SEVERS: Their size, Player Retention, Merging, Expectations & lastly Initial Peak vs Reality
novercalis
Member, Founder, Kickstarter
I am curious to know what is AoC current stance in 2024 on their expected #. What is their current belief their PEAK numbers will be and what will be the number that will settle down in reality.
With that said then we need to discuss and look at their server size (capacity).
We know each server will host 8-10k CONCURRENT players with a base of 50k registered player per server.
Bit of reality checks - as of today on https://steamdb.info/charts/?sort=peak
If we were to look at all the games that ever came out and sort through their HIGHEST - ALL TIME PEAK and compare it to their 24h recent peak and Current - of the first 100 games
Only 18 games has maintained over 20% of their player base in the past 24 hours.
Of those 18 games, 14 of them maintained 33% of their player base.
Of those 14 games, only 6 games maintained 50% of their player base.
And only 1 game has maintained over 75% of their player base (Counter-Strike2).
Majority of the top 100 "all-time peak" games has kept below 10% of their player base.
If we were to apply this logic, we are signing up 50k player per server with an expectation of 10k concurrent, we are looking at maintaining 20% of the player base per server. Where 10% would be 5k concurrent players which is WHAT I EXPECT the reality of our servers being.
Is AoC prepared and is their game world, economy, nodes at a place where it is functional with the potential of having a server world hovering around 4-5k concurrent players?
Also is the community and AoC prepared for the perception "backlash"??? Meaning it's gonna get huge numbers followed by a huge loss of players and that perception WILL hurt our game in that sense.
Look at Palworld, New World, Enshrouded, Valheim, Hellsdiver, for fuck sakes BAULDER GATE 3, they All open up with much fanfare and much success & Hype (let's put a asterisk on New World but i'll digress) only to lose 80-95% of their initial player base.
THIS IS THE NORM and the reality of gaming nowadays. if you look at the top 18 or top 6 games I was mentioning above; they are: dated games, FPS & MOBA games.
Should we be aiming for 50k signee with 8-10k concurrent?
How many servers do we want?
What is the minimal baseline # the world of Verra is functional to the core mechanics of the world for being "successful" and "meaningful progression" to the server & it's players?
I know about this: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Servers but it's time to get a more updated info.
Lots of games have came out since then & most of these info from the wiki are coming from 2017-2021. In the span of 3 years, lots of games came out & has shown a trend. A trend that shows things didnt dip/drop nor were many game had a fluke of bad luck or that was attributed to bad decision, design, direction. Outside of New World, most of the games were all regarded as great games, well received games. Hell one of them was Game of the year.
With that said then we need to discuss and look at their server size (capacity).
We know each server will host 8-10k CONCURRENT players with a base of 50k registered player per server.
Bit of reality checks - as of today on https://steamdb.info/charts/?sort=peak
If we were to look at all the games that ever came out and sort through their HIGHEST - ALL TIME PEAK and compare it to their 24h recent peak and Current - of the first 100 games
Only 18 games has maintained over 20% of their player base in the past 24 hours.
Of those 18 games, 14 of them maintained 33% of their player base.
Of those 14 games, only 6 games maintained 50% of their player base.
And only 1 game has maintained over 75% of their player base (Counter-Strike2).
Majority of the top 100 "all-time peak" games has kept below 10% of their player base.
If we were to apply this logic, we are signing up 50k player per server with an expectation of 10k concurrent, we are looking at maintaining 20% of the player base per server. Where 10% would be 5k concurrent players which is WHAT I EXPECT the reality of our servers being.
Is AoC prepared and is their game world, economy, nodes at a place where it is functional with the potential of having a server world hovering around 4-5k concurrent players?
Also is the community and AoC prepared for the perception "backlash"??? Meaning it's gonna get huge numbers followed by a huge loss of players and that perception WILL hurt our game in that sense.
Look at Palworld, New World, Enshrouded, Valheim, Hellsdiver, for fuck sakes BAULDER GATE 3, they All open up with much fanfare and much success & Hype (let's put a asterisk on New World but i'll digress) only to lose 80-95% of their initial player base.
THIS IS THE NORM and the reality of gaming nowadays. if you look at the top 18 or top 6 games I was mentioning above; they are: dated games, FPS & MOBA games.
Should we be aiming for 50k signee with 8-10k concurrent?
How many servers do we want?
