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So it is my understanding that we will one grand server and then shards after that.
I don't quite understand how this will be different, and more effective, than what we had in CoX.
Is it possible to spell this out a little clearer for me .
Thanks bunches.
Hi. I'm Hope.
CoX didn't have that many servers, and it used shards for heavily populated zones. The only difference really is with character names. In CoX you couldn't have the same name as someone on the same server.
I think CoT is going to have character names linked to your account, rather than to the server. So anyone can have any name (I guess you couldn't make two characters with the same name on the same account?).
You could still tell who is who because they would presumably have the account name viewable as well as their character name, with options to show one, the other, or both in chat and in game. This is not their login for the game, but what the person chose to call themselves, which usually correlates to their name on official forums for games that do this. CoT is definitely not the first to use this concept and it works quite well.
I haven't seen anything from devs about it but hopefully it will be easy to sync up with friends in other shards while also handling load balancing.
I assume like, most other games that take the one server shard based approach, that meeting up with friends would be as easy as opening a menu and going to their shard (as long as it's not over populated). Likely when teaming the game will attempt, whenever possible, to place teams on the same shard.
To the OP one positive of having one server, multiple shards, is that you don't have to communicate with friends to ensure you're all part of the same server. It also allows the entire playerbase to potentially interact (for better or worse), also with PVP being a seperate shard rather than a server one can go from PVE with their friends to playing PVP with minimal hassle.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
PH is right on the money, it alleviates many of the hassles older games had. You just log into the game and naturally are able to join up with friends. Most of the time players shouldn't even see any direct interaction with a shard system if it is able to balance loads (the main reason to have shards so you don't have 5 million people standing in the same spot) with the desire for players to meet up with others. Ideally three things should be achieved, which sometimes requires some prioritization since they can work against each other.
Load balancing. This is the primary reason to have shards at all, it ensures smooth gameplay for everyone and makes sure the MWM servers don't melt into a puddle and die.
Easy and under the surface grouping with friends. People should naturally have a tendency to be placed into shards with people they are friends or guild mates with to some degree. Everyone likes to see a friendly face they recognize. On top of this, joining up with friends that are not already in your shard should be seamless such that players don't even know there is a shard system in place. Shards should be something that players don't really need to see or understand from their perspective. Groups and possibly guilds should naturally sync up.
Players should consistently see new people they haven't met before. You don't want to limit who the players sees every time they log in by having an overly aggressive automatic friend linking logic. Have them see friendly faces, yes, but make sure they see new faces as well.
CoX's shard system worked but it was a relatively early example of such a system. These days games that use similar concepts tend to be much smoother in implementation such that players never really interact with it directly. People rarely have to ask "what version of atlas park are you in, I don't see you" in today's games.
Another advantage is that, over time, you won't end up on a consistently empty server as the population gravitates towards particular ones.
The converse is true as well, we won't end up with a handful of consistently overpopulated servers.
The main reason I quit playing SWTOR is because they created so many servers during the opening weeks that eventually, they had dozens of low population servers. When they, then, decided to consolidate (so we wouldn't get lonely) I lost my character's name. This happened to me twice and by then all the really cool names I had thought of were already taken. I ended up on a very high population server with lag so bad I could hardly move at times.
And I had a randomly generated name.
Although, from what I hear, it seems I got out at a good time; but that's a topic for a different thread :P
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
As the others have said both the "multi server" and "single server" approaches allowed for multiple shards (or instances) to help with player loading issues. So the key advantages we players get from the "single server" paradigm is having all our friends in one place and being able to use global naming.
Global naming in simple terms will let players name their characters anything they want. If your global name is ABC and someone else's is XYZ then you both could have a character named CaptainAwesome because yours would technically be CaptainAwesome@ABC and the other guy's would be CaptainAwesome@XYZ thus keeping them "unique" as far as the game is concerned. Then as TheInternetJanitor mentioned you could set your GUI to display names as either CaptainAwesome@ABC or just CaptainAwesome as you'd like.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
[url=http://bigworldtech.com/technology/]This[/url] might help provide a basic understanding of what we are going for. It is the inspiration for our approach to the server set up.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Thanks for the link. Interesting read...
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I might be having one of my "being dumb" days but I do not see a link.
Could it be because I am using my phone to look?
Hi. I'm Hope.
I'm on a PC with a big monitor and I almost didn't see it. The link is under the "This" (the first word of his sentence). The usual blue color of the hyperlink seems to have barely any "contrast" with just the four letters of that word making the link relatively invisible. :(
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Ok now I see the link thank you. It sounds good to me...what I understood of it.
