This was changed to five, quietly, way back in January/February. Not a word since. Any updates from devs on returning to the intended server capacity?
Any update on returning to 6 ships per server?
When the semi-recent change to limit player counts to 16 launched, 6 ship count servers returned. For 1 day. Turns out the server performance dropped horrendously and was switched back to 5 very quickly to save some performance for the long run.
6 ship servers will return when all of the game's content is reduced to at most October 2019 content. The more newer, intensive content start getting added to the servers, it begins to strain the servers, which were already pretty weak overall, even without the Xbox One support still going on.
@nex-stargaze I really hope we will see 6 ships/24 players make a come back, an extra ship on a server really makes a difference at times.
@nex-stargaze You may be right, but that's a lot of speculation. I am sure the Devs have more to say about this if they would choose to. I am hoping they will...
I sailed on the sea alone yesterday for 2 hours and I have not met a soul. Really bleak. The soul of this game is actually meeting other crews and maybe engaging in some fight to steal the loot. Just imagine my sadness yesterday sailing the seas all alone in the absolute desert ... I turned off for boredom.
why not increase the number of players per server?@nex-stargaze said in Any update on returning to 6 ships per server?:
When the semi-recent change to limit player counts to 16 launched, 6 ship count servers returned. For 1 day. Turns out the server performance dropped horrendously and was switched back to 5 very quickly to save some performance for the long run.
6 ship servers will return when all of the game's content is reduced to at most October 2019 content. The more newer, intensive content start getting added to the servers, it begins to strain the servers, which were already pretty weak overall, even without the Xbox One support still going on.
Lets hope they find some code to optimise.
@theblackbellamy said in Any update on returning to 6 ships per server?:
To anyone who wants 6 ships:
1] Are you currently satisfied with the way the servers perform with 5 ships?
2] Is having just one extra ship worth the cost of even poorer performance?
-
No
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Yes, servers are bad with 5 ships and 6 ships. start deleting pve and make the devil's roar a separate 3 ship game mode and remove from adventure mode. Delete until 6 ships is stable. Map right now is to large for only 5 ships... Heck even 6 ships is too few for how big the map is. We need 8 ships minimum.
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6 ships only strongly benefits alliance servers in the reality of the environment.
Organic activity only declines with more conflict as it slows and stops things from getting attempted and finished
Server hoppers want it because they over-fished their pond and devs want more action to keep the action hunters satisfied but it's not something that improves the organic experience or loot production to any significant degree.
Less fotd than the nearly non existent fotd's that exist
Less fof attempts because it's already annoying for manyImo they would actually be better off with 4 than 6 for actual quality improvements. Likely to help server performance and more risks would be taken, probably would even create noticeable improvements for server hopper's hunting
People clashing more often and finishing things/producing less doesn't really improve anything even though people like to pretend they are only in it for the fights that's never been what the activity has largely shown.
It's always more this and flood this when it comes to interaction and combat and I think it misses the mark nearly every time. Flooding with ships even if the number was intended in no way addresses the imbalances in the risk/reward environment that have lead to the issues in the first place.
The running and the lack of higher risk activity and the lack of wanting to deal with server hopping pvp comes from everything leaning towards server hopping pvp and the organic experience having all of the weight on them. More ships does nothing for that other than amplify the issues in the environment that actually exists, not the one on paper.
@treefittymonsta Lol ok so just for clarity: you're dissatisfied with performance and willing to be even more dissatisfied so you can, what, chase an extra ship around the server? Get hitregged outta your mind when you finally get to them? Desync off your ship or take random fall damage with ping spikes along the way?
I've stuck with this game all this time. But if server performance gets as bad as it was when we had 6 ships for the day Stargaze mentioned, I'll take a break and catch y'all when we have hitscan.
@theblackbellamy u just describe the game for the last four years? The game has never had stable servers. Hit reg has always been a problem And will always be an issue. So just add back the sixth ship.. I say
u just describe the game for the last four years? The game has never had stable servers. Hit reg has always been a problem And will always be an issue.
I mean, if you look at performance as a gradient and not simply black & white as good & bad, then yes the servers have been bad, but they can get much worse. And we know this because we have seen how much worse they can get with 6.
You edited and extrapolated your answer to my 2nd question. I would be okay with making the DR a separate instance. I've also said in the past that I think they should retcon some of the shrines/treasuries and sea forts out, if it would lift some stress off the servers.
