Server/Instance Limits and How they work?

[breakpointUK]

I could be wrong but wasn't it mentioned that initially the limit for players in a server/instance is 32

so how is this going to work?

Is it all players within a certain proximity are going to be in the same instance and then let's say you hyperspace or move out of range you are in a new instance?

But if you have partied up (not grouped) or still in proximity with a player who also hyperspaces to another system or stay in range of you that means you go to are you still in the same instance with them and a new bank of players?

This could also work with the Cloud Analyser?

Basically, how is swapping servers/instances going to work?

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, did a search but didn't find a specific thread on this

 

[tluamiani]

I think it's instances per system. So you fly to Leesti, and you're the only person there - there's only one instance.

If 33 people hyperspace to Leesti, then you'll have 2 instances. Presumably one with 32 people, and one with 1 person. In essence, you have 2 Leesti's...

That's my understanding at least!

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

I think it's instances per system. So you fly to Leesti, and you're the only person there - there's only one instance.

If 33 people hyperspace to Leesti, then you'll have 2 instances. Presumably one with 32 people, and one with 1 person. In essence, you have 2 Leesti's...

That's my understanding at least!

don't you mean my understanding at Leesti?

32 was a figure mentioned in one of the dev diary videos on KS and has been widely misinterpreted as a maximum figure, what was actually said was '32 right now but we hope for more' so i would look on 32 as a starting point instead of a cap.

if you imagine each systems instance as networked to all the other systems and their instances it only becomes a matter of following someone from one system to another instead of one instance to another as there should be enough leeway to allow for pursuit without loosing the trail

 

[tluamiani]

don't you mean my understanding at Leesti?

Ahhh, that made me lave.

 

[KING5TON]

It is not confirmed that it will be one instance per solar system.
I hear that all over the forums and it annoys me as it has not been confirmed and in my eyes it is not desirable.

As per this from Star Citizen it is possible to have more than one instance per solar system.
https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/chris-roberts-on-multiplayer-single-player-and-instancing/http://

Since it's possible and desirable it should be what we're aiming for.

I'm not saying I'm 100% right and there will be multiple instances per solar system, I'm saying I don't know but neither do you and if we have to have it one way or the other I would want to share my solar systems with as many people as possible (even though I might not see them) and not just 31 other players.

 

[Bungarus]

As per this from Vendetta Online it is possible to have no instances at all but true persistence in a space sim MMOG:

Will the game be split among multiple "servers clusters", each supporting a unique game universe?

No. Our game is a single game universe spread contiguously across all servers. In other words, the entire population of the game will interact in the same universe, not be split into different "server universes" as it is in World of Warcraft, EverQuest and other MMOs. There are some technical challenges to this, but we believe it's worthwhile in terms of the game culture, interaction, and general benefits of having an increased population in one place.

Since it's possible and even more desirable that should be what we're aiming for.

 

[Bromley86]

Two options.

1. You divide the solar system into 1 zone (not much of a division ). If you have 1000 players in that solar system, that zone will be divided into ~35 instances, with (ignoring groups) the station just being a single instance with everyone in it.

2. You divide a solar system into say 100 zones. Within most of those zones, there's probably only 1 instance as there's probably less than 32 players. Where there are more than 32 players (i.e. near Earth), the game creates extra instances for them. As before, those docked at the station are in a single large instance.

Option 1 allows for seemless speeded-up travel around the system (think stardreamer without the time acceleration). Option 2 probably requires you to remain in your zone until you activate your jump engine to take you to the next zone.

 

[Bromley86]

As per this from Vendetta Online it is possible to have no instances at all but true persistence in a space sim MMOG

You're just going to have to accept the word of both Chris Roberts and David Braben that it is not possible. They're not splitting the playerbase apart from each other because they're twisted, they're doing it because they can't make it work any other way.

 

[JohnP]

As per this from Vendetta Online it is possible to have no instances at all but true persistence in a space sim MMOG:

That's not instancing, that's sharding. There's not going to be any sharding in Elite, based on what's been said.

Instancing is a limit on the number of players in a single area not in the galaxy.

 

[Bungarus]

they're doing it because they can't make it work any other way.

But the folks behind Jumpgate and VO did make it work. I was flying there.

 

[Bromley86]

Again, you're just going to have to accept the word of both Chris Roberts and David Braben that it is not possible. No amount of pointing to another game and insisting that they're the same will change that.

Unless you know what goes on under the hood and can explain the difference. My point is that both David and Chris *do* know what goes on under the hood, and they've both decided that it's not possible to do in their games.

 

[Bungarus]

Perhaps both Roberts and Braben should talk to the people who did Jumpgate and VO.

And perhaps FD should better hurry since Roberts can throw more money at people. (-;

 

[argus1]

only 32?

I'm not sure what the right limitation would be. We don't want an hour in the queue for a world like Zaonce but 32 is a lot less than one modern CPU might support. If more than 200 real world players who have a pirate affiliation all go to one place, should the servers detect that and send up to 800 vipers to meet them, depending of course, on how anarchic the target starsystem may be? Or if there were some chance of them taking over a section of galaxy, might the navy or the thargoids sometimes intervene en masse?

It would take someone who is up to date with computer science to decide whether or not a virtual battlefield for 1000+ could be supported. I'm just a trader though, so I'd prefer to spend a few cr on a galactic news chart which marks such danger areas and recent thargoid incursions so that I can avoid them.

If 1000 pacificist clean traders all go to a Zaonce at the same time, should there be a zone around the space station(s) where no more than a dozen others are visible? That is, the queue for docking is mostly magicked into another server instance. I see different requirements for the different careers.

In another case, should 200 bounty hunters be able to succeed when patrolling the perimeter of the last known location of public enemy number one?

 

[Bromley86]

It's not about queuing. If 200 players go to the same place, they'll be split into 7 instances of 28ish each. They'll only have to queue with those other 27ish players (although even that would break the standard Coriolis station, hence the threads on the subject of docking).

Again, I'm clearly further along the change curve on this one that some . There will not be 1000 player battles in ED. Just look at the server sizes on FPS to see what is currently technically possible (and Planetside 2 seems to be an anomaly, so I imagine that has an interesting way of bypassing it like non-destructible scenery or similar).

 

[KING5TON]

Battlefield 2 had 128 player games if a remember correctly
MAG on the PS3 has 256 player games.
I vaguely remember a Delta Force game in the 90's that I played for about 20 minutes that had at least 128 per game maybe more (but it was rubbish)

Lets take MAG as an example.
If the PS3 can handle 256 players to play together in one match of standard FPS shooter hokum (lots of buildings, trees, guns and explosions etc..) then I cannot see a good reason that E: D cannot do the same with 256 player local instances (not solar system but a sector of a solar system, I don't believe in 32 players per solar system until I hear it from FD).

I cannot believe that it is any way related to the ability of local machines to run the game (I.e. If a PS3 can handle 256 players then a modern PC should be able to handle exponentially more) or that it's an issue that it simply cannot be done due to network limitations (other games have done it, why not E: D)

The only good reason I can think of is that FD can't or won't provide the server infrastructure required to host that amount of players at once.

Which is fair enough. They don't have a massive budget and this game won't reach millions of players that would generate enough revenue that big beefy servers justify (even though I would like it to).

What I don't believe is that it cannot be done because of.....erm.....magic.

 

[Bromley86]

Unless anyone knows why Planetside 2 plays the way it does, then it is effectively magic.

That aside, I was watching a (glowing) video review that was talking about low Frames Per Second rates in P2 (this was before the patch that further lowered the FPS rate). Perhaps that's a part of the reasoning for FD aiming low on player numbers, in that they want it to be multiplayer only to the extent that the game plays exactly as it would if you were playing singleplayer?

 

[Hamerstein]

Much of the limitation will be down to the quantity of data that can be transferred between players within an instance (regardless of the instance size - that's a total unknown at the moment).

With most multiplayer FPS games, data transfer is relatively simple. For P2P you need to track the location of every other variable object (generally players, the scenery and other architecture is handled client side) and track damage modelling.

Location is very simple, a small amount of data is sent from another players PC to yours giving location and status of key elements, the rest of the work for rendering how that data is represented as what you see is done client side (which way is the other guy facing, is he prone, kneeling etc.).

Damage modelling is also very basic, head shots might insta-kill, leg wounds might make them limp, but it's pretty crude. You shoot me with a pistol, I'll take some damage and limp if it was in a leg. You nuke me with a bazooka and I'm dead.

All this information has to be transferred in the simplest and smallest way possible, due to bandwidth considerations. The smaller the data packets, the less bandwidth required and the more players you can effectively interact with in a given instance.

Don't confuse something that looks highly complex when it's rendered for you as something that is actually complex as a P2P network model, modern PCs are very good at illusions if well coded.

We don't know much about the complexity of interaction between ships for ED, but if FD are citing "32...and it may be some more but we don't know yet!", expect the interactions to be much more complex than you're used to seeing in your average MP FPS in term of data transfers.

That could reveal itself as very sophisticated damage modelling, highly detailed and individualistic ship designs and modifications, very precise collision detection, other stuff I can't think of! We just don't know yet.

It could also be that FD have limitations for their network capability and they'd rather have small quantities of players, experiencing a high quality of interaction than attempting to "stack em high and sell em cheap".

 

[DobrijZmej]

Ashley confirms that the figure 32 per player limit is not static, and is shown just as an example.

My question:

Quite often on the forum I see people debate about the importance of the figures 32 in response to questions on the Kickstarter.
Can you tell me, what exactly is this limitation?

• the number of players who can manage one big ship?
• number of players that can be combined into one group?
• the number of players in a single system?
• the number of players in a single point in space? (part of the system, for example the size of 1x1x1 cubic km)
• perhaps something else?

Ashley answer

I can answer this for you. The reason 32 has been cited as the number of players in a single instance is purely because it was mentioned that there were 32 ships in a fight from one of our Kickstarter videos. In reality this number doesn't have any real significance, other than it being the minimum amount of players we want to be able to support in a single instance of the game, but we'd like to support as many as possible.

The reason why there has to be a limit at all is purely a technical limitation; the more players that are in the same place at the same time, the more demanding it is on the servers and your computer. Whilst we want the cap for the amount of players that can play together in the same instance to be as high as possible, there does need to be a limit at some point otherwise performance will drop massively, especially in popular locations.

 

[Ashley Barley]

As per this from Vendetta Online it is possible to have no instances at all but true persistence in a space sim MMOG:

Since it's possible and even more desirable that should be what we're aiming for.

Whether it is more desirable or not is subjective in my opinion, I have played MMOs that don't use instancing on different levels of hardware and more often than not the technical issues outway the percieved benefits.

 

[honoursword]

Anything is possible if you throw enough time and money at it. Elite: Dangerous on one gigantic server working sweet as a nut is definitely possible but probably massively costly and would take a lot of people and time to get it to work right.

I am fine with the whole instancing process providing it is a fair number of ships in one instance. Who knows if Elite: Dangerous really takes off like we are all hoping it will we may eventually see one big massive server with all of us on in the future.