Pop cap

I beg pardon for stepping into this hardy debate, but just out of curiosity, has any actually seen the cap yet? Unless I am reading the notes wrong - and alas, I am unable to log in today, so I cannot check myself - the update should already be up. I hardly see the point of complaining about caps if they are effectively never reached.

ok first of all this sucks for people questing/lvling what they should do is do what GW2 does have overflow servers and for the person who said it would suck to have beh/odin spawning on other servers just make it so if you get moved to the overflow theres no world boss fates there.

now for my second gripe about this is it was hard enough to be online with they were going on now it's gonna be even harder to do it, need to be online for them (random) AND get there before server zone is full will make it impossible for alot of people to even do it

Re posting my comment from the discussion thread prior to the patch going live because clearly it is still relevant (sorry being lazy and don't feel like restating the same things all over again):

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naunet

I really hope you're wrong on this. If so, it is a horrendous mistake on the part of SE.

Hopefully they've entered the 21st century and are just implementing zone channels, rather than some idiotic hard cap on the population of a zone.

---

They need to implement a hard cap additional to prevent additional load after a certain threshold. Sure overflow instances could theoretically be added on top of such a system, whether they do or not isn't the point here. The point is that right now there is nothing at all to prevent all 3000-7000 people in a server from trying to enter a zone and crashing the world. And this has already more or less happened due to the fates. Therefore they from an infrastructure standpoint need this zone limit, right now. They can't not to do it. It is the only sane thing to do right now.

It also is unlikely to cause problems except during odin and behemoth, and then only in those zones: so it is rarely going to effect people, and only for 20 minutes or so even then. Much better than the alternative where behemoth pops and the servers crash, and nobody can play for hours.

This is why it is a hotfix. Not doing it would be a horrendous mistake. Also, fyi hard caps are a key part of any overflow system also. That is the point of an overflow system: when you reach cap, you overflow. Whether SE does the overflow part later or not is irrelevant to them needing the cap. They need it regardless of what does or does not happen later.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naunet

I can't think of any good, modern MMO out there that limits the number of people in a zone with a hard cap. It's absurd and absolutely unnecessary.

---

They all do. And it is always necessary. But let me explain in broad generalities:

There is a limited amount of processing any single server can handle. After that point you have to do one of two things

1) Split servers by task aka instance
2) Scale outwards with clustering

Both are very very different design decisions, and both are fraught with different types of technical problems.

A pure open world will go with option 2, and will not have a hard cap per instance, but rather a hard cap on the entire world.

An instanced world with option 1 must have hard caps per instance because each represents a different server (or virtual server but the point remains).

You haven't seen this in other MMO's that go with clustered worlds where there is a world wide cap. But the hard cap is still there

In those cases they either use a pure queue system that prevents people from logging on at all when cap is hit, or they use an overflow server where people are thrown at a different set of servers. But in both cases you still have a hard cap.

This is not something unique to this game, it is something anyone who deals with large scale systems has to cope with in some fashion or another. The only difference here is that for some reason they didn't implement it from day one, and unlike other instanced games released recently, it doesn't have an overflow system to deal with what happens after the cap is reached.

I also am not sure why you are so hostile to this, given you won't even see it except when behemoth or odin pops. Unless you anticipate that 500 trolls will all get together to troll an entire world, which I find rather unlikely.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naunet

No. They do not - not if they're using servers that aren't toasters run by ailing hamsters. This is 2013. This kind of thing is unacceptable.



I understand why they need to manage populations. What you don't seem to get is that there is a far better solution already out there: channels for zones.

Also, we already have a hard cap for world population. That is why we get a queue upon logging in.

This will kill any large, organized events on a server. It's not going only come up when Odin and Behemoth pop - and even if it did, that would not be okay. There is no reason, none at all, for them to lock players out of zones when they could have just done as any other reasonable MMO does and implement zone channels.

---

You seem to think that implementing a hard cap "instead" of channels is bad.

What you clearly didn't catch from my above post is that a hard cap is part of a channel system. If they implemented a channel system, the very first thing they would have to do is implement a hard cap. This isn't "old" technology, or "lazy". It is fundamental fact of any load management design. There is no way around it.

Now clearly you think that they should have implemented channels/overflow servers at the same time. That is great. But they didn't have the infrastructure in place at all (from a development standpoint I was kind of, well, appalled, that they didn't have a hard cap from the get go). Given the nature of this system, my best guess development estimate is 3 months to add and test, and add additional servers etc, to implement channels. That is great and all, if they plan on it. But it is hardly going to happen overnight, much less as part of a hotfix to prevent world crashing issues.

