Crowfall deals a blow to the Zerg!!

Slapshot1188

Wargfoot said:

This is an interesting topic and it highlights one of the difficult aspects of PvP.

Naturally large organized groups of fanatic players are going to dominate the landscape and it is difficult to argue that they shouldn't.  If I work longer at a game, spend time making allies, and work hard at tactics I should be able to mop the floor with the less geared and prepared.

I don't know, but feel as if the zone caps are irrelevant.

Say you drop alliance sizes down to 50, as some have suggested here.  I can see a group of 50 organized dedicated (hardcore) players wiping out 100s of disorganized and poorly equipped players.

In UO a group of 4 PKs could bounce around the server wiping out hundreds of players in a single evening.

So I've not tried Crowfall but alliance size should be tied to surface area such that the larger you are the larger target you are as far as resources/etc.   The larger you become the more 'touchable' you should become so that a small group of 10 friends, well organized, could caputre and loot an outpost of yours.

Intersting... sounds like a legit game theory issue.

I think balancing mechanics need to be added - some random ideas:

1: An alliance > 100: None of the members can use fast travel.

^-- stuff like this, where you start to give love back to small groups.

Zone caps come into play because if you have a group larger than the zonecap you can theoretically just sit in the zone and play with yourselves and nobody can attack you.  Or you can sit in the zone with someone ELSES keep and prevent them to logging in to defend it.

A 2500 person alliance could theoretically take up every allocated player spot in every zone of the entire server.  Thus, it was a really, really bad idea.  Heck, even if you just bottleneck a specific zone you can stop people from logging into the game, or traveling between zones.

[Deleted User]

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Slapshot1188

Wargfoot said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Zone caps come into play because if you have a group larger than the zonecap you can theoretically just sit in the zone and play with yourselves and nobody can attack you.  Or you can sit in the zone with someone ELSES keep and prevent them to logging in to defend it.

A 2500 person alliance could theoretically take up every allocated player spot in every zone of the entire server.  Thus, it was a really, really bad idea.  Heck, even if you just bottleneck a specific zone you can stop people from logging into the game, or traveling between zones.

I'm not sure if this is a solid point.

"Say, the enemy has 2500 people logged on right now - but thankfully their are no zone caps so what do you say we get 10 guys together and give it a shot?"

If you can pack out every available player slot in a zone you've already won - the zone cap isn't the problem there (IMHO).

I think by the time a zone cap is a problem people have already quit.

Crowfall currently has POIs go vulnerable at certain pre-defined times.  So you only have to defend Keep X at Y time.   Let me flip it around for you:  What is the benefit of allowing Alliances of 2500 if a zone can only support 250?  

[Deleted User]

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Slapshot1188

Wargfoot said:

The other problem with these games is unofficial alliances.
Large group A and large group B are working together even though on paper they're sworn enemies.

I feel like developers have ignored 20 years of PvP gaming...

CF tries to address that with their win conditions.  Sure Group B could help Group A, but only group A gets the benefits of the POI and also only get points for holding it.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Slapshot1188

Wargfoot said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Wargfoot said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Zone caps come into play because if you have a group larger than the zonecap you can theoretically just sit in the zone and play with yourselves and nobody can attack you.  Or you can sit in the zone with someone ELSES keep and prevent them to logging in to defend it.

A 2500 person alliance could theoretically take up every allocated player spot in every zone of the entire server.  Thus, it was a really, really bad idea.  Heck, even if you just bottleneck a specific zone you can stop people from logging into the game, or traveling between zones.

I'm not sure if this is a solid point.

"Say, the enemy has 2500 people logged on right now - but thankfully their are no zone caps so what do you say we get 10 guys together and give it a shot?"

If you can pack out every available player slot in a zone you've already won - the zone cap isn't the problem there (IMHO).

I think by the time a zone cap is a problem people have already quit.

Crowfall currently has POIs go vulnerable at certain pre-defined times.  So you only have to defend Keep X at Y time.   Let me flip it around for you:  What is the benefit of allowing Alliances of 2500 if a zone can only support 250?  

