So now that everyone’s had a chance to see layering, whether its a Beta tester stream or the Stress Test, people have seen issues and exploits with the switching.
Primary negative cases for hopping
To check fresh node spots.
To escape PVP or corpse camping.
To find lower population layers for easier questing.
Note before listing options: If you choose to group up with someone who is right in front of you to do a quest, you are already on the same layer, so no layer changing is required. None of these restrictions would apply.
Here are a few of my ideas:
Layer changes only happen at an Inn or City - This would prevent people from being able to switch layers while sitting on a node point by jumping from group to group. It wouldn’t interfere friends grouping up, because while you’d have to go back to an Inn, you’re not grouping for a second, so the % of time travelling would be minimal, and if you’re not even with the friends when you group, you’d have to travel past an inn or flight point anyway.
Default Layer binding - When you start the game, you are bound to a default layer ID. When you log out and log in, without being grouped, you return to that default layer every time. If a layer gets too full (e.g because it was assigned across the period of a day, then all the assigned people get logged in at once) then you may have your default layer changed next time you go into an Inn or City. That new default would remain your default. When you leave a group that caused a layer change, you would return to your default layer, when you enter an inn or city.
You can only change layers once every 10 minutes - Even if you group up, you can only change layers once every 10 minutes, except for returning to your default layer. This prevents people from hopping from layer to layer constantly. The only reason to group up should be to have friends play together, and if you keep changing friends every 5 minutes, are they really your friends?
I think while Layering may have some consequences, these restrictions will help alleviate a lot of the dangers and exploits people are worried about.
What do people think? Are there other restrictions that people could suggest?
We are getting layering, but can we make sure its not exploited?
Let you choose which layer you want to be on.
You cannot interact with people in other layers in any way.
Put a certain cap on how many people can be concurrently logged onto each layer.
Rename layers to “realms.”
Layers introduce so many economy problems that I don’t even know where to begin.
For me the biggest issue will be cross-layer trading.
Imagine there’s 10 layers, each with the population of an entire realm. They’re all pooling into the same auction house. There will be 10x as many Teebu’s and other amazing rare items. Whichever guild has the most gold/resources will just collect them all, if only because they can.
If its only for the first few weeks, like Ion repeatedly said, the economy will recover because all the high level mats will get chewed up by leveling professions. And high level gear won’t be sold for the first few weeks, because people will want it themselves.
I think they should multiply the respawn time on Black Lotus and Devilsaurs by the number of layers. They could also create a debuff after swapping layers that prevents you from herbing/mining for XX minutes after switching.
Yes yes indeed, There is also the point that layering by itself is not enough to prevent bottlenecking in the starting zones Elora.
3 layers, each with 3k max. If they have 3k people in those starting zones, that puts hundreds in each starting area (more in the popular ones)> which basically means you are spending hours trying to tag boars and scorpions on launch day. That is simply no good.
There was a post or two about it.
Layering by itself is not addressing every problem, especially that early bottleneck
Uh, that’s the same limit we had in Vanilla. They’re not trying to stop bottlenecking more than Vanilla. That’s not an issue that’s part of the authenticity.
Agree to disagree here Elora. : ) Vanilla Launch didnt have 50-200 per starting zone, I was there. My overall point is that layering isn’t fully addressing the issue so we can agree there.
That isn’t a problem to me, it is how a freshly launched realm should be. If they stick to vanilla caps for each layer, the bottleneck only lasts a few hours. After that players will have dispersed enough that it isn’t as big of an issue. Layering is a hundred times better than sharding in my eyes.
I don’t believe any server is intended to have 10 layers. I believe 3 per server is going to be the max. For every layer they add on a server, 3000 people will have to quit before Phase 2 or overcrowding will be real.
No, but Priests won’t be getting to level 58 in high enough numbers in the first few weeks, that many Teebu’s will drop at all. I was thinking more the in-guild trading that occurs or in group etc.
(Also, Molten Core - Guilds will be managing all that loot internally)
I agree layering has its problem, especially if each server with 3 layers of 3k people never drops in population, thers no way they can ever converge it back to 1 because 1 server cant hold 9k…which causes issues.
![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")