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Helping to Prevent Server Merges and Avoiding Launch Day Queue Boredom with Sanctus
Goalid
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
A problem with Ashes of Creation is that the game is very anti-server merge at its core. Let's say my server's population dies down, and the server gets merged. All the hard work my guild put into a particular node goes to waste. The local economy gets completely changed; we lose all of our progress in a game that's centered around node progression and node maintenance.
So, I was thinking a bit over how Intrepid could prevent server merges from occurring, assuming that server populations are bound to dwindle by a certain percentage on launch. Although admittedly, if the game is as amazing as I think it will be, player retention will be higher than a certain, recent MMO that is plagued with server merges.
One obvious strategy to combat dwindling server populations, is to simply have not as many servers, and force players to be in a queue while waiting to play the game. Ashes current plan is to have 15,000 players registered to a server at launch with concurrent player populations of 8,000-10,000. So that's potentially a 4,000+ queue on launch and requiring 40% of the player population to log off in order to log on, if you're in the back of the line. We're going to be in queue at launch for several hours at a time. But this seems necessary to me, to prepare for the worst of a dwindling player population after the first quarter of the game's release. We don't want new servers to accommodate long queue times, only to have half the player base leave after a month of playing. I was thinking that during these queue times, we could be in a separate server dedicated to Sanctus in order to entertain us while we wait to get into Verra. That way, we can have some dedicated gameplay to hold us over.
Some suggestions of how this could work. Sanctus would be a tutorial area where you stay as long as you please. When you're ready to head to Verra, you interact with a Divine Gateway in order to get a queue reservation. Your spot in queue is in the upper right corner of your screen, and once it hits zero you get your little cutscene of heading through the Divine Gateway, and arriving in Verra.
While in Sanctus, there could be tutorials for the crafting system in Ashes. You could find out some Ashes lore, especially over 4000 years of Sanctus lore, in this area. There could be taverns you can wait in with other players, and play tavern games with those players. Or perhaps you could put up notices on tavern boards to recruit for your guild. Creating a nice little social environment at the beginning of the game would do wonders to hold people over. Sanctus could also act as an area all players in a server region interact; with a player's server selection being done by interacting with the Divine Gateway; and starting their queue reservation. (Unless you already have a guild reservation made.) Maybe you can choose to go to an instance of Sanctus that is only your race, creating a unique environment. Maybe you can get to adventuring level 2 in Sanctus, or gather a very limited number of tier 1 mats to take with you to Verra.
And when your main character gets into Verra finally, and the very next day you also have a queue timer, you can play in Sanctus on an alt while you wait. Recruit, find Sanctus lore, play tavern games.
My point being, if Intrepid can give us some kind of gameplay on Sanctus, there will be less pressure on Intrepid to open up servers that may be doomed to fail in the future. If we get players that stick with the game for 5 hours before getting on Verra, we might be ensuring healthy server populations down the line regardless of the game's popularity after launch. And it's a hell of a lot better than just staring at a number on a screen at launch.
So, I was thinking a bit over how Intrepid could prevent server merges from occurring, assuming that server populations are bound to dwindle by a certain percentage on launch. Although admittedly, if the game is as amazing as I think it will be, player retention will be higher than a certain, recent MMO that is plagued with server merges.
One obvious strategy to combat dwindling server populations, is to simply have not as many servers, and force players to be in a queue while waiting to play the game. Ashes current plan is to have 15,000 players registered to a server at launch with concurrent player populations of 8,000-10,000. So that's potentially a 4,000+ queue on launch and requiring 40% of the player population to log off in order to log on, if you're in the back of the line. We're going to be in queue at launch for several hours at a time. But this seems necessary to me, to prepare for the worst of a dwindling player population after the first quarter of the game's release. We don't want new servers to accommodate long queue times, only to have half the player base leave after a month of playing. I was thinking that during these queue times, we could be in a separate server dedicated to Sanctus in order to entertain us while we wait to get into Verra. That way, we can have some dedicated gameplay to hold us over.
Some suggestions of how this could work. Sanctus would be a tutorial area where you stay as long as you please. When you're ready to head to Verra, you interact with a Divine Gateway in order to get a queue reservation. Your spot in queue is in the upper right corner of your screen, and once it hits zero you get your little cutscene of heading through the Divine Gateway, and arriving in Verra.
