Priority Queue

General
1

So, as I’m sitting here looking at Wizard’s Den Lizard US West full again at 80 people I have decided to make a suggestion. Has anyone considered creating a priority queue system for patrons?

The idea would be simple. The higher the tier patron you are, the higher priority you have. All patrons would have higher priority over non patrons.

So, if the sever is full, and a patron decided to join, it would then start booting off people to make room who are not contributing financially to the project.

The idea came to me because it feels odd contributing money to the project, which includes server costs, yet I’m sitting here outside of the server I want to play on while people who are contributing nothing financially are now presently playing on the server that I am, in part, paying for. It doesn’t seem very fair.

The idea has some practical benefits.

1: It could drive more people to become patrons. After all, if you get booted out for not paying enough times that $3 a month is going to look better to you. This could bring in more development dollars for the game.

2: It rewards people who are patrons with access to what they’re paying for.

3: If enough people catch on and become patrons, it might actually even have the round about effect of even being a good thing for the non patrons by bringing in enough financial resources to open more servers in popular regions.

2

Imagine a random player just enjoying their time on the server and stuff and all of a sudden they disconnect all because some patreon member wanted in. That sounds really annoying.

The benefits are really good yes, but seems like a bad thing to do in my opinion. Ofc thats just me though

3

The patron system it might be very disadvantaged for players that use other types of money, for an example im going to use Turkish Liras, since if this becomes a thing that would be how much i pay. Currently 1 US Dollar is equal to about 21 Turkish Liras, and 3 US Dollars would equal to 63 Turkish Liras which is expensive to just become a patron for a game that might not be done. And even if i did pay that 3 US Dollars, im still disadvantaged from most players since there is no EU server that is populated and will be forced to play US west server with disconnections, bad ping etc. Than paying to become a patron, getting several games on steam (in steam, 1 US Dollar equals to 10 Turkish Liras) or even better, play the SAME game with more mechanics, with populated EU servers without having anybody over me because they can afford 3 US Dollars.

4

I think disconnecting non-patrons is not the right way to achieve your goal. This really doesn’t work in a game like this, imagine cap, hop or any head suddenly going ssd, certainly managable but a headache. Maybe a solution to that would be, protecting heads and sec from this.

Still the premise of this game is to be free and the official servers should represent this, randomly getting disconnected would be a huge issue, even if you are not in a very important position, as statet in another post before.

Though i can see a solution, in which patrons would get the mentioned benefits, while non-patrons would be mostly unaffected, therefore still potentially (though most likely lesser) increasing the amount of patrons and also making you feel more appreciated.

It is possible, either trough admins joining, or players disconnecting and rejoining later, after a new player connected already, to exceed the playercap. In the same way it could be possible to allow patrons to join, even if they’re exceeding the playercap.

I can see that this could lead to complications with server stability or something, if the limit is exceeded too much, though this could either be handled through upgrading the capacities of the servers with the possibly higher patron dollars coming in, or just letting higher tier patrons exceed the player limit, decreasing the probable amount of players exceeding the limit. Also there could be a second limit for patrons, so that there are not too much players, eventually some players will leave, maybe not even letting the second playercap even get in effect.

But there is still an issue, making the experience for non-patrons worse. If too many patrons are exceeding the playercap, it is very unlikely for non-patrons to even join at all, or is in connection with very long waiting time. Maybe Battlefield 1 being an example. Premium or whatever it’s called is no subscription and a lot, maybe even most players, have it already. It is basically impossible to get on full severs without this, but it’s not directly transferable, because SS14 doesn’t really have queues.

Just my thougts on it, i think you got an good idea, but just didn’t think it to the end.

5

as a patreon supporter this is stupid and should never be implemented

6

1 hour ago, berndlauert88 said:

I think disconnecting non-patrons is not the right way to achieve your goal. This really doesn’t work in a game like this, imagine cap, hop or any head suddenly going ssd, certainly managable but a headache. Maybe a solution to that would be, protecting heads and sec from this.

Still the premise of this game is to be free and the official servers should represent this, randomly getting disconnected would be a huge issue, even if you are not in a very important position, as statet in another post before.

Though i can see a solution, in which patrons would get the mentioned benefits, while non-patrons would be mostly unaffected, therefore still potentially (though most likely lesser) increasing the amount of patrons and also making you feel more appreciated.

It is possible, either trough admins joining, or players disconnecting and rejoining later, after a new player connected already, to exceed the playercap. In the same way it could be possible to allow patrons to join, even if they’re exceeding the playercap.

