Shards

Disclaimer

This page has been created in an evening and would benefit from some editing. I have tried to be objective and not put my opinions forward. Please leave YOUR views on the idea of 'shards' in the segment called Players comments. If you feel you can summarise the ideas better than I can, either let me know or change yourself! You can leave a pm for me ingame or through the forum... where I am listed as khaem. Thanks, Khaemwaset

Shards... what are they?

For Shard read server. ATITD is going to potentially start an experiment, whereby Teppy will open a new shard or server every few months.

Here is Teppy's definition on ENN... "Every 3 months, we'd open a new Tale in the Desert 5 (we'd probably do the first of these as a Tale 4 shard, starting in about a month.) Every Test and Tech would be unlockable on Day 1. So, no waiting for Devs to finish coding. Only 3 Tests are uncoded at the moment, so I think it's reasonable to assume that players would not have to wait."

Why?

Player driven not Dev driven.

Questions asked on ENN

Okay, so if I join one shard or server can I join another with the same avatar account?

No. If you want to play on another server you need to create and pay for a new account/avatar.

The downsides

1. The stream of players will all tend to be directed to the newest shard.

2. Players who would otherwise return to this shard might instead restart from scratch on the new one.

3. No solution yet as to how Monument building on other shards will effect the next Tale.

The above are as summarized by Teppy on ENN. If you have your comments please leave them below.

