servers Consolidate Shards

[Oklahoman]

I don't support server consolidation right now, but shortguy did make me think - what if on the server select screen it had a live window under each server name showing LFG on that server? If you were flexible with moving characters around and you might see that something is forming you want to join and transfer a toon to that server.

 

My luck it will be full before I complete the transfer.

[lemming]

33 minutes ago, Oklahoman said:

I don't support server consolidation right now, but shortguy did make me think - what if on the server select screen it had a live window under each server name showing LFG on that server? If you were flexible with moving characters around and you might see that something is forming you want to join and transfer a toon to that server.

 

My luck it will be full before I complete the transfer.

That's why you keep five alt accounts up so you can monitor LFG on each shard...

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Oklahoman said:

what if on the server select screen it had a live window under each server name showing LFG on that server?

 

Chat channels don't load until your character is logged into a shard, so the entire server infrastructure would have to be redesigned.

[Lunar Ronin]

28 minutes ago, lemming said:

That's why you keep five alt accounts up so you can monitor LFG on each shard...

 

There used to be a Twitch streamer that just streamed the LFG channel from all five Homecoming shards along with Rebirth, Thunderspy, and New Dawn simultaneously 24/7.  It only lasted a few months though before he or she pulled the plug on it.  It was a neat idea though.

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, shortguy on indom said:

• INCREASING THE NUMBER OF SERVER-TRANSFER-TOKENS MAY HELP THE OP TO FIND CURRENT RAIDS ON OTHER SERVERS?
• 5 -  TOKENS ARE NOT ENOUGH SOMETIMES IF YOU WANT TO DO THAT "CERTAIN SOMETHING" IN A 'RIGHT NOW' TIMEFRAME.

The author has stated (s)he/they already play on the most populated server.

[Crystal Dragon]

🤣 Eff no, if your not happy with the server shard your on, hop to another and find your niche. Otherwise, it's a you problem.

[shortguy on indom]

On 8/6/2024 at 2:21 AM, Duuk said:

I could see consolidating Torchbearer and Indomitable, but leave Everlasting and Excelsior alone.

• WOULD SUPPORT A EXCELSIOR/EVERLASTING MERGER.
• IT ONLY MAKES SENSE TO COMBINE THE LARGEST SERVERS RIGHT?

[Bionic_Flea]

• NO, IT DOESN'T.

[honoroit]

I don't get it.

 

Is it name collision --> I'll un-sub / riot?

 

you can still have you're closed communities among a larger crowd, no?

 

Seems it'd be a wiser use of scarce resources, and less repeated infrastructure instanced to support comparative husks, that fragment the overall player pool, kupo.

 

 

[shortguy on indom]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

• NO, IT DOESN'T.

• SINCE MOST ALL OF THESE SERVER MERGE THREADS ARE STARTED BY FOLKS WHO ARE ON THE MOST POPULUS SERVER... AND NEVER STARTED BY FOLKS ON LESS POP SERVERS...
• WOULD MAKE QUITE A BIT 'O SENSE... TO GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT.

[Bionic_Flea]

5 minutes ago, shortguy on indom said:

WOULD MAKE QUITE A BIT 'O SENSE... TO GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT.

 

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

NO, IT WOULDN'T.

 

[shortguy on indom]

• EVEREXLASTIOR... HAS A NICE RING TO IT.

[TygerDarkstorm]

11 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

 

 

I suspect they're being sarcastic.

[Lunar Ronin]

1 hour ago, honoroit said:

I don't get it.

 

Is it name collision --> I'll un-sub / riot?

 

you can still have you're closed communities among a larger crowd, no?

 

Seems it'd be a wiser use of scarce resources, and less repeated infrastructure instanced to support comparative husks, that fragment the overall player pool, kupo.

 

It's been stated on here by developers quite a few times over the years that, except for Reunion, consolidating the shards would save no money nor infrastructure as the four North American shards share physical hardware.  They could save money by shuttering Reunion, except they use the hardware in Europe as a backup anyway.

 

Secondly, Excelsior is very laggy compared to the other shards, especially the three lowest populated shards.  It's nice playing on a shard without all of the lag that comes from being heavily populated.

 

Thirdly, each shard has its own personality and sub-culture.  I personally don't care for the personality and sub-culture of Excelsior.  Others don't care for the personality and sub-culture of Everlasting.  You would also lose the personality and sub-culture of Torchbearer, Indomitable, and Reunion.

 

To sum up: Consolidating shards would result in the loss of shard culture and personality for three shards, and you'd lose players who do not want to play on heavily populated shards and would rather leave the game.  In addition, you'd gain nothing.

[shortguy on indom]

• BUT THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES, THE RAIDS, THE LFG, ETC.

