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Thread: Player warning: Crowd Limiting System coming up

  1. #81

    Exclamation Problems With this Idea

    Originally posted by Hodaka
    Why do I feel that this is another of those good intentions that's going to go horribly wrong..
    My feelings exactly! Problems I forsee in this...

    A) you have 10-fifty level clanners, 10-one hundred level clanners, and 10-one-fifty level clanners attacking 2HO; 20 mixed level Omni join the fight, who gets booted? How? What if you are being attacked and the engine says "oops, too many people fighting, you stop fighting..." Will the person attacking you stop attacking you as well? What if they don't? I've seen NPC's attack me from rooms in missions (at least seemingly) which I then can not attack, would this be a similar situation?

    B) You are on your way to a mission and try to whompa to Omni Ent, there's an assortment of people gathered near the BB stand near the whompas, do you have to wait until the number dies down before you are allowed to whompa? Don't move the BB stand, cause that is where it is the best place to find nano-programmers and buffer's, however you may have to if you implement this change.

    C) How will it work? How big of an area will it affect, how will it keep you out? Will you hit an invisible wall? What about neutrals? will it count 20 clanners, 20 neuts and 20 Omni? Or would it be 30 clanners, 30 omni, and neuts get the heck out of the way? Sounds like it would bring more frustration in the cities where PvP isn't likely.

    E) You are being attacked, you need to flee, maybe because you are dropped from the fight and can not defend yourself, you try to whompa out but the other side of the whompa has too many people waiting to get in on the fight, what happens then? You die.

    F) What affect will turrets have on these numbers and on bog rates?

    If you experience Bog, make sure you are Defragging your harddrive regularly! Hudreds of megs of files flowing will quickly create fragmentation, make sure you are defragging!

    Up your graphics card, that is about the most crucial thing you can have. Smart system tweaking can help matters quite a bit!

    This sounds good on the surface, but I have a bad feeling this has the potential to become a monster! I think what would be a better solution is to switch to simpler avatar graphics in a fight. In a computer generated war scene in the movies, can you see every little detail of every individual soldier? No! That is how they scrunch so many figures into smaller spaces! Ultimately though I see frustration, especially if the first implementation is buggy!

    A roleplaying issue, You fall asleep in a nice cozy meadow, the next day a battle errupts in that meadow. because there are a hundred people in that little area when you log in there, you are instantaneously gridded to some city miles away? Or wherever it is you end up when you log in? What if you can't log in?

    Just because a spokesman says "this is how it will be, you have nothing to fear", does not mean that you have nothing to fear!

    The Free Falcon
    Last edited by Free Falcon; Nov 8th, 2002 at 06:51:45.

  2. #82
    I REALLY would like to see this built into the part of operating the towers themselves. Part of the defense should be an engineer or Advisor or President of the defending party activating a mechanism in the Guardian tower to repulse attackers. I would like it much more if removing attackers were part of what the defenders did rather than an arbitrary action by the server.

    If someone who is 'operating' the tower were to target an enemy and issue a command to the tower, it could then issue a repulse nano that essentially does an AoE Warp Time and Space: <Home City>. There could be nanoresist checks and all on this. This capability would only become available once the 'critical mass' of attackers has been reached. I prefer strategy to simple and unrealistic solutions.

    As noted above, Defense has to be given the nod towards overkill in every situation when first setting these things up. If it's found that land never changes hands, adjustments can be made from that point on.

    That takes care of too many attackers in the area assuming the Defenders do their job once notification that the Tower is primed its Repulsion mechanism. Problem now remains as to how to limit the number of Defenders ...

    I think .. hmm. The ability to warp to your own tower could be used to a degree to impose a soft limit. If too many Defenders are in proximity to your tower array (and thus using energy to receive buffs) you could disable the ability to warp directly to your tower location. Reinforcements would come in more slowly or have to stay outside the boundaries of the clogged zone. Still doesn't work completely.