Should they have implemented a hard cap from day one? Yes. That is server load management 101. They didn't, therefore they had to. It is literally that simple.

Also, you clearly misunderstood what I was saying about instance servers vs clustered servers: world cap is not zone cap, because each zone is its own server. World cap is based on distributed load across all servers in the world. Each world is 30 servers. Each server has its own max cap which based on the last time a behemoth overload crashed a world, this maximum possible threshold is something around 750 per server. Given my own experience with servers, that makes sense. I currently work with high end servers (last replaced in 2012) that max out at 5000 connections due to processing overhead, the overhead in this game is much higher due to constant positional updating and enemy management. In order for World cap to be instance cap, they would have to cap each world to the max possible in each zone. That is simply not feasible from a physical server management standpoint, and also would make population density very low causing additional problems in game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Robinthehood

I've done Odin on a legacy server and never disconnected once and havn't heard of anyone else crashing during the fight either.

So it must be something wrong on your end if it only happened to you and a handful of other people.

---

This is on a legacy server
http://i.imgur.com/tABMJrd.png


This was going on periodically throughout the fight.

I have since learned to just skip Odin as 1) can't even see the damn mob 2) could only target my party a couple of times during the fight (hence the full MP) and 3) trying to get close enough to spam holy for some sort of input ended up dying to invisible forces.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rivienne

RThey need to implement a hard cap additional to prevent additional load after a certain threshold.

---

No. They do not - not if they're using servers that aren't toasters run by ailing hamsters. This is 2013. This kind of thing is unacceptable.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rivienne

They all do. And it is always necessary. But let me explain in broad generalities:

---

I understand why they need to manage populations. What you don't seem to get is that there is a far better solution already out there: channels for zones.

Also, we already have a hard cap for world population. That is why we get a queue upon logging in.

This will kill any large, organized events on a server. It's not going only come up when Odin and Behemoth pop - and even if it did, that would not be okay. There is no reason, none at all, for them to lock players out of zones when they could have just done as any other reasonable MMO does and implement zone channels.

Didn't read all of the posts so I don't know if this has been mentioned (I did CTRL+F "gil" in all of the pages though).
Assuming you attempt to teleport into the zone that is full you will be kicked out with the message to retry later; if the game takes your gil when the teleporting is complete and you get kicked due to full zone, will you get your gil back?

Why not make, CHANNELS?
They always gotta make shiz difficult than it is.

because channels suck. It REALLY sucks thinking someone is in the same area as you but then discovering they're on another channel. Channels are a mark of Korean MMOs as a cheap bandaid solution to a problem without really solving it.

I don't know why anyone is concerned about the zone limit at all. It's not going to affect anything other than keep the server from crashing when behemoth or odin pop.

My worry is that, say i logged out at MD

The next day I log in, max reached, you can't login... like for hours and hours and hours on end

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hulan

I beg pardon for stepping into this hardy debate, but just out of curiosity, has any actually seen the cap yet? Unless I am reading the notes wrong - and alas, I am unable to log in today, so I cannot check myself - the update should already be up. I hardly see the point of complaining about caps if they are effectively never reached.

---

Someone should answer this question.

Ever heard of channels SE? *slow clap SE slow clap*

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by diulalasing

My worry is that, say i logged out at MD

The next day I log in, max reached, you can't login... like for hours and hours and hours on end

---

again, that's not much of anything to worry about. It's only likely to happen if behemoth or odin is up, and as soon as it's over everyone leaves.

Quote:

---

Ever heard of channels SE?

---

again, NO. channels suck turds. They can stay in the korean MMOs where they belong.

So long as it only will ever see any action during the Odin/Behemoth style rush, this'll be fine. It will, however, be substantially less fine if the normal FATE grinding population in Coerthas is enough to trigger these limitations on populated servers like Hyperion/Excalibur/Cactuar etc.

The cap is likely only reachable during the Odin and Behemoth FATEs so what would be the point of channels? You want SE to waste time and money for something that will only be used for 30 min stretched a handful of times per week. Some servers probably won't even see the cap. I am curious about teleport fees and logging in though. In FFXI the cap was only ever seen in Beseiged which was technically an instance so logging in in al Zhabi just kicked you to Whitegate.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alhanelem

again, NO. channels suck turds. They can stay in the korean MMOs where they belong.

---

How do they, ahem, "suck turds" precisely? You can move freely between channels within a zone usually, so you can choose to be on a more populated channel or switch to one where there's nobody around. There's quite literally no down side.

