Bigger servers

Servers can’t handle bigger servers atm

@toom6241 said in Bigger servers:

Bigger servers

With todays hitreg? If they add more ppl to a server (which i want aswell) it's going to be worse.
Be glad if your cannon balls even register lol.

I think what people are really asking for when they ask for bigger servers is increasing the rate of encountering other players. I think there are ways to do this without increasing player count. There is alot going on in each sea of thieves server, and having that be stable for players on a variety of platforms at the same time is not an insignificant challenge.

Voyages could take you further afield across the seas for instance, the more distance traveled the more likely ships are to run into eachother.

Challenges like the recent fate of the damned update, as frustrating as some of them could be sometimes, definitely boosted the ammount of player interaction in the world.

Those are just a couple quick examples and I'm sure there are others out there. Basically the problem is less to do with ships per server, and more to do with ships not having opportunities to cross paths. It's a fine line rare has to walk here because too many player encounters will make things for newer players just getting their bearings alot more difficult. I think rare has done pretty well with such a complex problem overall. Things can always be improved, but by how much remains to be seen

better forum posts first

I am gonna oversimplify this and try to phrase things in a way that makes sense to anyone that reads it, even if that kinda sort makes things technically incorrect in some nuanced details. My apologies for non-tech jargon to those whom it offends. This reponce is also based on the assumption of how Rare servers are setup, and that they also use Microsoft Azure server infrastructure, and that it's also highly likely scaled.

@ocean-santa5827 said in Bigger servers:

@toom6241 said in Bigger servers:

Bigger servers

With todays hitreg? If they add more ppl to a server (which i want aswell) it's going to be worse.

Larger servers would not make hit-reg worse, it would realistically only cost them money as they are likely on some sort of "Free" X-box allocation of server usage as governed by their X-box contract. In other words more players = more ships = more Net work, CPU, RAM, KW of power, and in turn more $$$$$ to support. A certain threshold of resources is likely a requirement by MS to be on their Xbox Platform.

Hitreg problems are usually enemy target latency and not the server itself. The way they try to ensure quality of service to players who really should be on a different server with players of their own region is a big culprit. To fix hit-reg they would create a situation where you would have problems finding active servers at certain times of day, or would not be able to play with friends, or would potentially observe rubber banding in game, where your character imput is to move a direction and due to latency to the server you may get moved in X,Y,Z space when the server checks and corrects your location. To avoid that kind of janky feel, they have a server client loop that you provide input to, and the server checks the location input data and then updates itself rather than your client side (to a degree), and then updates. This loop cycle FEELS like maybe 30 to 50 milliseconds, but it could be faster, but I don't have a method to detect that. Point being, your target may not actually be where it displays in server space when the server checks the enemy targets location to find your latency + their latency = NO hit. (SADFACE)

Be glad if your cannon balls even register lol.

Because "the ship" is likely a server broadcast object rather than loop object like your player character. This is why your ship can appear to be rubber banding on occasion, but your player character does not. When you experience rubber banding of your ship, this means you are on a server that's realistically not in your geographic region, or your internet connection is terrible to the server.

Hit reg is something that can be remedied to a degree, but that would mean occasionally you may not get to play with other people, possibly even friends from other geographical locations, because something is always a trade off.

It's not possible to make the servers bigger, at least for now, the game wouldn't be able to handle it

There's no need to make this action

@jaegerdelta3465 6 boats per server doesn’t promote alliances. Almost all battles are 1 boat vs 1 boat. Their is so little substance in this game. This game is basically a floating first person shooter where you can be 7 verses 1.

@wavestalker said in Bigger servers:

@jaegerdelta3465 6 boats per server doesn’t promote alliances. Almost all battles are 1 boat vs 1 boat. Their is so little substance in this game. This game is basically a floating first person shooter where you can be 7 verses 1.

How would any ammount of people promote alliances? And why should alliances be promoted? A lack of substance isnt the problem, it's a sandbox what you do is up to you. You can form an alliance, you can sink every person you meet, you can try to launch up to the tops of the tallest rocks, you can try to collect as many bananas as you can. The game doesnt promote anything, it just gives you some tools and says have fun. That doesnt change with the number of ships per server.

With the way voyages and various other systems work right now, players are largely staying in a relatively small area of the map.
Thus, player interaction is rare because the most obvious reason someone is sailing toward you is to sink you. If they were doing somthing else they probably wouldn't be in the same area as you. If player interaction is made more commonplace, through whatever means, the assumption of hostile intent breaks down. If it's the first ship you have seen all session and they are sailing toward you, you are much more likely to shoot first and ask questions later. Why else would they have been sailing toward you, nobody else has been for 2 hours. If its the third time you have spotted a ship on the horizon and the other times people have sailed past, or stopped at a seapost, or done anything other than shoot at you. The player will be much less likely to assume that that ship is here to shoot at them.

Of course people will still be hostile, and pvp is how alot of people interact with the sandbox. But if player number in increased without adjusting mechanisms that affect player interaction, the game being a floating fps will be made more true rather than less true.