Originally posted by ShakyMo It's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Although it is a good way to avoid having to spin doctor server merges at a later date.
launch day cue's, being on the same server as your friend, and dead zones a few months after launch are problems that don't exist? those have been a problem for almost every mmo. it's nice to see they are trying to do something about it.
Not only that, but within those shards there will be phasing based on quests you've done, and many dungeons will be instanced. It's a damn shame really.
And I've reached out for a response from the devs and none of them have been able to tell me how the hell RvR works without multiple unique servers. (hint, it doesn't)
I don't think we have enough information about the system to fully praise or condemn it yet. On one hand, phasing can be really jarring when you complete a world event and suddenly some players appear out of nowhere and some disappear into oblivion. On the other hand, it's nice to have choices in a game with visible outcomes and consequences, even if they are arbitrary choices (though obviously it's better if they're not arbitrary). Phasing has never been done well. It's a very poorly thought out system. Designers should not try to cram singleplayer storylines into MMOs. GW2's system, while not perfect, shows actual change in the game world, as a direct result of the players. What's more, phasing breaks players apart from one another, which is the opposite of what a multiplayer game should do.
It could be that the phasing would be implemented poorly. As an above poster noted, it would be lame if you were in phase 1 and mined some ore, then just swapped through phases mining the same piece of ore because you're in a new version of the same world. That makes the world less unique and it makes the game less immersive. But what if it's not implemented like that? What if, instead of phases containing players, each player is a layer on top of one world, and some things, like a dock being on fire from an attack versus a fort being on fire from an attack are also layers that are attached to a player. And all players that enjoy PvP, role-playing, and are over the age of 25 are layered onto your layer, but anyone with a name containing xx, drizzt, death, or painsauce is removed. People can bounce from layer to layer, which means there is no coherent game world. Individual servers work worlds better in terms of a coherent gameworld, which is imperative in RvR.
Now, regarding RvR, I believe they have some sort of ongoing "campaign" system. A player joins a campaign and it creates a version of Cyrodiil. I suppose it's an effort to keep some semblance of balance and permanence. I think a campaign isn't a completely permanent choice which is a HUGE problem, permanent choice and meaningful realm reward are the only ways RVR work, but more adamant than say, a phase filter such as those outlined above. This doesn't sound that great to me, but hopefully Zenimax figure it out.
I still have to agree that a phased world is hardly different than several versions of a world in the form of separate servers. To me, it seems to have a lot more pros than cons.
It seems like FAR more cons than pros. Especially with RvR. It just seems like this is a way for them to make sure no servers have low population. The trade off is that barely any MMO features work now.
Originally posted by ShakyMo It's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Although it is a good way to avoid having to spin doctor server merges at a later date.
A problem that doesn't exist for you, perhaps. I won't say it's the worst thing about an MMO, or even an MMO launch, but there have been several times where I've discovered that someone I know plays the game I play, but on a different server. Often both of us are already invested in a character or community and it's difficult to really play together. This problem does exist.
Good point about the server merges as well. They're often have the least graceful implementation of all MMO happenings. As a long time warhammer online player, this especially rings true.
"Seventy buggy micro servers which will never put you with your friends even if you weely weely want to."
Ah. Much better.
On the + side, this mega server idea suggests that quest results and sulch won't restart or stay in a constaint state of flux. What you ... see... due to the mega servers sweet love capabilities is the results of your labor. No more werewolf or vamp attacks. You da man. the town loves you.
So the mechanics of a large MMO which break the immersion due to a need to cater to such a high volume could be gone and you will partake of the fruits of your loomish labours. If so I say.. Neil Armstrong me forward.
Not only that, but within those shards there will be phasing based on quests you've done, and many dungeons will be instanced. It's a damn shame really.
And I've reached out for a response from the devs and none of them have been able to tell me how the hell RvR works without multiple unique servers. (hint, it doesn't)
Devs have explained this
You get assigned to a campaign (the same campaign as your guild), you are then locked to that campaign. You can change campaigns but at a preventative cost (alliance points), and also if you roll an alt on a different faction that toon will be completely locked out of the campaign your main is on to prevent cheating.
Originally posted by ShakyMo Yeah it will go wrong and everyone and his dog will be in one sided campaigns.
Loosing alliance points won't work. Needs to be a hard ban.
You dont know that it wont work at all
It all depends on how important alliance points are, if its a pvp leveling system then i cant see pvpers wanting to lose there perks just to get a slight numbers gain (as long as the perks are worthwile)
Plus with the mega-server tech on each campaign they can just cap the population on the larger faction so it never exceeds double the lowest pop faction, that way they wont have an advantage even with more numbers
Phasing has never been done well. It's a very poorly thought out system. Designers should not try to cram singleplayer storylines into MMOs. GW2's system, while not perfect, shows actual change in the game world, as a direct result of the players. What's more, phasing breaks players apart from one another, which is the opposite of what a multiplayer game should do.