Not sure if someone has mentioned yet, but why not at least make Behemoth and Odin spawn in their OWN zone rather than MD and Coerthas? At least then the regular people who are not there for FATE will not be interrupted by intense lag and zone restrictions. It's just silly to have unique rare fates spawn in already populated zones. It would not solve the problem of too many people rushing to fight them, but it would at least aleviate some of the stress of having harvesters, questers, and people looking for dungeon groups around.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Robinthehood

Yeah, it definitely seems like SE didn't think this through properly. With all of the people who stands in Mor Dhona while farming tomes for gear or looking for groups its gonna cause alot of rage if people can't zone in to get their gear. People who needs to pass through there for the main story will have it rough if the cap is reached.

---

Only if those people are only there to run a FATE, if they are running instanced content, their numbers won't count for the zone population cap, while they are in an instance. this fix is designed to do two things, 1 prevent servers from crashing when an instance becomes overpopulated to the point where players are mass DCing. As for complaining that this is a poor way to fix things, it's not really, every server is going to have an upper limit to capacity for simultaneous users, every zone is instanced and so there is an implicit population cap (wall) created by the server's physical limits. Placing a software based population cap prevents the instance server running into that wall.

Considering the way that people abuse FATE in the game, fate parties in the southern shroud spamming the other FATE put additional pressure on the zone when Odin spawns. As soon as he spawns, the message goes out and higher level players arrive like a swarm of locusts. the population of that zone spikes hugely, if you've ever been in the area gathering or doing something else at the time, you know how unplayable it becomes with the sudden inflow of players. If this pop cap helps prevent that issue, it's a good thing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nekodar

You'd rather have server crashes than pop caps?
This is NOT about disappearing mobs, it's about ensuring server stability.

---

Or you know SE's infrastructure could not be 5+ years behind every other MMO to release recently... I swear why does it seem like SE are the only ones that have to wrestle THIS hard with these issues? Most games recently have countermeasures in day 1 the rest get them in shortly after launch, SE needs a failed game and months after a relaunch apparently.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Azurus

Or you know SE's infrastructure could not be 5+ years behind every other MMO to release recently... I swear why does it seem like SE are the only ones that have to wrestle THIS hard with these issues? Most games recently have countermeasures in day 1 the rest get them in shortly after launch, SE needs a failed game and months after a relaunch apparently.

---

THIS exactly. It should not even be an issue.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alhanelem

because channels suck. It REALLY sucks thinking someone is in the same area as you but then discovering they're on another channel. Channels are a mark of Korean MMOs as a cheap bandaid solution to a problem without really solving it.

I don't know why anyone is concerned about the zone limit at all. It's not going to affect anything other than keep the server from crashing when behemoth or odin pop.

---

And this solves issues how?
Blocking people from entering a map, while we have teleporting Gil Sellers or hackers and crap taking up space.

How about:
-Make Odin and Behe an Instanced fight and MAYBE only be level 50 to do it. You have way too many lowbies coming in as well so it adds to the clutter.
Only a certain amount of people per instance and have servers for each people trying to get in or something.
FATE's don't even load correctly after you hit Coerthas.

How hard is it to ask, "Hey, what channel are you own?"
Just click la switch...Not that hard.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alhanelem

because channels suck. It REALLY sucks thinking someone is in the same area as you but then discovering they're on another channel. Channels are a mark of Korean MMOs as a cheap bandaid solution to a problem without really solving it.

I don't know why anyone is concerned about the zone limit at all. It's not going to affect anything other than keep the server from crashing when behemoth or odin pop.

---

It prevents people that want in on the Odin/Behemoth battles from doing so and it prevents people from entering a zone to complete a quest objective.

Zones like Coerthas and Mor Dhona are always packed with players and those zones are mandatory for story quest objectives and many dungeon unlocks. If you can't get in, you can't progress.

For Odin/Behemoth, I would be very annoyed if I couldn't get in because I want to collect the Odin and Behemoth gear and I want the barding and to do that I need the currency they drop. Now if they spawned more frequently or the currency and items could be traded it would be less of an issue (but cheapens the experience)

Though I do not like it, channels are the better option as opposed to being screwed entirely.

SE should encourage, not discourage more people playing. To not be prepared for the population we have, did Yoshi and the rest of the team think that little of their game's potential?

