Zone congestion

Quote from the last interview where Yoshida mentioned Zone congestion and the possible solutions they are considering.

Aiming for 5000 players per server, 1000 players in one zone lagless
Two approaches to zone congestion

Display a message "too many players in zone, entry denied"
Spawn instances of a zone to allow for more players

My opinion:

Just locking the zone is of course the cheaper solution dev cost wise and 1000 players in 1 zone is not something that happens often.
But this would cause problems if popular events start happening or something like last event in 1.0 so its not the best solution.

Temporal instances would need an overflow server and probably cost alot more time and money. Obviously the better solutuion (for us).

I would suggest going with the overflow server, since at release a lock up could seriously anger some people and you know how cramped it can get first.
Yoshida probably wants a smooth start so he should take that into consideration.

What do you think?

Lock out is fine with me.

I just remember what a huge bummer it was getting locked out of Besieged when there were 700 in the zone. Would really rather not have that.

I had a great idea occur to me as I read your post, OP.

I like the idea of how they are using the blue dots at the end of a zone, kinda like what they did for this in FFXII. My opinion: if theres not a lot of people in that zone, leave the dots blue, if its starting to get congested but not quite full, make the dots yellow or orange, and if theres too many people in the area, make them red so you know you cant enter at that time.

Reason for my suggestion, its more convenient and more visually representative and not as cumbersome to the player. Surely having the area maxed is not good, but having that same person try to enter the zone, see a now loading screen and being told "too may people in area try again", over and over is even more frustrating for the player. Having a green(blue), yellow and red light system I think would make it easier.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by VoltaAsura

I had a great idea occur to me as I read your post, OP.

I like the idea of how they are using the blue dots at the end of a zone, kinda like what they did for this in FFXII. My opinion: if theres not a lot of people in that zone, leave the dots blue, if its starting to get congested but not quite full, make the dots yellow or orange, and if theres too many people in the area, make them red so you know you cant enter at that time.

Reason for my suggestion, its more convenient and more visually representative and not as cumbersome to the player. Surely having the area maxed is not good, but having that same person try to enter the zone, see a now loading screen and being told "too may people in area try again", over and over is even more frustrating for the player. Having a green(blue), yellow and red light system I think would make it easier.

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seems like great idea to me, certainly better than just a "area full, please try again" message.
But yeah, no congestion would be even better.

^ I doubt we'll ever see that error tbh, maybe more likely at launch and on patch days, but who really knows? It def depends on how the launch goes and how many people itll bring to the game.

I prefer zone lockout. In GW2 they used overload servers and it was a freaking NIGHTMARE trying to play with a friend. We both were constantly reconnected untill we finally made it work... only to have the same problem of being sent to different overload servers when we teleported or zoned

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NintenPyjak64

I prefer zone lockout. In GW2 they used overload servers and it was a freaking NIGHTMARE trying to play with a friend. We both were constantly reconnected untill we finally made it work... only to have the same problem of being sent to different overload servers when we teleported or zoned

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that would certainly be a hassle.

Only time I ever saw a zone lockout was in XI when Beseiged was first introduced. I think Al Zhabi was able to hold 600(?) players at once before it would start to lock out people. At first, if you were the unlucky sap that logged in Al Zhabi and tried to log in during a beseiged, the game would bump you back to the character selection screen.

SE promptly fixed that by tossing all players trying to enter Al Zhabi into Whitegate, and if you kept trying to zone to Al Zhabi, you either got lucky and got in or you'd just get bumped right back into Whitegate.

I can see SE doing something similar with XIV. Though I can't think of any reason any zone would get THAT full.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vilhem

Only time I ever saw a zone lockout was in XI when Beseiged was first introduced. I think Al Zhabi was able to hold 600(?) players at once before it would start to lock out people. At first, if you were the unlucky sap that logged in Al Zhabi and tried to log in during a beseiged, the game would bump you back to the character selection screen.

SE promptly fixed that by tossing all players trying to enter Al Zhabi into Whitegate, and if you kept trying to zone to Al Zhabi, you either got lucky and got in or you'd just get bumped right back into Whitegate.

I can see SE doing something similar with XIV. Though I can't think of any reason any zone would get THAT full.

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last 1.0 event?

Yeah 1.0 too <_< But they didn't think it was worth fixing for that last event xD

I like the stop light idea with the lock out. Will stop players from getting as frustrated. Not knowing when you can go somewhere makes me what to bang my head on the desk, at least with the light system I would be able to know right away that it was full and I could go do something else.