I agree that phasing has never been implemented to my liking. However, I don't beleive its inherently a bad design decision. I think that it can be done properly. What's more, I think that players must be broken up in multiplayer games. They are already broken up in the form of servers. So, RvR aside, what's the difference between having a Role Playing server and a Role Playing phase? Players dropping in and out is hardly a concern. It would be the same as players logging in and out or transferring servers. I think that there may just be such a negative connotation attached that it effects perception.
But again, players must be broken apart one way or the other. Over saturation is just as bad a problem as playing in a ghost town.
People can bounce from layer to layer, which means there is no coherent game world. Individual servers work worlds better in terms of a coherent gameworld, which is imperative in RvR.
Not necessarily. Again, I think there's not much of a difference from current server based system. I don't think the layering necessarily effects campaigns in Cyrodiil. I completely agree that having persistent allies and enemies in RvR. I've written considerable crittisms about GW2 regarding non persistent enemies. It is essential (for me) to see the same faces on my side and the enemies' for that sense of comradery and rivalry. Perhaps I'm mistaken about the campaigns. Perhaps they are permanent. Again, neither I nor anyone else has enough information about them to either praise or condemn the system yet.
I do beleive that the "layers" will have no bearing on the RvR. Of that I think we are both glad.
which is a HUGE problem, permanent choice and meaningful realm reward are the only ways RVR work,
It seems like FAR more cons than pros. Especially with RvR. It just seems like this is a way for them to make sure no servers have low population. The trade off is that barely any MMO features work now.
I agree again that permanence is important. Essential even. But that does not necessitate having a traditional server system. Perhaps if the layers work in the PvE zones, and you choose a PvP "server" or "campaign" that is permanent, you can get the best of both worlds.
if these things are the case, I cannot agree that there are more cons than pros. Just two people talking on the Internet have now figured out a workaround. I'm sure a room full of devs with the likes of Matt Firor at the helm could come up with something. I'm only saying it's far too early to dismiss the game, or the Megaservers system outright.
It looks like an entertaining game. Lets see how it plays. I have VERY little interest in the "community" aspect of these games. Since they went main stream, I'd rather have as little to do with 99% of the player base as humanly possible.
Instancing is just another tool, that can be used to deal with various issues. As long as the game is entertaining, I really do not care if its used or not.
Are you enraged that many games have people on multiple servers? you might be and that could be where this ends.
However, if you can live with the idea that many games have different servers then you can think of these different instances as "different servers where you are matched with like minded people and where you can easily switch to another "server" if a friend usually plays differently than you but you want to team up on occasion.
It's really not that.
Other posters have hit it on the head. It's community, persistence, the feeling of actually being in an open on-going world that can be changed by its players, a 'massive' online RPG that is actually worth the goddamn money. I'm not bothered by others who might be on another server, it's everyone on my server, my shard, that matters to me. It's about building fame or infamy among our playerbase, it's about questing with some guy as a lowbie and questing alongside him to the end and monitoring each others progress as we go. It's about open world PvP and seeing that same guy on the opposing faction in the same location day in day out wrecking havoc and making you cower in fear because hes so good! It's about crafting world-famous wares that everyone can come meet you at X location for.
I LIKE meeting people and NOT having to add them to my friends list just to forceably see them again, its distracting and completely breaks immersion. I don't necessarily want to be their FRIEND either. I LIKE the consistency to a real ongoing world. I want to log in and make a name for myself. I don't want to log in and follow my own fenced in path as i am carefully moddycoddled through the world by its god-like creators who only want me to have 'fun' the way they designed it.
I wan't freedom. I wan't to be 4 or 5 guys sitting around a quest mob waiting for it to spawn. This is when friendships are made and spontanious moments that actually matter happen. These are the times and people you remember. I LIKE that an MMO is somewhat challenging, i LIKE that there are ass-holes i can't simply 'switch zone' from, they're still part of the community. I don't want to be sitting in an empty, lifeless, boring Inn thinking ''i wonder if Zone 5 6 or 7 is more lively?'' while a group of 10 people i never met are partying, jeering and interacting at the same tavern in Zone 8. Don't you see the problem here?
MMORPG's are so bubble wrapped and simply CRAP these days i feel like i want nothing more to do with them. Everyone must have their own personal experience carved out and handed to them on a silver platter. I feel really sorry for the people who never had the chance to enjoy the golden era of the MMO because we seem to be the only people who really get what an MMO is and should be. We all know western MMO's have become nothing but fat annual cash cows built for the ADD crowd, i get it i really do. The only hope is in indie development teams and Asian MMO's because Asians appear to have the brain capacity and self dignity to demand a little more for their time and money while we just eat up whatever sh*t the industry decides to poop out when it needs more money.
I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.
I really hate this retarded direction ALL MMO's are taking now. There's nothing MMO about them, just cheaper server architecture to ease the workload in return for a weaker player experience and community. Then you have games like Planetside 2, an MMOFPS that happily allows thousands of players to be connected simultaneously in one server zone. Maybe i'm just an old-schooler who enjoyed the days of SWG, EVE and WOW when everything you were experiencing was being experienced by other players too. You never missed a thing. Now it's all about minimizing waiting for 'mobs' to spawn and creating a streamlined fast-track experience for players which completely detracts from the real MMO experience of community, patience and dedication.
