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In all likelihood, they already have some sort of autoscaling set up to allocate enough servers for the number of game instances they're running at any given time. That way they can pay for only about as much as they use, plus some headroom for changes.
The issue has to be with the rules that govern when splits and merges between game instances happen which no, you can't just slap more money on to fix. It'll take some thinking.
For those playing with friends on a high ping internet connection this type of design can be super frustrating because you will be broken up from your friend's party constantly and there's no guarantee that you will meet up again when you regain connection to the server.
So what the OP said there is true, this game do have "serving" issues, but that's not 100% based on bad servers, due to there are also chances that their internet provider can't provide a good ping to the OP's region and the OP's internet provider can't provide a good ping to LA as well (it's a problem from both sides). That's why other Online MMO needs to prepare regional servers to avoid such issues. TGC currently don't, and might not have the money to do so.
A small background history might helps here. TGC is founded inside the SONY building in LA, due to Jenova Chen, the founder of TGC has been given a chance to work for SONY with a contract to make 3 games for PlayStation and is given an office in the SONY building which started ThatGameCompany, back when Jenova's still a student in University of Southern California and made an award winning game named "Flow". Flow is later remade for PS, Flower and Journey too... so they've fulfilled their contract by then. They moved out of SONY building and started their own studio after that... So we can consider Sky a fresh start for them without SONY pulling the strings (much). Jenova aimed to make "small games" so SKY didn't aimed for huge population from the start, so they didn't really prepare a server system strong enough to back up the growing population they are facing now with Steam's beta release.
So yes, the OP's complain is valid, upgrading the serving system will certainly remedied a lot of problems this game have that are being called "bug" by players who are facing ping problems. Sitting down doesn't do anything (it actually does, but need to wait for 30± secs during ping lag), NPC/Players teleport around in weird ways (this is also the typical phenomenon we often see in online game during lag), plant won't burn or mechanism won't start after lighting up (all these are caused by heavy lag as well).
If the dev is ambitious enough to want a world wide players, they really need to start working on regional servers to avoid lag issues in their game. But it's not that "easy" as putting more money into it, first off, there needs to be enough "money" to start with, and regional server require more than just money to settle, they will need to rent offices in other countries to place those servers, and that will also require staffs to look after those servers... etc etc. It's not easy, but it IS the solution to the game's problem. Currently, TGC do not have the staffs nor the mental to take the risk comes with such expansion imo... but it's an issue they will need to fix sooner or later before the game's reputation gone bad enough that only local players near their server can enjoy (like a lot of "small" MMO games we've seen).
iOS has their main attention due to it's the 1st platform the game is released on. So the game's base engine is based off that platform. (Yes, unlike Flow, Flower and Journey which are made for PlayStation in mind, Sky is first made for iOS)
That's also why the game has this weird requirement that prioritize the ARM processors on higher bits calculation, and when most games doesn't require AVX2 on PC, it does.
I've seen game devs who prioritize "local players" in some small population based MMOG, and they totally ignores that fact that there are tons of "potential" customers that wanted to play their game but can't enjoy it due to lag and latency problem. These devs simply focus on the low risk investment and didn't want to expand their business into the high risk high profit zone and are contended with the low risk low profit zone they are in... Can't say it's bad though, some of these games lasted over a decade so their ways can't be proven wrong. It all boils down to how ambitious the game devs are and how many staffs the game company needs to feed.
Oh, btw... TGC do have fund raising before they left SONY... they raised 5.5million back then which went into the production of Sky CotL.
For small ambitious game dev... probably start doing region block on regions that doesn't payback much based on reports after the game runs for a bit and can generate regional income reports... eg... like you said, the pricing might be too much for some regions, and if these region has bad buying power, we can just region block them to save resources for the game server, if these regions have bad pings, it solved more problems than just server resources imo.
For big ambition game dev... well... regional servers is the only way to go. And this scale up with the ambition of how many regions the game wanted to reach. Smaller games often only aimed for US/EU servers, but nowaday trends made Chinese server a must have for profit. Recent Steam's report, Chinese language users is now more than English language users on Steam's own platform ( https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam ). Back in the past it's not worth the trouble for that market due to the troublesome Chinese gov and their laws, but now, with such high users, it's a chance hard to miss out for entrepreneur. So since a lot of game company will be having a Chinese server nowadays, why not take down the asian market too with SEA servers? Well again, there's those regional laws and rules need to be taken care off as well as regional ratings.
