Logical Discussion on Server Rentals

Battlefield 1 Rental Servers
21

@Striterax

I work for a company who does software development, I am sure you can look me up if you so choose to, and I have some experience here. In most companies, there are several requirements before posting a live patch.

  1. There has to be a need; bug fix, feature addition, etc…
  2. It has to go through QA for testing and approval.
  3. Someone in authority must approve; VP or Director of Engineering, VP or Director of Product Management, etc…

May I ask what major needed change took place that cannot be rolled back until the full system is in place? If I were losing revenue through refunds due to an unnecessary change, I would order it to be rolled back immediately. After all, businesses exist because customers can use the product to a minimum standard.

Raymond Tayse

22

@Striterax

Thank you for explaining what the actual bug fix was. I fully understand that the QM system putting people into custom servers is a real issue. Whether or not this issue is higher priority than the issue we currently have is to be discussed between your team and the product management team. I obviously have my opinion, but I know it has little sway in a corporate environment such as yours. I hope this issue is addressed soon; as it stands, our platoon bylaws requires a vote to spend platoon donation money. At this time, we have to wait and see what happens as no one is going to vote yes on a new server under the current circumstance. We have a lot of members who have a 4 day weekend that are very upset we cannot play on what we purchased.

I truly believe, you can see my post history, that you are doing the best you can to rectify the situation. I know the procedures for software development, and how often the developers take heat for decisions above their heads. Thank you very much for your honest responses to this issue. I honestly think a rollback is a far better solution given a very large portion of your customers are on holiday weekend. I would not risk any patches until Monday as every patch creates another unintended issue (just the life of software development).

-lindsay [Girl-In-Pigtails]
[ELDR] Elder Gamers
http://www.eldergamers.org

23

Hi Raymond!

That is of couse common sense, it is also common sense to use data to power your decisions, working with software development im sure you know this already.

Taking this into account you can probably figure out the logic behind the decision-making process.

Alex

24

Sadly Striterax, all your efforts are after the fact? The QM system worked fine for Vanilla servers up until yesterday? There was server maintenance, and now QM only services DICE servers? I hope you get it right “soon”..

25

Solve this asap please… Rsp servers having the same official settings Should get normal matchmaking traffic!!
And then saying you cant fix it until weeks of approval is simply not acceptable!

26

@Striterax

I absolutely understand the logic behind the decision-making process. If we are using data to power our decisions, may I ask how many refunds were issued due to the bug that was fixed? I have not even heard of this being an issue by the player base on this forum at all. I am sure you can ask how many refunds have happened in the last 12 hours or so due to this change. I cannot see the metrics, as I have no visibility, but I know that you could not purchase a server in the US for the last 3 days because they were sold out; right now, every region has available servers to rent. This may be an issue of causation without proper correlation, but I absolutely know of 3 groups who have canceled today alone.

It seems to me, from an executive standpoint, a rollback while you address the other issue properly would cause less revenue loss than leaving it as is with the promise of fixing it. We all know what happens with patches (this one is a prime example), unintended problems arise when you apply them. When a revenue impacting consequence happens, the most logical conclusion is to revert.

Yes, I am versed in these decision making processes. I am not saying I am 100% right and you are 100% wrong here, there are many factors in which I do not have visibility. I am saying that given the information you provided, and the obvious information that can be gathered by an outsider, I believe I have a higher probability of having a successful outcome over a holiday weekend.

Raymond Tayse

27

You have to remember they promised a roll out in November and that is what we got. There were no promises what functions would be available upon release.

It is sad to see that a game we truly love doesn’t have the ability to moderate yet. I know in my job, if I did not meet a deadline, in this case the release of a moderated RSP, heads would roll, meaning unhappy customers. I was brought into 1942 by a friend who was in a clan and have never played on an EA server since.

EA got my money because I was hoping the release was just a function of management, I was wrong. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!!

As of yesterday, we have moved back to BF4 and how refreshing it was to play on modded servers again.

Here’s hoping to play again in 2017 on a fully admin controlled server!!!

28

When i do a job and the customers are not satisfied, because not ONE customer here is satisfied with you guys removing our QM, then i do a rollback!
You are loosing customers, do something positive!

29

Here’s an easyish fix. If the Quick Match is just for “Official” servers. How about just remove them from the Server Browser? Just put the RSP in the browser. Then add your second quick match feature for RSP servers. And then you can change the amount of servers it displays from 50 to 250 for example.

30

And I as well work for a software company. If the demand for a fix is there, we issue a fix, period. If we find that a fix we implemented is causing problems we roll back that fix. We don’t punish our customer base because of a bug in the code base. We fix it and roll the fix out ASAP if it’s causing the company to lose money.

Because at the end of the day, if the customer isn’t happy and isn’t spending money then I don’t have a job. Simple as that.

31

Good discussion, OP and @Striterax

My questions would be in regards to this quote.

“Custom Games and RSP servers are supposed to have their own matchmaking options. Not to be confused with the regular quickmatch options.”

Ideally I think that the servers should run so that custom games can still get matchmaking, but will these separate matchmaking systems still allow for Vanilla RSP servers to be amongst the Quickmatch traffic?

