistake.
So what does the future hold for the Rent-a-Server program in Battlefield 1?
We will continue working on adding more features and tools as well as a bunch of other cool stuff which we aren’t quite ready to talk about just now.
We see the Rent-a-Server program in Battlefield 1 very much as a live service that will evolve over time based on your feedback, so keep it coming as we hear you loud and clear.
Sincerely
Alexander “Striterax” Hassoon
Striterax,
Firstly let me say that we understand DICE / EAs desire to streamline the server offering for BF1. While we may not agree on its implementation it is understandable from a business and uniformity standpoint. I would simply like to address a few points regarding this.
Point 1) I would argue that the differences between official servers and player run servers are EXACTLY what draws players to the rented servers. The ability to set those funky server settings is why may players, myself included, have never set foot in an official server in the Battlefield franchise. For me I find them exceedingly bland and lack depth as well as a solid community. In fact I joined a clan a few days ago specifically because of the group running the servers and the way they moderated it. DICE servers to be painfully honest draw the dregs of humanity. I routinely see derogatory, racist, ****, misogynist, etc etc text scroll by in every match I play to the point I hide chat, which is detrimental to play or in BF4 find a server who's admins will not stand for it.
What you guys only hear is I was banned from X server for no good reason. You don't have access to the wall of scum usually associated with the banning. Im not going into team killing because that's usually not an outright ban just a kick. I know you are saying that the tools are under development but as a past admin I have to question the sanity of releasing this product without the basic moderation tools. To do so seems a huge mistake.
Point 2) It seems that there is a push to blur the lines between consoles and PC gamers. There is a reason that PC titles that have console co-products have been segregated throughout the years. Servers are only a small piece of the bigger picture. Im not going into issues like Aim Assist vs Mouse and Keyboard etc, as they aren't germane to this discussion but sticking to the subject of the servers. PC titles have always had more granular controls simply because the user interface is more granular. Honestly I have yet to see how the two can be made into one universal server offering. This seems to be the direction the gaming industry is moving in and its disturbing as the two platforms will require differences not only to code but modes of operation.
Point 3) Presets in the past iterations of the rental server program have addressed different modes of operation fairly uniformly. Hardcore for example: Server admins had control over specific variable sets and while there were some pretty messed up servers that were created some very fun servers were designed. Zombie servers, Sniper limited or sniper only depending on your particular preference and many more. This granularity is exactly what draws people to play BF3-4 and to remove this seems very short sighted. While Im sure you aren't seeing huge sales of BF4 I know 3 people who picked it up recently based on my recommendations alone. They also purchased BF1 based on similar recommendations.
My big pet peeve at this point is how in HC instead of using a player health variable to determine a killshot weapon damage was boosted 200%. I fail to see how anyone thought this was a good idea. This simply makes half the weapons in BF1 overpowered and begs players to sit back and snipe from afar. 500+ m bodyshots are now one hit kills if ANY damage has been done to the target and with some rifles its a flat out kill. No one could have tested this and if they did the decision that this was a good thing makes the process look haphazard to say the least.
Another issue is the lack of granularity in the turning on/off certain features. The HUD for instance. I'm not sure you are aware but when this is turned off in HC mode mortars become useless. In BF4 you had the PDA used to aim mortars. In BF1 HUD removal also takes away any and all aiming features of the mortar. Every shot is a max distance poke and hope shot. Likewise the removal of the ability to keep hitmarkers if desired has had an adverse effect. While I don't mind so much during land battles, as the effects are fairly evident, aerial battle and AA rely a lot on hit markers to denote hits as most are at distance. Its very difficult to judge proper leads etc without them. I guess what Im saying is as a former admin I think you had it right in previous versions and respectfully ask that you look at those server models and rethink how you approach configuration options.
Point 4)The last one I promise. The inability to set minimum players needed to start dooms a server to not be seeded and languish not garnering any players. Our clan proved this by setting up a hard core server and joining. we sat there for hours and no one joined and the server could not be seen in the browser. We change the settings back to match the official DICE "easy mode" servers and it was full with a queue in less than 4 min. Couple that with the fact that if you change anything your server is labeled as custom and excluded from the quickmatch join leaves servers not running a preset to die.
I hope you read this, honestly I do, and see that a lot of the ire you see on the forums is not done out of spitefulness. We are a very dedicated community that , despite the multitude of gripes you see on the forums there are countless others that outweigh them who fully enjoy your products and wish to continue to do so. In this gamers opinion the previous rental server products were done well and allowed the fanbase to make a game they love their own. It has drawn like minded people together who would normally never meet and forged bonds that last throughout years and multiple iterations of the game.