Not really, no. That part takes just money. TGC uses Amazon Web Services for Sky's servers[aws.amazon.com], and it has a pretty good regional coverage[aws.amazon.com]. Creating a server in any of the given regions is just a configuration setting. AWS handles security, maintenance and replacements by itself.
It already exists and is run as a separate game[sky-children-of-the-light.fandom.com] that the rest of the world cannot interact with. Because indeed, the laws in China are so strict that prominent studios just hand their games off to Chinese publishers (such as NetEase in this case).
I'd emphasize it's this design, not type of design; because there is a relatively easy fix to that problem that already exists in numerous MMOs: on disconnection keep a server slot reserved for the player. That way if they reconnect within a few seconds, which is the case most of the time even on bad connections where latency can be up to a few seconds, they can still end up where they were.
But there's more to it. Some countries, including mine, have policies that restrict access to certain internet resources, normally by IPv4 (colloquially just IP) addresses. And because IPv4 addresses are in short supply (there aren't that many for the whole world), they're often reused. So getting a new IPv4 address that happens to be banned in some countries is not a rare phenomenon. The way it looks for a group of players is that after a merge a certain player disappears, and only rejoins some unspecified time later (in actuality, once a group moves to another server they can reach, but Sky doesn't give much of an indication when that happens). That can actually be fixed on the player's side, connecting through a different country using virtual networks. But it requires a time investment, it makes the connection slower and in some countries might even be illegal.
And I'm not sure if developers intend it that way, a massive part of the appeal of this game for me is its global scale, the ability to encounter strangers from the other side of the globe, having people from several different countries sitting at one table. Splitting the servers up into disconnected regional clusters is going to ruin it. They seem to have done it for China because they had no choice, but in most other countries they do. (And even then, some crafty Chinese players find ways to play on global servers anyway; I've met a few.)
Cloud servers are cost efficient solutions for devs. But not a good solution to overcome latency problem in compare with real physical regional servers. And in the end, it still depends on the base locations of the host + the middleman AWS + the end users location. You can view it similar to VPN, and operates about the same similar advantages and disadvantages when it comes to latency, so it could be better or worse depending on the locations. And to top that off, AWS do not have full global coverage currently ( https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/ ), so it's not a replacement solution for regional servers. Plus, AWS are well known for their constant slow connections even on the highest pay rate. And if you understand how Cloud services works, especially one that tried to use a 3rd party device for processing power as the design goes, there's no guarantee that 3rd party source is always available 24/7, and the randomness of that design might land you on a good or bad device totally depending on your luck.
To put it short, in the end, the physical distance is still LA to your home. Unless the game have multiple regional servers that connects to AWS to handle regional needs (or pay Amazon for such services), which, is no difference than having regular regional servers other than the processing method. But like i said, AWS current coverage fail to compete with real physical regional servers that the devs get to choose where to place.
Well, Jenova Chen's is an ambitious guy i can tell you that. Even though he said he doesn't want to make AAA type action blockbuster games, he still aimed to put Sky on as many platforms as he can manage. Which makes it a huge challenge itself.
But like it or not, no matter how advanced the current technology goes, there's that physical barrier and distance barrier that one need to face when it comes to making a good game with smooth connections.
We can no doubt create a game that let everyone in the world connect to the same instance, it's been done since there's internet, back then there's no "instances" to separate the players, we can have up to hundreds to thousands of players in the same room (pretty exciting by itself), and that's from the age where dial-up internet used to be a thing and game servers needs super internet model (back then it's T1) to support the load, lol... So Sky isn't the 1st who try to do this, but it will still face the same problems like those who came before Sky. They are not using a newer approach, but actually used an old approach that newer devs ditched from the past, and remodeled it to fit the modern needs. And just like nature's selection, and how time proves something to be better than another, wheels do not reinvent itself in other shapes when it's not needed to. There's a reason why top rated online games went with the regional serving system, and peer to peer design which further lessen the burden of the servers are being preferred over the old school server based designs, of course, local processing opens up for cheating and that require anti-cheat measurements, but even hiring a 3rd party AC security system is less costy than a full fledged server based design. Well, that's the server cost part, but latency... that's a different monster most Online game devs need to face... And for p2p to shine, Ping and Latency becomes important and regional servers started to become a trend as it solves the latency problem... provided that the game is separated into regional versions that didn't mix with the other regions in the world... isolated. But like i said earlier, there's actually enough population in each "region" to start a server of its own, you don't really need to worry about "no one helps open the door" when a server is populated. And the devs get to choose and decides whether if the region have enough population to guarantee profit before they start one there. Yes, enough research can minimize the risk and failure. But there's always the culture difference and Online games never have a long-term reputation to start with, sooner or later a gamer is going to get bored of the same online game and started to bad mouth it, not to mention the life-line (IAP) of these games are always the part hater hates.
