Why have 'servers', instead create a cluster

garretth

It seems that as a game matures a bit there is the inevitable server merge.

 

Why not have a server cluster instead that allows a player to have a unique name across all servers and would allow the server population to be dynamically balanced?

 

Many would say 'server pride!' but I believe that could be solved in a more interesting way.

 

Guild pride, home town pride, country pride, world pride...etc.

 

What do you think?

 

Loktofeit

 

Are you suggesting channels (Runescape) or single server (EVE Online)? The former seems to me to make more sense than individual servers, so I'm not sure why devs don't go that route. The latter seems optimal for a variety of reasons, but can be technically difficult and expensive to pull off.

 

Quesa

Not only expensive, as the above poster mentioned, but that typicall MMO's don't need that degree of integration and players would likely never know the difference.  You already have Realm vs. Realm PvP/PvE adn that's probably the most important aspect.

Eve Online was always developed and advertised as a single shard however apart from the ability to use global chat channels to talk to anyone in the universe, it's still instanced or sharded, it's just hidden well as a gate jump.

Quirhid

You mean channels/districts, right? Those are widely used.

Loktofeit

Originally posted by Quesa

Not only expensive, as the above poster mentioned, but that typicall MMO's don't need that degree of integration and players would likely never know the difference.  You already have Realm vs. Realm PvP/PvE adn that's probably the most important aspect.

Eve Online was always developed and advertised as a single shard however apart from the ability to use global chat channels to talk to anyone in the universe, it's still instanced or sharded, it's just hidden well as a gate jump.

There are no instances or shards in EVE Online. A gate functions like a teleport to cross long distances.

Loktofeit

Originally posted by Quirhid
You mean channels/districts, right? Those are widely used.

Channels in most cases are just instancing of a zone accessed through an in-game menu. I don't think many NA/EU MMOs use channel system as seen in something like Runescape or eastern MMOs, where characters are not tied to a particular server.

redcapp

Originally posted by Quesa

Not only expensive, as the above poster mentioned, but that typicall MMO's don't need that degree of integration and players would likely never know the difference.  You already have Realm vs. Realm PvP/PvE adn that's probably the most important aspect.

Eve Online was always developed and advertised as a single shard however apart from the ability to use global chat channels to talk to anyone in the universe, it's still instanced or sharded, it's just hidden well as a gate jump.

So.. we're just making stuff up now?

Lienhart

....right now I'm reading a lot of

"bullshit bullshitbullshit bullshitbullshit bullshitbullshit bullshitbullshit bullshitbullshit bullshitbullshit bullshitbullshit bullshitbullshit bullshit"

How many of you are actually in software development? And among those, how many of you work with MMO web services?

Arglebargle

Overflow servers. 

Iselin

Servers, shards, clusters, whatever, are all software devices that developers use to separate populations--based on what their testing shows the combination of 3D-engine and average connection speeds allows before the performance is negatively impacted.

In the simplest terms, the more complex the rendering required is, the fewer the number of on-the-fly player characters and effects they want to allow to co-exist in one spot simultaneously.

Clusters and "one server technology" are methods of attempting to broaden the base of players available to do group activities but usually only to congregate in instances where the maximum number is already tightly controlled. These "instances" can be WOW 5-man group content or GW2 WvW instances with several hundred allowed.

Sometimes they get the numbers right, sometimes they don't and they also usually have contingency plans to deal with abnormal congregations of players in one spot...like auto-reducing the rendering quality, auto-reducing the area around a player that is fully rendered, etc. GW2 WvW is a recent example of where a dev's decission to auto-reduce full-rendering areas can have an impact on gameplay which results in invisible (i.e. not rendered) players. You can also see this in heavily populated GW2 dynamic events.

The background environment also has a huge impact on how many players (and their effects) can be releiably rendered by base specs computers: lots of trees with detailed foliage and effects such as fires, storms, etc., create a large rendering overhead. In those environment the max number of players allowed before performance is compromised is drastically decreased. The opposite is also true for barren, featurless landscapes: many more players can be together in those environments before performance takes a noticeable hit.

