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Star Citizen Will See Increased Server Capacity Thanks to Successful Trials on the 3.17.2 Public Tes
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Star Citizen Will See Increased Server Capacity Thanks to Successful Trials on the 3.17.2 Public Tests | MMORPG.com
After opening up its Public Testing Universe to all backers, Star Citizen will explore increased capacity after testing this went so well.
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Multiplayer, not Massively Multiplayer.
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And really, if they can get it to run stable at 125, that's a pretty reasonable setup.
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Many MMOs like GW2, ESO and such, are heavily instanced and with loading screens in the middle, with player caps like 150 per instance on the case of GW2.
So let's not argue the "massively multiplayer" bit because those are clearly considered MMOs, not just Multiplayer games.
SC plans is the server mesh, meaning an instance of the mesh is multiple servers simulating the game-world, it's like multiple MMOs around only without loading screens between areas simulated by a different one. Attm it still multiple different instances of the same game-world.
With them doing that, it has as much right of the MMO tag as GW2 and ESO do.
The objects should not be shared across server mesh instances of the game-world. Neither on the next update when PES (the world persistence tech that alows this) from instance to instance.
To answer to capacity, the game will have to run multiple copies of a server mesh, each has its own game-world state for items dropped in the open-world.
@CondarFreed must be confused about this bit, it's just not possible to have global persistence across all instances that are simultaneously running, due to gigantic obvious conflicts like the scenario @Wargfoot mentioned and many others.
This may be confused with this bit said by the devs:
If I make a base on a moon, will my base be reflected on the other shards that I am not on?
The Planet Tech team plans to implement base building with server shards in mind. Claiming land for your base will claim this land on all shards, and we plan to replicate your base to all shards.
However, only one shard will have an ‘active’ version of the base, with other shards spawning a ‘limited access/read only’ version of that same base. For example, a base will give full access and the ability to expand in the shard the owner currently plays on, while on all other shards, this base may spawn with locked doors in an immutable state. The full design is not 100% established yet and may change though.
The bit that evidences the game-world state is per server mesh instance, what they label as shard here talking on not locking players to a shard and using match-making parameters to assign the best shard to the player:
The new matchmaking system currently in development alongside Server Meshing allows us to match players to shards based on multiple input parameters. Those are used to match players into shards with their friends, or where they left most of their items in the open world. However, it also allows us to use more advanced parameters, such as reputation and other hidden player stats that we track.
Pretty sure the intent is at some point these servers are all combined into one big mega server with dynamic meshing that allows the system to slice up any location to fit on as many servers as are needed to fit the population of players and items in that area to maintain performance. Currently having multiples of the servers like EU/US/AUS etc is simply done due to the current tech limits.
The latency alone will destroy that plan, so the server mesh per region is clearly the viable plan here.
And as everything but the items dropped around on the game-world is persisting globally, it's minimally disruptive, a ship landed and the location of your player is the the unknown to me is if this will persist or will continue to respawn you on the nearest station you were last, this seems to be a foggy area with the ship beds design and all.
Coo.
When it comes to dropping items on the game-world, say a box full of ammo hidden on a cave, that's not covered by any base or claim, that is what full persistence on SC is about, that is technically crazy for an MMO to attempt doing.
But as mentioned that is not what SC is doing, as far the items dropped on the game-world that state is per server mesh instance, things like bases on claimed land and everything else, is global.
It's memory for placed/dropped objects tied to account or instance, and bases on global is just another step to that.
Object permanence isn't complicated, the trouble largely comes up for how much memory you consume for it, speed related to how large of a list of assets you are trying to access, and accounting for the network layer streaming new user related content to the environment.
Biggest speed bump would likely be the memory issue, which can and has been solved a few ways with octrees to nest smaller batches of saved lists.
Still not particularly different from what 76 does there.
As far I recall you drop items or even place them in containers on the world, what people use for trading between different characters, and they WILL despawn after generally 20-30min I think. That is no world persistence.
Obviously as any game of the type what is on the bases persists, but as far changes enacted upon the open world that is a completely different story.
Permanence itself isn't complicated, the problem comes with all the nuances, especially the griefing and exploitation, a game like SC isn't the traditional MMO where you just walk through things without collisions or that use simple collision animations, people can grab a ton of boxes and vending machines and block entire entrances to places, messing it all up (that already happened with medical beds thrown at stairwells for example).
The same way people just cause why not filled their ship with hundreds of dead bodies and unloaded them while flying by a city while players wtf'd a raining dead bodies.
It's a massive complication of nuances that go beyond the obvious added server costs of having to track/load entities as simple as a coffee cup or a box that was left on a forest.
I would also say that permanence like F76 does it would be a nightmare for SC, because of how you could leave things anywhere, if things load out with the player and load back in, the probabilities of conflicts on things that will exist on the same coordinates, big mess waiting to happen, and it ain't just small objects at that, especially when everything is physicalized on SC.
You could drop an object, log off and unless the server got reset, it would still be there 3 days later unless picked up by someone.
Every town had message boards which retained the message for days or weeks, and their were scrolls you could buy, write a message on it and drop it on the ground.
Those would also stay for weeks. In fact, I got both of my accounts perma banned because I seeded almost every town with messages on the boards and ground inviting people to come join me over at DAOC.
I expected it, back then even mentioning the name of another game in world chat would get you chat banned for hours if not days.
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Curious if SC has solid plans in how that element will extend play versus enable griefing. There's a reason mmos with hard-bodied characters have traditionally implemented some option that let's a player move through other players or certain objects to prevent abuse.
Even the devs of New World were still smart enough to solve that problem.
I find your last point subversive to what MMORPG's are meant to be about and catering to solo, once again because that is the only direction MMOs go in. We need to know who the real players are as opposed to NPC's. This sounds like a method to disguise real player numbers on the server and make the game as solo as possible.