Originally posted by Wrayeth

Reading through the responses to this thread is like reading the responses to a thread on the official EVE forums by someone who jumped his uber faction-fit marauder into lowsec, got ganked by pirates, then decided to put up a post about how he shouldn't be able to be shot by other players anywhere, at any time.  It's almost like a shark feeding frenzy.  As such....

-throws a bag of popcorn into the microwave and drags out a big bowl and some popcorn cheese-

In reality, much as I may violently disagree with the design theory behind Champions (I play EVE, after all, and that's one shard with one--and only one!--instance), the truth is that, as far as I know, the only-one-shard-instanced-to-Hell approach hasn't been tried before.  This meets the criteria for "innovative" in my book.  As a result, most of the objections to the article posted here have little validity.

Now, as to whether that was a good design decision, that's another matter....

Isn't that exactly what Guild Wars is?

Also, I didn't catch that in the article - so, how are any of the readers supposed to know that by reading the article. From reading it,  "Champions Online recently launched, and one of the innovations that it brought to the table was shardlessness - a single server hosting the entire game population" The opening doesn't make any reference to zones or instances. It simply says that CO launched the game on a single server and it was innovative. It's not. There are a lot of different games that are on a single server. It could be innovative in its implementation, but I'm not spending $50 to find out what the author left out of the article.

Believe it or not, alot of people haven't played EVE and don't consider it a AAA release. (I personally don't consider it one, no matter how good it is.)

Also, Guild Wars is not even close to being Champion's Online. (I think you'd find pros and cons for both styles... only one is really suited for an MMO.  Guild Wars would have more in common with Hellgate than it would CO imo.)

The author basically listed concisely a number of pros and cons for the style of shardlessness employed by Champion's Online, a type of shardlessness that would be reasonable to assume could well be modeled off of in the future.

Finding one phrase that really doesn't have that much to do with the point of the article, nitpicking it to death, and then holding it up as some sort of triumphant dismissal of this author's contribution doesn't make you look perceptive and smart, it makes you look like a short sighted jackass.

Having played Champion's Online, I would by and large agree with his feelings towards their system.  He listed three legitimate "Pros" and he listed three legitimate "Cons".  What varies from individual is the "weight" that each of these systems have... for example, someone who enjoys playing with friends regardless of server may not feel the lack of a server identity a bad tradeoff.  A roleplayer may well feel the loss of server identiy more deeply, with the notion of having to potentially play with "everyone" a bad thing in and of itself.

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Originally posted by Yunbei Sheesh I am really tired of people telling "EVE this EVE that", usually "EVE had that first", "EVE has that better" or the like. I don't even think EVE is a MMORPG. RPG needs a role to play and in EVE you are a spaceship. Not to say its a bad game, but it is SO out of everything I consider a MMORPG and a game that interests me, god EVE could invent money shitting and I could not care a rats ass.

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I guess when you are a pioneer, people will keep pointing out that you had something others are calling "new".

Being shardless is not new, unusual at the moment, yes, but definitely not new.

Also Yunbei, you obviously never played EVE or if you did, you never got it. In EVE you are not a spaceship. You are a pilot. When I used to play EVE I had nothing less then 15 ships, each with it's own uses, strength and limitations.

And by the way, money shitting was already invented years ago. It was called a "Bling Gnome" in Dungeon Runners.

LOL, Captain Underpants! I remember being obsessed with that series in the fifth grade, I used to read at least one captain underpants book every week or so... Ah, I loved those flip page animations. I would always wait in anticipation until I got to it, and then spend forever just flipping it back and forth.

On a more pertinent note, I think that the shardless system would ruin a lot of games, like in WoW, the server community definitely defines a huge part of the gameplay. Besides, Blizzard is now going to use cross-server technology for all instanced gameplay for all the benefits of a shardless system in game, and Battle.net 2.0 will give you all the benefits of communication that come with it. That way, you don't have any trouble communicating with your friends on different servers or different factions, and you never have trouble finding a group for things, yet you still maintain the sense of community on your server. I think that sort of deal is pretty much win on all fronts.

"Believe it or not, alot of people haven't played EVE and don't consider it a AAA release. (I personally don't consider it one, no matter how good it is.)"

Well sorry to break your bubble, but Eve is one of the top 5 subscription MMO's considering it's playerbase size, so if it isn't a AAA title then most of the others are not either.

And sorry Stradden, but unless you provide specifics why Champions shardless design is that different from Eve, I have to disagree with your statement.  I don't think it is really pertinent how they implement such a design, it is still basically everyone on the same server.

Personally shardless design has it's drawbacks.  Wow for example, I always play on the roleplay servers to get away from the kiddie corps and their silly names.  A shardless design would be a real negative for me in that situation.

