Server Merge Solution

I have been saying for a while that low pop servers should trigger world threatening events that the server population can rally together and face to save the server.

If they succeed, they become a host server for low pop servers that fail. If they fail, the players will have the opportunity to caravan their goods to the divine gateway, which would be how they show up in the world of their new server. In this way, they keep the server storyline intact.

Imagine your world of Vera is threatened by a world destroying comet that can only be averted through special religious quests related to the constellation system. Imagine your server is unable to stop the disaster and the comet grows larger in the night sky over a week while players rush to save what they can and bring it to the portal, while bandits wait on every road looking to profit from the chaos.

Imagine you make it through to an alternate reality where the world has not fallen and your caravan, loaded with goods, is protected and brought to a nearby city where refugees are greeted with offers of citizenship and your housing certificate can be traded in for the gold cost of your original home or freehold. Struggling cities would compete to attract these immigrants to strengthen themselves and grow to new heights.

This is the way. Not the loss of your server, but the conclusion to its unique story. Not a restart, but instead, the beginning of your characters next grand adventure.

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KingDDD

While this idea sounds like fun it seems very time consuming development wise to create. The question I'd have for people is would you rather have this event system or something else in lieu of it. To me, it would be much better to dedicate engineers, artists, and designers to creating and implementing other more engaging systems.

blat

KingDDD wrote: »

While this idea sounds like fun it seems very time consuming development wise to create. The question I'd have for people is would you rather have this event system or something else in lieu of it. To me, it would be much better to dedicate engineers, artists, and designers to creating and implementing other more engaging systems.

Well this isn't exactly something required soon, or even at launch. And big server events seem pretty baked-in to Ashes dev, I imagine it's pretty fundamental to the framework they've built.

Also the value is quite high considering how many people have been put off previous MMOs by the way they've handled this problem.

So personally I'd say the effort : value ratio works out.

Songcaller

I don't see many big systems to be honest. The game is pretty generic in terms of the bigger systems. The only big system that stands out to me is the node system.

Jwscoot

blat wrote: »

KingDDD wrote: »

While this idea sounds like fun it seems very time consuming development wise to create. The question I'd have for people is would you rather have this event system or something else in lieu of it. To me, it would be much better to dedicate engineers, artists, and designers to creating and implementing other more engaging systems.

Well this isn't exactly something required soon, or even at launch. And big server events seem pretty baked-in to Ashes dev, I imagine it's pretty fundamental to the framework they've built.

Also the value is quite high considering how many people have been put off previous MMOs by the way they've handled this problem.

So personally I'd say the effort : value ratio works out.

These are my thoughts as well. You wouldn't want to spoil a storyline like this in alpha anyway. There will be plenty of server wide event quests they can test to iron out the larger event system that will already need to be in place.

This wouldn't need to be ready until servers start merging well after launch. And the best part is it could be implemented using the server wide event system that would already have to exist and that players would already be familiar with.

Telandras

I like your idea. Giving players agency over the server merge process would be a nice touch, given the theme of a player-guided world. However, let's posit that there is a server of active players who like things the way they are and manage to avert a world-destroying event. If they are, then, the server to which a failed server is going to move, they quickly have the opposite and also the same problem: things will no longer be the way they were, whether the new server comes to them or they are forced to wake up on a new server. Perhaps there could be a mechanism whereby one server can deflect / kill off the incursion of another server? Probably the devs would have to engineer a system whereby, if a server dies in this way, the population would somehow select which of several servers to go to, so that groups of game friends, guilds, whatever, could move together if they chose to but the effects were otherwise distributed across the virtual cosmos. It would be neat to have a Hall of History whereby, after some level of progression, servers and well advanced players on those servers could look into the past of absorbed storylines or to other servers and see what else has happened in the multiverse. It would be a nice way to spur new development and also cannonize hints as to what is possible in terms of unlocking world bosses.

It would also be good to have a nefarious warlock, a dark portal, and an unborn orcish hero to be delivered shortly after the server migration.

Otr

Jwscoot wrote: »

Imagine your world of Vera is threatened by a world destroying comet that can only be averted through special religious quests related to the constellation system. Imagine your server is unable to stop the disaster and the comet grows larger in the night sky over a week while players rush to save what they can and bring it to the portal, while bandits wait on every road looking to profit from the chaos.

Server merge could bring together two equally low population servers.
Why not let the comet first destroy one of the 2 continents?
The religious quests could influence which one is destroyed.
On each server players would move to the other surviving continent before or after the comet hit but definitely before the merge. Could also be some other event which would force players onto one side, like increased frequency of NPC attacks:

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Corrupted_areas
If players fail to address these corrupted areas, the frequency of NPC events against their node will increase. These can lead to node buildings and services being disabled, increasing the node's vulnerability to node sieges.[11]

Also resources could stop spawning on half the world to encourage players to move.

Final step before merge would be to prevent traveling toward the destroyed continent. The lore could place it under quarantine with a dense fog covering the ocean for 2-4 weeks.

Then eventually the server merge would "heal" the land and each server would get the destroyed continent back with the population of the other server settled and owning their own nodes and freeholds.

