How does the creation engine manage abandoned/ransacked settlements?

Sp3d_scout

When I first went to Grahtwood with my dark elf sorcerer character, I realized that the first settlement I saw had been taken over by hostile Jackdaw prates. Some time later, my friend @evilinvisiblecat (at least I think that was her handle) did a quest near that settlement and saved it from the pirates, making it a functional settlement. I saw this function reappear in Bleakrock Village. Bleakrock used to be a starter zone, bustling with noobs, but when I did a certain quest, all the NPCs and players disappeared and the village was no more than a grinding spot for people outside the Daggerfall Covenant. After this, I began to wonder, how does the creation engine do it? How does it make it so that the fate of the towns revolve around individual players while still retaining its MMORPG status? I know it doesn't create a separate instance for each player, because there is more than one settlement like Bleakrock, and there would be a lot less player interactions. So how do you think the towns work?

Nestor

Instanced Areas.

You can see this in game where a player is clearly standing in one place talking to an NPC, but you can't see the NPC. The first 2 or 3 zones in each Alliance did this, but the practice fell from favor. Anyway, the game populates the zone based on where you are in the story. Things are hostile, or not, depending on your progress.

Which makes me wonder how they keep this straight with AWA, but I digress.

Marto

First of all, ESO doesn't run on the Creation Engine. It runs on its own propietary engine that is based on the Hero Engine (the one the MMORPG Star Wars the Old Republic uses).

The way ESO handles environmental changes like that is to create multiple copies of each location, each functioning like a miniature server, usually called "instance".

When a player approaches the edge of a location like a town or city, the game seamlessly removes you from the city outskirts server, and places you in the city server.

If it's a location like Bleakrock isle, multiple versions of that city exist. One is intact, and the other is destroyed. Players that have reached the appropriate quest stage get seamlessly teleported to the destroyed version as soon as they approach the gate.

That means you usually can't see or interact with players that are in a different quest stage than you. Although there are some exceptions, in which the game allows you to see players from all different quest stages, but will only show you NPCs and environmental elements for your appropriate quest stage.

Danikat

The game can also create multiple copies of the same version of a zone if necessary. So for example during the New Life festival when everyone is going to Kynesgrove in Eastmarch to pick up the festival quests you'll never be stuck in a queue to get into the zone, or in a map so crowded the server crashes, because the servers will automatically create as many copies as are needed for the players who want to go there, even if they would all go into the same version.

kargen27

Long ago one of my guilds had a weekly fishing event. We would divide into groups of four and fish while chatting in Discord. Sometimes a player would disappear as we approached a fishing hole but you could see their bobber out in the water. Sometimes it was a matter of just a few steps that would make a player disappear or reappear. This also wreaked havoc on our hide and seek games.

FelisCatus

Nestor wrote: »

Instanced Areas.

You can see this in game where a player is clearly standing in one place talking to an NPC, but you can't see the NPC. The first 2 or 3 zones in each Alliance did this, but the practice fell from favor. Anyway, the game populates the zone based on where you are in the story. Things are hostile, or not, depending on your progress.

Which makes me wonder how they keep this straight with AWA, but I digress.

This is how they may fix cyrodiil in the future?

kargen27

FelisCatus wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

Instanced Areas.

You can see this in game where a player is clearly standing in one place talking to an NPC, but you can't see the NPC. The first 2 or 3 zones in each Alliance did this, but the practice fell from favor. Anyway, the game populates the zone based on where you are in the story. Things are hostile, or not, depending on your progress.

Which makes me wonder how they keep this straight with AWA, but I digress.

This is how they may fix cyrodiil in the future?

Other than lag/performance how is Cyrodiil broken?

katanagirl1

kargen27 wrote: »

FelisCatus wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

Instanced Areas.

You can see this in game where a player is clearly standing in one place talking to an NPC, but you can't see the NPC. The first 2 or 3 zones in each Alliance did this, but the practice fell from favor. Anyway, the game populates the zone based on where you are in the story. Things are hostile, or not, depending on your progress.

Which makes me wonder how they keep this straight with AWA, but I digress.

This is how they may fix cyrodiil in the future?

Other than lag/performance how is Cyrodiil broken?

In Cyrodiil everyone is in the same instance.

Marto

katanagirl1 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

FelisCatus wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

Instanced Areas.

You can see this in game where a player is clearly standing in one place talking to an NPC, but you can't see the NPC. The first 2 or 3 zones in each Alliance did this, but the practice fell from favor. Anyway, the game populates the zone based on where you are in the story. Things are hostile, or not, depending on your progress.

Which makes me wonder how they keep this straight with AWA, but I digress.

This is how they may fix cyrodiil in the future?

Other than lag/performance how is Cyrodiil broken?

In Cyrodiil everyone is in the same instance.

