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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.
Server merge = Monster Apocolypse PVE event?
QuiQSilv3r
Member
AOC plans on having a dynamic world with each server being different, eventually server populations will dwindle and servers will need to be merged. Starting a new server and moving both server populations to it and having the players duke it out might be fine if the node system ends up having as high of a turnover as they seem to indicate, however just losing everything you've built but keeping your resources won't be any fun, so what if you designed server merges as planned events, set several months out, tie it into the lore, make it an apocalyptic event like. Maybe something like monster coin, 3 months before server close the server close is announced and a server wide apocalypse begins initiating mass evacuation to the divine gates. The players can start caravans to bring mats and other stuff they want to keep through the caravan system they are already designing. Then you have players surviving while defending their caravans as they make their way to the divine gates to join the new server and you also give some excitement to the end of the server.
Think about what it would be like, the clouds ashen, fissures opening up across the land, your guilds caravans bumping across the once smooth road. An eerie silence permeates the air pierced only by the occasional sound of wildlife being extinguished by the monsters plaguing the world.
This allows a more fun transition to the new server and gives opportunity for looters and opportunity for players to struggle against hordes, which we all enjoy
Think about what it would be like, the clouds ashen, fissures opening up across the land, your guilds caravans bumping across the once smooth road. An eerie silence permeates the air pierced only by the occasional sound of wildlife being extinguished by the monsters plaguing the world.
This allows a more fun transition to the new server and gives opportunity for looters and opportunity for players to struggle against hordes, which we all enjoy
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Comments
I would recommend shutting down pvp and make this a pve event. Evacuees vs End of the World.
Going back through the gates is lore+!
Bravo
Simple logic dictates that this is wrong because to populate a new server with 8000-10000 active accounts they will need to close those accounts previous servers meaning that at least 8000-10000 people will get to enjoy this event. Hopefully this kind of apocolypse event would build upon their already existing code for caravans and corruption/monster events.
@unknownsystemerror
But the point is that if a server has a large population like you describe, it won't be merged. You only merge a server that has a tiny population not worth keeping anymore.
So if you don't have a good system in place for merges, merges might happen less often and be seen as more of a pain in the ass instead of something fun. You want to merge servers BEFORE the population is tiny because at that point you will be losing players you wouldn't have normally lost. AOC said themselves they want 8k-10k active accounts per server, so merging servers once they hit half capacity seems more ideal then waiting till they are at 1/4 or even lower. Which goes back to my point, this idea would be experienced by 8k-10k people since thats how many you need to populate the new server
All of the low pop servers would have an event that destroys those worlds and the "survivors" appear on a world reborn from the ashes of the old worlds - similar to Ragnarok.
Lets assume you are correct, then from development perspective, it would need to be developed once yes BUT the same code can be reused every time there is a need for merging the servers and further built upon too if needed.
So, is it worth it? Hell Yes!
Why? Cuz it will enrich game experience rather than be a coin toss on how much players will lose cuz of the server merging.
As far as accounts on servers are concerned, 8-10k people can play concurrently does not mean that there will only be 8-10k accounts per server. It will most definitely be 30k+ accounts per server. So when you say that "very low" number of people will get to experience this that number would still be in tens of thousands.
Like when you get a 100Mbps connection doesnt mean that your ISP is permanently allotting you 100Mbps bandwidth from their resource pool. They are allowing you to use whatever you want with an upper limit of 100Mbps. As a result many people are using that same 100Mbps at the same time cuz normal usage doesnt go beyond 1-2Mbps unless you are downloading or streaming. Same is true for this as well cuz those 8-10k players wont be online 24x7 and daily too for that matter.
How much effort? First of all, as this is related to server merges so it need not be a priority pre-release. From development perspective, it depends on how extensive the effects of "Apocalypse" is gonna be. It can be done in 2 ways:
- World wide changes in landscape: In this case it would be quite an undertaking from art and design perspective as well. Imagine WoW WoTLK to Catacalysm, sort of.
- Only the area where Portal will spawn will have the effects of Apocalypse visible: As this would be focused in relatively smaller area, it shouldn't be too taxing on development, art and design teams. Kinda like the Dark portal in Blasted Lands in WoW.
Worth it in the long run? As server merger wont be a one time thing and are likely to happen from time to time, yes it is definitely worth it.
And thinking like this is exactly why it should not be a promoted thing. You chose. Poorly. Your server died. Intrepid has tons of other backend systems and rules/guidelines they have to put out on server merges before they make something pretty for what again, a low population being merged into a higher population, is a niche event.