But the way it was explained to me (by more knowledgeable people in the forum) is that those areas are more or less just static, and don't contribute to any server load until they're occupied. Which is why we can "reset" islands by taking a trip to the ferry.
If they were to make changes to the environment like that, I would want to have those changes made first, before adding a 6th ship. Just to see if it makes any difference at all.
I'll be honest: one of the biggest factors to server performance is the game's calculation of the water physics. This game has, without a doubt, one of the most impressively beautiful ocean tops in video gaming history.
It is also, without a doubt, the MAIN reason the game doesn't work.
The physics being applied to every loot piece in the water, the ships, the players that decide to swim in it, the barrels that have a chance to spawn on top of it and float, the northwest current that plagues our sailing and naval battles, as well as the roughness of the waves between the shoreline and the open sea.
ALL OF THAT is what every server is doing as we speak, on live retail, on insider, and probably on the private dev build in Rare HQ. The water is beautiful, but there had to have been challenges consistently syncing that up for every single player along with their internet connection, their computer's hardware, and every task I just listed in the last paragraph that happens on the seas.
6 ships per server might have been a comfortable max the devs have in mind, but it certainly cannot be managed by this point in time due to the amount of content that's coming into it and how intensive it is for operating on already overworked and busy servers just managing the water.
@alexrogansbeta to be honest it's rare I see what feels like fully populated servers with a 5 ship limit. Usually even proactively looking for other ships I only see 2 other ships at any one time
@nex-stargaze I wouldn't mind a compromise to water physics being toned down one way or another if it meant better hit reg/stability and the return of 6 ships...
Honestly if you have fought in those rare 3 Galleons batttles, you will realize just how awful performance is, hitreg is through the roof, black screens are just terrible when you mermaid/die, if two gallys are stacked on loot and supplies, you might as well be playing on a Playstation 2 with fps dipping below 60 when your playing on Rare graphics on a 3070 etc...
Whats next, 4 ships/12 players limit if they decide to add more stuff to the map?
I think the problem is not 5 or 6 ships. The problem is that for a 2018 game, with peaks of 40k players online (google data), it is unacceptable to have servers that can host up to 20 people. Not in 2022 at least. Games that run on much older hardware can ospitate a lot more people (see GTA, Warzone, fortnite etc). Making a map so vast, so neat, so beautiful, etc. but empty of players, for a game that is based on online multiplayer makes no sense to me. In my opinion, after 4 years, 6 seasons and with an average of players still very active, they should aim for an improvement of the servers rather than find useless excuses. In the long run, players get bored of wandering around on a sloop alone and as HiradC says, the server is not always full. In my opinion, I repeat, they should aim to improve the server side. 20 players are a joke in 2022. they should be able to host at least 60 players
@clovis935568 If rumours are true that the Xbox One contract ends in less then a year and IF RARE decides to pull support also, the game could actually get exponentially better if it wasn't being held back by old gen. Honestly its a 9 year old console, I think in terms of technology it merits being pulled off support since its holding back current gen/PC performance and people are literally getting frustrated over the games/server performance, some days I would play with random LFC on Discord and this discussion somehow gets brought up on a regular, so you know it's bad when even casuals complain about the amount of bugs and BS this game has at times...
- Who am I to say most of the games issues is because its also tied back to old gen Xbox One? would cutting support and importing the game to UE5 Improve the game dramatically in reality? Who knows. Would love for a RARE dev to answer this.
Also as much as I love the Adventures, its also taxing servers and adding constant bugs EACH TIME, I remember when shrouded adventure got released, firebombs had knockback effects similar to the blunder bombs on sloops. It was just annoying to experience, and now this adventure is bringing cosmetics/title/Emote bug resets upon death. Annoying when you have 10 pages of emotes perfectly memorized for it to just be erased again...
Also I know a few who are getting constant disconnect errors since the new patch when this was never a common occurrence prior.@theblackbellamy said in Any update on returning to 6 ships per server?:
To anyone who wants 6 ships:
1] Are you currently satisfied with the way the servers perform with 5 ships?
2] Is having just one extra ship worth the cost of even poorer performance?
