Earlier this week inside their weekly news post, Bungie attempted to calm some unrest regarding news that Destiny 2 would not be featuring dedicated servers.
May 18th’s Destiny 2 Gameplay reveal was full of interesting insight into Bungie’s highly anticipated sequel, from improved story implementation to game wide PvP changes. Two of the major talking points to come out of the event, however, was that console versions would be running at 30fps (PC uncapped) and that no platforms would be using dedicated servers whatsoever. Both of these revelations were daggers to the hearts of fans who had been pleading for both, dedication servers in particular, since the game’s launch back in 2014.
Sensing some dismay from the community over the announcements, Bungie decided to tackle the issue directly during an interview conducted by Community Manager, DeeJ, in Bungie’s weekly blog post.
“We’ve seen a lot of people asking about how the networking model works for Destiny 2. Many are concerned by our announcement last week that Destiny 2 doesn’t have dedicated servers” said Destiny 2 Lead Engineer, Matt Segur. “While that’s useful shorthand, the full answer is more complex because Destiny has a unique networking model.”
“Every activity in Destiny 2 is hosted by one of our servers. That means you will never again suffer a host migration during your Raid attempt or Trials match. This differs from Destiny 1, where these hosting duties were performed by player consoles and only script and mission logic ran in the data center” Segur continued, and referenced a GDC presentation from 2015 that mapped out an explanation on how Destiny 1 handled networking.
Segur explained that Destiny 2 would be using a similar system to the first game, essentially a hybrid of both dedicated and peer-to-peer servers, but this time around both the ‘Mission Host’ and ‘Physics Host’ will run in Bungie’s data centres.
We really believe this is the best model for all of Destiny 2’s varied cooperative and competitive experiences. Engineering will always involve tradeoffs and cost-benefit analysis, but as a team we’ve got no regrets about the unique technology we’ve built for Destiny 2. – Matt Segur
So, does this mean all of the connection woes will be remedied for Destiny 2? Well, no, and they’ve fully acknowledged that not all of those frustrating moments currently being experienced will be gone completely. However, what it does suggest is that it will, at the very least, be a notable improvement and that in itself is reassuring. How much of an improvement, we’ll have to wait and see when we all get our hands on the beta, slated for release sometime this summer.
Let us know what you think in the comments below and check back for more updates on Destiny 2.
