One idea to get the ball rolling, is a Goblinworks-run Settlement at the beginning that becomes the "1st-BigTown". They could even have one of the pathfinder deities in mortal form as the de-facto leader/ruler/director of the settlement already Level 21 in all the available skills (!).
Goblinworks could then recruit some players to help run the settlement and act a Neutral superpower in the game that allows differen smaller settlements to grow, and if one becomes too big too soon, "1st-BigTown" can knock them down to size, led into battle by their "god-leader" (no doubt: Think Sauron in LOTRs battle scene).
Then eventually as the different power matrices develop, the gods could leave and 1st-BigTown could carry on as a regular settlement.
I know there's always the ideology that sandbox = player-run, it's the duality between the government-intervention vs free market until the economy becomes complex enough for the free-market to take care of itself?
I would hope Dancey remembers enough about the issues surrounding BOB and CCP employees in Eve to shy well away from any such favouring of a player group because that is exactly what this road leads to
Goblin Squad Member
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I would hope Dancey remembers enough about the issues surrounding BOB and CCP employees in Eve to shy well away from any such favouring of a player group because that is exactly what this road leads toOne idea to get the ball rolling, is a Goblinworks-run Settlement at the beginning that becomes the "1st-BigTown". They could even have one of the pathfinder deities in mortal form as the de-facto leader/ruler/director of the settlement already Level 21 in all the available skills (!).
Goblinworks could then recruit some players to help run the settlement and act a Neutral superpower in the game that allows differen smaller settlements to grow, and if one becomes too big too soon, "1st-BigTown" can knock them down to size, led into battle by their "god-leader" (no doubt: Think Sauron in LOTRs battle scene).
Then eventually as the different power matrices develop, the gods could leave and 1st-BigTown could carry on as a regular settlement.
I know there's always the ideology that sandbox = player-run, it's the duality between the government-intervention vs free market until the economy becomes complex enough for the free-market to take care of itself?
Like clockwork. ;)
Irrespective, Goblinworks need to manage the early economy: Whether they do that behind the curtain or in front of it, makes no difference and I'd argue: In fact it would be more "fun" if they made a few cameos on stage for all our entertainment, is the suggestion I'm making.
But I appreciate the warning-shot across the bows is well meant.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@AvenaOats,
GW could accomplish the same thing by having the NPC factions offer the same high tier training to characters that have dedicated their efforts to serving the faction. This would make those characters equally open to faction warfare (probably more so actually) as a settlement based company is to settlement warfare.
That is the trade off. If you are devoted to a faction rather than a settlement, you will be more open to PvP vs. an enemy faction.
I would hope Dancey remembers enough about the issues surrounding BOB and CCP employees in Eve to shy well away from any such favouring of a player group because that is exactly what this road leads toOne idea to get the ball rolling, is a Goblinworks-run Settlement at the beginning that becomes the "1st-BigTown". They could even have one of the pathfinder deities in mortal form as the de-facto leader/ruler/director of the settlement already Level 21 in all the available skills (!).
Goblinworks could then recruit some players to help run the settlement and act a Neutral superpower in the game that allows differen smaller settlements to grow, and if one becomes too big too soon, "1st-BigTown" can knock them down to size, led into battle by their "god-leader" (no doubt: Think Sauron in LOTRs battle scene).
Then eventually as the different power matrices develop, the gods could leave and 1st-BigTown could carry on as a regular settlement.
I know there's always the ideology that sandbox = player-run, it's the duality between the government-intervention vs free market until the economy becomes complex enough for the free-market to take care of itself?
Like clockwork. ;)
Irrespective, Goblinworks need to manage the early economy: Whether they do that behind the curtain or in front of it, makes no difference and I'd argue: In fact it would be more "fun" if they made a few cameos on stage for all our entertainment, is the suggestion I'm making.
But I appreciate the warning-shot across the bows is well meant.
