[Suggestion] The case for merging Briggs/Connery

Some Aussies might give me some flak over this but I say, stop whingeing, are you an Aussie or Pommie?

Here are the facts - look at the pictures.

All the times are in UTC +11, so it's a like for like time comparison.

Briggs - 1 month



Connery, 1 month

• Briggs barely reaches 300 for any faction anymore
• Briggs VS is usually UNDERPOPULATED
• Connery VS is usually overpopulated on 1 continent at a time
• Briggs highest population faction is NC
• Connery has solid NC numbers but they are more evenly spread over multiple continents
• Briggs has a TR that could boost the Connery numbers
• Connery needs TR numbers as TR is more often than not, the lowest population on any continent
• Briggs peaks correspond with Connery's troughs
• If Briggs was merged to Connery, there would be a more even population of factions 24/7
• If Briggs was merged to Connery, the game would play at the intended scale more consistently for those who come from Briggs to Connery
• Briggs does not exceed more than 600 or so players in peak and that is at the same time as Connery trough when Connery has around 500 players total, therefore the total if they were merged would be around 1100-1200 at that time, supporting a better gameplay experience for all

From a business case perspective:

• Briggs, by the numbers alone, must be the lowest revenue server
• Even if 50% of the peak Briggs player base are Auraxium level subscribers, at some $130/per year AUD, this is only $39,000 AUD
• Server hosting costs in Australia are relatively high (I know this because I am in the SAAS industry)
• Even if Briggs server players are buying SC, it would not add much overall revenue (otherwise why are SOE pushing membership so hard??)
• Connery would produce more revenue due to its higher overall numbers
• SOE could reduce the total cost of Connery by merging it with Briggs

For those that will bring up the "high ping" issue

• If you are on DSL, consider using a premium DSL provider with Annex M
• If you are on NBN or cable, there will be NO ISSUE if you play on Connery
• If you play on mobile internet, ask your provider to give you 4G
• East coast DSL players, in major cities should have very reasonable pings

So, in summary, there is a very valid case to merge these servers, from a player experience, commercial and network mechanics perspective.

No doubt, eventually when servers are merged again, Briggs will probably be the first to go due to player volumes and revenue from the server. This point in time is a good time for SOE to do the merge, before the Briggs player base falls further as well as the Connery playerbase.

By merging now, SOE might just give more players a larger scale experience that this game is all about and actually have a positive effect on their revenue base as a result, both by reducing costs and encouraging players to subscribe because they are getting a better experience.

Lastly, I am a Auraxium level Premium subscriber, 2nd year Auraxium membership, I am loyal to the game, Alpha Squad, paid Auraxium till December 2014.

I am Australian.

Thank You.

I don't know how I feel when the US have a major ping advantage over the Aussie players. Sure, using NBN fibre or cable will reduce what, 10-20ms? There is still a large physical distance from Australia to the US, and that will incur an additional 150ms of latency, regardless on how advanced your internets may be (which isn't great compared to the US)

So does SOE really want to risk losing the entire Australian population with this change, given it will be clear SOE are less willing to support Australian players? Do you want to remove the growth and expansion of this game's population in the Asia/Oceania region? I'm sure if you factor in these risks it'll probably be neck even and it'll be better off to leave it for now

Respectfully, i disagree. The game has client side hit detection and compensates pretty well for higer pings by design. In reality, when I was in Sydney, on DSL, I had a 150ms ping to Connery and a 10ms ping to Briggs. I am now in Tasmania, on NBN fibre. Is there any real difference - nope. NOTE even though I am on NBN my ping is now HIGHER to both servers - Briggs is around 70ms and Connery is around 250ms.

The only difference that I can observe at all, is when I am in a vehicle or a aircraft, which is being driven or piloted by a player in another country. In Sydney, on DSL, the vehicles would jitter in terms of smoothness of animation and the aircraft would have "turbulence" in terms of how smooth the animation was. But these animations are now ultra smooth on NBN in Tasmania, regardless of higher ping to both servers. As far as competitve play goes, no real difference either, I can kill high level players the same, whether on Briggs or Connery.

