Shards or Megaserver?

I was a WoW vet and now an Elder Scrolls Online Player. I prefer the ESO megaserver over the shards. Which is Ashes of Creation going to be. Game looks amazing I hope it becomes a success.

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Strevi

NiKr wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

I doubt the hype will be big in the context that the game may be released in 2024 - 2025 and meantime they reveal the game mechanics in great detail and even have a long Alpha 2 with no NDA. Will be like an early access game. I think this model cannot create hype. The Early Access principle is to sell unfinished games early, before they are ready but the release itself does not create as much hype as the moment when the game becomes accessible first time.

Alpha will supposedly show only half of the world. Now imagine that Intrepid manage to work amazingly with their community (kinda have been doing that already), develop a great game during that alpha2 and then have some nice advertisement before the release.

Don't you think that "a good game with great devs that's about to get twice as big with fresh servers" would get a shitton of people?

By hype I understand the unfunded excitement and hope that this MMO "is the one" which would cause shortly after the release the need to merge servers, as novercalis said above.

During Alpha 2 streamers and youtubers and gaming sites will be spreading news.
I doubt at release there will be players who will join to discover the game and leave because they expected something else.

Maybe some will overestimate their tolerance to pvp and losing during caravans and node sieges and leave when their node falls? Can those cause a need to merge servers?

Veeshan

NiKr wrote: »

Vraak wrote: »

Maybe shard was the wrong term. AoC uses servers instead. Are the servers all connected? Meaning will every player be in the same logical entity regardless of server where they can have the possibility of interacting with each other or would you have to transfer servers if you wanted to play with a group of friends. I get the EU, APAC and NA having different logical entities but will all of the NA player be on the same logical entity. I read through the wiki and I guess I wasn’t as savvy as I thought I was in trying to understand how player interaction is going to work.

There's no connection between different servers. You have a server and that's its own entity. That's it. No server transfers either (at least so far). So if you want to play with your friends - choose the same server.

prob be cash shop item tbh eventualy to server transfer but yeah wanna make sure ur on same server at launch

bloodprophet

Veeshan wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Vraak wrote: »

Maybe shard was the wrong term. AoC uses servers instead. Are the servers all connected? Meaning will every player be in the same logical entity regardless of server where they can have the possibility of interacting with each other or would you have to transfer servers if you wanted to play with a group of friends. I get the EU, APAC and NA having different logical entities but will all of the NA player be on the same logical entity. I read through the wiki and I guess I wasn’t as savvy as I thought I was in trying to understand how player interaction is going to work.

There's no connection between different servers. You have a server and that's its own entity. That's it. No server transfers either (at least so far). So if you want to play with your friends - choose the same server.

prob be cash shop item tbh eventualy to server transfer but yeah wanna make sure ur on same server at launch

Hopefully not. It would mess with the local economy. Unless they transfer a naked character.

WHIT3ROS3

You can play the may/might game as much as you want but until the game is actually launched there is no real way to tell. Server and active populations are such strange numbers. People talk about Wow and FFXIV player populations but the days when I feel like the world is bustling are few and far between. (I actually find the compartmentalized mega-server approach of EvE and Albion to produce a more populous feeling world)

What is really important is that the world feels alive, but not overwhelmed. It'll be interesting come launch day. There will be a countdown, a 1200sqm sandbox and hundreds of thousands of players waiting to enter in through one of the 4 divine gateways.

Stephen has talked about pre-registration before launch which I think would be a good idea. I just wonder how they intend to deal with thousands of players pouring in through the gateways at launch. The areas around the gateways could easily become overwhelmed. Perhaps each Gateway will be "capped" to only letting through 2500 players each so you will have an equal distribution of arriving players across the gateways and the world?

I think the number is fine, it is just about managing the population.

bminturn

I like having separate servers so that they can develop on their own. It's a throwback to the Dark Age of Camelot days when you may start on a server that is dominated by one realm, but the next server you try is dominated by another, except that it goes a lot deeper than that in AoC. You have an esprit de corps tied to it as well, and while that may not appeal as much to people who just want to jump in and power game, it takes the game to a different level of emersion that you can't get in ESO.

akabear

Whist aware not planned, I had always wanted a mmo with literally 10`s of thousands of potential participants.

If done again, I would like to see 3-6 additional sized maps with instanced bridged links to each other (if not capable as on instance) and if localized population overload was an issue, then build migration populations limits into the design and lore.

