140 replies to this topic

[Vdragon]

Introducing iHawken, by Apploaded games

Revolutionary, 5 / 10 - IGN

A good value bundle - TheRichPeoplesMagazine

I can't wait to alpha-test my new overpriced private server! - a customer

 

You know people get paid to test things, usually, right?

I'd have no problem paying a decent amount of money for a private server that is guaranteed to -almost- work, but it's ripping right there.

I mean, the goodies are good and stuff, but the stickers are at worst 5-8 $ and the mouse, even custom modded, probably don't exceed 60 $, it's a pretty 'cheap' mouse...

Edited by Vdragon, 23 April 2015 - 07:25 AM.

[CraftyDus]

Except there are countries outside of the U.S. with significantly lower per capita income. Has this idea ever crossed your mind?

 

It is a fair market value for this service in my country.

It's worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. 

[CraftyDus]

Introducing iHawken, by Apploaded games

Revolutionary, 5 / 10 - IGN

A good value bundle - TheRichPeoplesMagazine

I can't wait to alpha-test my new overpriced private server! - a customer

 

You know people get paid to test things, usually, right?

I'd have no problem paying a decent amount of money for a private server that is guaranteed to -almost- work, but it's ripping right there.

 

 

We've been "testing" them for over a year now.

It's not "overpriced"

I pay more for my cs:go server than this. This is a good value IMO

[Vdragon]

 

I pay more for my cs:go server than this. This is a good value IMO

 

I pay 3 � per month for a VPS with 1 Go of dedicated ram and 2 dedicated cores on a Xeon server with a more than decent support, used to run a GMOD server on it, you are definitively getting ripped ;)

Edited by Vdragon, 23 April 2015 - 07:31 AM.

[Houruck]

We've been "testing" them for over a year now.

It's not "overpriced"

I pay more for my cs:go server than this. This is a good value IMO

 

Exactly, we have been testing them for over a year and we know they are half-finished.

I pay ~100 USD for my server hosting company and I run my own webserver, TeamSpeak and game servers on it. And this is not a virtual machine.

 

 

I've rented gaming servers from many hosting companies and 130/3mo is perfectly reasonable, and there is swag merch to boot.

You know you want it.

I do not want another Logitech mouse and a sticker(!) for 129 USD.

Edited by Houruck, 23 April 2015 - 07:30 AM.

[CraftyDus]

I pay 3 � per month for a VPS with 1 Go of dedicated ram and 2 dedicated cores on a Xeon server with a more than decent support, used to run a GMOD server on it, you are definitively getting ripped ;)

 

that's cute

 

Mine is a 128-tick 12 slot Pub with

Dual Intel Xeon E5-2690 (Sandy Bridge-E 2.9ghz) node with 16 total processor cores and 96 gigabytes of RAM. 

Comes with a mumble 

location chicago

Best support of any rental hosting company I've used and I've used many in the last decade and a half.

 

you are welcome to try it out, it's a very very nice cs:go server, rcon is lactic

thebeesknees.game.nfoservers.com:27015

 

 

 

gg no re

Edited by Dustin, 23 April 2015 - 07:42 AM.

[Amidatelion]

I haven't discussed this bit with any admins asides from Xacius, but I wanted to write something quickly so that people were aware of our likely stance before they purchased private servers.

 

As far as I'm concerned, central servers remain the most fair option for North American players.  If you are a TPG participant, or if you plan on participating in the future, I would recommend selecting a Central server.  I don't know whether server regions will be selectable or changeable (and if they aren't, I suggest that those options be added), but if/when those options are made available, your safest bet is Central.

 

Teams are, of course, free to agree amongst themselves on a non-Central server, but if disputes arise, admins will likely push you toward Centrals.  This policy will certainly be the case for the remainder of Season 2, and it will likely be the case for Season 3.  We will be discussing it in-depth, however, so things may change in the future.

 

This. When I was going in on it, I chose NA - Dallas for convenience. However, there should be some choices for East and West, as New York will let folks from over the pond join and West has actually had the most activity over the past couple of days so that's actually promising. But get it in Oregon, not LA. The LA servers for some reason give me terrible lag/packet loss.

 

 

It is a fair market value for this service in my country.

It's worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. 

We've never been big fans of communism here.