    Try again: Too many defenders receiving energy from the towers could 'brown out' some of your defense structures and there if you reach 'critical mass' in terms of defenders, one by one your defense towers would 'turn off' (stop buffing or attacking the enemy). Thus, the Org leader or other field general would have to make a decision as to whether to trade off bodies for live Towers.

    Just throwing out ideas how population reduction could be achieved and actually add some strategy to defending/attacking a tower array.

    If nothing seems plausible, then the outlined solution is acceptable assuming they can work out the 'friendly non-combatant' issue. That is, my guild could very easily bring 40 Omni alts to an Omni tower we plan on attacking thereby letting the high level people in our guild have a much easier chance to take down the towers. On the flip side, we could all park Clan and Omni alts at our tower while we are not playing. These forces would prevent our enemies from amassing enough attackers to effectively destroy our towers. This one loophole I think is enough to try to think of ways to put the population reduction in the hands of the players during the live battle.

  3. #83
    We will monitor the number of attackers and defenders and try to make it 50/50.
    Not very clever, now is it ?

    You say you will try an balance the fight, fine. But if you force attackers to be same number as defenders you actually uneven the fight.

    If you attack a base with numerous defend towers and your teams make 50 people - you then force the defenders to be the same. Well here comes the problem, 50 people Vs 50 people + Towers, that can never be a fair fight, now can it ?

    If you have to succeed you must at least have 20% more people than the defending base just to have a chance to succeed in taking down towers too.

    This is basic knowledge for everyone..

    10 Tanks against 10 Infantry... You get my point ?

  4. #84

    Talking Well then this migt be worth considering.

    I generally dont like this idea at all. But I understand that this might be a thing that is a must.

    Crashes and Lag is a serious problem and have been the reason I stopped playing AO several times.

    Now if this should be a major problem because of all the different looks people can have I have a suggestion which I think should have been an obvious setting in the options.

    I mean, the number of different looks you can have is heavy! So this is a suggestion i have.

    When you enter a zone with alot of fooks in it. Instead of TRYING to display all theese players in their different looks at once, give them an standard appearance. They all look the same (basically, there should be a few standard configurations always cached up!).

    Thereafter as the computer chaces up and loads up the settings ppl switches from this "basic" character to theirs real characters with all attributes. So ond Highend comps, this is fast, hardly noticed. On Lowend comps, this takes longer time. the main thing is anyway... YOU shold NEVER experience lag. Better to have a large group of "uncached" guys, than a large group that make my comp lag like hell.

    This should improve lag and code in your system. Now with this in place, heck we might just have more players on the sama area at once...

    I still think there is a general glitch in the code somewhere regarding lag. But this might help.

    Zodde - Fixer

  5. #85

    Re: Re: Re: Giving up? I think so

    Originally posted by SM

    AO does look pretty, I'll give it that, but do you really want to maintain pretty at the expense of gameplay?
    If AO wasnt pretty where would it be today? I for one wouldnt play it. But I agree that something needs to be done and giving a easy option to completely turn off "pretty" before the big battles would be nice.

  6. #86
    Originally posted by Bionitrous
    I REALLY would like to see this built into the part of operating the towers themselves. Part of the defense should be an engineer or Advisor or President of the defending party activating a mechanism in the Guardian tower to repulse attackers. I would like it much more if removing attackers were part of what the defenders did rather than an arbitrary action by the server.
    Nice idea, it's just a shame in a case like ours, el presidente is stuck on 56k and is likely to be the first one dropped before he can get to flick the switch.

    It's a nice idea that FC seems to have had, and will be interesting to see how it works I am slightly concerned about what it might mean to large RP gatherings where due to the lag the server kicks in this system and boom, half the folks get booted out, or worse you have to take a clanner and a omni with you since the guild meetings triggered the system on the server hehe. Well, only one thing to do, wait and see Overall, nice idea FC. And nice to see you trying
    Major "Nyadach" Prabel
    Neutral and proud of it!