[honoroit]

40 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

It's been stated on here by developers quite a few times over the years that, except for Reunion, consolidating the shards would save no money nor infrastructure as the four North American shards share physical hardware.  They could save money by shuttering Reunion, except they use the hardware in Europe as a backup anyway.

 

Secondly, Excelsior is very laggy compared to the other shards, especially the three lowest populated shards.  It's nice playing on a shard without all of the lag that comes from being heavily populated.

 

Thirdly, each shard has its own personality and sub-culture.  I personally don't care for the personality and sub-culture of Excelsior.  Others don't care for the personality and sub-culture of Everlasting.  You would also lose the personality and sub-culture of Torchbearer, Indomitable, and Reunion.

 

To sum up: Consolidating shards would result in the loss of shard culture and personality for three shards, and you'd lose players who do not want to play on heavily populated shards and would rather leave the game.  In addition, you'd gain nothing.

 

It wastes compute by nature, to maintain process replicate due to overhead of the existence of the process instances as plural with respect to CPU instructions allocated, and storage/memory IO. At absolute best, it's resource inefficiency.

 

You could claim that separation of 100 users from 1000 users alleviates conditions where that 100 users existing pressures server dynamics such that conditions unique to player density arise.  I'd call rubbish on that, and you're still paying overhead running husks (on same hardware).

 

You'd gain a more populated paragon city / rogue isles / wherever-the-gold-people-go.

 

Edited August 8 by honoroit

[tatmia]

There is a reason some of us prefer smaller population servers.  Our family didn't originally choose to play on a smaller server (we didn't realize why Triumph was the first  server offered at the time).   I eventually did try out the larger servers, and quickly learned that we had accidentally picked the perfect server for us and when I ran out of slots on Triumph, I purposely started making characters on Protector.  

It's been years, but I believe that one of the reasons I switched to Everlasting and Excelsior when they were spun up was because I wanted the smaller population of a new shard (they might have also had some additional accelerated XP).   As those shards grew, I found myself soloing more and more.  I really should have picked up on the fact that I was doing it and moved to Indomitable (I'm lazy and didn't want to start all over with my bases). 

I love smaller servers for the community, the comradery, and the fact that the population size forces people to work with what shows up rather than saying that the team must have XX ATs or powersets.   I love that when I join a team, half the people are in my friends list and there's usually a few moments of everyone greeting each other because just like Cheers, most people know your name.   This doesn't bode well for people that are bossy, toxic, and are not team players.   They can't hide in the population and those that don't learn to adjust their behaviors usually end up leaving.  

I've spent the majority of my playtime over  last  few months on another server that at it's peak might have the same amount of players as Indomitable but normally doesn't even come close.   Yes, the population sometimes limits my original plans when I log on, but again, part of the appeal of smaller servers is learning flexibility. 

I'm sorry that you're having issues finding teams, but I'll propose that population isn't really the issue.

[tatmia]

On 8/7/2024 at 11:32 AM, Oklahoman said:

I don't support server consolidation right now, but shortguy did make me think - what if on the server select screen it had a live window under each server name showing LFG on that server? If you were flexible with moving characters around and you might see that something is forming you want to join and transfer a toon to that server.

 

My luck it will be full before I complete the transfer.

Rebirth uses a bot that mirrors in game channels to Discord.  I check the LFG mirror a lot while doing other things and might jump on if something interests me.   But, you have a good point about how quickly teams fill up so that might not be a good option for HC.

[shortguy on indom]

• AT SOME POINT ALL THIS MERGING IS GOING TO GET REAL.
  • SUGGEST A FEW THINGS:
    • START A NEW SHARD UP.... WAY BEFORE REALITY HITS.... LIKE NOW.
    • GIVE FOLKS ENOUGH TRANSITION TIME TO CREATE A PRESENCE (SG BASES; NAMES AND WHATEVER ELSE IS NECESSARY).
      • SLOWLY AND STEADILY SAILS THE SHIP.
  • A DIFFERENT SCENARIO WOULD BE TO DEDICATE EXISTING SHARDS FOR A SPECIFIC TASK:
    • SINGLE SHARD FOR LOW-LEVEL TOON BUILDING.  DFBs, AND THE LIKE.
    • SINGLE SHARD FOR ALL TASK FORCES/STRIKE FORCES.
    • SINGLE SHARD FOR LEAGUE WORK... HAMIS/MSRS ETC.
  • ALL IN ALL I HOPE THE COUNCIL IS THINKING ABOUT THIS IN A REALISTIC WAY.
  • RIGHT NOW IT ALL WORKS, BUT A CONTINGENCY EFFORT MAY HELP THE GAME FROM FALLING APART WHEN IT HAPPENS.

