[Poll] Region Locked Servers; Good or Bad?

[Tatwi]

I was going to choose Region servers only (not locked) [Low Ping], but then I thought it would be nifty to have a "world server", so I picked One main world wide international server (Medium-High ping), optional region servers (Low Ping).

[Figment]

Originally Posted by IronMole

Or just have a choice like the original?

You powerslid everywhere anyway! What do you care about connections!?

xD

[Shade Millith]

It's simple.

I'm not going to play.

This is the final straw.

Fuck you SOE. You've finally broken me.

[Checowsky]

I don't get these options, PS2 isn't going to launch and be dead, it'll be dam busy most likely. Multiple servers will be needed without a doubt. Just have regional servers but the option to play on whatever dam server you want.

[Checowsky]

Dear Higby,

Step 1: show the first 2 minutes of this to the uppers.

Step 2: Stare at them with an unamused face

Step 3: ????

Step 4: Profit.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode...veloper-part-2

[igster]

There is quite a large flaw in the region locking / separating out of the accounts.

One aspect that never seems to be satisfactorily handled in persistent world type games is population management of servers. Locking accounts to servers and regions is such a short term way of going about it.

Once the game's zenith has come and gone, and it comes time when the region locked servers are not so heavily populated, what are we going to do in order to merge servers again to get decent populated servers again?

The solution before was to merge servers. How do you do that when you have your accounts with different companies? So does this mean that the separate game distribution companies are actually just there for the good times when the populations are high and when we go back to a single server what do we do then? There you go.. back to SOE North American support - we don't want to handle your account any more.

What a pointless faff that is - split the accounts to 3 different companies. Oh now we have to merge them back again... er.. doh.. we'll put a -W after your name again...... /sigh


Even on games like quake, you didnt want to play on EU servers at certain times of the day. Empty servers are no fun. You'd go and play on a US server where there was some population. Region locking just means that we get a peak time with good populations and at all other times we are locked into a much less attractive game play experience.

I know that we need to segregate the player-base somehow but region locking is definitely not the smart thing to do.

- Worldwide Single Sign on. (authentication only - split populations as u wish)
- I don't care who processes the money, provides support, markets or to whom I pay in a region.
- I don't care who looks after the boxes as long as Sony treat the gamer's in NA equally with EU and Asia
- Forcing existing communities to split up is piss poor gaming customer service and you should be ashamed of that
- Don't lock me into low populated time zones / server areas
- Think of the long term changes in population of the game from day 1 to year 10 and don't just make it up as you go along

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by Figment

Perhaps a bit silly idea. Just thought it funny to theorize on the option.

Interesting approach to having a global server, although I think I still prefer multiple locals.

[Coreldan]

I'm personally very strongly against any and all plans of wanting to make a single international server by default. Naturally merges leading to that are OK (like in PS1s case) but the baseline shouldnt be to have one server that most likely favours the US

[Checowsky]

Why would you choose any other option than the one with MORE choice? Are you people stupid or something?

Also which dumbass put up a 1 server option for a game which has a pop limit.

Think about this for a second PS1 launched with roughly 70'000 people dropping to 30'000 ish in a few months or there abouts, that was with no advertising. Now you have this game which is the forefront of SOEs new tech and has plenty of advertising and teasers and you think one server, just one, could hold up the pops....Mental.


Can we please for the love of god stop comparing PS2 to PS1, NOTHING IS SIMILAR.

Art direction and names, thats all you've got. The companies standing is different, the game is different, the advertising is different and you could go on and on. There is very little to be compared between these two games now so can we all stop this.

[ItsTheSheppy]

This is a terrible idea. So many of my PS1 friends are from across the pond, and with this, we'll never be able to play together.

Complete fucking disgrace.

[TripX]

Those that know me know my standing before I even post it.

Region Locked. This is for many reasons.

We all saw what it was like fighting CN in PS1. Different part of the world, different mindset. While we liked massive battles a large portion of players also liked smaller more outfit oriented battles, mainly back hacks and resecures.

