The competition...

axRhino
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The competition...

Post by axRhino »

After some very frustrating times dealing with BF4 issues at its release and in the weeks that followed, paired with the post purchase revelation of the limitations of running it on a VDS and NFO's unwillingness to refund the unusable portion of our prepaid slots (30 of which were unusable but paid for) we are going to try (another RSP) for a month.

We have wanted to run large conquest and currently can't even with 40 players without it becoming unplayable on our 6 core NFO VDS. The lag, rubberbanding and crashes kill server traffic and we have been forced to play small conquest, domination or tdm.

So at NFO's suggestion we are going to go see how other companies perform.
we actually encourage customers to try out other providers while the game is still young. You'll see we aren't the only one seeing these issues and that we've been very honest and straightforward with all of you.
What we ordered from (the other RSP):

001 - Game Servers - Battlefield 4 Ranked
» Players Slots: 70 slots $77.00
» Game Server Location: (US) Dallas, TX $0.00
Setup Fees: $0.00
Monthly: $77.00
Total Due Today: $77.00
**5 Day Money-back Guarantee

What NFO Offers:
Game Servers - Battlefield 4 Ranked
Server Location: (US) Dallas, TX
Monthly: $90.99
**2 Day Money-back Guarantee (unless you already have an account with them- then no trial period)

I'll let you know what we see performance wise once we get it configured and filled.
FAST
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Re: The competition...

Post by FAST »

Were you not told that VDS are not really recommended for high BF3/bf4 slot counts?

Why did you not give NFO a shot with the pay per slot before going to the competitor?
to refund the unusable portion of our prepaid slots (30 of which were unusable but paid for)
I don't think any provider would actually refund this and it is not their policy to refund for unusable slots. I have been there but I know that's my fault for running into that problem.


Crashing we have been seeing lately is unavoidable at this time. That's a fact.


Xfactorservers was brutal and the owner (forget the kid's name but young person) was a scammer. It ran into legal issues and sold it to Fragnet. I can't really comment on fragnet as I have never used their services.

Good luck trying out the new provider.
axRhino
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Re: The competition...

Post by axRhino »

FAST wrote:Were you not told that VDS are not really recommended for high BF3/bf4 slot counts?
Nope and after several support tickets and posts in the forums the limit was brought to our attention
FAST wrote:Why did you not give NFO a shot with the pay per slot before going to the competitor?
Combination of poor support, sold us service they could not fully support, no refund of unusable slots, and they encouraged us to try other providers. So we are.

Lately we have also seen really inconsistent service from NFO across the board. The DDoS attacks are out of control and the consistency just hasn't been there.
FAST wrote:I don't think any provider would actually refund this and it is not their policy to refund for unusable slots. I have been there but I know that's my fault for running into that problem.
Edge100x wrote:axRhino, I understand your frustration. Many other people are also frustrated by BF4. Unfortunately it isn't as simple as providing an immediate service credit/refund on our end, as we would have to do that for all customers out of fairness, and we may not be able to afford it. We also would want to wait for the root cause of problems to be resolved, of course, and for word from EA/DICE on whether they will be offering compensation that we can pass through.

This release has been incredibly stressful for us and we're continuously investigating ways that we can improve the experience for our customers on this end.
NFO was willing to sell us the slots then tell us (after several trouble tickets and forum posts) that it was not going to be playable at 70 slots. As a 2 year client I would have thought they would be willing to work with us given the situation. Instead they were more than willing to take our money, blame the condition of the game on Dice /EA and offer nothing to make it right even though they could not live up to their performance guarantee. We were just supposed to eat the cost of the prepaid slots for 3 months.

You can see the previous forum thread here:

http://www.nfoservers.com/forums/viewto ... 93&t=10064
FAST wrote:Good luck trying out the new provider.
Thanks. We already have the server running. Filled it up for a period of time and have seen minimal lag / rubberbanding on some of the more troublesome maps. We will try to give it an acid test over the next five days and make a decision then.
.=QUACK=.Major.Pain
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Re: The competition...

Post by .=QUACK=.Major.Pain »

I would invite you to share your new server ip with Fragnet so others here can see you made a mistake switching.

Of course you will be setting up the same 70 slot 6 core VDS with them I am sure?

I think you will have the same results if all gsp's are under attack by dickheads.

I used to be a customer of theirs when they took over Xfactor and again at a later date.
Nothing but nightmares. They on several occasions just out of the blue, cancelled my servers in error, and had to wait days and weeks for them to be issues again. Had to start from scratch of course. They also moved my server to the UK for no reason and gave me a new server in the move. They were on and off support wise. At the end, the were horrible.

You can read my review here: http://gspreviews.com/fragnet-net
Visit gspreviews.com And Rate & Review Your Old & Current GSP's
Find Your GSP Coupons at gspreviews.com/coupons/
fantasygirl
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Re: The competition...

Post by fantasygirl »

I just registered to say I wish you guys had a private forum to discuss the attacks in case your forums are being watched..

and please don't all come to FN and bring the ddos's with you ;)
axRhino
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Re: The competition...

Post by axRhino »

.=QUACK=.Major.Pain wrote:I would invite you to share your new server ip with Fragnet so others here can see you made a mistake switching.

Of course you will be setting up the same 70 slot 6 core VDS with them I am sure?

I'll be happy to post either positive or negative results whichever way it goes as that is the point of trying a different service.

