Game completely instanced?

That's not how it works exactly. If you're the first to enter a scene, then there would initially be only one instance of that scene. Everyone else entering that scene after you will be put in that one initial instance until the player cap is filled. The next player that tries to enter the scene will cause a second instance to be created and he will be alone until more players enter. And as those other players enter, the game will check to see if the first instance is full and if it is, that player is put in the second instance. If it's not full, the game will then use the social graph logic to determine if that player should go into instance #1 or instance #2. Repeat this process for as many instances and as many players are entering the scene, continually checking the player cap levels for each existing instance so that you're put into the most relevant instance of that scene.

So basically, as you enter a scene, it will look at all existing instances and determine the right one for you, and will only spawn new instances if the player caps are all at their limits for every instance of that scene.

 

Hmm... That would only occur if all 1000 users were playing in SPO or FPO mode, which enforces a restriction that all users in the instance be somehow related by their "Friends List".

In the OPO instances, being on the "Friends List" is merely a sorting criteria, dictating the most appropriate instance to which to add your character, when there are multiple instances available to choose from. So the system will attempt to fill existing OPO instances with as many users as it feels is appropriate.

Playing Neverwinter, which uses a similar system to handle instancing, the process works fairly well. The town always feels full, even though there are multiple instances of the same zone running (my wife and I have been sorted onto different instances occasionally, so I know they are there).

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As for the abundance of resources due to the large number of instances : Good question. Though I can see means of restricting resource nodes in newly spun up instances, based on how often the entire hex itself has been harvested.

There are ways of dealing with such issues, if they do end up being a problem.

(Edit: and smack ninja'd)

 

The part that I have doubts about is how many of the same scene will open up allowing multiple mining/Lumber & other gathering skills will it mean a large influx of resources into the game.
If its a good mining area a lot will go to it once discovered. And with the ( The new instances of zones will be sorted according to friend networks, so "it should be relatively invisible" to players. Players won't have to hoop-jump to get to their friends.) it will mean when travelling the map you will see that an instance is open ( Devs stated this earlier that a marker will show if a friend is already in) but, if its not a friend you don't see it and open up the scene with your computer as the server. RG also stated that a scene would never have more than about 64 players because most players systems & ISP would not be able to run smoothly.

 

But is that run on the Neverwinters server and not P2P onto players computers like the SotA set up. As I stated earlier they have said only about 64 max being pushed into an instance when a player computer is the server.

 

The number "64" was merely a number arbitrarily chosen during testing in R3.

It has been mentioned that the value is variable, not a hard-set upper limit, and could easily be exceeded in the future.

Reference: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/community.12354/#post-207572 (Dev+ required)

 

I'm not on about the towns run on Portalarium servers I know they can have more showing, but it still becomes a layered shard instance not actually one persistent world once they start to break up the numbers. I mean the scene instances that were to be run P2P so not running more than 64 when its a players computer acting as the host server.

 

The town hexes are actually player hosted instances just like any other instance in the game, there is no difference.

Unfortunately, I'm unclear where you are going with this line of conversation.

So what does it matter if there are up-to 64 users, or up-to 128 users (or whatever number one wants to use) per instance ? My point is that the instances will still feel full regardless (Neverwinter instances, be they the main town or the outlying zones never feel devoid of other users, they actually feel overpopulated).

 

Well One thing maybe they mentioned in the earlier videos that a certain person would be given a quest to deliver goods to a certain location.
Then on the other side another person would be given a quest to stop someone carrying some contraband to a certain location.

I imagine with the hex/instance system going on...with a decent size population in the game keeping all those folks in the same instances vs an open world, so they can encounter each other may be a
bigger task, ideas?

 

My main question is the amount of instance's and how resource collecting.
And if its a dungeon instance the amount of loot flooding the economy, or are you saying I could enter a dungeon and it will be completely empty of enemy and all the chests are empty (like at the crafting stations in town) because there are to many of that dungeon instance open.

 

I'd say the mechanics of resolving that particular quest could be more complicated by the simple fact that the contraband carrier doesn't necessarily have to be in an instance *at all*.

They could simply cross the entire map using the overworld map, having never entered a hex (other than the final destination) in that circumstance.

In that case, I would suggest it be possible to catch users on the overworld map and pull them down into an instance where both you and them are guaranteed to be part.

As for the "final destination" hex: The dev team could set up the sorting criteria to *always* add the contraband carrier to an OPO instance where an opposing player is waiting.

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Personally, I like the idea of tracking them in the overworld map myself. Just sit on a hex in their path and jump them when they go past.

And I agree with your concerns in that regards. However, any SPO mode character can simply switch hexes over and over again to receive a new fresh copy of the instance without having to deal with multi-player instances at all.

As I noted earlier, that could be handled whenever a new instance is spun up : Reduce the available resources in the new instance if the hex has been over-harvested in recent instances.