We're moving into the future of gaming but game development appears to be going backwards. Instead of creating BIGGER worlds with MORE quests and MORE ways to level, they are creating SMALLER worlds and INSTANCING them to sh*t instead. I just don't get it. There's no boldness in developing any more, only shortcuts and unoriginal 'creativity'. I would have thought of all developers the Elder Scrolls team would be brave and bold with their development but it looks like i was wrong.
I despise instancing!
Really having +200 plus players standing around in a small in or house is immersive? havinf a thousand players all camping the same rabbit spawn or boss is fun???
Eve is a different type of game and even then you get ebnough players in the same spot and the lagfeast will make the game unplayable with actions taking 30 seconds or more just to fire off. you want more of that???
Personally i don't need hundreds of other players in every small town or dungeon i visit. With every twit dancing on the mailboxes or making every lost secret dungeon into grandcentral station.
Well stated. I have ZERO interest in lagfest games or ones that pander to the "community" types, and in the process lose a great deal of the entertainment value. The vast majority of people aren't going to frequently interact with more than 30-40 people any way.
Whats the difference if you have players you cant see on another server or in another instance?
I find a strong sense of selective outrage in some posts on these forums. Sorry to burst that little bubble you have or crack that shell around your precious ego but a game that features servers with others you cant see or communicate with is the exact same thing as having players you cant see or communicate with while in a seperate instance of a zone.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
If having servers is such a bad approach. Explain wow.
Dude WoW was released 8 years ago lol we didn't know anything else back then.
And they have changed a lot with the times.
Real ID friends, cross realm grouping/dungeons/PvP, and now cross-realm PvE areas for low-pop zones...
Only real thing that matters is "PvE or PvP" server - but all PvP servers are in WoW is a ruleset that allows you to gank/grief people without as much gear as you or as high a level.
I love and I mean LOVE the idea of multiple rulesets based on server type - I was a big fan of the Siege Perilous "hardcore" server back in UO.
But multiple servers of the same ruleset / type is a pretty outdated idea.
The only reason GW2 went with it was WvW.
You know what's great? Giving people choice.
As long as there is a choice in the ESO mega server options to put yourself in the "loves to group with others" column - I'm all for it.
Let the solo players who despise random grouping play in their own shards - doesn't do shit to me - doesn't effect me at all.
Just give me a "pro-grouping" shard to play in - hell give me a "pro-grouping" rule set / server type (doubtful) and I'm a happy camper.
I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.
I really hate this retarded direction ALL MMO's are taking now. There's nothing MMO about them, just cheaper server architecture to ease the workload in return for a weaker player experience and community. Then you have games like Planetside 2, an MMOFPS that happily allows thousands of players to be connected simultaneously in one server zone. Maybe i'm just an old-schooler who enjoyed the days of SWG, EVE and WOW when everything you were experiencing was being experienced by other players too. You never missed a thing. Now it's all about minimizing waiting for 'mobs' to spawn and creating a streamlined fast-track experience for players which completely detracts from the real MMO experience of community, patience and dedication.
We're moving into the future of gaming but game development appears to be going backwards. Instead of creating BIGGER worlds with MORE quests and MORE ways to level, they are creating SMALLER worlds and INSTANCING them to sh*t instead. I just don't get it. There's no boldness in developing any more, only shortcuts and unoriginal 'creativity'. I would have thought of all developers the Elder Scrolls team would be brave and bold with their development but it looks like i was wrong.
I despise instancing!
Indeed, it feels so backward.
It's lazy design, not just for bandwidth and server structure (hello folks, Ultima Online and EVE have been doing this for the last decades and both are alive, though the first one has different servers) but also for content, especially if you're using a themepark design. You'd need to keep these areas interesting and when the world is just about combat quest hubs, making a game world large enough to not need instancing would be quite inefficient.
Ultima Online had simple 2D graphics and EVE has vast amount of emtyness AND instances (solarsystems) and if you are a EVE player and you have been into fleet battles with 600+ players you should know it lags a lot for many people.
It's simple
Great graphics=instances
Poor graphics= almost none instance
Personly I really like this mega server structure no more play a toon up to lvl 30 and my friends tries to join after a few weeks on my full server they can't so they roll on another server so either I have to pay for a server transfer or reroll a new toon.
Thanks for showing you have absolutely no knowledge of how MMOs or computers work. Graphics have absolutely NOTHING to do with instancing. Graphics are entirely client side.
MMOs back in the day had cutting edge graphics and NO instances. Now tech is even better and suddenly we need instances? No, its a game design decision, and nothing more. Phasing and instancing are just bad game design, used to band aid problems devs aren't smart enough to fix.
And I've never, EVER seen an MMO that has servers so full my bud can't join my server when he plays the game.
If having servers is such a bad approach. Explain wow.
The only reason GW2 went with it was WvW.
And because, its a good design idea that's worked more or less flawlessly since MMOs were invented?
And don't forget that this game is supposed to have RvR too, just like GW2 and DAoC.