I can see that this could lead to complications with server stability or something, if the limit is exceeded too much, though this could either be handled through upgrading the capacities of the servers with the possibly higher patron dollars coming in, or just letting higher tier patrons exceed the player limit, decreasing the probable amount of players exceeding the limit. Also there could be a second limit for patrons, so that there are not too much players, eventually some players will leave, maybe not even letting the second playercap even get in effect.

But there is still an issue, making the experience for non-patrons worse. If too many patrons are exceeding the playercap, it is very unlikely for non-patrons to even join at all, or is in connection with very long waiting time. Maybe Battlefield 1 being an example. Premium or whatever it’s called is no subscription and a lot, maybe even most players, have it already. It is basically impossible to get on full severs without this, but it’s not directly transferable, because SS14 doesn’t really have queues.

Just my thougts on it, i think you got an good idea, but just didn’t think it to the end.

Those are some good points. From my understanding, the current cap of 80 players is more because of how difficult it is for Admins to oversea 100 players instead of a technical limitation.

That said, it would be a lighter touch to set aside patron seats or allow patrons to go past the limit. That way less or no people would be booted. Booting people does seem harsh. And, like you said, could be difficult if a command position were booted. That said, I also fear that if command positions were protected from booting it would drive people into playing them who don’t necessarily want to play them right now just to avoid being booted.

I guess my thought process was, and I didn’t math it out or anything, but I was originally thinking that if enough people got inspired into being a patron from booting that perhaps a second US West server could then be created. If we can get two servers up in a popular region, then I figured the booting problem would naturally fix itself in that the overflow would simply move to the second sever. That if we could keep two US West servers highly populated, then there would be enough room for both patrons and non patrons and that the booting would simply ease up because of the extra afforded server purchased from the patron’s money.

I’m not entirely sure why of all US Servers US West is very often full. There is an other highly populated US server I could go to as an overflow, but I don’t have most of the jobs unlocked over there so I don’t really want to go through that again right now when I can could just log onto US West if it were not full.

I think it’s good that you responded with these points. I was just throwing the idea out there. I think it should be discussed and worked through by the community. Everyone wants to play where other people are playing. As the game becomes more popular, the most populated server being full is only going to become more of an issue than it already is.

7

2 minutes ago, Skarlet said:

as a patreon supporter this is stupid and should never be implemented

Then do you have a better way for me, as a patron supporter, to get into a server with actual people? Otherwise my $20 a month is going to vanish down to $3 or $0 pretty soon because I’m quickly tiring of helping to financially support a game I’m not getting to play with anyone else because the main server people play on is almost always full.

8

Personally I don’t think people should be encouraged to think of donating to the project as if they were paying for a service.

Servers being too full or too empty is a fact of life with this sort of game until we have a larger and more stable population of players and servers, but from what I have seen it’s been pretty good lately, with Miros being populated

9

No

10

I can understand the sentiment of unfairness. I, as a non-patron, wouldn’t feel discriminated if there were different pop caps for patrons and non-patrons.

But I fear that such a system could, however, create some perverse incentives. Some patrons could demand special treatment (some rule bending, for example). And if funding would hinge on that, it would put pressure on admins. I understand admins and devs don’t make any money from the game, so they’d be in good position to resist that pressure, but it would be unpleasant to deal with anyway.

Now, do you play on any server other than Lizard? How do you feel about other servers?

11

just connect to miros instead of spamming lizard

12

might be nice to allow patrons to exceed the soft limit like admins and reconnecting players, so they can still play high pop without le “someone pls leave my friend want to join” but automated kick

13

I just need to set up more servers instead, which I’ve been slacking on.

14

On 6/3/2023 at 12:12 PM, EVIL_ED said:

Then do you have a better way for me, as a patron supporter, to get into a server with actual people? Otherwise my $20 a month is going to vanish down to $3 or $0 pretty soon because I’m quickly tiring of helping to financially support a game I’m not getting to play with anyone else because the main server people play on is almost always full.

This is not a game with a sub fee. You don’t pay on Patreon so you can feel entitled, you pay to support the SS14 project.

15

On 6/3/2023 at 6:12 AM, EVIL_ED said:

Then do you have a better way for me, as a patron supporter, to get into a server with actual people? Otherwise my $20 a month is going to vanish down to $3 or $0 pretty soon because I’m quickly tiring of helping to financially support a game I’m not getting to play with anyone else because the main server people play on is almost always full.

there is miros and leviathan :face_with_hand_over_mouth: or get whitelisted for salamander
there are actual people there too

16

On 6/4/2023 at 1:52 PM, Rich0rd said:

This is not a game with a sub fee. You don’t pay on Patreon so you can feel entitled, you pay to support the SS14 project.