There is a lot of difference between managing an economy in a neutral fashion and helping a group of favoured players build up a big town then handing it to them on a plate
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would hope Dancey remembers enough about the issues surrounding BOB and CCP employees in Eve to shy well away from any such favouring of a player group because that is exactly what this road leads toOne idea to get the ball rolling, is a Goblinworks-run Settlement at the beginning that becomes the "1st-BigTown". They could even have one of the pathfinder deities in mortal form as the de-facto leader/ruler/director of the settlement already Level 21 in all the available skills (!).
Goblinworks could then recruit some players to help run the settlement and act a Neutral superpower in the game that allows differen smaller settlements to grow, and if one becomes too big too soon, "1st-BigTown" can knock them down to size, led into battle by their "god-leader" (no doubt: Think Sauron in LOTRs battle scene).
Then eventually as the different power matrices develop, the gods could leave and 1st-BigTown could carry on as a regular settlement.
I know there's always the ideology that sandbox = player-run, it's the duality between the government-intervention vs free market until the economy becomes complex enough for the free-market to take care of itself?
Like clockwork. ;)
Irrespective, Goblinworks need to manage the early economy: Whether they do that behind the curtain or in front of it, makes no difference and I'd argue: In fact it would be more "fun" if they made a few cameos on stage for all our entertainment, is the suggestion I'm making.
But I appreciate the warning-shot across the bows is well meant.
There is a lot of difference between managing an economy in a neutral fashion and helping a group of favoured players build up a big town then handing it to them on a plate
There is and it is above board to point it out.
But also to consider, everyone remembers "The Killing of Lord British" in UO. Who will be the so-called assassin of "Ryan-Goblin-King-Dancey"?
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
One idea to get the ball rolling, is a Goblinworks-run Settlement at the beginning that becomes the "1st-BigTown". They could even have one of the pathfinder deities in mortal form as the de-facto leader/ruler/director of the settlement already Level 21 in all the available skills (!).
Steelwings warning shot aside, that's what we're trying to create with the Empire of Xeilias. We already came into PFO with the intent to be a major player and looking at PFO as having the same potential EVE had. Pax dropped the ball on EVE and went all in on SWG back in 2003. This time we wanted to set ourselves up in a position for success from teh get go, rather than success over the years. That said, Pax Gaming as a whole, and not just the leadership of Pax Aeternum and Pax Golgotha, are reaching out both within Pax Gaming and to our friends in other games (especially PVP oriented games) to see if there is interest among them to join us in the Empire of Xeilias in EE and OE. So far, so good, but a lot of people are still in "wait and see" mode. Folks want to see more solidified game mechanics, more gameplay videos (even at this early stage), etc before they commit. Still, that leaves me in a happy place, but I won't be comfortable until we're in game with at least one settlement and comfortable enough in numbers that we can support and defend it. But, I am very proud of all the owrk my leaders in Aeternum have been doing and I'm very happy to have the leaders of Golgotha along now, as well. They've added a great dynamic to an already diverse group of leadership. love my Paxians.
Like Krows says "it's a marathon, not a sprint".
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I would hope Dancey remembers enough about the issues surrounding BOB and CCP employees in Eve to shy well away from any such favouring of a player group because that is exactly what this road leads toOne idea to get the ball rolling, is a Goblinworks-run Settlement at the beginning that becomes the "1st-BigTown". They could even have one of the pathfinder deities in mortal form as the de-facto leader/ruler/director of the settlement already Level 21 in all the available skills (!).
Goblinworks could then recruit some players to help run the settlement and act a Neutral superpower in the game that allows differen smaller settlements to grow, and if one becomes too big too soon, "1st-BigTown" can knock them down to size, led into battle by their "god-leader" (no doubt: Think Sauron in LOTRs battle scene).
Then eventually as the different power matrices develop, the gods could leave and 1st-BigTown could carry on as a regular settlement.
I know there's always the ideology that sandbox = player-run, it's the duality between the government-intervention vs free market until the economy becomes complex enough for the free-market to take care of itself?
Like clockwork. ;)
Irrespective, Goblinworks need to manage the early economy: Whether they do that behind the curtain or in front of it, makes no difference and I'd argue: In fact it would be more "fun" if they made a few cameos on stage for all our entertainment, is the suggestion I'm making.
