After a weekend of server issues, Once Human developer Starry Studio has revealed the way it struggled to address the surprising quantity of gamers who’ve descended upon the sport.
Once Human is a free-to-play multiplayer open world survival sport from Starry Studio, a developer owned by Chinese language video games firm NetEase. It launched on PC on July 9 and rapidly discovered an viewers, with an enormous peak concurrent participant rely of 231,668 on Steam.
It’s an enormous success for NetEase, however some gamers have confronted frustration merely enjoying the sport. Particularly, gamers discovered they had been unable to play with mates as a result of they had been already enjoying on a server that was full due to newly imposed participant limits, or had prolonged queue instances.
Now, in a post on Steam, Starry Studio mentioned the rise within the quantity of gamers over the weekend “exceeded our earlier expectations” and in flip precipitated massive server queues. As a result of of this, Starry Studio mentioned it had “no different selection” however to restrict the quantity of gamers on every server.
“However we’ll admit that this has certainly precipitated inconvenience for some gamers, so we’re engaged on bettering that,” the developer added. “We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Starry Studio went on to clarify precisely why too many gamers on a single server causes issues for Once Human. It’s a useful perception into the way in which the sport works and the challenges builders face when it comes to MMO-style video games such as these.
“Once Human is an open-world survival constructing sport the place sources on the map are restricted in numbers,” Starry Studio mentioned. “If too many gamers get on the identical server, they’ll have a tough time discovering an appropriate spot to create their territory. Moreover, some late-game content material such as the Stronghold Conquest for PvP servers shall be affected. In accordance to our earlier check information, we found that the present situations may supply a greater gaming expertise if the quantity of gamers on every server was restricted between 6,000 and eight,000. That is why we have set a restrict. Once that restrict is exceeded, gamers may have to wait in queue. That is all for the web gamers to take pleasure in a greater gaming expertise.”
On the time of this text’s publication, 9 of Once Human’s servers are fully full. Starry Studio instructed gamers play on different servers as an alternative so as to get within the sport. Within the meantime, Starry Studio mentioned it would quickly increase the restrict for every server, which ought to imply gamers can play on the server of their selection, “however this measure is just not a long-term resolution, so you must nonetheless strive to keep away from servers that appear too crowded.” An August replace will add an invite code characteristic so you’ll be able to invite gamers to be part of your server even when the server is already full.
Within the shorter time period, a patch scheduled for July 18 will make some preliminary enhancements, with plans to supply compensation “for many who spend too lengthy ready in a queue.”
“We perceive that you just eagerly need to have enjoyable with your pals. We guarantee you that our staff is difficult at work resolving points associated to server hundreds, and we’re doing all that we are able to to enhance the queuing difficulty,” Starry Studio mentioned.
Final week, Starry Studio responded to a backlash about how cosmetics work in Once Human, and promised modifications. Once Human has a ‘combined’ person evaluation ranking on Steam, with some gamers expressing concern about every part from the sport’s privateness coverage to the use of the NetEase Launcher. In gameplay phrases, gamers have hit out at necessary seasonal resets and the way they will have an effect on your sense of development and attachment to your character, as properly as cosmetics being tied to particular person characters.
Wesley is the UK Information Editor for IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You’ll be able to attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.