The end of the “tick”?

[CaptainPugwash]

There has been a lot of speculation about the New Era and what it might contain, in fact we can but speculate ...
so far I have seen discussions mostly about client features, but if we were to speculate server-side what are we hoping for and what would disappoint us if not present?
I would like:

• to abolish the “tick” to open a new BGS world,
• server side instance management for those 100 player gatherings,
• persistent NPCs (but how would you scale them according to player level)
• only show stars on the gal map that have been discovered.

Am I dreaming Or could at least one of these happen??

 

[Nasc]

only show stars on the gal map that have been discovered.

You can pretty much do that already though.

Me, I'd like the forums to be accessible through the comms panel. And also have an option to block the forums on the comms panel because god knows it's bad enough seeing them here.

 

[Rubbernuke]

No, the tick will never change because at a conceptual level it allows a window of activity for the BGS that everyone across time zones can partake in. It would be a bold move but I can't see Dav or FD pushing for it.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

They did mention the possibility once in one of their live streams I think.

 

[Linnunrata]

server side instance management for those 100 player gatherings

I can only imagine the ping and other performance issues with this even with dedicated server.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

There has been a lot of speculation about the New Era and what it might contain, in fact we can but speculate ...
so far I have seen discussions mostly about client features, but if we were to speculate server-side what are we hoping for and what would disappoint us if not present?
I would like:

• to abolish the “tick” to open a new BGS world,
• server side instance management for those 100 player gatherings,
• persistent NPCs (but how would you scale them according to player level)
• only show stars on the gal map that have been discovered.

Am I dreaming Or could at least one of these happen??

I would like those things too. (Actually not fussed about huge player gatherings) . But I think you may be dreaming..... I hope I am wrong.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

I can only imagine the ping and other performance issues with this even with dedicated server.

I think Dual Universe has tested more than 2000 players in the same instance, 100 seems entirely feasible.

 

[Northpin]

Am I dreaming

Yes.

server side instance management

That will cost money - who will pay for it?
Most of the player base is against a periodic subscription

persistent NPCs (but how would you scale them according to player level)

That could be done at client level, but only for the duration of the current game session.
Currently there is a certain degree of NPC persistance. If you have an Wake scanner, you can scan the wake of a departing NPC then follow them, interdict and kill/pirate them
Also if you are jumped by npc, you can low wake and they will follow - keeping their current shield and hull values.

 

[Linnunrata]

I think Dual Universe has tested more than 2000 players in the same instance, 100 seems entirely feasible.

Yeah, but AFAIK DU is a single-shard MMO by design. 100 player instances in ED would obviously have to be built on the foundation that ED currently has, unless you are of course implying that they should do a massive rewrite in order to facilitate this.

It's funny tho, it reminds me of Open Jaques station that is an absolute traffic mess because AFK CMDRs keep the instances alive and the repeatedly spawning tourist ships go into total glitch mode when there are too many ships. I can imagine the mess with 100 CMDR ships...

 

[CaptainPugwash]

I don’t think any of the items in the list are possible without a big rewrite, but they do have money and time so maybe one of them is possible

 

[CaptainPugwash]

Yeah, but AFAIK DU is a single-shard MMO by design. 100 player instances in ED would obviously have to be built on the foundation that ED currently has, unless you are of course implying that they should do a massive rewrite in order to facilitate this.

It's funny tho, it reminds me of Open Jaques station that is an absolute traffic mess because AFK CMDRs keep the instances alive and the repeatedly spawning tourist ships go into total glitch mode when there are too many ships. I can imagine the mess with 100 CMDR ships...

If that’s the case I would suggest a rethink is necessary anyway ...

 

[Screemonster]

What I'd love to see for the BGS is to just move all influence levers to states, the way that blight and infrastructure failure and so on sap inf every day. You want your faction to gain influence? Put them into boom and civil liberty for an extended period of time. No direct influence effects at all, either positive or negative. Add in some more direct and targeted ways to influence negative states (besides just looking on the mission board in surrounding systems and hoping that some of them will do damage to the faction you're after) and things get a lot more interesting.

