Q & A New server, The Finalizer
12/12/2021
The SWGEmu Team
Q & A New server, The Finalizer
The verdict is in and we will have a new server. We will follow our tradition of naming our servers with the name of a spaceship. The new server will be named Finalizer. The Finalizer was a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer which served as the flagship of General Armitage Hux and Kylo Ren
The in-game survey had this result:
| Votes |
% |
Answer |
| 382 |
36% |
I'd play on Basilisk and the new server. |
| 261 |
25% |
I'd play only on the new server. |
| 193 |
18% |
Not sure what I'd do. |
| 159 |
15% |
I'd only play on Basilisk. |
| 48 |
4% |
Don't care. |
| 1043 |
100% |
TOTAL |
As we can see from the survey, we are divided as a community, so Basilisk will continue to stay with us. We have about 2500 unique accounts that log into Basilisk each month, so by running the survey longer, we would have a larger sample size to draw upon. The reason we only ran it for a week is that we really want to try and get this server ready before the holidays, where many in the community finally have some days off and time to sink themselves in to some SWG fun. Of all that have participating in our survey, only 16 didn't vote.
Lordkator have posted an in-dept analyze of the survey
her for the ones interested in more info
Here are the changes that we will make from the start of the new server:- Finalizer will use the same ToS as Basilisk does now.
- 2 characters per account, 1 character online at a time.
- Basilisk character names will be reserved for 90 days. After that period, the names are free to be used by anyone.
- ADKs, Resource deeds and Self Powered Harvester deeds will be removed
- Jedi unlock will still be the village, but with phase times reduced to 1 week
- Squad leader range will be reduced
- House maintenance will not automatically withdraw from the bank
- Automatic Galaxy Harvester pushes, but with a 2 day delay on new resources, so that people who enjoy this part of the game can still be first on a good spawn.
- Tuesday weekly push of new code from unstable with a server restart. We will not push unstable code, but the server will get a weekly restart at 09:00 UTC no matter if it got new code or not
Here we will try to answer most of your questions about the survey, and what a new server would mean. There are 42 questions and we have tried to answer them as well as we can.
Q: Why now? You have said Basilisk will stay until the project is done, it's in your mission statement.
A: There are several reasons for this. We have actually discussed this internally for some time.
Tools: To test tools that we wish to have on our future production server (permanent play server). For instance, we want to implement tools that handle merging of new code both in offline and online modes. Our backend code has changed a lot in the last few years. Code merges historically took several hours and we needed a weekend to do it. With backend changes that have been implemented you may have noticed that we are typically back online in less than one hour. Our dev team has done a very good job here.
Interactivity: Community interaction in-game is important to us. This survey is the first of many interactions we envision. As we know, only about 8% of our player base is actually active on our forum and discord isn’t ideal for threaded discussion. We see these occasional in-game polls as being the best way to garner actual player data.
Population: We all recognize that Basilisk is stagnant and as we get nearer to meeting the 14.1 target it becomes harder to entice people to test out code changes. Community suggestions were of the opinion that a new server, even without new content, will achieve a greater population testing out all code merges. As such, the implementation of the survey is us polling the community to see if there is enough demand to warrant us putting in time/effort into a new temporary server.
Q: Will a new server be a test server?
A: Yes, it will still be considered a temporary test server for us. It will be as Basilisk is now, however, the server will track Unstable much more closely. New code will be pushed on a weekly basis when the server restarts, given stability. This will facilitate quicker testing of changes and enable us to weed out issues that arise.
Q: What about banned accounts? Will they still be banned?
A: Yes, accounts that currently are banned, will still be banned with the new server. Nothing will change there.
Q: Will the new server have blue frogs?
A: No, there will not be blue frogs on the new server. It's a test/play server as Basilisk is now
Q: What TOS will the new server use and will there be CSR support on it?
A: The new server will use the same TOS as Basilisk does now and our support team will offer support on this server as they do on Basilisk
Q: Does this mean we are close to being done?
A: We are closer to the final goal than we have ever been, and the light is visible at the end of the tunnel. There are still some features that need to be implemented and others rigorously tested. We also have a good backlog of bugs that need to be fixed and tested. There are several things that we wish to test before we launch our production server and we feel this is a good time to start that.
