Well, pledgers are already given an array of things non-pledgers aren't as part of the pledge packages. And if I'm not mistaken, any sort of free-to-play (that's what FTP means, right?) account would already have limits placed on what was achievable in-game compared to a paid account. So there is already an appropriate "tier system" in place based on how much a player supports the game monetarily. Could a queueing hierarchy be added as another way to reward those who pay more into the game? It could...but subscribers and pledgers are already rewarded in other ways without it.
Tigersin said:Kastor said:That's an absolutely terrible analogy for paying customers with subs vs free trials.
Even the movie theater has a completely seperate line for paying members (you purchase per year). It gets you better service, discounts, and promotions. You dont stand in line with all the other non members. Feels great that I get to skip those lines and go about my movie experience. As I walk by the lines of people I love knowing that I crushed my enemies, I see them driven before me, and hear the lamentation of their women!
Speaking of terrible analogies. Movie theaters. Yep.
Anyway, the OP isn't just about subs and free trials but rather a hierarchy including pledges.
Movie theaters, Disney theme parks, grocery store memberships, different tiers of gym memberships, and a metric s ton of others that give perks. I don't know... It's just the way the world is. Don't get me wrong as I'm totally against a cash shop or pay to win. But putting a paying sub in front of ftp account is not pay to win. If I was trying the game out and liked it, it would make me sub sooner rather than later. Same with not being able to talk in zone or send tells, etc. as other games have done.
I am hoping Pantheon is extremely successful and runs into queue problems... something they will test for in late beta I'm sure.
dorotea said:Firstly - if VR does a good job there will not be any queues except under exceptional circumstances. They will determine maximum server population (factoring in the certainty that some players will leave the game and some players will create multiple characters) and prevent new character creation when the maximum is reached. Perhaps allowing new characters only to persons with existing characters on the server. Opening character creation again if population dips. The server software/hardware will be set up so that it can handle the volume they permit.
The first few weeks of the game, the first weeks of a major content expansion, shortly after they introduce a new race or class all may put an unusual load on the server. I don't know if current hardware/software is good enough to allow virtually any number of people to log on at the same time with no queues. So yes - queues may exist at times.
It makes eminent sense and is traditional in the industry to allow subscribers priority in the queue over non-subscribers (since they do not currently plan on free play, by non-subscriber I mean free trial) although I can see an argument *not* to place free trial players at the bottom because you are trying to encourage them not discourage them.
Giving people that pledged months or years ago priority over people that are paying the same subscription fee they are strikes me as an ...imperfectly good idea. Good for we who sibscribed - less good for the game to tell anyone other than us that they are second-class citizens.
eg. Say that a server can handle 10000 characters created. Say that each account can have 10 characters. That allows for 1000-10000 accounts. Say that all the first 1000 accounts make 10 characters. That blocks out the server from getting more characters created. This would not bode well for the server health. A very low amount of people can play and the capacity of 10000 concurrent characters will never be met which will be a very pricey server as it is only handling 10% of its capacity.
Characters on a server is nothing more than a relational database which contains all your character information. It is fetched by the login/authentication server when needed to show available characters on the server selected. What they should do is limit the amount of accounts that can create characters on a server to whatever their concurrent capacity will be.
Character creation can then be "locked" for newer accounts depending on whether or not they have increased the capacity or population has dipped significantly.
This, however, has nothing to do with queues. Queues happen because the Login/Authentication server gets swarmed with requests and is not equipped to handle them efficiently enough.
If we want Login/Authentication to not cause long queues it needs to be setup in a way that allows for multiple threads checking/verifying and letting people in and/or several login/authentication servers to work in tandem. It mostly comes down to how efficiently the software behind the login/authentication has been done.
Secondly, server population (accounts, not characters).. The ideal scenario would be for them to either:
Ashreon - I essentially agree. Limiting number of accounts rather than number of characters is a more precise description - essentially what I meant with my reference to a server blocking new characters from anyone that didn;t already have one - but more carefully worded.
Riahuf22 - The topic does make sense because VR will not be opening up new servers because of temporary overloads. Sure they can but they will not want 20 half-empty servers in lieu of 10 nicely populated servers that can get too crowded when some special event hits. No queues since 2007? You have been lucky - queues are not endemic but I have seen them many times in many games since then. One recent example when LOTRO opened up a new "legendary" server. They hastily added a second and there were still queues for both but after a day or two they went away. The queues - the servers are still there.
I hit a que one or two times in early EQ. I also found an excellent way to avoid them.
1) Devs Say the servers will be online at 8am.
