Quick idea about hosting servers...please take a moment and consider this BI.

[Nichols 243]

I am not speaking on behalf of Bohemia Interactive at all and I might just incur the wrath of Khan; but I have thought about this for a while and wanted to get it off my plate. Now with that said everyone knows hosting a server in Arma 3 is partly inexact science at best merged witchcraft and sorcery. We all know that what works for some communities doesn't work for others and everyone has their own flavor of the month/day/week/year....just pick one and you might have to cobble together something that works great 25% of the time; good enough for government work 50% of the time and creates nightmares for your community owners/tech guys 25% of the time. Whether it's mod incompatibility, scripts not working right or just plain lack of documentation for anything at all.

 

In my current break from Arma 3 I have been playing around with DCS and iRacing sims. DCS has it's own set of issues when configuring a server but they aren't super difficult to overcome. However; iRacing has a novel idea that I think is absolutely amazing. You pay iRacing $13 a month to be able to access their hosted servers and race against people from all over the world in different events. The cost of hosting your own race is $0.50/hour...that is 50 CENTS AN HOUR for up to 13 drivers but it doesn't cost the drivers a penny to join the server. So in essence if you wanted to host a Formula 1 or NASCAR race that in real life takes 4 hours to run and on iRacing it takes that long as well that race only costs you $2.

What if we could get BI to host servers for us with up to 64 players and the ability to add in a whitelisted modpack and the cost for the 2-4 hour hosted session was <$10? I could then understand having to pay some host like the ones out there for dedicated hardware Arma 3 server boxes the big bucks for your own 24/7 server but honestly how many communities are using their server 24/7? I have been a part of a few communities and know how much it costs to run a community from an owner and staff member perspective and the constant issues with trying to keep the servers running and missions hosted; along with not having your community members playing all the time. It is a pain in the butt.

[Dedmen 2588]

Why not just rent a server from a server provider of which there are dozens, which take care of the setting up for you, thats not a new idea at all.

 

BI won't host servers for you, but if your idea are very short timeframes of rented servers, like 1 day or half a day or something like that, you should bring that idea to a server provider.

They have deployment and all automated anyway, so I don't really see a problem in doing that.

 

For $15 a month I can get my own whole server, and run teamspeak + website + arma server on it and also use it for everything else I need.

I don't see the sense in paying probably about $5 per gamenight, when I have atleast 8 gamenights per month and unit members will also want to play spontaneous missions mid-week, and then I need a teamspeak server on top of that anyway.

 

Like if we take the iRacing numbers, $13 + 0.5 per hour. 8 sessions per month minimum, each about 5 hours (we don't know beforehand how long it takes, so that is another hurdle)

Thats $2.50 per session, making about $20 per month, plus the $13 on top.

$33 per month for a temporary Arma server thats only up for the specific session, no teamspeak, no website or anything else, no spontaneous mid-week sessions when members feel like it, for $33?

I have a 24/7 dedicated server with 2x Arma, Teamspeak, Webserver, Mailserver and everything else we need for just $20 a month, and our members appreciate being able to just hop onto the server mid-week whenever they feel like playing a bit of Arma.

[Nichols 243]

On 4/9/2020 at 3:00 AM, Dedmen said:

Why not just rent a server from a server provider of which there are dozens, which take care of the setting up for you, thats not a new idea at all.

 

Been there and done that and have ZERO desire to ever spend that much money on server rentals again. In my experience most of the gaming server providers here in the US aren't doing anything different than the the next one and in fact it seems like the vast majority of them aren't hosting their own hardware but they are renting from the big data center players in the online world.

[drdetroit 77]

No way!  Another $20-30 a month fee to pay for something I can't access 24/7 - the more I play the more I pay....hell no!  1000% agree with Dedman - he hit all the points already.

 

I got rid of I-Racing for that very $15 reason...that $15 adds up fast before you notice the $50-$80, or more (!), a month fee. R3E (Race Room) does it almost as well, imo with better graphics, driving physics, and tracks and all for like free, and can go up to hundreds of $$ if you go crazy on tracks/cars you want (no!  gotta have!)...you can actually race the free cars in events if you want, without purchasing anything.  It just doesn't have the sweet race day overlays and massive player base.

 

Don't get me wrong, I-Racing was pretty damn cool, but it get's expensive!  I don't want to go anywhere near that with my Arma!!

 

Just my $0.02 worth!

 

Good day!
DrDetroit 

[Dedmen 2588]

On 4/14/2020 at 4:45 AM, drdetroit said:

agree with Dedman

With who? Who is that Dedman guy?