Different start systems

[phreon]

I just found this game website and read about it. Looks really great.

I read that all players start in one point Alioth planet. I have an idea - maybe it will be more interesting if have some more start points in nearby systems, two or three and new players randomly start in one of them. Start points should be not very far from each other, so after some time people discovered other habitat systems. Maybe it will be a basis to begins a different factions from the start of game. 

[mrjacobean]

This would split the playerbase and only effect the players at launch (both bad things in an MMO). Imagine the frustration on finding that you and your friend have started on different planets when you were going to work from the start. In the long run it wouldn't achieve much either. There are already factions in the game (see the top 20-ish orgs). Remember it would also take several months in order to have common transport between neighboring systems (the few months to get the stargate expansion and then a few more months to build and deploy enough of them).

[BliitzTheFox]

The whole point is social interaction, to do that we need everyone starting in the same place, separating them would be horrific for early gameplay when we dont have ftl or any means to reach these other planets. Absolutely not, everyone must start in the same place to be fair and allow communities to be formed.

 

In case you don't know how bad this idea is, we will lack ftl and even atmospheric engines at start, meaning these planets could be separated for months after release. And all their markets, and it would ruin immersion and the lore. There is no positive point to this at all.

[Lord_Void]

It does seem like having everyone starting in the same place would get crowded, but the planets are really big. Like the others have said, being separated would do more harm than good. It will be months until the players can reach other star systems, perhaps even around a year. By the time they connected, the different worlds would be totally alien to each other. Imagine you start playing with your friends and you all get assigned to different start locations. Not to mention this defeats the point of it being a single shard game if everyone is separated to start with. 

 

That being said, it'll be interesting to see 20k - 50k players tarting in one spot.

 

Welcome to the game o7

[ATMLVE]

I believe it has been said though that players will be able to discover other Arkships. These ships may be defunct, or they may be able to be activated and turned into a new possible spawn point for new players. However, what everyone has said in this thread is true. In order to spawn at these Arkships, players will have to reach them first. I imagine it would then act just like the original Alioth Arkship, with a protection zone, and then allowing players the choice of where to spawn.

 

But beyond knowing that it has been said that finding new arkships will be possible, everything is speculation.

[Warden]

The starting planet or ark ship settlement would need to be somewhat large if we rule out different starting worlds. I just cannot imagine several thousand players in one relatively small place. Even if the tech makes it possible, it may not be overly helpful when I try to think how crowded and potentially "unusable" any local or global chat might become.

 

Surely it will be figured out and then chosen wisely until (late) Beta or so.

[Anaximander]

The starting planet or ark ship settlement would need to be somewhat large if we rule out different starting worlds. I just cannot imagine several thousand players in one relatively small place. Even if the tech makes it possible, it may not be overly helpful when I try to think how crowded and potentially "unusable" any local or global chat might become.

 

Surely it will be figured out and then chosen wisely until (late) Beta or so.

20km radius is not "Small".

[ostris]

I think the only reason they would have multiple start zones is if the hype train goes out of control and they have 100k-200k players all trying to get in day 1. The best bet in that case would be to have one large (20km) safe start zone on Alioth and then several very close by small moons with smaller start zones and players can pick where they want to start. I think this is kinda unlikely but i hope NQ has planned for such an event.

[Anaximander]

I think the only reason they would have multiple start zones is if the hype train goes out of control and they have 100k-200k players all trying to get in day 1. The best bet in that case would be to have one large (20km) safe start zone on Alioth and then several very close by small moons with smaller start zones and players can pick where they want to start. I think this is kinda unlikely but i hope NQ has planned for such an event.

How does the player number matter? They have a cloud-server. It's the whole purpose of it, more people sign-in, more servers are clustered. The system can scale regardless of how many sign in. If a DDoS attack can't take down a cloud server, you bet 200000 unique sign-ins won't do that either.

 

I don't think NQ benefits from spliting up the playerbase at start, cause they can capitalise on showing the nubmers of people o nscreen at once and all them graphs PC Gamer and IGN love to showcase.

 

 

Now, if the worry was "will the resources suffice", yes, the resources will suffice. People need to get a gripthat a 100km radiu planet has enough resources to take care of 200000 players for the first six months.

[ostris]

How does the player number matter? They have a cloud-server. It's the whole purpose of it, more people sign-in, more servers are clustered. The system can scale regardless of how many sign in. If a DDoS attack can't take down a cloud server, you bet 200000 unique sign-ins won't do that either.

 

I don't think NQ benefits from spliting up the playerbase at start, cause they can capitalise on showing the nubmers of people o nscreen at once and all them graphs PC Gamer and IGN love to showcase.

 

 

Now, if the worry was "will the resources suffice", yes, the resources will suffice. People need to get a gripthat a 100km radiu planet has enough resources to take care of 200000 players for the first six months.