 

Server costs vary wildly between providers. You can get Battlefield 4 servers for $20. You can get that same server package from another provider for $65. It is a completely unregulated market. At the same time, people are going to look at the cost of services they are used to paying for and expect other costs to at least following a median. Pinning Hawken's server costs at $40 a month is Reloaded's call but personally I don't see the value matching up to it, particularly given the current server control implementation and the lack of information we have.

 

Further to that, I think we need some more information before moving forward here:

 

1. What is going to happen to the extant private servers?
2. If they are going to be phased out, fair enough. Can we get a timeline on that?
3. What happens after that initial 90 days of server time advertised?
4. Do we get back-end/HTML terminal access?
5. Are there any additional terms of use?

 

Thanks.

[_incitatus]

I don't feel like the price is too high.  Obviously everyone would like it to be less.  I'm sure they need to start bringing in some money and this sale/event would will help to do that.  

 

Just hope they don't sell out too fast lol...

[(Unknown)1590d2c747fabd]

Except there are countries outside of the U.S. with significantly lower per capita income. Has this idea ever crossed your mind?

 

In there we have the rub... costs of hosting and operating overhead is often a fixed item regardless of Geo.

So looking at something like Amazon EC2 (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/ assuming we aren't talking physical server in a rack at a data-center) the cost is going to be around $1.50/Hour USD (rough averaging of higher GPU/Memory/Compute tiers as I don't know the specs of one of these servers.) 

 

So the cost to run a server for 90 days:
0.5 hours a day average = $67 USD

1.0 hours a day average = $135 USD

1.5 hours a day average = $203 USD

2.0 hours a day average = $270 USD

 

Given that mostly "hard core" players/teams/clans will be the main audience I would expect to see the higher end of utilized hours on these servers. Even if you only played 4 hours on Saturday and 4 hours on Sunday each week that averages 1.14 hours / day

 So at a price point of $130 USD/3 Months is "reasonable" to cover hosting costs alone using an "on demand" IAAS service with no upfront commitment.

 

But that isn't even factoring the upkeep of both the instances/servers and the overarching framework that rolls them out and keeps them alive. (Can't even guess the man hours on this but keep in mind a talented DevOps engineer in the US costs between $40 and $67.5 USD per hour.) Plus all the "necessary enhancements" we want for the management and customization interfaces that have been mentioned above.

 

So while I understand the per-capita income of countries other than the US, Reloaded likely wouldn't be able to sustain the infrastructure at a lower price point. The answer would be to spread the cost across friends/teams/clans etc. which also makes the most sense from a consumer side to increase ROI since no one person could utilize the server 24/7/365.

Edited by oSPANNERo, 23 April 2015 - 07:44 AM.

[CraftyDus]

This is definitely a great step forward in terms of competetive hawken and community building, it's going to be nice having all teams get their weekly matches in the same day like other games do.

[Vdragon]

 

 

DerMax, on 23 Apr 2015 - 5:14 PM, said:

Except there are countries outside of the U.S. with significantly lower per capita income. Has this idea ever crossed your mind?

 

In there we have the rub... costs of hosting and operating overhead is often a fixed item regardless of Geo.

So looking at something like Amazon EC2 (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/ assuming we aren't talking physical server in a rack at a data-center) the cost is going to be around $1.50/Hour USD (rough averaging of higher GPU/Memory/Compute tiers as I don't know the specs of one of these servers.) 

 

So the cost to run a server for 90 days:
0.5 hours a day average = $67 USD

1.0 hours a day average = $135 USD

1.5 hours a day average = $203 USD

2.0 hours a day average = $270 USD

 

Given that mostly "hard core" players/teams/clans will be the main audience I would expect to see the higher end of utilized hours on these servers. Even if you only played 4 hours on Saturday and 4 hours on Sunday each week that averages 1.14 hours / day

 So at a price point of $130 USD/3 Months is "reasonable" to cover hosting costs alone using an "on demand" IAAS service with no upfront commitment.

 

But that isn't even factoring the upkeep of both the instances/servers and the overarching framework that rolls them out and keeps them alive. (Can't even guess the man hours on this but keep in mind a talented DevOps engineer in the US costs between $40 and $67.5 USD per hour.) Plus all the "necessary enhancements" we want for the management and customization interfaces that have been mentioned above.