While in Sanctus, there could be tutorials for the crafting system in Ashes. You could find out some Ashes lore, especially over 4000 years of Sanctus lore, in this area. There could be taverns you can wait in with other players, and play tavern games with those players. Or perhaps you could put up notices on tavern boards to recruit for your guild. Creating a nice little social environment at the beginning of the game would do wonders to hold people over. Sanctus could also act as an area all players in a server region interact; with a player's server selection being done by interacting with the Divine Gateway; and starting their queue reservation. (Unless you already have a guild reservation made.) Maybe you can choose to go to an instance of Sanctus that is only your race, creating a unique environment. Maybe you can get to adventuring level 2 in Sanctus, or gather a very limited number of tier 1 mats to take with you to Verra.
And when your main character gets into Verra finally, and the very next day you also have a queue timer, you can play in Sanctus on an alt while you wait. Recruit, find Sanctus lore, play tavern games.
My point being, if Intrepid can give us some kind of gameplay on Sanctus, there will be less pressure on Intrepid to open up servers that may be doomed to fail in the future. If we get players that stick with the game for 5 hours before getting on Verra, we might be ensuring healthy server populations down the line regardless of the game's popularity after launch. And it's a hell of a lot better than just staring at a number on a screen at launch.
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Comments
That may not have a huge impact on ques on opening day, but it will have some impact since these players won't be logging into your server.
We will have to put up with the wait time for a bit, I think. Just read the wiki to learn more of the game and prepare yourself. Or write your mom, do your homework, wash your clothes, be productive....since once you get online those things won't be happening.
I don't see how head start servers will have any significant effect on queue times on the actual launch day.
It's not that people won't wait in a queue. It's that Intrepid will get negative press from long queue times and people will be moaning about creating more servers. Making it easier for them to keep longer queue times without as much negative backlash, seems like a good investment to me. After all, I'd expect them to make a Sanctus tutorial area anyway, why not make that an actual experience?
basically, long queues for a while is all a part of MMO's now, and most of us know and accept this.
Edit: I like the idea of a tutorial instance while in queue. Is it feasible? I don't see why not, but there's a lot we don't know right now. Mortal Online 2 did it, kind of.
But the demand for this game on release could be absolutely crushing. And then there could be a somewhat significant drop off later because of the nature of the game. This issue will probably be one of Ashes' biggest hurdles, hope it's on Intrepid's radar.
Given that they aren't a corporation seeking to maximize short term profits, a slow and steady upramping might be worth considering.
While trying to play on a server, if the server is full, the game automatically docks you to a mirror server. (places you on a different server) while queuing on your official server.
When the queue ends, a warning message appears to move to your official server and after a small loading screen there you are.
That goes against the game design for competition over limited resources on your server.
As for this specific question, I know Steven has mentioned in the past that certain accounts will be able to pre-register. We've also discussed what our plans have been for server population, which helps us plan ahead for when the release date comes. You can see more about what Steven said on this topic on this page of the wiki
@Noaani while some lay down and accept the situation, others try and innovate and create something new.
EQ2 had no server queues at all at launch. The games servers were designed where hardware was dedicated to specific zones. If a specific zone had too many people in it, the server would just open up a second instance of that zone, or a third, or a fourth.
I mean, if Intrepid have the hardware to allow players to play in Sanctus, why not just allow them to play in Verra instead? it's not like playing in Sanctus wouldn't use server capacity - unless it is an offline, client-side, single player thing.
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Because playing in that instance removes the threat of PvP that should exist, as well as the competition for resources. My suggestion for Sanctus doesn't involve using server capacity, Sanctus can be on a different server while you wait in queue to get on your server.
OP's Sanctus idea isn't bad, it reminds me of "Tutorial Island" from RuneScape, but there will still be technical limitations even if the Sanctum is instanced. You will either still have a queue at some point or it will have a cap on number of connections.
This is quite a difficult issue to solve, but in my opinion, potential server mergers (months or years down the road) are better than likely long queues.
If Intrepid were to agree with that statement, I believe they should make it clear how server mergers would work and find the best possible way to implement them, given all the peculiarities Ashes will have. Mergers will never make everyone happy, but I'm sure it's possible to make up to players that are active on the servers that will soon be lost/merged.
I am not saying server mergers are a good thing, I simply believe that it's better to have mergers start happening months after launch than having 12 hour queues hurting the game's reputation because the number of servers on launch was not enough.
Last but not least, no matter how many servers there are, there will definitely be server queues on the most competitive, streamer, RP and coolest named servers. Banning character creation on those servers is an awful decision, in my opinion.