I see no benefits, under any conditions, of allowing an alliance of 2500.
I call an alliance of 2500 a PvE server.

There has to be a good rule of thumb out there (I'll leave this to the game theory people) - but an alliance size should be a fraction of the maximum zone size.

Say 25% - so if a zone can hold 10,000 players you can have an alliance that is 2,500.

That’s roughly what I was saying from the start.  Got confused when you started taking about zone capacity not really being a factor.  In CF specifically,  Alliance caps used to be 2500 and zone caps 250.  This change will make Alliance and guild caps 500.  I believe those are still too high based on the zone caps, but it’s progress.

Ungood

Wargfoot said:

Throwing around more ideas:

• Small remote zones with tiny player caps of 25 players such that a tiny alliance could roll in and take it over for an evening.
• For each multiple of 50 in an alliance -1% to loot drops.
• MOBs favor large alliance players (justification: large alliances farm them) - thereby giving local aggressive mob support to smaller alliances.
• Vendors charge large alliances more (since they're rich).
• Alliances < 50 don't drop gear, each multiple over 50 drop 1 random item upon death.
• God's don't favor large alliances so priest/healing type spells begin to suffer.

There is the potential to allow alliance size to become a strategic choice.  I can see a alliance buff/debuff screen where a leader is deciding if allowing the alliance to grow is worth it.... "If I allow 100 more members what buffs/debuffs am I willing to live with..."

Yah.. they have something called a Hunger Dome, for small groups.. wanna take a guess who cried and whined and complained that they needed faction vs faction?

Yah.. Slappy.

Wanna guess who is crying that large guilds dominate large scale PvP (Like who would have thunk that a large organized guild would dominate large scale PvP.. Amazing right! No one could have guessed that outcome.)

Yup.. Slappy is crying about that too.

The guy just can't take a solid stand.

First he cries that the PvP is too Small.

Then he cries that the PvP is to Big.

The thing is, for a good pvp game, the best you can do, is balance the classes, so that individuals feel that the fight was far, but if the other side has more players and better organization, they are going to win.

Hey! Wanna guess who cried that there was no need for any kind of balance in large scale PvP games?

That's right.. Slappy on that one too.

Lets just call it.. this is not the game mode for him.

Iselin

Slapshot1188 said:

Wargfoot said:

This is an interesting topic and it highlights one of the difficult aspects of PvP.

Naturally large organized groups of fanatic players are going to dominate the landscape and it is difficult to argue that they shouldn't.  If I work longer at a game, spend time making allies, and work hard at tactics I should be able to mop the floor with the less geared and prepared.

I don't know, but feel as if the zone caps are irrelevant.

Say you drop alliance sizes down to 50, as some have suggested here.  I can see a group of 50 organized dedicated (hardcore) players wiping out 100s of disorganized and poorly equipped players.

In UO a group of 4 PKs could bounce around the server wiping out hundreds of players in a single evening.

So I've not tried Crowfall but alliance size should be tied to surface area such that the larger you are the larger target you are as far as resources/etc.   The larger you become the more 'touchable' you should become so that a small group of 10 friends, well organized, could caputre and loot an outpost of yours.

Intersting... sounds like a legit game theory issue.

I think balancing mechanics need to be added - some random ideas:

1: An alliance > 100: None of the members can use fast travel.

^-- stuff like this, where you start to give love back to small groups.

Zone caps come into play because if you have a group larger than the zonecap you can theoretically just sit in the zone and play with yourselves and nobody can attack you.  Or you can sit in the zone with someone ELSES keep and prevent them to logging in to defend it.

A 2500 person alliance could theoretically take up every allocated player spot in every zone of the entire server.  Thus, it was a really, really bad idea.  Heck, even if you just bottleneck a specific zone you can stop people from logging into the game, or traveling between zones.

Well designed faction vs. faction games deal with that problem simply by not having an overall bodies in a zone cap but instead having a cap for each faction. It's not rocket science.

