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How can Funcom "fix" instances in Age of Conan?
Timoshenko
Member Posts: 99
I have a question for people who know more about programming than me.
My number one concern with Age of Conan has always been those small instances. It feels like the whole Hyboria is just a bunch of small "rooms" that you have to run through, and always in the same order. I don't get that "massive" feeling when I play AoC and the constant loading screens really kill immersion.
I still remember back in the launch when it took 30 minutes for me and my friend to find each other in Old Tarantia because we didn't know that we were in same place but different instances! Luckily because subscription numbers have dropped there are no more multiple instances but what happens when trials come and population rises to 100k+ again? Yep, we get those damn multiple instances again.
My question is: can they "fix" this somehow? Can they program the client so that more players could enter one instance? Right now I believe it's capped at something like 50 players per instance. Could they double it or something? Or is it impossible because of the complex graphics?
Thanks in advance.
Comments
I have never heard of multiple instances of cities, but perhaps it was like that at launch (cities never make copies of themselves now not because of few players, but because there is no cap). If I am grouped with a friend, and we so happen to be in different instances, the system detects this and gives us an option to change instances by the press of a button. This takes 5-10 seconds.
I honestly would like to see a system put in place that gives the game the illusion of beeing seamless (like WoW), but I don't know if Funcom is capable of sporting the technology behind this. I usually use only 20 seconds between loading zones anyway, so I can manage thus far.
It is preferable not to travel with a dead man.
Here is a couple of facts for you to take in.
1. The game was designed for zones, it seems your getting confused with Zones > Instances. We knew about the design many years ago, and the reasons why, because of the way the game looks.
2. The zones won't become seamless. It would require a complete re-design and is not going to happen. Been said on the test server forums in the past by designers. What is happening and proof that we can see which I don't think you have experienced is that the "playfields / Zone" are getting bigger and the quality inside them is much better since you last played at launch.
3. It is a general hater argument to put across that there is a 50 player cap per zone, when it is simply not the case. You see THIS VIDEO done by myself 4 days after release shows 75 ppl plus in that group that is not counting others in the same zone either. The actual number is far, far higher. The actual number for sieges is 96 human players + pets + NPC's in a siege.
4. The drop down menu for the zone your in tells you the name. If you "zone" in a party you will all appear in the same zone, if you zone individually you may appear in seperate ones. The benefit of this is that when your party comes up on a boss and there are people killing it, what happends? you sit and wait for them to finish, or, how about your party just chooses a different one and that is free. You see it only takes a couple of seconds to switch, is not hard to do, and has more benefits that negatives for many people.
5. If you can factually provide proof of subcriber numbers then please do so mate, otherwise it might be better to stick a "your opinion" in the post. It seems like maybe your just looking for an argument and it is hard to tell if your genuinely interested.
They can double, triple, or remove them..it just takes a value change of the instance limit variable. I'm not sure how sucessful the win back's will be as they didn't seem to help other failed games such as Vanguard and Funcom's AO. Though they may increasse the load for a few days and therefore increase the instances as there are only 3 servers that people cluster on. Though the free trials and win backs are probably a while off the game is not good enough yet and Funcom would lose more money if it released them today, even Funcom seems to agree.
The instances are pretty silly but they are kind of needed later on for the small zone Kesh where pretty much everyone congregates until 80s get more roaming grounds. I don't like all the instancing though because it makes the game feel even more empty usually.
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
Here is a couple of facts for you to take in.
1. The game was designed for zones, it seems your getting confused with Zones > Instances. We knew about the design many years ago, and the reasons why, because of the way the game looks.
2. The zones won't become seamless. It would require a complete re-design and is not going to happen. Been said on the test server forums in the past by designers. What is happening and proof that we can see which I don't think you have experienced is that the "playfields / Zone" are getting bigger and the quality inside them is much better since you last played at launch.
3. It is a general hater argument to put across that there is a 50 player cap per zone, when it is simply not the case. You see THIS VIDEO done by myself 4 days after release shows 75 ppl plus in that group that is not counting others in the same zone either. The actual number is far, far higher. The actual number for sieges is 96 human players + pets + NPC's in a siege.
4. The drop down menu for the zone your in tells you the name. If you "zone" in a party you will all appear in the same zone, if you zone individually you may appear in seperate ones. The benefit of this is that when your party comes up on a boss and there are people killing it, what happends? you sit and wait for them to finish, or, how about your party just chooses a different one and that is free. You see it only takes a couple of seconds to switch, is not hard to do, and has more benefits that negatives for many people.
