A change to avoid forced servers

@mogetius-ita said in A change to avoid forced servers:

There's a lot of debate these days about whether closing the Arena will lead to PvP lovers poisoning the Adventure sessions. One thing that in my opinion breaks the game a lot are the famous emissary hunters and alliance servers.

On the one hand there are organised clans that claim victims and create frustration in the farmers.

On the other hand, there are farmers who concentrate the farming of a week's game on a single day, leaving the servers empty during the rest of the week.

One thing that Rare could implement is a temporary ban like in Arena.

Forcing the players not to force the lobby but to accept the server them logs into and the events/emissaries present.

Of course, once the first 30 minutes in the session have passed, you no longer receive any penalty for leaving the server.

In this way I think we eliminate the two biggest plagues of the game: the hunters that make the casual players run away and the serial PVE lords that make the game boring.

Yep, you will absolutely force many players to go play a different game that day every time they get a less than decent server. Probably to the tune of a large chunk of the player base. Not everyone has more than an hour of game time when they have time and cutting that in half won't work like you think. If someone wants to play Reaper, they aren't going to sit on a server with no emissaries for 30 minutes. If someone needs to finish sinking 500 skeleton ships for PL cannons, they aren't going to sit on a server without an active skeleton fleet. Etc.

Hunting emissary ships is the sole function of Reaper faction and the ONLY reason there is a 2.5x multiplier. Don't like that? Don't raise an emissary flag.

The way to deal with alliance servers is to better RNG server population. Cut off the ability for 20-30 players to VPN to the same IP and hit the set sail button at the end of a discord countdown. Not sure how to implement it, but that is precisely what the big alliance server discords use to set up a server in as little as 2 minutes.

@personalc0ffee said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@kommodoreyenser said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@mogetius-ita said in A change to avoid forced servers:
Not sure how to implement it, but that is precisely what the big alliance server discords use to set up a server in as little as 2 minutes.

Simple, when bulks of users are all trying to connect together, kick 'em to new servers. There are not very legitimate reasons for multiple users trying to connect at once to a singular area.

They could also ban the use of VPN traffic on the log in.

Yeah, this plus the new server population changes I think would end alliance servers. It may still be possible but it goes back to the original RNG they had back in the day where it might take 1-2 hours of attempts or more. I would find that acceptable honestly.

@personalc0ffee said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@kommodoreyenser said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@personalc0ffee said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@kommodoreyenser said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@mogetius-ita said in A change to avoid forced servers:
Not sure how to implement it, but that is precisely what the big alliance server discords use to set up a server in as little as 2 minutes.

Simple, when bulks of users are all trying to connect together, kick 'em to new servers. There are not very legitimate reasons for multiple users trying to connect at once to a singular area.

They could also ban the use of VPN traffic on the log in.

Yeah, this plus the new server population changes I think would end alliance servers. It may still be possible but it goes back to the original RNG they had back in the day where it might take 1-2 hours of attempts or more. I would find that acceptable honestly.

I thought they implemented those already?

Isn't it 5 crew 16 players?

They did, I meant those changes plus what you mentioned (if implemented) together would effectively nullify easy alliance server creation.

I understand your idea has good intentions, but the results would be a lot of people - especially content creators - abandoning the game.

What we actually need to be brainstorming is ways to make every server tasty to everyone. PvPers and PvEers alike.

Introducing more player-activated world events would be a start. Introducing more RNG items that spawn on the map that are high value and show up on the map like a reaper chest. Re-introducing mercenary voyages and bringing new ones in that give a purpose to the Reaper's Mark flag. Making chainshots a reward for PvE and not just another barrel item that's as common as bananas at times.

That list could probably go on and on and on, but what we really need to do is give people a reason not to server hop. Not prevent them from playing the way they want.

@sweetsandman said in A change to avoid forced servers:

Introducing more player-activated world events would be a start. Introducing more RNG items that spawn on the map that are high value and show up on the map like a reaper chest. Re-introducing mercenary voyages and bringing new ones in that give a purpose to the Reaper's Mark flag.