Also I think saying that the entire Australian server population is at risk is overstating the situation. Dedicated players won't have an issue as a lot already play on other servers. Also quite a few Americans and Japanese play on Briggs in primetime, which is Connery's low time' so moving these overseas and any Australian players to Connery won't do harm, it will be for the good of the overall game.

The Briggs population is in decline and its unlikely that new content is suddenly going to induce expansion, or more subscribers.

My proposal is a a way for SOE to cut cost and potentially boost revenue because dedicated players will continue playing, and because the overall experience in terms of scale will be better for all, they may be more likely to be financial contributors to the game rather than if they were stuck on a dying server.

Just shows how badly SOE manage their game
ALL servers have declining pop and its cause they stopped listening to their players once they got the taste for money
ALL they want now is to get the COD kids, but they also loosing their fan base, which will lead to catastrophic failure, much earlier than Ps1..

yeah this is all true

but COD types will tire of this game pretty quick as they alreadyhave low attention span, thats why they buy a new COD and a new BF each year.

this game attracts a particular type of dedicated player and that type of player is playing this game mostly for scale - that is the dedicated fan base.

the COD type will come and go, but I doubt they will put much cash into the game.

SOE needs to push the scale aspect to dedicated players, and that alone will entice more to become financial contributors as new content is deployed.

but you can't have scale if server populations keep thinning out.

Firstly, regarding Briggs population. The period that you are using corresponds with Briggs having huge log-in times (10 minute average, often 20, sometimes over an hour) for the last month. It has directly led to a third of our playerbase walking away. Late January and February we were reaching 1000 players during prime-time, so hopefully they come back once this issue has finally been fixed. It took four weeks of complete and utter silence from SOE, but we finally got a response from Higby a day or two ago and they are hopeful to get it fixed this week.

Secondly, you are massively underestimating the lag issue. At least half of the people I have talked to would simply walk away if they merged us with an American server, as they simply can't handle the lag. I personally would try to stick around, but it is definitely an issue for me as well. Not quite so much in small battles, but in large battles things start lagging significantly. And it's not just us having to put up with the lag - the Americans on Connery would have to put up with it. I played on my Connery alt the other day and after killing someone I was told to 'take my laggy *** back to Briggs'.

The OP assumes that everybody in Australia will get fibre-optics at peak efficiency with no slowdown due to load and that similarly that every game client will find a perfect link through the internet.

oh yeah and that shifting pingtimes wont have an effect on players that can be gunned down in seconds.

The OP reeks of self-interest disguised in reasoning. if he's happy to have increased pingtimes on a US server he can go right ahead and have to start from scratch on a new server.

'server cost for Oceania' is a non-issue given that there is only one Oceania server.

I have a ping of 80ms myself to brigs. i do not want to see that go higher just because someone wants a higher population server but doesn't want to start up a new toon. that's even before we consider how many Oceania players would quit after being pigeon holed into higher pingtimes for no worthwhile reason.

The long login times have been an issue pretty well from day one. Clearly, they have an issue with this one particular server and they have never found the root cause - the issue comes and goes. I have seen it since launch in 2012. Its now 2014.

1000 players in primetime, is only 50% capacity.

I see what you are saying about large battles, but in my experience its not as bad as you make out, and my experience is based on playing in two different states in Australia on two different types of connections. I honestly cannot see much difference in large battles even though, as I pointed out, I am now playing on higher ping via NBN than DSL! Its odd, but there is only the animation smoothness difference, and somehow, its improved on NBN fibre, but with a higher ping to both servers.

As for in game banter, I just can't see how that is valid - there are so many times when you would have dropped enemies but one person called you laggy - so what? That's online gaming and the same will happen in every online shooter regardless of what game or where the server is - someone will call you laggy. The main point here is that this game has client side hit detection so if you aim straight, at worst both players in a 1 vs 1 will drop each other - if your aim is straight.

The alterantive, if no merger occurs, is that over time, Briggs will lose players anyway, as Australia is a very very small market. And when revenue vs server costs declines, they will have to merge Briggs anyway.

My proposal is purely based on real numbers, because rather than slowly kill the game in Australia via attrition of playerbase, here is a chance to give the scale experience to those who are dedicated players, regardless of location.

There is no "perfect link" via fibre optic and if you read my posts, my ping is higher on fibre to BOTH servers than it was on DSL. No real change in competitive play.