It sounds as though you are saying that all RSP will be separate from quickmatch, which will be problematic for traffic since most people are simply going to use the ‘regular quickmatch options’. The people who use quickmatch (would be nice to have a percentage on this) probably are not interested in adjusting any settings to search - this is why they use quickmatch in the first place. So it is unlikely that much traffic is going to come from ‘Custom Quickmatch’.

Would a tiered system not be best? As in Vanilla RSP, Ranked RSP, and Custom RSP?

If Vanilla RSP were connected to the main quickmatch system it would only allow map rotation changes, but still have the kick/ban option. To offset any problems here with players being kicked there would have to be some sort of feedback system to give reviews to servers. And any servers that kicked too much may need to become ranked for a short period.

Ranked RSP would simply add changes to tickets, and perhaps minor changes to weapon, gadget, or class counts.

Custom RSP would allow for a variety of changes, up to a zombie mode.

Implementing some sort of review system could be very helpful for everyone. If Quickmatch brought up a few options in the search it may look something like this:

  • A Join Game box
  • a list of five Official DICE and RSP servers. (This would look much like the server browser.)
  • a box ‘advertisement’ for a server with good reviews (this would look much like the Homescreen options)
  • another box asking the player, ‘Want to try a Popular Custom Game?’ which would also connect them to a server with good reviews

Now, of course the whole point of Quickmatch is to find a game as quickly as possible, so this would have to be implemented in a way that is still smooth for the player. After clicking on Conquest, for example, it could just say, ‘Searching in your area’. And then the Join Game box would appear with all the other options beneath it. Otherwise it could just be beneath all of the modes in Quickmatch, but in any case it seems that more options will have to be added to the Quickmatch list if there is to be RSP matchmaking.

I’m sure most of this is obvious to you, but I just thought I’d share how I think the system would best work. The main menu is a really nice setup for the game, and this could be used in a way that benefits all of us RSP admins, the players, and you guys as well. And a review system could be a compromise between restricting traffic to custom servers and the badmins problem ruining the experience for some players.

Thanks for taking the time to respond here.

32

Vanilla RSP’s should get standard Quick Match for now. Why would this be omitted at this point? No need to jump the gun before there are any admin controls. All it does is remove player population from them.

With no advertising ability, no ability to see what server you are on (to potentially favorite), and no clan tags to show the group you are playing with… How exactly are people to know, or care about your server?

33

You are looking in potential fix ? it can take some time? ============> ROLLBACK!!!

34

Thats not good, the majority of people will just use the QM option in the beginning of the menu.. we need to get back the original QM and stop descriminating the OFFICIAL RSP servers where we pay for with the official DICE servers.

35

What platform do you play on? This is another thing that bugs me. If you are only using Official Settings exactly like the DICE servers why do you need to rent one? Just play on the DICE servers. On PC there are 40 Official servers in rotation on BF4. Compared to 200+ - so many that I stopped scrolling. Do you know why? Because the entire PC community prefers to play on community servers - Official and QM are the MINORITY.

36

I play on PC

And yes we also have a BF4 server and like to make use from official mode from time to time to boost the server, to get people marking the server as their favourites…
At this moment official seems the best way, we cant kick or ban anyway…
So we need the official mode, maybe later not.. but we like to have the choice on our own!
Our 3 years old BF4 server is now outperforming the new Battlefield 1 server, it should be the other way around!

37

@Braddock512
@Striterax
@TheBikingViking

It would be interesting to see how many cancellations have happened over the Holiday Weekend. I personally do not know of a group who has kept their server. I am sure there are a few out there; I am just saying I do not personally know them. Just to be very clear here; this could have been avoided with a simple revert of the patch that was applied on 00:01 November 24, 2016. Instead, a problem that very few (other than a YouTuber that I could even find) had issue with the bug that was fixed.

I honestly and truly hope they start listening to the actual customer base and not the vocal minority. I am sorry to be the one to say this, but if you are not aware the YouTubers have subscribers because they are good at their jobs. That job is to entertain and provide a means of information in games that are poorly documented. They, however, do not actually represent the opinion of the vast majority of the player base. You do not have to take my word for it, just read the comments section of their videos; even their own subscribers call BS on a lot of the changes they scream for. In this particular case, I think the money trail proves my point.

Raymond Tayse
[ELDR] Elder Gamers
http://www.eldergamers.org

38

@Braddock512
@Striterax
@TheBikingViking

One more point I would like to make here. You were able to get away with very minimal feedback and community information before the release because the game itself (which is absolutely fantastic as far as I am concerned) had so much hype. Now that people own the game and have the ability to refund their server rentals, you are seeing first hand what a lack of community information does to the bottom line. I really hope you guys start using the official forums to disseminate information when these types of issues arise in the future. I know it was a holiday weekend for you @Braddock512 as you are in the United States, but someone at EA (being a global company) was working and could have eased the community with a few posts.

Raymond Tayse
[ELDR] Elder Gamers
http://www.eldergamers.org

39

@Striterax
@Braddock512

What are the next features to be rolled out?

40

10 Days now and no rollback or fix to the problem…

This is an excellent way to treat your customers. You had one person, JackFrags, complain about the QM matchmaking and you ruin it for everyone. Now everyone with a server complains and you ignore them. Great job mate!

Ray