Well, Valve gives some good lecture about how to prevent that, but less than 1% of games in the industry managed to find that balance to be honest, and in the end, those that are not ambitious simply go for local business only. Eg. Japan only Online games is a thing among the Japanese devs for a reason, there's also "global" games that only favors certain "local" players near their home servers, which gives them an easier time to do business like selling and sending real life goods and doing real life events. In the end, the small business model makes those customers looks more appealing in these devs' eyes and they are also the ones that pay them the most in the end. Obviously, if you aim for that market, that's the market you are getting, no surprise in that.
As for the preference for Chinese players among devs nowadays... well... Steam's real time chart have proven they are the majority in gaming business now. On Steam here, Chinese language setting users are more than English users ( https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam ). Which means, giving up on Chinese users and went only for English users will make the game company lose 50% of potential customers, which is too large a number to ignore. And 50% is enough to guarantee a stand alone server (or even multiple servers) of its own, it's really hard to fail in that area unless a dev is capable of causing a nation to rebel against their game. Easily put, if an English game now have 500 players, adding Chinese supports will get them another 500 players, which doubled their income. Plus, the culture of China's GenZ and the way they spend money... makes these 500 Chinese players better than those 500 English players, because they spend more, irrationally.
As for seeing Chinese players in global games that already have a separate Chinese server... Do note that not all Chinese speakers are in China. 99.99% of countries on Earth have Chinese speakers in their country. So it's not hard to see Chinese speakers outside of China at all. Jenova Chen, the boss of TGC, is a Chinese himself.
The only wildcard would be other inhabitants of the hosts your compute instances are on; and AWS does allow for dedicated hosts to eliminate that if that's ever deemed to be a problem. It might be cheaper to rent dedicated servers from local providers though. Regardless, neither option requires establishing an office presence like you described.
Geographical coverage is also not quite as simple as looking at the map and noting empty spots. The internet's structure is based on communication channels with traffic exchanges acting as massive wide-band crossroads that are faster to go through even if they aren't part of the shortest path to the destination. Like a direct path through rural areas possibly being slower than going through the highway. AWS's placement of data centers is quite strategic in that regard because that's where their customers' demands are. Yeah, I just so happen to know a thing or two about cloud services.
The rest of that long-winded tangent is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand so I'll leave it be before it turns into a glowing illustration of Brandolini's law. Admittedly, part of my prior answer was already grossly off-topic too.
First off, Ping time is effected by physical distance of the CABLE, so yes, looking at the map doesn't tell you the maximum story, you need a cable map like this. https://submarine-cable-map-2024.telegeography.com/ and that one only shows the submarine map (AKA undersea cable), for land maps it's a lot more complicated https://bbmaps.itu.int/bbmaps/ and no, they don't travel in straight line on land like the submarine cables so the physical distance is way longer than drawing a straight line. Plus, we have networks in the sky as well, https://in-the-sky.org/satmap_worldmap.php but those require land receivers and the sky is not fully covered yet and physical distance still count, even in space. Also WiFi is part of the Ethernet, it's not really Internet, so i am excluding it here. JFYI, TGC devs actually recommend hard wire over WiFi connections in their bug report form.
