Carmack: Rage may drop dedicated servers too

I already had very little interest in Rage after the turdstorm that ID have managed to produce the last few years and this little pronouncement just made it drop off my interest radar all together.

"184420 Total Signatures"

That is over a million bucks in sales that they have lost assuming that just 20% of the signers where going to buy before the bad news hit. That's a lot of money for a small company to lose just to cut out a little bit of development time, after all, you guys already invented it before so it's not like you have to reinvent the wheel.

It's not just the poor pings. It's the inability to create and run your own server the way you want it. Most of the servers are currently run by Clans on dedi boxes. A clan who like hardcore mode with no arty, no claymores and gelded helis can do so. By having a dedi box, it can run 24/7 and public players who find they prefer that way of playing will populate it. So, when you fancy a game say at 6.30 pm, you can go on the server and have players there already, or it will fill up within a few minutes.

With IW.net, as far as I understand, you create a 'private' server for you and your 'friends' to play on. All well and good, but it doesn't sound too customisable and how do you build up a large public following? You can't, because it's for friends' which implies you already know them. Therefore, as you lose clan members, which happens, you have no real pool of public players wanting to join as you do now.

You will still have clans playing this, but no where near the volume they have now with COD4. I hope ID will see sense after MW2 release and shun the idea.

http://digs.by/iWG <- A great article by Ars as to why this move is a shite sandwich for PC gamers.

I really can't wrap my head around the logic for this. Fine, add matchmaking. I won't and several others won't use it but at least the PC gamers that supposedly don't like finding their own servers from a list will be happy. But why in the world would you remove a feature that hundreds of thousands of PC gamers enjoy?

[QUOTE=fodder]
With IW.net, as far as I understand, you create a 'private' server for you and your 'friends' to play on. All well and good, but it doesn't sound too customisable and how do you build up a large public following? You can't, because it's for friends' which implies you already know them. Therefore, as you lose clan members, which happens, you have no real pool of public players wanting to join as you do now.
QUOTE]

Actual it works more like xbox live, which is a good thing. no cheating, no special abilities, just clean honest fun.

so get over it, because it would be as bad as the cry babies are making out. a bunch of girls the lot of them

Originally Posted by cjoyce1980

Actual it works more like xbox live, which is a good thing. no cheating, no special abilities, just clean honest fun.

You're joking, right?

"It's a great big sh*t sandwich and we're all gonna have to take a bite."

Meanwhile at valve, Gabe eats another sandwich.

Id tech is overrated, Rage will suck. This guy is irrelevant, has been for years.

Its a right ****er if you think about it.

The options are to put up with it and it will be on every game from here to eternity or not to buy the game in which case even the most pc friendly dev will have pressure put on them by their publisher to not even bother with the pc version since the sales will be low.

We know the sales are generally low because they are missing fundamental points that the consumer requires but the bean counters will chalk it up to piracy or write it off as still being cheaper to not bother with a pc version versus the lost sales.

I just Rage Quit

I couldn't really care. I hadn't even heard of the game until now, although ID may just be blind if they think removing dedicated is a good idea haha.

incredibly disappointed about this. i woulda thought id would be one of those devs that really understood the pc market.

Another sad day for PC Gaming.

What. the. ****. ? Carmack is a tech genius, if anyone could pull off a working, low latency p2p system it would be him. But but but... jesus (carmack is jesus) surely he understands that there is more to the issue than just technology. We NEED dedicated servers so communities can form in a server, so that you know you can go somewhere well moderated and build up relationships with the other players. That's just impossible with matchmaking, you get left with a series of shallow fleeting encounters with strangers. Console players will never understand that as all they know is the shallow experience.

This is the stupidification of gaming in the pursuit of profits from the legions of casual gamers. Core gamers that supported and created these companies are being ass-****ed and left behind. All bow down to your new Wii Fit playing overlords.

Originally Posted by steveo_mcg
We know the sales are generally low because they are missing fundamental points that the consumer requires but the bean counters will chalk it up to piracy or write it off as still being cheaper to not bother with a pc version versus the lost sales.