 

KenFisher

Some systems already have this (if I understand the OPs description).  Login, select a server and any of your characters can play on that server.  It's handy for scaling, never needs server merges, but it does create problems with finding other players.  Your guild mates might be scattered over different servers.  It also makes multi-server chat problematic because the single channel can be talked on from any server.  This obviously wouldn't work well if there were 100 servers with 1000 players each.  The channel would be too noisy.

 

Quirhid

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Quesa

Not only expensive, as the above poster mentioned, but that typicall MMO's don't need that degree of integration and players would likely never know the difference.  You already have Realm vs. Realm PvP/PvE adn that's probably the most important aspect.

Eve Online was always developed and advertised as a single shard however apart from the ability to use global chat channels to talk to anyone in the universe, it's still instanced or sharded, it's just hidden well as a gate jump.

There are no instances or shards in EVE Online. A gate functions like a teleport to cross long distances.

Well... isn't the same old, sam old skybox an instance? An ever repeating area? Atleast in a terrestrial game likely you would name such an area an instance.

And have you ever heard of travelling from one system to the next without jumping? I haven't - only failed attempts. They may not be instanced or shards but they are areas handled by different serves within the same server group.

Scot

Channels and instancing do not help build a gaming community. Also I dont think you can have a PvP "Channel", but maybe you could have a RP channel?

CalmOceans

Originally posted by Scot
Channels and instancing do not help build a gaming community.

^^ this

The bigger the server is the more of a jerk you can be and get away with it.

Malcanis

Originally posted by Quesa

Not only expensive, as the above poster mentioned, but that typicall MMO's don't need that degree of integration and players would likely never know the difference.  You already have Realm vs. Realm PvP/PvE adn that's probably the most important aspect.

Eve Online was always developed and advertised as a single shard however apart from the ability to use global chat channels to talk to anyone in the universe, it's still instanced or sharded, it's just hidden well as a gate jump.

There are no instances or shards (barring the Chinese EVE license) in EVE. The word you're looking for is zoned

Malcanis

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Quesa

Not only expensive, as the above poster mentioned, but that typicall MMO's don't need that degree of integration and players would likely never know the difference.  You already have Realm vs. Realm PvP/PvE adn that's probably the most important aspect.

Eve Online was always developed and advertised as a single shard however apart from the ability to use global chat channels to talk to anyone in the universe, it's still instanced or sharded, it's just hidden well as a gate jump.

There are no instances or shards in EVE Online. A gate functions like a teleport to cross long distances.

Well... isn't the same old, sam old skybox an instance? An ever repeating area? Atleast in a terrestrial game likely you would name such an area an instance.

And have you ever heard of travelling from one system to the next without jumping? I haven't - only failed attempts. They may not be instanced or shards but they are areas handled by different serves within the same server group.

 

(1) That's not what an instance is. An instance is the same game area generated seperately for a player or group that disappears when they leave it and is not accessible to other players. There are no instances in EVE.

(2) The background - the nebulae and the position of the stars is generated seperately for each system. Those aren't just random wallpaper dots, they're the actual EVE systems. The position and the orientation of the nebulae change as you moved through a region. The latest patch actually shows you your autopilot route in space, highlighting the 'reality' of the stars you can see.

sanshi44

Crazy thought but would it be posible to devide a huge game world across muiltipal server machines so each machine has it own section of the map and have 1 huge game with a huge population instead of servers with with say 5000 people on each server. Just curious cause that would be nuts if u couyld have one game that has say 40 different massive areas across 40 PCs servers

Malcanis

Originally posted by sanshi44
Crazy thought but would it be posible to devide a huge game world across muiltipal server machines so each machine has it own section of the map and have 1 huge game with a huge population instead of servers with with say 5000 people on each server. Just curious cause that would be nuts if u couyld have one game that has say 40 different massive areas across 40 PCs servers

That's basically how EVE works.

sanshi44

Originally posted by Malcanis

Originally posted by sanshi44
Crazy thought but would it be posible to devide a huge game world across muiltipal server machines so each machine has it own section of the map and have 1 huge game with a huge population instead of servers with with say 5000 people on each server. Just curious cause that would be nuts if u couyld have one game that has say 40 different massive areas across 40 PCs servers

That's basically how EVE works.

hmm would like to see than in a fantasy MM non space ship one :P

Malcanis

Well EVE's zone boundaries are the jump gates that take you from one system to another. The boundary makes sense in the conext of the game; it's not immersion breaking. That might be a little harder to do in a fantasy game.