I guess here is my actual question.
If I log in and I see my friends Random #1 and Random #2 who are both on different shards and we want to street sweep together how does that work?
Do the 3 of us form a team and get lumped together in the nearest shard with 3 spots open?
What if there are like 20 of us who want to get together and just roleplay but not be on actual teams?
What will happen when I want to advertise a costume contest in some General Channel? How will randoms 1 through 712 know where to find me?
I guess that's more then 1 question and I hope they make sense.
As a side note thinking of going to try the warship game.
Hi. I'm Hope.
I like some of these questions.
will we have an option to select a shard number that is kinda our ... home shard.
like chat rooms in some games, you can designate your home chat as 3.... if you hate how croweded 3 is you can do chat room 564 which is almost always empty
This lets people who want a super crowded shard feel to be in a crowded area... and those that want to solo a zone to be in a smaller populated shard.
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In GW2, if groupmates happen to be on different shards, one can right-click on their icon and select 'join' to be transferred to the same shard. I expect MWM will use a similarly simple mechanic.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I guess a lot of this will depend on if the Devs of CoT want us to be "aware" of the shards or not.
What I mean is either they'll give us a dedicated GUI with a list of all the active shards and let us manually do things with them (like Steamtank was talking about) or they'll try to keep the whole idea hidden and make things like team finding/joining happen automatically without it being obvious that the game is actually switching you around to different shards as needed.
I could see this game being designed either way.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Really interesting :) Thanks tannim222 !
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Please keep in mind, the link is an example for our inspiration, NOT our the exact tech we are using.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
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[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Is the goal with this kind of architecture to better handle adding and removing servers/shards as needed, allowing more players to share the same shard, or both?
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I'd imagine it's a little of both. The basic premise is that you want to make sure the physical hardware is used in the most effecient way possible while also minimizing the lags or other "negatives" the average player might experience. Bottomline it's about loadsharing so that each shard doesn't have too many [b]or[/b] too few players.
Obviously having just one player on a shard would likely be a waste of server resources. Conversly trying to load too many players on one shard will make for a laggy experience for all the players involved. The system needs to be dynamic enough to know when it needs to spread the current population of players out or when it needs to consolidate them back to a reasonable number. All of that needs to happen at the same time that other players are either logging in, logging out or "hopping" from one active shard to another.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Hopefully the individual shards can handle a fair amount of players and stuff going on comparable to old CoX at least. Some games use this sort of tech better than others. I understand EVE online kind of revolutionized tech in this area, while some games struggle with it. Sea of thieves right now comes to mind as struggling with this issue, though that may largely be due to limitations placed on the devs by Microsoft in order to fit their ulterior goal of using the game to promote their platforms.
I imagine the greatest hurdle to managing shards are the players themselves. I think the most elegant solution I've seen is in GW2, IIRC, which prompts players to leave low population shards with the incentive of a brief XP boost. 'course if the population is sufficiently low I see no problem with the system telling players they'll be moved in 60 seconds unless they choose to move to another shard first.
The number I recall seeing most frequently for PCs on the same server/shard is between 100 and 250. However, as TheInternetJanitor points out, we also have the example of EVE which has had over 2,500 players in the same system during a battle.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
The idea of prompting/encouraging players to voluntarily move to other shards is fine but I'd hate it if the game forced players to move and the act of moving "messed up" a raid or a mission instance. For instance it would totally suck if you're soloing a long mission and the game automatically forced you onto another shard like a minute before you finished that mission.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Lothic brings up a good point. Soft caps rather than hard caps are good when controlling shard populations. Sure, there is some point past which a shard simply won't perform, the goal is to make sure it never gets close to that. Any automatic movement of players should be able to take into account if players are in a group or raid. Open world events could work by simply automatically offering to add anyone that joins it into a raid group, they probably should do that anyway to make doing those events easier to organize.
Most of this load distribution can happen during login and zoning etc and players won't even see it happening. If players take it upon themselves to force huge groups into one place for a big costume contest or something then warnings given to players in that area and carrots to encourage them to relocate before pings get too high can hopefully be enough. Forceful relocation should definitely be a last resort. It immediately makes me think of the famous protests in star wars galaxies, and the behavior of sony that was widely regarded as cartoonishly villainous. I bring that up because of the crazy stuff that happened towards the end of that story with sony literally teleporting players into space, with the servers buckling under the strain and crashing anyway.
