All Posts by batolemaeus

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Originally posted by wjrasmussen

 
Didn't Jita get brought to it's knees after that change?  Sure the numbers are impressive on how many are on a system at once. 
But what is the average player per zone?  Number of zones/Number of players.
What is the maximum number of players on a zone before you can't put any more people in it?
Let them put a detailed land area like azeroth and let players abulate around it and see how many people will fit onto that area.

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You have to differentiate between dedicated nodes, e.g. jita, and usual nodes.
As usual, things are a little more complicated.

Jita, with the changes, starts becoming considerably less responsive with about 800+ players. It is a physical node, though.
Taking 35k users and 5k zones, we end up with only 7 people per zone ON AVERAGE. Certainly not a lot, and manageable.

Sadly, the world is not an ideal world. People form trade hubs, mission hubs etc.
And when a lot of people band together to fight for a specific ressource that is not evenly distributed, things get nasty. Eve usually starts to choke on the load of two large fleets running into each other.

This is, in my opinion, a conceptial flaw in the design of eve. The devs did at no point think of such large numbers of people in their game during initial development.

The problem with a gameworld of thousands of zones is, that people crowd up. The challenge is to stop them from doing that, so you can run it smoothly.

If you ask me, high travel times and regional "ressource hubs" could help with this. What i mean is that your world is split up in regions that hold all required ressources. Within these regions, which could consist of hundreds of zones, there could be ressource spots to fight over. High travel times would assure that people prefer using the ressources in their current region and fighting over those, or moving into another region.

So, basically, you'd end up with a quasi-sharding. While you can move from every region to another, meet friends, trade rare things, you can live without ever leaving your region. Regions are unique, but there are many of them, and all feature the same basic set of ressources.
Basically, a bunch of traditional servers wit instant character transfer, no transfer fee, and people moving around as they see fit.

Eve is already roughly structured like this, but not consequently enough. As a result of this, their design has a lot of problems - with people.
So, to get back to your azeroth, an eve azeroth would consist of a few hundred interconnected azeroths, which are all randomly generated and populated. Each would feature unique landscapes, paths, vegetation, but the same basic ressources. Now you could watch people spreading around your hundreds of azerothes, building regional communities, and fighting each other. Some people might find an azeroth that allows them to defend its ressources easily. They start building a giant fortress. Some other people lived in the largely flat azeroth2, decide they like the other azeroth, and try to conquer it for its ressources.
This could be happening all over your new world. And stuff would matter, because things HAPPEN, they don't happen on just another shard.

Long story short, the eve way isn't the best. But in the right direction if you ask me.

Btw. actual numbers are very difficult for eve. One physical node might host several zones, so sometimes a starsystem might lag horribly with only 50 people, because a fleetbattle is happening somewhere else, or a 700 people battle runs smoothly because the other systems hosted on that node idle with 1-5 people in them.

My updated fitting, for added survivability. Tanks ~1800dps when flown in pairs, not factoring in signature. This fitting has proven itself tanking a fleet of 5 bs with fighters for several minutes until reinfocements ganked them.

[Guardian, fleet]
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Damage Control II
800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Adaptive Nano Plating II

10MN Afterburner II
ECCM - Radar II

Large 'Solace' I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
Large 'Solace' I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
Large 'Solace' I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
Large 'Solace' I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
Large 'Regard' I Power Projector
Large 'Regard' I Power Projector

Ancillary Current Router I
Anti-EM Pump I

Light Armor Maintenance Bot I x5

Updated setup, i'll let the old one stay though.
The goal was to reduce cost a bit, while maintaining the general fitting.

[Basilisk, fleet]
Power Diagnostic System II
Reactor Control Unit I

10MN Afterburner II
Conjunctive Gravimetric ECCM Scanning Array I
Photon Scattering Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II

Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Large 'Regard' I Power Projector
Large 'Regard' I Power Projector

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

Heh, for logistic work, look in the fitting section on this forum. I'll update my posts on the Guardian and Basilisk.
For a corp that uses logistics heavily, look into morsus mihi alliance. They even have a logistic replacement program.

Basically, logistics are something for very special people. People who don't mind killmails, don't care that the only times they appear on a killboard are their losses, and don't care that they will always be primary.
On the upside, they are usually the most well repsected players in the fleet. I've not seen people blaming logistics for a loss..in contrast to typical fantasy mmos where the healers are always responsible for wipes.. Still, it's absolutely a niche specialization.
Since you already seem to have the required skills, i'll give you one advice: Make sure you can fly both Guardian and Basilisk. Being able to fly the Scimitar is a bonus, the Oneiros is nice for PvE.

The usual logistics tactic is like this: Engage cap-cycle with your partner (logistics fly in pairs). Since the Basilisk and Guardian have a bonus to cap transfers, they can generate a lot of cap out of thin air. Two cap transfers are enough to run all modules on those ships and still have a lot of cap left in case someone neutralizes you.
You find a static spot, e.g. a gate, and orbit it at maximum speed. Then you just watch for incoming damage on your buddy, and repair everyone who is taking damage and is broadcasting. Plus, you usually have the fc, targetcallers and recons in your watchlist and watch out for those.
Sometimes you will even have a separate voice channel for easier coordination.
For fast roamings this changes, and you fly with Scimitars or Oneiros. Their job is to mwd out of danger, and repair from distance. If they get targetet, they warp around or mwd out again.
For PvE, the bonuses of the Oneiros are nice, since you can boost turret ships quite considerably.

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Originally posted by Wickersham

If I'm wrong, you tell me, because like I said, I'm new with this game, but from what i've seen so far it smells like BS to me.

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Take an alt account, pay with gtc.

Train his skills within first paypemt period so you have bs 5, large turret 5 etc. ready. Set long training.

Renew when your alt has finished the long skill, train smaller ones, gap with large turrets at the end of the month.

Renew when your alt has finishd the long skill, train smaller ones, gap with capital ships / carrier skills at the end of the month. Repeat Process.

Come back, sell character for isk, buy a new gtc for a fraction of said isk, rinse and repeat, make isk out of it, ruining the character market and artificially inflating the gtc market.

I doubt ccp ever intended that "feature" to be used in that way..it was documented and used as a selling point by the community for the normal joe who quit the game to come back.
It was a lot more widespread with 30d gtc, now they plugged the hole.

End of story. A lot of whine for something that was rarely used by normal players.

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Originally posted by Kainis
Eve works partly due to it's low poly ship models, whose only saving grace is mid range texture set ups. By low polys, I mean really low. Take a look at many warp gates. They are not circular for a reason, and that reason being the low polys it takes for that shape, compared to more of a circle. We call them isolines. From a distance they are smooth, but up close they are very polygonal.

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The thought that eve works just because the devs were able to intelligently hide a lot of polygons without sacrificing look is kinda funny.
Kainis hard-disk comment is complete nonsense, though. Sorry.

Eve has a zoned model, i think people should know that by now. That is, by the way, in no way different from a lot of ground based fantasy mmos.
This lets them split the players into independant zones, that can be processed individually on different hardware nodes. This is, still, in no way different from other games out there. The graphical processing in the client is completely irrelevant, by the way. The polycount in a scene with 100+ ships is about the same as the polycount in a crowded area in a fantasy mmo. (yes, that is a horrible generalization, but it's what i measured with ryzom vs. eve)

The only difference in eve is, that they have over five thousand of zones.
Each of those zones, or star systems, is interconnected with a few others. By travelling through them you can reach any other zone in the world. Nothing special here.

The real difference is, that ccp chose to not shard a few hundred of those zones, but just pile up a few thousand of them, distribute wealth around them so people have a choice for going to system a or b,c,d,n instead of z. This is the only real difference to a game like wow, where you level around linearly, and a zone you visited earlier in your career is not really interesting anymore.

What this means, is that they found a way to distribute tens of thousands of players around their world. Of course, this is not trivial, as the jita-case shows (1400 players was the peak). This would have to be avoided by better game design in a ground based game, and travelling times would probably do this. If it takees an awful lot of time to travel to the main trade hub, people will build local tradehubs instead.

If you ask me, the system eve uses could be directly translated into a ground based game. You would have to let go of custom quests though and invent a well working quest generator system instead. You'd have to let go of the linear raiding and leveling progression system, too, so people don't let your starter zones crash on the first day, and so there is a motivation to visit zones again.
Also, you'd have to find a good way to build large areas of land without dev interaction, seed them automatically with trees, animals, and ressources, and then maybe do some tweaking manually.

For this to succeed, you will have to go with a well executed sandbox model. Crafting and world shaping would have to play a large role, with territorial wars between clans over ressources and strategical points.