 

So while I understand the per-capita income of countries other than the US, Reloaded likely wouldn't be able to sustain the infrastructure at a lower price point. The answer would be to spread the cost across friends/teams/clans etc. which also makes the most sense from a consumer side to increase ROI since no one person could utilize the server 24/7/365.

2 things here: first, this is completely wrong, I did use amazon EC2 for personal projects, it is not as expensive as you described it, and second, this is irrelevant as they are not using amazon servers anymore.

Edited by LadyTiggs, 23 April 2015 - 08:21 AM.

[(Unknown)1590d2c747fabd]

<SNIP>

I mean, the goodies are good and stuff, but the stickers are at worst 5-8 $ and the mouse, even custom modded, probably don't exceed 60 $, it's a pretty 'cheap' mouse...

 

Sooo you are saying you are getting $65 USD worth of branded schwag for initial purchase of $130 USD.

 

Given that, you are only "paying" $65 USD for 3 months with no requirement/commitment to renew.

 

So ~$22 USD / Month to try out the service and decide if you like it.

 

Sounds reasonable to me.

[Vdragon]

 

 

why so salty?

Well, I really did laugh for 30 seconds straight after reading your post.

[Houruck]

why so salty?

Vdragon is referring to the specs you posted. I am sure those are for the hosting machine and not your virtual slice of it.

[phed]

What if I can't make the event but I want a private server?

I'll be on vacation on the 30th and won't be back at my desk till the 17th. Can I still get one?

[Vdragon]

Vdragon is referring to the specs you posted. I am sure those are for the hosting machine and not your virtual slice of it.

And also, even if those are the real dedicated specs, hosting a 12-slot server on it (be it 128 tick) is a laughable waste of money. Also, you can find multiple free mumble server providers, as it is one of the (if not the) least power expensive voice chat system.

Edited by Vdragon, 23 April 2015 - 08:02 AM.

[CrimsonKaim]

Everyone listen to Houruck, I dare you!

 

But srsly, if the old private servers are not coming back, I am already disappointed.

Additionally I feel sorry for people like Houruck, Pasta and pretty much everyone who hosted a server for the community. Like putting effort into soemthing that gets removed without any warning or information in advance.

 

Just sayin' FakeName does not like this happening.

Edited by FakeName, 23 April 2015 - 08:02 AM.

[Amidatelion]

why so salty?

 

Well, I really did laugh for 30 seconds straight after reading your post.

 

And here we see the mating dance of two proud and arrogant species, homo sapiens murrikanesis and homo sapiens baguetteapalethicus.

 

Before this gets too explicit, I reccomend they take it to a more appropriate venue.

[Dr_Freeze001]

What if I can't make the event but I want a private server?

I'll be on vacation on the 30th and won't be back at my desk till the 17th. Can I still get one?

As long as there are still tickets, yes.

[CraftyDus]

Well, I really did laugh for 30 seconds straight after reading your post.

 

I've rented from a dozen or so gaming server rental companies in the past decade and a half.

NFO has been considered one of the better quality companies in the comp dod community and many of us have been patronizing their service over the last six or seven years.

 

They are consistently good over many years. Among the best in the competetive history of one of the most seasoned gaming leagues around.

 

This isn't my first rodeo, and you are resorting to personal insults. 

[Vdragon]

Sooo you are saying you are getting $65 USD worth of branded schwag for initial purchase of $130 USD.

 

Given that, you are only "paying" $65 USD for 3 months with no requirement/commitment to renew.

 

So ~$22 USD / Month to try out the service and decide if you like it.

 

Sounds reasonable to me.

It's more reasonable, but still sort of expensive for the actual service provided, althought the cost of the goodies is most probably (as i insinuated in my first post here) lower than 65 $.

[CraftyDus]

And also, even if those are the real dedicated specs, hosting a 12-slot server on it (be it 128 tick) is a laughable waste of money. Also, you can find multiple free mumble server providers, as it is one of the (if not the) least power expensive voice chat system.

 

Double the resources of a ts3.

Vent is less than either.

Nice try tho.

[(Unknown)1590d2c747fabd]

<SNIP>

2 things here: first, this is completely wrong, I did use amazon EC2 for personal projects, it is not as expensive as you described it, and second, this is irrelevant as they are not using amazon servers anymore.