Sony literally "spaced" PCs to deal with server loading? Wow that's pretty hard-core. I guess the superhero version of that would be getting turned to dust like at the end of the last Avengers movie. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
This is true, although in CoT's case I doubt it would be a real concern since (almost?) all the content will be instanced. For any open world missions the players ought to be able to pick up right where they left off.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Actually it's the "instanced content" that specifically would be affected by a sudden shard switch.
If you're just running around in the "open world" there should be minimal impact. But again if you're working on an instanced "door" mission and you're suddenly yanked off that shard you're likely to lose all the progress you made in that mission.
Remember that "instances" can run on "shards".
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Why would the game force you into a different shard mid-mission? I can't see that happening except for like a glitch.
You likely wouldn't lose any mission progress either. But in the new shard all the defeated enemies would likely be back.
And I'm pretty sure most if not all instances are their own shards anyway. Usually you're in like Dungeon (#63) or something.
And it's also probable that all the mission instance shards would be made to allow more players than a full party to help prevent any issues of it not letting you in because the shard is full.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I don't know. It was Darth Fez who first brought up the idea of "automatic shard shifts". Ask him?
Right but what if the mission was a "Kill All "mission? If all the defeated enemies were reset then by definition you've lost all progress in that mission.
Sure that's possible, even likely. But again I was addressing this notion of Darth Fez's that the game could potentially (for whatever reason) be allowed to "automatically" shift you to another shard without recourse. It doesn't immediately sound like a good idea.
The "letting you in the mission" is not likely the problem. Again the problem is that the game might potentially decide to kill the shard you're on due to "under-population" even though you might be busy with a mission on the shard. Again it would suck if the game was not reasonable enough to let you remain to finish your instanced mission.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Instances are not affected that way. If you are in an instances mission and the shard closes, when you exit the instance you are connected to which ever shards remaini open.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
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[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
TBH, I suspected/hoped that what you just described was the way CoT was going to work. The only reason I entertained the other idea was that it was "possible" it could have worked that way which WOULD HAVE been problematic. ;)
I don't want to be "spaced" like Sony apparently did to its players...
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
None of my questions were specifically directed at you, Lothic. Which is why I didn't quote you in my post.
And yes, in the case of a "defeat all" progress would effectively be reset.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I don't see a problem with instances. Say we have a shard running x instances with an maximum of n players each. When the total potential number of players xn approaches the shard's soft cap c, we simply don't start any new instances on that shard. Players that drop don't result in a reduction of xn, so there will still be room for them as long as their friends keep the instance open.
When players start leaving an instance for the open world is when I've seen CO mess up. The first to leave gets put on one shard, but by the time the last one leaves that shard is full and the last player goes to another shard. If teams doing instanced content can be counted before assigning them to an Open World shard, and added onto its population to hold the space until the last avatar leaves the instance, this might be avoided.
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No worries. I was just continuing the conversation and thankfully Tannim clarified the issue regardless.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Oh, for those that aren't familiar with the events, please take a moment to look it up, the story is so much more crazy than that. They were spacing people because they dared to defy the authority of mighty Sony. They weren't overly concerned about server stability (the servers buckled anyway).
Sony online was well known for outlandish behavior and survived on the backs of revolutionary games that make a big impact such as everquest in spite of their management. Eventually their poor decision making did them in regardless and Sony closed SoE, selling what games it had left to investment companies like Daybreak.
In this particular story, players tired of the grind in the game had found exploits that allowed them to duplicate stuff in game. Sony at the time had started to combat gold farming by selling in game currency themselves, the idea being that it was another way to bleed money from players and they could generate it for free. Players also being able to generate currency for free though? That was a potential threat to profits, or at least that is probably how it was brought up at a sony meeting. Their solution was implement code into their game that could track the specific exploit used to dupe currency and periodically ban all accounts flagged as having such "dirty money". Instead of, you know, fixing the exploit and/or making the game less grindy.
This is where things really start to get interesting. The game had a built in "tip" system so players could tip each other small amounts of currency for services (there were in game professions that basically worked for tips like dancing). Players couldn't refuse tips, no one ever thought there would be a reason to do so. You can see where this is going. Exploiters used this as a way to launder their currency throughout the population. Since sony didn't put any real thought into their hamfisted approach to the problem , when the unleashed their ban-bot it killed a great many player accounts who were entirely innocent since anyone could be tipped and that money could then be used to further buy and sell things in a legit manner through player interactions far and wide. On top of this, Sony customer service was legendarily disdainful of the mere peasants that dared to open tickets or call their support lines. The company line was that anyone banned for having duped currency was a filthy evil criminal and should be treated as such.
This understandably made a lot of people very unhappy (understatement!). Imagine having your CoX account of many years full of all your characters banned permanently for something totally outside your control and being told you were a miscreant when you complained.
The community began to form protests. Many people that still had active accounts were of course friends of people that were unjustly banned since MMOs of the era fostered communities. The timing coincided with Sony trying to market the game to new players by offering free trial accounts, which allowed many banned players and their friends to join in as well, not caring at all what happened to them on their throwaway trial accounts.
The protests became so massive and the story so cartoonish that people joined in that had no stake in the matter other than to fight against injustice. Sony saw only that their peasants were becoming unruly and demanded an ironfisted (and extremely poorly thought out) solution to crush the rebellion. The resulting actions were so absurd that they even became enshrined in popular comics of the time like Penny Arcade.
Sounds like Sony
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Remember at the time Sony basically was a behemoth in the gaming market since everquest had started a whole new age of gaming and began the MMO craze. WoW was not going to be out for a while.
Found the relevant PA bit
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/08/25
Thanks for elaborating on the story. I think I knew the very "high level" version of all that but the details were interesting. Somehow even though I've played all sorts of games over the decades I don't think I've ever played one directly run by Sony so it sounds like I've managed (by accident perhaps) to avoid much of the silliness you spoke of. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I don't see how the act of "duplicate items" and "using an exploit several times" should end up in something different than a ban or a teleport into space/closed fountain (the latter was a very common practice by GMs, to expose the offender in the middle of the plaza ^^). The first part of your explanation suggests that "Fixing the exploit in a timely manner" should substitute the ban, with the latter being evil. It's so not the case.
Fixing the exploit is a different solution for a different problem: to prevent that from happening again. It doesn't punish the offenders that use exploits to take advantage upon OTHER PLAYERS. In fact, do not forget that all kind of cheaters/abusers ruin the game of the other players before ruining the pockets of the devs.
Let's at least try to be objective sometime and try to defend ourselves first, players shouldn't be expected to find exploits to be on par with other players. Sony has enough reasons to be hated by mmo-players that's not for banning cheaters/abusers.
This is the true and only negative point of the story, how the matter was handled by the Customer Service and Game Masters about the innocents. In particular we're talking about a story that happened to an old game, in an era were Customer Service had so much to learn yet, eve more than now, were these episodes still happen (and always to Star Wars games ^^").
I suspect it was simply the misbehaviour of a single person with too much power in its hands (no controls, very common before), the Community Manager and Game Masters leading man, that must have lost the patience with offenders constantly asking to be unbanned and took the decision to ignore all requests in this regard (error that's avoided by the majority of decent customer services nowadays, since not reading one single request may escalate in a legal action and money equal to the representative monthly pay or close).
Still are you certain that those "innocents" were really so? Today we know that "low-level-cheaters" (download/buy the cheat, activate it, done) are even instructed by the cheat-sellers to go cry to be unbanned and to cry their innocence on public forums when they get banned.
Thunder, if you read the story the reason people were mad about the bans was because it was done by a poorly designed automatic script that mostly swept up innocent people. The reason the teleporting was insane was because it was not used against exploiters, it was used against justifiably angry customers whose only offense was protest of their treatment.
The PA comic depicting sony as a villainous sith ordering mass murder from a distant spaceship is spot on. Most players that played a sony game during the early MMO era have similar stories to tell of the way they treated their customers. This story is more famous than most but treating customers like garbage was a hallmark of sony online entertainment before they folded recently.
If you aren't old enough to remember this era it is easy enough to find examples of sony making truly silly decisions that upset players in just about every single game they controlled with the tiniest modicum of effort. There are certain things the internet never forgets, and petty drama involving video games is definitely one of them.
I was a hand-picked alpha tester (there were probably around 50 of us picked out of the community) for SWG’s “combat upgrade”. We never actually tested anything, we chatted for months in a private forum before they shocked us by publicly announcing the release for the changes they said we’d tested. I think all of us testers rage-quit over the stuff they pulled. Not to mention the “upgrade” just made combat bland and boring and led to the game being completely revamped from a unique and special game to a clone of Everquest with a Star Wars skin on it. I hated having my name attached to that monstrosity as if I had anything to do with it (it wasn’t a secret who was in the test, we were basically representatives of various professions in the community).
SOE was terrible and was directly responsible for my worst ever experience as a gamer.
Wow, they picked you guys out for testing and then never even let you actually test what you were singled out for? That's pretty sad...
I continue to not really regret ever giving SWG a try. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]