would you prefer 2 servers to own more land ?

[mindtrigger]

Here is my thought on this because some of you know I was one of the more vocal people *against* War and Peace in the discussion threads, though I feel most people agreed with my position.

Ultimately, what would produce THE most interesting version of Xsyon, and what could be used as a huge selling point for the future growth of the game, is having the entire community on one server, just like EVE. Why? Because how amazing would it be if every player of this game, and everyone on the forums or in IRC chat, plays on the same server as you? We would all share the evolution of this game together as one big community. This changes a lot more than you may think. If you have never played a thriving sandbox game before, then you may not know that the players ARE the content in this type of game. The more interesting people you have on your server, the better.

Now, I am a tech, and a coder, so I realize this may or may not be technically feasible. EVE is a space based game (until they expand it soon), and by comparison, the amount of effort needed to expand the space in the game is probably a lot less than a ground based game. I'm sure there are many, many other technical challenges I know nothing about, not being an MMO programmer.

IF WE MUST have multiple servers due to a high load of players and the technical inability of the developers to expand a single server, then the rules should be IDENTICAL on all servers, so that we do not upset the balance of players any more than we have to.

War and Peace, no matter what the technical rule set was, caused people to see one as PvE and the other as PvP and make server choices based on this. Right or wrong, that is what happened. This would have split up the community in a way that would have made it less diverse and interesting and ultimately may have killed the game.

This is my opinion, and the devs may have a different vision. Someone posted a Goodbye Letter on the forum from one of the well known Mortal Online players. This is a good read and can serve as a crystal ball for this game in many ways.

[ifireallymust]

I would love to see 2 servers in the near future, or even 2 Peace servers and 1 War server, depending on how things would split. (With a restriction on the 2 Peace servers that would not allow someone to have characters on both, but giving players the ability to have 1 on a Peace server and 1 on a War server).

I've seen videos of what a couple of people used to be able to do in this game. Even before the newest incoming homestead shrinkage, I don't have near that amount of sand to play on. If there were more servers, maybe Homesteads could be a little larger. More elbow room is a good thing. But 67 pages of mostly "Bwaaa please no!" in a certain thread leads me to believe things will have to seriously go wrong on the single server before there's any major change of opinion. People love their one server. Well, let's see how much some of you love it in a few days. I admit, I'm enjoying the tears of some smaller tribes who told us homesteaders we were second class citizens and lucky to be able to play at all and who told us to get some friends, and who are now crying because they're getting to find out what it's like to be a second class citizen, too. I like that. Sweet, sweet justice. Enjoy your restrictions, welcome to the back of the bus.

[mrcalhou]

No. I would rather them figure out how to make the game's server function more more like Eve's servers so that the game stays on one shard.

[Marcolo]

I concur, one server.

The more people we can aggregate into a single server (limited only by load/responsiveness) the better for the game play. I am willing to sacrifice totem position for a more interactive game. In time, I suspect the mechanics of claiming land will be changed to address the current issues of rush and overlap. But for now I think the changes are a reasonable compromise to give us more options, and would rather have more people to interact with.

[Cyrus]

EVE is a space based game (until they expand it soon), and by comparison, the amount of effort needed to expand the space in the game is probably a lot less than a ground based game.

IT engineer myself, and here's my opinion.
EVE Shard / Clusters are the best thing ever, but this can't work for Xsyon :

- EVE has space portal "gates" connecting galaxys, so each galaxy could be on a separate server if needed because of crowding (Jita ...). Quest are in instances, with warp "gate". Global statistics, inventory, registers, are on separate global servers. All is calculated on SQL server, without any realtime collision calculation, based on numbers and stats. You just can't aim, but only select and click the button "calculate". And it's a highly optimized SQL stored procedure that will run and answer hit or miss.

- Xsyon zoning is efficient for world landscape loading, but I doubt the zone transition could take a player and change his server seamelessly without some "gate" between the big world squares.
There's no underground, no continents to separate things in the world. And there's some real collision calculation during combats ... In fact, i guess it's the heavy and hard thing to implement for ranged (bow) combat, that could kill one server load, or reveal to the players that the (ranged) combat system is definitely broken.
Planned world growth is 10 time the actual zone hidden in the green myst ... That could be enough, or not. We will see. But server load could be problematic.