What is the minimal baseline # the world of Verra is functional to the core mechanics of the world for being "successful" and "meaningful progression" to the server & it's players?
I know about this: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Servers but it's time to get a more updated info.
Lots of games have came out since then & most of these info from the wiki are coming from 2017-2021. In the span of 3 years, lots of games came out & has shown a trend. A trend that shows things didnt dip/drop nor were many game had a fluke of bad luck or that was attributed to bad decision, design, direction. Outside of New World, most of the games were all regarded as great games, well received games. Hell one of them was Game of the year.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
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Comments
at first, the max will be 10k players with 15k registered accounts per server.
sure, some servers will lose pop, but then they will get merged, and players in other servers are irrelevant to you since you cant interact with them. so as long as there is enough money to keep the game going, the number of servers doesn't matter much.
"The developers intend to carefully manage server populations via the use of character creation throttles to avoid the need to merge servers.[40][42]"
as it can cause potential issues
Naming, Housing location / loss, interactions for players tied to a Node that is no longer there due to merge. Story/quest unlocked from 1 server that isnt unlocked in another.
The 15k registered accounts for initial release is also an issue. It's a balancing act. For every 15k register = A new server will open.
If we were to look at the trend I stated above, 10% is 1500 players will stay and the other 13.5k disappear.
Their purpose of having 15k per server initially on launch is to mitigate login queue. Then down the road open it up to 50k once the game stablizes itself from the initial hyp and people begin to leave, you want new players filling in those vacancy spots with the concept of, you know you aren't gonna have a server that will be 8-10k or 20% of their expected number currently per server.
If you look at the online live service games, rather than looking at soloable games - all the good ones have grown over time. And some of them even had their max peaks waaay later in their life.
So all Intrepid need to do is keep the game good and they'll be fine.
yes of course, that's the last resort. but it will happen eventually. unless they decide not to do it, which will probably be worse. i don't think people will like to play on a server with 300 players when the game is designed for thousands of players. people will get bored of not seeing anyone around.
new player swill not distribute themselves evenly across servers either, unless intrepid forces a 1-1-1-1-1-1 and they wont do that.
Ashes of Creation is in a much better position to do that, than nearly any other MMORPG I've seen.
The big question is if the 'backlash' should be front-loaded, in my mind.
There's no specific reason why we shouldn't have server 'splits' instead of server merges, early into the game's life. Any 'abusability' of this usually comes from server transfers, not from splits, even if players can choose which target server they are splitting to.
So I don't have concerns right now, to me this problem always seems to be just the result of the devs of a game either not thinking it through, or deciding that their game doesn't have a server structure where they need to do that. Ashes can't count on the second thing so I'm just going to assume they do something about it.
what do you mean by server splits vs server merges? do you mean adding more servers or what?
You move the 2 continents further and further away until they enter each another server.
If anything they could have an overflow/temporay server where any people in queue can choose to go to overflow server to play and gain player progression with the expectation they be transfered into the server they choose as space becomes available.
Pretty much you get a server cluster of say 5 servers with 1 overflow server the overflow server will progress as other servers however you will be merged off of it as space becomes available in one of the other 5 servers of the player choosing when the queues are not as bad
Yes.
There is a world manager
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/World_manager
"Economic systems require scarcity. And in a game, all scarcity is artificially created in an attempt to simulate supply/demand structures or as we would call them points of player friction."
If that is correctly implemented, scarcity will exist even on a 20% populated server.
ah xDD
Sure, the games economy may well function, but the game will be kind of rubbish if there are only 20% of the players as intended.
At that point, the game suddenly appeals to a totalyl different player. People wanting open PvP would no longer be interested in the game as there wouldn't be much of that to be found. Those left are those wanting to play the economic aspect of the game - and the games direction would adjust to meet that reality.
I've seen a ton of tiny L2 servers, way below their "supposed" population requirements, but people still pvped a ton and fought over content.
AoC's nodes will pull people into just a few locations on the map, which will make them fight over the limited resources. And the ones left playing the game will want it that way, because barely any other game provides that right now (while also not being a complete mess in all the other parts of the game).
Yes, you are right. You already convinced me that we want the game to be popular and what that means, that even if IS says it is a niche, it will actually not be.
My statement is just a theoretical extreme, how the game should be balanced. But servers should be merged before population reach such a low percentage.
