This new update concerns me.

  • @hynieth Well I live in South of France and the closest Azure Server is really close to me... like really close.

    I played SoT with local friends that have fiber, VDSL, and worse...

    We all pretty much have the same latencies... Go figure!

    Never went under 60ping. Never ever :(

  • @dotcomrobots

    I don't disagree that they could do with hiring some more networking experts to optimise it that degree, I just think there is a lot of work ahead to reach a point where pings are significantly lowered.

    As I said in my original response, I don't get a lot of the really bad network issues that others get, just the occasional lag spike here and there and sometimes the hit reg problems but it's fairly infrequent. Seldom enough that when I think of SOT, they're not top of the list of things that spring to mind.

    I've played games with really bad lag problems and optimisation (ARK - oof!!) so maybe it's just that I'm a bit more forgiving when it's not an arena shooter or critical to my enjoyment, personally speaking - I know everyone has different expectations.

  • So I was against the capstan drop but honestly it isn't a game changer. You make it sound like the game totally changed lol. It did not and the capstan drop, although very very fun to execute, is actually kind of a cheap move. It literally can decide if you lose a battle. So I get it now. Let's move on. I honestly think a more disappointing change was moving the barrels on the sloop which now prevents sneaking.

  • @dotcomrobots said in This new update concerns me.:

    @hynieth Well I live in South of France and the closest Azure Server is really close to me... like really close.

    Never went under 60ping. Never ever :(

    Your nearest Azure server is Netherlands or Ireland, right? Still a lot closer than a lot of people in the US would be to their nearest server

  • @RealStyli I don't even consider ARK as a game despite it's ambitious vision. The execution is terrible and it's literally not the way a video game should be made.

    I understand your mindset but I'd rather keep talking about this to hopefully one day have Joe Neate talk about it. A lot of people don't even take time to give feedback and when they do it's for rather insignificant aspects of the game (pets, skins and whatnot)

    I would love some content just as everyone here, but the most pressing issue is being discarded by everyone and it just doesn't sound right at all.

    Of course developpement of the game must continue, they can't stop everything just to work on one aspect of the game... but an update from time to time on this subject would definitely reassure some of us.

    Silence isn't always gold.

  • @dotcomrobots France uses the Amsterdam server.
    You need to also take into account that packets sent and received by the SoT client contain more then just position data like with shooters.
    SoT isn't calculated Clientside but serverside.
    Potentially if given time and power from the Azure cloud services Rare could expand the map, the systems and everything except for the graphics because of this.

    You could compare ping times of SoT more to WoW and FFXIV then to CoD or BF4.

    If this were a shooter running on the cloud being calculated with your PC you'd probably get much lower ping values, but this game sends more data so it takes longer to send/ receive.

  • @hynieth That's very good info thanks!

  • @hynieth There is definitely a reason for SoT to have that much lag for sure.

    Considering the complex physics happening during a fight in a sailing boat, i guess the positional data is much more heavy and must require a much more "granular" engine in terms of scale and metering in order to precisely detect a player's position (which I doubt SoT has since it's a rather large world built on a 32bit engine) but again these are only positions. I wonder what Sea of Thieves sends other than player positions, projectiles positions (or sword radius on/off?) and player states?

    Bullet projectiles aren't even rendered in SoT... :D

    Cosmetics/inventory, gold and reputation doesn't really affect the combat situations..

  • @dotcomrobots said in This new update concerns me.:

    @RealStyli I don't even consider ARK as a game despite it's ambitious vision. The execution is terrible and it's literally not the way a video game should be made.

    Yep, one of the many reasons I stopped playing it and will never buy a game made by that developer again.

    I would love some content just as everyone here, but the most pressing issue is being discarded by everyone and it just doesn't sound right at all.

    I know I've been as guilty of this as anyone but I also understand why Rare's focus right now is on adding content and value. Maybe things would be different if the major criticisms around launch ("lack of content") weren't there.

    I think once Rare are happy enough that they can say the game has enough content and value, then they will shift focus to improvements. At the moment they are doing a little of that and have been optimising slowly since launch but that has definitely taken a back seat.

    With a team as relatively small as Rare (if you go by LinkedIn numbers, they're only about twice the size of Ninja Theory), I can understand there are limitations to what they can do.

  • @RealStyli Yes the team size is rather small for a project like SoT. I heard they were recuiting as of last year so I hope they got what they were looking for.

