kingpotato
Ask me about my Stream Deck
Over the weekend I had three multiplayer experiences which gave me pause to consider the state of multiplayer gaming today: Elden Ring, Space Marine, and Splendor.
Space Marine, though originally released in 2011 still has a small but fun community of players online. I'm sure this is bolstered by the upcoming sequel, but I periodically play even before it was announced and never had too much trouble getting into at least a basic match. This is thanks entirely to the peer to peer multiplayer design. Had this game been designed for a dedicated server, they would have been shut down long ago and the experience would be totally lost today.
Splendor, one of my favorite casual board games, was the opposite. The online servers had been taken down recently without warning, leaving players with a hollow experience. I have 70 hours logged on steam and undoubtedly that time was all spent in online matches. The developers responded to an individual on the discussion boards with a short message saying they didn't want to keep up the servers any longer despite there always being a small group of people playing.
Elden Ring was fine as expected, but what happens 15 years from now when they eventually take down the servers? We've seen it with Demon's Souls PS3. Dedicated fans will stand up a server, but in general the experience will be largely lost.
Internet speeds have vastly improved between players yet we still see plenty of games with dedicated servers being the only online option. I know of the negatives with p2p of course. Increased lag between players, mid game host migration, security/cheating, networking issues, unbalanced competition, etc, but at least you can still play it.
Space Marine, though originally released in 2011 still has a small but fun community of players online. I'm sure this is bolstered by the upcoming sequel, but I periodically play even before it was announced and never had too much trouble getting into at least a basic match. This is thanks entirely to the peer to peer multiplayer design. Had this game been designed for a dedicated server, they would have been shut down long ago and the experience would be totally lost today.
Splendor, one of my favorite casual board games, was the opposite. The online servers had been taken down recently without warning, leaving players with a hollow experience. I have 70 hours logged on steam and undoubtedly that time was all spent in online matches. The developers responded to an individual on the discussion boards with a short message saying they didn't want to keep up the servers any longer despite there always being a small group of people playing.
Elden Ring was fine as expected, but what happens 15 years from now when they eventually take down the servers? We've seen it with Demon's Souls PS3. Dedicated fans will stand up a server, but in general the experience will be largely lost.
Internet speeds have vastly improved between players yet we still see plenty of games with dedicated servers being the only online option. I know of the negatives with p2p of course. Increased lag between players, mid game host migration, security/cheating, networking issues, unbalanced competition, etc, but at least you can still play it.
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