 

1) I provided you the link to the Amazon EC2 pricing that I used for my modeling, here it is again: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

 

I chose US East as my region

I ruled out the free tier given the amount of computing and traffic likely necessary

I ruled out the general purpose given the amount of computing and traffic likely necessary

I ruled out "Storage Optimized" given my assumption that the server would not be storage intensive

This then leaves, as I mentioned in my original post, GPU/Memory/Compute tiers.

 

Compute optimized ranges from $0.116 per Hour to $1.680 per Hour

GPU optimized is either $0.650 per Hour or $2.600 per Hour

Memory Optimized ranges from  $0.175 per Hour to $2.800 per Hour

 

Given the assumption that Hawen is likely resource intensive (GPU/Memory/CPU) when doing a large game I decided to base my price point on the higher end, thus $1.50/hour. (I didn't even factor in network bandwidth costs which I couldn't reliably estimate.)

 

2) I did not state that Hawken was using Amazon for its offering. I was simply using it as a easily accessible and common exemplar service that everyone could relate to. Not to mention it would allow Reloaded to easily spin up or spin down servers on-the-fly as demand increased or decreased without any long-term commitments on their side. If you want to get super detailed, you could even compare pricing with Azure's calculator here: http://azure.microso...ing/calculator/

 

You and Reloaded could most likely get a better deal by signing a long term contract with a provider. But that is the trade-off of "pay as you go" for the consumer and for the provider they get the agility to make changes on the fly to their approach and offerings without having to worry about contracts with either their 3rd party providers or the consumer.

Edited by oSPANNERo, 23 April 2015 - 08:15 AM.

[Dr_Freeze001]

 

Like putting effort into soemthing that gets removed without any warning or information in advance.

 

A bit more of a warning than waking up Wednesday and hearing the Ultra-Violent servers were gone would have been nice, yes. I imagine that others feel the same.

[Vdragon]

I've rented from a dozen or so gaming server rental companies in the past decade and a half.

NFO has been considered one of the better quality companies in the comp dod community and many of us have been patronizing their service over the last six or seven years.

 

They are consistently good over many years. Among the best in the competetive history of one of the most seasoned gaming leagues around.

 

This isn't my first rodeo, and you are resorting to personal insults. 

You just came to the "I know better than you argument", well done, you are out of valuable arguments (and also following the school of "classical 'murican argumentation" very closely, no insult to other americans tho, it's just a very classical pattern I've noticed you guys usually follow).

But just to answer you and your concern about wether or not not I am capable of relating to server renting and hosting experience, yes, I can.

[CrimsonKaim]

A bit more of a warning than waking up Wednesday and hearing the Ultra-Violent servers were gone would have been nice, yes. I imagine that others feel the same.

 

Ofcourse they do, can't imagine someone being even close to happyness 'cause of that. 

[CraftyDus]

 is a laughable waste of money

 

 

If you could know what I've spent on cosmetics for all my smurfs in just hawken (I don't even know) you might die of laughter.

I bought a 1 1/2 x 3 foot mousepad yesterday.

You can buy all the cylindrical bread your heart desires and I'll spare you my derision.

I like pc gaming and it's money well spent, to me. 

 

It's a free market and things are worth whatever people are willing to pay for them. 

Vote with your wallet, I'll vote with mine.

[Nept]

Those servers may return, Dr_Freeze.  Ours were down for a day or two as well.  I'm certain that CapnJosh and crew recognize the value in providing some community servers.

 

As for the private server bundle, I'm going to pick one up.  I understand that the price seems steep to some  - in fact, I hope that it drops considerably in the future - but I'm willing to put some faith in this development team. 

[nokari]

You just came to the "I know better than you argument", well done, you are out of valuable arguments (and also following the school of "classical 'murican argumentation" very closely, no insult to other americans tho, it's just a very classical pattern I've noticed you guys usually follow).

But just to answer you and your concern about wether or not not I am capable of relating to server renting and hosting experience, yes, I can.

 

Take your personal bickering and arguing someplace away from this topic please.

