Live devblog - tons'o'changes

[JoeTF]

Good manager would see "really bad bugs" as what they really are and anticipate their massive exploitation.

[Viin]

It's unlikely that you'll ever find a Project/Product Manager on any project, anywhere, who will prioritize changes to an existing "working" system over adding new features or fixing "really bad" bugs.

Sometimes fixing a 'working' system causes more problems than you'd ever be able to imagine. See: Star Wars Galaxies.

But I beg to differ, I do try to improve 'working' systems as much as possible - but coming up with an ROI that the execs understand can be very difficult.

[Krakrok]

Bounty hunting revamp, giving a framework or system for players to trade/sell kill rights, other ways to make bounty hunting a viable profession (and lure people in to lowsec)

Uh, motherfucking awesome comes to mind? 

[Akkori]

Yeah, I would love to see them add in a way, necessarily complicated to do justice to what it means, that would make it harder for players with a bounty on their head to permanently reside inside a station. I also don't see the insurance system as a helpful thing. Yeah, it's nice to get some money back and all, but at the very least it should be a sliding scale paying out virtually nothing for the top ships, and paying the most to the bottom tier ships. This would help the new players out a lot, where the players capable of piloting BS and titans likely are not in need of financial propping up.

I like the idea of local going away, and also of pilot names not showing up regardless. It's too cheesy to be able to see that info automatically, AND it adds in some interesting new roles for Scouts... who would now be a more useful conduit of data for others since they can, through scanning and so on, know who's around.

But if they only do one thing, PLEASE God, let it be scalable text and a UI overhaul. I am so tired of sitting up and squinting at the screen to make out the text there.

[ajax34i]

Ah, but...  these new roles for scouts, they'll be neccessary, yes, but fun?  I think it'll amount to gatecamping.  You're not camping anything as a scout, you're just scanning.  Your miners are mining, boring but at least they can see some numbers go up every minute, and you just repeatedly hit the scan button trying to find reds.  And if you have a false alarm, they blame you for lost productivity.

I'd rather see them tank up haulers and mining vessels.  What transports have right now in terms of defense, the T1 indies should have.  And then go up from there.  But eh, a lot of you will disagree, and I won't argue anymore; CCP does whatever they want.

Trinity brought in quite a few new people, and the Steam thing brought some more, and it sounds like now they've all seen some of the flaws and are complaining/cancelling enough that the Devs see the need to do something.  Or maybe I'm just imagining things.

[Nerf]

If they beef up t1 indies to what transport ships have now, should they just make transports and freighters invulnerable, then?  Haulers are supposed to be slow and weak, especially cheap ones that don't take any skills to fly.

As to the insurance thing, removing it from suicide ganking is good, removing it altogether, or in 0.0/pvp/etc?  People would riot, as alot of people couldn't afford to replace jack shit.  Battleships don't mean big money, hell it'd even hurt me if I didn't get insurance payouts on battleships, everyone would be roaming around in cruisers and BC's until they could fly HACs, which are better than battleships in every way, and without insurance, cheaper.

[lac]

If they want to stop suiciding can't they just void insurance when Concord is involved and throw in a fine? It would probably be easier to make it economically less viable (or downright painful) instead of rebalancing ships.

[Endie]

If they want to stop suiciding can't they just void insurance when Concord is involved and throw in a fine? It would probably be easier to make it economically less viable (or downright painful) instead of rebalancing ships.

They don't want to stop suiciding, though.  They may want to make it less profitable for any but the really well-planned gank - shift the profit-levels to make it less ubiquitous - but the nature of Eve includes risk.  I suspect that there is a big argument going on about Jihadswarm amongst the Eve devs right now: some will think it's gone too far, while others will be keen to see the pressure it places upon high-end mining ship owners to move to 0.0 or lowsec as part of a larger revamp.  I suspect that all will be delighted that it has virtually doubled the cost of ISK from the Chinese.

[VickeVire]

Regarding suiciding there is NO risk whatsoever being the aggressor, you lose absolutely nothing (except standing). No payout when being CONCORDED should have been put in game a long time ago.

