Server requirements and performance discussion

[Kroenen 6]

I've been looking at supporting the DayZ community by paying for a server, and have shopped around looking for good service/good price. Having organised servers for other games in the past the one thing I notice with DayZ is that the requirements are so high that the cost is prohibitively expensive here in the yUK (home of taxation!).

Having tried out DayZ mod for quite some time (I started during the bean wars period of 1.7.1), and been around quite a few servers I have come to the conclusion that the rather strict rules for hosting are not achieving their intended goal...ie:"ensure a good gaming experience for everyone". Most of the servers with low pings, decent locality, hosted by reputable companies still suffer from really bad loading times, desync issues, random restarts, lag spikes etc etc making playing with friends a painful experience due to the constant rubber banding/warping etc.

So I figured I'd open this thread for discussion, not for flaming to see what the community and DayZ team feel about the current situation. There are however a few points I feel are worth bringing into the discussion.

1 - Server performance vs cost - Whilst Rocket and the team are hard at work constantly optimising performance (I heard Dean mention moving to 100-200 slots being the target), this would be around a £200 per month bill for a server due to the high requirements and strict rules enforced by DayZ. Thats a lot of money even for most clans.

2 - Server admins do it for the love - Let's face it...aside from the servers that the DayZ team have arranged hosting, this mod wouldn't be nearly as successful as it is without the hundreds thousands of servers being hosted by the community to support the mod. And for this they get....NOTHING. At present if I were to host a 200 slot server which was full, I am not even allowed to create room for myself to play on my own server that I pay a substantial amount of money for. I think the DayZ team seriously need to rethink whether allowing a 'reserved slot' system is an appropriate 'thank you' to the guys out there providing the servers that are making this game as popular as it is.

3 - Server logging - Obviously admins have a lot to contend with, especially when dealing with unscrupulous hackers ruining the experience for everyone, yet they have no tools to help them really. Where Battleye fails and hackers get through, I have read threads where server owners have no option but to shut their server down for 5 mins and hope the hacker moves on.

As I said before, this isn't intended as a flame war or 'this sucks, fix it or the kitten gets it!' thread, I'm genuinely interested in opening a discussion for existing server owners, potential server admins, the DayZ team to look at the existing problems and look at ways to improve moving forwards.

Thanks for reading!

K

PS: If you made it this far, the beans are on me!

Edited July 25, 2012 by Kroenen

[Hakultair 114]

Complete agree with everything you said. I must admit that I don't always go 100% by the rules myself when it comes down to banning hackers. If I'm sure about anyone on my server hacking or abusing exploits exessively they can expect the banhammer, idc that it's technically against regulation. It's the only way to deal with this at all if you ask me. ;x

This has only happened twice so far, but still.

Edited July 25, 2012 by Hakultair

[jskibo 143]

#2 should read "Thousands of servers hosted by the community"

[Hakultair 114]

IT's kinda funny, when I got my server there were like 350 servers, that was about a month ago. Last time a checked, last week, there were almost 2000 servers. Games gotten popular man. ;P

[Kroenen 6]

#2 should read "Thousands of servers hosted by the community"

Fixed. Just checked DayZCommander and sure enough....2276 servers!

K

[ebianbluefox 29]

2 - Server admins do it for the love - Let's face it...aside from the servers that the DayZ team have arranged hosting, this mod wouldn't be nearly as successful as it is without the hundreds thousands of servers being hosted by the community to support the mod. And for this they get....NOTHING. At present if I were to host a 200 slot server which was full, I am not even allowed to create room for myself to play on my own server that I pay a substantial amount of money for. I think the DayZ team seriously need to rethink whether allowing a 'reserved slot' system is an appropriate 'thank you' to the guys out there providing the servers that are making this game as popular as it is.

Rocket has said they are eventually gonna work a way to save some slots for yourself. It's just not in ARMA 2 by default and frankley there are alot more pressing issues to be delt with.

Edited July 25, 2012 by ebianbluefox

[jskibo 143]

Fixed. Just checked DayZCommander and sure enough....2276 servers!

K

hmmm,

2276 X $35 (cheapest, likely more) = $79,660 minimum a month being dumped out to support the mod!

Impressive! In a few more months we can bail out Greece and save the world economy :)

[Venzire 76]

If I get info and proof of any hacker I usually grab their GUID and IP then ban them. As for everyone legs breaking or everyone dying to a hacker I'll shutdown the server instantly and hope HIVE didn't read/write it correctly so we keep our hard earner gear and keep it down for 15 minutes. I'd get mad if my cost raised from $ 25 for a 40 slot server to a $ 150 server with 100 to 200 slot server. As for server logging, it's not enough we do need more than just the logs to catch a hacker.

[Kroenen 6]

Whenever I hear 'Hive', I can't help but think of the Umbrella Corporation :P

K

[U.B.C.S. Ravin 326]

Whenever I hear 'Hive', I can't help but think of the Umbrella Corporation :P

K

You called, Sir?

[Kroenen 6]

EEP! :huh:

K

[U.B.C.S. Ravin 326]

I can assure you. DayZ having a central computer system that controls everything and everyone is completely speculation and just a conspiracy theory. It is unrelated to the Umbrella Corporation.

[GuyNaruto 3]

lol 100-200 are they crazy?

what is that guy thinking