[Vdragon]

1) I provided you the link to the Amazon EC2 pricing that I used for my modeling, here it is again: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

 

I chose US East as my region

I ruled out the free tier given the amount of computing and traffic likely necessary

I ruled out the general purpose given the amount of computing and traffic likely necessary

I ruled out "Storage Optimized" given my assumption that the server would not be storage intensive

This then leaves, as I mentioned in my original post, GPU/Memory/Compute tiers.

 

Compute optimized ranges from $0.116 per Hour to $1.680 per Hour

GPU optimized is either $0.650 per Hour or $2.600 per Hour

Memory Optimized ranges from  $0.175 per Hour to $2.800 per Hour

 

Given the assumption that Hawen is likely resource intensive (GPU/Memory/CPU) when doing a large game I decided to base my price point on the higher end, thus $1.50/hour. (I didn't even factor in network bandwidth costs which I couldn't reliably estimate.)

 

2) I did not state that Hawken was using Amazon for its offering. I was simply using it as a easily accessible and common exemplar service that everyone could relate to. Not to mention it would allow Reloaded to easily spin up or spin down servers on-the-fly as demand increased or decreased without any long-term commitments on their side. If you want to get super detailed, you could even compare pricing with Azure's calculator here: http://azure.microso...ing/calculator/

 

You and Reloaded could most likely get a better deal by signing a long term contract with a provider. But that is the trade-off of "pay as you go" for the consumer and for the provider they get the agility to make changes on the fly to their approach and offerings without having to worry about contracts with either their 3rd party providers or the consumer.

You may actually be right. Althought network bandwidth cost shouldn't be considered, as they should be free/comprised in the price (many hosts propose 1 GB/s bandwidth for free).

 

 

Take your personal bickering and arguing someplace away from this topic please.

Sorry about making you butthurt, but how personal is telling someone they are wrong when they can mislead people into believing false information (and namely here, discussion about the price for renting a server being higher than the price of the whole bundle)? Also, how should I react when that same person simply tell me to shut up for the oh, almighty reason, I don't know better than him deducting that fact by his wealth and his virtual fuzzy bunny?

Edited by Vdragon, 23 April 2015 - 08:34 AM.

[(Unknown)1590d2c747fabd]

It's more reasonable, but still sort of expensive for the actual service provided, althought the cost of the goodies is most probably (as i insinuated in my first post here) lower than 65 $.

 

I appreciate the acknowledgement of my points. (Not sarcasm, I assure you.)

 

For data points:

Target is selling the G400 mouse for $62.50 USD (not including shipping or Tax/VAT) http://bit.ly/1EvHqHc

The branding likely makes this a special/limited/collector edition so add some unknown additional value for that

Bumperstickers sell for between $2.00 and $10.00 USD http://amzn.to/1EvHQNA

 

So I think $65 USD is likely a valid price point for the sake of the discussion.

 

I did a quick search of COD private servers and $22/Month USD will get you a 22 person server at the *FIRST* google return I got. http://bit.ly/1EvI7QP

 

So taking schwag value into account, I think we are in the "zone" at this point especially when you consider these other Games/Companies have a much higher player bases to:

 

1) spread overhead costs over ( < 1000 vs  > 100,000's)
2) to use when negotiating volume discounts with 3rd parties (Virtual hosting companies are looking for much larger purchases to issue decent discounts)
3) reduce/absorb the impact of "churn" with people activating or terminating services (When you have 100 servers, loosing 5 is 5.0% of your client base/revenue stream. When you have 1000 servers, loosing 5 is only 0.5%).

Edited by oSPANNERo, 23 April 2015 - 08:37 AM.

[CraftyDus]

these are going to sell out within 11 minutes

[Dr_Freeze001]

Those servers may return, Dr_Freeze.  Ours were down for a day or two as well.  I'm certain that CapnJosh and crew recognize the value in providing some community servers.

 

As for the private server bundle, I'm going to pick one up.  I understand that the price seems steep to some  - in fact, I hope that it drops considerably in the future - but I'm willing to put some faith in this development team. 

 

Well, let's hope it happens soon then, because it's not just me who needs those servers, it's the entire ultra-violent gang (as I believe they are called). Just not too fun that they were taken down without warning is all. Just the fact that they were taken down at all, honestly.

 

But I can't complain. Josh let us use the servers for free, I can't complain about anything.

[nokari]

Personally, ~$65 for 3 months of private server access is reasonable to me and I would seriously consider it.

