That fourth one on network architecture is mind-boggling (Destiny)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, April 01, 2015, 21:31 (3522 days ago) @ Kahzgul

and are available missions linked to your fireteam host rather than the location you're in? Otherwise why would the missions be consistent from one area after you leave and return? If those can be linked to your fireteam to remember their gamestate as you move through different bubble hosts, why can't world events be linked as well?

What do you mean by world events? Like Public Events? Those don't cross between bubbles because they are run by the Bubble Activity Host who's job it is to run just that one bubble. Things like Patrol beacons are remembered across bubbles because they are controlled by the Mission Activity Host which is presumably spun up for you (and your fireteam) when you launch a Patrol activity. That saved state goes away when everyone connected to it goes back to orbit. That's why you get an entirely different set of beacons if you hit orbit and come right back.

But yes, it would be nice if more was shared between bubbles allowing more complex persistent world events to span an entire destination world.

Also, god I want the game to read your friends list and try to match you to bubble hosts where your friends are playing. It seems like giving server preference that way wouldn't be too taxing. 40 available servers of which 1 has a friend, attempting to join friend... etc.

Yes, but the chief concern there is latency... and rightly so. ZackDark, who I play with sometimes, lives in Brazil and sometimes the connection between us suffers a good bit of lag. If he enters a bubble with no one else around he gets made the Physics Host which is perfectly fine since at that point its just his box running the entire game on its own. If Destiny placed friends above latency then it would connect me, in Texas, to him in Brazil... and my game quality would have a greater chance of suffering AI lag and other weirdness because of our distance from one another.

I'd wondered what networking magic Bungie had pulled between Reach (who's co-op would often grind to a halt due to lag) and Destiny. Turns out there really wasn't any! They just make sure to connect you to a Physics Host with low latency and they give up and make you the Physics Host if they can't find anybody suitable within five seconds of looking! (They start loading in map assets at ~15 seconds out from crossing into a new bubble, start looking for players at 10 seconds out... and give up and make you the host at 5 seconds out if no one is found.)

Furthermore, if the bubble hosts are all independent servers, why are they all identical? You could easily put a few random variables in there to make each host have slightly different spawns (location, number, type of enemies could all change), or to have slightly different geometry (a blown up devilwalker, a crashed spaceship, a vex conflux). Little touches to give variety would help the game out a lot.

Beyond the possibility of it being "Cody Miller Easy"? I don't know. Halo would do that. Think back to the circle room filled with sleeping grunts and those two patrolling Elites. Those Elites were not always in the same place and you had to actually approach cautiously if you wanted to clear the room without firing a shot. Maybe with Destiny they ran out of memory or development time?