R
reubs
Guest
Firstly I'd like to thank everyone for making suggestions on the What should happen to the servers? vote thread and the ones which preceded it. Sorry I haven't replied earlier, but I felt it was better to have a constructive, concrete response about what happens next.
I'd like to start by tipping my hat to Shovel and the clarity of his summary - a fine piece of analysis, made more difficult as you didn't have access to details of how the existing platform operates.
Right, onto the details - had we been an open-source project, or a not-for profit organisation/social club then we would have been able to have a fully open debate over the issues involved, but as a Limited company we have to consider commercial issues too, and I have to walk a fine line with sharing useful information with you, our users and our entire technical architecture with our competitors
The first idea raised was christened Barry Bar Lite, the concept being that new games could be given a free trial with simple access to the service without having to initially pay. A solution which achieves these ends, although not quite in the same way you all envisaged has been under development for a month or so now. I don't want to go into the specific details of how it will work, just to say it will achieve what is described in this idea and we intend it to go live within the next month or so.
The second idea was that of a network based device which would dynamically filter inbound connections, with the intelligence to work at the game server level, recognise subs/non subs and be able to allow / disallow access based on various rulesets. To be totally straight with you all, this is pretty much the specification we started from when we began looking at access control to game servers a number of years ago now. We believe it is technically achievable, that some organisations out there do some of it already, but at a disturbingly high cost of time and effort. In comparison our own current access control solution is much more simplistic yet affordable.
That isn't to say we've written off this approach, we are still actively investigating it, and our options for using it, so if any hardcore network engineers want to shove their half-penneth in, feel free to collar our network nerd data@staff.game.net.
In the meantime however we are going to explore another option.
Preview Servers
============
A little later this week we are going to be introducing a limited number of public servers, open to non-subscribers. On these servers we are going to test some software we've been writing to prioritise slots for subscribers. Its based on an idea referred to in this thread, thank you for that, one we’ve adapted slightly to work around certain technical timing issues. We’re not exactly sure how it will work in practice, but we feel its worth evaluating and finding out. It’ll work something like this:
Whilst non-subscribers and subscribers can join and play on the server as they want, the last X slots (configurable) on a server will be 'reserved' for subscribers only. We'll be monitoring the number of players on each server, when the number of free slots drops below X, we'll rcon kick the most recently joined non-subscriber from the server and repeat until we have X free slots for subscribers.
The level of information we provide to players, on joining the server and prior to being kicked depends largely on the games themselves, we'll do as much as we can with each game.
Its not an ideal solution, but given the technical constraints inherent in each game, its a start.
Its worth noting also that we'll be keeping a range of subscriber only community/public servers. The advantages such as direct management by our game admins and having a closed, known, paying userbase discouraging cheating are still services we feel are worth offering Subscribers.
Feedback
=======
Feedback on this approach, both the plan and the servers themselves once we get them live appreciated as always.
Clearly the aim of this is twofold, to provide non-subscribers somewhere to sample our servers, and to provide existing subscribers with GAME.NET public servers that will be populated. We're starting with the server name 'GAME.NET Preview - rest of server name' any suggestions on names which might better reflect the 'priority for subscribers' whilst still emphasising a preview for non-subs welcome
I'd like to start by tipping my hat to Shovel and the clarity of his summary - a fine piece of analysis, made more difficult as you didn't have access to details of how the existing platform operates.
Right, onto the details - had we been an open-source project, or a not-for profit organisation/social club then we would have been able to have a fully open debate over the issues involved, but as a Limited company we have to consider commercial issues too, and I have to walk a fine line with sharing useful information with you, our users and our entire technical architecture with our competitors
The first idea raised was christened Barry Bar Lite, the concept being that new games could be given a free trial with simple access to the service without having to initially pay. A solution which achieves these ends, although not quite in the same way you all envisaged has been under development for a month or so now. I don't want to go into the specific details of how it will work, just to say it will achieve what is described in this idea and we intend it to go live within the next month or so.
The second idea was that of a network based device which would dynamically filter inbound connections, with the intelligence to work at the game server level, recognise subs/non subs and be able to allow / disallow access based on various rulesets. To be totally straight with you all, this is pretty much the specification we started from when we began looking at access control to game servers a number of years ago now. We believe it is technically achievable, that some organisations out there do some of it already, but at a disturbingly high cost of time and effort. In comparison our own current access control solution is much more simplistic yet affordable.
That isn't to say we've written off this approach, we are still actively investigating it, and our options for using it, so if any hardcore network engineers want to shove their half-penneth in, feel free to collar our network nerd data@staff.game.net.
In the meantime however we are going to explore another option.
Preview Servers
============
A little later this week we are going to be introducing a limited number of public servers, open to non-subscribers. On these servers we are going to test some software we've been writing to prioritise slots for subscribers. Its based on an idea referred to in this thread, thank you for that, one we’ve adapted slightly to work around certain technical timing issues. We’re not exactly sure how it will work in practice, but we feel its worth evaluating and finding out. It’ll work something like this:
Whilst non-subscribers and subscribers can join and play on the server as they want, the last X slots (configurable) on a server will be 'reserved' for subscribers only. We'll be monitoring the number of players on each server, when the number of free slots drops below X, we'll rcon kick the most recently joined non-subscriber from the server and repeat until we have X free slots for subscribers.
The level of information we provide to players, on joining the server and prior to being kicked depends largely on the games themselves, we'll do as much as we can with each game.
Its not an ideal solution, but given the technical constraints inherent in each game, its a start.
Its worth noting also that we'll be keeping a range of subscriber only community/public servers. The advantages such as direct management by our game admins and having a closed, known, paying userbase discouraging cheating are still services we feel are worth offering Subscribers.
Feedback
=======
Feedback on this approach, both the plan and the servers themselves once we get them live appreciated as always.
Clearly the aim of this is twofold, to provide non-subscribers somewhere to sample our servers, and to provide existing subscribers with GAME.NET public servers that will be populated. We're starting with the server name 'GAME.NET Preview - rest of server name' any suggestions on names which might better reflect the 'priority for subscribers' whilst still emphasising a preview for non-subs welcome
