Every time the large coalitions of EVE try and have the “dream fight” and pack local with as many people as possible the servers can’t handle it. Granted, TiDi kicks in, and things slow way down, which helps greatly–but the servers can still crash. While the HED fight did not result in a sever crash (which was amazing by itself), I was there and would categorize in the “unplayable” section. Actually, I didn’t “play” it. I just left the screen up (stuck on the warp tunnel) and chilled out on comms, fixed supper, cleaned my apartment, walked the dog, played a competitive match in Counterstrike, finally loaded into HED, got on 1 dread kill, and crashed again. Repeat.
The infamous message appears many times throughout such fights: “Soul Crushing Lag”. The ironic thing is that it is true. Lag in any game (or even in general) is annoying and frustrating to people, but to game companies it can be a game killer—crushing the very soul of the game. Is it the same with EVE? I mean not everyone in EVE is in null sec…but everyone is effected by it, especially the economy.
First, from a technological perspective EVE is truly amazing. I am not going to pretend to know about all the work that goes into making the game able to support what it does. To me it is awesome we are able to have even hundreds of players fighting with not even a sign of TiDi.
Second, despite the amazing hardware and servers of EVE, the game itself is reaching a critical point. There is not enough new content to attract new players, and the old players want more fixed then is being fixed. Game design is very time consuming with many factors effecting what can be done and the order it can be done in. This process can take a lot of time, and in the case of a new game, years.
I think EVE itself is aging. The core of EVE (the code) is getting way out of date compared to what it could be. This is probably a big reason why they have not gone forward with anymore major game changes (such as redoing POSes or SOV). The code is all interdependent and messing with one area can have a long list of errors and problems in other areas. To be used in a completely optimal state the game would have to be upgraded all together.
The very fact EVE is the game it has become is a testament to what can be done in a game. However, in order to grow and survive another 10 years I think the entire game needs to redone from the ground up. A new EVE, using all the modern tech. It would need to have similar graphical requirements as it does now in order to allow the easy of using multiple accounts, but overall I think it would be a huge benefit to completely redo it.
It is impressive that it is a 10 year old game, and I applaud that, but I can’t help feeling like it is possible to have 4,000 man battles without any TiDi if the game itself were current. There have been times over the years when 200 players crashed the game, and CCP has done a great job of bringing that number up considerably. However, I think it has reached a point where they simply can’t just increase server performance alone.
I just imagine all the things they could change/fix with a new write of the game. I’m not just talking physical stuff we can see in the game, but actual backend processes they can make completely optimized using the years of experience they have gained so far. They also have the entire, brutally honest, EVE community to give them feedback every step of the way.
I think some type of character SP transfer would be needed because the thought of having to start years of work over is just crazy–so I can imagine what CCP feels like with the thought of making a new EVE. Personally, I would “start over” in a new EVE even though I would prefer transferring SP, but back to the topic.
My mind goes crazy with the possibility of an updated, modern EVE running on the military level hardware they use. I think 5,000 player battles or more is completely in the realm of possibility, and a new, clean code would certainly help server processes.
Granted, this is my opinion, and this is where the community comes in. Aside from being able to port charters instead of restarting, do you think in order to survive another 10 years EVE needs to be redone from the ground up? Can it survive in its current software state? I know some of you out there are server and software experts—what do you think about the current state of EVE?
Since someone is going to bring it up, I am not trying to diminish at all the fact we got close to 4,000 people in a system and the server did not crash. That means something was working…very hard…I just think taking that fact and updating the code/software would mean those battles can happen in real time—which would be absolutely amazing. There is no other game like EVE, and I want it to continue for years to come—I thoroughly love the game and truly want it survive.
~jsb
