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id's Rage Unlikely to Use Dedicated Servers
by Chris Faylor, Nov 06, 2009 1:00pm PSTWhile id is still deciding exactly what the multiplayer component of Rage will entail, the studio has said that the shooter is unlikely to support dedicated servers on PC.
"It's not cast in stone yet, but at this point no, we don't think we will have dedicated servers," id technical director John Carmack told Variety's The Cut Scene before noting "things are cooking along well" for the PC, Mac, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 title.
Infinity Ward recently revealed that its anticipated shooter Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 would not support dedicated servers, a decision met with vocal opposition.
"The great thing is we won't have to be a pioneer on that," explained Carmack. "We'll see how it works out for everyone else." An online petition opposing Infinty Ward's decision has surpassed 185,000 signatures, with the studio arguing that the new matchmaking system will provide more players with a better experience.
Lower player count, worse latency and the fate of mod support are among the various topics that have fans up in arms over Modern Warfare 2's lack of dedicated servers.
And while id has yet to say much on the topic of Rage's multiplayer component other than admitting it's a work-in-progress, CEO Todd Hollenhead recently suggested that the traditional inclusion of mod support was likely, but represented "something we may [have] to sit down and have a discussion with [id owner] ZeniMax about."
Thanks to everyone that sent this in.
Comments
the people this generally doesn't effect are those who only plan to focus on the SP aspect of the game. which is fine, you're entitled to not be affected by the poor choices developers are starting to make more and more.
what it takes away from is the ability to make custom maps among other things, but primarily that. a game's longevity is highly dependent on the flexibility given to the players. if there is none, there is going to be a large amount of people who will pass on the game solely based on no dedicated servers.
customization (steve meyers found this out) gives the players limitless attention span in a highly ADD influenced community. there are many players (myself included) who never even touch the SP version of any given FPS. the only reason our hands touch the game is for MP.
dedicated servers give a sense of community for the game as well, where you can host a server and have regulars, clans developing or homes for existing clans to mess around on between matches, fast download servers for custom maps, gravity adjustment, among many other things already mentioned.
just very hard for me to take in as a consumer for a business model that has always been driven by the purchasers, rather than the businesses pumping out products, to feed the cows. if statements and voices go unheard, it is a direct representation of the game developers themselves killing PC as a platform when it comes to game sales rather than piracy or the fact that "everyone is moving to consoles". this is entirely not the case, there are many other reasons why FPS players will stick with PC besides keyboard + mouse...and the developers are doing away with the advantages. and the denial of that by the developers is what hurts PC sales more than piracy. there are very few games you can actually pirate and get to work in multiplayer mode. multiplayer is purely what drives high PC game sales. stop shooting yourselves in the foot, especiially disheartening to see this happening from id, probably the most fun MP games to date and most modded. there are hours of advertising and entertainment just from quake acrobatics alone which is undoable in a non-dedicated server environment.
I am don't worry about this.
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This is not a big issue, according to me.
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This is not going to affect my purchase decision for either game, nor my opinion of the developers.
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I'm sure the engine it self still supports dedicated servers so if someone actually uses it to make a real PC MP game, it will have deddys.
When you realize that cod 4 got pirated over a million times (go look up the tweake guide article on piracy), we are fortunate that developers still develop for the PC. Adding dedicated servers takes time/money and when you consider the enormous financial downside for the PC, I wouldn't be surprised if they just came to the conclusion that it isn't worth it.
Console games don't have dedicated servers and lag is rarely an issue. Consoles are proof that the PC can change for the better (no, I don't mean we should start putting "press y to change weapon" messages in PC games.) Whether you want it or not, the PC is changing. You can go thank pirates next time you call piracy "freedom of information" or blame the "greedy" corporations for wanting people to actually pay for what they own.
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NEWS FLASH, PC Developers conduct survey which proves without a doubt that PC gamers no longer want to use a keyboard and mouse as their control device, we have also removed the hassle of picking the graphics resolution and now have the games hard coded to 1024x768, PC Gamers will be happy to know that we are no longer putting effort into the "alt-tab" feature so they can no longer browse the internet or multitask while playing our games.............
As someone who is very passionate about PC gaming this trend sucks SO BAD. and I can just see this kind of crap happening. I think these developers/publishers are being taken over by politicians.
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On another note, could we just drop this drama already? If the return on investment in PC development is these days is really in such a woeful state, that the devs can't be bothered to even make sure we get a non-accelerated and non-smoothed raw mouse input (not talking about about Rage, but in more general terms... e.g. Borderlands or OFDR... and many others) on the game, why do they even bother at all? Just drop it. Leave the PC for good.
They disservice themselves and the entire platform by releasing games for group of people who have no respect for their development decisions, and no desire to cough up the cash for piss poor ports. Anyone who wants to play a console game, is better off doing it on consoles, than get an emulated experience on the PC.
Just don't forget to send the memo to nVidia and AMD, so they wouldn't continue releasing more and more powerful, and yet completely redundant hardware for which nobody has any real world need for. I'm sure nvidia can stay afloat for their next gen console chip R&D cost with laptops and CUDA cards... right?
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I think Carmack is having a good laugh right now.
I'm not losing sleep over the removal of this feature, hating multiplayer in general, but it does make me feel uneasy how, little by little, developers/producers chiseled away a lot of the things PC gamers actually enjoy.
Now, remove dedicated servers from Quake 5 and we may have some riots. As of now, this is a non-issue.
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Infinity Ward is either just being stupid and they actually believe local hosting is enough for their game, or they're just porting their console game to PC and can't be bothered with additional features.
As for RAGE, I didn't even know it had multiplayer, and honestly who cares? It looks like a single player game at best, and just a new engine at worst (from gaming perspective).
I think it'll be like Crysis, a "game" built around the engine to show it off, nothing more. It's not going to take you away from TF2 that's for sure.
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As far as I'm aware Borderlands is peer to peer (Correct me if I'm wrong, I know I've only played that way so far) and thats fine.
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I thought it was hilarious so many people were whining about no dedicated servers for Modern Warfare 2 without even having a chance to try it.
Still, there really isn't any reason NOT to have Dedi's on the PC version.
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How dull !...lol.
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of course, this has more ramifications in the PC world than just software, but i don't want to get ahead of myself. it's a shame that this trend is continuing to get bigger.
mark my words, if all gamers convert to consoles, the piracy rate will be much much higher than it is on PC. it's incredibly easier to steal games on consoles as there's no need to worry about stupid DRM, viruses, trojans, etc.. just mod your console and pop in the burned media.
can't wait to see where this trend goes. hopefully, the devs will realize how much they are shooting themselves in the foot.
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‹^› ‹(•¿•)› ‹^›
If I ever play this game it'll be from a bargain bin at a low low price.
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Either way, my only concern are lag issues. Other than that, I really don't care.
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PC gaming is dead. blah blah blah.
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Still, I suspect part of the issue here is ZeniMax. For anyone who has been following the spate of interviews JC has been giving over the release of Doom Classic for the iPhone, it's obvious that ZeniMax isn't quite sold on releasing source for old games. Understandable, somewhat, since this is new and foreign to them. Given time, and Mr. Carmack's gentle cajoling, and I expect for them to turn around.
That all said, I expect to see the dedicated server be released some months after sales have slumped.
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