But I appreciate the warning-shot across the bows is well meant.
There is a lot of difference between managing an economy in a neutral fashion and helping a group of favoured players build up a big town then handing it to them on a plate
There is and it is above board to point it out.
But also to consider, everyone remembers "The Killing of Lord British" in UO. Who will be the so-called assassin of "Ryan-Goblin-King-Dancey"?
The difference is that UO wasn't a game based on settlement warfare and territorial domination so having some NPC overlord played by a dev really didnt make a huge difference
Having a dev assisted big town that is there to ensure no other player organisation can pursue the whole point of the game to sucessfully makes a huge difference.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would hope Dancey remembers enough about the issues surrounding BOB and CCP employees in Eve to shy well away from any such favouring of a player group because that is exactly what this road leads toOne idea to get the ball rolling, is a Goblinworks-run Settlement at the beginning that becomes the "1st-BigTown". They could even have one of the pathfinder deities in mortal form as the de-facto leader/ruler/director of the settlement already Level 21 in all the available skills (!).
Goblinworks could then recruit some players to help run the settlement and act a Neutral superpower in the game that allows differen smaller settlements to grow, and if one becomes too big too soon, "1st-BigTown" can knock them down to size, led into battle by their "god-leader" (no doubt: Think Sauron in LOTRs battle scene).
Then eventually as the different power matrices develop, the gods could leave and 1st-BigTown could carry on as a regular settlement.
I know there's always the ideology that sandbox = player-run, it's the duality between the government-intervention vs free market until the economy becomes complex enough for the free-market to take care of itself?
Like clockwork. ;)
Irrespective, Goblinworks need to manage the early economy: Whether they do that behind the curtain or in front of it, makes no difference and I'd argue: In fact it would be more "fun" if they made a few cameos on stage for all our entertainment, is the suggestion I'm making.
But I appreciate the warning-shot across the bows is well meant.
There is a lot of difference between managing an economy in a neutral fashion and helping a group of favoured players build up a big town then handing it to them on a plate
There is and it is above board to point it out.
But also to consider, everyone remembers "The Killing of Lord British" in UO. Who will be the so-called assassin of "Ryan-Goblin-King-Dancey"?
The difference is that UO wasn't a game based on settlement warfare and territorial domination so having some NPC overlord played by a dev really didnt make a huge difference
Having a dev assisted big town that is there to ensure no other player organisation can pursue the whole point of the game to sucessfully makes a huge difference.
I'm just suggesting extra EE "content" on the back of what the devs plan anyway. Seeing as us EE backers won't have much content, it might be a nice addition. The devs can consider the proposal and form their own "legislation" for interaction if the idea appeals to them. I'm sure they're well aware of the ultimate goal of settlement-driven territorial warfare.
If the devs wish to attract more players to EE, it could be one solution given the right prerequisites.
And EE won't last forever.
edit: Quick positives: Provides an interesting "attraction" to EE. Perhaps provides reassurance concerning the game not turning into a gankfest in EE "despite what the devs say". And a one-time chance to play the game alongside the devs while it's developing.
That conversation is over, we're talking about Harry Potter now...
I'm giggling at the idea that we want huge PvP battles, but we're not cogent of and planning for the necessary technical implementation. Tehehehehe.
Then you will have no problem telling us
1) What size battles you envisage
2) What mechanisms you will use to enable this
Sorry Dancey I am not going to take it as true just because you giggle at the idea. Give some details and I might begin to actually believe you otherwise I will treat your claim with the scepticism it deserves.
Hint When you talk about "low hundreds" as you did in the rp thread that doesnt equate to huge
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm giggling at the idea that we want huge PvP battles, but we're not cogent of and planning for the necessary technical implementation. Tehehehehe.
Yea, well I suggest instead of giggling, you start paying attention to Steelwing. He has actual experience playing games. On the internet. So maybe instead of giggling, you guys start taking notes and thinking about the really esoteric stuff that no one thinks about until too late.
Like server loads.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yea, well I suggest instead of giggling, you start paying attention to Steelwing. He has actual experience playing games. On the internet. So maybe instead of giggling, you guys start taking notes and thinking about the really esoteric stuff that no one thinks about until too late.
Like server loads.
Why, it's almost as if developers have, time and time again, promised these kinds of things and then completely failed to deliver. But that couldn't be true. No one would ever lie on the internet, right?
1) What size battles you envisage
2) What mechanisms you will use to enable this1: Yes
2: Lots
Well I can see why you were such a success as a marketing person Dancey. You do realise that you have to persuade people to give you money for this game at some point and if as you say you know the answers why not give them and perhaps people might be more interested in your game
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't understand why everyone is giving Steelwing such a hard time. He's asking perfectly reasonable and legitimate questions and you all are treating him like a blight on civilization.
How dare people have different priorities when it comes to this game...
Backend infrastructure to handle the sort of massive PVP that GW has proposed is something I've been concerned about as well. I'd love to see GW assuage those concerns with actual real answers (that said, I've already thrown my money at it, anyway).
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Morbis,
If someone presents themselves reasonably, something like "Hey, X is a problem in other games, how do you plan to handle X?" they'd be taken seriously, and perceived as being engaged constructively.
But of course if you position yourself as a combative, clueles master of the obvious, "Hey uh, have you guys ever heard of a thing called server loads, because they happen in games," then of course they'll look like fools. This is basic rhetoric, and that approach violates two basic aspects of ethos: practical wisdom and goodwill.
That kind of performance gets what it deserves.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would interpenetrate "Yes" to mean that they are envisioning everything from 1 vs. 1 up to the thousands on thousands you see in EVE. That there should never be a point in Pathfinder Online where your forces are too large or too small to go out and engage in some form of PvP.
The lot's just means there are going to be many approaches to it. I think the big one we've heard about so far is formations, but there are probably some approaches they are taking on the technical end that you won't get much out of hearing about unless you are also a game programmer.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't understand why everyone is giving Steelwing such a hard time. He's asking perfectly reasonable and legitimate questions and you all are treating him like a blight on civilization.
How dare people have different priorities when it comes to this game...
Backend infrastructure to handle the sort of massive PVP that GW has proposed is something I've been concerned about as well. I'd love to see GW assuage those concerns with actual real answers (that said, I've already thrown my money at it, anyway).
I don't think Steewing is being any harder on the game than many of us in here have been at one point or another. I also think it's a bit silly for anyone to take the game to the shed for lack of details. We know waaaaaaaay more about PFO at this stage of development than is the norm. We also have access to devs that field questions on a regular basis.
Most games will treat the next update like a nuclear secret.
@Pax Rawn
Indeed these are questions they should already know the answers to. They are not mechanics questions but technical and they would have used the technical planning as a feed in to engine selection.
I find it totally bizarre that a) Dancey won't answer even with rough numbers and technical detail and that some in the community are feeling this is somehow an illegitimate question
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CEO, Goblinworks
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I think we've covered this before, but I will restate.
There are three things that create problems with lag.
Client lag. This is usually a factor related to video card processing power. The common way to address this is a sliding ladder of level of detail (LOD). As the load on the card goes up, the failure mode is dropped frames. At some point every card will reach a point where even at the lowest LOD too many frames are being dropped to make for a satisfying play experience. I think that this point will not happen under most scenarios for people with reasonably good cards. The biggest problems happen with people with laptops and some small computers with integrated video systems. So of you're a person who wants to fight in huge battles, get good video cards.
Server lag : database. This is usually a factor of the number of read/write operations needed to keep the server state current with the game state. This used to be a pretty big problem for MMOs but it has mostly been addressed by faster processors, faster disk systems, and new kinds of database implementations (NoSQL being the biggest change). At very high densities this will remain a problem, but we think that we can minimize the effects by using the formation system, which has the effect of concentrating numerous player actions into segmented groups inside the input/update loop. If we find that we need even more traction we'll consider things like the time dilation system used by EVE.