- Yes
- Yes
I don't actually find it bad as is. Hit reg baaaaarely rears its head in my experience. I haven't had crashes in many months. Rubber banding is way way less than it was when Haven Runs launched. We no longer get the freeze when you get into a certain range of another crew's ship. It's been ages since I saw a loot pile big enough to bug out, and that isn't for a lack of huge loot piles.... From where I am sitting, the game has never been more stable. Time to bring in the 6th ship. I don't expect perfect servers. But what we have is more than adequate. It's good, even. Kudos to Rare, says I. They've clearly been working diligently on this, and I commend them.
@zeyrniyx
I think what the developers have said about it, is a big stupid thing because the small number of players per server is not suitable for a game that wants to be "online multiplayer". It is too low to create the right pirate atmosphere that the game is aiming for and also the map is too vast and useless for 4 cross boats wandering around. At this point, if the problem is the players, why not do it offline? the raids between crews should be the pivot of the game, not wandering around for hours alone, collecting chests, selling them and buying useless cosmetics that only you can admire (since you are in absolute emptiness). What is the point of putting guns on ships? What's the point of making crews of 4 with mighty galleons? what's the point of multiplayer? What's the point of the "pirate code" that the game throws in your face as soon as you enter the game? What's the point of that choice on the ferryman who asks you "if the other players bother you" when the other players don't even exist? I would be more than happy if after a raid I met a well-organized galleon of people that sinks me, as if I were to sink it. It is part of the game, we are pirates not traders. I also don't understand how 10/15 ships in such a large map can create pressing problems as you say. Skeletons, ghosts, sea monsters etc are all beautiful things but tire quickly because they are repetitive and are good for story missions, not freeroam.@clovis935568 If you watch early videos of them describing how they landed strategically on 6 ships per server, I think it's well designed. PvP is not supposed to be on top of you non stop. It's supposed to be, for those doing PvE, a looming fear. Seeing sails on the horizon and not knowing whether they're friend or foe...or if they'll even head in your direction at all. THAT is how they designed the game to be.
I think the big part of the problem is that you have way too many options to be disengaged from interaction on the seas.
You've got FOURTEEN Tall Tales available that effectively remove those players from wanting to interact with other crews on that server...and if they do get interacted with, they're often salty about it or not interested in being helped at all.
You've got these 2 week long adventures that - aside from the Shrouded Deep - have the same sort of effect on players participating in them.
You've got commendations out the wazoo related to sitting, reading journals, showing a strange lady your tattoos, and things that generally have that same sort of effect on the players participating in them.
You've got (what feels like) a million fishing commendations where players trying to get them don't want to be pestered at all.
6 ships (even 5) would be fine...IF (big if) everyone was participating in loot gathering...but that's probably not the case on the majority of servers. As it stands, if even ONE crew is participating in those activities above, that's 20% of the server's population that has little to no interest in interacting with other crews whatsoever. Heaven forbid you get on a server on the last 2 days of an active adventure as boring as the current one...likely 60%+ of the server will be trying to get it finished and not be interested in your shenanigans. Sure, there's some anomalies and fun times that I've had helping other crews with a Tall Tale, but by and large, those crews want to be in a silo and aren't doing any sort of loot production, thievery, or communication whatsoever.
@ix-indi-xi said in Any update on returning to 6 ships per server?:
@clovis935568 If rumours are true that the Xbox One contract ends in less then a year and IF RARE decides to pull support also, the game could actually get exponentially better if it wasn't being held back by old gen. Honestly its a 9 year old console, I think in terms of technology it merits being pulled off support since its holding back current gen/PC performance...
Firstly, as already stated, the Xbox One is not impacting server performance. There are plenty of PCs out there with similar or lower specs running the game. It would be really bad design if client hardware impacted server side performance in any significant way.
Secondly, regarding those "rumours", they came from an interview Matt Booty did before the Series X|S launched and, indeed, before the pandemic. He basically guaranteed Xbox One support for two years, or a year after the new gen launch.
Windows Central, January 2020:
"As our content comes out over the next year, two years, all of our games, sort of like PC, will play up and down that family of devices," Booty explains. "We want to make sure that if someone invests in Xbox between now and (Series X) that they feel that they made a good investment and that we're committed to them with content."
However, the pandemic has changed the landscape a lot and the worldwide chip shortage has meant less new hardware in the wild than anticipated - not just for Xbox, but across the tech industry. And a lot of the supply of Series X|S consoles that was there was hoarded by scalpers for a long time. While it's not that hard to get a console compared to a year or so ago, Microsoft are still far off their expected install base. All this to say, those plans may have changed and I wouldn't be surprised to see Xbox One support continue for another couple of years.
