Man I was bummed to see that the beta is over. Was hoping to get a few more minutes on tonight. Well guess it's back to The Division.

I would have to put Battlefield 1 in mixed review category, based on comments i received from friends.  Where would all of you place the game, based on comments your friends have a made about it to you.
 
 

I am surprised that I haven't seen any complaints here about server rental and administration support.

If you haven't already read, many clans and server owners are planning to boycott BF1. There are two primary reasons.

1) A large server provider has leaked information claiming that if you rent a game server, you will not be able to choose your game server rental provider. Rumor is that you will rent directly from EA this time and EA will decide which subcontractor to put your server on from a list of much less providers and much less locations than ever before. Less choice usually equals less quality. Customer support for server owners will probably also be affected in a negative way.

2) Rumors say that BF1 will have no Rcon connection system unlike all the other previous Battlefield games. Without an Rcon connection, there would be no Gametracker, no XLRstats, no GGC Stream, no PBbans, no Procon, almost zero admin support, no custom weapon or custom rule servers, no plugins, etc., etc.. This would mean that server owners would have almost none of the features they are used to having in terms of running and customizing their server. Rumor is that DICE will be providing a basic admin tool in the game to kick or ban players and probably not much more than that. This would mean that every game server would be pretty much the same and quite generic. Competitive BF1 leagues and players are backing away from BF1 already for these reasons; since they know that being able to properly set up a game server for a match would be impossible without Rcon unless DICE provided an alternative system.

First of all, I know that these are only rumors. But even if not true, these rumors have already had a negative effect on the general mood inside gaming clans and communities.

I know that you, as a gamer, probably think that you shouldn't care because you don't experience the server rental side of things. How does it affect you and why should you care? Server owners are the leaders of gaming clans and gaming communities, and if they are planning to boycott the game, the number of quality servers available may be limited and the number of active players may be limited by the fallout through those clans and communities. It may be a stillbirth. I certainly would not pre-order the game at this point knowing that there is the risk that BF1 may be as popular as Hardline in a month.

kidcrumb
I'm all for those server changes.
 
I understand why it would have a negative impact for most people. But in BF4, there were a ton of servers that were "No Grenades" or "No X Weapon," etc. And I hated that. All I wanted was to play a regular server that didn't kick me off for getting 10 kills in the helicopter.
 
All of the servers near me seemed to be altered in a way and unless I wanted to play on a server with 150 Ping, I couldn't play a regular game that wasn't inhibited in some way.

I wasn't looking for input on your personal preference. I was trying to issue a warning.

When the top 1% of the most popular BF4 game servers and BF4 gaming communities threatens to back away, you should be worried. If the biggest and most successful will not be there, who will be?

If you go to GameTracker, and look at the most popular servers, then go to those server owners' websites, you will often find very negative opinions of BF1 in their forums. Then, find out the alias of the person who rents that group's servers, go to Procon's forum, and see more negative talk and low expectations for game popularity based on their community's reactions.

All I am saying is that you should think long and hard before pre-ordering the game since there is a strong threat and risk among the most popular and largest communities.

If I remember correctly, one of the ProCon plug-in developers was hired by DICE over a year ago.

Although this may be meaningless, it could point to DICE developing their own set of inhouse plug-ins for BF1's RCON layer. Or, perhaps it means he's just sitting at a desk twiddling his thumbs.

Anyway, as Bizsar noted, rumors are just rumors. But if the rumor becomes reality and DICE either ditches dedicated servers or offers a very watered down admin control, then as I stated yesterday, I'll be saying goodbye to BF for good.

I understand that whatever EA/DICE does is a business decision, but they also must understand that the consumer can exercise the power of the purse, which is the power not to buy something they don't like.

I think lots of us on here have been messing with game servers and working with publishers for over a decade. Messing with game servers is not rocket science.
 
The information about procon and dedicated servers, just gave me another reason to hold off purchasing BF1. If DICE does do away with rcon stuff and becomes gatekeeper for dedicated servers, that will cause popular gaming communities to not support BF1 like ty_ger07 said.
Most of the gaming communities i know, they like to rent from nfoservers.com, they won't go with another provider, even if they offer them 10-20% off. If DICE ends up being the gatekeeper, they could sellout to one provider like what happened in Call of Duty BlackOps.
 
No one could rent a Startwars Battlefront server. That game still sold a lot of copies.   That game player base tanked within 3 months if i remember correctly.
 
 
 

double post

ty_ger07
Yes, Phogue (Procon developer) was hired by DICE quite a while ago. It is strongly assumed that whatever server management tools which will get released will be inspired by his work. Phogue was even working on a web-based proprietary admin interface at the time DICE hired him. All available information suggests that it will NOT be using the Rcon protocol. It will be something new and different. Whether external services will be able to connect to it directly (like GameTracker, GGC Stream, PBbans, Metabans, XLRstats, BF1stats, BF1DB, and so forth) is unknown and quite unlikely given that it appears that DICE is headed in a direction to lock out too much customization and access. EA wants DICE to weed out the badmins and it appears that restricting access is the easiest way.