Server lag : network. This is the unfixable problem for all MMOs. At some point, the N^2 growth of network traffic will degrade the game performance. We can push that point off by minimizing the amount of data that has to transmit between the server and the clients and by intelligently dropping packets, but because the problem is exponential and the solutions are not eventually we will hit roadblocks. If the happen beyond the horizon of most large combat environments, we'll be ok. Since it's impossible to test for this until the game is actually built and optimized we can't even put a prediction on where this will happen. But we know it happens at the edge of the range of interaction cases, as the number of entities in the local battle space exceeds several hundred. EVE manages to scale up to about 1k before they start hitting these issues, and they use time dilation to cope as the effects become more prevalent. We'll probably do the same. But we may find that the formation system buys us more headroom than EVE has. Plus we will think about high-load issues EVE is stuck with like drones and missiles which we may be able to implement in ways that generate less network traffic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would interpenetrate "Yes" to mean that they are envisioning everything from 1 vs. 1 up to the thousands on thousands you see in EVE. That there should never be a point in Pathfinder Online where your forces are too large or too small to go out and engage in some form of PvP.
The lot's just means there are going to be many approaches to it. I think the big one we've heard about so far is formations, but there are probably some approaches they are taking on the technical end that you won't get much out of hearing about unless you are also a game programmer.
I'd rather get actual answers as opposed to having to "interpret" one word to mean what I want it to mean. Part of the problem with people on this forum is all of the interpreting of vague answers that goes on. If actual answers were given, then people might not be so damned combative and argumentative.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think we've covered this before, but I will restate.
There are three things that create problems with lag.
Client lag. This is usually a factor related to video card processing power. The common way to address this is a sliding ladder of level of detail (LOD). As the load on the card goes up, the failure mode is dropped frames. At some point every card will reach a point where even at the lowest LOD too many frames are being dropped to make for a satisfying play experience. I think that this point will not happen under most scenarios for people with reasonably good cards. The biggest problems happen with people with laptops and some small computers with integrated video systems. So of you're a person who wants to fight in huge battles, get good video cards.
Server lag : database. This is usually a factor of the number of read/write operations needed to keep the server state current with the game state. This used to be a pretty big problem for MMOs but it has mostly been addressed by faster processors, faster disk systems, and new kinds of database implementations (NoSQL being the biggest change). At very high densities this will remain a problem, but we think that we can minimize the effects by using the formation system, which has the effect of concentrating numerous player actions into segmented groups inside the input/update loop. If we find that we need even more traction we'll consider things like the time dilation system used by EVE.
Server lag : network. This is the unfixable problem for all MMOs. At some point, the N^2 growth of network traffic will degrade the game performance. We can push that point off by minimizing the amount of data that has to transmit between the server and the clients and by intelligently dropping packets, but because the problem is exponential and the solutions are not eventually we will hit roadblocks. If the happen beyond the horizon of most large combat environments, we'll be ok. Since it's impossible to test for this until the game is...
:brofist:
Thanks Ryan =)
I think we've covered this before, but I will restate.
There are three things that create problems with lag.
Client lag. This is usually a factor related to video card processing power. The common way to address this is a sliding ladder of level of detail (LOD). As the load on the card goes up, the failure mode is dropped frames. At some point every card will reach a point where even at the lowest LOD too many frames are being dropped to make for a satisfying play experience. I think that this point will not happen under most scenarios for people with reasonably good cards. The biggest problems happen with people with laptops and some small computers with integrated video systems. So of you're a person who wants to fight in huge battles, get good video cards.
Server lag : database. This is usually a factor of the number of read/write operations needed to keep the server state current with the game state. This used to be a pretty big problem for MMOs but it has mostly been addressed by faster processors, faster disk systems, and new kinds of database implementations (NoSQL being the biggest change). At very high densities this will remain a problem, but we think that we can minimize the effects by using the formation system, which has the effect of concentrating numerous player actions into segmented groups inside the input/update loop. If we find that we need even more traction we'll consider things like the time dilation system used by EVE.
Server lag : network. This is the unfixable problem for all MMOs. At some point, the N^2 growth of network traffic will degrade the game performance. We can push that point off by minimizing the amount of data that has to transmit between the server and the clients and by intelligently dropping packets, but because the problem is exponential and the solutions are not eventually we will hit roadblocks. If the happen beyond the horizon of most large combat environments, we'll be ok. Since it's impossible to test for this until the game is...
Thats some information and goes a little way to answering I did however have some specific questions from the other thread you may not have noticed
1) Will player numbers be a hard limit (even if you won't give the number)?
2) What will happen to prevent flooding by one side (ie if the max players were about 500 what happens if the attacker lauches a surprise attack and sends 500 soldiers into battle thus preventing the defender bringing people into the area)
3) If player numbers are capped how do you intend to make it fair for the sides so that the smaller side can't gain an advantage because a larger attacker can't bring all its force to bear
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Steelwing IS a blight on civilization. How dare he ask perfectly legitimate questions!?
If we come join you in game we certainly intend to be :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ryan and anyone looking to play a Paladin
Each hour you do not act contrary to your Core Alignment (i.e., do not gain any points that move you away from your Core), you slowly move back towards your Core Alignment. If you do not act contrary to their Core Alignment, you will eventually return to it. This does mean if you have 7000 in Good, it will slowly trend down towards 5000 Good.
Alignment has a number of mechanical effects on characters:Some abilities, like Paladin feats and skills, are only available to characters of certain alignments. You can only learn and slot those abilities if both your Active and Core Alignment match the Alignment requirement. Also some of these abilities may require abnormally high or low Alignment scores, such as a Paladin ability that requires 7000 in both axes.
1. When you say "each hour" is that in-game or even when logged off?
2. If I'm reading this correctly a Paladin with 7000 in both Lawful and Good, has full access to all of his abilities. But when he logs off for the night and returns the next day, he will have lost that access.
3. If someone has a 7000 / 7000 built up, before he or she logs off for the night, might as well burn those 2000 surplus points.... Wearing a Green Hat! Going to lose that built up alignment anyway, might as well have some fun! ; - P
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Goblin Squad Member
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Asking questions, even legitimate ones, does not make any answer mandatory. @Steelwing, I strongly suspect (and quite probably could be wrong) that the questions you ask may not have a quantitative answer at this point of PFO game development. I feel that Ryan's answer on lag shows that GW is aware of the technical scope of the problem. Since the game mechanics on which you are wishing more detailed information may not even be implementable at the start of EE, I feel that you may not get a satisfactory answer until OE.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ryan and anyone looking to play a Paladin
Each hour you do not act contrary to your Core Alignment (i.e., do not gain any points that move you away from your Core), you slowly move back towards your Core Alignment. If you do not act contrary to their Core Alignment, you will eventually return to it. This does mean if you have 7000 in Good, it will slowly trend down towards 5000 Good.
Alignment has a number of mechanical effects on characters:Some abilities, like Paladin feats and skills, are only available to characters of certain alignments. You can only learn and slot those abilities if both your Active and Core Alignment match the Alignment requirement. Also some of these abilities may require abnormally high or low Alignment scores, such as a Paladin ability that requires 7000 in both axes.
1. When you say "each hour" is that in-game or even when logged off?
2. If I'm reading this correctly a Paladin with 7000 in both Lawful and Good, has full access to all of his abilities. But when he logs off for the night and returns the next day, he will have lost that access.
3. If someone has a 7000 / 7000 built up, before he or she logs off for the night, might as well burn those 2000 surplus points.... Wearing a Green Hat! Going to lose that built up alignment anyway, might as well have some fun! ; - P
I believe it would be only when they are logged in,
as someone could be away for a week and lose over 2000 rep in both axis, does not sound fair since they worked to earn it, and it could be gamed if it counts even the off-line hours|
Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Asking questions, even legitimate ones, does not make any answer mandatory.
I don't disagree. but answers like "Yes" and "lots" don't serve any purpose other than to frustrate the asker. Something like "We're not 100% sure" or "We're still working this out before we give any concrete answers" or ever what Ryan actually ended up posting are better. Especially when the person asking is a potential customer (with the possibility of bringing in even more paying customers) and the person answering is the CEO of the company that stands to make money from those customers.