If it is running on hardware that Intrepid are paying for, that hardware could instead be used to see more people on the actual server.
Also, instancing overland areas doesn’t remove PvP. You aren't getting an instance all to yourself, you are sharing it with as many people as the area is designed for - in EQ2's case, that was 100 or so for most zones, but some larger zones had more than that before they opened up a second instance.
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I think perhaps what some people here are not taking in to account is that for most companies and most games, there is a real and practical limit - the server hardware. Ashes doesn't have this limit, and so can do things different. There is no actual reason they couldn't allow more people on to a server at launch - they can just scale up the hardware to match since they don't have that same limit.
While I don't necessarily disagree, I do have to ask - why not just use the app while you are waiting?
That said, most of what is going to be on the app won't be of use in the first week or two.
Why does Ashes have no hardware limitations? I think under your model for instancing that might be true, but I don't believe Ashes having 20,000 concurrent players per server instead of say 10,000 is merely a consequence of the developer's will. I would think the servers would be more fragile with more players, and I would expect one server that runs with 20,000 players, would be more costly than two servers with 10,000 players.
Well, obviously if a similar system was to be implemented in a game like Ashes, there would be more than 100 people in an area. You wouldn't just copy and paste a system from a game that is nearly two decades old - you take the general idea and make it work with the game you have.
Ashes doesn't have the same hardware limitations as other games because they are using AWS, rather than their own hardware.
While New World used AWS as well, since that game was made by a bunch of people with no real idea what an MMO is, I wouldn't use them as an example of anything.
Multiple instances just wouldn’t work with an open world mmo in a good way, especially with the systems AoC has.
I actually really like the OP’s idea. It’s basically an extended starter area that can be limited with how much it affects the real map. Most tutorials could be left in that area too. Then the actual map starter areas can be more old school. Less hand holding. As long as there are no advantages over just entering the main map other than tutorials it would work.
There will still be ques so not against the tutorial/hang out area as well.
Multiple instances (or phases) in a game like Ashes could work just fine. I'm not saying it has to work, or even that it should be what Intrepid do, I ma simply pointing out to people that there are MANY ways to do things that most people here haven't thought of.
I don't see any point at all in a pre-game lobby. It doesn't add anything positive to the experience, and the concept of being able to log in to an alt but not your main is just weird.
I think most people have thought of instancing, but we're playing Ashes specifically to not get an experience like GW2 / Lost Ark, but more like Archeage in its heyday.
A pre-game lobby allows for socialization and some form of gameplay while you're in queue. People don't want to queue up and go do laundry, they want to have some kind of interaction with the game and its community (since it's a social game) and I think this helps create less complaints from people in a queue and satisfies some itch. The concept was that you could play on some Sanctus alt while waiting to get in on your main, maybe it can just be your main waiting in the pre-game lobby, I only suggested it for immersion's sake.
What if someone takes off for that specific day and can really only binge play for a day or two? I get the idea, but I think having a limit on consistent game time would cause way more complaints from consumers. Are there any other games that successfully implemented this idea?
Depends on how the games server is set up.
If the game just has a set amount of hardware per game server, allocating server resources based on in game location, then sure (this is what most games do).
On the other hand, if the game allocates resources to each character, regardless of where they are, then having more players on one server isn't an issue (Rift is designed this way).
If they developed Ashes that second way, and the AWS resources are just allocated per account, then yes, throwing more money at them will allow for it
I have no idea, I just thought of it tbh. I get it causing its own problems. I just know even days I took off for day 1 releases and had all day to play I rarely if ever was able to. It was hard to get in game for certain releases, then you get server maintence, Dcs, and every time your most likely waiting in que again. Just thought it might be a fair way to share game time early release. Classic WoW was the most recent one I can remember. I was trying all day and was just getting outpaced because I couldn't stay in game, while it seemed like others were able to stay/get back in. I kept doing /who to see names/levels.
It could definitely add a positive experience depending on how they did it Imo. While I don't care to much about lore, or tavern games, I can see other people that would enjoy that, which would be a positive experience for them. I personally would enjoy the free time of looking at my skills, maybe practicing rotations on a dummy, talking in gen chat, browsing your inventory/gear, checking out your status screen. While I agree you prolly shouldn't get to level or farm mats, there's deff stuff that would be more fun then staring at a que. Long ques could easily go on for a while.