Disconnects...???

From what I gathered from the last web-interview I watched, there will be instances that will take place on the client (as a server) when you play with others.

However I'm concerned that in PvP there might be an opportunity for a player to find a way to cheat the system, and possibly be a development obstacle to over come.

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For example I played the UFC games on the Playstation Network. However the fight actually takes place on the playstation that "Hosts" the combat. Nevertheless, If either person disconnected before the session ended no credit for a win was given. They never resolved this adequately either.

Furthermore, I'm concerned there is a possibility in an online scenerio for something worse to happen such as a black hole event, or other hangups that may cause that character to be "stuck" if the "host" were to disconnect or vice versa. There is no telling. This also happened on the PS3 scenario above (rarely), but I could just restart my PS3, but what if a game server had a hiccup because of this event???

So I don't know how that would be handled from a coding perspective, but it would be nice to actually be able to loot if you legitimately win, but also if somebody legitimately disconnects it wouldn't be so nice to kill Him. Although there is also the possibility that the host or lag, or the player deliberately disconnects so there is no penalty.
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sorry for the long post but I hope that might be helpful for the Dev Team to examine in case my concern is relevant.

 

As far as getting killed for an inadvertent disconnect, presuming SotA servers are adequate and we don't get a SimCity catastrophic server shortfall, it should be rare. If you have a twitchy connection, maybe PvP is not for you. The bigger problem from my perspective as an Anti-PK is letting murderers have an easy escape hatch by disconnecting, and thus avoiding justice. That would be bad, so I vote for at least a 30 second delay before your character leaves the world upon disconnect.

PvP entails risk. Lost connections are part of that risk.

 

@Owain are you part of the Dev Team? I am aware of connection issues that can happen, and life is life.

However what I am referring to isn't about the normal disconnects... It is possible NEW exploits and bugs that may need to be ironed out since nobody has ever attempted this type of Online experience. Make sense?

 

Not part of the Dev team, but I've played multiple MMOs in the last 15 years, so it's not like this is a new technology. If problems arise, I'm sure they will be addressed. I'll not lose sleep over a problem that does not yet exist.

 

Since there is talk about having your friends be npc companions when they are offline, then surely any disconnects could be replaced by that character as an npc. That way you could still kill them, or them kill you.

Also, they say this will be peer to peer so its possible to just trade off the host responsibilities should the host disconnect. This is all possible to handle gracefully depending on how much data is shared between peers. Most of the map and world data could come from LB's servers and your local game files, so only the character data should need to be passed between the peers.

From what they said so far, this is doable in a way that would have the least amount of exploits from disconnections, and I believe they said they have mostly been working on the tech up til now. I am really excited to see what they have to say. This should really be different than the multiplayer experiences we have today.

 

I hope so. Either way I figured I'd mention my concerns in case it hasn't come up yet. It sounded to me that it would be hosted on only one of the two player computers, not both, and at the same time check in with the main game server. That was my understanding.

Seems to me any foreign server (in this case personal computers) are involved it increased the complexity and possibility of happenings out of the control of the administrators. This is why I mentioned it.

I'm still not sure how they are doing this, but it sounds a complex and delicate process. I'm interested in a positive outcome and fare game play.

 

Thanks Umbrae! Excellent summation of the tech.