    Indeed patience is the key, but this buisness goes fast, players come and go. It's all about hype nowdays :D Fortunately their community is strong and loves the game with a rare passion. But let's face it, that's not how you save your IP. They must push things forward, always.

    As long as there is content the game should meet his public and bring in new blood quarters after quarters so I understand the urge for them to focus on content than the rest.

    Let's just hope they'll find some time in between their chaotic schedule to optimize the game in a proper way. I'll always be here to support the game, but i'll stay realistic and sincere no matter what :)

  • This game has network problems for sure, and I don't think there is much of excuse for it. The animations start to lag out when you have a lot of people moving in close quarters - like the tavern in arena. I know its not the engine, because its Unreal and this doesn't happen in other games so it has to be a low tick rate synchronizing player animations.

    Then you can look at games like the recent installments of the Battlefield series - which have tanks, bikes, planes, helicopters, cars all driving around. Projectile ballistics, rockets, grenades... 24-64 players per server and it is able to handle the load much better than the Azure servers. You will occasionally get lag if you get onto a server far away or one that is running on hardware that is unable to handle it or overtaxed with too many instances, but its nowhere nears as noticeably bad as it can be on SoT.

  • @d3adst1ck said in This new update concerns me.:

    This game has network problems for sure, and I don't think there is much of excuse for it. The animations start to lag out when you have a lot of people moving in close quarters - like the tavern in arena. I know its not the engine, because its Unreal and this doesn't happen in other games so it has to be a low tick rate synchronizing player animations.

    Then you can look at games like the recent installments of the Battlefield series - which have tanks, bikes, planes, helicopters, cars all driving around. Projectile ballistics, rockets, grenades... 24-64 players per server and it is able to handle the load much better than the Azure servers. You will occasionally get lag if you get onto a server far away or one that is running on hardware that is unable to handle it or overtaxed with too many instances, but its nowhere nears as noticeably bad as it can be on SoT.

    Dice has far more resources and personal than Rare, they're almost 3 times the size of Rare (again, using LinkedIn numbers as a rough guide). They also a lot more experience with their game and engine than Rare has with Sea of Thieves and Unreal.

    Hynieth also made a good point earlier that closer comparisons could be made to games like WOW and FFXIV than COD or BF.

    It's not just tracking players or ships, it's tracking A LOT of data and doing it server-side. Everything from loot positions, to AI, to wave simulations, to day-night cycle/TOD, to transactions at merchants. When you break it down, it's far more complexity going on than it appears at first.

  • @realstyli said in This new update concerns me.:

    It's not just tracking players or ships, it's tracking A LOT of data and doing it server-side. Everything from loot positions, to AI, to wave simulations, to day-night cycle/TOD, to transactions at merchants. When you break it down, it's far more complexity going on than it appears at first.

    Most of that stuff is dormant or non-existent until the player enters the island area (loot position, AI) or outside of the server instance (merchant interactions are connecting to an external service most likely, which explains the loading delay), so there is very little processing done on it until its within a certain range or the player is actively interacting with it. Day/Night cycle is just a server timestamp that increments at a set tick rate and is synchronized to the clients - not a lot involved there.

    Waves are not simulated over the entire game world all the time, they are maintained by a seed value (or values) which are sync'd to all clients and the clients render the waves based on that information. This isn't a lot of information to transmit over the network - Battlefield 4 did the same thing on maps with a lot of waves and the "levelution" events that had storms roll in. Waves were synchronized across all clients so everyone saw the same thing and vehicles were affected by wave movement.

    The only calculations that involve the waves is to figure out the ship position and orientation using the wave seed information and this is likely simplified quite a bit from actual buoyancy simulation for performance reasons.

  • Fun fact; I have no idea what a 'ping' is. My technical analysis boils down to, "Hmmm, a bit laggy today".

  • @tedakin taking about active players and where did you get that number?

  • @fast-bike94

  • @d3adst1ck so I read that article seems like they aren't in a hurry to change much about the game and 8.4 million players since 2018 seems legit but that doesn't mean it's alive I figure there is only 50k actually active people in this game that play daily or a couple times a week so millions of people played and left I also know alot of people that bought the game when it came out quit immediately because it was boring.

  • @fast-bike94 50K would put it into one of the top played games on Steam. I'm sure they would be fine with having numbers like that.

  • @d3adst1ck 50k might be a lot to them but I'm actually running into the same players over and over frpm arena matches or adventure matches and people on my friends list, I play 6 to 10 hours daily and am seeing people I have seen a few days ago everytime that just screams it's dying to me

  • @fast-bike94 Well if you play 6-10 hours you're probably going to run into several people who play daily for 2-3 hours at the same times in the same region as you, so that's no surprise.

