Homecoming Server Update (May 1st): Perfectly Balanced

[PrismAlmidu]

More options are always better, that's the entire draw of this game, from the costume creator, to power selection, to how every build can be viable.

[Tekno2099]

There may not be a lot of support for this, but I'd appreciate it if there was at least one shard that didn't have all this accelerated XP, or at least had a mechanism to opt out. And no, turning off XP gain isn't the same thing. I want to level my character, I just hate outleveling contacts and content. Laughable or not, some of us do want to experience or re-experience that, even some that played for 8 years. I'd love to be able to level at the intended rate.

 

And some don't want repeat all the boring old one but triyng fast as possible the last contenent like ALL the new power set from i24 ;-)

[barrier]

More options are always better, that's the entire draw of this game, from the costume creator, to power selection, to how every build can be viable.

 

You're basically saying that your position on optionality thwarts player autonomy. Nice. That's toxic.

[BlueKnight]

There may not be a lot of support for this, but I'd appreciate it if there was at least one shard that didn't have all this accelerated XP, or at least had a mechanism to opt out. And no, turning off XP gain isn't the same thing. I want to level my character, I just hate outleveling contacts and content. Laughable or not, some of us do want to experience or re-experience that, even some that played for 8 years. I'd love to be able to level at the intended rate.

 

And some don't want repeat all the boring old one but triyng fast as possible the last contenent like ALL the new power set from i24 ;-)

 

And I didn't say you should have to.

[PrismAlmidu]

Autonomy only works if there are options to choose from. At no point am I attacking your use of the AE, just trying to widen the pool of choices.

[Leandro]

Wait, so I'm confused. Is the AE server a separate piece of software/hardware?

 

The missionserver, as its called, is a separate piece of software that stores the mission data as created by players. It does use some resources, but that part is not a big deal. Once you start an AE mission, it's loaded in a mapserver, like any other mission. They are not treated any differently.

 

The problem is that players can build missions that are a lot more resource-intensive than normal missions from the game. When enemies spawn in normal missions, most of them have their AI in an "idle" state until they are aggroed, which doesn't require much processing power. But most AE farms rely heavily on ambushes or patrols, which spawn the critters with fully active AI. And that's the problem.

 

Missions are run on 9 servers with a total of 224 cores. For the most part you can run lots of zones and missions on a single core without a problem; but AE farms tend to max out a core all for themselves. If there's just 100 AE AI-intensive farms running, that eats half of the mapserver processing power for all 4 shards.

[Obsidius]

Thanks Leandro for all the team's hard work.

 

 

If reducing AE XP helps improve mapserver stability for all the shards, then IMPO the benefits definitely outweigh the drawbacks.

 

 

Carry on and thanks for all of the team's hard work. Let me know how I can send money :P

[barrier]

Wait, so I'm confused. Is the AE server a separate piece of software/hardware?

 

The missionserver, as its called, is a separate piece of software that stores the mission data as created by players. It does use some resources, but that part is not a big deal. Once you start an AE mission, it's loaded in a mapserver, like any other mission. They are not treated any differently.

 

The problem is that players can build missions that are a lot more resource-intensive than normal missions from the game. When enemies spawn in normal missions, most of them have their AI in an "idle" state until they are aggroed, which doesn't require much processing power. But most AE farms rely heavily on ambushes or patrols, which spawn the critters with fully active AI. And that's the problem.

 

Missions are run on 9 servers with a total of 224 cores. For the most part you can run lots of zones and missions on a single core without a problem; but AE farms tend to max out a core all for themselves. If there's just 100 AE AI-intensive farms running, that eats half of the mapserver processing power for all 4 shards.

 

Fascinating.

 

Do we have any info on how NCSoft handled this? I can't believe they were just throwing money at the problem over and over instead of figuring out a way of making the AI requirements from AE missions draw on elastic resources...

[Rylas]

Zone and mission maps for all servers run all together in the same hardware (the ones described as "mapserver hosts"); so there's no such thing as running AE for "just one server" without affecting the rest. The AE farms trigger a lot of ambushes or AI-enabled patrols which use a lot of CPU power and cause increase lag and instability for everyone.

 

The goal here is to get the servers to a point where they don't need a restart every few hours.

 

I wondered if tons of AE maps with all their ridiculous spawn numbers would be an issue for the servers. I figured that's why the XP nerf came through. Makes a lot of sense.

 

As for transfers. Would you be willing to consider a temporary period for doing them. Say, give people a few days or a week to ask for one, and then you do the manual transfers as you can. With the new servers, I can see how helpful it would be to move over for more consistent server stability. But some of us won't get to play as much while 2.5xXP is available so might not be enticed enough to make a move. Just food for thought.