Player count matters because you will eventually hit a point where the amount of players just becomes noise and adds no net value. if its no 200k its 500k or 1 million. Eventually you will hit a point where having a certain amount of players in a 20km safe zone to start the game will just look and feel like a complete mess.

 

Just because the servers can handles the dynamic space splitting mentioned in dev diaries and what not doesn't mean they should force it for no reason. There is overhead with the server architecture and spinning up new vms/containers w/e it is they are doing. If there is a purpose for doing it, like some epic giant space battle between two large groups, then its great they can do it. But there is very little reason to force 200k on to a single planet and force thousands of new vms or changing the region for thousands of vms for very little reason. Simple example if a vm can handle 50k players and there are 50k player on a planet they can all move around and cluster up on that planet with no work needed to be done. If you put 100k on that planet you now have to split which vm is handling what space depending on where the players group. Putting an insane amount of load like 200k players in a small area on a release of a game(releases are always very difficult) just seems needless and will put a huge amount of extra work on the server.

 

Lets say the servers can handle all the load no problem. You still have the issue of forcing huge player density on players computers. Some computers may have trouble handling this, in fact most will. Once again if there is a purpose to it like some giant fight, people can lower settings to compensate or w/e but forcing this on everyone all the time on the start planet safe zone for no reason is just a bad way to handle the situation.

 

With the devs saying it wont be THAT long(couple weeks to a month) to get non ftl space travel going there really isn't a dividing of the community as these will be moons and very close to each other.

 

Ultimately no matter how its looked at there is a player count this will simple add way to much work to servers/local machines and be an overall negative impact on player experience. Maybe its 100k maybe its 200k maybe its a million. I'm not sure how much but I hope they have a plan for it.

[mrjacobean]

Player count matters because you will eventually hit a point where the amount of players just becomes noise and adds no net value. if its no 200k its 500k or 1 million. Eventually you will hit a point where having a certain amount of players in a 20km safe zone to start the game will just look and feel like a complete mess.

You do realise that a city with that amount of players is less than the 20KM safe zone in surface area, yes? Also remember that there are timezones, so not everyone will spawn in at once. It is going to be chaos to begin with, but it would be the same when these hundreds of thousands of people have just woken up after they have left their planet of birth.

 

Lets say the servers can handle all the load no problem. You still have the issue of forcing huge player density on players computers. Some computers may have trouble handling this, in fact most will. Once again if there is a purpose to it like some giant fight, people can lower settings to compensate or w/e but forcing this on everyone all the time on the start planet safe zone for no reason is just a bad way to handle the situation.

Only a few 'chunks' radius will be rendered on the client, so the more people/activity nearby, the lower your view distance (due to smaller chunks)

 

Remember that the devs can learn from alpha/beta world start, so they will have accurate models for how to approach the problem.

[Anaximander]

@ostris

 

 

Actor model. Learn it. It's tied with the background data streaming they do.

 

Yeah, there is no limit. What you describe applies to CSP, not Actor based programming.

[ostris]

You do realise that a city with that amount of players is less than the 20KM safe zone in surface area, yes? Also remember that there are timezones, so not everyone will spawn in at once. It is going to be chaos to begin with, but it would be the same when these hundreds of thousands of people have just woken up after they have left their planet of birth.

 

Only a few 'chunks' radius will be rendered on the client, so the more people/activity nearby, the lower your view distance (due to smaller chunks)

 

Remember that the devs can learn from alpha/beta world start, so they will have accurate models for how to approach the problem.

All true. I guess my point is instead of having a low view distance because some very cool event is occurring or a huge city/battle that literally cannot exist in any other game to date is trying to load. You will instead have a lower view distance literally walking anywhere in the safe zone and possibly the related performances issues. i have no doubt NQ can handle it. I just think one of the solutions may be to split up safe zones. At least this is a good problem to have it means the game is very popular.

[ostris]

@ostris

 

 

Actor model. Learn it. It's tied with the background data streaming they do.

 

Yeah, there is no limit. What you describe applies to CSP, not Actor based programming.

Alrighty twerk

[ShadowLordAlpha]

All true. I guess my point is instead of having a low view distance because some very cool event is occurring or a huge city/battle that literally cannot exist in any other game to date is trying to load. You will instead have a lower view distance literally walking anywhere in the safe zone and possibly the related performances issues. i have no doubt NQ can handle it. I just think one of the solutions may be to split up safe zones. At least this is a good problem to have it means the game is very popular.