2) they will be late, they always are. I plan on 10am
3) I go watch a movie, mow the lawn, get frisky with the wife, whatever is better than getting angry staring at a wait que. There are lots of things.
4) I try to log in a 4pm. And no problem, get in straight away.
This whole thread is a non issue, Que's would be good for a lot of you. Teach you some patience and how to step away from the keyboard a bit and do that thing called Real Life.
dorotea said:Ashreon - I essentially agree. Limiting number of accounts rather than number of characters is a more precise description - essentially what I meant with my reference to a server blocking new characters from anyone that didn;t already have one - but more carefully worded.
Riahuf22 - The topic does make sense because VR will not be opening up new servers because of temporary overloads. Sure they can but they will not want 20 half-empty servers in lieu of 10 nicely populated servers that can get too crowded when some special event hits. No queues since 2007? You have been lucky - queues are not endemic but I have seen them many times in many games since then. One recent example when LOTRO opened up a new "legendary" server. They hastily added a second and there were still queues for both but after a day or two they went away. The queues - the servers are still there.
So your basing the reason why this post makes sense for only the initial launch of the game and upcoming expansions only? Than I rest my case, by saying we don't need it, because it ultimately fixes nothing and only makes VR put resources into something that will literally fix itself within time anyway.
Riahuf22 said:dorotea said:Ashreon - I essentially agree. Limiting number of accounts rather than number of characters is a more precise description - essentially what I meant with my reference to a server blocking new characters from anyone that didn;t already have one - but more carefully worded.
Riahuf22 - The topic does make sense because VR will not be opening up new servers because of temporary overloads. Sure they can but they will not want 20 half-empty servers in lieu of 10 nicely populated servers that can get too crowded when some special event hits. No queues since 2007? You have been lucky - queues are not endemic but I have seen them many times in many games since then. One recent example when LOTRO opened up a new "legendary" server. They hastily added a second and there were still queues for both but after a day or two they went away. The queues - the servers are still there.
So your basing the reason why this post makes sense for only the initial launch of the game and upcoming expansions only? Than I rest my case, by saying we don't need it, because it ultimately fixes nothing and only makes VR put resources into something that will literally fix itself within time anyway.
It fixes itself because people that would have been potential customers say screw this, if this is how it is going to be I'm out, which in turn hurts profits.
Not just that, but queue times and disastrouos launches carries on. It is not just a short sighted problem, it causes long term problems as the reputation for a bad launch can, entirely, ruin a game even if it is a good game, a good reason to avoid them all together.
If they can "magically" create a physical server instantly which:
1. Requires hardware to be bought and brought to the Datacenter.
2. Hardware to be installed and server put in to a rack and connected to the internet/electricity.
3. Software to be installed and updated.
4. Game software to be installed.
Then they have done something no one else have managed to do.. Ever. In the entire human history. It is much more a fairytale than it is actual life. Stuff does not happen instantly. Especially not getting new servers. Being a little bit of a healthy skeptic when it comes to such statements would do people good.
Queues, while "good for you", and let me intersect here I'll be the judge of that for myself thank you very much, are infuriating for a lot of people as most will think that, as a Developer, you should have been able to anticipate this. You have the number of sales, you can/should project how many sales you will get leading up to launch. You have google. Try search for queues at launch MMOs. Do the math. This puts a lot of people off because your Game Studio is seen as incompetent and a lot of game studios can attest to this.
Seriously, try google... You'd be surprised how many launches failed and had extremely long queues/break downs etc.
Ashreon said:
It fixes itself because people that would have been potential customers say screw this, if this is how it is going to be I'm out, which in turn hurts profits.
Not just that, but queue times and disastrouos launches carries on. It is not just a short sighted problem, it causes long term problems as the reputation for a bad launch can, entirely, ruin a game even if it is a good game, a good reason to avoid them all together.
If they can "magically" create a physical server instantly which:
1. Requires hardware to be bought and brought to the Datacenter.
2. Hardware to be installed and server put in to a rack and connected to the internet/electricity.
3. Software to be installed and updated.
4. Game software to be installed.
Then they have done something no one else have managed to do.. Ever. In the entire human history. It is much more a fairytale than it is actual life. Stuff does not happen instantly. Especially not getting new servers. Being a little bit of a healthy skeptic when it comes to such statements would do people good.