While yes there are poor admins/server owners they are by far the minority. The community corrects itself and those servers never last very long. Every clan I have joined in my time playing Battlefield have run their own servers. The reason I have joined them remains constant. They had the power and controls to enforce acceptable behavior, they ran a well configured server, and provided a community that I wanted to be a part of. ALL of this relies on a properly functioning, granular rental server program and to be honest what we have is not it. In a perfect world DICE/EA would say you know give us the time and we will roll it back to what it was in BF4, granular control, allowances for third party apps such as RCON etc, and third party hosts (No offence but the same company hosting the rental servers that had all of their servers nuked into non existence due to DDoS attacks bothers me as if this happens none of the servers will be available) but I don't know if at this point that is a viable strategy however one old admin can hope.
Thanks for all you do and please if you need input do not forget the community that truly enjoys the rental servers and ask we will be more than willing to offer any input that may be required.
22
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Comments
Most of my clan guys love the game but you have gutted the gamers community. Lift your game, I'm back on BF4. Please don't try and change that now so we have to play BF1 how you would 'like' us to play it.
Well, if the notes posted here are the actual and complete patch notes (if not, someone went to a lot of trouble) then there appears to be nothing changed regarding the RSP. If that is the case, I will be moving on to another game (back to BF4 and other games) and pretty much giving up on BF1. I don't anticipate that any mod/dev can say anything until tomorrow due to DNA restrictions. I agree fully with @NetRngr in his suggestions, and am hoping that something else will come out improving the RSP by tomorrow. Hoping, not expecting.
it has been a month since the release and nearly 3 weeks since the last communication.
All that said, no one wants this to fail or we wouldn't be so passionate about what we desire in the program. It is incumbent on us however to keep the discourse civil and helpful. Ranting relieves stress for us but drives away the people that can actually effect change in what we are saying. Hey I'm as guilty as the next guy about being frustrated but at this point it's only gonna hurt us to keep screaming.
If you feel the RSP isn't ready I urge you to do one of the following things:
1) Keep your server and make constructive comments and suggestions in a civil tone to those who can aid us.
2) Refund your server and make constructive comments to those who can aid us in getting it worked out.
Those are really the only two options at this point and honestly as frustrated as we are it could be worse... much worse.
Or the third option - don't rent a server in the first place until the constructive comments are carried out (the way our clan is going).
There are a lot of features, but we see the addition of admin kick capability, reduced number start size and better server browser searching as the bare minimum before we will consider spending a penny on an RSP.
They don't, they go on communication silence mode thus you get frustration and anger. They only have THEMSELVES to blame.
By ignoring and overlooking us, EA has repeatedly demonstrated its contempt for the Battlefield communities and for server renters in particular.
DO NOT REWARD EA's behavior.
DO NOT rent RSP servers until EA makes the necessary updates!
I plan on supporting Rising Storm 2: Vietnam in 2017.
The DICE of yore, no longer exists for me.
The problem is you wont get deadlines. They dont work for us as much as we wish they did sometimes. In the end they answer to stockholders. The one sure way to effect change is to put a dent in the bottom line. That said the change may not be what we want. It would be just as easy for them to say hey they can host servers now and this is all we are giving due to decreased revenue.
I doubt that would happen simply based off the lifespan of BF4 but it could dont think it couldn't.
At this stage there are a few things that should be adressed really soon. Like top priority.
1. Kick/ban function, this has been said tons of times. If DICE is able to keep logs on their server they should definitely take a peak at the chat logs. The amount of racism,antisemitism, religion hatred etc is beyond recognition. I have NEVER seen this much toxicity in chat as in BF1 right now. This is probably due to the fact that player know there won't be any consequences at all or at least from the server at that very moment. With kick/ban options this kind of behaviour might decrease with a fair bit. Well managed servers would be able to keep chat really civil, like these forums should be.
2. More admins, right now only the server owner can change things. Adding people to moderate the server etc is a must.
3. Reliable servers, we've already encountered numerous moments where the RSP servers would have huge lag and ping spikes. With massive delays, fps drops and a ton of warnings in your screen as a result. The most common warning is the icon that there is a problem with the server. Recently I noticed that every single RSP server had the exact same ping for me no matter where. This leads me to think that there is probably a common point where all servers connect to and there are probably too many RSP server on each "hardware server" so to speak. The pressure on the hardware seems to be too high. From my experience, DICE official servers have not had these issues so far.
These are just a few that are high-priority in my eyes. All the other stuff is needed too of course! But some things need priority. And with this there could be a beginning. (Btw the most easiest one to solve is probably the hardware one, just have less RSP servers on each piece of hardware.)