@realstyli I still find it hilarious that people who are "sO iNtO pCs" still have this mentality that the Xbox One support is what's causing poor server performance. Like...that doesn't even make sense at all. If anything, they are less of a hinderance on performance because they are not demanding such high graphics 😂
Its a low priority fix. Rare didnt design arena. How is that relevant? Well its the match making aspect of things. They dont know how to do it. Thats why theres no solo sloop only servers for example. Despite the fact they should now know how to do it due to arena. They need another company to help them sort out match making and stuff.
The issue right now is the servers have major memory leak issues. They always have. The more players on the server the worse the leaks get and buggier / more unstable the server gets. While there is a chance you could probably get 5 galleons on a server it would get unstable very quickly. I cant help but wonder if this is part of why arena was removed as well as all the other issues that held it back (like bad reward structure, reconnect feature creating bad play experience, cross play disabled lowering potential matches, open crews needing to fill before match would start)
They said they are working on trying to have the server dynamically switch what ship types are allowed to join when the stability starts to go down. So like at the start they might allow 2 galleons, 2 brigs, 2 sloops. things get bad then they lock it to 1 galleon 2 brigs 3 sloops. Those are examples obviously. The player count is the issue so it would just slowly alter the server to what kinds of ships are allowed eventually locking it down to maybe 1 brig 5 sloops or just 6 sloops. I imagine designing this would be a little more complicated than it sounds and getting out new content is more a priority than adding back 1 more ship to the world. And it was changed last year. I think they tried to bring 6 back earlier this year but it didnt work out so they had to go back to 5 again.
Sadly the price of getting more content means the servers struggle more and more. I honestly am starting to think we might go down to 4 ships before we get the fix to bring it back to 6. Ive seem some wonky things happen with 5 brigs all in the same play space
@magus104 said in Any update on returning to 6 ships per server?:
Its a low priority fix. Rare didnt design arena. How is that relevant? Well its the match making aspect of things. They dont know how to do it. Thats why theres no solo sloop only servers for example. Despite the fact they should now know how to do it due to arena. They need another company to help them sort out match making and stuff.
What? This is complete nonsense.
The issue right now is the servers have major memory leak issues. They always have. The more players on the server the worse the leaks get and buggier / more unstable the server gets. While there is a chance you could probably get 5 galleons on a server it would get unstable very quickly. I cant help but wonder if this is part of why arena was removed as well as all the other issues that held it back (like bad reward structure, reconnect feature creating bad play experience, cross play disabled lowering potential matches, open crews needing to fill before match would start)
While we can't tell if there are memory leaks because we can't see the servers' memory usage, we know that it is impossible to get 5 Galleons currently because they've capped the number of players per server, so the game will dynamically add ships that get matched so that the total ships is 5 but the number of players remains at or under 16.
@nex-stargaze There were some wonky issues before seasons started where i was on a 6 galleon server hunting megs to try and get the shrouded ghost. we werent using canons to fight to avoid hitting other ships. We had 3 megs despawn on us theres like a 10-15 minute window you have to kill it or it just despawns. After the 3rd one despawned on us i thought something funky was going on so i asked one of the other players to kill me. 4 people slashing away and shooting at me and 0 damage. I went to an island to try and kill a skeleton. I couldnt. Stab & shooting kegs... nothing. Skeletons killed me though. Dying didnt reset my ability to do damage. I think the fact that there is so much math involved in calculated shots (the reason hit reg is so broken) and we were all double gunning to kill megs the calculations just destroyed the server.
If they every fix hit reg by simplifying the math on calculating bullet flight it might solve a load of server issues. They said in the pod cast that the game has to account for both ships physics on the ocean which each ship can be under different physical effects based on sails direction & wind, waves, ship type and the fact that player physics on the boats arent tired to the boat physics (note when you try to do a hide emote your character isnt moving in sync with the ship. So after all these physics calculations the game also has to deal with bullet drop off and damage drop off for distance etc. If they change it to a straight shot he was in the cross hairs when the trigger was pulled bullet went in a straight line and made contact despite whats visually and physically going on in game.... That would make hit reg better and probably fix so much lag in combat heavy situations. But combat would also feel weird compared to how it feels now so who knows.