The lack of Rcon is all but confirmed. That subject is hardly a rumor. We know that currently there is no Rcon support information which means that it will not have Rcon unless they add that back in later. The previous releases had Rcon support information released ahead of time and Rcon developers even met with DICE one-on-one ahead of the game's release. This time is different and therefore quite confirmed.


Like I said, this isn't necessarily bad news. Maybe it is all for the better

Since Phogue was hired by EA, it leads me to believe they are developing a new admin tool, including automated server admin scripts much like the plug-ins that were developed for ProCon and its layer.

Although this is not conclusive evidence of dedicated server support for BF1, to me it is an encouraging sign. After all, why waste time and money hiring Phogue to develop admin tools if all you're going to do is run servers a la SWBF/COD style?

I just read the BF Forums and noticed a post speculating EA will do rent a servers on PC, akin to the PS4 and XBONE for BF4. I then checked out BF4STATS for PS4 and XBONE servers. It turns out that they have hardcore and pistol & knive servers. As you may know, it takes a ProCon layer server to run the necessary scripts for these on PC. If EA is planning rent a servers for PC, it is possible Phogue was brought in to develop this, to run just like the PS4 /XB1 rent servers. At this point, however, it's all speculation.

MSim

Pitfighter

ty_ger07
Yes, Phogue (Procon developer) was hired by DICE quite a while ago. It is strongly assumed that whatever server management tools which will get released will be inspired by his work. Phogue was even working on a web-based proprietary admin interface at the time DICE hired him. All available information suggests that it will NOT be using the Rcon protocol. It will be something new and different. Whether external services will be able to connect to it directly (like GameTracker, GGC Stream, PBbans, Metabans, XLRstats, BF1stats, BF1DB, and so forth) is unknown and quite unlikely given that it appears that DICE is headed in a direction to lock out too much customization and access. EA wants DICE to weed out the badmins and it appears that restricting access is the easiest way.

The lack of Rcon is all but confirmed. That subject is hardly a rumor. We know that currently there is no Rcon support information which means that it will not have Rcon unless they add that back in later. The previous releases had Rcon support information released ahead of time and Rcon developers even met with DICE one-on-one ahead of the game's release. This time is different and therefore quite confirmed.


Like I said, this isn't necessarily bad news. Maybe it is all for the better

Since Phogue was hired by EA, it leads me to believe they are developing a new admin tool, including automated server admin scripts much like the plug-ins that were developed for ProCon and its layer.

Although this is not conclusive evidence of dedicated server support for BF1, to me it is an encouraging sign. After all, why waste time and money hiring Phogue to develop admin tools if all you're going to do is run servers a la SWBF/COD style?

I just read the BF Forums and noticed a post speculating EA will do rent a servers on PC, akin to the PS4 and XBONE for BF4. I then checked out BF4STATS for PS4 and XBONE servers. It turns out that they have hardcore and pistol & knive servers. As you may know, it takes a ProCon layer server to run the necessary scripts for these on PC. If EA is planning rent a servers for PC, it is possible Phogue was brought in to develop this, to run just like the PS4 /XB1 rent servers. At this point, however, it's all speculation.

They could be making automated server admin script, to use it on all battlefield and or starwars servers. They would allow them to keep rcon restricted to avoid admins ruining people experience.
 
 
 

This too.

 
I'm not too excited about Battlefield 1. Just doesn't interest me for some reason. I think I'll stick with BF4.

As with all BF Betas we are playing an older playable version. 

I do remember that.

MSim

sinned.
As with all BF Betas we are playing an older playable version. 

 
You don't remember Siege of Shanghai (open beta map) when the building collapsed, it would crash peoples games at random, same thing happened with retail version. 
 
Everyone was like "were playing older build of the game", retail won't be like this.
 

hahaha, yes, I remember.
 
With DICE and most game developers the "beta" is essentially what you get at launch these days. They literally marketing soft launch for money this time hoping they won't have a disaster when it officially launches for everyone. I don't see that as incentive to pre-order by a long shot.

This video out today with some evidence that there will be BF1 dedicated servers, in some form.  It's not proof positive, but I believe this guy is on the right track.  Unfortunately, the presenter made three points that I absolutely disagree with pertaining to BF server administration, but that's another discussion.  The stuff he shows was actually easily seen in the beta, but I didn't think too much about it, at first:
 

It's a video game, wouldn't be too worried about how guns move in it. 
 
The rumors about DICE restricting rcon and becoming the middle man for supplying "dedicated" servers. I won't be shocked if it turns out to be true.