- CCP future game "spin off" Dust will uterly fail. This FPS is developped by a third party chinese studio. It won't run on PC, but on console only. Targeted players aren't Eve playerbase, but console casual, attracted to the real Eve after some "ground" fun. No game complementation. Ever. Just a classic FPS.

[Tandarie]

I admit, I'm enjoying the tears of some smaller tribes who told us homesteaders we were second class citizens and lucky to be able to play at all and who told us to get some friends, and who are now crying because they're getting to find out what it's like to be a second class citizen, too. I like that. Sweet, sweet justice. Enjoy your restrictions, welcome to the back of the bus.

LOL me too

[ifireallymust]

- Xsyon zoning is efficient for world landscape loading, but I doubt the zone transition could change the player server without some gate between the big squares. No undeground, no continents to separate things.

Quoted this part just because underground zones and new continents (States?) (Other territorial differentiation that could lead to zones?) would be awesome, sweet, whatever you kids are calling good things these days...get off mah lawn!

Oops, sorry, where was I? Oh yeah. Underground...bunkers, cities, already exist in some places, especially in the midwest, or so go the rumors...shafting in sunlight...underground rivers...digging...tunneling...daydream....

Where was I again?

Oh yeah. lol Tandarie, did we forget to tell them it's standing room only?

[mindtrigger]

IT engineer myself, and there's my opinion.
EVE Shard / Clusters are the best thing ever, but this can't work for Xsyon :

- EVE has space portal "gates" connecting galaxys, so each galaxy could be on a separate server if needed because of crowding (Jita ...). Quest are in instances, with warp "gate". Global statistics, inventory, registers, are on separate global servers. All is calculated on SQL server, without any realtime collision calculation, based on numbers and stats. You just can't aim, but only select and click the button "calculate".

- Xsyon zoning is efficient for world landscape loading, but I doubt the zone transition could take a player and change his server seamelessly without some "gate" between the big world squares.
There's no underground, no continents to separate things in the world. And there's some real collision calculation during combats ... In fact, i guess it's the heavy and hard thing to implement for ranged (bow) combat, that could kill one server, or reveal the combat system is broken.
Planned world growth is 10 time the actual zone hidden in the green myst ... That could be enough, or not. We will see. But server load could be problematic.

- CCP future game "spin off" Dust will uterly fail. This FPS is developped by a third party chinese studio. It won't run on PC, but on console only. Targeted players aren't Eve playerbase, but console casual, attracted to the real Eve after some "ground" fun. No game complementation. Ever. Just a classic FPS.

Agreed on all of the above. I wasn't talking about Dust as far as EVE ground play. Last I checked they were going to start doing stuff with the planets in the main game, beginning with mining/resources, and possibly going nuts from there in the future (visiting planets, playing on the ground, exploration, etc.) Who knows though; look how long station ambulation is taking. Once they have it though, it will work on planets too.

What I love about CCP is they never really say never, and they have developed their server technology to scale however the hell they want. Amazing when you consider it.

I'm not opposed to zoning in this game in the future if it will help them build a single server (shard/cluster) system. Few games can hide it like EVE does with warp travel, but as long as we aren't constantly zoning like Age of Conan (and breaking immersion every ten minutes), I'm ok with it.

[mrcalhou]

Personally, I wouldn't mind some "zoning" either if it helped expand the current playable area and kept things in a single universe. As far as the land area, I think things will improve in the future when (hopefully not "if"), they implement land that cannot be owned like with current tribal mechanics, but where any player that has the proper skills would be able to build or terraform at their leisure. As long as the rules effect everyone, and it's balanced (not impossible at all), then it would work spades better than what we have now.

I'm not completely opposed to how things are now, they could even leave this initial, or the first couple expansions with the same rule-set, or change it so that their is a progression of safe zones (The first area becomes completely safe: No PvP at all, then the next area has player owned safezones but PvP is open between them (like it is now), and then no hard-coded safe zones: land is only as "safe" as the player or tribes ability to make it that "safe.") Balance it out where there's different resources and things to hunt in each area and then the players will find their own niche within the gameworld, since all resources would be needed for different things.

[Zarin]

1 Server.

But I think a lot of us like the close knit and active feel of the game.

Before going for 2 servers I would even say I would rather have a loading screen through a cave or something into a separate world as way to increase server performance. I would must prefer that than separating the community into two servers.