Then, if the game expanded or decreased in population, instead of shutting down a server and moving players, they could be made or able to migrate within the current server by means of event or equivalent with a map swelling or shrinking size, and maintain a degree of harmony and overall population density target.

Strevi

akabear wrote: »

Whist aware not planned, I had always wanted a mmo with literally 10`s of thousands of potential participants.

If done again, I would like to see 3-6 additional sized maps with instanced bridged links to each other (if not capable as on instance) and if localized population overload was an issue, then build migration populations limits into the design and lore.

Then, if the game expanded or decreased in population, instead of shutting down a server and moving players, they could be made or able to migrate within the current server by means of event or equivalent with a map swelling or shrinking size, and maintain a degree of harmony and overall population density target.

I was thinking to post a similar suggestion, the servers to be chained on a virtual Vera with timezones like on Earth.
But there are two drawbacks:
- resource respawn rate which now is balanced for a server might not work well if servers are chained and players can fetch them from low populated ones, which cannot even be closed because the few players who may live there
- all such servers would be the same, which brings no exploration feeling when traveling to new instances.

They could limit the distance of traveling to only one server away from the original one and even make them look different but then would end up feeling like just a bigger map with one server which have some resources coming from other servers and players seeing slightly different map depending on which continent they start.

Botagar

I honestly think the concept of "servers" is outdated and all future online games should move away.
They are a relic of a period of time where software were monolithic deployables running on single machines.

Times have moved on significantly since then.
I would love to see and EVE Online -esque realm. Everyone from around the world in 1 virtual world.
I would however be content with a single realm for each geographic region for ping.
I would not like to see a population base fractured within a single geographic region.

You get fun and surprising interactions when you have to deal with groups of people from nationalities you dont generally interact with.

Mag7spy

novercalis wrote: »

I personally do not like the fact that server size is 8-10k.. that is way to big and prone for "Server dead" spams when the big wave of players leaves AoC after the hype wears off.

Seriously, this game is gonna pull a New World in the sense of - it's gonna get 1+ mil users, but eventually 70-80% of these fuckers are gonna leave for another game or hype or whatever. They arent mmo players.

20% of 1 mil is 200k which is still an amazing number, but ppl will see it as "fucking lawl, AoC Dead, lost 80% of its userbase, trash game, dead game. And Servers going from 10k to 2-4k because we choose to accomodate an absurb influx of players on hype.

EQ Server felt great at 2k
WoW Server felt great at 2.5k before they did the thing
FFXI has a 8k cap, never played the game to say how it feels.
UO:R current pop is 1.2k out of 1.5k when shards were created.

is 10k too much for a server, when 5k is probably a more manageable number?

PoE = 950k active users
WoW = 1.11 mil active user
Runescape 1.3mil active user
FF14 = 3.5 mil active user
New World Fresh Start = 100k active users (All time peak was 900k)

EQ p99 = 3.5k (3 servers. Blue peaks 1.5, Green peaks 2k, Red is Dead)
UO:R = 1.5k (1 shard, private server)
City of Heroes (private) = 1.5k (1 server)

I got caught up in RL and forgot my point lol
I think what may end up hurting AoC unironically is the hype and having the game inflate so large, creating servers, for it to finally pop and then we got server merge issues, low number of players across all servers that doesnt fill the world with 10k.

Hell, in in that crappy New World game, with fresh start, new servers are a cluster fuck mess.

I do believe a 10k server cap is too large and most importantly
what happened to REPUTATION Matters, when we got 10k playerbase. I aint gonna know all 10k players.
a 2k server, YOU WILL KNOW PEOPLE, you will remember, ppl will be held accountable.. at 10k... you just blend in, as everything becomes blurry.
everyone is just a walking npc at this point.

Don't agree with this, essentially you are saying they need to make the world smaller. This is a huge issue with new world with the server being so tiny it is hard to even play with your friends and they need an infinite number of servers and those will still die from the same exact issue.

Server merges will always be a thing now adays. Should not be a reason to create a smaller world that will suffer from the same issue. Do to the larger server sizes they can have a much higher population before locking a server.

Iskiab

Vraak wrote: »

I like the ESO model where everyone in NA is in the same logical entity. I don’t know how this pulled this off, it is still “instanced” but everyone in the game is in the same server for NA. It is what has kept me coming back to it. But AoC is more to my liking as far as the concept goes.

