Discuss gameplay: Combine Servers
By
Aett_Thorn,
Posted on: 2012-04-06 19:11 in Suggestions and Ideas
There are some good points, I would like to see cross server activity made a bit easier, for example, you are in a team on a server that begins to load up, being able to temporarily move your team to another server would be a great thing. Using your favorite toon to team with friends on other servers.
From a players point of view, I don't think that merging the servers would work, but allowing a seamless transition between servers might. (You have departed Earth Champion and arrived on Earth Virtue.) When visiting other servers you might have to default to your global while there, but I am OK with that!
Obviously, I am not a programmer so I have no clue as how difficult or easy this might be, but I think it is a better alternative to the OP.
I've seen games that do stuff like Character-Servername when you're in a cross-server group together, but actually now that I think about it, that should be unnecessary. The only thing you really need unique names for is sending tells to people on your team -- and we already have a well-established cross-server chat mechanism to use (global names)!
Things like trading already require you to target the person so that shouldn't be an issue, and since it's already easy to move things across servers, they don't have to go out of their way to block it.
I'm not even going to bother explaining how dumb this idea still is.
I've lost count of the number of times I've already done so, and this post is the maximum amount of time I'm prepared to waste on this thread.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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The game already sort of does this when you're on a mission map. All available evidence points to instance servers being allocated on demand from a pool that is shared between all the various shards, making the term "server" a complete misnomer. We can't prove that of course, but it certainly fits observed behavior. Consolidating everything into the Dallas datacenter makes this even more the case.|
Originally Posted by Remaugen
There are some good points, I would like to see cross server activity made a bit easier, for example, you are in a team on a server that begins to load up, being able to temporarily move your team to another server would be a great thing.
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The only remaining thing that affects performance on individual shards is the number of people in a city zone together. The game seems to require geometrically more processing power the more players you have in close proximity. There have been some engine improvements lately to mitigate this, but things like Hami and MS raids can still cause slowdown.
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Pssst.....your friend can make TWO characters you know.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
It always irks me a little when people consider "high server load" to be a good thing. Those dots on the side indicate server performance, people. You don't want them to be red because then the server starts lagging and dropping people off and you start waiting in queue.
That said, I've always preferred the concept of one global server for all players to share like what Champions Online uses, not because of population issues, but because I'm sick and tired of the character I want to play not being on the same server as that my friends are playing on right now. I actually have a Free Account friend right now that I would gladly pay for. We made his one character on Victory because that's my "main" server, and now he refuses to play the game because I'm currently playing in Pinnacle. |
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
For the reasons stated.
I was doing some playthroughs of City of Heroes. Now they will serve as memories of a better time ...
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Beat me to it.
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Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Pssst.....your friend can make TWO characters you know.
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BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
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Originally Posted by _Klaw_
They won't need to merge the servers. A while back I took part in an open beta where they tested cross-server teaming and it seemed to work, if the populations drop too much and there is a lot of free bandwidth it shouldn't be a problem to implement it.
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
The main thing is. They've already spoken up about this. The "servers" are running in a virtualized manner now. So it doesn't really cost them any extra to have 20 servers than it does to have 10 servers.
And, as hardware capability increases, this is just going to get easier and cheaper for them. |
Well they COULD merge Freedumb and Virtue, then I'd only have one mega server to ignore.
Check out the Repeat Offenders network of SGs! You'll be glad you did.
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More likely the Virtue players will decide to move to a completely different server because people choose not to play on Freedom for a reason. |
Originally Posted by Atilla_The_Pun
Well they COULD merge Freedumb and Virtue, then I'd only have one mega server to ignore.
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I'm a victim!!!|
Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
DramaQueen.
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Don't I know you???
Comine servers, no thanks. But it would be nice if the team up teleporter could be used cross server though. Would be easier to get a specific TF/SF that you want. Specially on redside.
Team Tios
Defiant to the last!
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My apologies, I didn't mean to support just my idea. I welcome all comments to support or not support this idea
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Originally Posted by Lotus_Maximus
I've been a long time game player of COV/COH and yet to see any servers combine with each other. Many servers are slower than others, or not as busy.
I think it's time that some servers are combined with others, to provide a much needed team oriented self serving ehancement to all players. Combining servers with other noncompetive servers I'm sure will provide a more stuctured and fluent gaming experience to all players, giving them more communication, knowledge, competiveness, challenges and most of all less work flow for the Dev's or any Tech. This is just an idea so please focus your comments on promoting this idea as oppose to not supporting combining servers. |
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And four pages of comments later, with absolutely no support at all, you are fishing for some positive feedback?|
Originally Posted by Lotus_Maximus
My apologies, I didn't mean to support just my idea. I welcome all comments to support or not support this idea
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How about your feelings about the points being raised in objection to merging servers?
In a game that encourages alting to the extent that City does, I know that I am not unique in having 200+ characters, any one of whom I would be quite upset to lose should the servers merge and the two merged servers combined have more than the 48 character single server limit. And the two servers with the most characters are not high pop servers, Champion and Justice (actually, Champion combined with any server but Zukunft and Vigilance will result in the loss of characters).
Others have already said it. You want a more populated server, move there yourself. Don't inconvenience everyone else by insisting that the other servers come to you.
New story arcs coming soon (ARC IDs will be aded when I finish the arc):
So, you want to join the Hellions? (level 1-14 Villainous arc)
Sparks & Steel (level 5-20 Heroic arc)
and
So you want to join the Skulls? (level 1-14 Villainous arc)
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Don't encourage the OP he only posted again to bump his thread back to the first page. Let it die and drop off again.
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Originally Posted by Lightfoot
And four pages of comments later, with absolutely no support at all, you are fishing for some positive feedback?
How about your feelings about the points being raised in objection to merging servers? In a game that encourages alting to the extent that City does, I know that I am not unique in having 200+ characters, any one of whom I would be quite upset to lose should the servers merge and the two merged servers combined have more than the 48 character single server limit. And the two servers with the most characters are not high pop servers, Champion and Justice (actually, Champion combined with any server but Zukunft and Vigilance will result in the loss of characters). Others have already said it. You want a more populated server, move there yourself. Don't inconvenience everyone else by insisting that the other servers come to you. |
I've never been a fan of combining servers when the argument is there aren't enough people to team with. I LIKE that! At the same time, I've also always been a fan of having just one global server for the simple reason that server divides are half of what keeps me from teaming with my friends. A lot of the people I originally met on the forums simply don't play on the servers I do, so we never get to play together. To me, it's less a question of population and more a question of borders and boundaries.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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That said, I would really like to see cross-server teaming at some point in the future. Since most missions are instanced, I think it should be possible, once some tech hurdles are cleared. I could see it working where you send an invite to a global name, and while you are unable to go to the same open zone as them, you could enter a mission and end up in the same one. There are some questions of course, like how to deal with two teammates with the same name. However the game already has plenty of NPCs that share names so it might not be too big of an issue.
I've always been for the idea of Cross-server teaming though, possibly using Portal Corp as a means of jumping between "realities". But I'd accept just a purely mechanical way of doing it (ie join a team on a different server and be teleported to whatever map the leader is on)