If this launch has shown me anything, it’s that a frighteningly large amount of people have no idea how economies work. “JUZ IGNORE IT AND IT DON AFFECT YOU”. Dear Jeebus, humanity…
I like this change. It’ll make it very clear which realms are still too overpopulated.
And players won’t avoid “Low” realms when they’re actually Full/High with all layers removed.
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leave some of the servers with layers… and let us transfer to them.
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I never once touched STV for leveling.
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Outside of bugs, most people dont realize also that due to increased realm population caps, without layers you are actually artificially supressing resources relative to population compared to vanilla.
If you want real vanilla economics the server cap needs drastically reduced.
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This is also a problem, but layering exploits injected a large amount of resources that wouldn’t otherwise be available on top. If Layering didn’t exist, there also wouldn’t have been nearly as many people per server, so the problems are also related that way.
Layers were to handle zone crowding not really server caps.
it doesnt matter if the servers can handle 3k or 10k people when 2k of them are in the 6 starting zones.
The bugs/abuse were stated to be overblown, with many being fake. Some did of course.
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rip skeram xD
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Ya, seriously. It’s not fun having to compete constantly. And with some people straight up rebuking a group attempt, it can be frustrating to say the least.
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These are related, though. Because you can’t have 10k players in one zone without it being unplayable, if there were no layering, they would have to have more servers with lower caps to prevent this from happening. Because of layering, they could have drastically higher player caps than would be acceptable otherwise.
Blizzard stated that one screenshot was fake, but some stuff the Blizzard user posted in that same post was BS, IE not being able to see layers; this was hotfixed later. There was also plenty of exploiting going on on streams, so it definitely existed.
The biggest issue isn’t actually “exploiting” though, it’s taking advantage of spread playerbase and normal layer mechanics; a vast majority of players are casuals, so in the first few weeks there were a bunch of layers, but only a very small percent of people were in the higher levels during this time. So the small amount of hardcores could use layer swapping (legitimately) to basically nonstop farm rare resources across mostly empty layers, with no real competition. By the time the majority catches up, layers are vastly reduced due to player falloff, so the result is a small amount of players per server got to farm a ridiculous amount of rare resources with no competition. Classic economies in general are just a mess, for a lot of reasons, but layering has a lot to do with it, even if some of the reasons are indirect.
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Whats a little funny is their original description of layering was zone by zone based on population which would have prevented this. Like a single server only CRZ.
But it got crucified pretty hard because of how it would cause alot if phasing in and out.
In the end i think i like the whole world layering as more seamless despite the (minor) side effects.
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As far as seamlessness goes, it is definitely better, but it also brings with it a lot of issues.
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not relevant. the same relative amount of gold is being generated from the game as well. well except for all the exploiters in the beginning
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Well, the 3 paths seemed to be:
Even longer queues, and starting zones virtually unplayable for everyone.
Phasing in and out per zone. Impacts virtually everyone.
World layering, allows very hardcore players to farm more resources than normal. Effects mostly the end high.
If the forums/chat didnt exist one of these options would be virtually invisible to most players.
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You must be kidding.
Depending on the respawn times of mobs, herbs and ore, it might have well been 50+ layers. lol
But it’s good that the reduction in layering is happening so quickly after launch. Kudos to Blizz. Waiting for that single layer to happen on the Big 3 realms.
13 is still better then none
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Ah, someone who’s also after the hat I see! I haven’t been in STV yet either.
Maybe but not necessarily. Say they want a layer max to be 5000. Now assume the online population is 5500. In that case I would guess you’d have 2 layers of 2750. Fairly insignificant. At least far from double.
That said, I still think the layers are probably still necessary on the realms they exist on.
I kind of wish my realm were still layered simply because that would mean there’s definitely going to be a long term, healthy population. Not that I want it layered. Just because it would indicate a lot of active people.
Skeram is in definite need of more Alliance.
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