Random Gripe About the Firmament

[Packetdancer]

Those maps don't actually use the normal aethernet system to begin with, so they never got the update. It has got nothing to do with spaghetti code and fates.

Huh. If they treat the Firmament under the hood as a dynamically allocated field zone (as opposed to a static instance, a'la housing wards), it would actually explain that.

I wouldn't have thought they did, because I remember when the Firmament launched we had problems where people could not get into the Firmament -- if I recall right, it's why they blocked folks from participating in the Firmament FATEs on servers other than their own, because people were server-hopping and flooding whatever server would have a FATE up next. Whereas Eureka/Bozja zones, if one is too full (or if an instance has gone 'stale' -- e.g., all the various NMs/Skirmishes/CEs have been expended and everything's on cooldown) it stops funneling people into that one and creates a new one.

But that change note does certainly imply that the Firmament acts that way under the hood. I wonder if that was a later change -- if they retrofitted it quickly into a dynamic field zone to make it potentially spawn new Firmament instances -- to address those overloading/crowding issues. If so, that'd definitely explain why it uses the older aethernet system still.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Maps will not be displayed when accessing the Aethernet in the following areas:

The Forbidden Land, Eureka Anemos
The Forbidden Land, Eureka Pagos
The Forbidden Land, Eureka Pyros
The Forbidden Land, Eureka Hydatos
The Bozjan Southern Front
Zadnor
The Firmament

Doman Enclave always used the new system. I just checked Bozja and it uses the old system.

Those maps don't actually use the normal aethernet system to begin with, so they never got the update. It has got nothing to do with spaghetti code and fates.

ah I see my mistake.

[Sove92]

Huh. If they treat the Firmament under the hood as a dynamically allocated field zone (as opposed to a static instance, a'la housing wards), it would actually explain that.

I wouldn't have thought they did, because I remember when the Firmament launched we had problems where people could not get into the Firmament -- if I recall right, it's why they blocked folks from participating in the Firmament FATEs on servers other than their own, because people were server-hopping and flooding whatever server would have a FATE up next. Whereas Eureka/Bozja zones, if one is too full (or if an instance has gone 'stale' -- e.g., all the various NMs/Skirmishes/CEs have been expended and everything's on cooldown) it stops funneling people into that one and creates a new one.

But that change note does certainly imply that the Firmament acts that way under the hood. I wonder if that was a later change -- if they retrofitted it quickly into a dynamic field zone to make it potentially spawn new Firmament instances -- to address those overloading/crowding issues. If so, that'd definitely explain why it uses the older aethernet system still.

It might have more to do with the fact that firmament has the whole restoration stuff and dynamic map system, so SE gave it a custom aethernet system to ensure there are no compatibility issues.

[Packetdancer]

It might have more to do with the fact that firmament has the whole restoration stuff and dynamic map system, so SE gave it a custom aethernet system to ensure there are no compatibility issues.

I don't think it would be a compatibility issue... but looking back, I can't remember if the older sanctuary/hub aethernet listed all the aethernet points and just had those you hadn't attuned grayed out; wracking my brain, I seem to recall it actually did. In which case, I can see them using the dynamic field zone stuff (and more to the point, its aethernet system) just to avoid spoilers, because Eureka and Bozja just don't list the aetherytes you haven't attuned yet. So by using that system for the Firmament, you wouldn't see aethernet points for places that hadn't been rebuilt yet, as you would not be able to get to that spot to attune to the aethernet point... thus it wouldn't be in the list. And so you wouldn't get 'spoilers' as to what was going to be rebuilt in future stages.

And that -- reusing an existing system to avoid having to special-case the normal hub aethernet system so that it would hide unattuned aethernet points -- absolutely has the ring of "yep, that is 100% a decision I can see a production team making."