Asking questions, even legitimate ones, does not make any answer mandatory. @Steelwing, I strongly suspect (and quite probably could be wrong) that the questions you ask may not have a quantitative answer at this point of PFO game development. I feel that Ryan's answer on lag shows that GW is aware of the technical scope of the problem. Since the game mechanics on which you are wishing more detailed information may not even be implementable at the start of EE, I feel that you may not get a satisfactory answer until OE.
While I agree that there is no compulsion to answer these are technical questions that they should be able to answer and are questions of interest to potential customers
To draw the customary vehicle analogy
You decide the task then design the vehicle to fit.
In this case the task is to me a game of settlement warfare and mass combat. The game has to be designed to support that and the database, network and graphics engine systems should have been selected to fit this purpose. They should already have carried out testing before selecting these components to ensure they would be fit for purpose.
If I was asking for a detailed description of the crafting skills and tiers you could justifiably argue they may not have designed it yet.
This sort of question though should be answerable to a certain extent I would indeed settle for a ball park figure such as "We aim to allow 400 player battles as a minimum"
They should also already have an idea how they are going to handle the inevitable situation where there are more combatants wishing to fight than they can handle.
Does Dancey need to answer? No he doesn't but at some point he is going to need to if he wants people to come give him money
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CEO, Goblinworks
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1) Will player numbers be a hard limit (even if you won't give the number)?
I've never seen a design for a system that doesn't degenerate with a hard cap. it seems to be the first thing people try and it doesn't work. Of course the alternative is a server crash and forced disbursal of characters so that's not a very good solution either.
For now I would assume no hard cap.
2) What will happen to prevent flooding by one side (ie if the max players were about 500 what happens if the attacker lauches a surprise attack and sends 500 soldiers into battle thus preventing the defender bringing people into the area)
.
3) If player numbers are capped how do you intend to make it fair for the sides so that the smaller side can't gain an advantage because a larger attacker can't bring all its force to bear
Yup, that's the degenerate condition.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
@Steelwing, I only ask you remember these things (and everyone else on the forum, of course):
1. We are all interested in this game, and to GW you aren't any more important than everyone else (not implying you thought you were). We all have a lot of questions we would like answered; remember that any developer's answers are completely optional and any answer they give is more than you would get in most game's development.
2. The game is still being developed. You aren't likely to get perfect clarity in any answers that can't be answered by their driving design principles. Most times, if they can give an answer, it will be a rough guess based on their current ideas and will definitely change before the game is in Open Enrollment.
3. Constantly mentioning that you'd be paying money if you played the game doesn't really serve any purpose.
Thank you for your time, and I hope you don't interpret any of this as a personal attack. :)
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I think we've covered this before, but I will restate.
There are three things that create problems with lag.
Client lag. This is usually a factor related to video card processing power. The common way to address this is a sliding ladder of level of detail (LOD). As the load on the card goes up, the failure mode is dropped frames. At some point every card will reach a point where even at the lowest LOD too many frames are being dropped to make for a satisfying play experience. I think that this point will not happen under most scenarios for people with reasonably good cards. The biggest problems happen with people with laptops and some small computers with integrated video systems. So of you're a person who wants to fight in huge battles, get good video cards.
Server lag : database. This is usually a factor of the number of read/write operations needed to keep the server state current with the game state. This used to be a pretty big problem for MMOs but it has mostly been addressed by faster processors, faster disk systems, and new kinds of database implementations (NoSQL being the biggest change). At very high densities this will remain a problem, but we think that we can minimize the effects by using the formation system, which has the effect of concentrating numerous player actions into segmented groups inside the input/update loop. If we find that we need even more traction we'll consider things like the time dilation system used by EVE.
Server lag : network. This is the unfixable problem for all MMOs. At some point, the N^2 growth of network traffic will degrade the game performance. We can push that point off by minimizing the amount of data that has to transmit between the server and the clients and by intelligently dropping packets, but because the problem is exponential and the solutions are not eventually we will hit roadblocks. If the happen beyond the horizon of most large combat environments, we'll be ok. Since it's impossible to test for this until the game is...
