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Ummm...more and more games are forcing you to be online during play because, in reality, that's what people want. People want their universal auction houses tha

Ummm...more and more games are forcing you to be online during play because, in reality, that's what people want. People want their universal auction houses that connect with other players and feel more "alive." People want their Wonder Trades and other seemingly inane social features. Do all games need it (eg. the StarCraft and WarCraft III remasters)? No, but that has less to do with "ONLINE GAMES ARE EVIL" and more to do with them wanting to keep people firmly in the Battle.net ecosystem. There's an entire player retention strategy that goes into that that has nothing to do with piracy. Moreover, MMOs in general necessitate a central server. They're a completely different genre that is isolated from the fears you're expressing and, more to the point, they're not a particularly popular genre when compared to session-oriented competitive multiplayer games, so they're not actually why those games are forcing you to connect to a central server. The main thing you're missing when complaining about the "loss of dedicated servers" is that centralized services consolidate the userbase, allow them to programmatically split the userbase by region, and ensure that, as long as people are playing, they can always be found. But, more importantly, you're never locked out of the "populated" servers for an arbitrary amount of time because they're perpetually full, which has been a problem in a number of games with dedicated servers. Also, you have to remember that the games industry is approximately 5x larger (by revenue, probably more by userbase, especially considering the rise of f2p games and increasing prevalence of deep discounts) now than it was in 2000. What the majority wants inevitably changed because "the majority" changed purely by virtue of there are 5x+ more people with their own opinions. So, sure, things are changing and are moving away from self-hosting, but there are a lot of cultural factors (and undeniable conveniences) that have influenced it far more than "companies are evil and they just want to control us."

stuu99 5y ago
- hedgewitch 5y ago
  > So we know the ability to have dedicated servers and in game server browser exists inside the engine. You can continue to spout conspiracy theories if you want, but the fact of the matter is that dedicated servers are a completely different archetype. If you connect to a server, your connection is retained until you disconnect, meaning that you are in the player pool until you disconnect, which means no one else can take your slot in the player pool until you disconnect. This worked when communities were smaller, but it's completely incompatible with having 100k+ people online at any one time. The server lists would be massive, especially in a game like Halo Infinite, where lobbies cap at 16. No one wants to deal with that. > Sigh, go listen to the post mortem devs of ultima online, as soon as UO beta was successful, Ultima 9 (the local app) was axed, for client-server ultima, aka "MMO's" are just back ended rpgs, they re not some different kind of game. Ultima IX was, from the ground up, awful. Not to mention, you're completely misrepresenting this. It's not like they killed Ultima IX and reused its code in Ultima Online. They're completely different games. And yes, MMOs are different. They literally have different mechanics. No Ultima game played like Ultima Online except Ultima Online. The entire appeal is that the entire userbase is all on one server. But, more importantly, at any given time, the servers are too complex to manage for individuals and, at the time that Ultima Online was released, it would have been literally impossible to run on the average desktop computer. A RasPi can barely manage 8 people on a Minecraft server. You think that your 1997 Pentium could have managed Ultima's server? Alternatively, look at Ryzom's open-source release. There are like four different interconnected servers. What average user is going to be able to adequately manage that for other users?
  - stuu99 5y ago
    - hedgewitch 5y ago
      I literally didn't say the network code was different. But server load, internet requirements (have fun hosting an Ultima Online server for your friends on a 56K modem), and more make it impractical for any single user to host a server. Quake II is literally not the same as an MMO. You have a small map with a maximum of, what, 32 players? MMOs can have thousands. Most modern MMOs can handle hundreds in the same zone before they become unplayably laggy. Most can't handle thousands in one zone, even on the machines the servers were built for. You can't do that as a consumer. It's not about the code. It's about the game itself and its requirements. Emulating servers doesn't change that. Again, it's all about being able to connect everyone that is playing and the difficult parts being managed for you. You never have to worry about spinning up a dedicated server to play with your friends. You just load in, invite them to party, and queue up. These conveniences are why this model is popular, not because of this bizarre conspiracy you're pushing.
      - stuu99 5y ago
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        hedgewitch 5y ago
        Okay, have fun in your alternate reality where users host all of your data and you regularly lose characters or accounts you've spent months on because they decide they can't be arsed to host the server that you were on anymore. After all, you can't allow users to brings their characters/accounts cross-server because that's a cheating risk. :)
        stuu99 5y ago

stuu99 5y ago

hedgewitch 5y ago
> So we know the ability to have dedicated servers and in game server browser exists inside the engine. You can continue to spout conspiracy theories if you want, but the fact of the matter is that dedicated servers are a completely different archetype. If you connect to a server, your connection is retained until you disconnect, meaning that you are in the player pool until you disconnect, which means no one else can take your slot in the player pool until you disconnect. This worked when communities were smaller, but it's completely incompatible with having 100k+ people online at any one time. The server lists would be massive, especially in a game like Halo Infinite, where lobbies cap at 16. No one wants to deal with that. > Sigh, go listen to the post mortem devs of ultima online, as soon as UO beta was successful, Ultima 9 (the local app) was axed, for client-server ultima, aka "MMO's" are just back ended rpgs, they re not some different kind of game. Ultima IX was, from the ground up, awful. Not to mention, you're completely misrepresenting this. It's not like they killed Ultima IX and reused its code in Ultima Online. They're completely different games. And yes, MMOs are different. They literally have different mechanics. No Ultima game played like Ultima Online except Ultima Online. The entire appeal is that the entire userbase is all on one server. But, more importantly, at any given time, the servers are too complex to manage for individuals and, at the time that Ultima Online was released, it would have been literally impossible to run on the average desktop computer. A RasPi can barely manage 8 people on a Minecraft server. You think that your 1997 Pentium could have managed Ultima's server? Alternatively, look at Ryzom's open-source release. There are like four different interconnected servers. What average user is going to be able to adequately manage that for other users?
- stuu99 5y ago
  - hedgewitch 5y ago
    I literally didn't say the network code was different. But server load, internet requirements (have fun hosting an Ultima Online server for your friends on a 56K modem), and more make it impractical for any single user to host a server. Quake II is literally not the same as an MMO. You have a small map with a maximum of, what, 32 players? MMOs can have thousands. Most modern MMOs can handle hundreds in the same zone before they become unplayably laggy. Most can't handle thousands in one zone, even on the machines the servers were built for. You can't do that as a consumer. It's not about the code. It's about the game itself and its requirements. Emulating servers doesn't change that. Again, it's all about being able to connect everyone that is playing and the difficult parts being managed for you. You never have to worry about spinning up a dedicated server to play with your friends. You just load in, invite them to party, and queue up. These conveniences are why this model is popular, not because of this bizarre conspiracy you're pushing.
    - stuu99 5y ago
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - hedgewitch 5y ago
        Okay, have fun in your alternate reality where users host all of your data and you regularly lose characters or accounts you've spent months on because they decide they can't be arsed to host the server that you were on anymore. After all, you can't allow users to brings their characters/accounts cross-server because that's a cheating risk. :)
        stuu99 5y ago