Intrepid has sold name reservations that are server specific. What if your name, that you paid for to reserve was good on your server, but some other chad has Sepiroth already? Who has preference on having to rename, the merged toon coming in who paid, or the the person that was on the larger server who possibly never had a package?
We know we are able to have "a comfortable amount" of characters on a server. What happens if the cap is say 5 as just number thrown out there. You have 5 on Server A which is the one being merged into, but you have 5 characters on Server Q which has died. You get to pick and choose who gets deleted? Where does their stuff go? Are resources moved to the new server, is specific gear, are one of a kind legendaries that might have been achieved on your dying server allowed to transfer over?
There are many things that Intrepid has to work on as exceptions and hypotheticals for any server merge tech they plan to have in place. Throwing more creep for what is bound to be a niche event for a lower population when they have thousands of man hours already committed for core pillars and mechanics is a waste.
Much more engaging than an ordinary closure date and then log in on a different server!
There would be no loss. I've often played last stand modes. It would be good if the devs blocked resurrection and log ins during the end phase and the server dies when the last soul online is slain.
Of course, until the game is released I do dabble in fantasies.
He isn't talking about griefing anyone or anything. He would make a toon, play the event and than that's that. Many people make alts, play around for sometime and then shelve them or use them as extra storage space. If you are a hardcore MMO player, which you look like, you probably have done this as well.
What does this have to do with Apocalypse event? Server merge will happen and this is a consequence of that. What you are saying is server merging is bad and should be avoided. That is 100% true. But Apocalypse event OP is suggesting is aiming to make the server mergers an impactful event rather than simply going through the motions cuz IS said so.
Don't get me wrong, its not a priority level idea, but you keep saying it will impact a small population, please think about it, at the very minimum you will have several thousand people experiencing the merge, thats if they move everyone to an existing server, if they move everyone to a new server then everyone on the new server will have experienced the event therefore meaning 8000-10000 active accounts will experience the event.
"You built up your node from scratch and collectively spent tens of thousands of hours into it? Well sorry, we opened too many servers so you have to merge, and your node gets obliterated. BUT, at least enjoy having to move all your mats from your guild bank to a divine gateway!"
Rather, maybe a short-term buff that temporarily increases advancement for any character who was transferred in the merge (not new characters created on the server). That way some measure of what was lost can be regained. Maybe.
I’m mostly thinking in terms of node advancement. I don’t think you’d lose anything in your character via the transfer.
I am making a single assumption with this, which is that Intrepid go the route of taking population from low pop servers and dumping them on a new server together as opposed to taking the population of one server and adding it to an existing other server.
With that in mind, every server will go through this at some point, meaning every player that plays the game for an extended amount of time will go through it. Players that join the game and play for a year, or perhaps 18 months - they may not see it. Players that stay longer than that will though.
Sure, lower population servers will go through it first, but all servers will eventually be low population servers compared to release.
A guild of 100 people, putting in 100 hours into a node is 10,000 hours. Or 1000 people putting in 10 hours. It better take collectively much more XP to level up a node than that, otherwise we'll have metropolis nodes in under a week of gameplay. There will be far more than just 10,000 hours put into leveling nodes up.
So, I am not sure that one can assert that they are 'lost' hours when the node is gone since they were hours spent raiding, hunting, guarding caravans, crafting and furthermore. It is like AoC is giving you a bonus because your hours accomplish two things at once, raiding and node advancement, for example.
I am also not sure that I can assert that my comment is relevant to your discussion.
So if you got your main deleted or your gear deleted and were told "well getting your gear and levels is just a bonus part of the game! The gear's just a bonus on top of doing the content!" you would be satisfied with that answer?
They should be focused on preventing server merges so not a single one happens. If that means longer queue times temporarily then so be it. I also think we disagree what's an acceptable number of players on a server, I think even if server populations went down to 3000 active players, they shouldn't be thinking of merges.
Two points to make here. The first is that if you are on a server that is merging, you knew it would happen before the developers did. You may not have known when it would happen until they said, but you would have noticed the drop off in population that are engaged in the game well before the developers would notice a drop off in actual population.
The second point is that the amount of experience needed to level up a node can be adjusted on a per server basis. So, if you are on a server that is about to be merged, your nodes will take a lot less experience to level up than a node on a fully populated server.
As to the last point in the post above, yes they should merge that server. Even if they reduce the experience needed to level up a node, with a population of 20% of what it should be (3000 active players vs 15000 active players), you run in to issues of not having a working economy, not having enough people to run content, not having the appropriate risk due to considerably fewer players to engage in PvP with you, etc.