The ENN Log

Teppy New Server Shards Chat

21:07:31 Teppy: --- 21:07:37 Teppy: Greetings, all... 21:08:02 Teppy: (One sec, tech problem) 21:09:21 Teppy: Ok, there we go. 21:10:36 Teppy: So I followed a bit of the informal discussion in E! yesterday. Lots of initial negative reaction to the idea and then some positive reaction later. 21:11:07 Teppy: So let me first explain the actual idea and hen talk about which problems I think it may solve, and which i won't. 21:11:28 Teppy: Rosethorn, feel free to add to this as I talk. 21:12:12 Teppy: As most veterans know, the feeling at a Tale's start is very different from 1+ year in. 21:12:18 Teppy: And is different from the endgame. 21:12:43 Teppy: In fact, I'd go so far as to say that there are 3 pretty distinct phases to a Tale. 21:13:26 Teppy: And I'll just come right out and say it - I've always enjoyed the first part the best. 21:14:17 Teppy: Yeah, there's new Tests and tweeks to various techs, but it seems that most of the interesting stuff is not knowing how the different regions will develop,m and who will become powerful... 21:14:37 Teppy: What sorts of guild relationships and purposes will evolve. 21:14:56 Teppy: It's been different in each Tale. 21:15:15 Teppy: And I've always said that shorter Tales are a primary goal. We're actually on track for a shorter Tale this time. 21:16:02 Teppy: Specifically, if we could shorten that middle phase (and ideally, lengthen the first phase, though I'm not sure how to do that.) 21:17:30 Teppy: And there's an interesting observation: 21:18:04 Teppy: Not only are the # of players online way, way higher at a Tale's start... 21:18:22 Teppy: Those that join early on stay over 2x as long as those that join, say, now. 21:19:54 Teppy: So Rosethorn suggested something that - in almost 8 years of ATITD - I never thought of... 21:20:37 Teppy: And the suggestion meshes nicely with some (but not all!) of those properties that are peculiar to ATITD. 21:21:33 Teppy: And that is, rather than start a Tale and have it run for 18+ months, where maybe 16 of those months are "midgame"/"endgame" 21:21:50 Teppy: Start a new shard every 3 months or so. 21:22:00 Teppy: One other observation... 21:22:32 Teppy: I have a Google Alert set up for ATITD, and I always go and read comments on message boards where we get mentioned... 21:23:34 Teppy: And many of the people who have been here and left feel frustrated that they were never able to be one of the top players. Not enough time to devote to it, etc. 21:24:06 Teppy: It's such an appealing game if you're one of the opinion leaders in Egypt... 21:25:20 Teppy: Also, an observation: At this point in a Tale we tend to cruise along at 1100-1300 players. We're a bit lower than that right now (972 a couple days ago), but same ballpark. 21:25:44 Nissim: how many players out of the ones active now consider or aspire to be opinion leaders? 21:26:59 Teppy: I don't kow - very hard to quantify. 21:27:17 Orrin: If I can just make a more 'specific' account on active players, it seems to me that we stand at about 250-300 *active* players. Wahim's wine petition was turned it at just over 110 signatories. The 250-300 figure is based on the census of >init in body, and is a faily good 'leveller' 21:27:30 Injeru: Not interested in being an opinion leader-- I do, however, enjoy being part of things that feel like they're affecting the world. The old hands seem to have a wrap on a lot of that. For example, was excited by the genetics, but there was no way I could compete with Tedra for resource availability or knowledge as a new player. 21:27:47 Teppy: See, that's very interesting. 21:29:22 Teppy: There's this odd result from sociology called "Dunbar's Number" - go ahead and look it up on Wikipedia... 21:29:52 Teppy: But it (and some related numbers) basically says that the size of groups are "quantized"... 21:30:40 Teppy: Depending on the type of group, something in human nature causes it to be 12 people, or 50 people, or 250, or 2500. 21:31:08 Teppy: Most of the real life groups that I've been involved in have been right about 12 people. 21:31:21 Teppy: And I think the 250 number is the size that tribes tend to be, before they split apart. 21:32:05 Keko: i think 300 or 400 players active and others mule and inactive paids 21:32:51 Teppy: It may in fact be 250. Again, hard to measure "real" accounts as opposed to mules, people who log in to socialize but not really "play", etc. 21:34:34 Teppy: So if you believe in the Dunbar's Number hypothesis - the idea of a new telling of Tale 4, or Tal;e 5, starting every 3 months may be a way to grow the overall size of the ATITD community. 