    You can keep burying your head in the sand, but the stats they've released say anything but this game is dieing. Just the fact that you play for such an unhealthy amount of time per day says that this game is not dieing.

  • @fast-bike94 Game stats always show a steep decline after release. Gamers are a fickle crowd. SoT continues to maintain a pretty solid player base. I see you joined a few weeks ago so you are possibly unaware how often people come here and post about the game dying. All game forums have them. A very small (but vocal) minority here were predicting its doom before it was even released. They left to be replaced with a new crop of prophets pointing to some stat or situation as proof that the game would be dead in a few more weeks. Poorly understood Twitch stats, mangled achievement stats, empty horizons, crossing paths with the same players now and then, and so on. Those folks left and the cycle continues. You'll see a few of them return long enough to post a "yeah, the game is still broken/dead/empty" claim here before leaving again. Despite their predictions, the game is still going, and the community still appears healthy. Eventually it will be true, but not now.

    I recognize that you are concerned about the game's direction and you care about it enough to say something. I respect that and share your enthusiasm for SoT. This does not mean their decision to stray from your vision will soon result in the game's demise. I was not happy to see Arena come along, and I feel it has made the original mode much more passive, but if Rare catered to just my desires I doubt anyone else would even play the game.

  • @fast-bike94 said in This new update concerns me.:

    @d3adst1ck so I read that article seems like they aren't in a hurry to change much about the game and 8.4 million players since 2018 seems legit but that doesn't mean it's alive I figure there is only 50k actually active people in this game that play daily or a couple times a week so millions of people played and left I also know alot of people that bought the game when it came out quit immediately because it was boring.

    You can "figure" all you want but unless you have some facts or inside information to back it up it is nothing but hot air.

    The game has CONSISTENTLY been in the most played games on Xbox, usually logging in around #20 each week for the past few months, shooting as high as #11 right after the big update.

    And to back up my statement:

  • @fast-bike94 said in This new update concerns me.:

    @dlchief58 that website is showing 32k active users for sea of thieves so I guess my estimate of 50k was a little to gracious.

    LOL, except those stats are NOT for just the site but are representative of gameplay over the entire Xbox ecosystem. TA members account for less than 25% of that information, the pool consists of well over 1 million active Xbox gamers worldwide. If you bothered to look further you'd have known that, instead pulling random unrelated facts which supposedly bolster your unsubstantiated view. Accept it, the game is doing quite well regardless of your Chicken Little claims that have no substance.

    Care to try again?

    EDIT: I see you deleted the post, must have found out how mistaken you were and too chicken to leave it up.

  • EDIT: The post I was replying to was deleted by the poster so I deleted this one to avoid confusion.

  • @ghostpaw yeah mis understood that website

  • @dlchief58 you can tell just how dead this game is by looking at achievements and seeing what percentage of people unlock certain achievements some of the achievements unlock when you essentially start the game. And only 63 percent achieve sailing for the first time that means 37 percent log in and log back.out and never play again lol

  • @fast-bike94 63% of 8.4 Million is still 5.2M players. If that is the metric you want to switch to, that's still a pretty good number.

  • @d3adst1ck then you can continue to narrow that down and say only 1.73 percent of people even hit pirate legend with the way the game is now you can achieve in a few weeks.

  • @fast-bike94 Well however far you need to move the goalposts to make yourself happy, be my guest.

  • @fast-bike94 said in This new update concerns me.:

    @dlchief58 you can tell just how dead this game is by looking at achievements and seeing what percentage of people unlock certain achievements some of the achievements unlock when you essentially start the game. And only 63 percent achieve sailing for the first time that means 37 percent log in and log back.out and never play again lol

    You are checking off all the boxes today. This is an example of the achievement stats claim that I referenced earlier. That chestnut gets trotted out quite often.

  • @d3adst1ck just showing people leave this game before they even get to pirate legend

  • @fast-bike94 Except that figure doesn't show that at all. It shows the number of people who have achieved Pirate Legend.

    There are lots of people still playing who are not Pirate Legends.

  • @ghostpaw never seen it used before maybe they should release actual graphics Joe neate says a number and it doesn't make it true show us actual stats.

  • @d3adst1ck I know there are people playing not pirate legend but a lot of them are the pve people you see complain about pvp on here and they don't come back until something is done.

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