 

Thanks for all the hard work you guys!

[Obsidius]

Fascinating.

 

Do we have any info on how NCSoft handled this? I can't believe they were just throwing money at the problem over and over instead of figuring out a way of making the AI requirements from AE missions draw on elastic resources...

 

I'm willing to bet they had a lot more hardware and financial resources, and a lot of players beta testing the AE feature to determine the resources and upkeep before launching it. AE launched before the game became F2P, so everyone was paying $15/mo for play and access. Getting a few more mapservers online just for AE probably wasn't a huge issue, but it's all conjecture on my part obviously.

[Rylas]

There may not be a lot of support for this, but I'd appreciate it if there was at least one shard that didn't have all this accelerated XP, or at least had a mechanism to opt out. And no, turning off XP gain isn't the same thing. I want to level my character, I just hate outleveling contacts and content. Laughable or not, some of us do want to experience or re-experience that, even some that played for 8 years. I'd love to be able to level at the intended rate.

 

Uhh... what's the "intended rate"? As far as I can remember, it was nearly impossible not to out-level content and contacts even at regular XP. I think it's only possible to stay within that range (especially at low levels) is by turning of XP (before you out level content) until your done with that content.

[BlueKnight]

There may not be a lot of support for this, but I'd appreciate it if there was at least one shard that didn't have all this accelerated XP, or at least had a mechanism to opt out. And no, turning off XP gain isn't the same thing. I want to level my character, I just hate outleveling contacts and content. Laughable or not, some of us do want to experience or re-experience that, even some that played for 8 years. I'd love to be able to level at the intended rate.

 

Uhh... what's the "intended rate"? As far as I can remember, it was nearly impossible not to out-level content and contacts even at regular XP. I think it's only possible to stay within that range (especially at low levels) is by turning of XP (before you out level content) until your done with that content.

 

Well, I'm assuming Cryptic didn't intend for you to constantly outlevel contacts and storylines. ;)  I do remember running into that issue with characters that teamed a lot while leveling, but not so much with more solo characters. Granted, 2004 was a long time ago, so I could be misremembering. In any case, the current XP boosts make things a lot worse in that regard.

[Rylas]

Well, I'm assuming Cryptic didn't intend for you to constantly outlevel contacts and storylines. ;)  I do remember running into that issue with characters that teamed a lot while leveling, but not so much with more solo characters. Granted, 2004 was a long time ago, so I could be misremembering. In any case, the current XP boosts make things a lot worse in that regard.

 

I can understand for you it's frustrating. Having a whole server that has no 2xXP doesn't sound like the answer for your problem though. Which server from the limited selection we have? What about the people that already have toons they'd like to get 2xXP for that are on that server? Why withhold 2xXP for 25% of the toons out there when those who would prefer not to have it would most likely be a much smaller population? While it might be a minor annoyance for you to turn off XP gain here and there so you don't out-level content, it would seem more burdensome to force the other route for so many others.

[Obsidius]

I can understand for you it's frustrating. Having a whole server that has no 2xXP doesn't sound like the answer for your problem though. Which server from the limited selection we have? What about the people that already have toons they'd like to get 2xXP for that are on that server? Why withhold 2xXP for 25% of the toons out there when those who would prefer not to have it would most likely be a much smaller population? While it might be a minor annoyance for you to turn off XP gain here and there so you don't out-level content, it would seem more burdensome to force the other route for so many others.

Beggars and choosers.

 

 

We're all playing this game for free thanks to the hard work of a dedicated few with the resources and guts to pull it off. If they have to increase stability for the entire server population by forcing a few people to level characters through different means, that's how we're going to have to roll unless/ until the paradigm changes.

 

 

That being said, I've already outleveled some contacts due to rested Xp and server XP bonuses, but it's all low-level stuff. Still, I might be upset if I don't get to fight Dr. V along the way.

 

 

But it is what it is, and it's a sight more than I had a month ago, which was no CoH whatsoever.

[BlueKnight]

 

I can understand for you it's frustrating. Having a whole server that has no 2xXP doesn't sound like the answer for your problem though. Which server from the limited selection we have? What about the people that already have toons they'd like to get 2xXP for that are on that server? Why withhold 2xXP for 25% of the toons out there when those who would prefer not to have it would most likely be a much smaller population? While it might be a minor annoyance for you to turn off XP gain here and there so you don't out-level content, it would seem more burdensome to force the other route for so many others.