21:34:43 Nchanter: Well if your goal is to make the game playable in ~250 player groups, you will have to re-scale a lot of things in the game, like research requirments (there are more active peopel at the beggining of the telling) and the way research works region to region. 21:35:34 Orrin: The problem as I see it is that this game is very much socially orientated. It's rather abstract, but you can compare the game to a self-sustaining reaction. Enough people must be around for the social network to function. If connections fail, the reaction slows down and it self-propogates. 21:35:44 Teppy: Exactly. 21:36:28 Lukeera: I think your idea of new shards would broaden the number of people playing...for a short time. Then you would encounter shifts based on "but that shard is better." 21:36:45 Teppy: NChanter: Agreed. That's not much smaller than we are now. So yeah, we would have to do some tweeking, but nothing dramatic... 21:37:13 Teppy: Many Tests are extremely hard right now, but most self-balance... 21:38:08 Piff: You know, it's not about being the "top" player in egypt, it's about what NOT being the top player means. For instance: raeli ovens, rare minerals...those things are not accessible to many small guilds or latecomers 21:38:22 Teppy: Bingo. 21:38:58 Nchanter: I do agree with the premis you posted in the calinder description that a player paced telling will retain more people than a developer paced telling -- having everything "unlockable" from the beggining and it gets unlocked when the players research it, not when y'all release it. but fragmenting shards mean that when a new one opens up, you will haev players move to that, and never "finish" any of the tellings. 21:39:24 Piff: why can't you just make them more accessible instead of starting new shards? 21:40:53 Teppy: There are probably 1000 "difficulty knobs" (variables) in ATITD: I do try to adjust them. For instance today I fooled with a half dozen or so that control how Beehive and Golden Sun mushrooms propagate. 21:41:01 Rosethorn: Nchanter, I don't think that's true. I don't think people would be willing to abandon all their hard work (the key players, the active ones in this telling) and not see it through for the chance to start over with the exact same tests. 21:42:15 Teppy: So the question is - how can we do this in a way where a whole different community forms in the other shard? Dunbar's Number says that there's at least an inclination to this - we're certainly not going *against* human nature. 21:43:04 Orrin: A big problem I see is that there is *so* much possible in this game, and right now, not much dev-time to spend on it. Take the recent discussion on eco, or even the one regarding 'auto' cc ovens. The community does have *some* good ideas, but often they're impractical. 21:43:32 hilly: to make a tale work you need all sorts of player then hard core, the workers and the sosail players. if you remove 1 of those groups, the hole things falls apart 21:44:20 Teppy: Absolutely. And I have no doubt that those roles would be filled on each shard. 21:44:30 Orrin: The major building of this tale is done Hilly, that and the research. We are really now into the realm of 'do tests, mess around, wait for something to happen' 21:44:49 Nissim: would the number of shards have an effect on lag? 21:44:51 Teppy: No 21:44:56 Chaul: you are talking about creating a whole new world, not just "splitting a tribe".. 21:45:14 Teppy: Right. *Splitting* the existing playerbase is the last thing we need. 21:46:11 Teppy: So we need to do everything possible to make the new shards their own communities, not a fragment of this community. I do *not* think that there are only 1000 people on the entire planet that would enjoy ATITD. 21:46:32 Nchanter: But that is what will happen. New blood will always go to the new server, the old server will continue to dwindle, and you will not have the numbers to complete monuments. 21:47:00 Teppy: That is one very real downside to this that I've identified. 21:47:27 Teppy: However, look in the Immigrants channel right now, with /ts on. 21:48:04 Teppy: 18 new arrivals in 24 hours. 21:48:44 BlueGrass: yes but not all are making it to Egypt 21:48:57 Teppy: Or permanently joining us. 21:49:14 Teppy: So yeah, the net attrition would be higher, but the inflow of new people is not what's going to make or break Monuments. 21:49:19 Nissim: another way to grow the community is understand why players are leaving.... through a survey 21:49:57 Teppy: We do that: The exit survey shows this - chat me privately afterwards, but I don't see any great insights from reading that. 21:50:10 Khaemwaset: Teppy could you pelase succintly describe b ywhat you mean by shards. Some of us are getting confused. 21:50:14 Teppy: Sure... 21:50:50 Teppy: (And keep in mind, this isn't fully fleshed out - I'm sure that some of the key things haven't been identified yet, and will come from this, or future chats.) 21:51:37 Teppy: Every 3 months, we'd open a new Tale in the Desert 5 (we'd probably do the first of these as a Tale 4 shard, starting in about a month.) 21:52:37 Teppy: Every Test and Tech would be unlockable on Day 1. So, no waiting for Devs to finish coding. 21:53:06 Teppy: Only 3 Tests are uncoded at the moment, so I think it's reasonable to assume that players would not have to wait. 21:53:47 Nchanter: Yes, but when you open up something new it's gonna cause more attrition on the existing server. "I didn't get a yellowish oven on serve 3, i'll try now again on server 4..." 21:54:34 Teppy: Could happen, but I think that particular case is remote. "I didn't play at all in December and January so I'm going to move" is plausible perhaps, but a yellowish oven? 21:54:47 Taemon: Would we be a new character on each shard? Or can we bring our levels along? 21:55:22 Teppy: I would set it up in a way to discourage moving among shards. I want the new shard to have a whole different, new community, not a splinter of this one... 21:55:43 Teppy: So characters would not be transferrable (technically crazy-hard anyway)... 21:56:15 Teppy: An account would be on one specific server. 21:56:25 Nchanter: Also, how would having multiple shards affect choosing what the legacy tests are gonna be for future numbered tellings. If you have a T4Arch Monument-A, T4Arch Monument-B, T4Archmonument-C which wone gets picked to be integrated into the various instances of T5? 21:57:12 Teppy: This is a problem I haven't solved yet. I won't be able to code 42 new Tests per Telling. 21:57:45 Teppy: Laws are a similar issue, but those are far quicker to code than Tests. 21:58:47 Teppy: Maybe something where the top monuments across shards become new Tests. I'm open to suggestions there. 21:59:36 Rosethorn: I believe marking the first shard for each telling (in this case this telling) as the 'primary shard' and only monuments from that shard would count towards the next. 21:59:57 Teppy: I don't think that would be ideal... 21:59:58 OZtwo: for many this would just kill the fun of it 22:00:01 Teppy: Right. 22:00:16 Teppy: I think it's important that each shard affects the next Tale. 22:01:01 Teppy: Kemet was a version of Tale 1 run by MDO games. They had a much lower population than Tale 1, but with some modifications to gameplay, they were able to complete 1 monument. 22:01:22 Nissim: but as I see it T4 shard A will move into T5 shard A, T4 shard B into T5 shard B etc... 22:01:31 Teppy: Yes, I would expect something like that. 22:01:43 Beah: Not sure I understand all this, but does it mean we have to start all over every 3 month? 22:02:23 Teppy: No. A given shard would last about as long as they do now. (I'd like to shorten that in general - I still feel that 12 months is ideal for a Telling.) 22:02:32 Nchanter: which constitutes "losing" the game, only building 1 monument, instead of all 7. 22:02:38 Savarin: What about player run institutions like The Goods? If one shard had that and another didn't; I think a lot of players would go for that server instead. 22:03:19 Teppy: My dream would be for similar but different things to occur in the various communities. 22:03:23 Orrin: I agree there teppy, 12 months would be good. 22:03:43 Piff: why don't you consider doing that again? Letting someone like MDO games run a copy of your server? Just curious 22:04:23 Teppy: If it was a competent company, yes. 22:04:39 Khaemwaset: so how big would each shard be... I mean in terms of regions and such? 22:04:53 Panyea: but sir, what about GM's? aren't we down to 3 now? 22:05:23 Teppy: Probably fewer regions. Or fewer open regions anyway. 22:05:31 Teppy: (Maybe 7 open regions?) 22:06:17 Injeru: The other question I've seen come up which I'd like to hear your thoughts on-- how much will be different between different shards running the same telling? Resource locations, etc... will there be some differences in the game world? I can see problems arising if everything's in the same place on a new shard. 22:06:40 Teppy: In the map itself, no difference. All Tale 5 shards would have the same visible map. 22:07:11 Teppy: Mineral locations, growing spots, nearly every other aspect of the game would change. 22:07:50 Teppy: This is possible, because I have a single "magic number" that seeds nearly all content... 22:08:53 Teppy: Wine regions, herb gathering techniques, mutagens, etc. 22:09:35 Nissim: I have no objection to sweveral shards if that number does not affect "my" shard... but would e-Genesis staff and investment be able to support the many shards? 