For their no faction worlds, well they're on their own there.

Slapshot1188

HungerDome is a MOBA/BattleRoyale mode.

The guy above has been wrong about every single thing regarding this game. 

Started with stating almost half a million people bought the game.
Then how population was fine even though they couldn’t give away Beta keys.
Then how the 250 zone cap was intended to promote “leadership and coverage”

Plenty of others.  This is just the latest example.

Last word was he hadn’t even played the game past the Tutorial. 

YashaX

Kyleran said:

carterza said:

Kyleran said:

It's often been said Unity is not the best choice when trying to design large scale MMORPGS, looks like the Crowfall team knew this, but pressed forward as they were going with the concept of multiple smaller shards and not trying for 500 vs 500 battles.

As such, the Guild or Alliance caps per instance should be quite small, say 25 to 50 tops...

It's often been said that armchair game developers shouldn't pretend like they know what they're talking about...

Most of the issues that players experience in these large scale MMOs like EvE, SB, Crowfall, DAoC, etc... have absolutely nothing to do with the game client and everything to do with the game server (which guess what? doesn't rely on a game engine to function). You're just spreading FUD about Unity really. I don't even use Unity outside of work (and I don't work in games for a living anymore), but I know that Unity is not the source of Crowfall's issues when it comes to large scale siege performance.

You simply don't know what you're typing about.

Said the pot to the kettle. No surprise why you aren't in the gaming business anymore.

Here's some posts to help you understand..

"I've discovered a few decent optimisations that you can make with your hardware and software to help Crowfall (mostly Unity) run faster"

https://community.crowfall.com/topic/27842-improve-your-crowfall-performance-today/

"Like in any other MMO performance is mostly dependent on CPU and memory. Even if you have a good GPU, performance may suck. Check out https://community.crowfall.com/topic/27842-improve-your-crowfall-performance-today Btw patch on TEST got more FPS and optimisation is ongoing task, FPS becomes better every major patch."

https://amp.reddit.com/r/crowfall/comments/o3s20j/crowfall_performance_is_bad_or_just_me/

So are you saying that the reason Unity might not be an optimal choice for making mmos is that it handles memory and CPU operations less efficiently than other game engines? 

My experience is that the game pushes my system harder than ESO or New World even when no players are around - which might be due to the engine, although I don't see how that is an mmo specific issue.

I would have thought things like skill dysnc, lag, and framerate drops when around many actual players (not npcs) would be more indicative of the game's performance as an mmo.

Quizzical

YashaX said:

So are you saying that the reason Unity might not be an optimal choice for making mmos is that it handles memory and CPU operations less efficiently than other game engines? 

My experience is that the game pushes my system harder than ESO or New World even when no players are around - which might be due to the engine, although I don't see how that is an mmo specific issue.

I would have thought things like skill dysnc, lag, and framerate drops when around many actual players (not npcs) would be more indicative of the game's performance as an mmo.

My experience has been that just about every single Unity game I've ever played felt like it had a nasty case of badly-coded syndrome.  Either Unity primarily appeals to incompetent developers for some mysterious reason, or else the common thread is the Unity engine and not the developers.

Kyleran

Quizzical said:

YashaX said:

So are you saying that the reason Unity might not be an optimal choice for making mmos is that it handles memory and CPU operations less efficiently than other game engines? 

My experience is that the game pushes my system harder than ESO or New World even when no players are around - which might be due to the engine, although I don't see how that is an mmo specific issue.

I would have thought things like skill dysnc, lag, and framerate drops when around many actual players (not npcs) would be more indicative of the game's performance as an mmo.

My experience has been that just about every single Unity game I've ever played felt like it had a nasty case of badly-coded syndrome.  Either Unity primarily appeals to incompetent developers for some mysterious reason, or else the common thread is the Unity engine and not the developers.

Here's the Pantheon teams "defense" of their choice to use Unity.  (How many successful, large scale MMORPGS are on this list?).  