I think a large part of this thread is a mistaken belief that channels are easy, and thus the correct fix. Note: they aren't. They are an additional infrastructure complexity, even if the system was built from the ground up with them in mind. Just because something looks easy to the user, doesn't mean it is to develop or support. Similarly just because something looks complex to the user, doesn't mean it is.

Some thoughts on the various possible arguments:

1) SE should have had some form of solution from day one: valid point.
2) SE should have added channels in the hot fix: not valid. (or even realistically possible. no one would release something of that magnitude in a hot fix.)
3) SE should have emphasized channel development over other types of infrastructure and content development before release: I am sure I know how well that would go over here.
4) SE should stop development now on other improvements and content for indeterminate amount of time to develop this right now (if they aren't already working on it): same as above. No one wants that.

So should they have had some form of solution in place at launch of 2.0? Yes, but they didn't, moving on..... Should they have implemented channels between 1.0 and 2.0: maybe yes maybe no, I would lean towards no. The type of overhaul they did to the infrastructure was a massive undertaking, and adding this on top would have added months of additional time for development and testing, when clearly they already were months behind on release (see CT).

Further based on the launch, it was clear they never anticipated this volume, so it never would have occurred to them 2 years ago to prioritize this type of design. Should they implement it now/in the future? I honestly don't know. It is an interesting question. Part of it is going to depend on future growth and long term sustainability. Will this be a long term problem? Or is it a problem now only because of launch spike? I don't know the answer. I don't know if the development team has any statistics to support such a clear cut answer either. So then it becomes "do we risk it on the assumption we will need such a system long term, or do we instead focus on other things such as DX11 client, overall engine improvements, and general new infrastructure/content like pvp?". My guess is unless they have strong evidence to support this being a long term problem, they won't prioritize it over other types of issues.

Also regarding population density in given areas: I have never seen even close to 500 people in Coerthas at a time, worst I have ever seen is maybe 300. Unless your world is actually seeing that kind of load already 500, or worse, you aren't going to see this issue anywhere except the big FATES where people drop whatever they are doing and all rush in, to watch or join in.

What's a main city?

I'd still like to hear of someone actually being afflicted by the population cap, and less of this random theorycrafting.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Missbone

Why the Hell Fan Boys like you defending them. The game is shitty programmed it seems and Limit something this way is not ok for an MMO. They are enough other and better Solutions, increasing Capacity and improve Server stability, implementing a Zone System like in GW2 and so on. But this sounds like some Noobi shit from the last century.

---

Reading is hard.

Confirm/Deny?

SE needs to send a couple of their "server team" to take some software preformance engineering classes, oh and stop using python

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TheRac25

SE needs to send a couple of their "server team" to take some software preformance engineering classes, oh and stop using python

---

Python? Is there confirmation they are using python for server code? I find that rather hard to believe......

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VitaminMT

I'd still like to hear of someone actually being afflicted by the population cap, and less of this random theorycrafting.

---

lol, this so much. People act like the zone cap is 20 or something, when it should be at least 500 or more.

So many rustled jimmies here, calm down folks

<^.^>

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rivienne

Python? Is there confirmation they are using python for server code? I find that rather hard to believe......

---

its the only thing i know of that runs so slow besides poor coding, oh wait

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rivienne

Python? Is there confirmation they are using python for server code? I find that rather hard to believe......

---

ruby would be more believable, especially since it performs worse than python.

Seems to be the way SE fixes anything. "Our servers can't handle the load. Lock them out." "Mobs are disappearing with too many people in the zone. Lock them out." They can't implement zone instances right now because they put bare minimum in place to handle the dungeon instances. Way to look toward the future. Seems they only want the bare minimum players to be able to play their game.

Whole lotta people here that seem to think they can do a better job than SE at fixing the problem. How many of you have sent in your resumes?

If the zone won't let you in, then you weren't going to beat the FATE anyways. Sure, you might get a chance at seeing a faint glimmer of Odin before he vanishes 2 feet in front of you, but all you're doing at that point is making it harder for other people to get their win. You might even end up being "that guy" that crashes the server because there was one too many people in the zone. Is the possibility of getting bronze really worth completely ruining everything for everyone else?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reiterpallasch

Whole lotta people here that seem to think they can do a better job than SE at fixing the problem. How many of you have sent in your resumes?

If the zone won't let you in, then you weren't going to beat the FATE anyways. Sure, you might get a chance at seeing a faint glimmer of Odin before he vanishes 2 feet in front of you, but all you're doing at that point is making it harder for other people to get their win. You might even end up being "that guy" that crashes the server because there was one too many people in the zone. Is the possibility of getting bronze really worth completely ruining everything for everyone else?