Q: Will you involve the community more in the future?
A: We are looking into several ways to involve the community more in our process. One of them is possibly implementing a player senate like SoE did back in the day. We are also looking into using the holonet system already in place in the spaceports. Lastly, we also have the survey system you were all just introduced to. So yes, we wish to interact with the community more.
Q: Will there be more events?
A: You might have noticed that we have an increased number of events this year. Our new events are more advanced than earlier years. This is because of time spent making better tools to handle events (both staff-run and autonomous system events). Some of the events may not be that grand in size, however the method we used to prepare and deploy them has enhanced with each one. All of which will be beneficial down the road for creating proper content.
Q: Will there be staff run events on both servers?
A: Scripted events will continue on both servers, whereas events initiated by staff will not be possible to have across multiple servers. The server with the most population will see most of these events
Q: Will the new server get new post-14.1 content?
A: It will not see a lot of changes to 14.1 at the start. Down the line we will make changes that we wish to test out.
Q: Will the new server see significant tweaks to buffs, armor, weapons, professions?
A: As with the previous question, any balancing attempts might be done at the very end of the current project’s lifetime, but not before.
Q: There are over 300 000 registered members on the site. Why not send an email to them?
A: We are concerned that doing that will trigger spam filters and prevent us from being able to do it again in the future. We will wait to do that until we are actually launching our permanent server. At that time, we will have a new forum, a new server and a completely new project with new content! Then we will inform everyone through all the channels we have at our disposal, including the emails we have in our database.
Q: Will code be pushed more often to the new server?
A: We will continue to use Nova as a test server for new code. The code will be pushed there first. Every Tuesday we will push that code to the new server with a restart, so our server will also get a weekly scheduled restart and not run until it crashes, like we do with Basilisk. This means the new server will inherently be less stable than Basilisk. But it will track changes quicker rather than waiting for a big Publish event.
Q: Will the new server have veteran rewards and will we be able to claim them?
A: Anti-Decay Kits, Self Powered Harvesters and Resource Deeds will be removed from the Veteran Rewards List. All others will be claimable during claim periods.
Q: How many characters will we have access to on the new server and how many online at the time?
A: There will be 2 character slots available for each player and you will be able to have 1 character online at a time. Unlocking Jedi will not give you a third character slot.
Q: What will be done with bots?
A: As much as we also don’t like bots, a solution will require a lot of thought to find a good solution. For now, this system will not be touched, but we have begun discussing solutions for our future production server.
Q: Will anything be done to jedi unlock?
A: Jedi will use the village unlock with reduced phase times - 1 Week. Your Jedi character will be the character you use to unlock Jedi with. Unlocking Jedi will not give you a third character slot.
Q: Will we have to start the prof grind, or will we get our characters from Basilisk?
A: It’s a fresh server and we all will have to start from scratch.
Q: What will happen with Basilisk if a new server is launched?
A: That is a bit hard to answer. It will run in parallel with the new server and we will have to see what happens to Basilisk down the road.
Q: Will the database be wiped?
A: We will not wipe any databases now.
Q: Can I guarantee that I’ll get the same character name as I have on Basilisk? I don’t want anyone impersonating me on the new server.
A: Basilisk character names will be reserved for 90 days. After that period, the names are free to be used by anyone.
Q: Will there be any rewards for playing on this new server? Like will we get something on Basilisk? A forum badge? Something special when the 1.0+ server launches?
A: No, there will not be any special rewards or badges for playing on any servers that we run at this time.
Q: I hope the new server isn’t used to perpetuate the 14.1 goal and instead “1.0” changes are tested upon it
A: At the start, the server will not have a lot of changes past Basilisk, but we intend to make changes and test them on this server.
Q: Will we see frequent wipes, let’s say every 2 years and not a 9 year as Basilisk?
A: No, we don’t plan to wipe this server regularly. It’s a test server, so you never know what happens when we start to make changes. When we reach the 1.0 milestone and are ready to post our new production server, both Basilisk and Finalizer will be taken down.
Q: Will squad leader be limited to range?
A: Yes, we will change the range of SL. It will no longer be planet side. The sensible range will have to be tested, but we will set it to 128 meters at start.