 

I'd say that it's more than a minor annoyance. I'd also say at this point we have no idea of the actual numbers of who would/would not be in favor of it. I also think (although I could be wrong) that the tools to boost individual character's XP already exist (such as the anniversary temp powers that are being handed out), while tools to slow (not stop) the rate do not. As far as switching servers goes, I've already done that to help relieve the burden on the original servers. No one's experience here is perfect. But all the people behind the scenes who are making this game available to us again are doing a damn fine job and don't think I don't appreciate it.

[Peerless Girl]

Are leveling pacts PERMANENTLY broken, or just broken for now? I have several characters that operate in a duo, and LP is extremely beneficial to them.

 

Leveling pacts are handled by the statserver, which is crashing pretty much constantly. They also have some database queries which need to be run in a specific order, but the order is not guaranteed; this is called a "race condition" and results in lots of errors, especially when the servers are as overloaded as they are right now.

 

So fix we need to figure out why the statserver keeps crashing, then we need to solve the race condition, then we can enable leveling pacts again. It's not intended to be permanent, but I can't give a time estimate because of everything else that's going on.

 

That sounds perfectly fine and reasonable, I was just curious what was up and/or if it was intended to be permanent or not, that tells me what I need to know. Thanks Leo!

[Reiska]

Do we have any info on how NCSoft handled this? I can't believe they were just throwing money at the problem over and over instead of figuring out a way of making the AI requirements from AE missions draw on elastic resources...

 

By encouraging players to report farm arcs and routinely deleting them from the server, and periodically making changes to the base code for AE to thwart methods people used to farm.  I know you don't like that answer, but that's what happened on live.

[MERCURY DRIPS]

Very good new for AE :)

It was convenient in a way (I used it) but in term of gameplay it is a killing machine if it goes industrial.

 

Quite bad news for shard purposes :(

Its a good think to propose dedicated places I admit, but for me it happen suddenly whereas I did so many efforts on torchbearer for my different toons.

Will not start from scratch on undomitable but I still prey that "ONE DAY" it will be possible to transfer from a shard to another. It was allowed on live server if I remember.

 

In the end : thanks a lot guys for your work, your constant efforts to maintain our world alive. God bless you.

[Dandropo]

Io vi scrivo in italiano e se vi va usate Google translate per tradurlo.

Ho giocato questo gioco quando ero adolescente per 7 lunghi anni, e quando ho saputo che si poteva tornare a giocarlo mi sono emozionato dalla gioia. Tanti tanti ricordi, e per questo non vi ringrazier򠭡i abbastanza. Per򠥲o e lo sono ancora, un PvP player. Le missioni, le task force ecc mi interessano poco se non per portare vantaggi in pvp. Ho sempre farmato personaggi per il PvP, e il nerf al Mission Architect è stato davvero un colpo basso. Costringete le persone a giocare PvE quando magari vogliono solo arrivare prima possibile al pvp. Ora la mia proposta è:

Se non riuscite a risolvere i problemi di hardware in modo da fare tornare il Mission architect come prima, allora non rimane che decidere un server ufficiale per il PvP e dare direttamente il livello 50 a tutti. Tanto poi bisogna fare influenece per gli enanchements, accolades, incarnates e quindi di pve da fare ce n'è. Ma vi prego livellare il personaggio per i pvp players è un agonia. Risolvete...vi prego. Siete dei grandi! Con affetto, dandropo.

 

[markofantares]

I've signed on briefly twice this week - I don't have as much time now that I'm older between work, working out (decided I would be the hero I couldn't play online!), cats, and just living as an adult.  BUT  - the shards were really stable, despite being full.  Kudos to the Homecoming Team!

[Jaguaratron]

The improvements since Saturday have been astronomical. AE changes are appropriate and were needed, its like a different game without the constant spam of AE farm chat clogging up the chat channels, groups are forming and people are playing content.

[barrier]

The improvements since Saturday have been astronomical. AE changes are appropriate and were needed, its like a different game without the constant spam of AE farm chat clogging up the chat channels, groups are forming and people are playing content.

 

Look at this nerfherder trying to appear like he's a nice guy.

[Eiko-chan]

Now that we know one individual AE farm mission can use up an entire server core by itself, I view anyone that still wants to do AE farm missions as extremely selfish. You are not entitled to use up that much power just for your own personal use unless you are the one paying for these servers.

 

As a compromise, since I can sympathise with the desire to get to 50 and get back to Incarnate stuff or PvP stuff, perhaps every account should get 1 (and only one) token that would allow them to jump to level 50 immediately. I'm not sure how hard this would be to design, but I imagine it could be stuck into the P2W vendor or the merit vendors?

[Smudgeman]

Just want tosay thax for all the effort, and hard work you have put into,great to see the best hero game alive again.

[Lunchmoney]

Got to play for a few minutes today.

Then servers crashed :(

 

So happy to be back in Paragon City :)