The answer for how ESO pulled it off is not well, lag was always an issue and world PvP was at times unplayable.

Noaani

Botagar wrote: »

I honestly think the concept of "servers" is outdated and all future online games should move away.
They are a relic of a period of time where software were monolithic deployables running on single machines.

Times have moved on significantly since then.
I would love to see and EVE Online -esque realm. Everyone from around the world in 1 virtual world.
I would however be content with a single realm for each geographic region for ping.
I would not like to see a population base fractured within a single geographic region.

You get fun and surprising interactions when you have to deal with groups of people from nationalities you dont generally interact with.

Exactly how big of a world would you need to have to sustain a multi-million concurrent player population?

EVE gets away with this due to its game world beingnliterally nothing at all. A game set in a world like Verra cant do that.

Sure, a game could use instancing or psuedo-instancing in order to achieve it (as per ESO), but this leaves the world feeling kind of shit.

Just because a game mechanics or system was introduced due to technology limitations, it doesnt mean that mechanic or system isnt still good once those limitations have been overcome.

The example of this I give often is in regards to turn based strategy games. Originally, they were just called strategy games, as real time strategy simply wasnt technologically viable. When it became viable (around the late 1990's), there were very few major turn based games for about a decade. All the developers were working on real time strategy games.

Then people realized that real time strategy doesnt actually give the same gameplay as turn based strategy - both actually have a place simultaneously. All of a sudden, developers started making turn based strategy again, and we got two new X-com games out of it.

Incidentally, real time strategy has kind of fallen off a cliff now.

In terms of MMO's, mega servers do have a role to play - just not in every MMO. The game needs to be built with it in mind from the ground up, and Ashes is not built with it in mind.

Botagar

Noaani wrote: »

Exactly how big of a world would you need to have to sustain a multi-million concurrent player population?

EVE gets away with this due to its game world beingnliterally nothing at all. A game set in a world like Verra cant do that.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. A touch over a mil probably, not multi-millions.
Yes, it would be crowded at launch, but we have no idea on how the new player experience will be setup atm. Will there be multiple stater zones? Perhaps a queueing system which progresses as people leave the starter zone(s)? It's up in the air atm (from what we can tell as outsiders) but one thing for sure is that whatever mechanics exist must function as a function of player count.
The Ashes team has demonstrated that they can do some pretty good things with network and rendering optimisations (based on A1). I'm excited to see what other deep technical fundamental tech they can bring to the table.
Before any code is written is the best time to be debating these fundamentals.

Noaani wrote: »

Just because a game mechanics or system was introduced due to technology limitations, it doesnt mean that mechanic or system isnt still good once those limitations have been overcome.

The example of this I give often ... <cut short>

In terms of MMO's, mega servers do have a role to play - just not in every MMO. The game needs to be built with it in mind from the ground up, ....

Sure different flavors of gameplay go in and out of style, regardless of their genesis.
I'm putting forth my belief that fewer and bigger fragmentations of the player base is better than highly fragmented smaller ones.
You mention that EVE universe is mostly empty space (pun?) which is true, but when combat/action occurs, it's suddenly NOT the case. I've had amazing interactions living and fighting on the edge of Russian controlled space, dealing with people who's way of thinking was so different to mine (and my corps'). The timezone games, sabotage, mutli-lingual trash talk etc... These things would not be possible on tiny servers with only the people within 50ms ping to me.

Noaani wrote: »

and Ashes is not built with it in mind

Ashes is *NOT BUILT* yet. Which is why I think conversations like this are warranted NOW rather than in Beta.

I understand you seem believe many smaller populations is better for AoC, I simply disagree.
We both seem to want the best of Ashes, and I'll still play AoC regardless of what model is taken.

Also part of my argument is a higher level one about the language used.
"Server" as part of gaming nomenclature I think should be dropped for a word that encapsulates what is actually happening, a carving up and fragmentation of the player base.

Nerror

Ashes is partially built already. The time that went into building the basic universe in Eve Online is probably less than how much time the devs have already spent building the world in Ashes.

Wanting to play Ashes on a megaserver with 1 million players is something that should have been discussed and decided 7 years ago in 2015, when it was all only on paper. It's a completely moot point now, and it will not happen.

Ludullu

Botagar wrote: »

Yes, it would be crowded at launch, but we have no idea on how the new player experience will be setup atm. Will there be multiple stater zones? Perhaps a queueing system which progresses as people leave the starter zone(s)?