The "flawlessly" part is highly, highly debateable.
I've spent way, way too much time in queues to log in, on servers that are crashing because they don't have dynamic player cap scaling, and being forced to choose between two groups of friends/guildies that are on different servers to say that it's been "flawless" for me in the past 12+ years.
Mega-server has its pros and cons, just like phasing has pros and cons and seperate servers have their pros and cons.
I don't really care much for MMO PvP since UO so I really could care less about the RvR in ESO - it will probably suck. For the PvE part of the game, and especially the story parts (and the fact it's Elder Scrolls in the first place) makes me feel like mega-server is a good idea for what they are trying to do in this game.
Especially if there is plenty of group-only content and lots of ways to connect with other players as they say there supposedly will be.
Are you enraged that many games have people on multiple servers? you might be and that could be where this ends.
However, if you can live with the idea that many games have different servers then you can think of these different instances as "different servers where you are matched with like minded people and where you can easily switch to another "server" if a friend usually plays differently than you but you want to team up on occasion.
It's really not that.
etc
look, you are preaching to the choir. I get that.
I want open world, no instances, ffa pvp (if done well) and extremely epicly long leveling arcs with player shops, sieges that aren't every other hour so there's pride in ownership, bartering, item decay and "what have you". I wan a community where what you do and say affects how the server deals with you.
but what I said up there is the approach they are taking. Instead of having multiple servers they are "having multiple servers that allow players to hop from one to the other because really it's a mega server that caters to your specific play style".
That's what they are doing. Regardless of what people do or don't want.
And in some ways it does make sense. You want a role play server? fine you get a role play server, you want a server where everyone is a raider? you get that.
It is what it is.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.
I really hate this retarded direction ALL MMO's are taking now. There's nothing MMO about them, just cheaper server architecture to ease the workload in return for a weaker player experience and community. Then you have games like Planetside 2, an MMOFPS that happily allows thousands of players to be connected simultaneously in one server zone. Maybe i'm just an old-schooler who enjoyed the days of SWG, EVE and WOW when everything you were experiencing was being experienced by other players too. You never missed a thing. Now it's all about minimizing waiting for 'mobs' to spawn and creating a streamlined fast-track experience for players which completely detracts from the real MMO experience of community, patience and dedication.
We're moving into the future of gaming but game development appears to be going backwards. Instead of creating BIGGER worlds with MORE quests and MORE ways to level, they are creating SMALLER worlds and INSTANCING them to sh*t instead. I just don't get it. There's no boldness in developing any more, only shortcuts and unoriginal 'creativity'. I would have thought of all developers the Elder Scrolls team would be brave and bold with their development but it looks like i was wrong.
I despise instancing!
Indeed, it feels so backward.
It's lazy design, not just for bandwidth and server structure (hello folks, Ultima Online and EVE have been doing this for the last decades and both are alive, though the first one has different servers) but also for content, especially if you're using a themepark design. You'd need to keep these areas interesting and when the world is just about combat quest hubs, making a game world large enough to not need instancing would be quite inefficient.
Ultima Online had simple 2D graphics and EVE has vast amount of emtyness AND instances (solarsystems) and if you are a EVE player and you have been into fleet battles with 600+ players you should know it lags a lot for many people.
It's simple
Great graphics=instances
Poor graphics= almost none instance
Personly I really like this mega server structure no more play a toon up to lvl 30 and my friends tries to join after a few weeks on my full server they can't so they roll on another server so either I have to pay for a server transfer or reroll a new toon.
Thanks for showing you have absolutely no knowledge of how MMOs or computers work. Graphics have absolutely NOTHING to do with instancing. Graphics are entirely client side.
MMOs back in the day had cutting edge graphics and NO instances. Now tech is even better and suddenly we need instances? No, its a game design decision, and nothing more. Phasing and instancing are just bad game design, used to band aid problems devs aren't smart enough to fix.
And I've never, EVER seen an MMO that has servers so full my bud can't join my server when he plays the game.
rift and swtor are the most recent to have launch day server cue times. wow mop had server cue's. guild wars 2 servers are listed as full making joining your friends server a hassle.
the secret world uses one server technology and i don;t think those problems exsist in that game.
It is weird how people can have such utterly different viewpoints, allthough that fact might be one the great driving forces of humanity.
Because I have asked for this exact feature since 2001 and I played Anarchy Online, and they had TWO servers back then!
I could not for the life of me understand why they did not do one login server and then let you play werever you wanted.
They had no server switchs and I had friends on both rk1 and rk2.
To me it always seemed as an opportunity lost that you had hundreds of thousands of players ( well maybe not in AO's case, but still ), and you were only able to play with the ones on "your" server.
This has been a torn in my eye ever since, and with every new MMO.
One of the reasons EVE feels so great is that EVERY player is a potential group member.
Instances seems like a small price to pay.
Would I like a game world the size of a small country that could fit and harbor a hundred thousand players without instancing?
Of course!
However I do not see that for a very very long time
This to me is splendid news, something I have asked for for over ten years.
Different servers are no less "instancing" to me, just with a barrier between them.
