Dead severs

darthaden

This is A issue that hopefully won't come up for year after release but it's never too early to plan for the future. Every game no matter how good will eventually lose players. In most mmos this is relatively easy to fix by merging low population servers but in a game like Ashes things will be a little more complicated.

I'll run a scenario through here: My guild and I over the years due to hard work have become one of the more dominate guilds on our server. Our home node is A metropolis and many members own mansions in the center of the city because we helped build it from the ground up. Over the years our sever population has reached a point it's no longer high enough to meet basic gameplay mechanics so our server either stays dead or we merge.

The server we merge with most likely our home node wouldn't be at a metropolis stage and even if it was those mansions would be owned by another. the easy answer would be to fight to rebuild our city on the new server but that would require months of effort and we'd lose out on the benefit of ownership during that time.

Noaani

Intrepid have said that - while they know they will need to merge servers at some point - they are unsure how they will go about it.

The most likely thing imo will be for Intrepid to start a new server with the population from any servers that needed to be merged.

It is worth keeping in mind though, that even your guild is unlikely to want to keep one node a metropolis for that long. Even if you are dominant, don't expect your home node to be stable.

With this in mind, being dropped on a fresh server isn't really much of an issue.

Kesyntanth

With New World's well publicized problems, it's been interesting to watch this in real time. The long story short is that they botched that pretty hard. From what I have heard, you can't even see the population numbers when you log on. Of course, that's kind of irrelevant when people can check populations on third party sites.

I would imagine that it would have to be done in a way similar to what @Noaani suggests: put the population on a fresh server with no node ownership and let them fight it out on equal footing. Move everyone over with all their banks and resources and see what happens when the dust settles.

It might even be interesting.

Taiphee

darthaden wrote: »

This is A issue that hopefully won't come up for year after release but it's never too early to plan for the future. Every game no matter how good will eventually lose players. In most mmos this is relatively easy to fix by merging low population servers but in a game like Ashes things will be a little more complicated.

I'll run a scenario through here: My guild and I over the years due to hard work have become one of the more dominate guilds on our server. Our home node is A metropolis and many members own mansions in the center of the city because we helped build it from the ground up. Over the years our sever population has reached a point it's no longer high enough to meet basic gameplay mechanics so our server either stays dead or we merge.

The server we merge with most likely our home node wouldn't be at a metropolis stage and even if it was those mansions would be owned by another. the easy answer would be to fight to rebuild our city on the new server but that would require months of effort and we'd lose out on the benefit of ownership during that time.

There would only be 8 mansions per metropolis, therefore 40 per server, so you can't have too many mansion owners in your guild.

Noaani

Taiphee wrote: »

There would only be 8 mansions per metropolis, therefore 40 per server, so you can't have too many mansion owners in your guild.

This is not true, according to the best information we have.

A node had 8 cottages at village stage, this is correct (and likely where your assumption came from). However, according to this quote from Steven, increasing the level of a node not only increases the size of houses, but also increases the number of houses available.

If you choose to keep the same size then the next stage will have an occupied small home. So for instance if at stage three there are 8 small home and you own 1, then at stage 4 there are 10 new small homes of which x are owned by previous owners, and 10 new medium homes of which x are owned by upgraded small home owners.

So, in this quote from Steven, leveling the node from stage 3 to 4 increased the number of top tier housing from 8 up to 10, as well as adding 10 lower tier houses.

Hasil

I'll provide some input on what to do here.

Step 1: Make a list of everything Amazon did with New World and server launches and mergers.

Step 2: COMPLETELY AVOID doing everything you listed in Step 1.

CROW3

Well said, sir. Give that man a beer.

Pitou

for dead server they should do an the apocalypse event where people can log in ( before closing down server ) and fight against corruption earning rewards but if you don't make it to the portal on time or die you lose rewards like equipment or so on. And you can't log back into the server. dying or going thought the portal like a risk and rewards mechanic.as time the server counts down it gets harder and harder for to survive.

Diggy

By the way, I always wanted to give a fantastic explanation of servers and all sorts of mirrors, otherwise, plunging into the world at the time of the server change, it feels like it’s an assassins creed and we are all in the virtual world of the Middle Ages, it was great to start a plot thread, as if there are alternative realities for you, someday you will have to use magic to get into someone else's reality, since the period of the apocalypse has begun in yours.

Jahlon

Noaani wrote: »

Taiphee wrote: »

There would only be 8 mansions per metropolis, therefore 40 per server, so you can't have too many mansion owners in your guild.

This is not true, according to the best information we have.

A node had 8 cottages at village stage, this is correct (and likely where your assumption came from). However, according to this quote from Steven, increasing the level of a node not only increases the size of houses, but also increases the number of houses available.

If you choose to keep the same size then the next stage will have an occupied small home. So for instance if at stage three there are 8 small home and you own 1, then at stage 4 there are 10 new small homes of which x are owned by previous owners, and 10 new medium homes of which x are owned by upgraded small home owners.

So, in this quote from Steven, leveling the node from stage 3 to 4 increased the number of top tier housing from 8 up to 10, as well as adding 10 lower tier houses.

There will only be 8 mansions in a metro.

Only the first 8 In-Node houses will grow.

Although it is not necessarily 8 > 16 > 24 > 32 for total houses, only the 8 Cottage at the Village stage will have undergone the 3 upgrades it takes to be a mansion.

mcstackerson

As Noanni said, I think people should see a server merge the same as a failed siege defense. You will most likely be losing your home in this game from time to time, especially if you are in a high level node.

I'm not sure how this should be handled. Merging a few servers into a new fresh one is an option but might create an issue if you have to wait for enough servers to reach a state before doing this. I could see it being easier to close down the server and allow people to transfer.

Noaani

Jahlon wrote: »

There will only be 8 mansions in a metro.

Only the first 8 In-Node houses will grow.

@Jahlon

This was my assumption as well, until the quote from Steven on Discord where he specifically talked about the number of small houses in a level 3 node being 8, and then the number of of medium houses in that node being 10 when it leveled up to level 4 (along with there now also being 10 small houses).

Maybe Steven mis-typed here, but that is what he said. Unless there has been clarification of that fairly direct statement, we should assume it is accurate imo.

Jahlon

Noaani wrote: »

Jahlon wrote: »

There will only be 8 mansions in a metro.

Only the first 8 In-Node houses will grow.

@Jahlon

This was my assumption as well, until the quote from Steven on Discord where he specifically talked about the number of small houses in a level 3 node being 8, and then the number of of medium houses in that node being 10 when it leveled up to level 4 (along with there now also being 10 small houses).

Maybe Steven mis-typed here, but that is what he said. Unless there has been clarification of that fairly direct statement, we should assume it is accurate imo.

We clarified that with him and it was a misspeak.

He was referring to the ability of one of the original home owners to not upgrade their house.

So, you have a cottage at Stage 3. When the Node hits Stage 4 the 8 cottages would upgrade to Medium Homes. UNLESS one of the 8 home owners doesn't want an upgrade and wants to keep a cottage.

Then it would be 7 Mediums + 1 Cottage
+ 10 New Smalls
+ 1 New Medium to replace the Cottage that was not upgraded.

Noaani

Jahlon wrote: »

We clarified that with him and it was a misspeak.

Cool.

The mechanic as you are describing it is actually slightly different from what he has talked about in the past, not just the numbers. That mechanic, the way it is worded, makes it so there are more houses in the node if players do not want to upgrade - unless he misspoke again (which happens).

Are you able to either send a quote to Lex, or update the wiki with it?