This is mostly a post about player traffic and how VR is going to handle it.
There are definitely a lot of questions, but server infrastructure should be accounted for early on in development. You don't want it to be a wildly successful release and find that you can't support everyone.
On day 1 of launch, can you (the developers) please explain how you predict player traffic will behave and what steps will be taken to ensure a good launch day?
How many people per server do you expect there to be?
Is there going to be cross-server grouping like other MMOs have implemented in modern times?
Are servers going to be locked after a certain threshold for creation to try and distribute players among them?
Will we be able to see some sort of friends list for our offline friends and what server they chose? (Let's say I come home from work that day and I need to make a character to play with friends but they are asleep, am I going to have to guess/wake them up/wait?)
These may seem like silly or unimportant questions at this point in time, but to suffer any of these as a customer/player on launch day is going to just bloat customer service tickets.
Can we hear from the server engineering team to gain confidence about stability?
I'm fairly certain this sort of thing is going to get (mostly) sorted out during open beta, when they stress test the servers. Brad has launched enough games to know how to prepare, but it's way too early to answer these questions. That's like the whole point of the open beta phase.
I replied to you on Twitter about this from our official account and was trying to, in a roundabout way, say that we can't give that information and that it is a long way off (couple of years) but we are well aware of the issues that can arise and will take every precaution to mitigating as many issues as possible.
We use cloud servers and can put one nearly anywhere in the world and we have control over other options but I can't give any more information than that, the servers and the client are things we will rarely speak about for security reasons.
In saying that, we can't predict what will happen at launch, especially 1-2 years from now, you even see multi-million dollar studios like Blizzard and Bethesda struggle with huge teams in multiple countries, so no one is safe, we just need to take as many steps as possible to prepare and we have the right people on the job doing that for us, but no one should ever expect a perfect launch. ;)
How many people a server can accommodate will have a lot to do with the amount of content. They aren't likely to know exactly how much there will be until much closer to launch. The technical side will have to be addressed throughout testing phases as they continue to take on increasily more clients.
I believe they aren't going to be doing any cross-server stuff. Cross server systems go against much of what they intend for Pantheon. Cross-server hurts community, as well as character popularity and reputation. Allowing people to become anonymous has horrible repercussions.
Dullahan said:How many people a server can accommodate will have a lot to do with the amount of content. They aren't likely to know exactly how much there will be until much closer to launch. The technical side will have to be addressed throughout testing phases as they continue to take on increasily more clients.
I believe they aren't going to be doing any cross-server stuff. Cross server systems go against much of what they intend for Pantheon. Cross-server hurts community, as well as character popularity and reputation. Allowing people to become anonymous has horrible repercussions.
The server population cap will be decided in testing when we can see how the servers handle large amounts of players and how congested/empty key POI are and we have said we will try to find a nice balance so a server feels alive and lived in with a bustling population but not so full that everyone fights over trash respawns and events or have to implement a queue system, which is just not suited to a game like ours.
Kilsin said:Dullahan said:How many people a server can accommodate will have a lot to do with the amount of content. They aren't likely to know exactly how much there will be until much closer to launch. The technical side will have to be addressed throughout testing phases as they continue to take on increasily more clients.
I believe they aren't going to be doing any cross-server stuff. Cross server systems go against much of what they intend for Pantheon. Cross-server hurts community, as well as character popularity and reputation. Allowing people to become anonymous has horrible repercussions.
The server population cap will be decided in testing when we can see how the servers handle large amounts of players and how congested/empty key POI are and we have said we will try to find a nice balance so a server feels alive and lived in with a bustling population but not so full that everyone fights over trash respawns and events or have to implement a queue system, which is just not suited to a game like ours.
A queue system should be implemented before launch, even if you think it will never be needed.
What seems to happen with every MMO launch is certain servers become the "popular" ones and are insanely full. Players are forced to spam click the connect button at server selection hoping to join the server all their friends are already on. People complain, the game gets a bad rating, and the devs work overtime to implement a server queue system ASAP. A few weeks after launch, the populations level out and the queue is no longer needed, but on launch day it is always an issue.
Wellspring said:Kilsin said:Dullahan said:How many people a server can accommodate will have a lot to do with the amount of content. They aren't likely to know exactly how much there will be until much closer to launch. The technical side will have to be addressed throughout testing phases as they continue to take on increasily more clients.
I believe they aren't going to be doing any cross-server stuff. Cross server systems go against much of what they intend for Pantheon. Cross-server hurts community, as well as character popularity and reputation. Allowing people to become anonymous has horrible repercussions.
The server population cap will be decided in testing when we can see how the servers handle large amounts of players and how congested/empty key POI are and we have said we will try to find a nice balance so a server feels alive and lived in with a bustling population but not so full that everyone fights over trash respawns and events or have to implement a queue system, which is just not suited to a game like ours.
A queue system should be implemented before launch, even if you think it will never be needed.
What seems to happen with every MMO launch is certain servers become the "popular" ones and are insanely full. Players are forced to spam click the connect button at server selection hoping to join the server all their friends are already on. People complain, the game gets a bad rating, and the devs work overtime to implement a server queue system ASAP. A few weeks after launch, the populations level out and the queue is no longer needed, but on launch day it is always an issue.
I was speaking as a permanently implemented queue system, we will do whatever our team thinks is best for our launch, which will most likely be a couple of years down the track and we will use whatever technology is available to us at the time that helps us launch smoothly, whatever that may be. :)
dauthi said:This is mostly a post about player traffic and how VR is going to handle it.
There are definitely a lot of questions, but server infrastructure should be accounted for early on in development. You don't want it to be a wildly successful release and find that you can't support everyone.
On day 1 of launch, can you (the developers) please explain how you predict player traffic will behave and what steps will be taken to ensure a good launch day?
How many people per server do you expect there to be?
Is there going to be cross-server grouping like other MMOs have implemented in modern times?
Are servers going to be locked after a certain threshold for creation to try and distribute players among them?
Will we be able to see some sort of friends list for our offline friends and what server they chose? (Let's say I come home from work that day and I need to make a character to play with friends but they are asleep, am I going to have to guess/wake them up/wait?)
These may seem like silly or unimportant questions at this point in time, but to suffer any of these as a customer/player on launch day is going to just bloat customer service tickets.
Can we hear from the server engineering team to gain confidence about stability?
I sure hope there is no cross server grouping, I must say that is probally the only (well forced pvp but we know that aint happening) thing that I consider a deal breaker, wont do it for any reason
I devoutly hope there IS a launch day like there used to be. Lots of crowdfunded games seem to exist in a vague state of alpha/beta for years and when 'launch' comes, most people have moved on to other things.
I dearly hope for a busy and crowded launch day like all MMOs used to have!
Morr said:I devoutly hope there IS a launch day like there used to be. Lots of crowdfunded games seem to exist in a vague state of alpha/beta for years and when 'launch' comes, most people have moved on to other things.
I dearly hope for a busy and crowded launch day like all MMOs used to have!
Yeah agreed. I miss it too.
For a persistent game like Pantheon, you basically are guaranteed a "launch" day. It'll be the first day the servers come up after the final character wipe.
I wish Kilsin would stop saying launch is a "couple of years" off. I know that's true, but it makes me sad. I only heard about this game a week ago and immediately pledged support to it. Now I can't stop thinking about it.... I am so freakin' excited to relive the joy I had playing EQ1/2 and to some extent DAoC that I haven't found in any modern games no matter how many years I play them. My wife is already tired of hearing me talk about it and trying to convince her how much fun she will have playing it. My wife isn't much of a social person and doesn't seem to see why I miss the social part of playing EQ.
Server Launch – GO LIVE Day
I was chatting with my guildies last night and the topic of “how many servers” was being tossed around. While we obviously have no idea what that will eventually look like, we were unanimous in the thought that very little is a bigger game drain than dead servers. Many games we’ve played previously have been killed by the thought that “no one plays”. You log on, you tour around, hit the hot spots…. Nothing.
Some games seem to fall into the trap of “too many servers” based on initial launch numbers. The servers are crowded, often overwhelmingly so, resources are scarce or impossible to locate and often highly (and fiercely) contested. It can be difficult to find any nibble of content in the early days when throngs of lookey-loos are exploring the game to see the shiny new thing, and while I hope many do fall in love with Terminus, the truth is, not everyone will stay.
As such we all agreed that it was preferable to stand in line, deal with limited resources, crowded cities, and scarcity of those sweet exp-giving mobs for the first little bit. It’s really better than dealing with ghost-towns or server consolidations at a later date because we know we’re in it for the long haul. Both of those scenarios send an unwelcome (and sometimes untrue) message that the game has failed. Of course true optimization of server population and hitting that sweet-spot of players giving life to a server vs thousands left out hungry and wanting more is hard to manage. Having listened to many interviews I believe the team is fully aware of this phenomenon and is likely formulating/have formulated a plan to deal with it, but I wanted to weigh in as a voice saying “we get it… we can be patient…”
I think of two scenarios my guild has experienced. Game One: we were playing a pvp game but were the only ones in the entire world for about 80% of our playtime. We had to resort to killing each other (which some of us did with a creative glee that would make a Skar cackle). Game Two: we waited four hours to log into an overcrowded server, had to stand in line to talk to quest NPCs, and came up with the creative idea of jamming a playing card into our keyboard to keep us online when we had to take food breaks (because auto-logging off potentially meant another several hours waiting in queue). In this game, we resorted to disco dance parties, deep conversations, and true exploration just to look at the flowers and trees and landscape. We played game one for a few weeks… we played game two for several years.
I’d prefer to see VR ere on the side of fewer servers and possibly some disgruntled folks who had to wait or couldn’t find enough game to eat. Heck if I have to wait, I’ll BE one of those disgruntled people, but I won’t complain. To me, the payoff is worth it in the end. What do you think?