On the other hand I remember an old interview with I think Smedley were he said that servers transfers in EQ were like 30% of their income!
So it is no surprise this have not changed until now.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whats the difference if you have players you cant see on another server or in another instance?
I find a strong sense of selective outrage in some posts on these forums. Sorry to burst that little bubble you have or crack that shell around your precious ego but a game that features servers with others you cant see or communicate with is the exact same thing as having players you cant see or communicate with while in a seperate instance of a zone.
There is a major difference that you would have seen already if you'd read the thread.
Ten isolated servers mean ten isolated communities; that means you will regularly be playing with the same people and will get to know the community on your server. Individuals will develop repuations within that community (good and bad) and players will be more likely to form friendships with those they encounter regularly.
Ten instances on one mega-server leads to something very different; those people are switching around all over the place which essentially means it's one HUGE community ten times the size of the isolated server example. This means that you very rarely encounter a player more than once due to there being ten possible different versions of the same place. This means that individuals cannot build a reputation for themselves because they just get lost in the crowd.
This also leads to one of the most endemic problems of the WoW-era MMO community: a lack of consequence for anti-social behaviour. WoW's dungeon finder (which combines many servers into one pool) makes it inconsequential to troll whereas the isolated server example would see such a person develop a bad rep and ultimately shunned by the community unless they started playing nice.
There is a VERY distinct difference between servers and instances, because instances are designed to be easy to move between and that means there is no persistence in the community. Persistence is one of the concepts the MMO genre is built on, so yeah I'd say it's a big deal when a mechanic removes it.
Whats the difference if you have players you cant see on another server or in another instance?
I find a strong sense of selective outrage in some posts on these forums. Sorry to burst that little bubble you have or crack that shell around your precious ego but a game that features servers with others you cant see or communicate with is the exact same thing as having players you cant see or communicate with while in a seperate instance of a zone.
There is a major difference that you would have seen already if you'd read the thread.
Ten isolated servers mean ten isolated communities; that means you will regularly be playing with the same people and will get to know the community on your server. Individuals will develop repuations within that community (good and bad) and players will be more likely to form friendships with those they encounter regularly.
Ten instances on one mega-server leads to something very different; those people are switching around all over the place which essentially means it's one HUGE community ten times the size of the isolated server example. This means that you very rarely encounter a player more than once due to there being ten possible different versions of the same place. This means that individuals cannot build a reputation for themselves because they just get lost in the crowd.
This also leads to one of the most endemic problems of the WoW-era MMO community: a lack of consequence for anti-social behaviour. WoW's dungeon finder (which combines many servers into one pool) makes it inconsequential to troll whereas the isolated server example would see such a person develop a bad rep and ultimately shunned by the community unless they started playing nice.
There is a VERY distinct difference between servers and instances, because instances are designed to be easy to move between and that means there is no persistence in the community. Persistence is one of the concepts the MMO genre is built on, so yeah I'd say it's a big deal when a mechanic removes it.
they've already said it will put you with people you've played with before. so if you select the RP mega-server pocket you will always be thrown into the RP mega-server pocket with other just like you. but you also have the choice to play with others who aren't in that pocket.
I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.
I really hate this retarded direction ALL MMO's are taking now. There's nothing MMO about them, just cheaper server architecture to ease the workload in return for a weaker player experience and community. Then you have games like Planetside 2, an MMOFPS that happily allows thousands of players to be connected simultaneously in one server zone. Maybe i'm just an old-schooler who enjoyed the days of SWG, EVE and WOW when everything you were experiencing was being experienced by other players too. You never missed a thing. Now it's all about minimizing waiting for 'mobs' to spawn and creating a streamlined fast-track experience for players which completely detracts from the real MMO experience of community, patience and dedication.
We're moving into the future of gaming but game development appears to be going backwards. Instead of creating BIGGER worlds with MORE quests and MORE ways to level, they are creating SMALLER worlds and INSTANCING them to sh*t instead. I just don't get it. There's no boldness in developing any more, only shortcuts and unoriginal 'creativity'. I would have thought of all developers the Elder Scrolls team would be brave and bold with their development but it looks like i was wrong.
I despise instancing!
Indeed, it feels so backward.
It's lazy design, not just for bandwidth and server structure (hello folks, Ultima Online and EVE have been doing this for the last decades and both are alive, though the first one has different servers) but also for content, especially if you're using a themepark design. You'd need to keep these areas interesting and when the world is just about combat quest hubs, making a game world large enough to not need instancing would be quite inefficient.
Ultima Online had simple 2D graphics and EVE has vast amount of emtyness AND instances (solarsystems) and if you are a EVE player and you have been into fleet battles with 600+ players you should know it lags a lot for many people.
It's simple
Great graphics=instances
Poor graphics= almost none instance
Personly I really like this mega server structure no more play a toon up to lvl 30 and my friends tries to join after a few weeks on my full server they can't so they roll on another server so either I have to pay for a server transfer or reroll a new toon.
Thanks for showing you have absolutely no knowledge of how MMOs or computers work. Graphics have absolutely NOTHING to do with instancing. Graphics are entirely client side.