Jwscoot

Telandras wrote: »

I like your idea. Giving players agency over the server merge process would be a nice touch, given the theme of a player-guided world. However, let's posit that there is a server of active players who like things the way they are and manage to avert a world-destroying event. If they are, then, the server to which a failed server is going to move, they quickly have the opposite and also the same problem: things will no longer be the way they were, whether the new server comes to them or they are forced to wake up on a new server. Perhaps there could be a mechanism whereby one server can deflect / kill off the incursion of another server? Probably the devs would have to engineer a system whereby, if a server dies in this way, the population would somehow select which of several servers to go to, so that groups of game friends, guilds, whatever, could move together if they chose to but the effects were otherwise distributed across the virtual cosmos. It would be neat to have a Hall of History whereby, after some level of progression, servers and well advanced players on those servers could look into the past of absorbed storylines or to other servers and see what else has happened in the multiverse. It would be a nice way to spur new development and also cannonize hints as to what is possible in terms of unlocking world bosses.

It would also be good to have a nefarious warlock, a dark portal, and an unborn orcish hero to be delivered shortly after the server migration.

There are some really interesting ideas here. I especially like the hall of hero's, which seams a bit tangential, but is also undeniably awesome.

However, I think we have to start with the premise that forced server mergers have to exist. There is no way to avoid this. No one wants their server to have to merge. The best solution is no one ever leaves and no server ever dies. Unfortunately, for the health of the game, your server will have to combine with another if the population falls too low.

Building in a mechanic to avoid this defeats the entire purpose of this exercise. How do we make forced server mergers palatable when servers aren't compatible by their very nature?

This is the dilemma we should be aiming to address.

Jwscoot

Otr wrote: »

Jwscoot wrote: »

Imagine your world of Vera is threatened by a world destroying comet that can only be averted through special religious quests related to the constellation system. Imagine your server is unable to stop the disaster and the comet grows larger in the night sky over a week while players rush to save what they can and bring it to the portal, while bandits wait on every road looking to profit from the chaos.

Server merge could bring together two equally low population servers.
Why not let the comet first destroy one of the 2 continents?
The religious quests could influence which one is destroyed.
On each server players would move to the other surviving continent before or after the comet hit but definitely before the merge. Could also be some other event which would force players onto one side, like increased frequency of NPC attacks:

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Corrupted_areas
If players fail to address these corrupted areas, the frequency of NPC events against their node will increase. These can lead to node buildings and services being disabled, increasing the node's vulnerability to node sieges.[11]

Also resources could stop spawning on half the world to encourage players to move.

Final step before merge would be to prevent traveling toward the destroyed continent. The lore could place it under quarantine with a dense fog covering the ocean for 2-4 weeks.

Then eventually the server merge would "heal" the land and each server would get the destroyed continent back with the population of the other server settled and owning their own nodes and freeholds.

I had not considered this. It removes some of the player agency and would be devastating to whoever lived on the wrong continent, but it would keep the server continuity for everyone.

From the perspective of a player on the wrong continent is it better to escape across the sea rather than escaping to a divine gateway? Would the world event be more compelling knowing you are fighting to save your continent rather than your server? How would the the player agency be preserved for that world quest if you know that the two populations have to end up on different continents?

Your idea has a lot of merit and I would be in favor of either one. For me, I guess it would come down to which one is easier for the devs to implement. And for that you would have to ask them. I honestly have no idea.

akabear

On a server that is about to be shut down and for the servers that that the players are being distributed to, I would like to see something like a big portal rise up (or several ) across the land and players themselves can move through the portal to leave their current land and arrive through a portal in their new alternate universe.

Players that move through first by themselves perhaps get some benefit before a forced server shutdown move..

Or something to that effect!

Electronn

Such a cool idea. I hope @StevenSharif reads this.

I do understand the point above about whether it's a good use of dev resources. It's a valid point. However, this could be a true paradigm shift for a common problem in the genre, so maybe worth it anyway.

Songcaller

Tacquito wrote: »

Such a cool idea. I hope @StevenSharif reads this.

I do understand the point above about whether it's a good use of dev resources. It's a valid point. However, this could be a true paradigm shift for a common problem in the genre, so maybe worth it anyway.

It is said those who summon The Sandal God don't know how to cook. Missionaries get confused with friars.

unknownsystemerror

Songcaller wrote: »

Tacquito wrote: »

Such a cool idea. I hope @StevenSharif reads this.

I do understand the point above about whether it's a good use of dev resources. It's a valid point. However, this could be a true paradigm shift for a common problem in the genre, so maybe worth it anyway.

It is said those who summon The Sandal God don't know how to cook. Missionaries get confused with friars.

As long as they are deep oil friars on a mission, airy and crispy shall be their suggestions.

Jwscoot

Songcaller wrote: »

Tacquito wrote: »

Such a cool idea. I hope @StevenSharif reads this.

I do understand the point above about whether it's a good use of dev resources. It's a valid point. However, this could be a true paradigm shift for a common problem in the genre, so maybe worth it anyway.

It is said those who summon The Sandal God don't know how to cook. Missionaries get confused with friars.

I am not sure he needs to be summoned, but this is an issue I think Steven should be thinking about and planning for even at this stage.

xMrWoolf

Fantmx wrote: »

We have said for a while that the servers should be reset. Death and destruction. Time to rebuild. New alliances. New people to double cross.

i would rather the game take me 2 years to even be close to BiS then to reset every 3 months because it lacks goals and content..

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