Q: How long do you think it will take to prep and launch a new server like this?
A: Unfortunately, it’s a bit difficult to say, seeing as we depend on people having time to volunteer for this. We are hoping to have the server up for the holidays.
Q: How will backups be handled? In case something goes wrong from a merger and the need to revert.
A: The new server will have the same backup capabilities as Basilisk has now. Basilisk is saved every 10 minutes, so the longest rollback we would experience would be 10 minutes, unless the save has become corrupted.
Q: If the server is successful, what are your priorities for it and next steps?
A: Looking at the in-game poll and the forum poll, we expect the server to be successful, meaning people will log into it and play. Our first priorities will be to make the changes we want at start and tweak them. Fix any bugs that might come because of the changes and get every Tuesday restart and code merge to function as we need it to.
Q: What will be the purpose of each server in the next couple of months?
A:
-Nova will continue as it is now and used as it is now.
-Basilisk will continue as it is now.
-ThePit will be taken down and replaced by the new server. The new server will see changes past 14.1 at start, and eventually see larger changes later on.
-TCPrime is mostly a staff test server that we copy any server into and test there, without interfering with the server we have copied.
Q: Are pre-patch resets a possibility in case of a severely detrimental patch (a patch that inadvertently allows a game breaking exploit or something)
A: Every time the server is taken down, it will be saved. It's taken down before a patch, so we will save the server.
Q: If new code mergers break a certain aspect of the game or create a temporary unfair advantage that is exploited, will the server be rolled back to correct this?
A: This is almost impossible to answer. It really depends on how long the bug/exploit have been on the server. What we most of all depended on, is that bugs and exploits are being reported to Mantis. Why some of the exploits we have seen on Basilisk become so huge, is because people used the exploits, instead of reporting them to us. It's short sighted and only damages our community.
Q: Can we introduce elements of change to keep wipes different and exciting?
- Resource scarcity (less common high-end resources to keep armor from being 80kin the first month of play. I think Benny was making padded the first few weeks of bask at 72kin)
- Difficulty: NPC ham / damage increases for high end pve.
- Over spawn
A: We have discussed this internally. At the start of the server, we will not make the changes that you ask about here. We might look into throttling resources, so that we don’t get SB resources in the first month, but no decisions have been made yet
Q: Will you change how FRS xp is earned so there’s no need for fight clubs, balance changes to looted dot weapons or CM dots or addressing the AFKers, Ewoks/Krayts/Acklay etc?
A: We feel that the change to 2 characters and one online at the time, will make it so that the players are more dependent on each other and that it will make fight clubs harder to achieve. It will still be possible to do. To solve that, would require a new system and that is not something we can do at the start of this server.
Q: Relating to character slots per account, what will be done to reduce the number of players with multiple accounts?
A: We don’t have a solution to this issue at the time of this Q&A. We want people in each household to be able to play together, but at the same time, we know many misuse the multiple accounts their home has been allowed to have. To find good rules for this is even more important than before, since we now will limit the characters, you can have to 2 and only 1 online. People who are found abusing this, will get banned.
Q: Will there be any improvements to the process for approving multiple household accounts?
A: The process will unfortunately be as it is today. We don’t have another way to handle it. We have tools in place to stop multiple accounts. But tools only take us this far. A lot of the multiple account issues must be handled manually by someone in support.
Q: How will veteran rewards be handled?
A: Currently this system is handled by account creation time. This is of course not optional for a new server. There would have to be a new system in place to handle this and we don’t have the time to implement something like this. With that said, ADKs, Resource Deeds and Self Powered Harvester Deeds have been removed.
Q: Do you have any plans to progress servers and emulate content releases like the addition of speeders or GCW?
A: Down the line we will make changes, but we can’t give a specific answer as to what, other than the ones mentioned in the answers above
Q: Standard XP rate or boosted? Standard resource gathering? Standard city populations and progression times?
A: We will not change anything here at this time
Q: If the daily population of Bas drops below xx for dd period of time, will Bas be shuttered?
A: We have not taken a stance on this yet. Many that have answered the in-game survey have said they will play on both servers. We basically have to wait and see.
We hope that this will answer most of the questions you might have about this.
~The SWGEmu Team
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