MMOs back in the day had cutting edge graphics and NO instances. Now tech is even better and suddenly we need instances? No, its a game design decision, and nothing more. Phasing and instancing are just bad game design, used to band aid problems devs aren't smart enough to fix.
And I've never, EVER seen an MMO that has servers so full my bud can't join my server when he plays the game.
rift and swtor are the most recent to have launch day server cue times. wow mop had server cue's. guild wars 2 servers are listed as full making joining your friends server a hassle.
the secret world uses one server technology and i don;t think those problems exsist in that game.
TSW does what AoC does, and just shards everything so that you're never with anyone you want to be.
Launch day QUEues are not a good enough justification to destroying a coherent game world with a gimmicky poorly thought out MMO mechanic. Because guess what, the impact of instancing lasts forever, but launch day queues will only be there on launch day.
Whats the difference if you have players you cant see on another server or in another instance?
I find a strong sense of selective outrage in some posts on these forums. Sorry to burst that little bubble you have or crack that shell around your precious ego but a game that features servers with others you cant see or communicate with is the exact same thing as having players you cant see or communicate with while in a seperate instance of a zone.
There is a major difference that you would have seen already if you'd read the thread.
Ten isolated servers mean ten isolated communities; that means you will regularly be playing with the same people and will get to know the community on your server. Individuals will develop repuations within that community (good and bad) and players will be more likely to form friendships with those they encounter regularly.
Ten instances on one mega-server leads to something very different; those people are switching around all over the place which essentially means it's one HUGE community ten times the size of the isolated server example. This means that you very rarely encounter a player more than once due to there being ten possible different versions of the same place. This means that individuals cannot build a reputation for themselves because they just get lost in the crowd.
This also leads to one of the most endemic problems of the WoW-era MMO community: a lack of consequence for anti-social behaviour. WoW's dungeon finder (which combines many servers into one pool) makes it inconsequential to troll whereas the isolated server example would see such a person develop a bad rep and ultimately shunned by the community unless they started playing nice.
There is a VERY distinct difference between servers and instances, because instances are designed to be easy to move between and that means there is no persistence in the community. Persistence is one of the concepts the MMO genre is built on, so yeah I'd say it's a big deal when a mechanic removes it.
they've already said it will put you with people you've played with before. so if you select the RP mega-server pocket you will always be thrown into the RP mega-server pocket with other just like you. but you also have the choice to play with others who aren't in that pocket.
From my understanding it tries to place you in instances with either friends or people who selected the same preferences as you. On paper that would be ok (though IMO isolated servers would still be better).
The problem is they've also already explained that they open more instances as previous ones fill up... filled up means they can't add more people. I don't see how this system will work as it will inevitably end up unable to place people together due to capacity restrictions.
If an instance has a cap of 100 players and the first instance fills up with 75 group players, 20 roleplayers and 5 soloers a new instance would be opened... another 50 soloers log in on the new instance. So where would it place the next group player that logs in? If the first instance is full then it would have to place him with the soloers which means he's completely cut off from the players he needs to be with.
The only way to deal with that would be to forcibly move players between instances like auto-balancing in an FPS. That would NOT be popular in an MMO.
I really just don't see how this will work without fragmenting the community even more.
Comments
launch day cue's, being on the same server as your friend, and dead zones a few months after launch are problems that don't exist? those have been a problem for almost every mmo. it's nice to see they are trying to do something about it.
It seems like FAR more cons than pros. Especially with RvR. It just seems like this is a way for them to make sure no servers have low population. The trade off is that barely any MMO features work now.
A problem that doesn't exist for you, perhaps. I won't say it's the worst thing about an MMO, or even an MMO launch, but there have been several times where I've discovered that someone I know plays the game I play, but on a different server. Often both of us are already invested in a character or community and it's difficult to really play together. This problem does exist.
Good point about the server merges as well. They're often have the least graceful implementation of all MMO happenings. As a long time warhammer online player, this especially rings true.
"Seventy buggy micro servers which will never put you with your friends even if you weely weely want to."
Ah. Much better.
On the + side, this mega server idea suggests that quest results and sulch won't restart or stay in a constaint state of flux. What you ... see... due to the mega servers sweet love capabilities is the results of your labor. No more werewolf or vamp attacks. You da man. the town loves you.
So the mechanics of a large MMO which break the immersion due to a need to cater to such a high volume could be gone and you will partake of the fruits of your loomish labours. If so I say.. Neil Armstrong me forward.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
"We hate server lag, disconnects, queue times, lines for respawns, and not being able to play with all of our friends!"
Well here you go, here is a solution to those problems.
"I hate this and you are ruining the MMOs I know and love!"
But I thought you didn't like these things we are fixing?
"No that's not it at all, we just don't understand our ass from a hole in the ground so we are illogical and angry!"
Oh, ok... well... we hope you give our game a try!
Devs have explained this
You get assigned to a campaign (the same campaign as your guild), you are then locked to that campaign. You can change campaigns but at a preventative cost (alliance points), and also if you roll an alt on a different faction that toon will be completely locked out of the campaign your main is on to prevent cheating.
