[Long] Four grave problems with Cut Throat, and how to fix them.

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Falcord wrote:

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Malice wrote:

Good post, there are some potential issues with your proposal though.


I assume that for this to work you would need to prevent players from being able to choose which instance they wish to enter, and that they would instead be assigned to a new or pre-existing instance automatically.

Exactly. In fact, it's quite explicit in the detailed description of the mechanic. Did you read the spoiler? =)

But yes, that's how it works.

Funny that you should assume that I didn't read it when my paraphrase of it was "exactly" correct. Yes I read the whole thing.

But anyway...

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Falcord wrote:

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Malice wrote:

This could cause stale instances to hang around longer than they otherwise would. Currently if you want a fresh instance you can simply ctrl-click on an area transition or waypoint to create one. However with automatic placement, it might prove difficult to find an instance that actually has monsters in it, or that has a quest boss still alive. Players would constantly get recycled into pre-existing instances, which could be frustrating.

Instances won't get stale as their ELVL will constantly increase at higher pace. What this means is that incoming players will be higher level, and a high level player joining a low level area is doing so explicitly to gank. When such thing happens, the camping players will be swept and the instance will be rendered useless as the gankers will eventually leave. Also, the constantly increasing ELVL means that players who were going to join that area to complete its relevant PvE objectives won't be assigned to that specific instance, so they won't have to deal with the recycling.

As I also explained, when an instance is devoid of people, even if it's still alive, will be locked so new players cannot enter.

If you think carefully of the interaction between the ELVL mechanics, what they achieve is maximizing contact between players of similar power, and minimizing staleness and outdated instances.

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Falcord wrote:

When an instance has no players in it, it will retain it's ELVL. The 15 minute timer to destruction remains, but new players won't be assigned to it unless there's someone inside.

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Falcord wrote:

Instances raise their ELVL very slowly (1 point per 15min) until half of the monsters have been cleared, or until meaningful PvE objectives are already achieved. When either of those things happen, the instance's ELVL will start rising by 1 per minute.

With a big enough player base, even a rather fast rate of increase for the ELVL could still result in hundreds of stale instances. The more players, the larger the problem. Imagine playerbase large enough that there are 500 players joining a particular area every minute. "Bob" enters the area and happens to create a new instance and clears it in 5 minutes. Within that 5 minutes there are potentially hundreds of other players entering the instance and perhaps leaving it again, so there is a high chance that at any given moment that Bob is not alone. Bob finishes what he was doing and leaves. But there are still other players in the instance, perhaps fighting each other, perhaps scavenging loot, killing stray monsters, or maybe just popping in, realising the objective is complete, and leaving again to try to find an instance where they can complete their objective.
Even with the +1 per minute, given a +/-5 range for entering an instance, there are hundreds of players potentially entering this stale instance every minute for the next five or more minutes.
So in this way there could be many lingering instances where all relevant objectives are completed, unless some sort of countermeasure was incorporated.

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Malice wrote:

Funny that you should assume that I didn't read it when my paraphrase of it was "exactly" correct. Yes I read the whole thing.

But anyway...

I see. Sorry if I sounded harsh, I apologize for that =).

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Malice wrote:

With a big enough player base, even a rather fast rate of increase for the ELVL could still result in hundreds of stale instances. The more players, the larger the problem. Imagine playerbase large enough that there are 500 players joining a particular area every minute. "Bob" enters the area and happens to create a new instance and clears it in 5 minutes. Within that 5 minutes there are potentially hundreds of other players entering the instance and perhaps leaving it again, so there is a high chance that at any given moment that Bob is not alone. Bob finishes what he was doing and leaves. But there are still other players in the instance, perhaps fighting each other, perhaps scavenging loot, killing stray monsters, or maybe just popping in, realising the objective is complete, and leaving again to try to find an instance where they can complete their objective.
Even with the +1 per minute, given a +/-5 range for entering an instance, there are hundreds of players potentially entering this stale instance every minute for the next five or more minutes.
So in this way there could be many lingering instances where all relevant objectives are completed, unless some sort of countermeasure was incorporated.

Fair enough. Solutions for this are not impossible though. For example: In a fast-paced, high population scenario as you describe, players with unfinished PvE objectives in an area could be assigned with priority to the "virgin" instances.

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Falcord wrote:

Fair enough. Solutions for this are not impossible though. For example: In a fast-paced, high population scenario as you describe, players with unfinished PvE objectives in an area could be assigned with priority to the "virgin" instances.

Right, I'm glad you agree. Wasn't trying to attack your idea or anything, just being thorough. There are many possible solutions to this potential issue.

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Malice wrote:

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Falcord wrote:

Fair enough. Solutions for this are not impossible though. For example: In a fast-paced, high population scenario as you describe, players with unfinished PvE objectives in an area could be assigned with priority to the "virgin" instances.

Right, I'm glad you agree. Wasn't trying to attack your idea or anything, just being thorough. There are many possible solutions to this potential issue.

Yep, of course the concept can be worked on and perfected =).

good post.

which darkfall player where you?

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ScarceXrul wrote:

good post.

which darkfall player where you?

Thanks!

I'd rather not say. I don't want old grudges (or unwanted friendships) to persist when I move into a new game =).

ha okay =(

I don't hold grudges, none that i can remember at least =P

Myself and Mourn Vallas are really looking forward to the release of Cut-Throat.

Being able to kill players pretty much anywhere and endlessly pvp all day long was the best thing about darkfall.

I never played D2 but mourn did and so far i really enjoy this game the customization is awesome!

Just 1 question were we close "Same alliance at 1 time? etc" ? Do you remember me?

LOD????????????? jk ha

Bumping in hopes I can get someone from GGG to drop his/her opinion here.

Particularly, if there is anything being done to prevent issues as those highlighted.

bumping as well, because I consider this important for the longevity of cut-throat.

A few of these concepts have been thrown around before... previously it was discussed in alpha in the topic about the entrance messages.

In an ideal system, players are constantly recycled into fresh zones with a good chance of meeting up with someone else from an unexpected direction WITHOUT a warning message.

I think that overall the idea to increase the Elvl over time coupled with disallowing players to enter if nobody is in an instance should solve most stale instance issues.

Additionally if the population is viable to support GGG then it should be sufficiently large to randomize non-partied individuals disallowing gaming the Elvl system.

I still see massive issues to solve though... single entrances at waypoints... everyone and their dog will show up at the waypoint at roughly the same time creating a bottleneck that isn't fun.

Additionally there is the problem of resolution advantage where one player can see 2-3x further than another player due to their monitor type.

Overall cut-throat needs a system to automatically balance match making versus giving people fresh instances. People will probably often choose a random instance, not get a fresh instance, walk 2 feet forward, see dead enemies, then log out and try again... and again... and again.

How do you solve that?

So I was thinking about how to continually ensure that players are given instances with both stuff to kill and potentially players.

By the very nature of the bottlenecks, it's very likely that entering a zone will put you behind a player, with you simply running with no challenges to that player up ahead.

This can be solved by only putting a player at an entrance to a zone, if no other player or group has entered from that side...

This would effectively always put you in a fresh zone or put you in a zone with stuff to kill and players.

So in short this system would search for an instance that has not had someone enter from the direction you are coming from... and place you there. Other heuristics can be used to potentially lower the probability of being dropped into a waypoint with someone who has cleared from the entrance to nearly the exit.

It could also place you in a fresh zone a percentage of the time or if no other compatible zone exists.

This system may alleviate some of the issues with bottlenecks as well...since you cannot just enter and wait right there, as nobody else not in your party would be coming through there.