r/classicwow • u/zhellqq • 16d ago

Forever Beta Feedback Phasing like this is really immersion breaking

I understand why they do it, but it feels like there has to be a more elegant way of handling it, or perhaps a better "overlap" period where someone only moves off your layer when they are no longer visible.

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u/ripleyisntreal 16d ago

Yeah but if you layer an entire continent you're gonna have some layers that have no people in certain zones and a lotta people in other zones. I think the dynamic layering is designed to keep every place feeling reasonably populated. Problem is it just doesn't work well right now at all.

Layering should be something you really don't notice.

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u/zigzagofdoom 16d ago

You dont need players EVERYWHERE, you just need players to be noticed. I'm not looking forward to going to out-of-the-way zones like Feralas and see 100 players swarming around me. The duality of remote and popular locations is important too, and unfortunately omega servers with dynamic layering kills this.

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u/missingpiece 16d ago

Exactly this. I don't want Blizzard's fucking algorithm telling how many people I'm "supposed" to be playing around at any given time. What the "optimal" population of STV ought to be. It was so fun playing PvP in Classic to go questing there early in the morning before it became a warzone, then head to a lower population area once people started waking up.

I'm not saying it should simply go back to the old way, I'm saying there's gotta be a better middle-ground than having every single zone effectively be its own instance.

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u/ripleyisntreal 16d ago

We don't disagree which is why I said reasonably populated.

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u/pymode 15d ago

great perspective

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u/Xae1yn 15d ago

You still need sharding for that, otherwise you get the classic layering issue where you have 1000 ppl per layer in org and 2 in desolace. Even going to just 20 in desolce means it needs 1/10th of the shards.

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u/zigzagofdoom 15d ago

Having 2 people in Desolace isn't necessarily a bad thing. I would much rather feel alone every now and then over feeling like I'm in a bustling city 100% of the time.

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u/lostspace_1 16d ago

What are you rambling ? The issue you describe is solved by layering.

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u/zigzagofdoom 16d ago

Not if every zone has a unique list of layers. If I understand the layer method correctly, it will only populate a certain amount of layers based on zone. So like a main city will have many many many layers, but a sparsely poplated zone will only have a few layers. It will only create a new layer if the other layers have reached capacity, meaning there will only be 1 layer that is less than the limit. 

I could be wrong about this, but if my assumption on the layering method is correct, that is a serious problem with megaservers.

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u/Arteqt 15d ago

Don't think what you are saying is plausible. If people are not disappearing, why are they going for instancing in the first place. This is not their fix to "oh no servers are dying". This is their fix to "server costs are too high"

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u/itsyenzabar 13d ago

We def noticed it in hardcore xD

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u/Lesty7 12d ago

It’s tough because the major cities obviously have the most amount of people in them, so you’re almost always going to layer there. My best idea is to simply move the layering boundary a bit outside the city, like halfway into the next zone where there isn’t a bunch of foot traffic there to witness it.

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u/zhellqq 16d ago

I would propose to keep the old layering system for now, so that Blizzard can have more development time to work on a system that is the best of both worlds. In the beginning the layering system would not have the issue you mentioned as the servers are fresh anyway!

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u/DevlinRocha 16d ago

bro this is an advanced technology they’ve developed and implemented into the game, not a Lego brick they can just swap out for a different color whenever they want