If you look at the google doc sheet that shows the expenditures of the Patron funds; a very large amount of that money is going to server hosting. So, of course I should properly feel entitled.

See, that’s what people misunderstand about the word entitled. When you use the word entitled in a pejorative sense, that only makes sense in the situation of a not paying person expecting something for free. (Like the people playing for free on servers that I am in part paying for.) When I use the term entitled in this sense (someone who is paying) it’s about paying people getting what they’re owed. Like a customer paying for a product getting upset when a product isn’t working correctly.

Being a Patron on Space Station 14 is kind of a gray area that I myself am trying to figure out how I should see it. On the one hand, I do want to continue to donate so that the game continues to get more content and engine development. On the other hand, I do feel like my money going to server hosting fees is pretty useless when there is only one decently populated server and it’s almost always full. It’s really a waste of my money, in my view.

Is there any way for me to specify that my money go specifically to funding software development rather than being wasted on server hosting that I am only getting to enjoy on a spotty bases? Because, in that way, it does feel to me like a game with a sub fee that I am getting screwed on. It’s like paying for an Internet connection or a Streaming Service and it coming in and out half the time.

 

17

On 6/3/2023 at 3:11 PM, lonesoldier55 said:

just connect to miros instead of spamming lizard

My complaint is that I’m wasting my money with being a Patron because the only populated server is often full. Your response was to send me to a barely populated server. That’s not a helpful answer at all.

US West has 80 people right now. Miros has 15. How you could possibly see that as comparable in any way is completely beyond me.

18

 

So, if you look at the Patrons Page. It shows that we have 89 Patrons coming in at $750 a month. If we look at the google documents sheet that shows the SS14 Patreon Spending, we can see where that money is going to.

 

It’s actually a really difficult document to read through because to spite having the amounts and dates; it’s not exactly organized into a monthly bases. So, for the purpose of this example, I kind of have to mock up a sort of on the fly monthly example because the document doesn’t. Also, the most recent months don’t have complete information. So, that makes getting a more current picture difficult to determine.

 

The last demarcated Paypal Transaction Free was all the way back on May 11Th of 2021 at $20.00. There is a space for a more recent one on May 12Th of 2023 that says “TODO.” We can see that the next one back from 03/11/2021 is November 2Nd 2020 at $16.77. So, it did go up $3.23 from 11/02/2020 to 03/11/2021. That still makes a current price difficult to guess.

 

When I google “what percentage does Patreon take?” I get this answer. “Patreon makes money by taking a cut of all creator earnings generated through the platform. Patreon currently takes between 5% and 12% of creator earnings (plus a payment processing fee), depending on the product plan chosen by the customer.”

 

Does this means 5%-12% of the total income on top of the $20 that had already been stated? Sense I have no idea what “product plan” was chosen by the customer; the best I can do is guess. So, I will, for the sake of this demonstration, guess at the highest value of 12%. Again, without all the information, all I can do to make a report like this is guess.

 

So, let’s do some math. The current Patreon Pull is $750 a month. At 12% that means $90 a month is going to Patreon itself. That leaves $660 a month for other things. It looks like in the google doc sheets that there are only 4 entries for paypal transaction fees. So, I am going to assume this is proceeded about once a year? If so, that would be (using the example of $20, the last listed price) 20 divided by 12 to get the monthly $1.67. So, $90 + $1.67 = $91.67. $750 - $91.67 = $658.33.

 

So, where does $658.33 go a month? Again, that’s not really easy to figure out based upon the google docs sheet. Because nothing is really organized by month; even though the Patreon Pull comes in monthly. Instead, it’s all just thrown onto the sheet and dated in a list.

 

So, let me try to reconstruct. The only thing listed for the entire month of May for this year is Bee Hosting at $16.24. But, I doubt that’s really the entire server cost for the entire month for all the servers. From my best guess, then, I doubt the server costs are billed monthly. Because they populate the list in a very sporadic way rather than in a regular way. This makes it very difficult to understand how much money a month goes to server hosting and paypal fees. About the only sensible thing to do, then, if I am going to make a monthly pie chart is to lump about a year’s worth of server hosting into a giant year long pool and then divide it by 12 to get a monthly cost. But, even that isn’t the easiest thing to do from this list. It looks like servers hosting might have changed so it’s kinda difficult to ascertain what costs are still relevant and which are outdated to be considering for a current monthly cost pie chart. So, here’s a wild guess at it.

 

We really shouldn’t be using 2023 because 2023 is not over so it is not complete. So, I will be using 2022. That said, that likely doesn’t match up for the amount of Patrons and Patreon Pull that we currently have. But, without a complete set of more modern numbers and with everything just being thrown on a sheet as it comes in, it’s the best I can do with the information that I have to work with to at least create a hopefully somewhat accurate monthly Patreon Expenditure Pie Chart.

 

Okay, so further reading in the sheet looks like the fees are applied as the money is withdrawn and listen in the chart on that date. So, I will disregard factoring in the last Patreon Fee of $20 as if it were a yearly thing and then dividing it by 12 for a monthly fee. Because that doesn’t really look like it applies that way. Instead, I will simply use the estimated 12% across the board. Again, this could be as low as 5%. I have no idea what it really is.

 

What this gives me is an estimated 20.39% of Patreon Dollars going to Hosting. Hosting, here, being a sort of catch all because I don’t really know which thing is used for hosting what. There is server hosting for the game, as well is web site hosting. So, which is what between Reliable Site Hosting, Bee Hosting, Invision, and Name Cheap is not stated. I tried doing a quick look into each of these and from what little I can tell they are all ‘hosting’ of some form or another.

 

Honestly, the google doc sheet doesn’t tell me much. Does all of the Patreon funds go to hosting and Patreon Fees? Does anything at all go to paying the developers for developing the game? Because all the Doc Sheet shows is money coming in (sometimes, really just early on in the doc sheet) and then money going off to these four hosting platforms. Nothing is listed as ‘paid developed John to develop X feature for the engine’ or ‘paid developer Betty to create new outfits for Clown.’

 

So, when you call me entitled for complaining that my donation money is not spent correctly it’s pretty misguided (nice word for me to use) on your part. I’m severely disappointed by the fact that there is only one official US sever that ever gets close to well populated; and it’s full most of the time. I have to sit out there refreshing to try to get in. While the only other official English speaking server that comes close is Miros which has about 15 people, if you’re lucky. That isn’t well populated; that is a joke. The fact that a Project Manager suggested that to me as a solution to my problem is an even bigger joke. This all compounds even worse for me when it appears that the only thing the Patreon funds really go to is server hosting. So, at $750 a month you’d think that would be enough to fix the problem considering it doesn’t look like any of the donation money goes to paying for engine development or content development. If it does, nobody bothers to list it in the google documents SS14 Patreon Spending Sheet.

 

If only 20.39% goes to servers/site hosting, and none goes to engine and content development; outside of Patreon Fees, where does this rest of this money (the vast majority of it) actually go to? Does it just sit there as a fallback emergency option in case the Patrons stop donating to keep the servers on with?

 

It just seems odd to me that money is spent on keeping mostly dead servers up with 15 or 20 or less people (again if you’re lucky) while US West often tops out at 80 people. Should there not be a US West 2; considering that seems to be where most people are playing?

PIE CHART.PNG

SPACE STATON 14 MONTHLY.ODS (66.4 KB)

19

:skull:

20

1 hour ago, EVIL_ED said:

 

So, if you look at the Patrons Page. It shows that we have 89 Patrons coming in at $750 a month. If we look at the google documents sheet that shows the SS14 Patreon Spending, we can see where that money is going to.

 

It’s actually a really difficult document to read through because to spite having the amounts and dates; it’s not exactly organized into a monthly bases. So, for the purpose of this example, I kind of have to mock up a sort of on the fly monthly example because the document doesn’t. Also, the most recent months don’t have complete information. So, that makes getting a more current picture difficult to determine.

 

The last demarcated Paypal Transaction Free was all the way back on May 11Th of 2021 at $20.00. There is a space for a more recent one on May 12Th of 2023 that says “TODO.” We can see that the next one back from 03/11/2021 is November 2Nd 2020 at $16.77. So, it did go up $3.23 from 11/02/2020 to 03/11/2021. That still makes a current price difficult to guess.

 

When I google “what percentage does Patreon take?” I get this answer. “Patreon makes money by taking a cut of all creator earnings generated through the platform. Patreon currently takes between 5% and 12% of creator earnings (plus a payment processing fee), depending on the product plan chosen by the customer.”

 

Does this means 5%-12% of the total income on top of the $20 that had already been stated? Sense I have no idea what “product plan” was chosen by the customer; the best I can do is guess. So, I will, for the sake of this demonstration, guess at the highest value of 12%. Again, without all the information, all I can do to make a report like this is guess.