As for the vds...No. Why would we try another VDS if they are incapable of hosting the type of server we wanted to play? We are keeping our vds with NFO for now as it hosts our other games but if the performance issues continue we will have to consider a different service provider. My community members have been questioning the quality and consistency of the NFO setup we have.

I'm certainly not saying Fragnet is good.....just that we are trying them as one of the official BF4 server providers. I'm sure every GSP has both horror stories and glowing reviews. Its just the nature of the business.
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Re: The competition...

Post by Madhavok »

axRhino wrote:As for the vds...No. Why would we try another VDS if they are incapable of hosting the type of server we wanted to play?
Why wouldn't you try a VDS on another host? That is the issue, the VDS here is having issues. Why would you go with a PPS server on another company instead of switching your VDS back to a PPS server here?

Maybe I missed a key point..
Image[url=steam://friends/add/76561197986357938]Image[/url]
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Re: The competition...

Post by Edge100x »

The VDS slot limitation is mentioned directly on the VDS order page. We have always been clear about not recommending BF3/BF4 servers over 48 slots to be run on VDSes. We don't outright ban it, because fundamentally the VDSes and dedicated servers are about customers determining how their own resources are used, but we don't suggest it at all.

Comparing a server on a VDS here to one hosted on a bare-metal machine elsewhere would not be an "apples to apples" comparison. For true "apples to apples" comparisons (same type of server, with the same number of slots and configuration, in the same location) we have a full performance guarantee that covers our customers.

We do not mind if you try out a competitor, and we expect for many customers to do this. Some will end up staying with the competitor for any number of reasons (for instance, they may have a lower price and quality that is lower but still acceptable to the customer; or they may offer service in a location we don't have available; or the customer may not wish to lose his or her GUID in the move back), but we know that many will see the difference (in service/support, performance, features, and overall quality) and come back to us.

Please, no advertising for specific competitors in this forum. Just keep it general and say that it's a competitor, and everyone, please stay professional.
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soja
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Re: The competition...

Post by soja »

The performance guarantee doesn't apply to high slot BF series servers(if I recall properly).

They also have this on the VDS order page:
Image

When they sold you the slots, you can use them however you like, with 1 server or 5. It is well known that BF4 does not perform well on VDS's here. Icewolf experienced this near launch day:
http://www.nfoservers.com/forums/viewto ... bf4#p49287

As said before, comparing a VDS vs bare machine performance won't give you a real comparison.

NFO doesn't get a refund for the slot price from EA, so they can't give one to you :(
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Re: The competition...

Post by Cyberbang3r »

I have rented hundreds of servers and every host is different... All depends on your needs (ie, performance, customer service, cost, etc) NFO has it's problems just like everyone else and is far from perfect. My experience is when you "Host Hop" you usually solve one problem only to create another... Good Luck on whatever you choose :)
axRhino
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Re: The competition...

Post by axRhino »

I never stated it was an apples to apples comparison. Simply that we going to compare performance of our vds (which had issues / limits) to a standalone server and see if it performs better.

In this case we opted to test with another company because of the 5 day trial period, the lower cost and we were seeing repeated periods of lag probably related to DDoS attacks and or server maintence issues.

We learned to live with the 40 slot limitation for the duration of our 3 months we prepaid with NFO. The 48 slots were unplayable with large conquest due to game performance issues that supposedly EA/ Dice are working on.

Yes people rent elsewhere for a number of reasons and we have been happy with NFO for the majority of the time we have been here. Only recently have we seen a slide in the quality of their products and services.
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soja
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Re: The competition...

Post by soja »

The performance of a standalone server will outperform a vds. NFO states this here: http://www.nfoservers.com/forums/viewto ... =47&t=4077

However in my experience the performance is significantly lower than bare metal hardware for the BF series.
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Re: The competition...

Post by Edge100x »

Our internal quality continues to go up, but the recent DDoS attacks have made us seem to have more problems. Similar attacks have been felt at other hosts, as well, but I can understand that the grass may seem greener.

The size of these attacks is larger than any host can handle right now. Internap's upgrades and our upgrades should help to mitigate them, and I'm taking all other measures that I can to stop them at the source, coordinating with upstreams and other ISPs to reduce their intensity. The amount of time that I've spent fighting DDoS attacks in the last week alone -- and amount of time just spent on the phone with the Internap NOC troubleshooting them -- is mind-bogglingly large.

I know that fourty7r had similar concerns about VDS performance with large servers. They moved to regular standalone servers with us and I believe they have been very happy with the performance of those.
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Re: The competition...

Post by soja »

Yes, Icewolf has talked with me on steam about the great performance once moving to shared game servers, forgot to include that.
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axRhino
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Re: The competition...

Post by axRhino »

After one day we saw much better performance. We ran large conquest all day and even with a full server we saw only minimal lag / rubberbanding. Its been much better than running it on our NFO VDS. Time will tell if this continues. naturally its more expensive than running on a VDS.

I can also report that the "Other GSP" doesn't ping as well as NFO to Dallas. My off peak ping from SLC to Dallas with no one on the server is 70ms. My NFO ping to Dallas are in the mid 50's. During peak times last night my ping rose to 115-125ms to Dallas while the NFO server there (that was unpopulated) was in the mid 70's. I would expect a 20ms bump during peak play hours but not 50ms on top of already higher pings.

We had one additional player report the same ping issue I saw but our other players weren't seeing the same effect. A traceroute report two servers in Dallas were pinging over 120ms at the time.

We'll see if this happens again today. Its idling at 70ms now.

My guess is that a standalone rental server will run BF4 large conquest better than a vds no matter where you go.
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