5. If you can factually provide proof of subcriber numbers then please do so mate, otherwise it might be better to stick a "your opinion" in the post. It seems like maybe your just looking for an argument and it is hard to tell if your genuinely interested.
You forgot the most important advantage of zone design:
Different rulesets can exist in every zone, and this is one of the reasons why AoCs PvE servers still offer PvP. There are no other games out there that can offer an environment where people can choose when to PvE and when to PvP. This is one of the reasons I love Wiccana as PvE/PvP server
Another thing @ the poster above me, quoting AoC have only 3 populated servers is just straight out lie. AoC merged to 18 servers and have no increased that to 26 Servers. That is hardly a negative sign. The game is growing.
Also, the world in AoC can't be seamless simply cause between the areas, in the Hyborian world, there would be many cities, provinces and even countries and kingdoms, to have an idea think of Old Tarantia as being located in Italy and Khemi in Egypt, you can't possibly make a seamless transition between the two cities cause they are in two different, very far away one from another, regions of the world.
the instancing, some areas have theoretically, no limit cap in population, but with the complexity of the graphics there has to be a breaking point number and likely safeguards to prevent this kind of overcrowding to happen.
Advancing in tech and power could mean they increase the caps for the differentzones, some, like Tortage will remain at a very small cap as it is designed to be shared by a small number of players.
Instead of just eliminating instancing in the world as a whole (it serves more purposes than one) i would add more regions like the border kingdoms, that don't get instanced, and maybe too eliminate instancing in select areas of the world.
Both the separation in zones and the instances are in the game as much by design than for technical reasons, or even more, FC didn't invent hyboria, they depicted parts of it, as it's impossible to put it all in a game, and keep theproportion of scale into something that is not a tasteless mockery of Howards work and 70 years of stories.
Jasma: Actually AO has different PvP rulesets within a same zone, they have sub areas for this effects, so it can be done, however in AoC would make less sense to have every zone having subregions were you can figth and others where you can't, both implementations have their merits and are more a matter of when it's better to use one or the other.
You forgot the most important advantage of zone design:
Different rulesets can exist in every zone, and this is one of the reasons why AoCs PvE servers still offer PvP. There are no other games out there that can offer an environment where people can choose when to PvE and when to PvP. This is one of the reasons I love Wiccana as PvE/PvP server
I can't believe someone actually supports Funcoms small instanced zones design.
Maybe you should play single-player games? Most people play MMO's because they want to play with hundreds of other players, not do solo play in small zones with a handful of players.
Actually, a lot of people do support it at least in a limited state.
The instancing do serves many purposes, all i would really do, as i posted before would be to add more zones with no instanciation (like the border kingdoms) and increase the cap for several others, leaving the rest as they are right now.
Lol yeah right..
You have a source for that piece of information? Or maybe we should make a poll about the subject?
I have NEVER met anyone who liked small zones or instances. In fact it's one of the main reasons why so many people left the game.
i din't say a majority, nor gave %, but word of mouth account for a lot of people, also i added the limited state, as many people see areas like Tortage and other quest heavy ones as good for instancing, most really want more BK like areas where the bigh battles can accor with more ease, bar indoors, people don't really complaint about their instancing, and many have expressed (you can look for it in the official forums) that the graphic detail is worth the trade off, i again don't say majority, large portion of the population, or xx% as unlike others i dislike using speculative numbers when i post.
The instancing in AoC serves several purposes, i wish it was reduced, and in some areas (or in new areas) to be eliminated.
As a trade off in most areas i find fine to be able of interaction with the current possible number of random other people to maintain performance and visuals.
Lol yeah right..
You have a source for that piece of information? Or maybe we should make a poll about the subject?
I have NEVER met anyone who liked small zones or instances. In fact it's one of the main reasons why so many people left the game.
Look, lets discuss that your face is hexagonal in WoW or that the axe stick out of my back when I ride a wolf in WoW. Do we prefer it, NO, it looks idiotic. BUT there is still 11 Mill people playing it, meaning that WoW have other very good qualities pulling people into the game. Qualities that outshine the bad points. Same goes with AoC, not all are like me. I prefer instancing because as I said before a instanced Zone allows me to experience PvE and PvP ruleset on the same server. Thats Excellent in my book. Some people don't give a flying fck, others have not even thought about it because they are too consumed with the fantastic graphics and gameplay, and finally there are some people that do mind but they think the zones are big enough to still feel the explorer aspect of the game. Let me remind you that it takes like 25 min to jog from one side of "Field of dead" to the other. Zones are quite big.