Well, this is a form of current tech that is available. It is akin to rate availability with your network provider, but instead of just bandwidth, they provide dynamic means to expand your games support. Server hosting sites do this all the time, providing immediate access to resources at the click of a button. Virtulization provides extreme power in such, but... it also has costs and limitations. You are correct in that this takes more, memory, more hardrive space, more bandwidth, but in terms of it being difficult for them to provide it like it was in the early days? Not at all...They will have the means to quickly adapt and adjust to demand, but... just like hosting services, and network providers, this comes with a price. They will likely have a contract on a specific range of need and with a certain range of flexability in demand. There will be limits though and if they estimate poorly and go far beyond their expectations (ie not properly accounting for the load that F2P will have), the costs could result in decisions to self limit anyway.
Nothing is free, everything costs and someone will have to pay for it, which is why F2P isn't a good idea if you don't have a service to balance it out (Subs may not be enough to balance out the cost, which is why companies often use "RMT services").
Tanix said:Ashreon said:
It fixes itself because people that would have been potential customers say screw this, if this is how it is going to be I'm out, which in turn hurts profits.
Not just that, but queue times and disastrouos launches carries on. It is not just a short sighted problem, it causes long term problems as the reputation for a bad launch can, entirely, ruin a game even if it is a good game, a good reason to avoid them all together.
If they can "magically" create a physical server instantly which:
1. Requires hardware to be bought and brought to the Datacenter.
2. Hardware to be installed and server put in to a rack and connected to the internet/electricity.
3. Software to be installed and updated.
4. Game software to be installed.
Then they have done something no one else have managed to do.. Ever. In the entire human history. It is much more a fairytale than it is actual life. Stuff does not happen instantly. Especially not getting new servers. Being a little bit of a healthy skeptic when it comes to such statements would do people good.Well, this is a form of current tech that is available. It is akin to rate availability with your network provider, but instead of just bandwidth, they provide dynamic means to expand your games support. Server hosting sites do this all the time, providing immediate access to resources at the click of a button. Virtulization provides extreme power in such, but... it also has costs and limitations. You are correct in that this takes more, memory, more hardrive space, more bandwidth, but in terms of it being difficult for them to provide it like it was in the early days? Not at all...They will have the means to quickly adapt and adjust to demand, but... just like hosting services, and network providers, this comes with a price. They will likely have a contract on a specific range of need and with a certain range of flexability in demand. There will be limits though and if they estimate poorly and go far beyond their expectations (ie not properly accounting for the load that F2P will have), the costs could result in decisions to self limit anyway.
Nothing is free, everything costs and someone will have to pay for it, which is why F2P isn't a good idea if you don't have a service to balance it out (Subs may not be enough to balance out the cost, which is why companies often use "RMT services").
I only know of one company that use virtual servers, Blizzard and they host them on their on physical servers so they can manage how many each physical server supports.
You cannot if you rent them from a Datacenter (which is likely the case). They can, probably, rent dedicated servers which is likely what they will do, but a dedicated server is still a physical server. It has a set amount of virtual servers it can run and they do actually run out of these at datacenter at which point you will have to bring in more physical servers which leads to the above (this was what happened during FFXIV:ARR launch).
While it is, in theory, a fast way of making new playable servers it comes at a heavy cost.
The more stress one physical server (which host a number of virtual servers) the more stress all its the virtual servers will experience leading to instability, lag, disconnections etc.
I used to have a Minecraft server and it was evident that it was a virtual server as its performance would rise and fall according to the day. Usually leading to instability in NA prime time and being stable during EU prime time. I ended up just hosting it myself (on my old Macbook Pro from 2011 which is slower but funny enough performs a heck of a lot better than the virtual server I had).
As you can probably hear, I'm not particularly fond of virtual servers. Most of my skepticism comes from my job as a Software Engineer though.
I hope they will do this responsibly, but I must admit I have little faith in launches having been part of so many all of them.. Not successful one bit.
AWS has an entire team dedicated to virtualized servers for game developers. It comes down to cost and essentially cost alone. Does any dev want to spin up enough servers to prevent a queue. The scale of these large cloud data centers makes it so shared resources is not an issue.
Renting a server from one of those one off sites, that typically oversaturate to make a buck, is not the same as renting resources with AWS or any other large scale cloud based server provider.
gertdoggy said:So if I have more items in my shopping cart at the grocery store I should be able to cut to the front of the line? Who thinks like this? Stupid topic
Haha!! this made me chuckle, I'm going to try that next time i'm at the grocery store...excuse me sir but I contribute more to the grocery stores profits, move aside peasant...