There are also some technical implications for the single-shard open world game. Like when 1600 of your players all want to have their big fight in the same zone... that means you need some pretty powerful server nodes and some really slinky netcode.

Icewhite

Never mind

Loktofeit

Good morning, all!

 

+1 to each of Malcanis' posts. Good explanations of how it works.

 

 

Banaghran

Originally posted by sanshi44

Originally posted by Malcanis

Originally posted by sanshi44
Crazy thought but would it be posible to devide a huge game world across muiltipal server machines so each machine has it own section of the map and have 1 huge game with a huge population instead of servers with with say 5000 people on each server. Just curious cause that would be nuts if u couyld have one game that has say 40 different massive areas across 40 PCs servers

That's basically how EVE works.

hmm would like to see than in a fantasy MM non space ship one :P

Well, that kinda hits the roadblock of the current design, story, quest hubs, capital cities with all the facilities and ofcourse the most importatnt thing: there is nothing to do in the outside world.

Flame on!

Quirhid

Originally posted by Malcanis

Well EVE's zone boundaries are the jump gates that take you from one system to another. The boundary makes sense in the conext of the game; it's not immersion breaking. That might be a little harder to do in a fantasy game.

There are also some technical implications for the single-shard open world game. Like when 1600 of your players all want to have their big fight in the same zone... that means you need some pretty powerful server nodes and some really slinky netcode.

It also means you have to have gameplay which suffers little from high latency. We all know Eve has made significant concessions to accommodate the high player numbers. They've had to give a lot of stuff away in order to do that.

Just active blocking becomes problematic in single shard design. A fantasy game designed in such a way would have rely heavily on dicerolls to resolve combat and/or have to be turn-based. Not to mention, you'd have to sell the indirect character controls to the players who have been using to direct controls for years now: pressing a button and seeing the character respond to that immediately. What about large scale fights? Type /follow to your anchor and press a button to activate autoattack.

Tough sell that...

In short: You also need to have the right (and simple enough) gameplay to make it possible.

Loktofeit

Originally posted by Quirhid

Originally posted by Malcanis

Well EVE's zone boundaries are the jump gates that take you from one system to another. The boundary makes sense in the conext of the game; it's not immersion breaking. That might be a little harder to do in a fantasy game.

There are also some technical implications for the single-shard open world game. Like when 1600 of your players all want to have their big fight in the same zone... that means you need some pretty powerful server nodes and some really slinky netcode.

It also means you have to have gameplay which suffers little from high latency. We all know Eve has made significant concessions to accommodate the high player numbers. They've had to give a lot of stuff away in order to do that.

Just active blocking becomes problematic in single shard design. A fantasy game designed in such a way would have rely heavily on dicerolls to resolve combat and/or have to be turn-based. Not to mention, you'd have to sell the indirect character controls to the players who have been using to direct controls for years now: pressing a button and seeing the character respond to that immediately. What about large scale fights? Type /follow to your anchor and press a button to activate autoattack.

Tough sell that...

In short: You also need to have the right (and simple enough) gameplay to make it possible.

 

There's no technical reason for anything you presented. It seems like you are confusing 'single shard server' with '1,000 player battle'.

 

AutemOx

It isn't a huge engineering hurdle to eliminate servers, but they would have to be replaced by a districting system instead.  I think most devs think servers are better because its easier to manage downtime, it allows communities to form between smaller groups of players, and because districting is confusing to casual players.

To explain the latter, imagine that you are in newbie area 1, where very few players play.  There is only 1 copy of this area because so few players are playing in it.  You see a few other newbies around you and they are walking towards the big city near the newbie area.  As you and the other newbies cross an imaginary line between the newbie area and the big city, some or all of the other players from newbie area 1 will disappear because they got shuffled into different big city districts.  Work arounds may allow party and guildmates to see each other even if they are not in the same district, but imagine if you are a casual player who does not understand the district or party system and you are trying to meet up with a friend from real life.  It could be very frustrating.

I would prefer districting though, because it is just so boring to play these games alone and servers get so empty late at night when I like to play.  Also I often find myself playing a game months after its release and very few players are left in the lower level areas.