Loosing alliance points won't work. Needs to be a hard ban.
If having servers is such a bad approach. Explain wow.
You dont know that it wont work at all
It all depends on how important alliance points are, if its a pvp leveling system then i cant see pvpers wanting to lose there perks just to get a slight numbers gain (as long as the perks are worthwile)
Plus with the mega-server tech on each campaign they can just cap the population on the larger faction so it never exceeds double the lowest pop faction, that way they wont have an advantage even with more numbers
It looks like an entertaining game. Lets see how it plays. I have VERY little interest in the "community" aspect of these games. Since they went main stream, I'd rather have as little to do with 99% of the player base as humanly possible.
Instancing is just another tool, that can be used to deal with various issues. As long as the game is entertaining, I really do not care if its used or not.
It's really not that.
Other posters have hit it on the head. It's community, persistence, the feeling of actually being in an open on-going world that can be changed by its players, a 'massive' online RPG that is actually worth the goddamn money. I'm not bothered by others who might be on another server, it's everyone on my server, my shard, that matters to me. It's about building fame or infamy among our playerbase, it's about questing with some guy as a lowbie and questing alongside him to the end and monitoring each others progress as we go. It's about open world PvP and seeing that same guy on the opposing faction in the same location day in day out wrecking havoc and making you cower in fear because hes so good! It's about crafting world-famous wares that everyone can come meet you at X location for.
I LIKE meeting people and NOT having to add them to my friends list just to forceably see them again, its distracting and completely breaks immersion. I don't necessarily want to be their FRIEND either. I LIKE the consistency to a real ongoing world. I want to log in and make a name for myself. I don't want to log in and follow my own fenced in path as i am carefully moddycoddled through the world by its god-like creators who only want me to have 'fun' the way they designed it.
I wan't freedom. I wan't to be 4 or 5 guys sitting around a quest mob waiting for it to spawn. This is when friendships are made and spontanious moments that actually matter happen. These are the times and people you remember. I LIKE that an MMO is somewhat challenging, i LIKE that there are ass-holes i can't simply 'switch zone' from, they're still part of the community. I don't want to be sitting in an empty, lifeless, boring Inn thinking ''i wonder if Zone 5 6 or 7 is more lively?'' while a group of 10 people i never met are partying, jeering and interacting at the same tavern in Zone 8. Don't you see the problem here?
MMORPG's are so bubble wrapped and simply CRAP these days i feel like i want nothing more to do with them. Everyone must have their own personal experience carved out and handed to them on a silver platter. I feel really sorry for the people who never had the chance to enjoy the golden era of the MMO because we seem to be the only people who really get what an MMO is and should be. We all know western MMO's have become nothing but fat annual cash cows built for the ADD crowd, i get it i really do. The only hope is in indie development teams and Asian MMO's because Asians appear to have the brain capacity and self dignity to demand a little more for their time and money while we just eat up whatever sh*t the industry decides to poop out when it needs more money.
Well stated. I have ZERO interest in lagfest games or ones that pander to the "community" types, and in the process lose a great deal of the entertainment value. The vast majority of people aren't going to frequently interact with more than 30-40 people any way.
Whats the difference if you have players you cant see on another server or in another instance?
I find a strong sense of selective outrage in some posts on these forums. Sorry to burst that little bubble you have or crack that shell around your precious ego but a game that features servers with others you cant see or communicate with is the exact same thing as having players you cant see or communicate with while in a seperate instance of a zone.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Dude WoW was released 8 years ago lol we didn't know anything else back then.
And they have changed a lot with the times.
Real ID friends, cross realm grouping/dungeons/PvP, and now cross-realm PvE areas for low-pop zones...
Only real thing that matters is "PvE or PvP" server - but all PvP servers are in WoW is a ruleset that allows you to gank/grief people without as much gear as you or as high a level.
I love and I mean LOVE the idea of multiple rulesets based on server type - I was a big fan of the Siege Perilous "hardcore" server back in UO.
But multiple servers of the same ruleset / type is a pretty outdated idea.
The only reason GW2 went with it was WvW.
You know what's great? Giving people choice.
As long as there is a choice in the ESO mega server options to put yourself in the "loves to group with others" column - I'm all for it.
Let the solo players who despise random grouping play in their own shards - doesn't do shit to me - doesn't effect me at all.
Just give me a "pro-grouping" shard to play in - hell give me a "pro-grouping" rule set / server type (doubtful) and I'm a happy camper.
Thanks for showing you have absolutely no knowledge of how MMOs or computers work. Graphics have absolutely NOTHING to do with instancing. Graphics are entirely client side.
MMOs back in the day had cutting edge graphics and NO instances. Now tech is even better and suddenly we need instances? No, its a game design decision, and nothing more. Phasing and instancing are just bad game design, used to band aid problems devs aren't smart enough to fix.
And I've never, EVER seen an MMO that has servers so full my bud can't join my server when he plays the game.
And because, its a good design idea that's worked more or less flawlessly since MMOs were invented?
