Topic

How many of the current "problems" will change with the issue of scale?

Obviously with the adding influx of players things changed somewhat dramatically during the last test. This is going to be exponential when the game becomes open. Part of the magic (as I see it) of Glitch is the ever expanding nature.

As the worlds gets bigger, it is possible that some issues (like mass destruction of one type of tree) will go away... or at least the impact will be lessened. While someone could wipe out the egg trees in a dozen streets they will be hard pressed to do it in fifty. And if projects are happening in more spread out areas people will be less likely to travel great distances to loot areas.


But how big will the world become? I have no idea what Tiny Spec might be thinking, so all of the following numbers are me just spit balling.


Let's say Glitch gets 100,000 active members. (For reference, FarmVille claims to have something like 60 million "active" members. I have no idea what those number actually mean.) Obviously they won't all be on at the same time. So let's randomly say each member plays and average of an hour a day. (This is probably insanely off. Most will not play every day. But also playing will not be even distributed over a 24 period. Their will be peaks in the afternoons and evenings, especially North America and Europe. Potentially Asia.) That's 4,166+ players at any given time. I'm going to say that a 4 players per street seems about right as a max (keeping into account that there will be many more on some streets but that part of the charm is entering an empty street). That's 1041+ streets. I don't know what the current street count is. (Glitch wiki list 226 streets, counting residential blocks but obviously not homes. This does not include at least some of the street build in the last test.)


The most distributed nature of the world might make it more likely to contain problems. Or at least make problems more avoidable while the get solved.


Of course, this says that the number folks who wish to test the limits (like killing trees or populating a public street with a hundred chickens) will stay constant or at least not rise at the same rate as the population. I'm not sure that is a true statement. When it becomes open, "griefers" and the like will arrive. So is the nature of the beast. (I am not arguing "Oh No! Now everyone can play and it will be ruined! Far from it. I think the joy of a free form MMO with no specified "win condition" and a strong community like Glitch will become MOST interesting in a more open system.) 


I'm very curious to see how it plays out.


(Also note: Yay! to folks pushing the system now and finding exploits. That is what testing is all about.)


I am also interested as things grow and some folks do get "bored" with projects and like, what entertainments they create. (I know that I hid a few Golden Eggs in hard to find places that were not found in two days.)

Posted 20 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • One problem acknowledged yesterday (I forget by whom) was that global chat doesn't scale.  So using the Help channel or any other channel for _everyone_ would apparently cause problems of some kind.  Maybe a solution to this would be to add some kind of regional chat for the region you happen to be in at that moment, so that when you go from Shimla Mirch to Chakra Phool you automatically would change into the new regional chat.

    This doesn't solve the problem of groups, though.  If a group has many many members, what is the limit before the channel (or chat in general) breaks due to the volume?
    Posted 20 months ago by Merek Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Not scaling means that it's impossible for 1,000 people to use one chat room cuz the messages fly by far too fast to read.  Most sites subdivide the rooms with some ability to change rooms so you can be with friends.  Tiny Speck went with groups instead, make our own divides and size limits.
    Posted 20 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink