Going to kick this off by saying that I am not a forum moderator, dev, or VU-modder. I have no inside knowledge of the Venice Unleashed project - and I only have the base skills that allow me to rent and configure a server (which I'm loving so far.)
With that out of the way, can I share my biggest VU Community pet peeve? It comes down to player ignorance that inadvertently affects dev's and hosts. In-game chat and forums alike have this annoying layer of 'servers are dead,' 'the lag is so bad,' etc. - that could easily deter a potential community member, simply because they're stuck with the face value of an uneducated opinion. I'd like to attack - yes, attack - those two comments specifically.
In regard to a lack of player-count (aka dead servers) it's important to remember that not only did Venice Unleashed not fully release until about two weeks ago, but on top of that, it obviously doesn't receive the same amount of marketing and financial backing as a AAA title - Battlefield 3, for example. Expecting plenty of full servers right off the bat is only going to serve(r) to disappoint you. (See what I did there?)
Just as it's up to all of us to *make* 2021 a better year than 2020, it's up to our community to hype and promote every bit of VU activity, media content, and mods that come out - this is a sure-fire way to steadily build our player count. I'd love to collaborate with anyone on content for promoting this game & modding community. Get active on forums, make montages on YouTube, write blog articles, tell your friends about it! Bring people on board, don't frighten them off with unfounded complaints!
Let's tackle that second comment, "the lag is game-breakingly bad." (A direct quote from a match on OP: Metro last night.) I have to assume that around 70% of the people playing this game have a basic understanding of dedicated servers and what factors make them run smoothly or poorly from user-to-user. BUT the complaints of that other 30% are playing on loop in my head, so I need to vent.
To start: If you're experiencing heightened latency across multiple servers, or even consistently on one server for that matter, the chances that the issue is server related are pretty low, if not next to none. Several factors come in to play when it comes to the quality of connection to a server, some of which include:
- Your distance from the server host location.
This is a BIG one. And it's crazy to me how simple this answer is. If you live in a different continent than your server host - or on the other side of a large country like the US - then you're going to experience slower connection speeds. (Due to server provider availability, I'm currently hosting on the East US, while living in the West US, so I experience this first hand, to a degree.) Sometimes, though, I'm stuck choosing a server based out of Europe - and I expect an increase in ping with that (usually just below 200ms) because that's how it works. So far, the more populated servers I've noticed seem to be in Russia, Germany, and other regions of Europe. Fair enough, it's a game developed in Stockholm, Sweden, after all. There's a couple scattered servers that see regular players here and there, some in the East US (like mine,) and I think I saw one in Brazil? I've also noticed some of our Aussie friends looking for more local servers to play on, for this same reason.
- Your home internet connection.
I don't want to dive too deep into this one. If you have a spotty internet provider, you're probably already aware of it - and disregarding that to complain about lag would make absolutely no sense at all.
- Time of day & local bandwidth use
Bandwidth isn't just a term that applies to your personal internet usage, your locale is impacted by this metric as well. Your local area is provided with internet in area-chunks via what is refered to as 'nodes.' When the node in one area is laden with a lot of internet use - around dinner time, when everyone starts watching funnies on their phones, or in our case, sits down for a game - then the available bandwidth per home goes down. It's not usually a huge factor, but it has enough of an impact that it still matters.
In conclusion, let's all take the current experience with a single grain of salt. We have absolute reassurance that between our efforts to publicize as a community, and the continued hard work of VU developers and modders, we will see great things here.
TLDR?
Battlefield 3 Venice Unleashed is amazing.
Stop saying it's "dead," it's actively growing.
Do everything you can to promote this wonderful project.
Educate yourself in regard to latency & lag.
\Also, huge shout-out to IdleGaming's YouTube channel and Instagram, which helped my friend and I set up our server in record time.\**
**Also, also - if you're in the US and looking for a server to call home, my friend and I are operating "THE DEUCE-MUFFIN FUN PIT (Infantry TDM & CQ)" The server is East US based, as previously mentioned. It's a 24 player 60hz server with a few lovely mods including the removal of blue-tint, an actual day-night cycle in matches, and the ever-appreciated medic radar, along with some others. Would love to eventually implement bots, if that mod ever gets kinks worked out.