So the issue isnt exclusive to all the new content thats been added though im sure it doesnt help. especially if the shots from these other ai elements are being calculated the same way. like the lightning balls, mermaid trident shots, ghosts etc. And all this pve is spawning on islands actively fighting each other when a ship gets close
@d3adst1ck ignorance is bliss. I bet you think the 24 server lock is BS too. 24 hours from server creation the server gets flagged for shut down and no new ships can join. You ever sail around for a while and never see another ship and then you suddenly get the server merge message? Yea its because you were alone and the server wasnt allowing new ships and it was waiting to merge you off the dying server.
SO yea we cant see the server status or the code or know thats theres memory leaks but what else would it be? data corruption? why can servers only stay up for so long before they shut them down? WoW servers run for a whole week before they reboot them. But something about sea of thieves servers makes them need to be killed every 24 hours. And the server shutdowns you may or may not have seen would happen at 48 hours when the server got so bad they had to force it to shut down. While yes ive player on servers that were 4-5 days old. Hell during cursed sails I was on one that was 6 days old with 2 galleons and a ping of 2500. There are certain server things we just cant know because its not like they will make that info public. But some things I could tell you for a fact... Reaper chests dont spawn on servers with only 3 ships. I dont know the actual cut off but basically the concept of reaper chests is go fight over it so they coded it into the servers to only spawn if theres X ships. I dont know what the X is. Im guessing 4 but could be 5.
Also from being alone on a server I know that kraken never goes away until it spawns on a boat. it is a world event. so in recent updates when world events stop spawning its because the kraken was glitched and wasnt grabbing a ship. Kraken is the only world event that doesnt cycle away. I waited 3 hours at an island fishing on a server i knew had no other boats. no events spawned. The second i left the island kraken.... then killed the kraken and now forts spawning again
@magus104 said in Any update on returning to 6 ships per server?:
@d3adst1ck ignorance is bliss. I bet you think the 24 server lock is BS too. 24 hours from server creation the server gets flagged for shut down and no new ships can join. You ever sail around for a while and never see another ship and then you suddenly get the server merge message? Yea its because you were alone and the server wasnt allowing new ships and it was waiting to merge you off the dying server. They cant merge a ship in an alliance though so alliances exploit this fact if you got a few ships doing some long grind sessions eventually there will be no new boats on the server and they can just pve like crazy. In the same sense the ship wont merge if the whole crews not on board. so you can just have someone rowboat around doing their own thing or fishing at a seapost while you play and eventually single player sea of thieves baby!!! In the early days they would only merge you to a new server when you dropped the anchor. But people learned this through observation. Like oh hey if i never anchor i stop encountering other players.... So we stopped anchoring and got to play single player. So rare fixed it so now you merge regardless of anchor being up or down.
I know this. What does this have to do with matchmaking or server limits?
You cant discount fact just because your ignorant to it. While true we cant see the code, we cant see the status of the server to know how bad it is. Just like we cant see the server we are ons location but its been proven that with a VPN you can join with friends if you all set sail from the same region. Basically the people using their knowledge of how the servers function to play the way they want to play is such a smaller % of the player base that it doesnt really impact anything. Despite being a PvP game this isnt a competitive game. They deleted the only part of the game that really had any competition. You can tell by the leader boards theres like no shot the people at the top arent exploiting in 1 way or another. But does it even matter? theres no reward for being #1 just being in the top %
Game is separated by region? What a revelation! LOL
Still don't get how this relates to your claim about matchmaking or the player/ship caps in effect.
I don't actually find it bad as is. Hit reg baaaaarely rears its head in my experience. I haven't had crashes in many months. Rubber banding is way way less than it was when Haven Runs launched. We no longer get the freeze when you get into a certain range of another crew's ship. It's been ages since I saw a loot pile big enough to bug out... From where I am sitting, the game has never been more stable. Time to bring in the 6th ship. I don't expect perfect servers. But what we have is more than adequate. It's good, even...
Lol it has definitely been more stable. And we had more ships and a higher player capacity back then as well. Wasn't perfect. But it wasn't as wonky as it currently is.
That's not to say that it hasn't also been worse at times, as you've mentioned particular instances. The most recent update I can think of, in which performance was pretty bad, was when they temporarily bumped servers back up to 6.
If you think servers are "good" and hitreg isn't an issue, idk what else to say other than we'll need to agree to disagree. Though it does, in your defense, justify why you think we'd be okay with 6.
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