In the hayday of Emerald you knew if an outfit like DT was going to back hack something, they were going to be a smaller faster moving more organized group of players and the people that responded 90% of the time were similar outfits from other empires whether it be KoToR or 1CMM etc... This led to rivalries and outfits standing out. We had sort of an honor system. Sure not everyone followed it, but most did.

When Markov/Werner merged outfits like HT, SR and Mercs had the win at all costs mentallity which dulled a lot of fights cause you knew that that meant max crashes, plasma plasma plasma. Are they in the game and perfectly fine to use? Sure obviously they are! But that doesn't mean people think less of you when you don't get a chance to weaken em with plasma and they own you every time they face you. And the CN, well the second a hack was noticed you had 30 screaming CN for everyone to recall causing 60 people to resecure a base against 15 guys returning us to the same 3 way fight that had been going on for 2 days. Again making the game slow and boring. russian players and CN were the type that you could kill no problem, but they normally absorbed 2-3 shot sleaving you unprepared for the next guy, if he would have died in the right number of shots, you would have had time to reload, med up, or fall back to a better position. But you couldn't!

I know a lot of people are saying outfits like DT were heavy european and they played on Emerald! This is true, however the style and mentallity of play were established on servers in the beginning and most players adopted that style of play. large amounts of European players who came to Emerald tried out for DT cause of that Honor mentallity of you don't need crutches to win. Plasma grenades were rare on Emerald, as well as Personal Shield and Special Assault. When the better outfits recruited, things like Maxes and Personal shield would keep you from getting an invite.

With that every, FPS out there has regional servers for a reason. there is a reason why i could never play other games with my European friends. Bottom line is, its just not fair for either side. Ping etc is giving someone an advantage. What ever side benefits from it who cares. Bottom line is that someone is benefitting from it. I as well as millions of gamer's like to know that when people beat us they beat us or we beat them because we are better or smarter. Not because the guy has an uber computer and is tucked away in northern Sweden warping lagging etc.

If SOE does this right (lol) you should have plenty of people to recruit into your outfits in those areas. It does suck that some people won't play together, but I know a lot of the people I played with are European but id rather ensure a fairer fight that allows people to enjoy the game and not stop playing cause some guy with high ping is bouncing in and out of walls making it half impossible to hit, or when you do hit, it doesn't register.

Region Locked is teh only fair way to go. So please stop crying for your 50 man outfits as someone else pointed out, they are less that 1% of the player base.

-TripX

[TripX]

One more thing, for those saying that the 166 people who voted in the thread needs to be brought to the attention of higher SOE. You have to remember you are a dying breed of Planet Side "Fans"! Half the people posting have outfits that have been long dead and you are small voice from the community. Though SOE is about 90% responsible for the fall of Planet Side the player base plays a role in it as well. And 166 players from a game that pretty much died in 2007 compared to the possible millions that will subscribe in the first year is highly unlikely who SOE is worried about pleasing. When they decided to merge CN to Markov, the markov player base died. Werner Died on its own cause the playstyle, Emerald though it wasn't thriving was doing 10x better than Markov/Werner. So they merged Emmy and Markov and Werner completely died. Within 6 months the pops of 3 servers on 1 was now down to the equivalent of 1.5 servers. And within a year the pops were what they were on 1 server 2 yrs prior. Whether it was having to make new toons, ping, CN, playstyle, whatever the reason the pops dropped and dropped and dropped. Whatever they did to try to salvage the game late, was killed by the piss poor attitude of the playerbase.

Its a game for us but its a business for them. And when you look at the success of other games like CoD, MW, CS which all have more active players than PS that is who they are going to cater to, that player base. Not a few surviving die hard game fans. They would be completely out of their minds not to cater to what the 2012 gamer want and to cater to a dying breed of PS1 fans.

What you really need to know is, how many servers per region are there going to be, and the remaining PS community needs to start figuring out where they are going to play so that players from rival outfits can get on teh same page and start on those servers.

-TripX

[Vancha]

Did that post get lost in the tubes or something? It's at least a month out of date.

Edit: Apparently not. You're aware they removed region locking, right Trip?

I would also direct you to this post.

[Hamma]

Yes this is essentially gone now. Please review this news post and comment thread:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/n...1-faq-2735.htm

Closing this out to avoid confusion.