I think more games should start doing it this way, devs are making bigger and bigger worlds so why not pack more people into them. I like the one game one server you can only log into.  Fallen earth has a good idea with the seamless instances. You can watch someone go in first then you go in and poof their gone, unless they were in your team.  Its like magic and its awesome, no loading screen which im always for. Im not sure if they are the first but thats not the point, the point is ,that they are using the technology. Devs and Gamers alike need to embrace technologies like one "Server" worlds and seamless instances, it will make the world feel more massive and no loading screens to help with immersion.

@ Ozmod  yeah I can see how that would suck but then you just have a naming policy just like most games do. If you see someone that don't have the right name report them. Or they could make  4 servers for WoW. a RP, RP PvP ,PVP, PvE. There you go people can all play which server they want with a ton of people.  But right now Im playing FE to try and stay away from those kiddies in the first place.  But WoW will do anything to grab more people IMO, which Im not down with. Id rather have a game that keeps the existing people rather than acting like a whore trying to get as many people to play.

I simply cannot stand the way newer games all appear to be completely instanced. Nothing kills the feeling of immersion more than splitting every single zone into multiple instances of the same area. Yet, this appears to be the growing trend in every new MMO in development.

I am all for a shardless world if it does not rely on instancing every area in the game. If it can be done the way it is in EVE (no instancing ANYWHERE), then it is great. But let's face it, most games that would utilize this model would make it a shardless collection of instanced copies. The more people crammed in the same small game world, the worse this will be... Good luck ever running into someone you know in the gameworld because you are in instance A and they are in instance Z.

Any sense of community is totally lost in this kind of game. There is no permanence to the world and it is completely unrealistic. How do the developers explain it when two friends are in the same zone looking for each other, but neither can find each other because they are in different instances? How do developers NOT see that this is a total immersion killer? It is mind-boggling to me...

In order for a popular single-server game to be done RIGHT, it would have to have an absolutely IMMENSE game world. One the size of EVE. It would have to have such a staggering amount of content that it would be nearly impossible to accomplish in any setting other than outer space.

Either that, or the developers would have to come up with some method for automatically zoning people who know eachother in the same instances as their friends/guildmates. If that could be done seamlessly, then it might not matter that everyone is in different zones. Unfortunately I don't see any way to do that...

Originally posted by Anubisan

I simply cannot stand the way newer games all appear to be completely instanced. Nothing kills the feeling of immersion more than splitting every single zone into multiple instances of the same area. Yet, this appears to be the growing trend in every new MMO in development.

I am all for a shardless world if it does not rely on instancing every area in the game. If it can be done the way it is in EVE (no instancing ANYWHERE), then it is great. But let's face it, most games that would utilize this model would make it a shardless collection of instanced copies. The more people crammed in the same small game world, the worse this will be... Good luck ever running into someone you know in the gameworld because you are in instance A and they are in instance Z.

Any sense of community is totally lost in this kind of game. There is no permanence to the world and it is completely unrealistic. How do the developers explain it when two friends are in the same zone looking for each other, but neither can find each other because they are in different instances? How do developers NOT see that this is a total immersion killer? It is mind-boggling to me...

In order for a popular single-server game to be done RIGHT, it would have to have an absolutely IMMENSE game world. One the size of EVE. It would have to have such a staggering amount of content that it would be nearly impossible to accomplish in any setting other than outer space.

Either that, or the developers would have to come up with some method for automatically zoning people who know eachother in the same instances as their friends/guildmates. If that could be done seamlessly, then it might not matter that everyone is in different zones. Unfortunately I don't see any way to do that...

"Back in my day... blah blah blah."

All I can say is you better get used to it.  The move from statically defined servers to shardless, dynamically instanced everything parallels the shift from static web pages to dynamic ones.  

Have fun lamenting the good old days with the other MMO dinosaurs.  I will certainly not be missing them.

I didn't read through all the responses so this may have been mentioned. There is one thing that shardless allows that isn't really allowed otherwise.

Currently players can't effect their world because once the shards are different the devs have to do multiplying amount of content to reach the same size audience. So more and more work to cover the different states of the shards to bring in the same money.

Shardless allows for the devs to put in a quest that depending on how many people complete it one way over another, that effects the outcome and effects the world from that point forward. So a quick example, an evil guy tries to come to power. Players can choose to help him or fight him. If more choose to help him then he gains power in a future patch and the world is forever changed.

Would be interesting to see a company that went shardless also adopt this strategy and give the players genuine choices in how the game world develops.

