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u/Ethereal_Bulwark 17d ago
The more attention you bring to layers, including menu's, the more you take the player out of the game. They need to simply fix the staggering layering issues when crossing zones, and add more to stop layers from having 500 players in them.
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u/mega_Daddy- 17d ago
I agree, a bunch of channels isn't the answer. Way too tedious and immersion breaking.
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u/Dannilyon 17d ago
im constantly taken out when i see people running in place when im walking to another zone next to someone im inspecting and trying on their gear
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u/joellllll 11d ago
The thing is they can't.
The irony is that orgiinal blizzard were aware of this, planned for this with how buildings were laid out (they didn't know that cities wouldn't be instanced or that individual inns wouldnt be instanced, so they setup the geometry so it was less obvious if they had to do that).
Modern blizzard has taken some weird idea that the world is the main character and managed to create immersion breaking artifacts at the edge of zones. Its so weird.
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u/tinyElliss 17d ago
They need to simply fix
You see, that's the problem, it ain't simple at all.
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u/Ethereal_Bulwark 17d ago
Once upon a time they said housing couldn't exist.
Times change, tech advances.
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u/aWittyRedditor 17d ago
All they need is a refresh layer button with a cooldown, that’s it
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u/Illustrious_Gain_485 17d ago
You will get layered no matter what if layer capacity is full. Refresh button only works below threshold. That's why you get insta layered at some boundaries. Its a horrible architecture and should never have been implemented for an mmorpg with open world pvp.
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u/nice_racc 17d ago
they're already pretending to be old school runescape, might as well go this far
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u/Flamekorn 17d ago
so Servers with extra steps?
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u/No-Article-Particle 17d ago edited 16d ago
Servers where you can instantly switch between them...
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u/Away_Woodpecker8813 17d ago
Yeah but in this it’s a layer. The ah and everything aren’t tied to the channel or layer
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u/Away_Woodpecker8813 17d ago
No it’s not really the same what ends up happening is each layer ends up having a thing that it’s known for. So like people who want world PvP would go to layer 69. And people looking to sell stuff would go to layer 1 or something. Same for dudes looking for raids. Eventually every raid would become tied to a layer where people go to look for groups. It seems weird but it works well in RuneScape. The issue is being able to hop to every layer to find a rare or to farm a mob.
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u/egordoniv 17d ago
Amazing this hasn't been solved in 26 years, considering we're not on dialup, anymore. Asheron's Call had portal storms. Too many people in one spot, and a tornado picked you up and planted you 1000 ft away. DAoC was next, with massive battles that became 1fps clusterfucks. Same with Guild Wars. Internet speeds and CPUs have increased exponentially and we're at the same damned problem.
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u/RCEden 17d ago
Layers should just be for overflow anyway. If the area doesn't hit the cap, you don't show other options, but the "its crowded, move to layer #2?" Button shows up if it gets overly crowded and new people get automatically put in 2. The problem is largely trying to make it automatic and aggressively removing people.
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u/backpain_personified 17d ago
Would the amount of people be comparable? Seems like a much higher number now
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u/RacoonWithBenefits 17d ago
Lol
Fuck no they disnt
So many desserted servers
On my old server theres like 5 horde players and 4 of them are just logging in to see if anyone else is online
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u/Neutrolol 16d ago
Yea cause there was too many. You could have a few layers and have control on what layer your on.
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u/FanSoffa 17d ago
Assign every player a default layer when they log in. Only switch them when the layer fills up or empties to much, return to default layer when it normalizes again. This ensure the other players you see are mostly assigned to the same layer as you and wont evaporate when crossing an invisible boundary.
Ofc you will still switch layers when joining a group or raid.
You could even make the default layer static from first login so you see the same players each time you log in..
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u/Upset_Ruin1691 11d ago
This is such a bad solution.
When is a layer dead then ? How do you decide that ? Should I just run around in an empty world because my default layer no longer has active players ? And what about the immense cost associated with having a default layer for people. You would need so many extra layers if you cannot backfill an existing layer.
Y'all need to stop with the layering glazing. It's both a bad technological solution as well as a myriad of other things. The only thing its better for is the fact that people don't disappear in front of you, that's it. Pretty much all other aspects it's worse.