Except we do know. There's gonna be 5 starting areas and there'll be queues, that supposedly will be remedied by preregistrations. We know that there'll be no shards either.

Botagar

NiKr wrote: »

Botagar wrote: »

Yes, it would be crowded at launch, but we have no idea on how the new player experience will be setup atm. Will there be multiple stater zones? Perhaps a queueing system which progresses as people leave the starter zone(s)?

Except we do know. There's gonna be 5 starting areas and there'll be queues, that supposedly will be remedied by preregistrations. We know that there'll be no shards either.

True, I missed that https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Starting_areas

@Nerror , a few bits of a biome and almost nothing in terms of class kits a game does not make (things we have visual confirmation of). We need to remember that the whole A2 map could get scrapped if things don't work out as expected during testing. We're so early in things that ANYTHING can change.

I'm going to keep advocating for larger, fewer servers as I believe it'll spark the most ingame interactions that'll make memories for people.
If we were really going to keep the server nomenclature, maybe strive for 250k servers caps with expected 50k concurrent connections. That to me would be a really healthy bustling world with loads of opportunity for sparks.

Also, It's a bit disingenuous to insinuate that the EVE core universe was something that was not "deep" at launch and that AoC is already shitting all over it in its current early dev stage...
EVE was started by a bunch of nerds, just like AoC.

I'm going to bow out of this thread, it's clear people here are just doggedly sticking to the original vision set forth many years back and aren't stopping to think if its still relevant now.
Whilst I don't think sticking to the original vision on servers will kill AoC, in general, the above mindset is death to long run software engineering projects.

Ludullu

Botagar wrote: »

Nerror , a few bits of a biome and almost nothing in terms of class kits a game does not make (things we have visual confirmation of). We need to remember that the whole A2 map could get scrapped if things don't work out as expected during testing. We're so early in things that ANYTHING can change.

It's not about whether it's possible, it's about whether such huge changes should happen. NW did a 180 in their design during alpha and we know how that turned out.

Botagar wrote: »

I'm going to keep advocating for larger, fewer servers as I believe it'll spark the most ingame interactions that'll make memories for people.
If we were really going to keep the server nomenclature, maybe strive for 250k servers caps with expected 50k concurrent connections. That to me would be a really healthy bustling world with loads of opportunity for sparks.

How exactly would the game change for you, as a singular player? Node sieges might already bring together 1-2k people to fight over the node. Those people will be split apart around the node's center during a siege purely due to body collision. So you, as a singular player, would never even see more than a few hundred people on your screen, be it a 10k server or a 50k one.

And when you travel you'd still see the same amounts of people, because, as Intrepid's internal testing have apparently shown so far, the game needs way more space to properly accommodate its playerbase. Hell, it might even need more of that space once we get to alpha2 testing and have a few thousand people on a server.

Unless Intrepid go down the route of randomly generated content on the scale of whole continents - the game just can't support such numbers of players. And RGC is very rarely as good as properly manually designed one, let alone better.

Mag7spy

NiKr wrote: »

Botagar wrote: »

Nerror , a few bits of a biome and almost nothing in terms of class kits a game does not make (things we have visual confirmation of). We need to remember that the whole A2 map could get scrapped if things don't work out as expected during testing. We're so early in things that ANYTHING can change.

It's not about whether it's possible, it's about whether such huge changes should happen. NW did a 180 in their design during alpha and we know how that turned out.

Botagar wrote: »

I'm going to keep advocating for larger, fewer servers as I believe it'll spark the most ingame interactions that'll make memories for people.
If we were really going to keep the server nomenclature, maybe strive for 250k servers caps with expected 50k concurrent connections. That to me would be a really healthy bustling world with loads of opportunity for sparks.

How exactly would the game change for you, as a singular player? Node sieges might already bring together 1-2k people to fight over the node. Those people will be split apart around the node's center during a siege purely due to body collision. So you, as a singular player, would never even see more than a few hundred people on your screen, be it a 10k server or a 50k one.

And when you travel you'd still see the same amounts of people, because, as Intrepid's internal testing have apparently shown so far, the game needs way more space to properly accommodate its playerbase. Hell, it might even need more of that space once we get to alpha2 testing and have a few thousand people on a server.

