Understanding pricing model and looking for a small scale indie dev option

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cartellonegerardo asked Apr 13, '22

Understanding pricing model and looking for a small scale indie dev option

I looked at the servers prices on this page:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/playfab/features/multiplayer/servers/multiplayer-servers-detailed-price-sheet

I'm a started to server tech so I'm maybe getting things wrong.I read the pages where you explain how the pricing works but I still was quite confused.

You have server instances types based in different regions if I understand correctly if a player connects to my server from somewhere away from the region I chose I have to pay extra "egress" cost which depend on how much data is transferred and how many different players connect daily. Do I obligatorily need to choose a region or is there a way to have a sort of more global option?

Also if for example if I pick a US east A1v2 1 vCpu linux the price is 0.0473/h so running this constantly 31 days a month will cost me 750*0.0473$ = 35.5$/month.And maybe more because of the connections away from USA east which I guess are most of them since I guess my game won't be targeting usa east specifically. So are my getting this right or are my way off.

I'm an indi dev so I would be lucky if my game makes more then 35.5$ a month currently i'm just supposing it won't make any money so i really need to go for the cheapest options .Any good suggestion for my situations would be highly appreciated. I feel like I have maybe some options that are pretty cheap with AWS Ec2 servers but they don't come with all the extra services such as matchmaking and authentications maybe there is a way I could have my EC2 server check if players are authenticated using playfab before authorizing players to do things?

Also maybe I don't even need a server. Here I asked a question a while ago explaining all the services that i need. .

https://community.playfab.com/questions/61364/i-need-to-store-player-data-and-i-need-something-t.html

I feel like I need server since I'm not using unreal I'm using unity and my game is an android game so I can't use the PlayFab Party system.

Thanks in advance for any help.

pricing

10 |1200

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Answer 1 · 2022-04-14T02:30:03Z

Seth Du answered Apr 14, '22

PlayFab Multiplayer server is designed for session-based games like MOBA, Battle Royal, etc. From the previous thread, I notice you want peer-to-peer. Normally session-based games highly require fairness, which means data must be processed in a dedicated host server. I am not sure of the genre of your game and if you can describe more about your game, we may help you choose a proper solution.

>>about AWS Ec2 servers

Matchmaking system and PlayFab Multiplayer Server can work independently. The matchmaking can be used, but you need to manage your own multiplayer server.

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cartellonegerardo commented · Apr 14, 2022 at 08:56 PM

So it's just a special chat/game for android in terms of connection basically it's just like a 1 on 1 chat no need to have more then two people chatting. you can choose to chat with a random person among-st other people that also want to chat with a random person or you can chat with a friend if you know his username and he/she has their game on.

During games chats Nothing about the mini game people play on their phone while chatting is transmitted to the other players the only thing transmitted through the internet is the text/string that constitutes what the players want to say to each other. It does need to be transmitted fastish like a face book or discord chat.

I don't care too much if there is hackers that cheat, if they want they can would just defeat the purpose of the game. Except obviously would like to avoid them screwing up the server as much as possible and hacking each others computers but that everyone I guess

Players need to have accounts and save their friends list in their account. Conversations though are not saved. I

I'm starting out with a simple plan just as an initiation to the server multiplayer world.

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Seth Du ♦ cartellonegerardo commented · Apr 15, 2022 at 06:55 AM

Multiplayer Server is required when the game needs fairness and real-time transmission, while according to your description, it seems hosted server is not necessary.

However, since it is 1v1 chatting, you can still use matchmaking system and set 2 for the maximum match size, while, for the chatting feature, you can use shared group data. Please refer to Using Shared Group Data - PlayFab | Microsoft Docs. The client API has an upper bound limit of 100 calls per 2 min and you can call GetSharedGroupData once in a while to refresh the data as long as the frequency is below that limit. Additionally, I also suggest setting a unique name for the shared group, such as combining both ID and an extra random string.

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cartellonegerardo Seth Du ♦ commented · Apr 15, 2022 at 11:39 AM

thanks a lot for guiding me to the shared data system seems like probably the best choice for me i'm quite hyped about it. Although i'm still confused of how I'm going to be able to get around using a server .

So here is the create shared-group-data info page:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/playfab/server/shared-group-data/create-shared-group?view=playfab-rest

I think shouldn't be giving power to my Players to create group data as they wish so i'm assuming I should keep the X-SecretKey to my self? But for this system to work my players do need to be able to request a group-data creation, although they must be authenticated and have no other group data created, then also probably their should be conditions so group data is automatically destroyed if players are just not doing anything with it maybe more conditions. For that it seems like I have to do some sort of server program or maybe it's just possible to program this behavior from the playfab title management website :

https://developer.playfab.com/en-us/my-games

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