That's the funny thing though, relative to console gamers PC gamers are low but in the absolute they're not. In fact they've continued to grow over the years. Developers have a much wider audience of PC gamers now then when they did back when PC gaming wasn't looked down upon as a bunch of hackers and pirates. But the money is cretainly in consoles right now.

184,000 of whom.

PC gamers are people too! Not just things :(

Originally Posted by MajorTom
I just Rage Quit

+1 lol

Nothing like a bit of controversy to provide free publicity, hes just trying to get his name attached ot this scandal.

Head scratching this one. On the one hand it sounds totally stupid (like MW2), but on the other I hold Carmack in such high regard I can't believe he'd do something so totally bizarre.

Unless he's planning something rather advanced, like (blue sky thinking time) some sort of virtual server that dissapears when people exit, but maintains a permement IP address that kicks into a new server when anyone else signs on. Otherwise though, it just doesn't make any sense, surely from the guy who invented Deathmatch he can see that?

ID software's multiplayer has been a piece of shitez after Quake 3 Arena. I hope RAGE has co-op though.

guess i'll stick with css and tf2 bit longer then

multiplay should start a petition

**** you, Carmack. **** you.

You might be a coding genius, but betraying the players that paid you is just stupid.

***Carmack said that the idea wasn't definite at this point and that the team at id Software would be watching Modern Warfare 2 carefully to see how well the idea of using listen servers might work***

Given that statement, I think it's a sure thing that he will have dedicated servers because as we all know MW2 is going down like a **** coverd lead baloon and nobody will want to be seen copying anything even close to that mistake.

For all of those raging against Carmack, he created the FPS genre and it was his coding that allowed 1) fps to work at all 2) for them to be playable on the internet 3) He has been the driving force behind every major advance of the fps until valve showed up and now shares being the driving force with them. When someone here accomplishes 1/1000th of what he has in PC Gaming then maybe you can open your mouths (to praise him).

I signed the petition against IW in the dedi scandal, I idnt think it was a good idea. Carmack said he was thinking about it for Rage, not that a final decision has been made.
Now I know that you are all thinking you are the smartest person in the room (and while you sit there with your blanket with sleeves thinking you are the King of your Castle) just chill out and wait.
Trusting someone like Carmack is always a good idea, since he is usually smarter than everyone else in the room (combined).
Maybe FPSs are moving away form the dedi model to something else. Maybe not, all the sky is falling crap and pointless assertions make posters look stupid, not Carmack.
We shall see.

Yours in Trust of Carmack,
Star*Dagger

P.S. Full disclosure, I know him and know him to be not only a God of PC Gaming, but a great person as well.

Originally Posted by feedayeen
That is over a million bucks in sales that they have lost assuming that just 20% of the signers where going to buy before the bad news hit.

Most of the money from an individual sale goes to the shops, not the publishers and developers.

This game is going to sell millions, 180,000 isn't really gonna dent that.

Well, if Rage is up to the same standard as Doom 3, I'll not be losing any sleep over this, especially as it is likely to not be ported to linux like their previous games.

Why alienate the group of users capable of keeping a franchise going for years? Look at EA's multiplayer games outside the Battlefield series. When EA decide to turn the servers off, that's it, game over. Meanwhile, users can host their own BF2 servers and it is still going strong. I've little doubt that people are still buying BF2 from retailers in decent quantities too.

Carmack is more interested in building his rocket to the moon than creating a decent video game these days. Id are so rooted in the past now that I can't get worked up to much about this news. It's probably just a gimmick to get people talking about the game.

actually it depends where you shop from, between 20 and 25% goes to small retailers

Originally Posted by Star*Dagger
For all of those raging against Carmack, he created the FPS genre and it was his coding that allowed 1) fps to work at all 2) for them to be playable on the internet 3) He has been the driving force behind every major advance of the fps until valve showed up and now shares being the driving force with them. When someone here accomplishes 1/1000th of what he has in PC Gaming then maybe you can open your mouths (to praise him).