Yaladan said:gertdoggy said:So if I have more items in my shopping cart at the grocery store I should be able to cut to the front of the line? Who thinks like this? Stupid topic
Haha!! this made me chuckle, I'm going to try that next time i'm at the grocery store...excuse me sir but I contribute more to the grocery stores profits, move aside peasant...
you don't even need to say excuse me sir. you are above such pleasantries to a pleb. you just do it because you are a 5th lord contributor at the noble whole foods market. and you got the stats to prove it m'lord. as a matter of fact, i'll dispatch the scum for you.
stellarmind said:Yaladan said:gertdoggy said:So if I have more items in my shopping cart at the grocery store I should be able to cut to the front of the line? Who thinks like this? Stupid topic
Haha!! this made me chuckle, I'm going to try that next time i'm at the grocery store...excuse me sir but I contribute more to the grocery stores profits, move aside peasant...
you don't even need to say excuse me sir. you are above such pleasantries to a pleb. you just do it because you are a 5th lord contributor at the noble whole foods market. and you got the stats to prove it m'lord. as a matter of fact, i'll dispatch the scum for you.
Bad Analogy, if you have nothing in your cart you wouldn't be in line....hence F2P people.
Anyhoo I love the labeling being elitism, while all I would want is to play the game and it not be bogged down by trial accounts taking all the space. I don't really care about pledge Hiearchy, but I am worried about the F2P guys. I think people who put in money should have priority in the game at the launch phase atleast, since that is always a **** show, and since they helped fund the game with the possiblity of it crashing and burning.
Kastor said:I like this. We supported the development and helped make the game possible. So get us in there playing ASAP. Almost like buying a "fast pass" at amusement & theme parks ;-)
nice seeing you back on Kastor hehe I still see you lurking the forums :P
Not having read all of the posts, I am not in favor of a tiered server queue. If there were a system like that, VR would likely give priority to the trial subscribers in an attempt to make their experience more enjoyable to get them to purchase the game... thereby allowing the servers to be swamped by farmers, spammers and others with malicious intent. I'm ok with a 'first-come first-serve' approach; with that said, I am hoping that the developers are capable of avoiding this kind of scopre creep since MMOs have been around for 20 years now and server population has been an MMO killer. With the ease of which a virtual instance of a server can be brought up (minutes) I realy don't think server population will be an issue... but never say never.
Add: @VR - One thing to take note of is the current population of the guild members currently on the forums and expect entire guilds to have their members joining the same server (keeping in mind the possibility of the community of Alpha testers trying to join the same server(s) for launch).
VR wants people to try the game to see if they like it.
Others want those people to try standing at the back of the line and to watch as we pledges continually cut in front of them.
Tell me why are we so blind to see that the ones we hurt are you and me?
-Coolio, 1995, Gamers Paradox
Watemper said:Kastor said:I like this. We supported the development and helped make the game possible. So get us in there playing ASAP. Almost like buying a "fast pass" at amusement & theme parks ;-)
nice seeing you back on Kastor hehe I still see you lurking the forums :P
Good to see you too my friend!! Patiently waiting for alpha :-) I lurk here and there, but I can only roll my eyes and shake my head for so long. I'm glad VR is sticking to their vision.
Ashreon said:Riahuf22 said:dorotea said:Ashreon - I essentially agree. Limiting number of accounts rather than number of characters is a more precise description - essentially what I meant with my reference to a server blocking new characters from anyone that didn;t already have one - but more carefully worded.
Riahuf22 - The topic does make sense because VR will not be opening up new servers because of temporary overloads. Sure they can but they will not want 20 half-empty servers in lieu of 10 nicely populated servers that can get too crowded when some special event hits. No queues since 2007? You have been lucky - queues are not endemic but I have seen them many times in many games since then. One recent example when LOTRO opened up a new "legendary" server. They hastily added a second and there were still queues for both but after a day or two they went away. The queues - the servers are still there.
So your basing the reason why this post makes sense for only the initial launch of the game and upcoming expansions only? Than I rest my case, by saying we don't need it, because it ultimately fixes nothing and only makes VR put resources into something that will literally fix itself within time anyway.
It fixes itself because people that would have been potential customers say screw this, if this is how it is going to be I'm out, which in turn hurts profits.
Not just that, but queue times and disastrouos launches carries on. It is not just a short sighted problem, it causes long term problems as the reputation for a bad launch can, entirely, ruin a game even if it is a good game, a good reason to avoid them all together.
If they can "magically" create a physical server instantly which:
1. Requires hardware to be bought and brought to the Datacenter.
2. Hardware to be installed and server put in to a rack and connected to the internet/electricity.
3. Software to be installed and updated.
4. Game software to be installed.
Then they have done something no one else have managed to do.. Ever. In the entire human history. It is much more a fairytale than it is actual life. Stuff does not happen instantly. Especially not getting new servers. Being a little bit of a healthy skeptic when it comes to such statements would do people good.Queues, while "good for you", and let me intersect here I'll be the judge of that for myself thank you very much, are infuriating for a lot of people as most will think that, as a Developer, you should have been able to anticipate this. You have the number of sales, you can/should project how many sales you will get leading up to launch. You have google. Try search for queues at launch MMOs. Do the math. This puts a lot of people off because your Game Studio is seen as incompetent and a lot of game studios can attest to this.