  7. #87
    Erm, what would be the effect of an option for the game to just NOT load the meshes? If the system lag is being caused by pulling meshes from the database, would it really hurt to allow people to disable the display of meshes (or certain meshes) on other players? Yea, it'd look bad, but if it makes performance acceptable with 60 people within 40 meters, I wouldn't mind everyone looking like Fixers :-p
    Aleksei "Zagadka" Garcia - Savior, Council Clerk
    Cindi "Razishlyat" Bolieu - Advisor Eternalist

  8. #88

    Buhhaha

    Welcome all
    I just hope that this crowd thing will not work as GREAT patch 14.6. Tell me why did them realise so bugged patch ?
    If Crowd thing will work like this patch i will quit AO for good I almost quited after that AWSOME patch and lots of my friends was thinking about it, soooo Funcom try to make it good.
    I see dead bodies! homgz

  9. #89
    Raz: Considering that the mesh is the "skeleton" of the character, the effect of not loading the meshes would be to turn each character into a 2D pancake...

    As for not loading the textures - or at least loading low detail versions...this is already a client side option, but it requires a restart of the client (I think. Been a while since I used it).

    I still say, let's see what effect the optimisations of the engine have on the overcrowding system, then we can consider more drastic measures...

    But then, I may be wildly overestimating the effect of the code tweaks. Hard to tell, since we've had no hard info on this, that I'm aware of. (Aside: If there is hard info, could I have it please?)

  10. #90

    Unhappy

    Originally posted by Hodaka
    Why do I feel that this is another of those good intentions that's going to go horribly wrong..
    Welcome to Asherons Call? I get that creepy feeling too about it being a disaster.

  11. #91

    Question Re: Thank you for feeding us lies and BS

    Originally posted by Landover

    Now possibly you need my monitor program. I wrote a program to show what your card is being told to do, and it logs to another machine. I have proof that your game is double and triple loading the same textures, being told to draw the same spline over and over, and not bothering to clean up unused textures at all.

    Landover
    Hi, where can you download this monitor program?

  12. #92
    So, FunCom, basically what you're telling me is that you're trying to sell me a product that I might be able to actually use? That is, as long as not too many (what's too many btw?) other customers are trying to use it at the same place and time?

    Just a scenario:
    - Oh crap, where did the Doc go?
    - Sorry guys, I got beamed back to Trade.
    - Well, so are we now, at the reclaim.
    - Oh. What about our multi-million credit tower installation?
    - No idea, mate, can't get back there.
    - Team mission anyone?

    This idea is probably the worst I've ever seen coming from FunCom, and I've been around for a long time. Good intentions or not, kicking out players already in the area is nothing but a showstopper for the individual player, and will only cause anger and tears. And as people have already said here, this system is going to be "exploited" in numerous ways.

    And last, blaming the customers for having crappy hardware when it's clearly your product that's failing, that dear Gaute, is appalling. An apology to the customers for that is the least you can do.

    Not very smart, FunCom. Go sit in the corner and reconsider.

  13. #93

    CLS

    Howdy,

    I understand what is going on to an extent, however if the problem is my system why not have the client LOOK at my system and upload as many textures as possible based on popularity and location.

    For example, I am Clan (duh!) and so I'm not going to run into a bunch of the textures that OT'ers would. Therefore, don't load them until needed.

    I assume the system is loading the mobs that are encountered in that playfield when I enter it and not keeping those in memory as well. Same for buildings as Tir looks nothing like Athens and neither look like The Grid.

    As for popularity, set the server up to keep track of what is the most popular armour/face/yadda/yadda/yadda and have those loaded for fast access.

    A final note.