"While Unity originally may have been geared towards smaller and more simple games, a lot has changed since then. Unity’s developers are committed to providing an engine every bit as capable as any other professional game engine. In fact, we have a special relationship with them and they are excited to see a major MMO being developed using their technology. Here are some of the AAA games that are using the Unity engine:

• Crowfall
• Deus Ex: The Fall
• Might & Magic X Legacy
• République
• Gloria Victis
• Wasteland 2
• Dead Trigger 2
• Kerbal Space Program
• Call of Duty®: Strike Team
• Endless Space
• Shroud of the Avatar"

Kyleran

YashaX said:

Kyleran said:

carterza said:

Kyleran said:

It's often been said Unity is not the best choice when trying to design large scale MMORPGS, looks like the Crowfall team knew this, but pressed forward as they were going with the concept of multiple smaller shards and not trying for 500 vs 500 battles.

As such, the Guild or Alliance caps per instance should be quite small, say 25 to 50 tops...

It's often been said that armchair game developers shouldn't pretend like they know what they're talking about...

Most of the issues that players experience in these large scale MMOs like EvE, SB, Crowfall, DAoC, etc... have absolutely nothing to do with the game client and everything to do with the game server (which guess what? doesn't rely on a game engine to function). You're just spreading FUD about Unity really. I don't even use Unity outside of work (and I don't work in games for a living anymore), but I know that Unity is not the source of Crowfall's issues when it comes to large scale siege performance.

You simply don't know what you're typing about.

Said the pot to the kettle. No surprise why you aren't in the gaming business anymore.

Here's some posts to help you understand..

"I've discovered a few decent optimisations that you can make with your hardware and software to help Crowfall (mostly Unity) run faster"

https://community.crowfall.com/topic/27842-improve-your-crowfall-performance-today/

"Like in any other MMO performance is mostly dependent on CPU and memory. Even if you have a good GPU, performance may suck. Check out https://community.crowfall.com/topic/27842-improve-your-crowfall-performance-today Btw patch on TEST got more FPS and optimisation is ongoing task, FPS becomes better every major patch."

https://amp.reddit.com/r/crowfall/comments/o3s20j/crowfall_performance_is_bad_or_just_me/

So are you saying that the reason Unity might not be an optimal choice for making mmos is that it handles memory and CPU operations less efficiently than other game engines? 

My experience is that the game pushes my system harder than ESO or New World even when no players are around - which might be due to the engine, although I don't see how that is an mmo specific issue.

I would have thought things like skill dysnc, lag, and framerate drops when around many actual players (not npcs) would be more indicative of the game's performance as an mmo.

Here's what others say about Unity.

"Unity is not suitable for big projects

Not being able to drill down too deep is both a strength and a weakness for Unity. On one hand it allows for a quick process, well adapted to beginners, on the other hand that means Unity is probably not what you're looking for if you're hoping to make anything very bespoke, or on a large scale.

You might want to reconsider your choice if you're aiming to do a AAA game, or a large landscape with lots of things on screen at once, or networked games.

"Unity has a lot AAA facets but I don't think it's quite there yet in terms of open-world stuff," says Foster. "[Unity Technologies is] rebuilding that networking model at the moment so that might not be true in the future, but for now you bump into that wall, you can't go deep enough to do heavy optimisations or you have to do a lot of fancy tricks as Unity is not giving you enough room to change what you need to. That's where you hit the inflexibility of Unity."

Unity promotes bad code practices

For Tea for Two's Williams, the problem lies in the fact that Unity wasn't necessarily meant to become a game engine; it was originally meant for web development and JavaScript.

"Unity promotes bad code practices, because it was meant for smaller projects"

Garry Williams, Tea for Two

"A few things are not really well adapted to C# and game development," he says."I switched from MonoGame to Unity but it wasn't an easy decision for me because I don't really like Unity. It promotes bad code practices, because it was meant for smaller project"

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-01-16-what-is-the-best-game-engine-is-unity-the-right-game-engine-for-you

I may not be a game developer, but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express a time or two.

PurplePepe

I didn't know Crowfall had 2500 players total.

