Battles in EVE Online Will be Even Bigger; CCP Tests Important Changes
Larger battles in EVE Online, more stable gameplay and no downtime? All this may be enabled by a solution, which CCP Games is currently working on.
EVE Online is famous for many achievements of its players, but let's agree - it's the huge battles that attract the most attention. Clashes of space fleets may soon become even bigger thanks to the changes announced by devs at CCP Games. Details are discussed in an extensive technical post on the game's official website.
At the core of Quasar (as the developers call their plan) is a modification to the game's entire network infrastructure, the first in nearly 10 years. The last time CCP Games made changes to it was in 2011, and while they brought many positives, the system is far from perfect. In a nutshell: every data packet has to go through the main server (called Tranquility) and Python's so-called GIL (Global Interpreter Lock), on which the EVE Online is based.
With larger, counting often thousands of units, groups of players in the same star system, the number of messages (which must be sent in the blink of an eye) can be so huge that the server has to deliberately slow down the passage of time in the game to process all the information. This slowdown is known as Time Dilation (TiDi) and - as you can guess - it's not a very welcome effect (unless the players like switching between applications during the game).
This is why CCP Games has been working for years on a "simple" solution: a system to bypass Tranquility when processing certain data packets. Starting with the EVE Portal app, through the tech demo called Aether Wars and many other experiments, the developers finally tested their idea this year. We're talking about Skill Plans, a modification to the skill system that was introduced in August. No messages related to this novelty went through Tranquility and thay had no impact on either the server or player sessions.
Quasar is still a working project, so to speak, but the possibilities of these changes are enormous. Improving the transfer of information will translate into - as the creators put it - "moar lasers", or battles with even more ships, and that without the use of TiDi. Another benefit will be the ability to make changes to some elements of EVE Online without having to shut down the entire server. In other words, the developers could fix some bugs without forcing players to log off, which they call "No Downtime". The game should also become more stable.
If you want a more extensive (and much more technical) explanation, we encourage you to read the whole entry.
