Can you give us an example of how one would use their imagination to deal with a pop up asking if you want to change instances to be with your group?
Can you give us an example of how one would use their imagination to deal with talking to somebody that should be right in front of you but they are not there?
Can you give us examples of using imagination to deal with the various issues that arise with phasing so you do not realize that phasing is taking place and that you're just playing a game?
Can YOU give us an example of how - in the absense of any kind of population control - you use your imagination to deal with the fact that there are 1 million players on your screen, completely blocking any and all geography while the NPC says "it's been a long while since I have seen a jedi around here"?
(I mean, technology to allow it aside, can you even IMAGINE 1 million players all together in one place? What about 10 million?)
There may be a ton of problems with SWTOR, but instancing is certainly the least of them.
Also, in order to actually keep your immersion and follow the storyline, SWTOR's "suspension of disbelief" requires you to imagine that you're the only player in the world - otherwise the story makes no sense. So if you're doing the whole "suspension of disbelief" correctly, then instancing is not an issue - since you're ignoring the existence of all the other people anyway. I don't for a second believe that this is the right way to design an MMO storyline, but alas, that is how SWTOR and the majority of story-based MMOs are currently made.
I think you are looking for different servers ? I am pretty sure lol, they wont allow 1 million people on 1 server .
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
It only takes one other player interested in that node for for the node issue to arise. I often bring up nodes in discussing the many forms of PvE Griefing available in those griefing threads, and I agree that it is very annoying. If I see somebody is fighting their way to a node - I'm not going to try to get the jump on them. Many do not have that problem.
However, I find it interesting that you bring it up in this regard. You're saying that with sharding, you've experienced less of an issue with this. Basically to paraphrase in a sense, you're saying it is less of an issue with fewer people. Yet, the very reason that some people are playing Massively Multiplayer games - is because of that massively multiplayer aspect. Otherwise, they would be playing single player or co-op games.
No doubt though, those same people would also likely complain about the lagfests that can arise from massively populated areas. It does become a little unrealistic to think that every area should be built to handle those possible bottlenecks...kind of.
Personally, I'm not a fan of phasing - it can lead to problems for groups, roleplaying, immersion - etc. However, to a great extent - I have to agree with what they have said about their options as detailed in another post in this thread.
Still though - my preference is toward not designing a game around a limited number of hubs (whether we're talking starting points, end points, or the points between) and also for what some companies do with the dynamic allocation of resources to particular areas. I think both of those, would be a better solution than phasing.
Well, while it CAN arise, it's akin to the behaviour of stealing food. You're far less likely to do it if you aren't starving.
On the last two red highlighted points, I suspect that both things are in effect in the game. But there is only so much that can be done. In most cases, there are about 1.5 to 3 times as many nodes than you need in a given area. If they recycle every 30-60 seconds, that can cover most reasonable populations. But a launch crowd without shards? No chance.
Finally, the yellow bit. I agree generally, but I don't think that the aspect most are seeking is 30 players in the same room blowing up everything in site as the norm. Some of the time? Sure. Plenty of people like raids, but not all the time.
GW2 with its "non-group" grouping, will test that theory. I hope it does well and causes some revolutionary "rethinking" of grouping across the MMO board. But that's for another thread.
It's like Lineage 2, but all across the game world. When an area gets to full a new, same instance(quest hub or area) is created. It helps to keep people from lagging when to many players are present.
There is still KSing which is not what I am looking forward to.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Jesus christ if this is for real Bioware have trully fubared their chance of gettign a huge market share. I know excatly how this works from previuos games such as EQ2, AOC etc, and nobody bloody likes it except the hardcoe players.
Jesus in AOC evento find the same shard as players in your own group was a challenge, and then when speaking to people was a challenge, and dont forget about the bloody shard jumping of players. This is what will kill star wars eventually I am pretey sure of it. Sorry this news has really put me of the game big time.
It's there to prevent an excess of players from being in any given area at the same time. Also, you can switch between them freely, so if you feel like your current phase if laggy or if you feel like your current phase has few people, you just switch to the other.
Jesus christ if this is for real Bioware have trully fubared their chance of gettign a huge market share. I know excatly how this works from previuos games such as EQ2, AOC etc, and nobody bloody likes it except the hardcoe players.
Jesus in AOC evento find the same shard as players in your own group was a challenge, and then when speaking to people was a challenge, and dont forget about the bloody shard jumping of players. This is what will kill star wars eventually I am pretey sure of it. Sorry this news has really put me of the game big time.
Just because you're in Hutta 1 does not mean you can't speak to those in Hutta 2. Everyone in the same planet shares the same General Chat. Also, switching phases is super easy if you need to. Furthermore, there is a Find Group mechanic that allows you to more easily form parties. Finally, it's imperative that there are phases because if you have 300 people in the same starter area, things become cramped, laggy, and not enjoyable.
It's there to prevent an excess of players from being in any given area at the same time. Also, you can switch between them freely, so if you feel like your current phase if laggy or if you feel like your current phase has few people, you just switch to the other.
Sorry you can try to smoothas much as you wont. It never works like that, and it always works to the detriment of the player, the game, and the whole gaming experience.
Shard jumping is one of the worst things ever devised. I dont see why they would need it such a huge game like starwars. They must alreayd know from theri research that the demand will eb huge at launch, and they must have talked about necessary infrastructure eyars and months in advance. Sorry there is no getting away how this is one of the worst features ever.
Can you give us an example of how one would use their imagination to deal with a pop up asking if you want to change instances to be with your group?
Can you give us an example of how one would use their imagination to deal with talking to somebody that should be right in front of you but they are not there?
Can you give us examples of using imagination to deal with the various issues that arise with phasing so you do not realize that phasing is taking place and that you're just playing a game?
Can YOU give us an example of how - in the absense of any kind of population control - you use your imagination to deal with the fact that there are 1 million players on your screen, completely blocking any and all geography while the NPC says "it's been a long while since I have seen a jedi around here"?
(I mean, technology to allow it aside, can you even IMAGINE 1 million players all together in one place? What about 10 million?)
There may be a ton of problems with SWTOR, but instancing is certainly the least of them.
Also, in order to actually keep your immersion and follow the storyline, SWTOR's "suspension of disbelief" requires you to imagine that you're the only player in the world - otherwise the story makes no sense. So if you're doing the whole "suspension of disbelief" correctly, then instancing is not an issue - since you're ignoring the existence of all the other people anyway. I don't for a second believe that this is the right way to design an MMO storyline, but alas, that is how SWTOR and the majority of story-based MMOs are currently made.
That really is the problem isnt it, Bioware tailoring a story to revolve around you....But there thousands of others doing this same story aswel. which is fine if you want to treat this like kotor 3 online.
Personally, I dont think the "new generation" of gamers or the products target users really care about the massive factor anymore. It Wont matter how many "Channels" a world has aslong as within 1 there is enough to create the illusion of a "good" population.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
It's like Lineage 2, but all across the game world. When an area gets to full a new, same instance(quest hub or area) is created. It helps to keep people from lagging when to many players are present.
It's there to prevent an excess of players from being in any given area at the same time. Also, you can switch between them freely, so if you feel like your current phase if laggy or if you feel like your current phase has few people, you just switch to the other.
Sorry you can try to smoothas much as you wont. It never works like that, and it always works to the detriment of the player, the game, and the whole gaming experience.
Shard jumping is one of the worst things ever devised. I dont see why they would need it such a huge game like starwars. They must alreayd know from theri research that the demand will eb huge at launch, and they must have talked about necessary infrastructure eyars and months in advance. Sorry there is no getting away how this is one of the worst features ever.
It's not there to facilitate their job. It's there to facilitate the player's experience. Read my post right before this one. I don't feel it necessary to explain something this simple twice.
It's like Lineage 2, but all across the game world. When an area gets to full a new, same instance(quest hub or area) is created. It helps to keep people from lagging when to many players are present.
Jesus christ if this is for real Bioware have trully fubared their chance of gettign a huge market share. I know excatly how this works from previuos games such as EQ2, AOC etc, and nobody bloody likes it except the hardcoe players.
Jesus in AOC evento find the same shard as players in your own group was a challenge, and then when speaking to people was a challenge, and dont forget about the bloody shard jumping of players. This is what will kill star wars eventually I am pretey sure of it. Sorry this news has really put me of the game big time.
This is not going to hurt this games initial release at all, if anything it'll help it. Besides that just like GW, you can switch shards if your friend or friends are on another. It's not like you are locked onto that one shard.
i will take "shard jumping" over server instability or overpopulation and having to wait in line to complete an objective any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
this is going to be beneficial to the launch of this game and just like in EQ2 once the zones are not so over populated, you will never see the "sharding" again.
I think of it like this, instanceing/sharding is great for todays quest " go kill 10 space rats " or " go collect space ship parts " and you have a million other people standing around waiting for the part to spawn or waiting for that rat to spawn. with instanceing it spreads the people out so more can get that awsome quest done faster and move on to killing 20 space boars.
Sorry you can try to smoothas much as you wont. It never works like that, and it always works to the detriment of the player, the game, and the whole gaming experience.
Shard jumping is one of the worst things ever devised. I dont see why they would need it such a huge game like starwars. They must alreayd know from theri research that the demand will eb huge at launch, and they must have talked about necessary infrastructure eyars and months in advance. Sorry there is no getting away how this is one of the worst features ever.
Geez, talk about an overreaction. It's a temporary fix for launch day madness in the starter worlds and big cities. Period. The two alternatives are as follows:
1) Insanely long queue times the first few days of launch with many pissed off customers.
2) Open WAY more servers than you will actually end up using long-term, then having to consolidate them later. In effect, this will kill server communities, force entire guilds to move (not good when you had a system in place to have guilds created before launch), and cause panic among players that they are already closing up servers so soon after release.
So you can choose one of those two options, or you can take an option that is a temporary fix that doesn't require merging of servers and doesn't make people who have shelled out $60 for the game to sit in a queue all evening and not getting to play the game after a hard day at work. I know which choice I'd make.
To give you an example: Rift has probably the best server technology of any of the current games on the market right now, and even their servers were not enough to hold that many people on launch day. They chose to just expand the number of servers to combat the queues. One month later, they were having to consolidate them and move entire guilds of people. And Rift's launch day population may very well be half of what SWTOR's will be.
Remember, in this day and age the hardest thing for an MMO to recover from is a bad launch. That has to be paramount for Bioware at this point, and if they need to ensure a smooth launch by sharding for a week or so in the starter areas, then they are making the correct decision. MMO players are very unforgiving of bad launches.
Originally posted by DrunkWolf I think of it like this, instanceing/sharding is great for todays quest " go kill 10 space rats " or " go collect space ship parts " and you have a million other people standing around waiting for the part to spawn or waiting for that rat to spawn. with instanceing it spreads the people out so more can get that awsome quest done faster and move on to killing 20 space boars.
Channeling is also good for mob camping and farming.
Rift has probably the best server technology of any of the current games on the market right now
lol.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
World boss Shard 1 - 15 mins to kill jump to shard 2 - kill rinse and repeat
enjoy the gear.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Rift has probably the best server technology of any of the current games on the market right now
lol.
You disagree? I thought that's what Trion was known for---having the kind of engine that allows their servers to be adjusted quite a bit and hold many players in small spaces without much lag, hence their ability for massive Rift clusterfucks. Am I wrong about that? If so, my apolgies, but I know that was the "innovation" that Trion has been bragging about bringing to the MMO industry. <shrugs>
Rift has probably the best server technology of any of the current games on the market right now
lol.
You disagree? I thought that's what Trion was known for---having the kind of engine that allows their servers to be adjusted quite a bit and hold many players in small spaces without much lag, hence their ability for massive Rift clusterfucks. Am I wrong about that? If so, my apolgies, but I know that was the "innovation" that Trion has been bragging about bringing to the MMO industry.
Well, Trion say alot of things lol..
In beta i found that their servers really hit the fan understress, In retail they did ok, But i dont think its the best technology on the market.
Personally i think EvE wins the award for server technolgy, Although most of their players are "spread out" and not confined to a single space however, when they do consolidate they are taking "revolutionary" steps in terms of "time dialation" fix lag issues. So i think its undeniable that they are a big contender for best server architecture imo.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Rift has probably the best server technology of any of the current games on the market right now
lol.
You disagree? I thought that's what Trion was known for---having the kind of engine that allows their servers to be adjusted quite a bit and hold many players in small spaces without much lag, hence their ability for massive Rift clusterfucks. Am I wrong about that? If so, my apolgies, but I know that was the "innovation" that Trion has been bragging about bringing to the MMO industry.
Well, Trion say alot of things lol..
In beta i found that their servers really hit the fan understress, In retail they did ok, But i dont think its the best technology on the market.
Personally i think EvE wins the award for server technolgy, Although most of their players are "spread out" and not confined to a single space however, when they do consolidate they are taking "revolutionary" steps in terms of "time dialation" fix lag issues. So i think its undeniable that they are a big contender for best server architecture imo.
EVE and RIFT are not that far off - from the far off view of things. Distributed and dynamic. Obviously RIFT has an increased draw lode, so they start to bottleneck before EVE does - but these are two games that are on the right path, imo - as opposed to the wrong path...sharding.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Sharding at launch? Ok that makes sense because the starter areas will be packed. If the high level zones are highly sharded it may end up hurting the game quite a bit. It segregates a server's community, adds extra resources/items into the games economy, and it cheapens the overall feeling of the game. Can't find a certain mob or resource? Click zone 2. Your guild wants to kill a world boss but another guild got there first? Click zone 2. You're getting owned in pvp? Click zone 2.
Comments
I think you are looking for different servers ? I am pretty sure lol, they wont allow 1 million people on 1 server
.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Carl Sagan-
Well, while it CAN arise, it's akin to the behaviour of stealing food. You're far less likely to do it if you aren't starving.
On the last two red highlighted points, I suspect that both things are in effect in the game. But there is only so much that can be done. In most cases, there are about 1.5 to 3 times as many nodes than you need in a given area. If they recycle every 30-60 seconds, that can cover most reasonable populations. But a launch crowd without shards? No chance.
Finally, the yellow bit. I agree generally, but I don't think that the aspect most are seeking is 30 players in the same room blowing up everything in site as the norm. Some of the time? Sure. Plenty of people like raids, but not all the time.
GW2 with its "non-group" grouping, will test that theory. I hope it does well and causes some revolutionary "rethinking" of grouping across the MMO board. But that's for another thread.
It's like Lineage 2, but all across the game world. When an area gets to full a new, same instance(quest hub or area) is created. It helps to keep people from lagging when to many players are present.
EQ2 did this years ago. It isn't a big deal as there are usually convenient tools to sync with other players on the same shard/zone copy.
That's basically how i feel about it..
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
There is still KSing which is not what I am looking forward to.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Carl Sagan-
Jesus christ if this is for real Bioware have trully fubared their chance of gettign a huge market share. I know excatly how this works from previuos games such as EQ2, AOC etc, and nobody bloody likes it except the hardcoe players.
Jesus in AOC evento find the same shard as players in your own group was a challenge, and then when speaking to people was a challenge, and dont forget about the bloody shard jumping of players. This is what will kill star wars eventually I am pretey sure of it. Sorry this news has really put me of the game big time.
It's there to prevent an excess of players from being in any given area at the same time. Also, you can switch between them freely, so if you feel like your current phase if laggy or if you feel like your current phase has few people, you just switch to the other.
Just because you're in Hutta 1 does not mean you can't speak to those in Hutta 2. Everyone in the same planet shares the same General Chat. Also, switching phases is super easy if you need to. Furthermore, there is a Find Group mechanic that allows you to more easily form parties. Finally, it's imperative that there are phases because if you have 300 people in the same starter area, things become cramped, laggy, and not enjoyable.
Sorry you can try to smoothas much as you wont. It never works like that, and it always works to the detriment of the player, the game, and the whole gaming experience.
Shard jumping is one of the worst things ever devised. I dont see why they would need it such a huge game like starwars. They must alreayd know from theri research that the demand will eb huge at launch, and they must have talked about necessary infrastructure eyars and months in advance. Sorry there is no getting away how this is one of the worst features ever.
That really is the problem isnt it, Bioware tailoring a story to revolve around you....But there thousands of others doing this same story aswel. which is fine if you want to treat this like kotor 3 online.
Personally, I dont think the "new generation" of gamers or the products target users really care about the massive factor anymore. It Wont matter how many "Channels" a world has aslong as within 1 there is enough to create the illusion of a "good" population.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Where does L2 do that?
It's not there to facilitate their job. It's there to facilitate the player's experience. Read my post right before this one. I don't feel it necessary to explain something this simple twice.
Ugh...you're right...I meant Guild Wars. Sorry...eeeep.
This is not going to hurt this games initial release at all, if anything it'll help it. Besides that just like GW, you can switch shards if your friend or friends are on another. It's not like you are locked onto that one shard.
i will take "shard jumping" over server instability or overpopulation and having to wait in line to complete an objective any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
this is going to be beneficial to the launch of this game and just like in EQ2 once the zones are not so over populated, you will never see the "sharding" again.
I think of it like this, instanceing/sharding is great for todays quest " go kill 10 space rats " or " go collect space ship parts " and you have a million other people standing around waiting for the part to spawn or waiting for that rat to spawn. with instanceing it spreads the people out so more can get that awsome quest done faster and move on to killing 20 space boars.
Geez, talk about an overreaction. It's a temporary fix for launch day madness in the starter worlds and big cities. Period. The two alternatives are as follows:
1) Insanely long queue times the first few days of launch with many pissed off customers.
2) Open WAY more servers than you will actually end up using long-term, then having to consolidate them later. In effect, this will kill server communities, force entire guilds to move (not good when you had a system in place to have guilds created before launch), and cause panic among players that they are already closing up servers so soon after release.
So you can choose one of those two options, or you can take an option that is a temporary fix that doesn't require merging of servers and doesn't make people who have shelled out $60 for the game to sit in a queue all evening and not getting to play the game after a hard day at work. I know which choice I'd make.
To give you an example: Rift has probably the best server technology of any of the current games on the market right now, and even their servers were not enough to hold that many people on launch day. They chose to just expand the number of servers to combat the queues. One month later, they were having to consolidate them and move entire guilds of people. And Rift's launch day population may very well be half of what SWTOR's will be.
Remember, in this day and age the hardest thing for an MMO to recover from is a bad launch. That has to be paramount for Bioware at this point, and if they need to ensure a smooth launch by sharding for a week or so in the starter areas, then they are making the correct decision. MMO players are very unforgiving of bad launches.
lol.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
World boss Shard 1 - 15 mins to kill jump to shard 2 - kill rinse and repeat
enjoy the gear.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Carl Sagan-
You disagree? I thought that's what Trion was known for---having the kind of engine that allows their servers to be adjusted quite a bit and hold many players in small spaces without much lag, hence their ability for massive Rift clusterfucks. Am I wrong about that? If so, my apolgies, but I know that was the "innovation" that Trion has been bragging about bringing to the MMO industry. <shrugs>
Well, Trion say alot of things lol..
In beta i found that their servers really hit the fan understress, In retail they did ok, But i dont think its the best technology on the market.
Personally i think EvE wins the award for server technolgy, Although most of their players are "spread out" and not confined to a single space however, when they do consolidate they are taking "revolutionary" steps in terms of "time dialation" fix lag issues. So i think its undeniable that they are a big contender for best server architecture imo.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
EVE and RIFT are not that far off - from the far off view of things. Distributed and dynamic. Obviously RIFT has an increased draw lode, so they start to bottleneck before EVE does - but these are two games that are on the right path, imo - as opposed to the wrong path...sharding.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
i'm so excited i shard myself
Sharding at launch? Ok that makes sense because the starter areas will be packed. If the high level zones are highly sharded it may end up hurting the game quite a bit. It segregates a server's community, adds extra resources/items into the games economy, and it cheapens the overall feeling of the game. Can't find a certain mob or resource? Click zone 2. Your guild wants to kill a world boss but another guild got there first? Click zone 2. You're getting owned in pvp? Click zone 2.