Slapshot1188

PurplePepe said:

I didn't know Crowfall had 2500 players total.

It may not any longer. At least not concurrent ones.  We don’t know since they blocked the Malekai Bot from pulling population numbers.   

Ungood

Slapshot1188 said:

HungerDome is a MOBA/BattleRoyale mode.

The guy above has been wrong about every single thing regarding this game. 

Started with stating almost half a million people bought the game.
Then how population was fine even though they couldn’t give away Beta keys.
Then how the 250 zone cap was intended to promote “leadership and coverage”

Plenty of others.  This is just the latest example.

Last word was he hadn’t even played the game past the Tutorial. 

I never said half this.. but then you again, you have openly admitted you have below average reading abilities.

So let me hold your hand for.. Ungodly amount of Times.. that I have had to do this.

1) I was given misinformation.. by YOU I might add, about how many people bought the game, and when I got better info, I corrected that.

2) I stand by the fact that the population is fine.

3) I never said this, I said Throne War games were about Coverage and Numbers, which is 100% true.  I never said anything about what the 250 cap was intended to promote that or anything at all about why the 250 cap existed, that is you just failing to be able to read.. yet again. for the umptieth time.

4) Oh yah.. I got my new Graphics Card.. been playing along now. Thanks for asking.. My Guild had 125 active users, when I was last on.

Slapshot1188

Ungood said:

PSlapshot1188 said:

HungerDome is a MOBA/BattleRoyale mode.

The guy above has been wrong about every single thing regarding this game. 

Started with stating almost half a million people bought the game.
Then how population was fine even though they couldn’t give away Beta keys.
Then how the 250 zone cap was intended to promote “leadership and coverage”

Plenty of others.  This is just the latest example.

Last word was he hadn’t even played the game past the Tutorial. 

I never said half this.. but then you again, you have openly admitted you have below average reading abilities.

So let me hold your hand for.. Ungodly amount of Times.. that I have had to do this.

1) I was given misinformation.. by YOU I might add, about how many people bought the game, and when I got better info, I corrected that.

2) I stand by the fact that the population is fine.

3) I never said this, I said Throne War games were about Coverage and Numbers, which is 100% true.  I never said anything about what the 250 cap was intended to promote that or anything at all about why the 250 cap existed, that is you just failing to be able to read.. yet again. for the umptieth time.

4) Oh yah.. I got my new Graphics Card.. been playing along now. Thanks for asking.. My Guild had 125 active users, when I was last on.

As I said many times,  Sure Dude 

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Ungood

Slapshot1188 said:

Ungood said:

PSlapshot1188 said:

HungerDome is a MOBA/BattleRoyale mode.

The guy above has been wrong about every single thing regarding this game. 

Started with stating almost half a million people bought the game.
Then how population was fine even though they couldn’t give away Beta keys.
Then how the 250 zone cap was intended to promote “leadership and coverage”

Plenty of others.  This is just the latest example.

Last word was he hadn’t even played the game past the Tutorial. 

I never said half this.. but then you again, you have openly admitted you have below average reading abilities.

So let me hold your hand for.. Ungodly amount of Times.. that I have had to do this.

1) I was given misinformation.. by YOU I might add, about how many people bought the game, and when I got better info, I corrected that.

2) I stand by the fact that the population is fine.

3) I never said this, I said Throne War games were about Coverage and Numbers, which is 100% true.  I never said anything about what the 250 cap was intended to promote that or anything at all about why the 250 cap existed, that is you just failing to be able to read.. yet again. for the umptieth time.

4) Oh yah.. I got my new Graphics Card.. been playing along now. Thanks for asking.. My Guild had 125 active users, when I was last on.

As I said many times,  Sure Dude 

As I've said many times, Yer Wrong Dude.. 

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Ungood

Wargfoot said:

Developers: "Let's create a game where someone can rule the world."

Also Developers: "OMG, someone took over the entire world."