    My system:
    2000xpAMD
    1 stick of 512/DDR
    K7-A 266-E Motherboard
    nVidia GeForce2mx 32MB
    2 X 80 gig Seagates
    windoze xp

    AO takes over the entire machine showing upper 90% and normally 99% of CPU use. It is near impossible to drop out of AO or a moment to check something on my system no matter how simple.

    On the other hand, I can have Photoshop 7, Word, Hotdog (my HTML editor), 2 browsers and my internet radio going and move back and forth with ease.

    Makes me wonder about the coding of AO.

    In closing, I love AO and enjoy my time on Rubi-Ka. Yes, things get Nerfed (LIVE WITH IT) and this causes the struggle for power to shift ever-so-slightly. We all get some loving now and then, too. And if you really want to make a difference, get on the Test server and mess with it to your hearts content.
    Original forum name: Megis
    Lost to the ages since FC made their forum name changes...now I'm Pheasant

    *** Just returned to game Fall of 2009 (and again Spring 2013) - All Retired ATM ***

    Megis: Adventurer (Test) Leader of Special Feature Finders
    Pheasant: Doctor
    Zahrobi: Shade
    VonJona: Fixer
    Dagen: Enforcer


    And a few more...

  14. #94

    Constructive criticism

    Most of you assume too much, we haven't got the answers yet on how it works.

    I think it is a good idea because fights in areas with too many people are horrible. I won't even step into the area around Tir grid because it lags so bad with the client/server connection having to keep track of so many people.

    The idea of equalizing out the fights at a cap is a good one. It needs to be monitored carefully though.

    How will neuts be effected in a fight? Keep in mind that most of the neuts will be part of a team seeing as they can't initiate PvP in a 25% zone. Use that unused Team Side: feature to temporarily assign those neuts a clan/omni side. Do this in normal play too so we don't target them. =)

    Capping the number of combatants makes the fight more interesting and more strategic by balancing it. Some people who just like to win enjoy 200 people against 5. There isn't any real fighting or strategy going on in those numbers of course.

    In a 200 vs 60 fight here the excesses will still get to fight. The keeping of reserves will be of strategic importance.

    The big issue I see is who gets bumped. Some ideas I have:

    lowest level: Seniority rules. Also there may be a problem with low level characters anyways who can't be PvPed. because of the PvP level limit. Bumping these first would make it better. It is also more interesting because both sides would use its "big guns" first and the reserves would be lower level (weaker characters) going against those who've already been softened up (weakened).

    Fractional teams: If some people have less than a 6 man team then people from the smallest team should get bumped first. These people are already at a disadvantage and bumping them can actually help because they can regroup and form a full team for when they're able to get back in. In this setup the system would be more monitoring teams than actual players so it might make it easier on the systems.

    Is 30 vs 30 fair when the defenders have their static defenses? Irrelevent, it becomes a matter of strategy. The defenders will have the battlefield advantage (as is proper in a war) while the attackers have the initiative advantage of attacking at their time of choosing and being more organized for it.

    PvP could actually become interesting with this. Too bad most of the rest of the game is a broken and bugged mess.
    Clan Elder of The Pilgrims

  15. #95
    Well i'll give my 2 cents. Firstly, I think it's pretty preposterous to blame it all on the client-side machine as illustrated by my fellow players. Secondly, the idea of zone limiting for PvP purposes is fine and dandy, but what does that leave the players who may not be in uber orgs participating in the gunfire? It leaves us cooling our heels at zone borders waiting for the smoke to clear just so we can get on with traveling. I can see it being realistic in an RP sense, but in a world where the idea is "go where you want to", this is extremely stifling. Do we not wait in line enough in the game at dynacamps and static dungeons? Even waiting in line for teams.