 

So, let’s do some math. The current Patreon Pull is $750 a month. At 12% that means $90 a month is going to Patreon itself. That leaves $660 a month for other things. It looks like in the google doc sheets that there are only 4 entries for paypal transaction fees. So, I am going to assume this is proceeded about once a year? If so, that would be (using the example of $20, the last listed price) 20 divided by 12 to get the monthly $1.67. So, $90 + $1.67 = $91.67. $750 - $91.67 = $658.33.

 

So, where does $658.33 go a month? Again, that’s not really easy to figure out based upon the google docs sheet. Because nothing is really organized by month; even though the Patreon Pull comes in monthly. Instead, it’s all just thrown onto the sheet and dated in a list.

 

So, let me try to reconstruct. The only thing listed for the entire month of May for this year is Bee Hosting at $16.24. But, I doubt that’s really the entire server cost for the entire month for all the servers. From my best guess, then, I doubt the server costs are billed monthly. Because they populate the list in a very sporadic way rather than in a regular way. This makes it very difficult to understand how much money a month goes to server hosting and paypal fees. About the only sensible thing to do, then, if I am going to make a monthly pie chart is to lump about a year’s worth of server hosting into a giant year long pool and then divide it by 12 to get a monthly cost. But, even that isn’t the easiest thing to do from this list. It looks like servers hosting might have changed so it’s kinda difficult to ascertain what costs are still relevant and which are outdated to be considering for a current monthly cost pie chart. So, here’s a wild guess at it.

 

We really shouldn’t be using 2023 because 2023 is not over so it is not complete. So, I will be using 2022. That said, that likely doesn’t match up for the amount of Patrons and Patreon Pull that we currently have. But, without a complete set of more modern numbers and with everything just being thrown on a sheet as it comes in, it’s the best I can do with the information that I have to work with to at least create a hopefully somewhat accurate monthly Patreon Expenditure Pie Chart.

 

Okay, so further reading in the sheet looks like the fees are applied as the money is withdrawn and listen in the chart on that date. So, I will disregard factoring in the last Patreon Fee of $20 as if it were a yearly thing and then dividing it by 12 for a monthly fee. Because that doesn’t really look like it applies that way. Instead, I will simply use the estimated 12% across the board. Again, this could be as low as 5%. I have no idea what it really is.

 

What this gives me is an estimated 20.39% of Patreon Dollars going to Hosting. Hosting, here, being a sort of catch all because I don’t really know which thing is used for hosting what. There is server hosting for the game, as well is web site hosting. So, which is what between Reliable Site Hosting, Bee Hosting, Invision, and Name Cheap is not stated. I tried doing a quick look into each of these and from what little I can tell they are all ‘hosting’ of some form or another.

 

Honestly, the google doc sheet doesn’t tell me much. Does all of the Patreon funds go to hosting and Patreon Fees? Does anything at all go to paying the developers for developing the game? Because all the Doc Sheet shows is money coming in (sometimes, really just early on in the doc sheet) and then money going off to these four hosting platforms. Nothing is listed as ‘paid developed John to develop X feature for the engine’ or ‘paid developer Betty to create new outfits for Clown.’

 

So, when you call me entitled for complaining that my donation money is not spent correctly it’s pretty misguided (nice word for me to use) on your part. I’m severely disappointed by the fact that there is only one official US sever that ever gets close to well populated; and it’s full most of the time. I have to sit out there refreshing to try to get in. While the only other official English speaking server that comes close is Miros which has about 15 people, if you’re lucky. That isn’t well populated; that is a joke. The fact that a Project Manager suggested that to me as a solution to my problem is an even bigger joke. This all compounds even worse for me when it appears that the only thing the Patreon funds really go to is server hosting. So, at $750 a month you’d think that would be enough to fix the problem considering it doesn’t look like any of the donation money goes to paying for engine development or content development. If it does, nobody bothers to list it in the google documents SS14 Patreon Spending Sheet.

 

If only 20.39% goes to servers/site hosting, and none goes to engine and content development; outside of Patreon Fees, where does this rest of this money (the vast majority of it) actually go to? Does it just sit there as a fallback emergency option in case the Patrons stop donating to keep the servers on with?

 

It just seems odd to me that money is spent on keeping mostly dead servers up with 15 or 20 or less people (again if you’re lucky) while US West often tops out at 80 people. Should there not be a US West 2; considering that seems to be where most people are playing?

PIE CHART.PNG

SPACE STATON 14 MONTHLY.ODS (66.4 KB)

bro there is no fucking way your still fighting for your life on this

fucking someone end this once and for all