Of course, self interest is the only horse that is trying - famous words from Paul Keating. I love the game and I want to have a large scale experience which is only fleeting on Briggs.

Client side hit detection negates the higher ping times in most cases, if you can aim straight.

As i keep saying, I have played on different connections in different states and the game is actually smoother animation wise on a higher ping.

Cost is never a non issue, it is a measure against which revenue then comes into play. The reasoning that there is only one server in Oceania therefore cost is not a factor is not accurate in a business sense. In business, cost always matters. I'm sure SOE is not a charity.

My proposal is a way to reduce total cost and potentially boost revenue because dedicated payers will get a better scale of experience.

Lastly, if the Briggs numbers continue to drop, it will be merged anyway as the game won't be playable. This is a way to mitigate that risk before it eventuates. The pigeon holing to another server is going to hapen sooner or later. I'm suggesting do it sooner and help the game overall.

Absolutely. Eventually, the merger may need to happen. But we're certainly not at that point yet, and we won't be any time soon.

It would help if they advertised the game properly, especially in SE Asia. I've got a number of Singaporean, Malaysian, Thai, and other nationalities in my outfit, and they all say that there is no kind of advertisement in their countries.

The lack of advertising - I agree with you on that for sure. That goes to the root of the problem. Butnmaybe they don't advertise because they feel the overall market potential is small and not worth the expense - i dunno.

If the game was more well known in the region, I would not feel the need to make this thread. Also, the countries in the region, perhaps with the exception of Singapore, Japan and parts of Malaysia, also have very poor internet, so those players may have issues on Briggs similar to what Aussies say they maynhave n Connery - I think that is a fair point. In fact a lot of the Asian countries may have better links to the US than to Australia as most of the corporate world uses links to the US.

The thing is though, the game is now 18 months old from startup, so I'm guessing that a lot of regional players have left already. I think the graphs can vouch for this. I know that at night time, in Briggs prime, a lot of Japanese, for instance, switched from Briggs to Connery.

So unless the game picks up new players then an eventual merger, is ineveitable.

Your outfit on Briggs is one of the best i've played against, no doubt. Your tactics alone would put you in good stead on ANY server.

I can't believe that JUGA would be hobbled by an extra 100ms ping hehe.

In this instance cost is a non-issue as obviously right now the money coming in from brigs outweighs the cost of maintaining the server.

it is not certain that a merger right now will boost profits, they may not pay as much for a server maintenance but the profit could go down further then the savings on server costs. as for 'a better scale of experience' you are also gambling you could gain or you could loose.

I'd rather 80ms at all times with the rare large battle then a higher ping with constant mid-to high pop battles.

yeah its a gamble - i'm not arguing that.

but where i respectfully disagree is that money coming in vs cost of keeping a server going is actually positive in the case of Briggs. I work with software and while i am not in the games industry, i can tell you that hosting costs in Australia are high, relative to the rest of the world. If you use a tier 1 data centre, like from Telstra, the comparative cost in Australia is definitely higher than in the US where there is much more competition in the hosting space and many more datacentres.

Lets say Briggs has a total base of 1000 Auraxium level subs - thats like 130k AUD per year. I've seen high availibilty server hosting cost upwards of 5000 per month, depending on traffic and type of server. Even if SOE pays half that - then thats say 30k server costs per year. That leaves 100k plus any SC revenue. Lets add another 100k for that. 200k. How many staff does that pay for?

Of course i don't know the real figures but i can only guess and i can only judge by the current marketing push in game. Note, the push is IN GAME and not external advertising to get new players - because that advertising introduces NEW cost while internal ads are within the exisitng cost of the dev team. Developers who write java/c for me here in AU are on salaries of up to 125k a year, for senior people. In the US they might be a bit cheaper but great talent costs money.

we've all seen the "upgrade" push and the in game advertising. we've read Higby's sticky about how the have a team of devs, CSR's, forum people etc etc. So clearly they are feeling the pinch somewhat as the global numbers have reduced if the graphs presented in many thread are anything to go by.

the gamble as you say, is right and it is this: does SOE try to improve the bottom line by getting more financial contributors in EVERY geography, or do they focus on the larger markets and gamble that those who love the game, from smaller markets will continue to pay.