Nope. Cyrodiil undoubtedly utilizes similar tech already.

Neither the client nor the server need to calculate the location of every player and all the actions they are taking at all times. All that work gets spread over chunks.

Alliance bases are definitely separate instances.Towns might be separate instances. Empty zones of the map without any players don't generate any new instances. And new instances are likely dynamically created whenever players engage in combat.

I wouldn't be surprised if the crossed sword icon that appears on the minimap is, behind the scenes, just an indicator of where a new instance is being created by the game, for the purpose of having all fighting players see each other.

Varana

You also notice the instancing when grouping up.
Let's assume you're in Vivec (which has different stages depending on quest progression, esp. in how the floating moon looks), and you get invited by someone who is also in Vivec.
In that scenario, after joining the group, you may get the message that "the group leader is in a different version of Vvardenfell", with the prompt to teleport to them (even though you're in the same area). This happens if you're in different quest stages, or probably even different instances of the same Vivec stage.
If you don't teleport, you can see their group symbol floating around in mid-air but you can't see the other player's character.

kargen27

katanagirl1 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

FelisCatus wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

Instanced Areas.

You can see this in game where a player is clearly standing in one place talking to an NPC, but you can't see the NPC. The first 2 or 3 zones in each Alliance did this, but the practice fell from favor. Anyway, the game populates the zone based on where you are in the story. Things are hostile, or not, depending on your progress.

Which makes me wonder how they keep this straight with AWA, but I digress.

This is how they may fix cyrodiil in the future?

Other than lag/performance how is Cyrodiil broken?

In Cyrodiil everyone is in the same instance.

Not really. In Cyrodiil you get to pick what instance you want to be in and once the instance is full there is a queue to get in. It is PvP so it makes sense that you want to allow as many players as the server can accommodate into each instance.

Janni

Marto wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

FelisCatus wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

Instanced Areas.

You can see this in game where a player is clearly standing in one place talking to an NPC, but you can't see the NPC. The first 2 or 3 zones in each Alliance did this, but the practice fell from favor. Anyway, the game populates the zone based on where you are in the story. Things are hostile, or not, depending on your progress.

Which makes me wonder how they keep this straight with AWA, but I digress.

This is how they may fix cyrodiil in the future?

Other than lag/performance how is Cyrodiil broken?

In Cyrodiil everyone is in the same instance.

Nope. Cyrodiil undoubtedly utilizes similar tech already.

Neither the client nor the server need to calculate the location of every player and all the actions they are taking at all times. All that work gets spread over chunks.

Alliance bases are definitely separate instances.Towns might be separate instances. Empty zones of the map without any players don't generate any new instances. And new instances are likely dynamically created whenever players engage in combat.

I wouldn't be surprised if the crossed sword icon that appears on the minimap is, behind the scenes, just an indicator of where a new instance is being created by the game, for the purpose of having all fighting players see each other.

This is technically called "interest management". They probably don't use instancing. Instead its customary to use some kind of spatial partitioning like a quad tree or bsp tree. It effectively does the same thing though by helping break up the number of objects that calculations need to run through in order to find out what they are going to have an effect on.

katanagirl1

kargen27 wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

FelisCatus wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

Instanced Areas.

You can see this in game where a player is clearly standing in one place talking to an NPC, but you can't see the NPC. The first 2 or 3 zones in each Alliance did this, but the practice fell from favor. Anyway, the game populates the zone based on where you are in the story. Things are hostile, or not, depending on your progress.

Which makes me wonder how they keep this straight with AWA, but I digress.

This is how they may fix cyrodiil in the future?

Other than lag/performance how is Cyrodiil broken?

In Cyrodiil everyone is in the same instance.

Not really. In Cyrodiil you get to pick what instance you want to be in and once the instance is full there is a queue to get in. It is PvP so it makes sense that you want to allow as many players as the server can accommodate into each instance.

Are you talking about campaigns?

kargen27

katanagirl1 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

FelisCatus wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

Instanced Areas.

You can see this in game where a player is clearly standing in one place talking to an NPC, but you can't see the NPC. The first 2 or 3 zones in each Alliance did this, but the practice fell from favor. Anyway, the game populates the zone based on where you are in the story. Things are hostile, or not, depending on your progress.

Which makes me wonder how they keep this straight with AWA, but I digress.

This is how they may fix cyrodiil in the future?

Other than lag/performance how is Cyrodiil broken?

In Cyrodiil everyone is in the same instance.

Not really. In Cyrodiil you get to pick what instance you want to be in and once the instance is full there is a queue to get in. It is PvP so it makes sense that you want to allow as many players as the server can accommodate into each instance.

Are you talking about campaigns?

yep. Each campaign is a separate instance. And when we need more for events they provide.

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding