For the past week or so I have been reading a lot about New World's launch day/week "woes". It was touched upon in the most recent P+ Rewind (see here https://youtu.be/QblpbhGq8x8); during that podcast I thought to myself what mitigation approaches Pantheon could adopt, and not necessarily technological solutions.
One did stand out; player distribution, from a perspective of across the landmass and level ranges on a given server. Specifically, whether VR and the community are open to a soft launch for pledgers? Perhaps those who pledge before a certain time. My thoughts on this are:
a) It provides a group of (small?) players an opportunity to accelerate ahead of the main player base, diversifying across the world and content. Thus, reducing the load on starting content, and
b) An incentive/reward for pledgers
There are some draw backs that spring to mind and obvious questions to such an approach (i.e. how long would a soft launch be?). But there are positives as well, such as testing of infrastructure and stability prior to the actual launch.
I'm interested in everyone's thoughts.
Those who pledge will be in the (pre-) alpha/beta, that will already give us a very significant advantage of in-game knowledge, where to go, what to do etc. They don't need any further advantage in the form of an early start.
However, I think it would be good to open character creation (and server selection!) early. This could give VR an idea which servers will be full, and might allow them to implement soft limits for character creation on particular servers.
Too much interest is a good probkem to have - I can only hopr the game gets a significant amount of interest.
The technical points are very important - of course. How many players fit on a server? How easy and inexpensive is it to roll out new servers as needed?
I generally agree with Sarim.
When I focused on the New World Release a few other points hit me very forcefully. They have severe, and I mean *severe*, limits on character creation. Not even one per server but one per set of loosely linked servers. I would consider anything remotely resembling this an almost inconceivable nightmare. It could also be an opportunity for VR if they charged for extra character slots. The New World global limit is two characters. aarghhhh - beyond awful.
New World obviously plans on severe and early server mergers - servers in line for mergers with each other is that loose linkage I referred to. Should Panthron release with a visible plan from day one to do early mergers? I would have assumed not.
Naming - another design decision of nightmare proportions to many people. Unique first names not just per server but across the world. With thousands pouring onto the first servers opened, far from where they intended to play, to grab names. Another decision obviously made with mergers in mind. Also money - maybe they will switch to per-server unique names after those mergers but charge for renaming the one character you are allowed to have.
The big one - pay to buy the game with no subscription fee. I hate that model for more reasons than I can name without writing a book. It worled wonderfully for Amazon (not so well for the players after sales dry up and all the planned charges in lieu of subscriptions start to hit). It would work far less well for a game like Pantheon that won't have the huge interest New World got. But VR has to be looking and drooling.
If I were VR:
I would build a registration system for guilds. You would login to the site and setup a guild. Two or more people can setup a guild. All players who plan to play together register to this guild. The guild as a whole picks a primary and secondary server. DO NOT NAME SERVERS. Just have generic names like "US EAST 1" or some such denoting physical location of the server so people can at least pick a server near them.
VR could then assign guilds to servers. As servers "fill up" guilds are assigned to other servers. This would be a soft cap. So if the server cap is 2000, then only allow 1000 to register to that server, or whatever VR deems appropriate.
Once they get close to launch they should have a fairly decent idea of how many servers to launch with and expected player base. This would be open to non-pledges and pledges alike.
Would allow people to stake a claim to a server and guild name. Maybe open to pledges first then everyone else a few days later to allow the pledges first dips on guild names.
When the game launched the accounts associated with the guild are LOCKED to the server they picked. For the first couple weeks you'd not be able to make characters on other servers. Once post launch settles down and things are stable and people are in game with low to no queue times, then they could allow the servers to be opened up fully.
There would be a list of guilds and their chosen, and then once closer to launch their assigned, servers with account forum names. It should be easy to find your friends and guild mates or that **** streamer you simp for and register.
If the server fills up before you lock in your guild, tough, choose another. Will people be annoyed if they can't follow their streamer simp gods around? Maybe, but at least they can play the game day one. Get in early and get your guild registered.
Each server will only be partially full, so there should still be room for people to login. The biggest issue with these queues are friends getting shut out from their guilds and such. This will ensure that every guild gets all of their members on the same server. A few guilds could get together and pick the same servers, so rivals or sister guilds can play together as well.
People who have no friends playing or no guild affiliation will still be able to jump in on launch, but they shouldn't have the same "Can't get with my friends" issue. And if those people end up not being able to simp for their streamer god then.... tough.
I'm sure this wouldn't happen, as it is pretty heavy handed, but IDGAF and that's how'd I'd do it.
If you are going to distinguish a soft launch from a real launch, the soft launch needs to have some type of barrier for entrance. This barrier could be only people that pre-ordered, or only people that supported crowd funding, or something similar. Or maybe just have a larger open beta.
But sometimes the launch issues are related to just having more people playing at launch then you could ever have during beta – so I don’t know how much it would help resolve issues like Amazon is having right now.
Sarim has a good point regarding early character creation, also I dont think this is VR's first rodeo.
Plus, as we swim through alpha, ideally all the starting cities, races and classes will be in testing so those testers as sarim indicated will also have some foreknowledge.
If so inclined, some of the testers-now-players can influence (there's current terminology) can be influencers to the new Pantheon community of first time players. Instead of creating cliques immediately and "rushing" new players like some college fraternity/sorority forced social...ism (?) into an established group name, perhaps by being a common voice to the "unspoken rules"to those experiencing pantheon for the first time.
Technically, I think they will have contingencies per server if there is a higher load on one city over another that they can seamlessly dial up or down as needed, or at least I hope so. Having prior knowledge of race choices can definitely help. Can a percentage of initial "looky-loos" be predicted? those that will create an account for only a short time to get a look and not commit , this can also be factored into start date and server needs. maybe rent additional servers just for first 2 weeks instead of owning servers forever.
Manouk said:maybe rent additional servers just for first 2 weeks instead of owning servers forever.
Edit:
Maybe this is what they were talking about, since it mentions "Easily integrate Amazon GameLift into your Unity game ..."
Dedicated Game Server Hosting - Amazon GameLift - Amazon Web Services
I believe Pantheon is using Amazon which means they can scale up pretty quickly. But having more backend servers doesn't help if your front end authentication system isn't designed for that many connections. So it's not just about scaling up.
bigdogchris said:I believe Pantheon is using Amazon which means they can scale up pretty quickly. But having more backend servers doesn't help if your front end authentication system isn't designed for that many connections. So it's not just about scaling up.
New World is literally Amazon running it. The launch day rush still hit hard even if they increased their servers day after day. No one wanted to start over after 20+ hours of work on their character.
I don't see the launch day rushes as something that can be avoided without a planned server merger system in place but that makes it look like the game is dying which can actually make the game die. They could sell it as an idea though that may keep it from being a problem. IE announce they are launching with double the planned servers and a plan to merge them on x date in ~3 months after the initial rush.
I don't know how they will avoid some of the same issues as New World on launch. I imagine there will be more than 2,000 concurrent players per server but even at 3,000 or 4,000 they would likely still end up with massive queuing and complaining, same as NW. A lot of people just don't seem to understand or care about how the game worlds fall apart beyond a certain number or otherwise expect megaservers/cross-server gameplay etc where home server doesn't matter at all and it's more a server cluster/global community than a server community.
Even at 2000, on launch day per server that would be ~222 players per starting zone (in the unlikely event players evenly dispersed between all races). I don't know that even that will be feasable, especially if leveling is quite slow and players spend more time in these areas than modern MMOs.
I would be totally fine with a "soft launch" even if I wasn't included in it. As far as I'm concerned it's as much of a disadvantage as it is an advantage to start a few days before others. And no matter what there are going to be people starting before and after others, that's just the type of game this is. It isn't a race to the end, it isn't a whoever gets here first wins type of game. There will be new players trickling in days, weeks, months, and even years after launch. To say that these players are at a "disadvantage" because they didn't start at the same time is simply untrue.
Just to point out a few of the disadvantages for those that would be included in a soft launch: Tougher to find a group, tougher to find crafted items, tougher to work the market, and many others. Only pointing that out to repeat that it's not an advantage or a disadvantage to start on a different day as someone else. It's simply starting on a different day.
"To say that these players are at a "disadvantage" because they didn't start at the same time is simply untrue."
I agree in all respects. Coming in a bit later can have major advantages - you avoid a lot of chaos and it is easier to get resources since other people will actually have more than 5 copper for the richest player on the server in minute 1.
But perception becomes reality and many *potential* fans will not view it positively if others get a head start. Everyone that is willing to subscribe should get the same opportunity to be there for the chaos if they so choose.