I chosen 20% as an example because each map can have up to 5 metropolises. Depending how much effort requires a metropolis to be developed and maintained, maybe those 20% players would concentrate into one place and will have no other metropolises to fight against.
Or would rather prefer to fight and have many lower level nodes and siege them. Almost like we will have in A2 except that in a released game they'll have some items remaining from former metropolises.
Some factors for a more stable player base in AoCs favour:
Now these are mostly factors around subscriptions and not actual daily login time. Most of that may have to do with how good the game is, and how much replayability it has. If you consider the lobby-pvp type games that the OP was talking about, those appear to have the most stable player bases.
This is both a pro and a con to the AoC model. On one hand, the pvp end game loop around node seiges and territory control could provide the consistency and reason to log in that PVP games tend to have, but as it is not a lobby game, there may be pressure for those types of players to not get into AoC. Because why spend 10 hours doing content you don't enjoy in order to do 1 hour of content you do enjoy when you can just play another game and always enjoy the content? This is an inherent issue that AoC will have to resolve in the game design.
I don't really have a great solution though other than having a lot of servers at launch and having a solid merge system down the track. Another solution might be to put caps on node and player progression at game launch to try and spread the load out over time.
destroy other peoples nodes then and buidl yours duh.
idk why people would get emotinally attached to their node. a military node is as good as any other military node. the only really important thing is what type of content they unlock (depending on their location).
I remember watching 1 youtube video about the problem with merges (but cant seem to find it now to give the credits to the 1 who deserves them...). He was talking about how AOC should launch during the least played time of the day. For example work/school hours for each region (for example 10 AM at Wednesday). Of course there will be many players who will take day off/sick leave or whatever, but there will be a lot who wont be able to do this.
This way they can open less servers at launch, And till the work day is over and more players start to log in the game, the queues will be already down (since there will already be 8 hours passed till 6 PM).
And ofc they will need to open new servers periodically (for example very 4 hours), so people wont feel left behind. For example if you couldnt play at launch and log 8 hours later, you will see new server opened before 20 min, and you will be in equal start with everyone else in the server.
And ofc the other servers that now have less queues in them will still get more players to join the server by players from guilds / friends that are already in the server, and they will want to join exactly that server to play together (even tho they will be bit late with few hours)
This way AOC will have less servers, with less queues with more players in each server, and even after part of those players leave the game, It will still have a lot players left in the servers
working adults, family men aint gonna bother ruining their sleep schedule to game.
kids, teens, college students gonna be degen anyways - might as well get them all on the same servers.
Same goes for nolifers, poopsockers - they can all que in the same servers.
Then when new servers open up around 4-7pm - normal folks can play with other sane normal folks.
there will be a ton of complaints / "backlash" but I think its worth and its gonna blow over anyways. There gonna be other server issues happening anyways - dont think I ever seen a smooth day 1 mmo release without being a shitshow.
you are severely underestimating some of us
Sure, launch your first/first two NA-West server(s) at 2 AM PST.
Make it so people have one character slot for the first week or two.
Make it so you can't create a character on another server as long as you have that one.
Launch next two NA-West servers at like 9 AM PST. Make these the new 'default' for people who don't read stuff and just press through. They'll def have lower queues. Just keep 'dodging' the bulk playerbase for the timezone for a bit. Then when they fill up and the queues get bad, split the servers, but like, a hard split. You have two days to confirm which you want to split to, and you only get the choice based on the server your main is currently on (you have the chance to delete your main once the split option appears, so you can just jump to an entirely new server).
If you miss the split option due to IRL stuff, friends or guildies on server can get you a pass. Maybe even restrict those a bit. Can't get a pass? No prob, you have friends, delete your char and make a new one on the new server, you have permission since you had the split 'offer'. If you don't mind paying the cost of restarting at the beginning of an MMORPG, no problem.
Convoluted and frustrating? Obviously moreso than a free-for-all. But the result would be forgotten for most people within a month. And the whole 'first server to open is always the big one' goes away because that first one split into two, or maybe even four, over time.
Similarly, it's much much easier for Ashes to 'diverge a timeline', both in terms of their Server History whatever, and in terms of Nodes, than it is for them to merge two. Server E and F just get 'start a day with half as many people in them'. This also gives Intrepid time to smooth out some random economy stuff, dupes, banning early bots jumping in to establish themselves as legit players before changing to bot mode, etc.
Dodge, split, hope.