I don't say this as I think high sec space should be more safe, just that only being a really juicy target should be risky, now you can get blown away for cargo worth very little.

[Slayerik]

I personally started running tech II fittings on my suiciders....just cause im a DPS whore and want to be able to take down transports...so there is some financial risk there. :)

[VickeVire]

and to counter the suiciders people start with CONCORD bombs: Sending in a newbie alt attacking to get CONCORD on the gate before hauling their goods...

[lac]

Concord bombing is only good if you want to protect the belt in which you mine in high sec, since that is static. Its slightly less work to simply not go afk while hauling than getting an alt on every gate you want to use and have them shoot you as you afk by.

Concord bombing 101: Get your alt to shoot you at the belt you want to mine, concord will show up and hang around (for ten minutes?) to instapop every jihadi that opens fire on you. Rince and repeat.

[Endie]

Concord bombing is only good if you want to protect the belt in which you mine in high sec, since that is static. Its slightly less work to simply not go afk while hauling than getting an alt on every gate you want to use and have them shoot you as you afk by.

Concord bombing 101: Get your alt to shoot you at the belt you want to mine, concord will show up and hang around (for ten minutes?) to instapop every jihadi that opens fire on you. Rince and repeat.

There is a way to clear belts, too, though 

[Nerf]

Concord sticks around until someone else gets concorded, so jihads could just concord bomb a station and then run in to rape your face if they were so inclined.

[lac]

Don't spoil the sekrits!!
Next thing you know the RMT prices will fall back to their old levels and once again it will be easier for the people with money to catch up with the people who have time. And that's immoral!!

[Simond]

- Capitals to be readdressed.  Titans and motherships to be redesigned as staging posts for the frontlines, with enhanced jump-cloning capabilities.  Tick tock.  Not only sounding like reduced offensive capabilities but also increased zerging possibilities.

Welp, that's the end of BoB. 

[lac]

Welp, that's the end of BoB

One would have hoped. It would have been nice from a 'move on' point of view if the train would have obliterated BoB but it didn't and now the train has lost its momentum.
Sure, another multi-alliance orchestrated push might win the coalition another system and more formidable efforts could have yielded even more systems but reality shows us that the steam is gone, the train has stopped, the warriors went home to fight their own battles.
The big nap fest, the global peace, is weakening alliances because peace is boring and eve is war.
All the steam that is escaping from the kettles of this once mighty train is being used elsewhere and the pressure is building up on global peace. Bored corps are leaving their alliance, alliances are eyeing their friends, naps become nuisances and plans are born.
Peace in eve is always preparing for war.
There will be another age after this great war and it will be an age of shattering.

[Endie]

Welp, that's the end of BoB

One would have hoped. It would have been nice from a 'move on' point of view if the train would have obliterated BoB but it didn't and now the train has lost its momentum.

Wait and see.

[Phred]

There is already a constellation channel, btw.

New characters get it turned on by default, but I've never seen it on my older char.

My char was created 4-5 weeks ago and doesnt have it so it must be real new.

[Simond]

Welp, that's the end of BoB

One would have hoped.

Let me elaborate: The only thing keeping BoB out of NPC stations at the moment is a huge cap/supercap swarm* defending their own systems under a cynojammer. Supercaps get nerfed (again) to a purely logistical tool, BoB loses those systems. Goonswarm? Well, we tend to use our titan mostly as a mobile jumpbridge anyway, so turning them into mobile stations is an upgrade for us.

* Seven (eight?) titans and counting, dozens of motherships, scores of carriers all on grid simultaneously with all possibly fighters out. Nothing in EVE can attack that and survive, short of an equal zerg...and if that happened, one side would desynch or the node would crash.

[Akkori]

Sorry, but that's just cheesy. If they can't fight, lag out the system?

[Endie]

Sorry, but that's just cheesy. If they can't fight, lag out the system?

From the people that brought us supercapital pos bowling, fighter lag-bombing is pretty low on their list of sins.

[JoeTF]

Welp, that's the end of BoB

One would have hoped.

