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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
concurrent player ratio
ashone
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
A bit of concern on the 50,000 accounts to 10,000 concurrent players ratio - how are you going to ensure the first weeks/months of the game are not simply people stuck in queue; and how does this work given the prime time idea for scheduled events?
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Comments
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Server merging would be horrible imo but I also want to make sure I get my guild together at launch so too little server would cause us a major headache after a year of recruitment and preparation. I am expecting to have 25-50 at launch and I kinda need us all together haha.
you can ensure that through pre-registration. question is whether they get to play duribg the first 3 days
It's either have queues until the initial bubble of excitement dies off or risk having dead servers that need to be merged...which IMO would be the worst case scenario considering the amount of time invested into your nodes.
Let’s also not forget that we will have what, one or two headstart servers which open up 2 days in advance? They will certainly use that launch as a way to know if they’re about to get destroyed and can be more ready for the official launch.
That seems a somewhat deliriously optimistic take. Access to headstart servers are only owned by 10-25k players. Which isn't even remotely relevant to the amount of players that can be taken expected upon launch.
Just to put it into perspective.
Head start, as it is now won't even be remotely relevant to the stability within the launch periode.
Then again, this isn't even the problem. The problem are the hordes of tourists that try out the game, fill up all the servers (create queues) and leave them half dead a couple of weeks later.
Which, unfortunately, is a Problem, that appears in every new mmo. First you have a lot of tourists, then you can be happy if 10-20% of the players sticks. Which usually results in server populations massively dropping.
There pretty much are only 3 ways to avoid these problems:
Option 2 is wishful thinking.
Option 3 can be implemented game design wise with a bit of hassle. The question is whether Intrepid wants to go through that (+ finds a good concept) and finds a solution supporting that on the hardware end.
Blizzard is the most experienced MMO company on the planet and even they frequently chug to a halt the first week or so of an expansion launch. To think Intrepid will hit the magic number is an incredibly utopian thought.
So it got me thinking.
A solution I have seen work is on 2b2t ("Minecraft's oldest anarchy server" TM). I don't actually play on this server, but I do keep tabs on it because the stories that come out of it are EVE online tier epic sagas that are 100% player driven. The stand out feature is that 2b2t always has a que, but they give senior players priority. A lot of people want to come and see what 2b2t is all about, but not very many people actually want to stick around. It is after a blood bath with a very high learning curve. Treating all players as equal when it comes to login rights does would not work for 2b2t. The high volume would mean nobody get to enjoy the server.
I realize that what I am about to suggest would be highly upsetting to some, but I want to throw it out there anyways. Feel free to hate the idea. I personally would prefer a system where the game looks at play time and uses that to prioritize position in the que to login. I also would want this play time to start as soon as possible. Even if they don't open alpha 1 keys to be sold, and my playtime counter is behind until alpha 2. I would like to see a system where those who are consistently playing the game get priority.
I realize what I just suggested is potentially very upsetting, but I would like to hear some thoughts as it is related to the main topic of this thread.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I would 100% support that - but I only see it as a solution for when they add major DLC to the game. Prioritizing people based on play time when everyone has zero play time doesn't seem like a good idea to me, and so since that initial few days would essentially be random, peoples total play time after those first few days would be 100% dependent on how much time they got in that rng of a first few days.
Again though, for DLC it is a great idea.
What I'd like to see for the games initial launch is for them to only offer 6 month subscriptions for the first 3 months, then add the three month subscription, then the 1 month subscription.
At least that way you are pricing the tourists out of clogging up the initial launch of the game. As long as it is clear at the games launch exactly what is happening, I think you would find more people ok with the idea than against it.
I could see this helping a little bit and wouldn't be opposed if Intrepid Studios decided to do something similar at launch. But when it comes to giving certain players log-in priority on servers... that's an absolutely horrible idea, in my honest opinion. A total no-go for me on that one.
Is there any particular reason you wouldn't want to see a priority as per outlined?
The way it would work seems fairly good to me. Since everyone that has been playing the game for the duration of a content cycle obviously fits on the server just fine, and since these people would all obviously have more play time than people that haven't been playing the game and thus higher priority, the game is simply prioritizing people that have been playing the game all the way through, rather than the people that are likely only going to be there for a few days or week.
To me, if someone did have to sit in a queue for a while, it should be the people that are only coming to check the new content out, not the people that have been playing the game solidly the whole time. Prioritizing based on played time does exactly that.
If you are a casual player that has been playing the game through that whole content cycle, you would still have more hours logged than the players that haven't, so even the casual players that are playing the game constantly - even if casually - would get priority over the people just there to check out the new content.
In order to get any benefit at launch they would have to start the "playtime timer" in alpha.
@Samson
I do understand that a lot of peoples gut reaction would be a swift "Hell No", but I am curious as to why you dislike the idea?
When trying to attack my own idea. I can only come up with "We all pay the same sub we should all have equal access" as a rebuttal. Net Neutrality also comes to mind, but I am not 100% sure that applies here as I am not a "law talking guy".
