Aidin Amado
Gulliver Corp
Prismatic Refraction
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Posted - 2008.10.01 09:39:00 -
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Edited by: Aidin Amado on 01/10/2008 09:39:00
The node crash is, unfortunately, not really CCP's fault, in spite of the whining and *****ing. There is no system on earth that can handle the congregation of 1100 fighting users in a specific location without latency and lag problems. I won't go into the details, but you can imagine yourself when you look at the complexity of any MMO.
1) The server needs to keep track of all npcs, all systems, all objects and all players
2) The server needs to decide whether any player is near any other player, or near any other object, whether npc or item.
3) The server needs to zone out each player into a area of influence bubble where the player can detect what is going on. In the case of Eve, I guess it's zoning out the player into a grid.
4) In a single shard model like Eve, you can't shield the players in a grid, because the server will still need to look for the potentiality of interaction with everything else and decide if someone has left or entered the grid.
So, when 1100 fighting players congragate into the same zone, you have 1100 to the power of every other thing in the game universe to contend with. It's pretty big. So, without care it's no wonder a node crashes now and then considering the computational effort needed.
An MMO is not a single player game. An MMO has very very little in commong with a single player game. An MMO is a game where EVERYTHING is done on the server, and where everything HAS to be done on the server.
So, I don't really whine about CCP and about the fact that a node crashes someties. You want it to change? Change the model of warfare. Reduce the fleets, spread out the fight onto several systems.
But I don't see that happening, so I guess one has to figure out a way to handle the problem, and one way to do that could perhaps be to instance such a fight? If a lot of players congragate in the same space, perhaps the server should detect this and automatically instance the fight into their own node? Isolate the fight from the rest of the server, just keep track of who leaves and enters, and then let a special "fight node" handle the congregation?
Problems I foresee with that kind of solution is that the fight will take place in a "black hole" invisible from the rest of Eve, and a lot of interactions will be odd - like say M-O being empty for users not in the fight - but red hot for players that are in the instance. But perhaps that is preferable to having the entire system crash on you?
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Recruitment Director,
Gulliver Corporation |