What i'm speaking of is basically a larger, more polished version of wurm online. The only problem i see there is player congestion, which has to be avoided. The key to this is ressource distribution and travel times.

p.s. short summary of the eve server:

Every physical blade server can run several nodes.
Each of those nodes can run several zones (starsystems).
Each player is connected to a proxy server, which manages his movements between zones.
Each zone can run on one cpu max (hard limit in python which is biting ccp in the rear now)
Each node is connected to a very, very mighty database that uses a ramsan as mass storage.
The client is just a dumb terminal.

Considering you need isk to make more isk, they are probably spending it to make more of it.

I don't know what's going on in their twisted minds, though.

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Originally posted by Xpheyel
I suspect mapping as much land as that would require would be far too expensive and time consuming.

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Not really. Just dish out some gnerated maps with a simple perlin generator, seed them with vegetation, seed animals, seed ressources, let players shape the landscape and build things on it.

The only thing that will take a lot of time and research is the terrain streaming and rendering, and the whole crafting aspect. The map itself isn't that much work..

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Originally posted by rikilii
The only way to do this successfully in most MMOs would be to have an insanely vast world

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I'd love to have a ground based mmo that has such a huge world, that travelling through it would take days..

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Originally posted by Kyleran
because there's a huge difference between enlightened excitement and suicidal behavior.

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Suicidal behaviour can be a lot of fun in eve, though.
The last time i attacked a battleship my reasoning was like this:
"I have a frigate, he has a bs. My chances of survival are close to zero.

To heck with it, LEEEROY"

After 20 minutes of fighting, he exploded. During parts of that fight i could barely fire any weapons, and my frigate was always on the edge of falling apart.

By the way, another game has fear. Wurm Online. Because you don't hunt monsters there, monsters hunt you. Outside of the safety of towns you have to be very, very careful.

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Originally posted by Drukstylz

In some games you can ruin yourself at the early stages in your build, skill tree.

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Just don't try to minmax your attributes during char creation.
Another important point: Think of a name that you feel good with. Chances are "l33t d0mJneat0r" won't be the nick you want to use in the next years. Usually people won't change their characters later in the game..

Other than that, feel free to fly around. Keep away from low security space (warning popup will warn you when you try to jump there), and don't steal from people (warning popup will warn you).

Btw., if a can is labeled "free to take", you can bet it's a trap.
Paranoia is a good skill in eve, train it to maximum.

As a final word..play around a bit. Don't worry about stuff.
Just make sure you never fly what you can't afford to lose.

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Originally posted by DragonShark
 Forum Wars.

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<- level 5 troll \o/

The industrial expansion will release pretty soon.
(The testserver is already running parts of it. Looks like another expansion with a lot of small yet important fixes.
Movable Ui, cooldown counters for modules, a change to missile formula, several small features, certificates, custom medals, and some bugfixes. Rumours are, that amarr might get some useful drones, too.)

Njet, working for me.

He won't be able to activate a trial on an old account, though.

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Originally posted by Elsabolts
Notice in the above sig " Pod Killer " ask the gentelmen what that means.

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My hobby of collecting corpses does not matter here.
Besides, most of the previous owners of my fine frozen corpses have been at least double my age at the time of their passing.

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Originally posted by deugemiet

 And btw Batolemaeus kiss ur own *ss because ur so wise in ur own eyes...cant u keep ur mouth shut and make ur own topic instead of spamming other ones...

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I am, like, totally, feeling really insulted by your lack of arguments and grammar.

Keep up the good work.

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Originally posted by Elsabolts
The game is new player Harsh very Harsh you need to get in a Corperation and start training skills problem is you can only train one skill at a time and some higher level skills take 60days. Your always gonna be mining or giving minerals to corp and you will be last one to get asked to pvp. This will continue on for 1 to 2 years as the skill training is now.

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Nice misinformation. Let me give you somthing that your post is lacking a lot: ,,,,,,,......;;;
Have fun with them.

Anyways, eve is harsh for everyone. Everyone can carve their way through it and find some area(s) he/she likes. It's not exactly easy, but it can properly reproduce the old elite or privateers feeling.
And as long as you are not intimidated by other people who played longer than you, you'll probably even succeed.

From time to time i visit some of the old and died out cities i used to visit when gw was initially released.

Chats closed of course. The "community" is so horrible it's not even funny. Luckily, thanks to how they expanded the game world, nobody visits prophecies anymore.

eve and nethack.
The market flows even if i'm not logged in, wallet fattens..
And nethack...well, i really need to finally beat that damn game. After 5 years of playing it's about time.