 CO would have been a great game if they just would of made it a single player rpg. There is nothing to brag about having one shard, because the game is so instanced it completely destroys the 'Massive' in MMO.

 I find the article unbiased and logical, which leads me to ask, "what the hell is going on around here?"

In all seriousness, you do bring up very good points.  I especially like the cons.  Being able to log onto an alt and be anonymous has appeal to it, and server communities do tend to take on characteristics all their own.  

Even EvE, with its single universe has characters that are unique from the user account name.  

I rather enjoyed the challenge of finding a meaningful name in City of Heroes, and I liked the global chat handle feature in that game too. 

I played the closed beta of CO and this was one of the "features" that prevented me from buying the game. Didnt like this system at all.

The idea of 1 server to handle your player population is very cool. It becomes uncool however, when you shatter that world into an X amount of instances. If you want your world to feel large and big do it, but do it with one shard 1 instance. You can multi instance dungeons we're all used to that but the whole 30+ variations of the same world zone is frustrating to say the least.

 Nothing innovative here. Single servers have been done.

Con: The savvy number cruncher can gauge the health of your game easily. Even though you'll never have to close a server, one can get a feel for the game's population by making note of the number of instances available and the population per, extrapolating concurrent players to make an educated guess at subscription levels. (This point is a little muddied by the trend toward lifetime subscriptions and free to play business models that we are seeing, but that's another article.)

I don't see this as a con, especially as a player. I find it insulting when game companies try to hide these kinds of things from the players. It's hard to build customer trust when you lie or withold information that players use to base their judgements on whether or not they are going to try the game.

Con: Server identity and feeling of community are lost. The division of servers gives a natural sense of community, as you can expect to see a consistent set of people when you play and individual guilds begin to define the character of the server. In the past, I've joined guilds mainly because I grouped with a few of their members in PUGs over time and enjoyed it enough to ask to join. Shardlessness means randomness. You can't expect to hook up with the same people all that consistently if they can be on any one of twenty or more instances. I don't add people to my friends list until I've grouped with them a few times, and as a consequence, my Champions friends list currently contains only people I already knew.

I think that the biggest hit here is the sense of identity. In almost every game I have played, certain servers become identified by the unique attributes of its population, whether it is defined by a large base of role-players, the presence of an uber guilds and influential players, or even for being the server where all the douchebags play. The more you become invested in games, the more you base decisions about where you want to play off of information like this.

 

Well, if the players are divided into many different instances, then that isn't truly "shardless" in my opinion. All players in one big world (besides instanced dungeons) would be shardless. But it sound like CO is no more shardless than a typical AoC server (at launch anyway).

Furthermore, I like games where players can't just switch servers or change thier names. Players need to be held accounatable for how they act in games, and you just don't see that in todays MMOs. I believe that is one major reason why the communities have suffered so much recently. There is too much anonymity. A player can ninja loot an entire raid, change his name, and come back the next day and do it again and again.

One way to fix the global handle problem would be allowing each player to have three or so global handles that represent them as if they are three or so different players.

That way, I could have my global name with my characters that are RP, my global name with characters that are in Guild X, and a global name for something else.

I'm kinda surprised the Champions Online devs haven't thought of this solution before.

Originally posted by Anubisan

In order for a popular single-server game to be done RIGHT, it would have to have an absolutely IMMENSE game world. One the size of EVE. It would have to have such a staggering amount of content that it would be nearly impossible to accomplish in any setting other than outer space.

While I agree with most of what you said, I don't agree that the game would have to be in in outer space. You could have different nations, continents or even an archipelago.  
 

Originally posted by Ozmodan

And sorry Stradden, but unless you provide specifics why Champions shardless design is that different from Eve, I have to disagree with your statement.  I don't think it is really pertinent how they implement such a design, it is still basically everyone on the same server.

If you are willing to draw a very broad definition of 'single server' and 'multi-server' titles, then sure, ChampO uses the same system as EVE. But the specifics of implementation are different.

EVE goes for a shardless single world / single zone - everyone plays in the same world at the same time. There are no separate servers to segment the players and every single EVE player could meet in one location if they wanted to (technical issues aside).

ChampO goes for a shardless multi-concurrent zones - players across multiple different versions of the same zone and there are multiple zones that provide content for different level ranges. There are also some instanced locations. Each zone is limited in the maximum numbers of players it can hold before sending players to other instances.

It is different to Guild Wars' "lobby areas leading to shared instances" structure.

Is it the single greatest revolution ever seen in MMOs? No. But it is a logical extension of Cryptic's instancing decisions that existed in CoH/V - now the world is instanced rather than just the warehouse / cave system - and a neat way of dealing with the issue of servers vs single world. The mix of also offering an open naming system to this multi-concurrent zones could certainly be considered innovative. (I'm not sure when Aion in Korea got this feature - the ability to flip to a different version of the same zone where it can be easier to find / avoid players is something Aion has too.)