 

[Rubbernuke]

What I'd love to see for the BGS is to just move all influence levers to states, the way that blight and infrastructure failure and so on sap inf every day. You want your faction to gain influence? Put them into boom and civil liberty for an extended period of time. No direct influence effects at all, either positive or negative. Add in some more direct and targeted ways to influence negative states (besides just looking on the mission board in surrounding systems and hoping that some of them will do damage to the faction you're after) and things get a lot more interesting.

If you are going fully nuts, you could meld PP with the BGS, making factions mini Powers that harness BGS expansion mechanics. You have the faction avatars already, its just transitioning them. And then you can make superpowers based on the amount of s power supporting factions in a report.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

No, the tick will never change because at a conceptual level it allows a window of activity for the BGS that everyone across time zones can partake in. It would be a bold move but I can't see Dav or FD pushing for it.

A big problem - under the current model - would be that inputs are normalised and non-linear across the tick to balance things out. That wouldn't work in a continuous model.

I'm also not sure what would really be gained from having influence percentages shift by 0.001% in real-time, either, or state durations being fractions of days.

If that’s the case I would suggest a rethink is necessary anyway ...

Even with the current instancing large pads at starports can get filled up during CGs. The stations are designed for a few players using them at once - which, 99.99% of the time, is all that's in any individual system anyway. Making the stations ten times bigger so that they could host a single-instance CG would be a bit pointless in almost all cases.

Trying to optimise instancing for the ultra-rare occasions when even tens of commanders meet up, rather than the most common case of 1 (or 2-3) at once, is not a good use of Frontier's time, I think.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

I'm also not sure what would really be gained from having influence percentages shift by 0.001% in real-time, either, or state durations being fractions of days.

There are plenty of possible obstacles, and I agree that some actions maybe shouldn’t have immediate consequences, and that some consequences should remain for a minimum time.
However for me the tick as it stands is still a bit ‘artificial’ for want of a better word, and having to wait until 3pm or whatever time of day till something changes, so I tend to lose interest. I would find it more stimulating if I was say doing INF missions and could see a real time update for the faction I am pushing, especially as I could then also see if someone is working against me in real time. For me that would make quite a difference.

 

[Ezren]

 

[Dommarraa]

Much as I appreciate that killing the Tick would be a lovely immersive move, I have had enough of games that necessitate me playing at 3AM to beat off a sneak attack from the US or China. No thanks.

 

[Kelster87]

• only show stars on the gal map that have been discovered.

Umm, what? And how do I plot an exploration course? Not to mention that it makes no sense.. I can already look up and map out stars and a little science gets me distance, so why hide what can already be seen?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Umm, what? And how do I plot an exploration course? Not to mention that it makes no sense.. I can already look up and map out stars and a little science gets me distance, so why hide what can already be seen?

There was a very old idea (pre-1.0 design discussions) that undiscovered-to-you stars would only appear on the map as potential destinations after you'd done some sort of scanning process from a nearby system - perhaps selecting the star visually from the skybox and then some sort of sensor minigame - to pin down its location precisely enough to jump to it. This would have included "dark systems" without primary stars, to allow jumps in sparser areas to be made, and also to allow people to figure out personal shortcuts even in the bubble and potentially avoid bottleneck systems, or skip across a gap.

It never made it into any released version, of course, and with so much of the game now based around the idea that travelling a couple of hundred LYs doesn't take all that long, there's no way it can possibly come back later.

 

[Kekkonshiki]

I'm also not sure what would really be gained from having influence percentages shift by 0.001% in real-time, either, or state durations being fractions of days.

I think the real reason FD won't ever allow real-time updating of the BGS is that each and every action could be quantified by players until we had a full and transparent understanding of the mechanics of the BGS.