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swiftwilly

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From the latest 10ftc:

 

RoJ Asks: Other large MMO games - especially "single server" sorts of universes - have historically seen large groups of players banding together in the name of "disruptive" behaviour. This can take the form of denying an area of the game to other players, controlling the economy, or just generally causing havoc. What are your plans for the Star Citizen universe to accommodate the lone freelance miner caught up in the madness?

 

There are a couple of things that make us a little different than the games I think you're referring to perhaps like Eve online. First of all the player base is only ever going to make up at most 10% of the population of any given place, and what's happening in the economy etc, so in terms of being able to dramatically affect an area or economy, it's going to be pretty hard. You may be able to have an impact, but even the largest player group in a given area will make up less than 10%. The other issue is, because we have such high fidelity, we can't have too many people in one particular instance, like in AC the limit at the moment it's only 8 people, with 1.0 we'll have some new tech that we've made that allows much greater player numbers in one instance, but even with a best case scenario at the moment of 50-100 players, there are only so many people that can be crammed into one instance. Matchmaking will help limit these things, like say an organisation might only be able to occupy a certain portion of an instance, there will be slots reserved for friends of other players in that instance as well. It won't be a case where a thousand people can get together and control an area anyway, even if they fill that instance, there could be another instance of the same space that matchmaking might put you into because you're unrelated to whatever activity is going on there. If you want to be more PvE than PvP, the contextual matchmaking will put you together with other NPCs that might attack you rather than players filling the pirate role. There are places where you'll be beyond the PvE/PvP selections, where there's "no law", but if you're after quiet trading without players hassling you you'll have the choice to steer clear of those areas. We still want organisations to have AN effect on the economy though, there will definitely be things they can take over and control, but not allow them to spoil other's fun. I'm a bit of a dreamer here, but I have a good feeling about the balance that we've worked out, and we can and will continue to work on that as time goes on. I could be crazy, but I'm sure I'll hear about it from you guys on the forums :-D

 

Sounds like each instance is likely less than what I expect and wonder how that changes things. If best case scenario for CR (who is a bit of a dreamer) is 50 - 100. does that mean we should expect < 50 players in any instance? Also, not sure if it was mentioned before, does this figure include or exclude AI?

 

 

For me that really changes things...Given that each Idris likely would have 2 hornets as well with it (let me know if that is incorrect), so that is idris + 2 hornets = in terms of crew each hornet would have 2, idris can hold 10. That a total of 12 players. 50/12 = 4.16 idris' only in each instance? I was kind of imaging 50 Idris' battles etc. I didn't expect the battles to be this size. 

 

50 player max size isn't totally out of the question either. I know BF4 has 64 players but that game has a lot less going on versus SC in the PU in each instance. SC would need to be processing what each ship is doing and what each player within that ship is doing etc where as BF4 would be processing a lot less. I cannot imagine the max player account to go much above that...

 

Also changes my perception on how war between organisations will play at as well. 

 

Keen to hear your thoughts and let me know if I have missed anything...

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I guarantee they have no idea at this point how many players/ships will run stable in any given instance. It may be 25 or maybe 500. The code that will drive data transfer is still in the works so if the can limit the amount of data being transferred then you can have more people. If they have to calculate every item on every ship and broadcast it to every client, well there is where they will run into issues. We'll see, they've come up with some creative solutions to complex problems so far, so I still remain optimistic.

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I might be a bit of an optimist, but when I hear CR saying "50-100" people I am thinking he means "ships". Beyond that though, it really depends on what the servers can handle.

 

Like Juntau said, I'm sure they can come up with creative solutions to minimize the impact of instancing.

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@Luetin went into some solid theory into how this would work within one of his numerous (and great) video segments.

This entire video is well built but the Battle Instance stuff starts around 12:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f2IM0JAAzA

 

What he postulates here is the best I have heard about how Instance Counts could be generated and handled. - DRUM out

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Personally, for the sake of capital ship mechanics, I hope they figure out a way to make ships instanced within, and exterior instance is based on ships not players. If they don't, well 1 Bengal and its hornets will take up a full instance....

 

I'm sure they're working hard though to solve this issue. One of the things in  the initial campaign trailer was that CR was talking about being able to fly a hornet around a Bengal and wave to your friend within the bridge, who could in turn wave back.

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Im sure they mentioned overlapping instances i.e you could see other players in the distance and potentially fly to their instance.