Finally let me also underline a very annoying aspect of seamless worlds. Seamless world MMOs have very poor density of fun stations as in you have to run 15 min in a low detail boring world between every fun thing to do. MMO developers love this shit because they can just generate squaremiles after squaremiles of grass and by doing so having added hours of content. Think of the Barrens in WOW. Do you think it is a coincident that it takes like 15 min to run accross that shit... NO, it's by design, things are supposed to take long time. Is fun to run the Barrens, NO, we hate it. There is nothing but grass and sand and a few low AI mobs. When you say I want seamlessworld, you have to realize that you trade away high density action, detail and uniqueness for all that grass. I do not agree with you that grass is more important than fun. I could agree more with you if you said, I want AoCs detail and fundensity just that it is everywhere like in WoW (in a seamless world), BUT that is neither fair to FC or anyone else. There is no hardware in the world that could handle that, and it will take another good 10 years before it possibly can be done. Another thing, also be aware of that running around in AoC you always see many more people all over the place compared to seamless games. Characters are not spread over one giant 100000000 square mile of gras. AoC offers high population density, intense PvP and more fun pr unit time. This goes away with seamless world to some extent if the developer overdo it. If the map is 1000000000 square miles of grass you don't have much chance of bumping into someone do you? I don't mind seamlessworld, but when devs use it to scam playhours out of me running environments like the barrens, the thousand needles or similar playfields I boycot that shit. Seamless can be just as poor zoning.
A well designed game with zones can be very healthy for the funfactor of a game, and I belive FC has the perfect mix.
Lol yeah right..
You have a source for that piece of information? Or maybe we should make a poll about the subject?
I have NEVER met anyone who liked small zones or instances. In fact it's one of the main reasons why so many people left the game.
Look, lets discuss that your face is hexagonal in WoW or that the axe stick out of my back when I ride a wolf in WoW. Do we prefer it, NO, it looks idiotic. BUT there is still 11 Mill people playing it, meaning that WoW have other very good qualities pulling people into the game. Qualities that outshine the bad points. Same goes with AoC, not all are like me. I prefer instancing because as I said before a instanced Zone allows me to experience PvE and PvP ruleset on the same server. Thats Excellent in my book. Some people don't give a flying fck, others have not even thought about it because they are too consumed with the fantastic graphics and gameplay, and finally there are some people that do mind but they think the zones are big enough to still feel the explorer aspect of the game. Let me remind you that it takes like 25 min to jog from one side of "Field of dead" to the other. Zones are quite big.
Finally let me also underline a very annoying aspect of seamless worlds. Seamless world MMOs have very poor density of fun stations as in you have to run 15 min in a low detail boring world between every fun thing to do. MMO developers love this shit because they can just generate squaremiles after squaremiles of grass and by doing so having added hours of content. Think of the Barrens in WOW. Do you think it is a coincident that it takes like 15 min to run accross that shit... NO, it's by design, things are supposed to take long time. Is fun to run the Barrens, NO, we hate it. There is nothing but grass and sand and a few low AI mobs. When you say I want seamlessworld, you have to realize that you trade away high density action, detail and uniqueness for all that grass. I do not agree with you that grass is more important than fun. I could agree more with you if you said, I want AoCs detail and fundensity just that it is everywhere like in WoW (in a seamless world), BUT that is neither fair to FC or anyone else. There is no hardware in the world that could handle that, and it will take another good 10 years before it possibly could be possible. Finally, also be aware of that running around in AoC you always see many more people all over the place as the characters are not spread over one giant 100000000 square mile of gras. AoC offers high population density, intense PvP and more fun pr unit time. This goes away with seamless world to some extent if the developer overdo it. If the map is 1000000000 square miles of grass you don't have much chanse of bumping into someone do you? I don't mind seamlessworld, but when devs use it to scam playhours out of me running environments like the barrens, the thousand needles or similar playfields I boycot that shit.
A well designed of Zones can be very healthy for the funfactor of a game and I belive FC has the perfect mix.
Good post.
Here is a couple of facts for you to take in.
1. The game was designed for zones, it seems your getting confused with Zones > Instances. We knew about the design many years ago, and the reasons why, because of the way the game looks.
2. The zones won't become seamless. It would require a complete re-design and is not going to happen. Been said on the test server forums in the past by designers. What is happening and proof that we can see which I don't think you have experienced is that the "playfields / Zone" are getting bigger and the quality inside them is much better since you last played at launch.
3. It is a general hater argument to put across that there is a 50 player cap per zone, when it is simply not the case. You see THIS VIDEO done by myself 4 days after release shows 75 ppl plus in that group that is not counting others in the same zone either. The actual number is far, far higher. The actual number for sieges is 96 human players + pets + NPC's in a siege.