Alright so I'm just going to flat out say no. As far as I have seen the view distance is not actually truly affected. What I have seen them do in the videos was actually throttle the number of update packets going to a client based on distance from said client. This makes the movement less smooth (viewing) for people far away but still functional. This also helps a lot with the exponential growth of packets being sent for players in an area because of how much you can cut down due to client side smoothing and interpolation that can take place without the need to a ton of extra data. It just normally isn't as accurate

[Anaximander]

Alright so I'm just going to flat out say no. As far as I have seen the view distance is not actually truly affected. What I have seen them do in the videos was actually throttle the number of update packets going to a client based on distance from said client. This makes the movement less smooth (viewing) for people far away but still functional. This also helps a lot with the exponential growth of packets being sent for players in an area because of how much you can cut down due to client side smoothing and interpolation that can take place without the need to a ton of extra data. It just normally isn't as accurate

Shhh, don't let Ostris find out what movement prediction is. He doesn't know yet. He already has a hard time grasping WTF Actors are in programming.

[Lord_Void]

Player count matters because you will eventually hit a point where the amount of players just becomes noise and adds no net value. if its no 200k its 500k or 1 million. Eventually you will hit a point where having a certain amount of players in a 20km safe zone to start the game will just look and feel like a complete mess.

 

Just because the servers can handles the dynamic space splitting mentioned in dev diaries and what not doesn't mean they should force it for no reason. There is overhead with the server architecture and spinning up new vms/containers w/e it is they are doing. If there is a purpose for doing it, like some epic giant space battle between two large groups, then its great they can do it. But there is very little reason to force 200k on to a single planet and force thousands of new vms or changing the region for thousands of vms for very little reason. Simple example if a vm can handle 50k players and there are 50k player on a planet they can all move around and cluster up on that planet with no work needed to be done. If you put 100k on that planet you now have to split which vm is handling what space depending on where the players group. Putting an insane amount of load like 200k players in a small area on a release of a game(releases are always very difficult) just seems needless and will put a huge amount of extra work on the server.

 

Lets say the servers can handle all the load no problem. You still have the issue of forcing huge player density on players computers. Some computers may have trouble handling this, in fact most will. Once again if there is a purpose to it like some giant fight, people can lower settings to compensate or w/e but forcing this on everyone all the time on the start planet safe zone for no reason is just a bad way to handle the situation.

 

With the devs saying it wont be THAT long(couple weeks to a month) to get non ftl space travel going there really isn't a dividing of the community as these will be moons and very close to each other.

 

Ultimately no matter how its looked at there is a player count this will simple add way to much work to servers/local machines and be an overall negative impact on player experience. Maybe its 100k maybe its 200k maybe its a million. I'm not sure how much but I hope they have a plan for it.

 

I think you vastly overestimate the number of players that will be concentrated in any given area and vastly underestimate the capability of the server system. 

 

Firstly, number of players. As much as we all love to imagine this game as THE game, the reality is that it is pretty niche at the moment, and will be until it can demonstrate itself after launch. Right now there are around 9K backers of the game which based on the rate of new backers is probably not going to go much higher than 10K. Through advertising and people watching alpha/beta gameplay, that number will probably increase 5 to 10 times, giving a "core community" of 50K - 100K people. These are the people who are likely to get the game day one. More people will come in over time in the following weeks and months as reviews are written and they hear feedback from their friends. Keeping in mind that only 10% - 20% of those people are going to be online at given time and you are only looking at 5K to 20K online at any given time during the first few weeks of the game. Spreading those players out across the planet (which they will spread out naturally, and quickly) means that there are no extremely crowded areas (I mean, based on what we know there could be as much as 126,000 km^2 on the planet, spread even 100K players over that and you still have less that one person per km^2 on average). 

 

Secondly, server tech. The main selling point of the server technology here is that it is specifically designed to be able to handle high concentrations of players. Saying that they should make changes to avoid putting load on it is like refusing to drive a high performance super car faster that 60mph because you don't want to strain it. 

[ostris]

Alright so I'm just going to flat out say no. As far as I have seen the view distance is not actually truly affected. What I have seen them do in the videos was actually throttle the number of update packets going to a client based on distance from said client. This makes the movement less smooth (viewing) for people far away but still functional. This also helps a lot with the exponential growth of packets being sent for players in an area because of how much you can cut down due to client side smoothing and interpolation that can take place without the need to a ton of extra data. It just normally isn't as accurate

So i think maybe some things are getting mixing up. This comment was in response to:

 

You do realise that a city with that amount of players is less than the 20KM safe zone in surface area, yes? Also remember that there are timezones, so not everyone will spawn in at once. It is going to be chaos to begin with, but it would be the same when these hundreds of thousands of people have just woken up after they have left their planet of birth.

 

Only a few 'chunks' radius will be rendered on the client, so the more people/activity nearby, the lower your view distance (due to smaller chunks)

 

Remember that the devs can learn from alpha/beta world start, so they will have accurate models for how to approach the problem.