I really do miss those, especially the Reaper's run voyages and events. I would honestly be okay with them bringing something like that back as a rotating time limited event (one per season rotating through the regions each season.) It really didn't have much lore around it that would push it outside the current or future timeline and Reapers are not going anywhere unless the entire emissary system gets deleted.

@d3adst1ck said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@personalc0ffee said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@kommodoreyenser said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@mogetius-ita said in A change to avoid forced servers:
Not sure how to implement it, but that is precisely what the big alliance server discords use to set up a server in as little as 2 minutes.

Simple, when bulks of users are all trying to connect together, kick 'em to new servers. There are not very legitimate reasons for multiple users trying to connect at once to a singular area.

They could also ban the use of VPN traffic on the log in.

It's not very efficient to spin up 12 new servers when you could start 2-3 and handle the same amount of people. Large numbers of players connect at once all the time and not specifically for alliance servers, so trying to do this would create a huge number of 1-2 ship dead servers that would need to be merged anyways.

I think he was probably referring to that many players trying to connect from the same IP, as is what happens when you use a VPN to get a low pop region server selection and then all try to connect at once to lock one down.

@kommodoreyenser said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@d3adst1ck said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@personalc0ffee said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@kommodoreyenser said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@mogetius-ita said in A change to avoid forced servers:
Not sure how to implement it, but that is precisely what the big alliance server discords use to set up a server in as little as 2 minutes.

Simple, when bulks of users are all trying to connect together, kick 'em to new servers. There are not very legitimate reasons for multiple users trying to connect at once to a singular area.

They could also ban the use of VPN traffic on the log in.

It's not very efficient to spin up 12 new servers when you could start 2-3 and handle the same amount of people. Large numbers of players connect at once all the time and not specifically for alliance servers, so trying to do this would create a huge number of 1-2 ship dead servers that would need to be merged anyways.

I think he was probably referring to that many players trying to connect from the same IP, as is what happens when you use a VPN to get a low pop region server selection and then all try to connect at once to lock one down.

How do you tell the difference between people using a vpn to do it and myself who can launch 5 copies of SoT at the same time?

Edit for device list. Xbox Series X, Old Desktop, Laptop, and my Desktop which can run both Microsoft Store and Steam at the same time.

@captain-coel said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@kommodoreyenser said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@d3adst1ck said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@personalc0ffee said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@kommodoreyenser said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@mogetius-ita said in A change to avoid forced servers:
Not sure how to implement it, but that is precisely what the big alliance server discords use to set up a server in as little as 2 minutes.

Simple, when bulks of users are all trying to connect together, kick 'em to new servers. There are not very legitimate reasons for multiple users trying to connect at once to a singular area.

They could also ban the use of VPN traffic on the log in.

It's not very efficient to spin up 12 new servers when you could start 2-3 and handle the same amount of people. Large numbers of players connect at once all the time and not specifically for alliance servers, so trying to do this would create a huge number of 1-2 ship dead servers that would need to be merged anyways.

I think he was probably referring to that many players trying to connect from the same IP, as is what happens when you use a VPN to get a low pop region server selection and then all try to connect at once to lock one down.

How do you tell the difference between people using a vpn to do it and myself who can launch 5 copies of SoT at the same time?
Edit for device list. Xbox Series X, Old Desktop, Laptop, and my Desktop which can run both Microsoft Store and Steam at the same time.

5 is not 20-30 for one, that extremely alters the time it takes given that 1-2 of those could get shunted to another server affecting ~50% of the accounts attempting to get 5 different crews onto one server. Right now this also happens to those 20-30 accounts I am sure, but even 5-10 of them happening still makes the possibility of 15-20 ships to land 5 on the same server highly likely in low density regions. The current rebalance at least makes 5 galleons impossible and 5 brigs unlikely so alliance servers are having to try and queue with mixed ship counts.

