Server population

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Population limits will be enforced on each server.[1]

  • Around 8-10k concurrent users per server is projected.[2][3][4][5]
  • Initially there will be a limited number of registered accounts (approximately 15,000) per server to help mitigate login queues.[6]
    • This limit will increase over time to around 50,000 registered accounts per server.[6][7][8]
  • There may be queues to get into high population servers, but the aim is to avoid excessively long queues.[8]
  • The developers intend to carefully manage server populations via the use of character creation throttles to avoid the need to merge servers.[7][9]
  • The developers may occasionally release stats relating to server populations and archetype/class makeup, but there isn't going to be an official page that surfaces this information.[10]

Managing population density

Ashes of Creation features a custom network back-end with proprietary Unreal Engine networking code to enable mass combat in the open world: such as PvP, Node sieges, Castle sieges, Dungeons and World bosses.[12][13]

Player density is a very important aspect of our custom network layer. Zach and his team have been doing an incredible job of creating a unique network layer that we utilize in Ashes of Creation to facilitate, not just the player density goals, but also the open-world and seamless travel across that world. There's a number of different strategies that we employ when architecting the network layer. Some of those things have to do with the significance of replicated data that the player is receiving as the density gets higher. We mitigate calls and reduce the significance distance- the net relevancy distance. We keep things specifically that need to be known for the player directionality, which direction they're facing. Those are the most pertinent data that we transfer- that we transmit to the player character. So there's a lot of different strategies. It's a relatively complex system but our goal is to satisfy hundreds of players available within a given area; and certain events, especially castle sieges, caravans are one of those types of events, and our architecture facilitates that.[14]Steven Sharif
  • The networking solution dynamically distributes processes and scales up necessary server instances to accommodate player density across the world.[12][15]

Population based scaling

The prices that NPCs sell items for will scale based on the economic activity on a server. Prices will rise to combat inflation and fall as a population diminishes.[16]

The node system allows the developers to scale the experience needed to level a node and the attrition that affects a node based on activity.[16]

Things that NPCs buy and sell scale based on the economic activity that exists on that server... As inflation rises, prices rise and everything ends up being equal, even though there might be a couple of extra zeros. So that can go up and it can also go down so as a population leaves, things become less expensive and players don't have to do as much to earn that. On the other side of things we look at the node system and the node system is set up in this really flexible way that allows us to scale the experience needed to level a node and the attrition that delevels a node to scale based on activity too. So it's just a matter of adjusting a couple of constants and that goes up and down and the server can watch it and change those on the fly as it needs to.[16]Jeffrey Bard

Server merges

The developers intend to carefully manage server populations via the use of character creation throttles to avoid the need to merge servers.[7][9]

  • Only servers that share the same timezone will be merged together.[17]
  • The server with the lower population (weaker server) will be merged into the server with the higher population (stronger server).[17]
  • Players from the weaker server will be provided the opportunity to change their character names during the merger.[17]
  • There are two options for player owned land and property depending on the difference in size of the two servers.[17]
    1. For equal sized servers, property ownership will be reset for both servers, requiring all players to reestablish property ownership when the merge is complete.[17]
    2. For merges into a stronger server, only the players coming from the weaker server will be required to establish property ownership following the merge.[17]
Part of the equation of essentially watching to make sure that we don't over populate the server selection, but at the same time making sure that there's not a queue system in place that's so long it's detrimental to the concurrency of the player's will to play so to speak. It's a tough balancing act.[8]Steven Sharif

Server transfers

Server transfers, outside of server merges, will not be possible initially.[17][18]

  • The developers intend to assess the impact on housing and other systems closer to launch.[18]

See also

References