4. The drop down menu for the zone your in tells you the name. If you "zone" in a party you will all appear in the same zone, if you zone individually you may appear in seperate ones. The benefit of this is that when your party comes up on a boss and there are people killing it, what happends? you sit and wait for them to finish, or, how about your party just chooses a different one and that is free. You see it only takes a couple of seconds to switch, is not hard to do, and has more benefits that negatives for many people.
5. If you can factually provide proof of subcriber numbers then please do so mate, otherwise it might be better to stick a "your opinion" in the post. It seems like maybe your just looking for an argument and it is hard to tell if your genuinely interested.
Avery spells it out pretty accurately except on a few points,which I think it is mostly the terminology that needs to be comfirmed.
Once I clarify it a bit more i'll see if Avery agrees.
AOC is made up mostly of zones with some instances. Anyone who has ever played EQ1 knows that a successful game can have zones and instances without that game being a failure.
Now, zones make up the core of the world. The "Zone" allows every player the opportunity to play with other players and that zone is static. Now, an Instance is a piece of the world that doesnt have structure until a single player/group/raid asks the game to create it for them. At that point no one outside of that specific Instance can enter without permission. So, in an Instance, random players cannot freely come and go as they please.
You cannot have multiple zones of the same place. You have the original zone that never goes away but when that zone begins to get overcrowded with players then the game will create a "Shadow" of the original zone or as Vanguard calls it, a "Shard" of the original zone. Now, in these Shards, random players enter them freely and they can also change from Shard to Shard to Shard if they are looking for something specific.
So in AOC there are Original Zones, then there are "Zone Shadows" or "Shards" and finally there are Instances.
Now, im an old school MMO player(for over 14years) and zones and instances dont bother me however what does irk me about AOC is the various Shards of the zones. Are the Zone Shards needed? Yes, because of the high quality of AOC graphics, the demand on each zone without these type of shards will be tremendous and players will have very bad lag and perhaps cause the zones to become unstable and perhaps even crash.
Here is a couple of facts for you to take in.
1. The game was designed for zones, it seems your getting confused with Zones > Instances. We knew about the design many years ago, and the reasons why, because of the way the game looks.
2. The zones won't become seamless. It would require a complete re-design and is not going to happen. Been said on the test server forums in the past by designers. What is happening and proof that we can see which I don't think you have experienced is that the "playfields / Zone" are getting bigger and the quality inside them is much better since you last played at launch.
3. It is a general hater argument to put across that there is a 50 player cap per zone, when it is simply not the case. You see THIS VIDEO done by myself 4 days after release shows 75 ppl plus in that group that is not counting others in the same zone either. The actual number is far, far higher. The actual number for sieges is 96 human players + pets + NPC's in a siege.
4. The drop down menu for the zone your in tells you the name. If you "zone" in a party you will all appear in the same zone, if you zone individually you may appear in seperate ones. The benefit of this is that when your party comes up on a boss and there are people killing it, what happends? you sit and wait for them to finish, or, how about your party just chooses a different one and that is free. You see it only takes a couple of seconds to switch, is not hard to do, and has more benefits that negatives for many people.
5. If you can factually provide proof of subcriber numbers then please do so mate, otherwise it might be better to stick a "your opinion" in the post. It seems like maybe your just looking for an argument and it is hard to tell if your genuinely interested.
Avery spells it out pretty accurately except on a few points,which I think it is mostly the terminology that needs to be comfirmed.
Once I clarify it a bit more i'll see if Avery agrees.
AOC is made up mostly of zones with some instances. Anyone who has ever played EQ1 knows that a successful game can have zones and instances without that game being a failure.
Now, zones make up the core of the world. The "Zone" allows every player the opportunity to play with other players and that zone is static. Now, an Instance is a piece of the world that doesnt have structure until a single player/group/raid asks the game to create it for them. At that point no one outside of that specific Instance can enter without permission. So, in an Instance, random players cannot freely come and go as they please.
You cannot have multiple zones of the same place. You have the original zone that never goes away but when that zone begins to get overcrowded with players then the game will create a "Shadow" of the original zone or as Vanguard calls it, a "Shard" of the original zone. Now, in these Shards, random players enter them freely and they can also change from Shard to Shard to Shard if they are looking for something specific.
So in AOC there are Original Zones, then there are "Zone Shadows" or "Shards" and finally there are Instances.