Unless Intrepid go down the route of randomly generated content on the scale of whole continents - the game just can't support such numbers of players. And RGC is very rarely as good as properly manually designed one, let alone better.

one of the best examples of too many players was that mode in the new battlefield game where 20 people just spawn on you. And having people look at you from every angle wit how crowded it was.

Overcrowded games are not fun, this asmongold take is really bad and not really built on game design but simply just wanting a ton of players without an answer or a reason based on design. 100000 players in a town at the start of the game is just going to feel gross. No mobs or anything just players non stop and unable to do what you want in the game.

Noaani

Botagar wrote: »

I honestly think the concept of "servers" is outdated and all future online games should move away.

Botagar wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Exactly how big of a world would you need to have to sustain a multi-million concurrent player population?

EVE gets away with this due to its game world beingnliterally nothing at all. A game set in a world like Verra cant do that.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. A touch over a mil probably, not multi-millions.

Are you saying that no future MMO should ever strive for a population that measures in the multi-millions?

Veeshan

bloodprophet wrote: »

Veeshan wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Vraak wrote: »

Maybe shard was the wrong term. AoC uses servers instead. Are the servers all connected? Meaning will every player be in the same logical entity regardless of server where they can have the possibility of interacting with each other or would you have to transfer servers if you wanted to play with a group of friends. I get the EU, APAC and NA having different logical entities but will all of the NA player be on the same logical entity. I read through the wiki and I guess I wasn’t as savvy as I thought I was in trying to understand how player interaction is going to work.

There's no connection between different servers. You have a server and that's its own entity. That's it. No server transfers either (at least so far). So if you want to play with your friends - choose the same server.

prob be cash shop item tbh eventualy to server transfer but yeah wanna make sure ur on same server at launch

Hopefully not. It would mess with the local economy. Unless they transfer a naked character.

generaly transfers tend to be no items in most games or only specific items, Teransfers imo should be no items and currency up to X amount to get started on new server, X would be based on either character level or the server there transfering to economy (So player adverage gold on server x is say 1000g this would allow u to transfer 1000g with char transfer for that account)

Nerror

Botagar wrote: »

NiKr wrote: »

Botagar wrote: »

Yes, it would be crowded at launch, but we have no idea on how the new player experience will be setup atm. Will there be multiple stater zones? Perhaps a queueing system which progresses as people leave the starter zone(s)?

Except we do know. There's gonna be 5 starting areas and there'll be queues, that supposedly will be remedied by preregistrations. We know that there'll be no shards either.

True, I missed that https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Starting_areas

@Nerror , a few bits of a biome and almost nothing in terms of class kits a game does not make (things we have visual confirmation of). We need to remember that the whole A2 map could get scrapped if things don't work out as expected during testing. We're so early in things that ANYTHING can change.

I'm going to keep advocating for larger, fewer servers as I believe it'll spark the most ingame interactions that'll make memories for people.
If we were really going to keep the server nomenclature, maybe strive for 250k servers caps with expected 50k concurrent connections. That to me would be a really healthy bustling world with loads of opportunity for sparks.

We have seen a shit ton more content than "a few bits of a biome and almost nothing in terms of class kits". You're the one being super disingenuous now.

Botagar wrote: »

Also, It's a bit disingenuous to insinuate that the EVE core universe was something that was not "deep" at launch and that AoC is already shitting all over it in its current early dev stage...
EVE was started by a bunch of nerds, just like AoC.

I'm going to bow out of this thread, it's clear people here are just doggedly sticking to the original vision set forth many years back and aren't stopping to think if its still relevant now.
Whilst I don't think sticking to the original vision on servers will kill AoC, in general, the above mindset is death to long run software engineering projects.

The universe in Eve Online was procedurally generated in about 24 hours based on the seed of '42'. https://www.engadget.com/2008-09-25-agdc08-the-meaning-of-life-in-eve-online-really-is-42-no-joke.html

Ashes of Creation is mostly a hand-crafted world.

The two are not even remotely the same. I played Eve back then. I played Ashes in A1. They had built a lot more of the world already than was shown in A1, based on the videos from before A1.

Your idea would likely kill the project entirely, with years of added developer time to multiply the size of the handcrafted world 5 times or more to fit in all those people. Unless you just want copy-pasted areas?

Not to mention the huge impact it would have on the core design of the node system and all the tuning of the interconnected systems, and all the time it would take to rebalance that. That's a hard no thanks.

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