What I'm reading on that page looks a lot like what the OP is looking for.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
That sounds pretty similar to what GW2 has. It isn't as useful as a district system though. That is simply cross server chating and grouping. It does nothing to solve the issue of empty areas of the game world.
A district system is like GW1, where the # of copies differs depending on which area of the game you are. If you are in a heavily populated area, there are more copies. If you are in a low populated area, there may just be 1 or 2 copies of that area, that way there is always a decent amount of people playing where ever you go. It is a nice feature to have especially once the game gets a few months old and the lower level areas empty out.
I was thinking more about it last night though and i decided that in an ideal MMO, there would be servers + gameplay features to help encourage players to utilize more areas of the game world instead of deserting them when they hit a certain level. That would be ideal because splitting people into smaller servers create a better sense of community/society for each server, encouraging players to utilize all areas of the map breaks the monotomy of dungeons/high level areas, and also keeps these areas more populated for players who are still utilizing them for their primary purpose.
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'.
I'm not.
Try playing an FPS game on a server half way round the world. Doesn't even have to be an FPS - any game with time sensitive information to send to and from the server. Not fun. Playing a fast-paced action game on a server anywhere outside your region is agony.
Try playing a game which has direct controls, mouseaim, collision detection and physics with 1000 players. Any server will crumble under the stress. Even a game such as Battlefield 3 had to transfer hit detection from server-side to client side to reduce server loads and that game has what... 64 player servers? And still, BF is unresponsive compared to fast-paced FPS games such as Quake, Unreal and the like.
GW1 had 48 players at most in the same area at any given time. GW2 had to give away interrupt skills and body blocking to allow higher player numbers. Two notable features of GW1's combat and rarely found in MMORPGs. Don't you think Arenanet would've wanted to have atleast one of those if the could?
If it is technically possible, are you saying that majority of the developers are simply inept? -Single shard server with action combat is out of the question. Thousands of players in the same battle with the aforementioned features?- Out of the question.
Eve can't do direct controls, any sort of manual aiming or "actiony mechanics" because the high latency would make it feel unresponsive. Newtonian flight and collision detection would bog down the servers unless the player numbers per battle was brought down considerably.
But hey what do I know... I'm only an amateur game designer and I only speak from what I've played and what I've read.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
If it is technically possible, are you saying that majority of the developers are simply inept? -Single shard server with action combat is out of the question. Thousands of players in the same battle with the aforementioned features?- Out of the question.
It is and it works, if you played rift at launch, zone events with 100+ players were not uncommon, and they were playable.
As for action combat, dunno, what is your definition? Wow enough actionwise for you? Features predictions and asynchronous events to battle lag and to look more fluent.
As they say, anything can be done if you have the money.
Its much simpler and cheaper to divide people into servers.
If it is technically possible, are you saying that majority of the developers are simply inept? -Single shard server with action combat is out of the question. Thousands of players in the same battle with the aforementioned features?- Out of the question.
It is and it works, if you played rift at launch, zone events with 100+ players were not uncommon, and they were playable.
As for action combat, dunno, what is your definition? Wow enough actionwise for you? Features predictions and asynchronous events to battle lag and to look more fluent.
As they say, anything can be done if you have the money.
Its much simpler and cheaper to divide people into servers.
Flame on!
And there is no compelling gameplay reason not to do so.
If it is technically possible, are you saying that majority of the developers are simply inept? -Single shard server with action combat is out of the question. Thousands of players in the same battle with the aforementioned features?- Out of the question.
It is and it works, if you played rift at launch, zone events with 100+ players were not uncommon, and they were playable.
As for action combat, dunno, what is your definition? Wow enough actionwise for you? Features predictions and asynchronous events to battle lag and to look more fluent.
As they say, anything can be done if you have the money.
Its much simpler and cheaper to divide people into servers.
Flame on!
And there is no compelling gameplay reason not to do so.
Well, yes, on its own even servers are superfluous without a shared world/area, similarly, if you dont have a dispersed and/or sandboxy universe...
It's predominantly a technical hurdle. It takes more effort to create a server architecture with clusters than a bunch of isolated limited-capacity servers.
