Instanced battles and the coward

[Brigand]

From another thread:

 

Q. Both the open world and the instanced battles use time compression. Yet, the ratio of this compression varies. This leads me to believe that you can cover more distance in the open world than you can in the instanced battle happening at the same time?

A (admin): If you name things as they are, the open world map is a travel map.

Some developers choose to visualize it in isometric 2d (city of abandoned ships), some make it small scale cartoony 3d (PotBS). Our travel map is a 3d world.

Q: Could players in the open world sail a circle around the players in an instanced battle? Thereby effectively bypassing them?

A (admin): no - you can only see the symbol on the map that there is a battle here - thus you don't need to bypass anything  - just sail further.

Q: Intuitively, working with two different rates of time compression, seems problematic (I haven't tried, so I'm not sure of course). How is this handled in the game? or, why is it not deemed problematic?

A (admin): we don't see a problem.

Q: Is there some plan to enable new players to join an instanced battle, that has already started?

A (admin): you can if that particular battle type allows it.

 

I'm wondering about 'seeing the symbol on the map': it makes sense if it is some sort of overhead map. Yet, I don't see how this would work out in a 3D environment. Will there be a symbol floating above the sea indicating some players are fighting there? It would be a huge offence against immersion if you ask me.

 

On the other hand, I do see why they need to implement instances: it is a twitch based game, where every calculation is done on the server. Right now, there seems to be no viable method to combine this with a shared open world.

 

Yet, it is somewhat of a disappointment. I would love to be able to actually see some ships fighting at the horizon. But that would mean I would have to join the instance. Yet, in the instance time flows at a different speed than it does in the open world. So automatically joining every instance you come across would hugely slow down your progress in going towards wherever you where heading. If joining an instance is not automatical, than there is little point in doing so, unless you want to participate in the fight. Yet, you don't know yet if you want to participate, because you do not yet know who is fighting who and in what ships?

 

So, maybe as a compromise, could this 'symbol on the map' consist of a radically simplified version of the battle that actually goes on in the instance? thereby creating the illusion that the battle is part of the open world?

 

Cheers,

Brigand

[Magnum]

I would love the idea of open world being one big sandbox (like the EVE trailer describes) - but - but in EVE they have FTL travel, I sure don't see my Victory (or even my cutter) hitting WARP 3.

 

Any other ideas? --- hey --- here's one

 

1. Have ALL travel and battle in open world pace at the same compression ratio vs. real time.

 

2. Have different insertion points when you enter the open world - eg you could enter at San Juan Puerto Rico OR you could enter at Havana -- you would of course sail the calm waters around San Juan and Puerto Rico if you enter there and you would be involved in the turmoil and battles around Havana if you enter there.

 

If a battle is happening 45 min sail away from an insertion point - reinforcements are minimum 45 min away - plan accordingly

 

3. If you exit an area - you suffer a 10 min (or 15 min or 20 min) delay before you can jump into any other area (do a 10 min PVE if you want) to eliminate super ganks.

 

4. If you bail while under fire - your ship can be captured. If you exit not under fire (to go to bed etc.) your ship is saved for you and will be in the lobby when you return.

 

Pretty simple game play with fights or without - depends on the players involved - much like real life.

 

Comments?

[Sharp]

due to the amount of work involved to change what the dev's have in mind I feel that it will only ever be a case of testing and tweaking/balancing what the devs give us, not come up with a new concept.

[Magnum]

due to the amount of work involved to change what the dev's have in mind I feel that it will only ever be a case of testing and tweaking/balancing what the devs give us, not come up with a new concept.

 

Well, perhaps they threw it out there to see if it would stick - if it fails to stick, perhaps they would like an alternative to consider?

[admin]

We never promised seamless open world.

Non instanced battles are impossible due to combat complexity.

Eve online is not seamless as well it has gates.

Eve separates world horizontally, we separate vertically

Eve combat is also a lot less complex it's just select and click. This makes bigger battles are possible.

[Lord Vicious]

We never promised seamless open world.

Non instanced battles are impossible due to combat complexity.

Eve online is not seamless as well it has gates.

Eve separates world horizontally, we separate vertically

Eve combat is also a lot less complex it's just select and click. This makes bigger battles are possible.

At list make those istances last open as much as possible

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

With the speed at which ships outside the instance can travel, it is in the game's best interests not to keep the instance open to newcomers as long as possible.  Only those in a realistic radius when the instance starts should be able to interact with it - leaving it open too long allows other ships that couldn't have ever realistically reached the battle to pile on and improperly affect the outcome.

[Magnum]

With the speed at which ships outside the instance can travel, it is in the game's best interests not to keep the instance open to newcomers as long as possible.  Only those in a realistic radius when the instance starts should be able to interact with it - leaving it open too long allows other ships that couldn't have ever realistically reached the battle to pile on and improperly affect the outcome.

 

I agree - if warp speed sailing ships and "instances" are the only way it is possible - then at least don't combine them by having people coming into an instance at warp speed!

[AP514]

With the speed at which ships outside the instance can travel, it is in the game's best interests not to keep the instance open to newcomers as long as possible.  Only those in a realistic radius when the instance starts should be able to interact with it - leaving it open too long allows other ships that couldn't have ever realistically reached the battle to pile on and improperly affect the outcome.

 

 I Agree......

[Peteatthecows]

Throwing ideas around is great, but I think this should be done after we have had a chance to test what the devs have come up with.

[Magnum]

Throwing ideas around is great, but I think this should be done after we have had a chance to test what the devs have come up with.

 

That seems to me like deciding if you like a stock after you buy it ......

[Wetworth]

I'd love battles to be, uh, you know, the opposite of instanced, but that would either limit map size or greatly increase sail time, right?

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

No, it would reduce it to something like the old-style Civilization in detail and complexity - see ship, sail to ship, click "attack" button, wait for battle to end.  Trying to use a single instance to calculate each individual ball's flight, track the impact/damage, all the polygons to show things damaged, hit, splashes, plus sending the exact wave state to each ship like they're doing now - all of these are impossible to do with a fully open world.  You also have a problem with accelerated travel being next to impossible if the battles themselves aren't instanced.

[Brigand]

The software architect in me (yes, that's my profession) says that this is (a) a very interesting challenge and (b) it may have merit to investigate the path of dynamic scaling of the area delegated to an instance.

 

If you see the world map (travel map) as a large set of adjacent tiles, you could come up with an algorithm that assigns those tiles to different instances. Empty tiles only require minimum resources to manage. Tiles where a battle is going on require a lot of resources. Consequently, an instance could manage a large set of near empty tiles. If a fight breaks out on one of those tiles, this tile (and maybe a few empty ones around it) could be delegated to another instance. Thereby keeping the workload for each individual instance manageable. A a result, a tile with a big fight would be very quickly (predictive algorithm?) be isolated into its own instance. As the fight comes to an end, the workload of the instance handling the fight would drop and other tiles could be assigned to it. This architecture would result in an ever changing amount of instances which are controlled by dynamic work load balancing.

 

I realise writing this out in a post is quite simple and does not (yet) address the point of differentiated time compression ratios between the separate instances/tiles, but that does not mean it is impossible to build this, nor does it mean it is possible; it would need further planning and work to investigate the possibilities of this being able to handle the load seamlessly. However, I also realise that it may not be needed: right now Game Labs has made a design decision which sidesteps this problem.

 

Cheers,

Brigand