[Bionic_Flea]

2 minutes ago, shortguy on indom said:

AT SOME POINT ALL THIS MERGING IS GOING TO GET REAL.

• SUGGEST A FEW THINGS:
  • START A NEW SHARD UP.... WAY BEFORE REALITY HITS.... LIKE NOW.
  • GIVE FOLKS ENOUGH TRANSITION TIME TO CREATE A PRESENCE (SG BASES; NAMES AND WHATEVER ELSE IS NECESSARY).
    • SLOWLY AND STEADILY SAILS THE SHIP.
• A DIFFERENT SCENARIO WOULD BE TO DEDICATE EXISTING SHARDS FOR A SPECIFIC TASK:
  • SINGLE SHARD FOR LOW-LEVEL TOON BUILDING.  DFBs, AND THE LIKE.
  • SINGLE SHARD FOR ALL TASK FORCES/STRIKE FORCES.
  • SINGLE SHARD FOR LEAGUE WORK... HAMIS/MSRS ETC.
• ALL IN ALL I HOPE THE COUNCIL IS THINKING ABOUT THIS IN A REALISTIC WAY.
• RIGHT NOW IT ALL WORKS, BUT A CONTINGENCY EFFORT MAY HELP THE GAME FROM FALLING APART WHEN IT HAPPENS.

 

• BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE!
  • START A NEW SHARD
  • USE WHATEVER SETTINGS YOU WANT
  • SEE HOW MANY PEOPLE WILL JOIN
• YOU COULD SET AS MANY DIFFERENT SHARDS AS YOU LIKE, EACH WITH UNIQUE FLAVORS!!
• YOU COULD BE THE SAVIOR OF THE GAME AS THE ULTIMATE CONTINGENCY PLANNER

[honoroit]

5 minutes ago, shortguy on indom said:

• AT SOME POINT ALL THIS MERGING IS GOING TO GET REAL.
  • SUGGEST A FEW THINGS:
    • START A NEW SHARD UP.... WAY BEFORE REALITY HITS.... LIKE NOW.
    • GIVE FOLKS ENOUGH TRANSITION TIME TO CREATE A PRESENCE (SG BASES; NAMES AND WHATEVER ELSE IS NECESSARY).
      • SLOWLY AND STEADILY SAILS THE SHIP.
  • A DIFFERENT SCENARIO WOULD BE TO DEDICATE EXISTING SHARDS FOR A SPECIFIC TASK:
    • SINGLE SHARD FOR LOW-LEVEL TOON BUILDING.  DFBs, AND THE LIKE.
    • SINGLE SHARD FOR ALL TASK FORCES/STRIKE FORCES.
    • SINGLE SHARD FOR LEAGUE WORK... HAMIS/MSRS ETC.
  • ALL IN ALL I HOPE THE COUNCIL IS THINKING ABOUT THIS IN A REALISTIC WAY.
  • RIGHT NOW IT ALL WORKS, BUT A CONTINGENCY EFFORT MAY HELP THE GAME FROM FALLING APART WHEN IT HAPPENS.

 

in before 6x thumbs down from the regulars.

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, shortguy on indom said:

• SINCE MOST ALL OF THESE SERVER MERGE THREADS ARE STARTED BY FOLKS WHO ARE ON THE MOST POPULUS SERVER... AND NEVER STARTED BY FOLKS ON LESS POP SERVERS...
• WOULD MAKE QUITE A BIT 'O SENSE... TO GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT.

As opposed to giving the players on the less populated servers what they want? Or the players on Everlasting that like not logging onto the red Excelsior server? Merging Everlasting and Excelsior would drive Excelsior beyond what the server can handle. That's the reason for multiple servers, to reduce strain on the servers and give players places to play.

[Nerio72]

No thanks.

[Crystal Dragon]

• Lets not.
• There's already enough players to house on each of the shards.
• IT IS A YOU PROBLEM.
• The population of each shard is that way for player reasons. Some like smaller population, some don't.
• Move to a shard that fits the population you are seeking. /solution

Let me explain this in barebones sense.

Each server shard has it's own culture, it's own preferences of play styles, and uprooting that would only drive players that like their routines and preferences from the game entirely. Forcing a merger would only harm the current population on these shards, and I for one would quit if we end up with a merger on Everlasting. I've seen what harm server mergers, especially FORCED server mergers can do to player populations and I won't stick around to witness that harm happen here. If you are not happy on the server shard you are on, MOVE TO ONE OF THE OTHERS. It saves the developers a bunch of unnecessary work to merge the servers and in result, damaging the player communities already housed on these shards, but also leaves you the FREEDOM to hop shards to find the niche you are looking for. So, I think that touches on the important points that hadn't been brought up thus far.

[Luminara]

28 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE!