What's to be done about over-crowding certain areas/servers?

Could someone enlighten me on what game mechanics/strategies will be in place to lessen the burden of overcrowded areas? Will the server population be limited enough to keep this from occurring, but unlimited enough to make the world feel lively in the lively areas? How can we accomplish this?

Thanks.

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Songcaller

Its called killing the opposition

ravnoscc

What if the overcrowding is all allies?

Songcaller

You could all join together in a group or organise the situation. Allies are often amenable unlike foes.

ravnoscc

What I'm imagining is 40, or even 100 people trying to complete a quest designed for one or two or even a group of eight... It doesn't make for a fun experience, based on other games that did not handle that situation well at all.

I'm not pretending to know the solution either.

Songcaller

Hopefully there won't be too many bottleneck quests.

CROW3

Here’s my plan:
1. Go through the gate
2. Choose a direction
3. Start walking and don’t look back

Veeshan

unlike traditional MMO's where u have to level in one zone and then move to the next AoC doesnt have this since all zones can be used to level basicly from 1-50 due to node progression so if one spot overcrowded just walk off to find another spot to play

Depraved

ravnoscc wrote: »

What I'm imagining is 40, or even 100 people trying to complete a quest designed for one or two or even a group of eight... It doesn't make for a fun experience, based on other games that did not handle that situation well at all.

I'm not pretending to know the solution either.

kill them all

Fantmx

This is the idea of pvx. You will have to entertain the possibility of killing other players in order to do what you want to do. And you have to consider the possibility of other players killing you for the same reason.

You might decide it's not worth your time and move on. But the design of the game is such that this will be a frequent consideration you have to make.

They same goes for harvesting gatherables. No longer is it a rush to get the first hit on a tree or a rock so you get the claim for the resources. Now if you do the person you beat could very well kill you and take it for themselves.

superhero6785

ravnoscc wrote: »

What I'm imagining is 40, or even 100 people trying to complete a quest designed for one or two or even a group of eight... It doesn't make for a fun experience, based on other games that did not handle that situation well at all.

I'm not pretending to know the solution either.

My understanding is that the whole world (or a lot of it) "starts at level 1" and advances with each node. So, if one area is over crowded, then you have the option to go explore a less populated area and begin working to advance that other node. It's going to be completely up to the players which nodes they want to grow, and population will play a factor - for better or worse.

Talents

Thankfully Ashes is actually trying to be an MMO unlike most modern "MMOs" so there is no sharding or layering or rendering or instancing or channeling players out when there's more than 20 people in an area.

If there's 200 people in an area then there's 200 people in an area and you'll see them all.

RazThemun

From my understanding Nodes only have a limited number of citizenship slots. So lets say that number is 1,000 (random number). Naturally things are going to be spread out when the server can support 15,000 players. There will be regions that are more populated... but it would not be realistic to assume a large portion of the map will remain inhabited.

"Thankfully Ashes is actually trying to be an MMO unlike most modern "MMOs" so there is no sharding or layering or rendering or instancing or channeling players out when there's more than 20 people in an area.

If there's 200 people in an area then there's 200 people in an area and you'll see them all."

^ This comment by Talents makes my quite happy! I detest layering and sharding... makes a game feel dead at times, when in reality, numerous players are there at that location on the given server.

jtrenth

You would think that this would become the worlds biggest gankfest with so many people competing for resources. Corruption system has managed this to a large degree. PVE players are losing interest because they can't find things to do or craft and PVP players are losing interest due to being held back due to corruption. Not sure how you create a balance between PVE and PVP but it just feels crowded now. The new nodes are making little to no progress to lvl 3 and the Riverland nodes are ridiculously overcrowded. On the bright side the game is starting to show a little polish.

Vyllz

Great question, and one that’s come up a lot since the earliest livestreams. Steven and the team have mentioned a few mechanics meant to help with overcrowding:

Node System: Since nodes develop dynamically based on player activity, the population should naturally spread out as different areas evolve into towns, cities, etc. This creates incentives to move and settle in less crowded zones.

Limited Citizenship & Housing: Some features, like citizenship and freehold plots, are limited per node. This encourages players to seek out emerging or lower-tier nodes instead of piling into one.

Event and Resource Distribution: Content like world events, resource spawns, and dungeons won’t all be in one place. This should help prevent everyone from clustering in one “meta” area.

Server Caps & Overflow Tech: While exact server cap details aren’t confirmed, they’ve said they’re balancing for a world that feels populated but not overcrowded. There may be tech for layering instanced zones (like starter areas) if absolutely necessary.

We’ll see how well it plays out in Alpha Two, but the dynamic world design seems built to guide population flow organically.

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