If time-dilation is acceptable and network lag is the problem, can't the network problem be dropped to ~N by using some level of Peer-to-Peer communication; send a hash to every client in a cluster, and send every client a subset of all information with instructions to share it with every other client in the cluster? That might replace the network O() with a processor O() greater than N^2, but I suspect that the processor tasks involved can be made parallel easier than the network tasks.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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1) Will player numbers be a hard limit (even if you won't give the number)?I've never seen a design for a system that doesn't degenerate with a hard cap. it seems to be the first thing people try and it doesn't work. Of course the alternative is a server crash and forced disbursal of characters so that's not a very good solution either.
For now I would assume no hard cap.
Yup, that's the degenerate condition.2) What will happen to prevent flooding by one side (ie if the max players were about 500 what happens if the attacker lauches a surprise attack and sends 500 soldiers into battle thus preventing the defender bringing people into the area)
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3) If player numbers are capped how do you intend to make it fair for the sides so that the smaller side can't gain an advantage because a larger attacker can't bring all its force to bear
EvE initially handled that by crashing the server, a characteristic that was mercilessly exploited. Time dilation was (I believe) their final solution. Anarchy Online handled that issue by capping the number of characters allowed in an area, and creating a complicated system for kicking out characters when those limits were exceeded. Some companies handle the entire problem by sharding or instancing so that the hardware only needs to scale with N. I'm not aware of any other solutions that have been implemented.
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Goblin Squad Member
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send a hash to every client...Never, ever trust the client. It is in the hands of the enemy.
I got the impression Decius was referring to a protocol similar to what Bitcoin uses. I would think that if a block of clients emerges that is large enough to overwhelm the system, then you've got bigger problems than client hacks.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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send a hash to every client...Never, ever trust the client. It is in the hands of the enemy.
The problem you stated is not the fatal flaw I have noticed on reflecting on the problem: Sharing information peer-to-peer in that manner would be computationally infeasible to falsify information, but would potentially allow a client to slow the entire thing down, and it would create a situation that is simply a bad security practice in a manner that I don't want to publicly explain in detail.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If player numbers are capped how do you intend to make it fair for the sides so that the smaller side can't gain an advantage because a larger attacker can't bring all its force to bear
A prior question is 'Should they?' A basic element of choosing terrain is to deny your enemy the ability to bring all his force to bear. Leonidas at Thermopylae. Alexander at Granicus focused his phalanx of companions whereas his opponent spread his numerically superior cavalry across the whole front. And the whole purpose of turning a flank is to create a front where you can apply superior force even with lesser numbers.
Why do you argue that the whole merit of tactics should be removed from battle? Is the only force multiplier available to you superior numbers?
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Goblin Squad Member
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send a hash to every client...Never, ever trust the client. It is in the hands of the enemy.Hey Ryan, Bludd and I asked a couple of on topic questions...
Does passive rep and alignment gain and loss occur while you are offline?
Your answer is already in the post. It says each "hour of playtime". You can't play while logged off. Unless GW has redefined playtime for their game (they haven't) then playtime and being logged out are mutually exclusive states.
You'll have to be logged in.
It makes sense right. Passive reputation gain is a reward for acting cool in the game so why would you get that reward if you're not even in the game? The only exception I can see is (not necessarily passive anyway) if you attacker-flag-hit someone but logout before they die to attempt to avoid the associated rep/alignment changes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If player numbers are capped how do you intend to make it fair for the sides so that the smaller side can't gain an advantage because a larger attacker can't bring all its force to bearA prior question is 'Should they?' A basic element of choosing terrain is to deny your enemy the ability to bring all his force to bear. Leonidas at Thermopylae. Alexander at Granicus focused his phalanx of companions whereas his opponent spread his numerically superior cavalry across the whole front. And the whole purpose of turning a flank is to create a front where you can apply superior force even with lesser numbers.
Why do you argue that the whole merit of tactics should be removed from battle? Is the only force multiplier available to you superior numbers?
Never ever EVER let yourself get roped into a fair fight. I thought this guy said he played EVE..