 

But I don't want to shell out $130 to get swag I don't have any interest in attached to that package. If I'm going to shell out $130 for extra stuff that comes with a private server, I'd rather it be something in-game like the Vanguard Initiative where I get something rare and unique that can't otherwise be bought.

Edited by nokari, 23 April 2015 - 09:54 AM.

[CounterlogicMan]

Not renting until the server can be interchanged between private/public and admin can kick/ban people. 

 

Right now Hawken servers are very limited in options available to admins. Plus what are the specs of these servers?

 

Currently what has been shown so far indicates to me that these servers are not worth $130/3mo 

 

 

I'd like to know, what makes these servers different from the, highly accessible, private servers currently in central?

Edited by CounterlogicMan, 23 April 2015 - 08:34 AM.

[Dr_Freeze001]

Not renting until the server can be interchanged between private/public and admin can kick/ban people. 

 

Right now Hawken servers are very limited in options available to admins. Plus what are the specs of these servers?

 

Currently what has been shown so far indicates to me that these servers are not worth $130/3mo 

 

 

I'd like to know, what makes these servers different from the, highly accessible, private servers currently in central?

 

Not being in central, mostly. You know, for people not in NA?

[Vdragon]

I appreciate the acknowledgement of my points. (Not sarcasm, I assure you.)

 

For data points:

Target is selling the G400 mouse for $62.50 USD (not including shipping or Tax/VAT) http://bit.ly/1EvHqHc

The branding likely makes this a special/limited/collector edition so add some unknown additional value for that

Bumperstickers sell for between $2.00 and $10.00 USD http://amzn.to/1EvHQNA

 

So I think $65 USD is likely a valid price point for the sake of the discussion.

 

I did a quick search of COD private servers and $22/Month USD will get you a 22 person server at the *FIRST* google return I got. http://bit.ly/1EvI7QP

 

So taking schwag value into account, I think we are in the "zone" at this point especially when you consider these other Games/Companies have a much higher player bases to spread overhead costs over ( < 1000 vs  > 100,000's), for use when negotiating volume discounts with 3rd parties (Virtual hosting companies are looking for much larger purchases to issue decent discounts), and to reduce the impact of "churn" with people activating or terminating services (Committing to "long term" contracts will give you better negotiating leverage).

I actually found the mouse price in eurozone to get near 40 $, I've just looked at the price on newegg (it's american, right?), I'm actually surprised by how expensive it is there (100 $ ??? What the actual fuzzy bunny).

[nokari]

Not renting until the server can be interchanged between private/public and admin can kick/ban people. 

 

Right now Hawken servers are very limited in options available to admins. Plus what are the specs of these servers?

 

Currently what has been shown so far indicates to me that these servers are not worth $130/3mo 

 

 

I'd like to know, what makes these servers different from the, highly accessible, private servers currently in central?

 

 

• one (1) 90-day "Server Pioneer" bundle, which gives you a token to set up your own private server hosted by us, that you can either make private using a password that you share with friends OR you can make public where people can play using your pre-determined ruleset. 

 

The $130 includes a mouse, sticker, and discount on the Nemesis bundle. It's not $130 just for the renting.

 

Those central servers are only accessible to public because the user admins chose to give out the password to anyone who asks. You still can't access them without getting the password first. The only reason they exist is because they were made when ADH was still in charge and Reloaded just hasn't taken them down, but they did take down other private servers. And frankly there doesn't need to be a difference. This advantage is more of a matter of letting MORE people have control of servers in different regions besides only Central, whether they choose to make them public or private.

Edited by nokari, 23 April 2015 - 09:56 AM.

[CraftyDus]

 

"Sorry about making you butthurt,"

 

thats not an apology

 

"Also, how should I react when that same person simply tell me to shut up "

 

I never said anything like that though

 

idk why you're being hostile

I'm just super excited for this event!

[Nept]

Well, let's hope it happens soon then, because it's not just me who needs those servers, it's the entire ultra-violent gang (as I believe they are called). Just not too fun that they were taken down without warning is all. Just the fact that they were taken down at all, honestly.

 

But I can't complain. Josh let us use the servers for free, I can't complain about anything.

 

Did you send him a message?  You may not feel as though you have a right to complain, but you could certainly request that they restore a couple community servers for those purposes.