22:10:14 Teppy: We have enough hardware to support an additional shard with some to spare. 22:10:32 Teppy: If the experiment is at all successful, buying more hardware is pocket change in comparison. 22:11:04 Orrin: The more shards you have, the thinner you spread your admin/WBs/GMs/Events 22:11:39 Teppy: We will need GM teams on other shards. 22:11:43 Lukeera: Staff can be added to handle those issues. 22:11:52 Rabble: If the experiment is a failure, will there some path for the other shard players to merge into this shard with their test/skills intact. Or do they just wait out T5? 22:12:13 Teppy: A 1-time merge of characters is technically doable... 22:12:34 Teppy: Merging Test passes, levels, skills, etc., is not. 22:13:57 Teppy: Guilds, CPs, Ovens, etc., is all not mergeable. 22:14:13 Klangdah: I'm getting lost here, the new shard(s) would be on T4 and you plan to have them going for around a year... meaning we are at least one year away from T5 ? 22:14:26 Teppy: I'm guessing we're 5 months from T5. That's a guess. 22:15:12 Teppy: 3 Tests to code, so that's 6-8 weeks, then 3 months of end-game. 22:15:21 OZtwo: just keep T4 goes as it is and don't make a mess of it 22:16:35 Teppy: That's the thing - except for the tiny trickle of new players coming into T4, this shouldn't have any effect. 22:16:47 Nissim: I see the number of legacy tests as an issue for you guys... 22:16:56 Teppy: Definitely an issue. 22:17:57 Teppy: I'm not saying that this idea is free of downsides - but I think that it's an overall win, and has the potential to be a huge win. 22:18:09 Savarin: Be honest with us, have you made up your mind on this and you're just looking for suggestions on how to implement it? 22:18:48 Teppy: I haven't heard anything that made me say "oh yeah, that's a fatal flaw." 22:19:09 Squiranha: My problem with this idea is that new shards would be lively because they'd be in the first phase of the game, but without content/events/new things, people playing there would be get bored just we do here during middle tale, and with the community split, less would stay until the end and it would be much harder to do endgame in any of the shards 22:20:55 Teppy: That has entirely to do with the length of a Tale. That's a big problem - the biggest problem even. But it's - as mathematicians say - orthogonal to shards. 22:20:59 Rosethorn: We'd do events on new shards just like we do here. 22:21:17 Nchanter: Teppy, that's 'casue you're not listening to people saying "this is a bad idea. you've clearly made up you mind that this is a good idea." 22:21:46 Teppy: I'm listening to the reasons, not the "I Think This is a Bad Idea" part. 22:22:20 Teppy: And so far, in my judgement, the reasons against have been less persuasive than the likely advantages. 22:22:39 Rosethorn: This is an experiment in many ways. If it fails, we know not to do it in telling 5. If it succeeds, it has the potential to increase users in telling 5. Also, I'm sure Teppy agrees here too, we'd love to see how long a telling lasts that is purely player driven. 22:22:52 Teppy: Oh yes! 22:23:10 Orrin: I think it's worth a trial at the least, with a contingency to merge the new 'shard' and this 'shard' should the idea fail. 22:23:13 Lukeera: I don't think this is a bad idea. I think ATitD has a lot more potential than is being realized now. This is an idea session for what in all probability would be an entirely new player base. 22:23:57 Nchanter: when you ask "what are the flaws" and people point them out to you, some of which you're putting through and some of whic you havent', you've responded a few times "oh, well i haevnt' figured that out yet" and then proceeded to say this will happen in about a month. the message that is getting across is that you're just cchatting us as a courtesy, that you aren't really listening, and that our objections don't matter. 22:24:35 Teppy: I'm listening to ideas on HOW to best make it work. If there's a fatal flaw, then I'm listening for that too. 22:24:42 darkfyre: With all tests and techs "ready to be unlocked", I can see power players finishing a shard in months rather than years 22:24:46 Teppy: Would be pretty cool. 22:24:51 Injeru: I'm on board-- I think it's well worth trying out. 22:24:59 Khaemwaset: Rosethorn-- am i ok to set up a wiki page and a discussion thread on the forum. i think we all need to have a look at the issues before we commit our money to the game. i hope that if I do set up wiki/forum pages peeps will respond? And teppy will read??? 22:25:08 Teppy: Sure. 22:25:50 Orrin: I'm not too sure on that, there is a substantial *risk* that the playerbase here will fossilise and the tale will die. However, there is also a substantial benefit from a healthier playerbase. There's no massive weight imbalance as I see it. 22:26:19 Rabble: If this turns out to be a big mistake and causes lower population in T4 and start of T5 but Egenesis has the financial resources to rebound by T6, then I say experiment away 22:26:20 Lukeera: Remember that he isn't tlaking about removing anything from us but rather adding more ATitD to the world as a whole. 