Let me elaborate: The only thing keeping BoB out of NPC stations at the moment is a huge cap/supercap swarm* defending their own systems under a cynojammer. Supercaps get nerfed (again) to a purely logistical tool, BoB loses those systems. Goonswarm? Well, we tend to use our titan mostly as a mobile jumpbridge anyway, so turning them into mobile stations is an upgrade for us.

* Seven (eight?) titans and counting, dozens of motherships, scores of carriers all on grid simultaneously with all possibly fighters out. Nothing in EVE can attack that and survive, short of an equal zerg...and if that happened, one side would desynch or the node would crash.

Sorry, but that's just cheesy. If they can't fight, lag out the system?

Yeah, that's goonswarm you're talking about.

We don't lag the system on purpose, I mean, how the hell few dozen super-ships is supposed to lag the system anyway, as compared to infamous 600 noobship swarm?
Droes don't add to server lag as much as they do for client side and besides, our defense strategy does not rely on fighter swarming. As in, how the hell fighter swarm to work with multiple doomsdays?! In practice fighters are nto only as lagged as your ships, but also have tendency to get bugged - it's impossible to realiably call them off every few minutes for a doomsday. But again, why let facts get in the way of Simond's pasting.

The solution to the problem isn't nerfing already nerfed sup caps(especially lol motherships - 150% dmg, 3,000% the cost), but limiting JB to BS and smaller ships only, so you have to take Cyno Jammer down to sneak those titans in.

PS. Sneak in some dreads.
PS2. Don't pretend that cowardice to use your titan in combat is a virtue.   

[Endie]

For those who are in any doubt, Joe is trolling.

[Phildo]

So what IS your defensive strategy if it isn't lag swarming?  We'd like to know 

PS3.  A superior system to the PS2 in nearly every way.

[Akkori]

I guess it's just another case of the dev's not being prepared for what the players will do to "their" game. You'd *think* that the Devs would have adequate hardware, and efficient programming to allow relatively smooth combat between 2 massive armies. Barring that, they should just cap the number of people per alliance in any one system. Or something like that.

Too bad though. I was hoping one day to maybe do a fly-by of a titan while running the Space Balls scene in my head where the president is running to the bridge and says (something like) "The ship is too big, if I walked, the movie owuld be over".

[Morat20]

I guess it's just another case of the dev's not being prepared for what the players will do to "their" game. You'd *think* that the Devs would have adequate hardware, and efficient programming to allow relatively smooth combat between 2 massive armies. Barring that, they should just cap the number of people per alliance in any one system. Or something like that.

Have you seen their hardware? They're not skimping, I can promise you that. There doesn't exist adequate hardware, but they're using the best you can buy.

As for efficient coding -- obviously there's no way to tell, but judging from Devblogs in the past they're not shy about bringing in outside help to check their code. It's just what people are trying to do is pretty insane -- when CCP manages go get nodes stable and playable for 100v100 with drones and fighters out the ass, people bring in 200v200. Since they handle 40k concurrent across their hardware and do manage to support pretty damn large battles, they're not doing too badly -- I'd imagine their server and netcode is probably the best of the MMORPGs on the market.

Although, just for giggles, I remember a thread on EVE's forums where some idiot suggested to the EVE devs that they use "threads" for their servers, to make it run smoother. He was serious. An EVE Dev -- rather patiently, and without use of the phrase "you fucking moron", noted that yes, they DO thread their stuff -- microthread it, in fact, using stacklass python.

I can't recall what the genius in question responded with....

[bhodi]

What they *don't* have is efficient netcode. They are working on it, I think, completely replacing the stack and when that's done performance / loading grid should be quite a bit better.

[Morat20]

What they *don't* have is efficient netcode. They are working on it, I think, completely replacing the stack and when that's done performance / loading grid should be quite a bit better.

Really? I mean, how are you judging "efficient" here? Like as in "they're switching to a custom, application-driven netcode instead of using the standard TCP/IP stack internally" (which is how I read it) efficient, or "They're really doing stupid shit with TCP/IP" efficiency?