 

This was not an issue about network traffic. this was an issue of client side rendering of 100k player models(or however many were in view). The amount of updates isn't the primary issue that I'm addressing as NQ has a proposed solution to that. I hadn't heard of reducing view distance as being an actual solution to the problem proposed by NQ. I didn't really question it cause its doesn't address the larger issue that all of these performance increasing techniques should be used for a purpose not just because everyone is clustered together at the start. Meaning if i go in to a huge player owned city and a cost of that is reduced view distance/refresh rate I'm ok with that because it has to be done to allow that city to exist. Dropping everyone in the same start zone means that these techniques will be used a huge percentage of the time just running around the ark because of the player density at the start. This could have a negative impact on player experience and first impressions of the game.

 

@lord_void i agree. I stated originally "I think the only reason they would have multiple start zones is if the hype train goes out of control and they have 100k-200k players all trying to get in day 1" and that its not likely to happen but hopefully they plan for it.

[Lord_Void]

 

@lord_void i agree. I stated originally "I think the only reason they would have multiple start zones is if the hype train goes out of control and they have 100k-200k players all trying to get in day 1" and that its not likely to happen but hopefully they plan for it.

 

I'm sure they will plan for it and make adjustments as needed. They will probably be able to predict how the first month or two of the game will go based on Beta and advertising data. I'm sure that if there is a concern about an extremely large day 1 influx, they will brace the servers for it. 

[ostris]

I'm sure they will plan for it and make adjustments as needed. They will probably be able to predict how the first month or two of the game will go based on Beta and advertising data. I'm sure that if there is a concern about an extremely large day 1 influx, they will brace the servers for it. 

If i were less lazy I would get the gif of Samuel L Jackson in Jurassic park saying Hold onto your butts.

[Lachenlaud]

So here's my thought on this... DU is going to be doing an Alpha... and a Beta period.... This will give them time to decide whether or not multiple spawn zones (perhaps player selected) are a requirement for the game to operate.  

 

After all, if during Alpha it sorta smells like a Zerg, then during Beta it starts to look like a Zerg... they can then decide if it really IS a Zerg and go from there... 

 

Frankly from all I've observed, the folks putting this show together have put a LOT of careful thought into the mechanics of the game, and probably spent many an all nighter debating what they should and should not be like.  

 

I personally could reasonably see the Lore changed so that several Novark ships landed on the same planet, perhaps with a small smattering of unsuccessful landings as well (oooh... mystery to solve!) and having a user driven choice allow players to select which LZ they want to initially spawn in.  This way if there are groups that want to spawn in the same spot, they can do so, and if there are folks who just don't give a flip about which zone they spawn in they can take whatever the server recommends due to load at the time of initial entry. 

 

'nuff said!

[0something0]

I personally like this idea, but there should be a way to go from an arkship to another freely, like some sort of handwavy device similar to a Resurrection Node.

[Lethys]

I don't really see the need for spreading the playerbase early on. There is plenty of room, even for 200k people. Taking timezones into account, there won't be that many on day 1.

 

NQ already said that there MAY BE a second arkship added later on as spawnpoint for newbros with a POSSIBLE one-time teleport to it (so you can't abuse it). But I think that's only needed when the area around the first ship is depleted, full of constructs and pirate campers so that newbros don't have a reasonable chance to get ressources.

[0something0]

People keep saying that there are enough space for lots of players at the Arkzone.

 

Lets say there are 50k new users at the Arkzone, in a 20 km radius. This means the area of the Arkzone is 400pi or about 1256 km^2. Dividing that by 50k players give you about 25 m^2 per player. That is about 5 m by 5 m. Talk about 20 km being huge! 

 

People say that the planet will have a 100km radius, which leaves us a surface area of 126000 km^2 for a perfectly flat planet. Again, dividing that by 50k gives us 2.52 km^2 per player, or 500 m by 500 m. Better, but still rather crowded. 

 

Now, lets talk about ore density. In Minecraft, the ore density for Iron is about 0.6% of all blocks below 50 blocks above bedrock. Assuming an average ore density for all ores of that, and that the editable voxels are 10 km deep. The total volume is 4190000 km^3-3050000 km^3 = 1140000 km^3 of editable voxels. 0.6% of that is 6840 km^3 of ore, which means each player gets about 0.14 km^3 of ore, or about 5m by 5m by 5m. If we increase the ore density to that of Minecraft Coal, about 1%, we get 11400 km^3 of ore, or about 0.23 km^3, 6.1m by 6.1m by 6.1m of ore. 

 

The following measurements show that Allioth cannot sustain newcomers for longer periods of time.

[Lethys]

Oh, just increase it to 10 or 20%. Or, you know, use the crafting system to increase the amount of iron you get from ore. Or the skill system (skills yield more iron and you can build a more efficient furnace)