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I know you guys are just trying to offer up a potential solution, but I just personally think the idea of giving server priority is flawed and would be harmful to the game/player base in general.
I mean, of course the people with priority will have the most time played... because THEY are the ones that are able to access the server and play!
Entitlement should be thrown out the window in this case... and ALL players should have equal access to play the game regardless of how much they have or plan to play.
EDIT: Also, wouldn't granting server priority be a prime example of Pay-to-Win? Especially if the timers began in Alpha... where players had to pay to participate in the first place?
The rich getting richer is a totally valid argument that I was not thinking of.
I am on the fence about if I consider it to be Entitlement or not. I am a strong believer of "Equality of opportunity" over "Equality of outcome". On one hand I think that anyone who has the time to play a MMO, and own a PC capable of running ashes, should have the money to get into the alpha, and be able to invest their time if they wanted priority under my hypothetical system. On the other hand, what I just said is not exactly true. I know a lot of people, would like to play other games while they wait for ashes, and may be waiting to upgrade their rig as close to launch as possible to save money. A priority system would force them to play when they are not ready, just out of FOMO for the day one experience.
Still, seeing it work for 2b2t so well makes me think it a possible solution for MMOs.
I was hoping for the term "Play-to-Win', but you are technically right.
The game is so hyped, there is bound to be an astronomical amount of tourists.
It's not like I can't handle large ques, I just hate waiting 6 hours to login when I know 75% of these bozos won't be around next week. Happens every time.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I'm not super keen on the idea of anything from alpha/beta giving players an acta advantage once the game goes live.
If they did it this way, people that were in alpha/beta, both of which cost money to get in to, would have a real advantage once the game is live.
I'm sure you can see how that wouldn't be a good thing for Intrepid.
Apply it to WoW, since that is a game most are familiar with. We would be talking about this suggestion first applying when Burning Crusade came out, which means people that played the game all through vanilla would have priority to log in to their server over people that just came to check out the new expansion. This is a very good thing for the people that have been continuous subscribers to the game - who are the people any MMO company should be trying to do right by.
People were able to play the game as much as they wanted during vanilla, there were no server queues for most of that time, so there's no scope for the self-perpetuating scenario that you are thinking of - and that I already talked about above - from happening.
Yeah I thought more about it since Sampson pointed it out. You would have to start the timer in an open-alpha/beta for it to not be "Pay-to-Win". I don't think ashes has any open testing. So no dice.
Still, I can't help but think there is something a little off about all of this. I mean "Founders" bought into a system where they can log in early. The founders que is not going to be a problem. That whole system could be argued to be "Pay-to-Win", but it is too late to have that argument because the founders packs are already sold.
I don't even see a real "Stress test" in the release schedule. It would be quite the feat to have a smooth launch after slamming the servers with only 27k players in beta (Assuming everyone logs on at once). I really hope that the 8-10k expected server population has like 40-50k worth of headroom or something. If not we will get through it. Again...
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I believe Amazon's architectures can be pretty flexible when it comes to handling heavy loads in bursts?
Then again... New World's beta test was also maxed out, wasn't it?
Don't even care about the guild? K, then think of your friends (if you have any), same issue here. It's not good for the game and it's not good for the players at that point.
Can confirm.
This is why it wouldn't work for the initial launch, but is also why it would work in relation to future DLC.
It isn't good for guilds or existing groups of friends to not be able to log in to play together. The best way to ensure they can do this with a DLC that is seeing large numbers of players coming back temporarily to look at the game is to ensure those people that have been playing the game continually (and thus are in guilds and have in game friends) are able to log in first.
Again, not a good idea for the initial launch, but a great idea for any added DLC.
That said, I don’t know a single MMO that has a real queue. That’s something I remember dealing with in days of yore but that doesn’t happen in modern games. Maybe briefly during a special event but it’s rare. I think it’s a pointless exercise to speculate about how Intrepid will deal with an issue that doesn’t exist.
If there's a queue it'll be b/c of the launch. Shadowlands had a queue for about a week until the initial buzz petered out
That’s my point. If there’s a queue it will be rare and temporary. It’s really not worth wasting time on something that will almost never happen.
This is like stressing about buying meteor insurance in case a meteor hits your car while driving.
You're not wrong, it is something that would only happen every so often.
However, with Ashes plan for DLC, as far as I remeber, that "not long" would well be once every three months.
Even that isn't worth the effort to maintain a system if that system needed constant maintanence, as meteor insurance requires constant payment of a premium.
However, if someone offered me meteor insurance for life, for the cost of one of those payments, it would me far more attractive (meteor insurance still wouldn't be worth that, but other forms of insurance that would otherwise not be worth it suddenly would be).
With a system like this, Intrepid would only need to implement it once, and that is the only time it needs any attention. After that, it is just "there" doing it's thing when it is needed.