'cause I couldn't see most of the other MMORPGs laboring under that sort of load with their current setup, but I've ALSO seen systems (non-game) running better with higher loads (although from what their DEV blog indicates, their DB setup is pretty optimal).

Offhand, though, the ask some insane things of their systems, just from what they've released. There's places that ask more (you should have seen the specs for Kennedy's next-gen launch control setup in the late 90s -- doable now, but at the time it was a serious hardware and LAN killer), but I haven't seen another MMORPG that makes those demands.

[ajax34i]

There's not much they can do.  While they've sharded their server differently than everyone else (shards/nodes being dynamically assigned), all MMO's still have the problem that if too many people bunch up in one zone or location, there will be huge lag.

Maybe they can make the client pre-load, gradually, a busy system, from several systems away.   Won't really work (there will still be rubber-banding), and then someone can set up a sniffer to "detect" your gate camp from 3-4 systems away.  Another way may be to designate priorities based on ship type and fleet role, and then give packet priority to the fleet commanders etc, and extend the cloak to however long it takes for you to load up the environment + 30s.  Shrug, I'm not a dev, I don't know.

[bhodi]

Their client communication code is terrible. Last I read, during large fleet battles, they send an 8 megabyte data dump when you load grid. There is a ton of extraneous data in there and it's all legacy code from the start of the game.

Needless to say, they're working on pairing that down.

[Morat20]

Their client communication code is terrible. Last I read, during large fleet battles, they send an 8 megabyte data dump when you load grid. There is a ton of extraneous data in there and it's all legacy code from the start of the game.

Needless to say, they're working on pairing that down.

Good for them. I like their approach to lag and slowodnws -- throw hardware, change gameplay, optimize code. Too many people just do one of the three. :)

Of course, their players reward them by shoveling more shit into a battle until it lags again.....I fear one day they'll take away my precious drones.

[JoeTF]

I guess it's just another case of the dev's not being prepared for what the players will do to "their" game. You'd *think* that the Devs would have adequate hardware, and efficient programming to allow relatively smooth combat between 2 massive armies. Barring that, they should just cap the number of people per alliance in any one system. Or something like that.

Have you seen their hardware? They're not skimping, I can promise you that. There doesn't exist adequate hardware, but they're using the best you can buy.

As for efficient coding -- obviously there's no way to tell, but judging from Devblogs in the past they're not shy about bringing in outside help to check their code. It's just what people are trying to do is pretty insane -- when CCP manages go get nodes stable and playable for 100v100 with drones and fighters out the ass, people bring in 200v200. Since they handle 40k concurrent across their hardware and do manage to support pretty damn large battles, they're not doing too badly -- I'd imagine their server and netcode is probably the best of the MMORPGs on the market.

Although, just for giggles, I remember a thread on EVE's forums where some idiot suggested to the EVE devs that they use "threads" for their servers, to make it run smoother. He was serious. An EVE Dev -- rather patiently, and without use of the phrase "you fucking moron", noted that yes, they DO thread their stuff -- microthread it, in fact, using stacklass python.

I can't recall what the genius in question responded with....

The EVE client is not multi-threaded as python does not support this yet (I say yet as it is a hope of ours that this will change).


CCP Lingorm
CCP Quality Assurance
QA Engineering Team Leader

microthreads =/ threading (as in using multiple cores), which is what the whole discussion was about

[kidder]

Why isn't EVE a multithreaded "application"?

First off, EVE is a very very multithreaded application and far more so than most you will encounter. We use Stackless Python to get microthreading abilities within the single process running on each CPU.

To better clarify that, right now, the EVE cluster is running 110 threads on 110 CPU's. Within those threads we have 100's to 1000's of microthreads running various services.

Link:

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=286


The above post and quote are more than 2 years old, but it shows that the SERVERS are threaded and multithreaded.  While the clients are not, but isn't the discussion about the servers?

(Edit to add:  I might be stupid, but I can't really find a big difference between microthread and multithreaded.)

[nurtsi]

So their servers are running python 

Well, I guess CPU isn't the bottleneck of any MMO server (might be on an MMOFPS or something which actually needs to complex collision detection). Networks and databases are still slow.