Loadout's Australian and South American Servers Shut Down

Steven Bogos

The Taco Man
Jan 17, 2013
9,354
0
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Loadout's Australian and South American Servers Shut Down


Australian and South American Loadout players will now be forced to play on high-ping American servers.

Loadout is a fun little Team Fortress 2-inspired [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/10988-Loadout-Review-Gun-Porn] third-person shooter, whose free-to-play microtransaction system has been pretty much universally praised by gamers and critics alike. Unfortunately for Australian and South American fans of the game, their experience is about to get a whole lot worse. An Edge of Reality customer service agent has confirmed that the Australian and South American servers for the game have been disconnected, meaning players from those regions must now play on higher-ping overseas servers.

"Unfortunately, after reviewing the history of our various game servers traffic seemed that our Australia and South America servers were not seeing enough traffic to support players the ideal match, resulting in waiting times too long for matches degraded efficiency the matchmaking system," said the agent [https://www.loadout.com/forums/index.php?threads/australian-and-south-american-servers-were-disabled.6840/], adding that "we monitor traffic on a regular basis, and so we see a sufficient number of players accessing our game servers from these regions, we reevaluate the possibility of activating these servers again! "

Loadout, while initially quite popular, has plummeted in average player count, dropping from 30k average players in February to just 3k at last count [http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&jstime=1&appid=208090&from=1391241600000&to=End+Time]. It's no surprise that the servers are being shut down, but it's still a bummer to players from the affected regions - particularly those who had invested real money into the free-to-play title.

For a shooter-type title like Loadout, ping is a very important aspect of online play. Australian ping to American servers is usually in the 200-300ms range, which any shooter fan will tell you is completely unacceptable.

We've reached out to Edge of Reality for comment.

Source: Loadout Forums [https://www.loadout.com/forums/index.php?threads/australian-and-south-american-servers-were-disabled.6840/]

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dumbseizure

New member
Mar 15, 2009
447
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Uhhhh.....as an Australian....I haven't heard of this game.

When did it come out? Cause I haven't seen anything about it (that I remember anyway).

It's a shame that the Aussie and SA servers are shutting down for those that play it.
 

Caliostro

Headhunter
Jan 23, 2008
3,253
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2 months and it's already tanking? Oh dear...

Think it's a shame if it goes down though. For all its flaws I thought it was quite good for a F2P shooter, particularly their business model. Definitely head and shoulders above the average F2P shooters...
 

njrk97

Senior Member
May 30, 2011
248
2
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okay so the game is losing popularity, that's bad. So its not making enough money, still bad. So the morons decide to lose EVEN more of their audience by dropping server in region in a game that is CRUCIAL to have efficient ping. Why not just allow people to host there own server in the regions then. The devs don't have to pay for these and Austrlian and South America get good pING. Seriously i am so F*cking tired of almost any multiplayer game forcing Australians to join high ping servers. WE ARE A COUNTRY GUYS, WE EXIST,GIVE US A BREAK.
 

Albino Boo

New member
Jun 14, 2010
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In my days of playing TF2 I played on east coast US servers. I normally had pings of ~120ms but I normally got into the top 5 on a 32 player server. Its tactics that wins general population servers not ping. If you were talking about organised teams where the skill level is even then yes ping is the decider but otherwise it wont make a difference.
 

frobalt

New member
Jan 2, 2012
347
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I'm one of those players that used to play but doesn't anymore.

The game itself can be quite fun, and the fact that you only have to pay for cosmetics is a good thing.

However, the price for the cosmetics is ridiculously high. I know they aren't needed, but I bet a lot of people were put off by the price.

I simply got bored of it. However, it's pretty typical for me to get bored of a game quickly like this.
 

Elijin

Elite Muppet
Legacy
Feb 15, 2009
2,045
1,007
118
What you actually meant to say was 'All Australians everywhere stop playing Loadout'

300ping is not a playable ping.
 

Smooth Operator

New member
Oct 5, 2010
8,162
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Well they should really find some middle ground, because devs do have it right, a game without players is awful even if you have a real good ping, there were many F2P games I gave up on simply because there was never enough people to play with and the few who remained would only play one mode on one map day and night... that is a community that will bury your game.

But high ping are no joke either, once you get up near 100ms the match is severely scaled against you especially in something as frantic as Loadout.
So for the love of christ Loadout crew consider keeping at least one or two local servers with options to play in separate regions.
 

Chareater

New member
Aug 12, 2010
67
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Well I spent £50 on this game, simply because I wanted it to do well and to show other F2P game makers how it is done. And now this... I don't think it will last much longer which is a shame.
 

fletch_talon

New member
Nov 6, 2008
1,461
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Umm as an Australian who literally downloaded and played Loadout for the first time today, it was quite playable on like 90 ping or so on the Asian server.

Not sure where the 300 ping and having to use the American servers comes from.
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
9,909
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The sad thing though is that the apparent failure of Loadout so quickly means that their much-praised attitude on micro transactions and supporting themselves isn't going to be picked up. As much as users and critics praised it, it sadly showed itself to be less viable from a business standpoint going by this.

Of course then again while the game was okay, it was pretty limited, and I think it's fallout in interest has to do with the game itself... as high quality as it was, it's still just a deathmatch shooter and is in competition with other similar games like the enduring "Team Fortress 2" to which it was largely just a novelty alternative for a while. I suspect this has more to do with it's player falloff and needing to drop servers than anything, but I doubt many bean counters will choose to see it that way in the future.
 

NuclearKangaroo

New member
Feb 7, 2014
1,919
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too bad, the game just didnt manage to hold my attention, i like the weapon customization but its way too simple, too bad i truthly like their business model
 

Antitonic

Enlightened Dispenser Of Truth!
Feb 4, 2010
1,320
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I'd like to know how people are managing 200-300ms online, frankly. The rare times I play online I'm surprised to see anything under 1500. 65000 is my record. :p
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
8,407
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But are the NA servers actually high ping servers or are the internet connection of yours just crap? i remmeber playing on canada servers with bellow 100 ms pings.

Antitonic said:
I'd like to know how people are managing 200-300ms online, frankly. The rare times I play online I'm surprised to see anything under 1500. 65000 is my record. :p
are you on dialup or something?
 

Antitonic

Enlightened Dispenser Of Truth!
Feb 4, 2010
1,320
0
0
Strazdas said:
But are the NA servers actually high ping servers or are the internet connection of yours just crap? i remmeber playing on canada servers with bellow 100 ms pings.

Antitonic said:
I'd like to know how people are managing 200-300ms online, frankly. The rare times I play online I'm surprised to see anything under 1500. 65000 is my record. :p
are you on dialup or something?
Nope. Cable broadband. One of the better plans available too, apparently.
 

Grabehn

New member
Sep 22, 2012
630
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I've never liked to play on South America servers cuz I usually find them really annoying, and the only problem that there could be is having a high ping, which has never actually made a game unplayable.

I haven't played this game, since there's nothing that I see other than the "CUSTOMIZE ALL THE GUNS" thing, but as long as they allow people to play, it's fine. Unlike other companies that put IP locks "Cuz it affects the servers", looking at you Nexon...
 

truckspond

New member
Oct 26, 2013
403
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Because I live out in Western Australia I have a >90 ms link to the Asian servers so I am not really that bothered by this