yep, its a gamble all right.

i just say this.go **** yourself. until our ****** government can get their ***** together and improve our web infrastructure thirtyfold go **** youseld

hehe yeah i knew this would come from my Aussie brethren...thanx mate

predictable.

and i agree with the premise, well except for ******* myself lol

its exactly why i bought myself a place in a NBN enabled area, precisely because our governmemt cannot be trusted as they don't value high speed broadband. the previous govt didn't value it either, they politicised it and as a result the rollout rate was pathetic. they rolled it out to places where people don't even understand what it is. for example, in my area, there are ads on tv because people have not converted to NBN and copper is being decommissioned around here at the end of May. Can you imagine - the uptake of fibre is slow! When i walk around here, most houses, even though the fibre is connected from the street to the visible NBN box, you can't see the white fibre wire, you still see on most houses, the black color copper wire going in.

i've been in direct contact with both parties about this very issue over the years, but mainly with Turnbull as it was clear that the ALP would not last. Conroy, was a fool, because his model was to roll out in areas where there was no demand and that killed the commercial viability. The Liberals are corporate stooges, so anything not commercially viable, will not last long in the hands on this government and will end up going to the private sector. I've lobbied both sides on their flawed approaches for 6 years, since 2008 basically as this infrastructure has impact on my business, not just my gaming hehe.

Mark my words, the current government absoutely hates publicly owned infrastructure and will scuttle the NBN as soon as they can, by giving it over to private enterprise. Already, they are talking FTTN which is rubbish, then they have already hinted that greenfields will no longer be done by NBN Co, but be subcotracted out to Telco's. Which basically means that more copper will be rolled out because it's cheaper.

This is off topic, clearly, but it does play a part in this disucssion because of the perceived disadvantage for those with sub par connections, especially people who reside in the western half of Australia, or in country towns.

But no need to abuse me, send Malcolm an email with the **** words mate.

Edit: just to add a bit of context to this post in relation to other points contributed by some of the others:

- how much of the Briggs paying player base is from country australia

- how much of the Briggs paying player base is from western australia

- cosidering that most of our population lives in the major cities on the east coast, where pings to Connery should be quite reasonable, it is a decent gamble for SOE to merge Briggs to Connery, if the majority of the paying playerbase is from the large mainland cities of eastern Australia?

- how much revenue would SOE potentially lose if they lost paying customers in country towns or in the west and how many who currently pay and are in the east coast mainland cities would continue to pay if the servers merged?

no more questions hehe

totally agree with this.

For me getting on to Briggs has always been an issue - but I blame the hosting provider not SOE.
So from Melbourne I have always played on Connery with a 180ms ping - and IMO have just as much fun and can kill just as well as most on the server.

Either way I hope it happens as at night Connery gets fairly dead.

I suspect the gameplay experience improvement of having more people around would more than make up for the added ping, which as the OP has noted Planetside 2 deals with pretty well.

Part of the reason I've been happy to support Planetside 2 is the Australian server, but unfortunately population is a huge issue. I'd rather they fixed their game's flaws and more people played, but I doubt that's on the cards, and a timely merge with a US server would be preferable to a long, slow death as population spirals downwards and the game becomes unplayable.

Imagine, we could be playing on Amerish right now, instead of stupid Indar. Isn't that worth 150ms of latency in a game with client-side hit detection anyway?

thank you. exacty my points. especially that the additional playerbase from Briggs primetime if merged with Connery, would give Connery the shot in the arm it needs at night. and you are correctamundo about your ping and your kill experience.

Briggs right now has about 420 players total. Connery right now is sitting just under 500.

Combine the two and we have decent fights in a quite a few places.

yeah i got sick of the ghost caps on Briggs on other continents....so i mainly play Connery in the daytime around my work...

I hardly play Briggs because its mostly Indar maybe except for some weekend nights if there is an alert...but even then when the big fights dissipate..well its not really the scale that the game showcases...

agree with all you've said. thank you.

OP makes a fine case for merger. I'm playing from Melbourne and hits on Connery aren't much different from Briggs. As OP noted, what makes this game distinct from other FPS games is it's scale and persistence. Would be better off playing BF then playing Planetside on a low pop server.