Of course, one of the ironies here is the discussion of a "server" as if it is just one physical entity somewhere. It could be, or it could actually be a multitude of different physical entities that have a single virtual face as the server. Even single servers might not really be single servers!

Finally, Wachter is unlikely to be a Cryptic plant for this article (which is the subtext I get from several posts here) since he no longer works at Cryptic and hasn't for quite a while.

Those who have played know that the game tends to sort instances with friends/team/super team members in it near the top of the selection screen. Maybe what we need is a 4th level.

Just spit-balling here, but perhaps an "acquaintance" level. This will automatically track people you've grouped with, or had some sort of interaction with and will sort instances containing those types of people to the top.

This will perhaps bring a bit more community as you start to see the same people more frequently.

Originally posted by Palebane

Con: Server identity and feeling of community are lost. The division of servers gives a natural sense of community, as you can expect to see a consistent set of people when you play and individual guilds begin to define the character of the server. In the past, I've joined guilds mainly because I grouped with a few of their members in PUGs over time and enjoyed it enough to ask to join. Shardlessness means randomness. You can't expect to hook up with the same people all that consistently if they can be on any one of twenty or more instances. I don't add people to my friends list until I've grouped with them a few times, and as a consequence, my Champions friends list currently contains only people I already knew.

I think that the biggest hit here is the sense of identity. In almost every game I have played, certain servers become identified by the unique attributes of its population, whether it is defined by a large base of role-players, the presence of an uber guilds and influential players, or even for being the server where all the douchebags play. The more you become invested in games, the more you base decisions about where you want to play off of information like this.

 

 

Well, if the players are divided into many different instances, then that isn't truly "shardless" in my opinion. All players in one big world (besides instanced dungeons) would be shardless. But it sound like CO is no more shardless than a typical AoC server (at launch anyway).

 

Furthermore, I like games where players can't just switch servers or change thier names. Players need to be held accounatable for how they act in games, and you just don't see that in todays MMOs. I believe that is one major reason why the communities have suffered so much recently. There is too much anonymity. A player can ninja loot an entire raid, change his name, and come back the next day and do it again and again.

I think the only distinction you make here is in the definition of shard. Shards and instances are technically the same thing but define two seperate concepts. A shard is a single copy of the entire game world. An instance is a single copy of a zone within a game world. Semantics to be sure but they are important distinctions. To have only one copy of the game world is to make the game shardless(IE one server to log into period). To have or not have instances in such a world is another topic alltogether.

An example, In AoC if I pick server A to create my character on and get that character to lvl 30. My friend joins the game but chooses server B to make a character to reach lvl 30 on, We can not play our level 30 characters together because we are on different shards. In Champions online If I level my character to lvl 30 in instance 1 and he goes and does that in Instance 2 at any point with no help from the developers or publishers I can join my friend by simply switching instances. That is a one shard game.

I think the writer outlined the pro's and con's of a one shard system fairly well. I personally think the con's outweigh the pro's by a pretty good margin in the types of games I want to play.

My preferred system is still a multishard universe with a completely non-instanced game world. I would tolerate some special case instancing in a system for arena style pvp and for special dungeons made specifically to challenge you as a player where the developers can control specifically who can get in so the dungeon design can be tailored to that. But I would want that to encompass no more than 10% of the total game world content.

I'm not terribly concerned with the language or who innovated what... However, one point in the article that really hit home for me was that (paraphrased):

Server shutdowns and mergers caused by a reduction in population send a negative message to the players.

I never thought about it in this light, and I agree completely.  Panic the people and they flee.

Ken

Originally posted by RealmLords

I'm not terribly concerned with the language or who innovated what... However, one point in the article that really hit home for me was that (paraphrased):

Server shutdowns and mergers caused by a reduction in population send a negative message to the players.

I never thought about it in this light, and I agree completely.  Panic the people and they flee.

 

Ken

 

In a game in decline its always the fine line between server population issues and the negative PR from shutting down servers. I think that developers overestimate the negative impact of server merges in todays MMO market. The vast majority of people who play MMO's expect a population decline after the first month now and its much better to make sure any and all servers open after the first month have good/healthy populations. This will have a much larger impact on people staying to play the game than just about anything else a game company can do. They will take a short term negative hit as all the nay sayers will say I told you so, but that will only last about a month and can easily be overcome if the game itself remains healthy and fun to play.

Hiya, Spork....Wish you were going to be part of PlanetSide 2...Because we all still miss you in PlanetSide.....