And don't forget that this game is supposed to have RvR too, just like GW2 and DAoC.
The "flawlessly" part is highly, highly debateable.
I've spent way, way too much time in queues to log in, on servers that are crashing because they don't have dynamic player cap scaling, and being forced to choose between two groups of friends/guildies that are on different servers to say that it's been "flawless" for me in the past 12+ years.
Mega-server has its pros and cons, just like phasing has pros and cons and seperate servers have their pros and cons.
I don't really care much for MMO PvP since UO so I really could care less about the RvR in ESO - it will probably suck. For the PvE part of the game, and especially the story parts (and the fact it's Elder Scrolls in the first place) makes me feel like mega-server is a good idea for what they are trying to do in this game.
Especially if there is plenty of group-only content and lots of ways to connect with other players as they say there supposedly will be.
look, you are preaching to the choir. I get that.
I want open world, no instances, ffa pvp (if done well) and extremely epicly long leveling arcs with player shops, sieges that aren't every other hour so there's pride in ownership, bartering, item decay and "what have you". I wan a community where what you do and say affects how the server deals with you.
but what I said up there is the approach they are taking. Instead of having multiple servers they are "having multiple servers that allow players to hop from one to the other because really it's a mega server that caters to your specific play style".
That's what they are doing. Regardless of what people do or don't want.
And in some ways it does make sense. You want a role play server? fine you get a role play server, you want a server where everyone is a raider? you get that.
It is what it is.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
rift and swtor are the most recent to have launch day server cue times. wow mop had server cue's. guild wars 2 servers are listed as full making joining your friends server a hassle.
the secret world uses one server technology and i don;t think those problems exsist in that game.
It is weird how people can have such utterly different viewpoints, allthough that fact might be one the great driving forces of humanity.
Because I have asked for this exact feature since 2001 and I played Anarchy Online, and they had TWO servers back then!
I could not for the life of me understand why they did not do one login server and then let you play werever you wanted.
They had no server switchs and I had friends on both rk1 and rk2.
To me it always seemed as an opportunity lost that you had hundreds of thousands of players ( well maybe not in AO's case, but still ), and you were only able to play with the ones on "your" server.
This has been a torn in my eye ever since, and with every new MMO.
One of the reasons EVE feels so great is that EVERY player is a potential group member.
Instances seems like a small price to pay.
Would I like a game world the size of a small country that could fit and harbor a hundred thousand players without instancing?
Of course!
However I do not see that for a very very long time
This to me is splendid news, something I have asked for for over ten years.
Different servers are no less "instancing" to me, just with a barrier between them.
On the other hand I remember an old interview with I think Smedley were he said that servers transfers in EQ were like 30% of their income!
So it is no surprise this have not changed until now.
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Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
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There is a major difference that you would have seen already if you'd read the thread.
Ten isolated servers mean ten isolated communities; that means you will regularly be playing with the same people and will get to know the community on your server. Individuals will develop repuations within that community (good and bad) and players will be more likely to form friendships with those they encounter regularly.
Ten instances on one mega-server leads to something very different; those people are switching around all over the place which essentially means it's one HUGE community ten times the size of the isolated server example. This means that you very rarely encounter a player more than once due to there being ten possible different versions of the same place. This means that individuals cannot build a reputation for themselves because they just get lost in the crowd.
This also leads to one of the most endemic problems of the WoW-era MMO community: a lack of consequence for anti-social behaviour. WoW's dungeon finder (which combines many servers into one pool) makes it inconsequential to troll whereas the isolated server example would see such a person develop a bad rep and ultimately shunned by the community unless they started playing nice.
There is a VERY distinct difference between servers and instances, because instances are designed to be easy to move between and that means there is no persistence in the community. Persistence is one of the concepts the MMO genre is built on, so yeah I'd say it's a big deal when a mechanic removes it.
they've already said it will put you with people you've played with before. so if you select the RP mega-server pocket you will always be thrown into the RP mega-server pocket with other just like you. but you also have the choice to play with others who aren't in that pocket.
TSW does what AoC does, and just shards everything so that you're never with anyone you want to be.
Launch day QUEues are not a good enough justification to destroying a coherent game world with a gimmicky poorly thought out MMO mechanic. Because guess what, the impact of instancing lasts forever, but launch day queues will only be there on launch day.
From my understanding it tries to place you in instances with either friends or people who selected the same preferences as you. On paper that would be ok (though IMO isolated servers would still be better).
The problem is they've also already explained that they open more instances as previous ones fill up... filled up means they can't add more people. I don't see how this system will work as it will inevitably end up unable to place people together due to capacity restrictions.
If an instance has a cap of 100 players and the first instance fills up with 75 group players, 20 roleplayers and 5 soloers a new instance would be opened... another 50 soloers log in on the new instance. So where would it place the next group player that logs in? If the first instance is full then it would have to place him with the soloers which means he's completely cut off from the players he needs to be with.
The only way to deal with that would be to forcibly move players between instances like auto-balancing in an FPS. That would NOT be popular in an MMO.
I really just don't see how this will work without fragmenting the community even more.