Seriously, try google... You'd be surprised how many launches failed and had extremely long queues/break downs etc.
The problem you listed doesn't have anything to do with what you said, and it certainly doesn't fix it either, you saying long queue times is way people sometimes quit the game, so let's say I am a new non-pledge costumer and I've been in queue for 15 minutes and I keep getting pushed back because people who have pledge keep joining in, see its doing the exact opposite of what you want it to do. Plus when it comes to servers they said they can make them pretty fast from the cloud, so I'm not seeing the issue still in this post, it doesn't solve amything, in fact like I listed it instead pushes away new costumers from figuring out if they like the game because you put them at the lowest priority for no reason what so ever.
Well if VR looks at the subscriptions and pledges and make sure they have enough severs and space for atleast that amount of players to begin with and then have around 50,000 extra slots than it shouldn't really matter lol. If you are cool with not wanting to play the game at launch, or wanting to wait in a long que and let the trial accounts, that are possibly going to be saturated with bots and or boxing ahead of you, then just don't log on for several hours at launch and wait. In fact, just make a trial account and wait in line.
Or if we make trial accounts on separate servers then I wouldn't care about this anyways :P. But I know for a fact that most of you crying second citizen and elitism, really get out of your bubbles will you, were for separate servers. Shows you are elite and want the lowly second class trial citizen accounts to be far away from you while you sit in your gated community server and still fight for the little man. Wonder who that reminds you of lol.
Watemper said:Well if VR looks at the subscriptions and pledges and make sure they have enough severs and space for atleast that amount of players to begin with and then have around 50,000 extra slots than it shouldn't really matter lol. If you are cool with not wanting to play the game at launch, or wanting to wait in a long que and let the trial accounts, that are possibly going to be saturated with bots and or boxing ahead of you, then just don't log on for several hours at launch and wait. In fact, just make a trial account and wait in line.
Or if we make trial accounts on separate servers then I wouldn't care about this anyways :P. But I know for a fact that most of you crying second citizen and elitism, really get out of your bubbles will you, were for separate servers. Shows you are elite and want the lowly second class trial citizen accounts to be far away from you while you sit in your gated community server and still fight for the little man. Wonder who that reminds you of lol.
The only reason people have stated for the trial accounts to have their own server or anything of the sort it to stop gold spammers from abusing the fact they can make free accounts so the banning system means nothing, but putting them in a trial server would at least midi gate it, if you could separate the trial accounts that are "good costumers" from the bad ones I would in a heart beat but you can't which sucks I know, but to just think some of us just simply doesn't want to deal with new players just because they are a trial account is honestly quite dumb, most of us are adults, and we actually like talking to new people because it brings up interesting conversations from time to time.
f2p is free to play, which isn't going to happen since pantheon is sub based.
ftp is free trial player. which will exist and they can be treated as such.
i'm fine with offering premium connectivity as long as it's not part of the pledge system and should be in the subscription. i think that's a good comprimise for you elitist out there. a servant can't serve well if you bleed him dry. please my glorious overlords. allow me this meal so that i may serve you better.
Watemper said:stellarmind said:Yaladan said:gertdoggy said:So if I have more items in my shopping cart at the grocery store I should be able to cut to the front of the line? Who thinks like this? Stupid topic
Haha!! this made me chuckle, I'm going to try that next time i'm at the grocery store...excuse me sir but I contribute more to the grocery stores profits, move aside peasant...
you don't even need to say excuse me sir. you are above such pleasantries to a pleb. you just do it because you are a 5th lord contributor at the noble whole foods market. and you got the stats to prove it m'lord. as a matter of fact, i'll dispatch the scum for you.
Bad Analogy, if you have nothing in your cart you wouldn't be in line....hence F2P people.
Anyhoo I love the labeling being elitism, while all I would want is to play the game and it not be bogged down by trial accounts taking all the space. I don't really care about pledge Hiearchy, but I am worried about the F2P guys. I think people who put in money should have priority in the game at the launch phase atleast, since that is always a **** show, and since they helped fund the game with the possiblity of it crashing and burning.
food stamps = f2p
sampling food = ftp
it can be a good analogy. just depends on how you look at it.