Now, im an old school MMO player(for over 14years) and zones and instances dont bother me however what does irk me about AOC is the various Shards of the zones. Are the Zone Shards needed? Yes, because of the high quality of AOC graphics, the demand on each zone without these type of shards will be tremendous and players will have very bad lag and perhaps cause the zones to become unstable and perhaps even crash.
You are talking highly specialized here. Remember there are people that have reported as much as 250 players in a zone and there would still not be set up shadow zones. There is only a few places in the world where population go so dense that shadow zones will start to spawn. So unless you are looking for a very specialized discussion I would rather explain the zones as the backbone of the game where all fun is packed into. Group instances are as you say generated for a person or group the minute the group enter a instanced dungeon. There are also zoned dungeons by the way. In those cases there will be hordes of people roaming around looking for kill:)
You are talking highly specialized here. Remember there are people that have reported as much as 250 players in a zone and there would still not be set up shadow zones. There is only a few places in the world where population go so dense that shadow zones will start to spawn. So unless you are looking for a very specialized discussion I would rather explain the zones as the backbone of the game where all fun is packed into. Group instances are as you say generated for a person or group the minute the group enter a instanced dungeon. There are also zoned dungeons by the way. In those cases there will be hordes of people roaming around looking for kill:)
Lol you have a source for that?
There is NO WAY AoC client can handle 250 players at the same time. Most people I've ever seen is 50 and I'm positive there has never been any proof of over 100 players in a same zone.
So stop your lies, please.
Lol you have a source for that?
There is NO WAY AoC client can handle 250 players at the same time. Most people I've ever seen is 50 and I'm positive there has never been any proof of over 100 players in a same zone.
So stop your lies, please.
Yep, Funcom have always said that their zones will take only 48 players (+ the players who are changing instances to join their friends), and 2x48 players in the siege instances.
fixing requires something broken to begin with. Instances in AoC work the way they should.
i wished they've made the zones so that instead of talking to someone we would cross an area to enter another zone. like the thing in AO. its too late for that though. even a thing like witcher's travel screen( from swamps to city) better than the loading screen we have now.
I need more vespene gas.
Yeah that's why I said "fix", with those nice little dots around the word.
I know it's working like intended but I'm just saying it's not a very good design solution. Small, instanced zones were one of the main reasons why so many players quit. If you don't get that "massive" feeling in MMO's then you start to ask yourself is it wise to pay that monthly fee?
Yeah that's why I said "fix", with those nice little dots around the word.
I know it's working like intended but I'm just saying it's not a very good design solution. Small, instanced zones were one of the main reasons why so many players quit. If you don't get that "massive" feeling in MMO's then you start to ask yourself is it wise to pay that monthly fee?
We've got a genius here. I guess not every developer would want to have a zoneless world, millions of players just stacked on one server, best graphics running on 386's and a soundtrack composed by Peter Spilles uhm. You know, there's something called technology. You can't have that graphics in a zoneless world with no capacity.
REALITY CHECK
We've got a genius here. I guess not every developer would want to have a zoneless world, millions of players just stacked on one server, best graphics running on 386's and a soundtrack composed by Peter Spilles uhm. You know, there's something called technology. You can't have that graphics in a zoneless world with no capacity.
Who is Peter Spilles?
I need more vespene gas.
You miss my point. we all know that there are limitations to how detailed a MMO world can be made, and by making the playzone bigger you take out content and details. In fact it is a lot of the time such that the center of the seamless world maps is nothing but a huge boring field of grass. As little detail as possible, BUT it take god damn 20 min to run across it. Grass running is not my idea of fun. This is something MMOers should be aware of, seamless world developers use that huge grass field all the time to suck player hours out of the players. That is not ok in my book. It's borderline boring
For your first body of text, you are off the ball completely. On a AoC server a high level player can not move to a low level zone and gank without consequences. On a PvE server it is just all together impossible because there is no PvP in the regular questing open world. People (wether high or low level) have to travel to the borderlands to PvP, meaning that noone will be exposed to PvP unless they want to. Then again you also have the various minigames that offer PvP but in separate Tiers so that people on more or less the same level will compete against eachother. The apprentice facilitates this even more. On a PvP server, there is PvP in all zones, but there are consequences for being a jackass. You get murderpoints and the society will punish people playing like jackasses. So it's not quite like what you describe. First of all players can choose PvE or PvP of which PvE is full controll over when you want to PvP. On PvP server you are more exposed, yes, but you are still protected by the consequence system.
You made some excellent points there.
I always try to look things objectively but sometimes my own personal views come across too hard. It's all about what people look in an MMO. You look for different things than me and I respect that.
I hope you have a great time in Hyboria. I really do.