22:26:41 Seiun: another good way for shard i have thought of is making possible for player to make a shard and then the shard's owner may invite poeple to it 22:26:49 Beah: Why don´t you send out a poll/questionary to every player and ask them if they say yes or no to this? 22:27:49 Teppy: Ultimately it's my decision. It's a risk/reward calculation, not a 50% threshold sort of thing. 22:28:14 Orrin: You cannot deny that a tale start is far more active than the position we're in now 22:28:24 Seiun: so poeple will raise a shard in community 22:29:02 Teppy: So to wrap up, here are the downsides identified so far: 22:30:01 Teppy: 1. The stream of new players will tend to all be directed toward the newest shard. 22:30:59 Teppy: 2. Players who would otherwise return to this shard might instead restart from scratch on the new one. 22:31:24 Teppy: 3. No solution yet about how monument building on other shards affects the next Tale. 22:33:07 Teppy: (#'s 1 and 2 are aspects of fragmenting the community; there are probably other less common ones as well, but I think those two are most of it.) 22:33:24 Orrin: As far as bug fixes go, will that propogate over servers? 22:34:03 Teppy: Yeah, in my experience with Kemet, it's not a huge problem - usually just a code recompile which takes a few minutes and no server downtime.) 22:34:57 OZtwo: but again Teppy if this is such a good idea in your mind, why hasn't WoW done it yet? -- not that I play it..but the idea 22:35:18 Teppy: Probably because the structure of WoW is fundamentally different from ATITD. 22:35:39 OZtwo: I joined this game since it was the closest to the old SimCity as I could find..with a little work, you can make this better than SimCity classic 22:35:46 Nchanter: And what about attntions to things like laws, or triggering new legal ballots, that requrire dev intervention. and running sunday test passes? 22:36:00 Lukeera: WOW has done it in essence with new servers, closed to xfers for 6 months. 22:36:01 Moses: are you kiddign WOW has open many servers over the yerars 22:36:06 Teppy: I stand corrected then. 22:36:24 Teppy: EVE Online hasn't done it though, and they're very successful. 22:36:35 Taffer: Will there be a way to choose which shard you want to go too, basics of wanting to join with old friends. Or will new players that are old vets just get swept into the new shard. And will there be server to sever communication, like the old EQ to EQ2 sony talking through servers. 22:36:56 Teppy: No server-server chats - each would would be self-enclosed. 22:37:52 Teppy: But you'd be able to connect to (and create an account on, at any time) any server. They would be listed in the launcher. 22:38:34 Teppy: We'd default the radio button to the newest server, but each would have a name. 22:38:59 Nchanter: Will you make sure to keep people ont he new server from having the same names as people on the old server in case we decide to create a second account on the new server to check it out? 22:39:13 Teppy: No. 22:39:29 Teppy: (Technically very hard to allocate names across all servers at once.) 22:39:41 Nchanter: Also, to play on both will i have to pay for two subscriptions? 22:39:56 Teppy: Yes. And I really do hope that such a thing is rare. 22:40:28 Nchanter: then what happens with t5 when you have to do legacy denotation? 22:40:57 Teppy: We would roll over T4 server "B" to T5 server "B: by default, just as T4->T5 by default now. 22:41:18 Teppy: And then we'd manually handle special cases as we do now. 22:41:25 Taffer: What about the Full paid YR contracts. Reserved name status. Would I be able to have taffer any *any shard, if I start a new account on a different server? or is t just this account, logg in name, password. dont get to choose server. 22:42:33 Teppy: They'd be on a single shard. I've always gone out of my way to help those that have supported us, and would still do so. 22:44:21 Teppy: Ok, I'm going to wrap up now. I'll continue to discuss the plans moving forward... 22:45:29 Teppy: Like I said, I'd like to launch the next T4 server in about a month, though I haven't set an exact date yet. I want to have a better grasp on Monuments and a few other issues first. 22:47:39 Teppy: Thanks all. The "ratio of thoughts to words" in this chat was particularly high, so I am especially appreciative of that. 22:48:05 Teppy: Teppy out! 22:48:06 Teppy: ---