How do I change instance (If I can't ZOS make this option)

Iink · May 2015

Alot of MMO's have instances, channels, ect.

But they give you the option to switch between them.

When I go to a town, I would think that everyone would be in the same instance there, but they are not. One time I saw a friend in a town, another time we were in different instances (and it was not because of quest differences).

Is there anyway I can travel from wichever random instance I was put into to Instance 1 / channel 1? I always want to be playing on the most populated instance.
Most MMO's give players a choice.

Lenikus · May 2015

There are no 'random instances'

If you completed the town/vilalge's quest, it's no longer infested with dremora/evil pact/covenant soldiers, so that's it.
For people who have not yet completed the quest, the town will still be overrun.
It's not random. It's progress related. Some people say you can circunvent this by having the 'non' completed quest person invite the other, but i'm sure it doesn't work ^^'

Iink · May 2015

Lenikus wrote: »

There are no 'random instances'

If you completed the town/vilalge's quest, it's no longer infested with dremora/evil pact/covenant soldiers, so that's it.
For people who have not yet completed the quest, the town will still be overrun.
It's not random. It's progress related. Some people say you can circunvent this by having the 'non' completed quest person invite the other, but i'm sure it doesn't work ^^'

is zone chat instanced?

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO · May 2015

There are dynamic instances in the game, but i haven't actually seen them kick in for a very long time. No places I have been to have been crowded enough to be split. What you are seeing is probably a quest related difference, as pointed out above. With the current low population in the game, only very few locations will ever have more than one instance (or "phase", as they call it).

Enodoc · May 2015

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

There are dynamic instances in the game, but i haven't actually seen them kick in for a very long time. No places I have been to have been crowded enough to be split. What you are seeing is probably a quest related difference, as pointed out above. With the current low population in the game, only very few locations will ever have more than one instance (or "phase", as they call it).

How would you know, though? There's no identifier for which server shard you're in, so there's know way to know whether they are in use or not. I think "phases" are something else though; locations are in different "phases" depending on whether you complete a quest there or not, whereas what I am calling shards (and what I think ZOS call "channels") are the different dynamic instances of zones. Locations are in different phases within the shards, and changing between phases doesn't require a loading screen. Changing between shards though would require a loading screen.

Think of it like this:

Four players form a group and all go to the same place
Player 1, Player 3, and Player 4 have finished a quest in that place
Player 2 has not yet finished the quest
Player 3 and Player 4 can see each other, but not Player 1
Player 1 and Player 2 can not see anyone else
Player 2 turns in the quest, and suddenly 1 and 2 can see each other
-> Player 2 just moved between phases (without a loading screen)
Players 3 and 4 use /traveltoplayer to Player 1
All players can now see each other
-> Players 3 and 4 just moved between shards (with a loading screen)

No, @Iink, there is no direct way to change between shards, unless you can find a player in a different one and /travel them. Logging off and logging on again will sometimes put you in a different shard, but it's random. Since they are dynamically generated anyway, all it would be conceivably possible to do would be to type a slash command (/reshard, for example) to load into a different one, but you wouldn't know whether it was more populated or not.

Ranique · May 2015

Lenikus wrote: »

There are no 'random instances'

If you completed the town/vilalge's quest, it's no longer infested with dremora/evil pact/covenant soldiers, so that's it.
For people who have not yet completed the quest, the town will still be overrun.
It's not random. It's progress related. Some people say you can circunvent this by having the 'non' completed quest person invite the other, but i'm sure it doesn't work ^^'

It depends a lot on the actual place. So far I've noticed two mechanics being used with different effects
1: people who didn't finish it are placed on a different shard in that part of the map
There is no way to circumvent this. If you've finished, your pal is on his own

2: The NPC's turn from hostile (red) to neutral (yellow) (maybe they even change appearances, not sure). In this case you will not get on a different shard. You will see your pall just attacking or getting attacked by npc's who are yellow for you. But you can participate in the fight (without getting a bounty).

freespirit · May 2015

So I read the OP and started thinking on how well this 'Mega Server' was actually working........

I did a bit of web surfing and found this from Jan 2014........

Check out the list of 'Features' of this kind of server!!

http://www.esohut.com/news/whats-mega-elder-scrolls-online-mega-server/

Soooo funny.

Iink · May 2015

So zone chat is instanced then. That sucks. I thought Zone chat meant everyone in the city regardless of instance.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO · May 2015

Enodoc wrote: »

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

There are dynamic instances in the game, but i haven't actually seen them kick in for a very long time. No places I have been to have been crowded enough to be split. What you are seeing is probably a quest related difference, as pointed out above. With the current low population in the game, only very few locations will ever have more than one instance (or "phase", as they call it).

How would you know, though? There's no identifier for which server shard you're in, so there's know way to know whether they are in use or not.

How would I know? Well, I can't be absolutely certain, but I can observe and draw conclusions. When I find myself almost alone in a game location in an MMO, do I find it plausible that other players would also be playing more or less by themselves in separate instances of that place? If I am one of three or four people in a public dungeon, when I see only a handful of other players in a city, or when I visit a bank where the number of visitors is in the low single digits, my conclusion is that the few people I see are the only ones across the entire server who are in that place at that time. It stands to reason that only places that are well populated would be duplicated.

At launch, some places were crawling with players, often to the point of cities and delves being overcrowded. As a consequence, they lowered the threshold before another instance was created, but why would they now have multiple parallel instances of the world with so few players in each that the game looks deserted? No, sorry, I will stand by my conclusion that the game does not make heavy use of parallel instances right now.

Their megaserver would be good at hiding crowds if we had them, but it's absolutely terrible at hiding the current lack of crowds.

Iink wrote: »

So zone chat is instanced then. That sucks. I thought Zone chat meant everyone in the city regardless of instance.

I'm not sure about that, but right now, it's mostly the same thing, so it's more or less a moot point.

Varicite · May 2015

Iink wrote: »

When I go to a town, I would think that everyone would be in the same instance there, but they are not. One time I saw a friend in a town, another time we were in different instances (and it was not because of quest differences).

While you cannot switch freely between the channels on the megaserver, you can invite a person to your group or vice-versa and select "Travel to Player" in the group menu.

This will put you both in the same channel.

Iink wrote: »

So zone chat is instanced then. That sucks. I thought Zone chat meant everyone in the city regardless of instance.

Zone chat is not instanced. It does mean everyone in that zone, regardless of the channel they're in. Even if you cannot actually see them until you join the same channel (using the method I described above), you can still talk to them.

Zanen · May 2015

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

There are dynamic instances in the game, but i haven't actually seen them kick in for a very long time. No places I have been to have been crowded enough to be split. What you are seeing is probably a quest related difference, as pointed out above. With the current low population in the game, only very few locations will ever have more than one instance (or "phase", as they call it).

How would you know, though? There's no identifier for which server shard you're in, so there's know way to know whether they are in use or not.

How would I know? Well, I can't be absolutely certain, but I can observe and draw conclusions. When I find myself almost alone in a game location in an MMO, do I find it plausible that other players would also be playing more or less by themselves in separate instances of that place? If I am one of three or four people in a public dungeon, when I see only a handful of other players in a city, or when I visit a bank where the number of visitors is in the low single digits, my conclusion is that the few people I see are the only ones across the entire server who are in that place at that time. It stands to reason that only places that are well populated would be duplicated.

At launch, some places were crawling with players, often to the point of cities and delves being overcrowded. As a consequence, they lowered the threshold before another instance was created, but why would they now have multiple parallel instances of the world with so few players in each that the game looks deserted? No, sorry, I will stand by my conclusion that the game does not make heavy use of parallel instances right now.

Their megaserver would be good at hiding crowds if we had them, but it's absolutely terrible at hiding the current lack of crowds.

Iink wrote: »

So zone chat is instanced then. That sucks. I thought Zone chat meant everyone in the city regardless of instance.

I'm not sure about that, but right now, it's mostly the same thing, so it's more or less a moot point.

You'd think so, but I'm not sure you're correct on that.

We know the game isn't doing great population-wise, but I think it's doing better than single-instance, at least since BTP. There are population discrepencies that look more like intentional sharding than player behavior, some zones are packed while others are empty.

I believe many people prefer to play in empty zones, there are still a lot of people who'd rather be playing TES6, and there are issues with XP, nodes and respawns that are very population sensitive.

The server was supposed to preferentially zone you into shards will guildies and friends in them, if that functionality was working as intended it could give you the impression you know a substantial percentage of the playerbase.

Not saying there's a dozen shards of every zone or anything of the kind, pvp and guild stores indicate a limited playerbase, but I don't think we see the entire population in-game either.

Elsonso · May 2015

Enodoc wrote: »

How would you know, though? There's no identifier for which server shard you're in, so there's know way to know whether they are in use or not. I think "phases" are something else though; locations are in different "phases" depending on whether you complete a quest there or not, whereas what I am calling shards (and what I think ZOS call "channels") are the different dynamic instances of zones. Locations are in different phases within the shards channels, and changing between phases doesn't require a loading screen. Changing between shardschannels though would require a loading screen.

Think of it like this:
Four players form a group and all go to the same place

Player 1, Player 3, and Player 4 have finished a quest in that place

Player 2 has not yet finished the quest

Player 3 and Player 4 can see each other, but not Player 1

Player 1 and Player 2 can not see anyone else

Player 2 turns in the quest, and suddenly 1 and 2 can see each other

-> Player 2 just moved between phases (without a loading screen)

Players 3 and 4 use /traveltoplayer to Player 1

All players can now see each other

-> Players 3 and 4 just moved between shardschannels (with a loading screen)

No, there is no direct way to change between shards channels, unless you can find a player in a different one and /travel them. Logging off and logging on again will sometimes put you in a different shardchannel, but it's random. Since they are dynamically generated anyway, all it would be conceivably possible to do would be to type a slash command to load into a different one, but you wouldn't know whether it was more populated or not.

When you enter a zone, I am sure that part of the time that the loading screen is up is finding a channel to enter into. They try to group friends, party members, and guild members into the same channel, and that is probably what takes the most amount of time when selecting an appropriate channel.

However, I do not think that a loading screen is always required after that. I learned in beta that the server can merge channels dynamically and can do it without a loading screen. I do not know if the server can move individual players between channels or split channels, or whether a loading screen would be required if that happened.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

How would I know? Well, I can't be absolutely certain, but I can observe and draw conclusions. When I find myself almost alone in a game location in an MMO, do I find it plausible that other players would also be playing more or less by themselves in separate instances of that place? If I am one of three or four people in a public dungeon, when I see only a handful of other players in a city, or when I visit a bank where the number of visitors is in the low single digits, my conclusion is that the few people I see are the only ones across the entire server who are in that place at that time. It stands to reason that only places that are well populated would be duplicated.

Their megaserver would be good at hiding crowds if we had them, but it's absolutely terrible at hiding the current lack of crowds.

I think you are being rather extreme in your pessimism about the server population, making your conclusions inaccurate.

Monday nights are not exactly the busiest nights for ESO and tonight the EP zone population, on a slow night, is better than the busiest night of the week back when server population was actually pretty low.

Varicite wrote: »

Zone chat is not instanced. It does mean everyone in that zone, regardless of the channel they're in. Even if you cannot actually see them until you join the same channel (using the method I described above), you can still talk to them.

Unless they changed this, what you say here directly contradicts what I have actually seen in the game. Namely, that as channels got merged during beta, the traffic in zone chat increased to the point where it was not possible to read it. This increase in speed makes me think that the chat subsystem content is unique to the channel.

Enodoc · May 2015

lordrichter wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

How would you know, though? There's no identifier for which server shard you're in, so there's know way to know whether they are in use or not. I think "phases" are something else though; locations are in different "phases" depending on whether you complete a quest there or not, whereas what I am calling shards (and what I think ZOS call "channels") are the different dynamic instances of zones. Locations are in different phases within the shards channels, and changing between phases doesn't require a loading screen. Changing between shardschannels though would require a loading screen.

Think of it like this:
Four players form a group and all go to the same place

Player 1, Player 3, and Player 4 have finished a quest in that place

Player 2 has not yet finished the quest

Player 3 and Player 4 can see each other, but not Player 1

Player 1 and Player 2 can not see anyone else

Player 2 turns in the quest, and suddenly 1 and 2 can see each other

-> Player 2 just moved between phases (without a loading screen)

Players 3 and 4 use /traveltoplayer to Player 1

All players can now see each other

-> Players 3 and 4 just moved between shardschannels (with a loading screen)

No, there is no direct way to change between shards channels, unless you can find a player in a different one and /travel them. Logging off and logging on again will sometimes put you in a different shardchannel, but it's random. Since they are dynamically generated anyway, all it would be conceivably possible to do would be to type a slash command to load into a different one, but you wouldn't know whether it was more populated or not.

When you enter a zone, I am sure that part of the time that the loading screen is up is finding a channel to enter into. They try to group friends, party members, and guild members into the same channel, and that is probably what takes the most amount of time when selecting an appropriate channel.

However, I do not think that a loading screen is always required after that. I learned in beta that the server can merge channels dynamically and can do it without a loading screen. I do not know if the server can move individual players between channels or split channels, or whether a loading screen would be required if that happened.

Now that's interesting, I didn't think it could do that based on my experience with Travel to Player. When I was /travelling to someone in the same channel as me, the loading screen was as it usually is, with the zone music plonking away in the background, whereas when I /travelled to someone in a different channel, the loading screen was accompanied by the Title Screen theme tune instead (like when you go to Cyrodiil). That's how I was identifying whether the channel changed, and why I would have assumed that channels couldn't be merged.

Varicite · May 2015

lordrichter wrote: »

Unless they changed this, what you say here directly contradicts what I have actually seen in the game. Namely, that as channels got merged during beta, the traffic in zone chat increased to the point where it was not possible to read it. This increase in speed makes me think that the chat subsystem content is unique to the channel.

Well, I am not currently in any trade guilds (or any guilds at all, for that matter), so I do most of my buying and selling utilizing zone chat.

Often, though we are clearly in the same zone since we were both just talking in the chat, when we meet to trade our wares, one of us needs to travel to the other because we are invisible to each other.

That's really my only proof. : P

Elsonso · May 2015

Varicite wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Unless they changed this, what you say here directly contradicts what I have actually seen in the game. Namely, that as channels got merged during beta, the traffic in zone chat increased to the point where it was not possible to read it. This increase in speed makes me think that the chat subsystem content is unique to the channel.

Well, I am not currently in any trade guilds (or any guilds at all, for that matter), so I do most of my buying and selling utilizing zone chat.

Often, though we are clearly in the same zone since we were both just talking in the chat, when we meet to trade our wares, one of us needs to travel to the other because we are invisible to each other.

That's really my only proof. : P

That is interesting if zone chat was being used.

Say what you will about the current active population, but the megaserver technology itself must be designed so that it can scale well above what is actually being used on an average daily basis. This means that the way the megaserver software is designed to scale. It is designed to handle millions of players online simultaneously. Of course, this does not mean that they can achieve that in practice.

Anyone who designs such a system, if they are worth the salary they are being paid, has to consider the scenario where there are 1 million Aldmeri Dominion players, all of them standing at the Vulkel Guard wayshrine. The design has to be able to handle 1 million people standing right there, all of them asking Gina where the patch notes are in Zone chat.

There is no way that the server and client could scale to those levels if they did not partition the players, and everything they do. The sheer size of the data would far exceed the capability of all systems involved.

Moonshadow66 · May 2015

The only zone/city I'm aware of is the Hollow City in Coldharbour which is not an instance/phase anymore. I've seen LEVEL 1 (!) players there along with VR14 players while I was still at the start of that questline. Usually we couldn't see any of them, but for some reason we can, now.

Nestor · May 2015

Moonshadow66 wrote: »

The only zone/city I'm aware of is the Hollow City in Coldharbour which is not an instance/phase anymore. I've seen LEVEL 1 (!) players there along with VR14 players while I was still at the start of that questline. Usually we couldn't see any of them, but for some reason we can, now.

Can you even make it out of the Wailing Prison at less than L3? I never did. Wait, I had one that did get out at L2 but went L3 as soon as I discovered Daggerfall.

That is more people being ported to the Hollow City to farm Alchemy Mats. You never have to leave that city to do that. I have been bringing Level 40 something characters up there for a year now to take them to the Vile Lab to grind out some levels.