Calathea Sata
State War Academy
|
Posted - 2011.04.12 01:49:00 -
[1]
This idea needs to be strongly put down, because of reasons below.
Originally posted in a thread in General Discussions.
Time Dilation will not work.
Formalizing lag as a game mechanic, really? That is really, really the worst way possible of fixing the problem, the problem of "whoever brings the most wins thus making everyone blobing as big a blob as possible". It will not fix the problem, only easing the syndrome, simply because of people will always try to bring as many as possible into the fight and the system will always be stretched outside its limit. Formalizing lag (Time Dilation) can ony ease out that much of lag and people will just keep bringing in more and more people until the server cannot afford the workload again. Moreover, it simply sounds ridiculous and immersion breaking.
Lag is a natural product of the current game design itself: the fantasy of unlimited numbers of ship fighting together vs the realistic capabilities of the internet and the servers. As long as bringing as many ships into the fight as possible means easier wins, people will do it. Time Dilation won't work. Instead CCP should think about the game design itself: is the concept of an unlimited amount of ships fighting realistic? Perhaps 1000 vs 1000 will not be too different than 2000 vs 2000 simply because the screen and overview cannot contain that much information? Perhaps it is not 1000 but 500? How should we discourage people going over 500, maybe we can create some mechanisms to eliminate the advantages of bringing in more than 500 ships? Etc etc, I am only illustrating an example. I am sure there are better ideas than this one; I am sure someone can think of many more better ideas. But Time Dilation is the worst solution possible.
Lag cannot be solved, only designed out
Lag will always be present as long as the mechanics do not change: people will just bring in more and more until the server breaks, even if the server can run 10x faster than now. The game mechanics itself is to blame, not the coding or network itself (but it is relevant). I think it is not a hard concept to understand. The game mechanics simply need to be designed to accommodate realistic numbers. Instead of not limiting the number of ships on grid at all (which simply encourages bigger and bigger blobs) there should be at least some sort of discouragement of simply spamming quantity of ships(it is pretty stupid to be honest), if not hard limits on the game itself (max number of friendlies on-grid, max number of ships doing effective DPS to a target, etc). The game needs designed, unlike the current "no design" design which will always, always be broken by bigger and bigger blobs.
|