Dice does not know how to. They are confused it seems talking to each other, to EA, and to us as a community. These forums were suppose to be the portal for all of us to talk to each other. Instead we need to use reddit and twitter and what ever else they decide to talk in and it is never together with everyone. He is a cut and paste from another post I made.
Deadlines in something like this are impossible. Everything is tentative. Dice does need to work on their vocabulary. All they see to say is "soon". They should be able to say "In 6 to 8 weeks. At least give us some sort of time table. I am glad they are bringing out a patch. I just don't know why they are working on minor issues when the major ones should be addressed firstly. Make the game playable and enjoyable. then go to tweaking it. This patch shows me that DICE is not listening at all to the community. They have no direction in that path they should be taking. Most game get the new version a year from the release of the previous version. Most players quit playing the game after 3 to 6 months. With the current direction of this game, I do not see this game making it 3 years like Battlefield 4 did. I am having trouble wanting to play it now like a lot of other players. Their are many in my gaming community that have not purchased this game because of it's current state. Now it is 2 months old and the major issues from day 1 are still not being addressed!
For the record, PC players made EA more money then either of the consoles. You should probably listen to us.
https://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/
October is a major month for shooters.
This October saw the release of two out of three highly anticipated shooter titles: Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1 (Call of Duty: Infinite Warfarereleased in early November). Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 1 shot to first place in console rankings, becoming the best-selling new release for October with $70 million in revenue on console and $110 million across all platforms. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare will likely generate more sales than Battlefield 1 on Console, but is unlikely to beat Battlefield’s PC performance.
Electronic Arts did not find comparable success with the release of Titanfall 2. Electronic Arts made the poor choice to push out the title in between the releases of two larger and more popular FPS franchises. The divided attention of FPS gamers had a negative impact on sales, bringing in total of only $18 million. Compared to Titanfall 1 (which released in March 2014 against no competing titles), Titanfall 2 brought in only 28% of its predecessor’s first month revenue.
Now if the PS4 and the Xbox1 brought in 70 million out of the $110 million made then that is basically $35 million each. That still means the PC made them $40 million. Is my math correct?
I just do not understand why DICE/EA doesn't push the console more instead of downgrading the PC experience. I could have saved myself a lot of money had I gone to console. I graphics card alone cost more then what a console cost. If DICE wants a uniform experience, then why are we not in the same servers together? That would make sense the to downgrade the PC. All the original DICE members are gone and a new crew is running the show since the launch of BF4. DICE games produced since then have shown me that the new crew they have do not have touch with the community. Only twitter accounts and youtube videos. Both must have a strong following.
I am sure I have learned more but you get the idea.
While this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, Electronic Arts’ CFO Blake Jorgensen has revealed that the company designs games to run on high-end PCs and then scales back for the console versions. This topic of discussion was brought up at the UBS Global Technology Conference. Jorgensen explained that since now all of Electronic Arts’ internally developed games use the Frostbite Engine, that they are able to scale back without much issue.
“You won’t see much margin upgrade at all,” explained Jorgensen. “We build all of our games to the highest possible spec, which is typically a high-powered PC, and as the consoles come in, [which] may not be the highest spec, we may actually dummy down the console product to meet the spec of the console. In a world where the console looks more and more like a PC, that’s good for us.”
Clearly this strategy is working for Electronic Arts as Frostbite Engine games like Battlefield 1 and Star Wars Battlefront are some of the best looking games on the PlayStation 4 and PC. As we enter a phase of iterative console design, such as the PS4 Pro, console owners will only continue to see even better performing, and looking, games from Electronic Arts. In the end, everyone from PC owners to console players are rewarded.
Have you been impressed with Electronic Arts’ Frostbite Engine on PS4? Let us know what you think of the game engine that powers Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, and EA’s beloved first-person shooters.
Read more at http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2016/11/18/ea-games-developed-pcs-scaled-consoles/#jVCM5Eoh29c8rLtS.99
yet DICE says this:
So no wonder all the confusion. It seems DICE is more confused then any of us.
I am just glad to know that I am a Jewish/Muslim black homosexual who hates government in the USA.
Thanks for the heads up Star. I gotta say my spirits are a little boosted hearing today's patch call the base game update. That makes me feel like they are seeing the RSP as its own product that will have its own patch notes etc.
*Crosses fingers*
Wasn't that the downfall of windows 8. The stupid metro UI that they wanted to force on us to have a unified UI across devices. While it is fine/good for a touch screen device it sucked ***** for a keyboard/mouse.
Why are we trying to do the same with Battlefiekd 1 with PC and CONSOLE? Can we not learn anything from other people's mistakes?
Now if they bring modding back (seriously doubtful), then your argument would hold some weight.