I signed the petition against IW in the dedi scandal, I idnt think it was a good idea. Carmack said he was thinking about it for Rage, not that a final decision has been made.
Now I know that you are all thinking you are the smartest person in the room (and while you sit there with your blanket with sleeves thinking you are the King of your Castle) just chill out and wait.
Trusting someone like Carmack is always a good idea, since he is usually smarter than everyone else in the room (combined).
Maybe FPSs are moving away form the dedi model to something else. Maybe not, all the sky is falling crap and pointless assertions make posters look stupid, not Carmack.
We shall see.

Yours in Trust of Carmack,
Star*Dagger

P.S. Full disclosure, I know him and know him to be not only a God of PC Gaming, but a great person as well.

^this x100. people are getting mad over something that may not happen. And until MW2 is released then none of us will know how the multiplayer option will work out.

Meh... I remember when Steam first started and everybody wanted to boycott it over spyware & privacy issues, as well as alledged changes to the multiplayer experience. It didn't happen.

See what you ****ing did Infinity Ward, now you have others following your lead... I wasnt excited about this game but now for sure im done.

Pc gamers are being negleted everywhere... as the modding community here at Bit Tech

Hey it's his and his company's game, he can do what he likes. but even thinking out loud that you're going to make the same changes to your comeback game when you're the Doom-Meister was dumb.

Granted Q4 was pirated into Oblivion (though they contributed to that by being lazy about the story and making the MP QIII with better graphics) so they would have reason to protect their product but they need every single sale they can. Put it this way I was considering a 360 depending on the deal this Christmas but Rage isn't a must-buy title by any stretch, I'd catch up with GTA IV first of all.

I'll be 6 feet under before they get me to do all my gaming on consoles.

On a side note...

Why is PC gaming so unreachable for a lot of people, thereby making PC gaming less rewarding financially to devs/pubs? Even though we all love PCs like our lives depend on them, most people are not like us and don't have inquisitive, PC-literate brains.

Blue screens ... illegal operations ... random disappearing windows ... back-to-desktop crashes ... reboots ... 30 second hangs ... upgrades! A massive part of owning a PC is upgrading the buggers - I love it, you love it, Joe Bloggs down the road hasn't got a friggin clue about it, and likely never will.

We can work these errors/bugs/problems out and fix them, or patch them, and stop it happening again, because we know this PC voodoo-magic stuff and we don't let it beat us, or if we cannot fix it then we'll damn well sort it out however we need to to get to the solution. We all know it's just a matter of time, patience, forum posts, maybe tech helpers located anywhere around the world will eventually answer our prayers or we'll answer theirs to find solutions.

Consolers, even though they are limited to their lack of intuitive controls, lack of decent communication devices and general lack of any friendly social communication devices or features, lack of multi-tasking, lack of work-friendly software (ie. Office, etc), have gaming exactly how they need it - spoon fed to them by simple mechanics, simple gameplay, simple controls.

And to sum up, I guess the devs/pubs are favouring them over us because there are more of them, hence the money is with consoles.

Is the 'PC Gaming Alliance' an impotent task force that has done fk'all for PCs and PC owning families? By now we should have a simpler set of rules for PCs that enable people to negate most, if not all of the errors and problems associated with hardware conficts and upgrading. But instead we are now at a stage where we get daily news stories of PC games being ports from consoles, or lack of dedicated servers ... who would have thought 1 year ago, that companies would be making PC MP games minus dedicated servers?

A quote from: www.pcgamingalliance.org

According to the 2008 PCGA Horizons report, PC gaming software revenue was a $12.7 billion industry in 2008, up $1.9 billion or nearly 18% from 2007

Whilst I disagree with the removal of dedicated servers, IW are trying something new. If it falls flat on it's arse then they may release a patch to bring dedicated servers back. I really can't see other companies going the IW way if it fails. Why would they do something that they know is going to fail?

If it fails and they still stick to the p2p system then they're idiots and will not sell many games in the future. This will cause PC gaming to slow and probably fail altogether.

However, if it's successful and we've all been whining for no reason then all should remain good. Not sure about clans because I've never been in one.

So it's best to see how it goes and then complain because until then, IW will not listen to any of us.

If Rage drop dedicated servers they may as well just piss off and not bother developing for the PC.