Moderate-high technical cost vs. low (if any) monetary gain results in a feature that we don't see often enough in games.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It's predominantly a technical hurdle. It takes more effort to create a server architecture with clusters than a bunch of isolated limited-capacity servers.
Moderate-high technical cost vs. low (if any) monetary gain results in a feature that we don't see often enough in games.
Yes. Agreed. I find creating a mechanism to bridge players between shards adds alot of additional time and effort, but Im finding it also allows me more scalability and load balancing.
The current team Im working with will allow players to hop between shards divided by zone subscription.
Comments
you mean TSW's single server tech?
http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=39889
Secrets of Dragon?s Spine Trailer.. !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwT9cFVQCMw
Best MMOs ever played: Ultima, EvE, SW Galaxies, Age of Conan, The Secret World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2X_SbZCHpc&t=21s
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The Return of ELITE !
What I'm reading on that page looks a lot like what the OP is looking for.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
That sounds pretty similar to what GW2 has. It isn't as useful as a district system though. That is simply cross server chating and grouping. It does nothing to solve the issue of empty areas of the game world.
A district system is like GW1, where the # of copies differs depending on which area of the game you are. If you are in a heavily populated area, there are more copies. If you are in a low populated area, there may just be 1 or 2 copies of that area, that way there is always a decent amount of people playing where ever you go. It is a nice feature to have especially once the game gets a few months old and the lower level areas empty out.
I was thinking more about it last night though and i decided that in an ideal MMO, there would be servers + gameplay features to help encourage players to utilize more areas of the game world instead of deserting them when they hit a certain level. That would be ideal because splitting people into smaller servers create a better sense of community/society for each server, encouraging players to utilize all areas of the map breaks the monotomy of dungeons/high level areas, and also keeps these areas more populated for players who are still utilizing them for their primary purpose.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
I'm not.
Try playing an FPS game on a server half way round the world. Doesn't even have to be an FPS - any game with time sensitive information to send to and from the server. Not fun. Playing a fast-paced action game on a server anywhere outside your region is agony.
Try playing a game which has direct controls, mouseaim, collision detection and physics with 1000 players. Any server will crumble under the stress. Even a game such as Battlefield 3 had to transfer hit detection from server-side to client side to reduce server loads and that game has what... 64 player servers? And still, BF is unresponsive compared to fast-paced FPS games such as Quake, Unreal and the like.
GW1 had 48 players at most in the same area at any given time. GW2 had to give away interrupt skills and body blocking to allow higher player numbers. Two notable features of GW1's combat and rarely found in MMORPGs. Don't you think Arenanet would've wanted to have atleast one of those if the could?
If it is technically possible, are you saying that majority of the developers are simply inept? -Single shard server with action combat is out of the question. Thousands of players in the same battle with the aforementioned features?- Out of the question.
Eve can't do direct controls, any sort of manual aiming or "actiony mechanics" because the high latency would make it feel unresponsive. Newtonian flight and collision detection would bog down the servers unless the player numbers per battle was brought down considerably.
But hey what do I know... I'm only an amateur game designer and I only speak from what I've played and what I've read.I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
It is and it works, if you played rift at launch, zone events with 100+ players were not uncommon, and they were playable.
As for action combat, dunno, what is your definition? Wow enough actionwise for you? Features predictions and asynchronous events to battle lag and to look more fluent.
As they say, anything can be done if you have the money.
Its much simpler and cheaper to divide people into servers.
Flame on!
And there is no compelling gameplay reason not to do so.
Well, yes, on its own even servers are superfluous without a shared world/area, similarly, if you dont have a dispersed and/or sandboxy universe...
Flame on!
Exactly. Better spent the resourcse on making fun combat, or scripted adventures.
It's predominantly a technical hurdle. It takes more effort to create a server architecture with clusters than a bunch of isolated limited-capacity servers.
Moderate-high technical cost vs. low (if any) monetary gain results in a feature that we don't see often enough in games.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Yes. Agreed. I find creating a mechanism to bridge players between shards adds alot of additional time and effort, but Im finding it also allows me more scalability and load balancing.
The current team Im working with will allow players to hop between shards divided by zone subscription.
-blitz
Werewolf Online(R) - Lead Developer