News: Resolved - PS2 Region

[Oryon22]

Would the affected parties be willing to pay a fee to play with their friends overseas?

Give EU players the option to "transfer" to a US server for a nominal fee and slightly higher ping.

[Rbstr]

If you honestly think there's no reason, outside of some nebulous corporate money-grubbing argument, for regionalization you're not thinking clearly.

Packets take time to get places, the further and more convoluted paths they have to travel means they take longer. Load up your favorite FPS that tells server location and look at your Ping - the importance of distance should become immediately apparent.
Sure, it's better these days than it was back in PS1s time. But I think the only way the game shouldn't be region locked is if the servers kick on exceeding some kind of latency threshold so dicks from other continents or on dial-up don't ruin the game for people with good connections.

[Vancha]

Like someone said in the other thread, contracts can be broken, albeit messily. This is not done and dusted.

Originally Posted by Rbstr

Packets take time to get places, the further and more convoluted paths they have to travel means they take longer. Load up your favorite FPS that tells server location and look at your Ping - the importance of distance should become immediately apparent.
Sure, it's better these days than it was back in PS1s time. But I think the only way the game shouldn't be region locked is if the servers kick on exceeding some kind of latency threshold so dicks from other continents or on dial-up don't ruin the game for people with good connections.

We had this earlier in the thread. I got 93ms and no loss from the UK to Emerald. There were plenty of Americans that lagged about more than I did.

[texico]

Originally Posted by Oryon22

Would the affected parties be willing to pay a fee to play with their friends overseas?

Give EU players the option to "transfer" to a US server for a nominal fee and slightly higher ping.

What?!?! You can absolutely guarantee that EU players aren't going to pay for something that US players get for free, that's going to be a slightly worse experience for them anyway due to ping. Or at least, they'd be highly offended by that notion.

[Gandhi]

Originally Posted by Rbstr

Packets take time to get places, the further and more convoluted paths they have to travel means they take longer. Load up your favorite FPS that tells server location and look at your Ping - the importance of distance should become immediately apparent.

There must already be a ping cap system, otherwise anyone could fire up a BitTorrent client to abuse the resulting high ping and packet loss. So this is a non-issue.

[Mastachief]

Originally Posted by Gandhi

There must already be a ping cap system, otherwise anyone could fire up a BitTorrent client to abuse the resulting high ping and packet loss. So this is a non-issue.

Nope there is none and actually certain "skilled" players already do something similar.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Duddy

I'm surprised you seem to think it is the minority of people that have forged international bonds over games. Perhaps in proportion for those new to PC online gaming, sure, but for those who have been playing a long time I would find hard to believe that people hadn't made such a connection.

I'd love to see actual numbers, but I think that's somewhat a peripheral point. What I find galling however is the telling people they are the minority. Got any proof of that? Even a "guesstimate"? May I suggest that if you want to propose this is not a matter for people that you back up what you say with either a well thought out conjecture or numbers to support it.

I just got my numbers from the "Out of my Butt Institute" so it's not scientific. What I was referring to really was the number of Planetside players actually left playing with each other in comparison to the hopefully vast numbers of Planetside 2 players. So I consider the current PS players a minority, and the EU players a subset of that minority.

You bring up a solid point, however, about gaming outfits / guilds in general. They are international more often than not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hard set on advocating for region locked servers. However, I do see an upside to it, and considering what it looks like business-wise, I don't know if there is anything that can be done to change it, so I'm taking the view of, we all better start to learn to accept it and move on.

[Gandhi]

Originally Posted by Mastachief

Nope there is none and actually certain "skilled" players already do something similar.

Planetside has a lot of problems with cheating and hacking, I'm assuming they won't be making those mistakes again.

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by Rbstr

Packets take time to get places, the further and more convoluted paths they have to travel means they take longer. Load up your favorite FPS that tells server location and look at your Ping - the importance of distance should become immediately apparent.

Almost half of America doesn't have access to high speed internet last time i saw the stats, I guarantee the people here that are pissed off about this have far more capable connections and get lower pings than a good sized chunk of the usa will

[Wakken]

Originally Posted by Vancha

To everyone saying this doesn't affect anyone but PS1 players...

What of all the Call of Duty clans, Battlefield clans, Counter-Strike clans, TF2 clans etc. etc.?

None of those games are region-locked. Who knows how many multi-national clans might have moved over to PS2 to try it out, but decide not to because they can't play together?

Additionally, what of all the people who were thinking of giving SOE another try and decide not to because they see they still care so little about their customers? I've already seen people who had a wary interest of PS2 (due to SOE's bad reputation) stating they won't play it because SOE clearly hasn't learned...

A very good point

[IronMole]

Originally Posted by Rbstr

If you honestly think there's no reason, outside of some nebulous corporate money-grubbing argument, for regionalization you're not thinking clearly.

Packets take time to get places, the further and more convoluted paths they have to travel means they take longer. Load up your favorite FPS that tells server location and look at your Ping - the importance of distance should become immediately apparent.
Sure, it's better these days than it was back in PS1s time. But I think the only way the game shouldn't be region locked is if the servers kick on exceeding some kind of latency threshold so dicks from other continents or on dial-up don't ruin the game for people with good connections.

/sigh.

[BlazingSun]

I think those guys who get upset about the "region lock" are reading too much into the contract between SOE and ProSiebenSat1. I think this is more of a contract clause than an actual statement of them somehow enforcing a "region lock".

Originally Posted by Gandhi

Planetside has a lot of problems with cheating and hacking, I'm assuming they won't be making those mistakes again.

I wouln't put my hand in the fire for that, if I was you.

[ThGlump]

Originally Posted by Gandhi

Planetside has a lot of problems with cheating and hacking, I'm assuming they won't be making those mistakes again.

Yea. Soe is bragging about how theyll will hunt and punish hackers. Ok if they focus on it it could be done. But what will pro7 do? Will they ban hackers too, or will they ignore them? Again second grade service.

[Duddy]

Originally Posted by Raymac

I just got my numbers from the "Out of my Butt Institute" so it's not scientific. What I was referring to really was the number of Planetside players actually left playing with each other in comparison to the hopefully vast numbers of Planetside 2 players. So I consider the current PS players a minority, and the EU players a subset of that minority.

You bring up a solid point, however, about gaming outfits / guilds in general. They are international more often than not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hard set on advocating for region locked servers. However, I do see an upside to it, and considering what it looks like business-wise, I don't know if there is anything that can be done to change it, so I'm taking the view of, we all better start to learn to accept it and move on.

Fair point in regards to what we have here being a minority, the common phenomenon of the silent majority and the vocal minority and the same is true here.

Forgive any potential accusations, this wasn't my intent, but the approach you appear to be adopting just seems somewhat dismissive and defeatist.

Likewise I understand the positives for such a move, which is why I would support making us use a different account for US play as somewhat of a a barrier to it so that not everyone does it. But I can't accept the seemingly current plan in light of what it does to various communities.

But yeah, agreeing to disagree to a certain degree. :P

[Wakken]

Originally Posted by Figment

http://eq2wire.com/2012/02/22/20-thi...alaplaya-deal/

Some interesting issues brought up by EQ2 players.

this article must be seen by the powers.