 

Bengals might have their own special instance map what allows for more players...or perhaps bengals can only launch so many fighters at one time?

 

Will be interesting to see the outcome though.

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A Bengal will allways have to exist in multiple instances otherwise you would never be able to kill it. I wonder how they are going to handle that though. A Bengal with say a 2 destroyer and 4 frigate escort (which I think is pretty minimal escort if you ask me) would easily involve over 200 people. In order for anyone to be able to attack this fleet they would need at least a similar amount of players and probably double that.

There is no way SC will be able to track over 400 people in 1 instance (esp. when most of them are in fighters). So they will have to split up the attack into several instances but this opens up a whole new can of worms. You cannot defend a ship in 5 different instances unless you have 5 different people occupying the same turret in the bengal (for example).

Splitting the on ship fighting into a separate instance is pretty easy I guess the big problem is how do you instance fights between fleets or between lotsa fighters and a carrier. You need a lot of ships to nail a carrier and even a 100 player instance limit (which I think Chris will not pull off) is still pretty low. Given that there should be squadrons of fighters and bombers on that carrier alone a full combat launch would fill the entire instance ....

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A Bengal will allways have to exist in multiple instances otherwise you would never be able to kill it. I wonder how they are going to handle that though. A Bengal with say a 2 destroyer and 4 frigate escort (which I think is pretty minimal escort if you ask me) would easily involve over 200 people. In order for anyone to be able to attack this fleet they would need at least a similar amount of players and probably double that.

There is no way SC will be able to track over 400 people in 1 instance (esp. when most of them are in fighters). So they will have to split up the attack into several instances but this opens up a whole new can of worms. You cannot defend a ship in 5 different instances unless you have 5 different people occupying the same turret in the bengal (for example).

Splitting the on ship fighting into a separate instance is pretty easy I guess the big problem is how do you instance fights between fleets or between lotsa fighters and a carrier. You need a lot of ships to nail a carrier and even a 100 player instance limit (which I think Chris will not pull off) is still pretty low. Given that there should be squadrons of fighters and bombers on that carrier alone a full combat launch would fill the entire instance ....

 

I wonder, as others have, if it is more a ship limit than a person limit. Im sure having 200 people just walking around a handfull of large ships wouldnt be too difficult. However, having 200 people all in individual ships could be challenging.

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I wonder, as others have, if it is more a ship limit than a person limit. Im sure having 200 people just walking around a handfull of large ships wouldnt be too difficult. However, having 200 people all in individual ships could be challenging.

from a network side it is usually players (connections) that matter

 

so every player has to be sent all the "events" that happen within their scope from all other players and their actions

a Freelancer with three peoples inside is heavier than an Idris with one player inside

while a bigger ship might create a few more "events" that have to be communicated it is probably not that big of a difference in contrast to the cumulative effect that additional players have

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I assume anything that 1 player can do that impacts another players "world" is relevant in the instance count, the following activities would need the most bandwidth I guess :

 

- flying ships and combat (vector/speed changes and laser/projectile/missile/flare/chaff updates, damage states, etc.) 

- flying drones (if they can be controlled they need vector/speed updates and damage state updates etc.)

- turreting (laser/projectile updates and turret direction plus vector/speed updates for the ship of the turreting player himself)

- doing voluntary or accidental EVA ;) (vector/speed changes and laser/projectile updates, damage states, etc.)

- loot pickups and debris collisions (incl vector/speed changes in collisions)

- asteroid shooting (when they get shot at and explode)

 

In a combat furball between 50 fighters the amount of data that would need to be updated constantly for all players (and which cannot be accurately predicted) would be quite large and the problem is that for the majority of this data a connection with a low ping is imperative in order for the universe to be semi lag free. Depending on where the hit detection is done all kinds of weird problems will pop up with either data overload or lag ...

Personally I think the instance thingy will come back and bite Chris in the ass, i suspect we will lose some interesting game aspects because the network code cannot handle it (like battles where dozens of capships and wings of fighters and bombers get into a big furball :wub: )

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Technology has been growing at such a fast rate I honestly don't see this as a problem. What can be seen as a technical obstacle now could easily be overcome in the 2 years by release. Even if it is released with a 200 person maximum, a few years from then it could be 1500. I plan on being in it for the long haul.

It seems like just yesterday I bought and installed a 9800GTX to play Age of Conan. Now I'm rocking GTX 780's and the difference is absolutely astounding. It's only been 5 years.

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But this really a new development for game play. It has always been stated that data transfer would be an issue hence the instancing. It will only be a game changer if instances can only deal with under 50 players give or take. People talking about huge capital ship battles with dozens of cap ships and hundreds of fighters must have missed that memo from early on.

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Instancing is the thing that worries me the most. Its great having all this damage states, but I'd prefer to have 200 people in one batter with no damage states than 50 people with damage.

 

And having lag is really frustrating. Nothing worse than getting a kill, only to find out you are already dead.

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from a network side it is usually players (connections) that matter

 

so every player has to be sent all the "events" that happen within their scope from all other players and their actions

a Freelancer with three peoples inside is heavier than an Idris with one player inside

while a bigger ship might create a few more "events" that have to be communicated it is probably not that big of a difference in contrast to the cumulative effect that additional players have

 

Yes that definitely plays a big part in the limitation. However, I recall CIG stating the high fidelity nature of the game and the volume of ships and their actions would play the biggest part, both in networking issues and also the ability for players pc's to be able to smoothly display the content and action.

 

I guess this is maybe why you can easily have 64+ player fps maps and have been able to for the last decade or so.

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Technology has been growing at such a fast rate I honestly don't see this as a problem. What can be seen as a technical obstacle now could easily be overcome in the 2 years by release. Even if it is released with a 200 person maximum, a few years from then it could be 1500. I plan on being in it for the long haul.

It seems like just yesterday I bought and installed a 9800GTX to play Age of Conan. Now I'm rocking GTX 780's and the difference is absolutely astounding. It's only been 5 years.

 

You're referring to the increase in computational power over the last decades, unfortunately this isn't quite the same for player capacity for servers. Although the bandwidth has also increased in the last 20 years (from 0 to 100 Mbit/s some people currently have), in for example most FPS games the amount of players is still limited to 64, if it ain't even 32 (hello console ports). Battlefield 1942 had 64 players, Battlefield Vietnam had 64 players, Battlefield 2 had 64 players, Battlefield 3 had 64 players, Battlefield 4 has 64 players, you get the idea ;). Sure, the bandwidth has increased since the release of Battlefield 1942, and so did the computational power, but unfortunately the amount to be calculated also increased dramatically. Modern simulations share not only positional data and data about where you fire at, but also about destructible objects and so forth.

 

The complexity of the simulation in a game increases at the same pace as the increase in computational power, such that effectively the bandwidth requirements remain proportional and you still can't play with 500 players on a Battlefield map, despite all the progress. What about MMORPGS that handle thousands of players? Well, the simulation is much less complex there as well as the amount of actions players can perform, as well as requirements to the responsiveness and accuracy of the simulation, while for a FPS you don't want any synchronization lag between players, just to avoid situations such as "wtf cheater you shot me around the corner".

 

For Star Citizen I think it was mentioned that an instance could contain about 100 characters (either NPC or player, since NPC generates about the same amount synchronization data as a player would do), which would be quite a lot already, especially considering that thruster simulations are all in there as well as complex damage states and the ability to see players inside ships (as well as lights and displays).

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You're referring to the increase in computational power over the last decades, unfortunately this isn't quite the same for player capacity for servers. Although the bandwidth has also increased in the last 20 years (from 0 to 100 Mbit/s some people currently have), in for example most FPS games the amount of players is still limited to 64, if it ain't even 32 (hello console ports). Battlefield 1942 had 64 players, Battlefield Vietnam had 64 players, Battlefield 2 had 64 players, Battlefield 3 had 64 players, Battlefield 4 has 64 players, you get the idea ;). Sure, the bandwidth has increased since the release of Battlefield 1942, and so did the computational power, but unfortunately the amount to be calculated also increased dramatically. Modern simulations share not only positional data and data about where you fire at, but also about destructible objects and so forth.

 

The complexity of the simulation in a game increases at the same pace as the increase in computational power, such that effectively the bandwidth requirements remain proportional and you still can't play with 500 players on a Battlefield map, despite all the progress. What about MMORPGS that handle thousands of players? Well, the simulation is much less complex there as well as the amount of actions players can perform, as well as requirements to the responsiveness and accuracy of the simulation, while for a FPS you don't want any synchronization lag between players, just to avoid situations such as "wtf cheater you shot me around the corner".