AWS do not, and can not escape this system as long as it's in the physical world. It's not like they've created a portal system that warp data around (even portal and black hole can't escape physic rule, they just have more energy to speed things up). The data passing still required the land/submarine/sky lines... and for cloud system, it means it's sharing devices that is scattered all over the world to help "processing" the data that needs the math calculations, which means first, the host needs to submit a request, and it gets passed on to the quest taker, when the calculation is done, it gets passed back to the host. That's Cloud server for you. When End users are involved, the cloud server acts as a router to pass on the data, but it doesn't mean it can escape the physical world so rules like distance still applies. AWS do provide "local" services that let their customer have local "host" for their businesses, but like you said, it's more costly and the service itself doesn't provide a faster connection compared to a real physical server. Plus, what you suggested on renting regional servers isn't feasible for business who wanted to keep some secrets with their source data, it came with a risk of data leak and hacker could get their hands on the server source code and started their own server of the game. That's why most online game company take it into their hands to do everything for security purpose, can't deny that there are smaller companies that do the rental thing, because they didn't really expect to have a life cycle of over 2 years in their online games, and plan to sell it sooner or later to a cheap publisher within 2 years time. Yes, 2 years lifespan is basically the timeline and server deadline when most companies design their fast cash grab online games out there to minimize risk and return of capital. So they don't really care much about it being stolen, they plan to ditch it from the start anyway. But games that are designed to last long and pumped with love from the devs are different, they want to ensure its safety.
TGC do not, and probably will not use any of the regional server system. What they wanted to do is goes against the traditional (it's how Jenova Chen works his stuffs) and try to reinvent the wheels to make it better. The temporary offline mode is one of those measurement they came up with, but it's a bad design if one doesn't understand how it works. We ended up with complaints like "everyone is missing on my screen", "why i can't burn the plant", "plant suddenly burst up in flame without anyone near it", "i've light up the mechanism to open the door but it won't open", "i am trying to pick up the candle on the floor like forever", "players suddenly pops up from nowhere", "npc is teleporting around the map", etc etc... which are all latency problem but disguised to look normal by their merging system. It's not a "solution", it's just a hotfix slapping duct tape over something that's falling apart. The match maker however, could prepare itself to fit in the regional host type design when needed to, but since this is a global game that doesn't separate/isolate the regions, having the match maker isolate the regions is going to end up with more complains like "i can't get into the same zone with my friends in X country".
Topping it up, Los Angeles, where TGC is located, is among one of the states that has the highest reports of internet outage. So the "starting point" of this whole network system isn't reliable to start with...
And you did mentioned the Chinese "local" version of the game. If you have tried that game from a location near China, you will 100% noticed that difference in the Ping. And how smooth the game plays out within their regional area (of course, if you are far from it, it's a different story then). That's why we see complains in the forum about "China server" is better than "Steam beta", where this beta is the Global version and those trying this beta from China needs to connect to the other side behind Earth and the Ping really really sucks. If they are using AWS local servers, this won't be happening. In fact, the Chinese version uses a different publisher that have their own internet serving system. Which is similar to some Asian made MMO that uses "Regional distributor" or "Regional publisher", sub-contractors. In short, TGC sells the rights of their game to NetEase for a period of time, letting them run the show within the region of their contracts. Which means NetEase gets to run the game the way they like it. And due to that, the CN version has a lot of stuffs the Global version don't or vice versa. Not to mention the pricing in the CN version is way way higher than the Global version.
If your argument against using AWS cloud servers in different regions is that it all still goes to a central server somewhere – that's wrong, all that requires central management is a matchmaking, and once you're assigned a game instance on a server you can communicate with that server directly, getting all the speed benefits until you're told to jump to another. It's a system similar to CDNs, only the nodes on the ends of it aren't just storage and retrieval, but are active game spaces. Such a connection can be more local to the players that connect to it and thus be much faster than hosting everything in one location.
The complaints from end-users you list are not inherent to the design, they're, simply put, bugs. State synchronization bugs, to be specific. Latency can make reconciliation slower, but as it stands, in many cases it doesn't happen at all, as if the game just forgets to do it. It's so bad that after a red shard event if you and your friend warp to the shard memory can end up on different maps, but still see each other walk on thin air. That's how broken it is. Faster internet can't fix that.
And IP theft for server rent is generally a non-issue, full-disk encryption by itself makes a data theft attack unreasonably expensive and data centers typically go through certifications to make sure they have preventative measures in place (auditing, usually) because, again, it's in the cloud customers' demands.
Again, ignoring tangents. Stop derailing the thread please.