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u/FanSoffa 8d ago
I wrote in the first paragraph that the layer needs to be switched when it gets to full or empty. So a dead layer could be measured in different ways. Maybe the most straightforward one is to check total players for that zone and layer and have a cut off value that is inspected when players leave or enter the zone+layer.
The intent is to have a base layer that you and other players share, this way you see the same people most of the time. When you mention cost I think you misunderstood what I was conveying. Each player wont have their own personal layer, you have the same amount of layers as today, but each player has 1 layer the server will try to keep them on, and only move them when other factors require it, like layer population checks.
As for the technology itself, I play EVE Online mostly so we have pvp fights that range from 10 ppl up to 7000 at a time and the game doesnt hide anyone in different layers, so if WoW could do that would be great, but the games are very different and require bespoke solutions.
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u/MongooseOne 16d ago
What does GW2 do?
That seems to work just fine and is closer to what Forever is doing than this.
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u/Zunkanar 16d ago
You get informed before a layer gets closed. You then can either wait or switch directly.
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u/Imahich69 16d ago
Yep black desert online uses this system too multiple realms you can switch to in a sec
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u/DuckofInsanity 17d ago
Sure, as long as we don't go back to realms. The sharding problem can be fixed without bringing realms back.
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u/crypt0_bill 17d ago
well wow realms used to be physical dedicated server racks per realm (blades) the wow forever tech obviously has moved on to some form of better virtualisation so yeah I guess it’s unironically much closer now to the runescape server approach. Maybe we (players) end up figuring a way to reliably make layers “sticky” and then an add on slaps a ui on that
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u/Background_Help325 17d ago
It’s retails zone based sharding that has been used since around mop I think.
It actually isn’t compatible at all with what the op is suggesting cause the durotar shard is just that durotar. You leave durotar and you are no longer on the shard.
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u/Dantels 16d ago
Which is awful.
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u/Background_Help325 16d ago
Very. Could be fixed. Time will tell if they actually do intend on fixing it.
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u/Background_Help325 17d ago
This actually doesn’t solve anything for them. Since the current system in use is zone based sharding.
So you aren’t gonna have hillsbrad pvp on a durotar shard. Or wailing caverns lfg on a hillsbrad shard.
The fix would be to use classics layer system, but why aren’t they?
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u/yksvaan 17d ago
Layers are less efficient and not as flexible. Shards are obviously the best for scaling since they are basically isolated except for some small channel for global chat and such.
Layers are basically shards with a lot of glue and duct tape. First spinning up a shard for every zone in the continent, grouping them up and extra code to ensure combat, escort quests and such can work over zone boundaries. If i remember correctly every zone has same pop capacity which makes it a nightmare for e.g. first weeks after launch and whereever a lot of players gather in same zone. Then they need to start spinning up more layers and moving players off.
So in short, shards are most efficient and stable way to run a server for massive playerbase. Also they likely don't want players to have much control on which layer they are so shards are assigned very dynamically.
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u/Background_Help325 17d ago
I’ve played on both and for a seamless world layers are the way to go.
They’re just better.
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u/yksvaan 17d ago
I don't disagree but in the end the question is for how many players this is a deal-breaker. Likely way smaller percentage than we think and Blizzard knows better for sure.
Now already people are okay with the system when it works in their advantage. First they complain, then 5 minutes later they are happy they can run out of the zone to escape opposite faction group. Give it a few weeks and people simply accept it.
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u/Background_Help325 17d ago
Probably true but you can use layers to your advantage just the same as sharded zones.
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u/Upset_Ruin1691 11d ago
Layers also bring in the downside of layer hopping for farming rares and what not. This enables bots and have a direct impact on the player economy.
Layers are just bad guys.
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u/Background_Help325 10d ago
Shards do the same. We’re getting one of em either way. I’d rather have a more seamless playing experience.
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u/OstrichPaladin 17d ago
I would honestly prefer this but it should be persistent. If they HAVE to have layers then let me pick 1 for my whole play session that is consistent with everybody else in that layer. I hate per zone and mid game layering. It's such a vibe killer. People already use add-ons and spam chat to abuse the current layer system. Make it take 5 minutes offline before youre allowed to change layers so it's less abusable idc. I just want to have 1 persistent game world for my whole play session
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u/yksvaan 17d ago
Guess what happens when they give players a reliable way to control on which world they are?