---

Give me a break. How many game companies have you ever seen completely lock players out of content instead of fixing the issue? None of these issues are new and game companies long before them realized these issues and implemented fixes to them long before their games were even released.

You'll get used to it.

Any FFXI veterans already are during Beseiged's famous days.

I'd rather this, than people crashing the zone, which has been done. Odin, however, will likely need a difficulty adjustment.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sadebreth

Give me a break. How many game companies have you ever seen completely lock players out of content instead of fixing the issue? None of these issues are new and game companies long before them realized these issues and implemented fixes to them long before their games were even released.

---

If it's so easy to fix, what's your solution? And I don't mean to fix it down the road. I mean toss us an idea that you can implement right now, to fix it right now. It's easy, so certainly they don't need to do something like this in the meantime right?

Quote:

---

It prevents people that want in on the Odin/Behemoth battles from doing so and it prevents people from entering a zone to complete a quest objective.

---

That's the whole point. Other people are only inconvenienced for a short time, it's better than everoyne being inconvenienced because of every areas having channels/instances.

Capping the participants in those fates is the only way for them to be fates without it being a clusterbomb of lag and server crashing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TheRac25

its the only thing i know of that runs so slow besides poor coding, oh wait

---

Slow? What slow are you talking about? Server timing has proved to be very precise, I have seen client side problems, but from a server side coherency, it is pretty solid timing. What makes you think things are running slow server side? (Also Ruby runs factors slower than python)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by floredon

ruby would be more believable, especially since it performs worse than python.

---

Yeah, ruby runs slower. But what is with the server code bashing and snide language use remarks? The thread was about hard population caps to prevent system overload, which is a feature of basically any similarly scaled server infrastructure. This has nothing to do with the language being used. It is the nature of a server. It has a fixed capacity, and there is a real world limit to how much it can handle, which is going to be distributed based on the various tasks being performed.

The cap is going to be determined by how much CPU and memory usage each process is going to take, which is going to be dependent on number of objects it has to manage, enemies, some portion of enemy AI, not to mention real world environment, duty finder matching, (potentially) market board, and so on. It is the combination of all these things that is going to determine the cap, and this game has a lot of things going on per server, and per person, all while ensuring coherency between players.

It is a really massive undertaking, and caps of some kind were inevitable. You could argue that the cap should be larger and that this is a sign they have bad servers, or inefficient code, but unless you have seen the actual servers/code, you really have no way to judge unless you yourself have worked on a system in a similar environment. And either way: they would still have caps, The question would simply be what the cap looked like, is it 750, 1000, 1500? I would find it hard to believe these servers could ever cope with much more than ~1000, short of scaling up so high that the cost metric of servers to subscribers isn't worthwhile, no matter how efficient the code was.

Anyway, nobody is actually listening to me here so I am going to stop now. This is why developers usually aren't allowed to talk directly to users. Trying to be calm and coherent when people keep spouting random (frankly confusing at times) assumptions as though they are fact, is seriously frustrating at times.

*laugh* And this isn't even my project.... These forums are bad for me.....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Missbone

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by billydata21

If they have to add something like this because of the behe and odin fates then they shouldn't have added something the game couldn't handle.

Putting behe and odin in fates is stupid anyways, it's not like they are fun fights or you get anything great from them. Should of made them an instance.

---

Why the Hell Fan Boys like you defending them. The game is shitty programmed it seems and Limit something this way is not ok for an MMO. They are enough other and better Solutions, increasing Capacity and improve Server stability, implementing a Zone System like in GW2 and so on. But this sounds like some Noobi shit from the last century.

---

Reading comprehension fail.

Wow, what a bunch of whiny little brats. We've got a bunch of keyboard Einsteins demanding a fix like it's just throwing another burger on the grill. Stop underestimating the complexity of the situation; they don't have a magic wand they can just wave and make everything all better. This is the first MMO that is allowing PC gamers and console gamers to play together. Therefore, they're likely facing issues that haven't been encountered before. Some fixes take time, like it or not.

Whining about it without offering solutions is unproductive and unhelpful.

i just find it kind of funny that we have so many people complaining about a cap that MIGHT affect people.....but yet no complaints about actually being affected by it. And instancing the zone wont help much, having instances does not increase the servers capacity, just splits it up. So if the zone can only normally hold 2000 people....if you instance it into 2, then each instance can only hold 1000 people....but there will still be 2000 people in the zone. If they cap it off now, they would still have to cap off zones if it was instanced.