    Now I'm not going to be a flamer and say its the end of the world, but the idea is rife with problems. This would be fine and dandy if there was a way non-combatants could bypass the crowd limiter without having to circumvent the area via hostile zones, or worse yet, zones that don't exist. But lets be realistic, it's not going to happen that way. What about those of us who hunt, or explore, or have missions in specific areas? This may seem like a good idea on paper, think about how much freedom you'd be pulling out of the players hands. No thanks, I'll deal with the lag and the crashes, I've been dealing with it for months. If FC thinks this will stop the client crashes and make the game smoother, they're in for a rude awakening. Trying to adapt such a rule based on an arbitrary PC config is going to have SEVERE repurcussions and may just be the final straw for some players.
    "An enforcer is judged by the strength of his will, not by the force of his beam or his blade."

  16. #96

    Re: Re: Re: Giving up? I think so

    Originally posted by SM
    [B]All True, however the terrain objects that the player would "see" can be loaded before arrival (stopping post-whompa building popping) minimising the post-zone thrash. If the meshes are done properly you should need 1 mesh for each breed (not each body type) regardless of wether they are wearing cloaks or not and a few extra meshes for helmets/weapons/tank armour. Have a few generic textures in memory (use vertex shaders to colour the armour) or just straight vertex colour. Then monitor free CPU and trickle in "important" textures and meshes from disk to mem and from mem to GFX card as and when you can.
    I don't think that the various meshes they have currently for the players are the reason for the disk access thrashing - they probably don't weight that much in total. I think that the textures are much more of a problem.

  17. #97
    Originally posted by wrecklass
    Here is a much better idea, and much more serious:

    If the problem is the number of textures that may be drawn for all the different armor and stuff folks are wearing, do this:

    Make everyone who is going to PvP wear trench coats. They cover up everything. The Omni's all wear Red, Blue for Clans and Black for Neutrals. So it also makes it easy to figure out who is on your team.

    Simple solution, reduces lag, makes teammates obvious and avoids the CL stuff.
    I've wanted to see something similar to this for a looong time. Great idea! The key would be that reducing texture loading, so you create an option called "Battle View", with this on you'll only see solid colored textures and breed models and the textures for what they are actually wearing never load until you turn the option off. ALL the textures for battle view would load when activated.

    Heck, even make it goggles .. something like fighting with night vision.

    This should handle lag and texture loading problems quite nicely and then you just have to worry about server performance.

  18. #98
    Maybe I'm just being the su****ious type, but when I read the article my impression was:

    The 'texture' issue is just a red-herring, to justify the area limit that is being implemented.

    I suspect that the primary purpose that these limits are put into palce is to make PvP more exciting when Notum Wars is released. This limits large guilds from protecting their towers from attacks by smaller guilds. Perhaps Funcom wishes to encourage area attacks by smaller guilds.

    Personally, I don't like this fix (and I am in a small guild). A large organization should be able to apply its full force if it choses to use them to protect their towers.
    ======================

    blix01/spookiepants/stiffwood

  19. #99
    I've been thinking about posting a question about NW and lag for about a month now. I've experienced Camelot, and was seeing nightmares about large outdoor lag battles on towers...

    Hehe, a new option to get stuck in Tir. Your running for the grid, but oooops, "Your entering a crowded area, please turn back"

    Might work, might not. Hope your system can handle Notum Wars.

  20. #100
    I have been thinking of this for VERY long.... been months.....


    Why not simply lower the detail of the character mesh (and whatever mesh u have there) until everyone looks like just very simple pieces of avatar??


    Wouldn't that solve the "lag" ??


    Or is FC choosing "beauty" over "functional" ??




    But I guess the dev will not read and comment this.... unless I see a reply from dev in here.... but no.... I know I will not....
    Sonny BeachHunk Beach - Level 200 Omni Enforcer - Current Armor




    Tanked: Ian Warr, Supply Master Smug, High Commander Fredrickson, Diamondine Soldier, Fiery Soldier, Notum Soldier, Obediency Enforcer, The One, Peter Lee, Ljotur, Special Agent Lamb, Nelly Johnson, Patricia Johnson, The Pest and pretty much anything else there is to tank.

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