Also, I would love to know what hardware you are running on the PC that can run two instances of SoT onscreen at the same time and click "set sail" at once, just curious.

@kommodoreyenser not the same time, it requires me to hit Enter, alt+tab, Enter. And for sticking to my guns about it, I do it manually lol. The other 2 pcs and xbox are on controllers so I can just hit "A" at the same time.

Pc Specs
Mobo: MSI x570 Ace
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900x
Ram: 32gb 3600cl16
SSDs: Sabrent Rocket Gen 4 1tb, and a Firecuda 520
GPU: EVGA 3080ti FTW3

Though I plan to upgrade my 3900x in the near future, waiting to see what AMD does with the 3d v cache and if they do it with any other chips in AM4. I dont want to do a full platform update just yet.

But I bring my situation up because im betting that same thing that tracks the vpn would flag me. It might also struggle with people on lan connection if they were connection at or near the same time.

@captain-coel said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@kommodoreyenser not the same time, it requires me to hit Enter, alt+tab, Enter. And for sticking to my guns about it, I do it manually lol. The other 2 pcs and xbox are on controllers so I can just hit "A" at the same time.

Pc Specs
Mobo: MSI x570 Ace
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900x
Ram: 32gb 3600cl16
SSDs: Sabrent Rocket Gen 4 1tb, and a Firecuda 520
GPU: EVGA 3080ti FTW3

Though I plan to upgrade my 3900x in the near future, waiting to see what AMD does with the 3d v cache and if they do it with any other chips in AM4. I dont want to do a full platform update just yet.

But I bring my situation up because im betting that same thing that tracks the vpn would flag me. It might also struggle with people on lan connection if they were connection at or near the same time.

If it were me, I would set the threshold to 6 instances connecting within a 1-3 second window. LAN parties are pretty scarce these day and anyone I know would be tripping breakers if more than two of us had our rigs on the same 10A circuit lol.

Gotta love the 3080+ cards. I am running an Asus 3090 OC and that thing finally sweats nothing at max on my 1440p 144Hz setup. My old 1070 in my laptop was struggling with anything released after 2017 at like 90FPS on 144Hz. Also another cultured individual running full SSDs with no HDD!

@kommodoreyenser said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@captain-coel said in A change to avoid forced servers:

@kommodoreyenser not the same time, it requires me to hit Enter, alt+tab, Enter. And for sticking to my guns about it, I do it manually lol. The other 2 pcs and xbox are on controllers so I can just hit "A" at the same time.

Pc Specs
Mobo: MSI x570 Ace
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900x
Ram: 32gb 3600cl16
SSDs: Sabrent Rocket Gen 4 1tb, and a Firecuda 520
GPU: EVGA 3080ti FTW3

Though I plan to upgrade my 3900x in the near future, waiting to see what AMD does with the 3d v cache and if they do it with any other chips in AM4. I dont want to do a full platform update just yet.

But I bring my situation up because im betting that same thing that tracks the vpn would flag me. It might also struggle with people on lan connection if they were connection at or near the same time.

If it were me, I would set the threshold to 6 instances connecting within a 1-3 second window. LAN parties are pretty scarce these day and anyone I know would be tripping breakers if more than two of us had our rigs on the same 10A circuit lol.

Gotta love the 3080+ cards. I am running an Asus 3090 OC and that thing finally sweats nothing at max on my 1440p 144Hz setup. My old 1070 in my laptop was struggling with anything released after 2017 at like 90FPS on 144Hz. Also another cultured individual running full SSDs with no HDD!

I appreciate the compliment, but i have a 4tb wd black hdd for bulk storage. screenshots and videos and work documents do not need to be on my nvme drives. Videos and pictures I am editing do but then they can get moved back. BUt I love my 3080ti, outside of the 3rd fan issue that evga is having causing me to get a new one sent this week. Im going to send you a dm, maybe you can help me quick.