OMG I laughed way too hard at this.. because this applies to sooooooo many games.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

YashaX

Kyleran said:

YashaX said:

Kyleran said:

carterza said:

Kyleran said:

It's often been said Unity is not the best choice when trying to design large scale MMORPGS, looks like the Crowfall team knew this, but pressed forward as they were going with the concept of multiple smaller shards and not trying for 500 vs 500 battles.

As such, the Guild or Alliance caps per instance should be quite small, say 25 to 50 tops...

It's often been said that armchair game developers shouldn't pretend like they know what they're talking about...

Most of the issues that players experience in these large scale MMOs like EvE, SB, Crowfall, DAoC, etc... have absolutely nothing to do with the game client and everything to do with the game server (which guess what? doesn't rely on a game engine to function). You're just spreading FUD about Unity really. I don't even use Unity outside of work (and I don't work in games for a living anymore), but I know that Unity is not the source of Crowfall's issues when it comes to large scale siege performance.

You simply don't know what you're typing about.

Said the pot to the kettle. No surprise why you aren't in the gaming business anymore.

Here's some posts to help you understand..

"I've discovered a few decent optimisations that you can make with your hardware and software to help Crowfall (mostly Unity) run faster"

https://community.crowfall.com/topic/27842-improve-your-crowfall-performance-today/

"Like in any other MMO performance is mostly dependent on CPU and memory. Even if you have a good GPU, performance may suck. Check out https://community.crowfall.com/topic/27842-improve-your-crowfall-performance-today Btw patch on TEST got more FPS and optimisation is ongoing task, FPS becomes better every major patch."

https://amp.reddit.com/r/crowfall/comments/o3s20j/crowfall_performance_is_bad_or_just_me/

So are you saying that the reason Unity might not be an optimal choice for making mmos is that it handles memory and CPU operations less efficiently than other game engines? 

My experience is that the game pushes my system harder than ESO or New World even when no players are around - which might be due to the engine, although I don't see how that is an mmo specific issue.

I would have thought things like skill dysnc, lag, and framerate drops when around many actual players (not npcs) would be more indicative of the game's performance as an mmo.

Here's what others say about Unity.

"Unity is not suitable for big projects

Not being able to drill down too deep is both a strength and a weakness for Unity. On one hand it allows for a quick process, well adapted to beginners, on the other hand that means Unity is probably not what you're looking for if you're hoping to make anything very bespoke, or on a large scale.

You might want to reconsider your choice if you're aiming to do a AAA game, or a large landscape with lots of things on screen at once, or networked games.

"Unity has a lot AAA facets but I don't think it's quite there yet in terms of open-world stuff," says Foster. "[Unity Technologies is] rebuilding that networking model at the moment so that might not be true in the future, but for now you bump into that wall, you can't go deep enough to do heavy optimisations or you have to do a lot of fancy tricks as Unity is not giving you enough room to change what you need to. That's where you hit the inflexibility of Unity."

Unity promotes bad code practices

For Tea for Two's Williams, the problem lies in the fact that Unity wasn't necessarily meant to become a game engine; it was originally meant for web development and JavaScript.

"Unity promotes bad code practices, because it was meant for smaller projects"

Garry Williams, Tea for Two

"A few things are not really well adapted to C# and game development," he says."I switched from MonoGame to Unity but it wasn't an easy decision for me because I don't really like Unity. It promotes bad code practices, because it was meant for smaller project"

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-01-16-what-is-the-best-game-engine-is-unity-the-right-game-engine-for-you

I may not be a game developer, but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express a time or two.

Unfortunately, none of those quotes provide evidence that Unity is a bad engine for mmos in particular, and some of them are just bizarre – for example the engine "promotes bad coding" or "was meant for web development".

Slapshot1188

I don't think it really matters if it's a Unity issue or an Artcraft issue.

What matters is that there is a cap of 250 players per zone.   The other game mechanics should account for that and take it into consideration.  Having a 2500 Alliance cap was ridiculous.  Now it's 500.  Still crazy but a substantial improvement.  At the end of the day though, no guild or alliance should be too big to even fit in a zone by themselves.