 

For Star Citizen I think it was mentioned that an instance could contain about 100 characters (either NPC or player, since NPC generates about the same amount synchronization data as a player would do), which would be quite a lot already, especially considering that thruster simulations are all in there as well as complex damage states and the ability to see players inside ships (as well as lights and displays).

Battlefield doesn't go back and update their engine, they just wait to implement it in a brand new part of the series. Where as SC will likely be on the same engine as they optimize and update it along the way. I doubt the complexities in simulation will get that much different between release and 2 years from then. But the servers they run on can change.

I'm not a programmer or a IT guy, so my knowledge is very limited. I've just seen how other MMOs in the past have changed. I'm talking about the ones that last years, not the ones that are in their prime for 4-6 months then close down. Think DAoC.

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Battlefield doesn't go back and update their engine, they just wait to implement it in a brand new part of the series.

 

My point was, any progress in engine improvement and server improvement has so far been met with an increase in the complexity to be handled by the servers, such that the player count has remained more or less constant over more than 10 years.

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@Luetin went into some solid theory into how this would work within one of his numerous (and great) video segments.

This entire video is well built but the Battle Instance stuff starts around 12:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f2IM0JAAzA

 

What he postulates here is the best I have heard about how Instance Counts could be generated and handled. - DRUM out

 

This is a cool idea if CIG can pull this off. :)

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Technology has been growing at such a fast rate I honestly don't see this as a problem. What can be seen as a technical obstacle now could easily be overcome in the 2 years by release. Even if it is released with a 200 person maximum, a few years from then it could be 1500. I plan on being in it for the long haul.

It seems like just yesterday I bought and installed a 9800GTX to play Age of Conan. Now I'm rocking GTX 780's and the difference is absolutely astounding. It's only been 5 years.

 

technology might, but information/data can only be sent at max speeds (of light) so I don't see the GPU power being the issure but more just simple "distance" related. If you have 200 players to deal with that is an awful amount of information you need to be sent out to everyone....anyway, I am not IT by trade but that is my logical guess. Pretty sure I am wrong here...

 

But I know from Eve days when you had a lot of people in one area it wasn't a GPU issue at all.

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Let's hope they figure out a way then. I would hate to see big battles equalling "only" 10 or 15 ships. If they could treat a ship as 1 player and the people inside the ships instanced, we could experience some truly epic battles! [emoji3]

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You're referring to the increase in computational power over the last decades, unfortunately this isn't quite the same for player capacity for servers. Although the bandwidth has also increased in the last 20 years (from 0 to 100 Mbit/s some people currently have), in for example most FPS games the amount of players is still limited to 64, if it ain't even 32 (hello console ports). Battlefield 1942 had 64 players, Battlefield Vietnam had 64 players, Battlefield 2 had 64 players, Battlefield 3 had 64 players, Battlefield 4 has 64 players, you get the idea ;). Sure, the bandwidth has increased since the release of Battlefield 1942, and so did the computational power, but unfortunately the amount to be calculated also increased dramatically. Modern simulations share not only positional data and data about where you fire at, but also about destructible objects and so forth.

 

The complexity of the simulation in a game increases at the same pace as the increase in computational power, such that effectively the bandwidth requirements remain proportional and you still can't play with 500 players on a Battlefield map, despite all the progress. What about MMORPGS that handle thousands of players? Well, the simulation is much less complex there as well as the amount of actions players can perform, as well as requirements to the responsiveness and accuracy of the simulation, while for a FPS you don't want any synchronization lag between players, just to avoid situations such as "wtf cheater you shot me around the corner".

 

For Star Citizen I think it was mentioned that an instance could contain about 100 characters (either NPC or player, since NPC generates about the same amount synchronization data as a player would do), which would be quite a lot already, especially considering that thruster simulations are all in there as well as complex damage states and the ability to see players inside ships (as well as lights and displays).

I don't know why you keep referring to Battlefield, a Frostbite Engine, when Planetside 2 would be a more accurate comparison, being the same engine (CryEngine). And Planetside handles a lot more than 64, in fact hundreds. Sure the fidelity is not all that great but it isn't all that bad either. 

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But the high fidelity in SC is what's so appealing to a large portion of the players. I don't think they (and myself for that matter) are willing to step back on that for a higher number of people and ships on your screen.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I would be pretty hard pressed to drop the quality as well. But I think optimization will inevitably lower it; how much however will depend on how far CIG optimizes. That being said, a 5-10% drop in fidelity will still make SC the most visually appealing game ever made. 

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