[polly]

Alright. This will likely be on the controversial side of things. But someone has to say it.
It is no secret that every time an event is ran, SL2 just becomes... unbearable to play for anyone not attending said event. It slows to a crawl, sometimes takes nearly a minute or so breaks between inputs all because of... what? Six encounters and a couple fancy effects?

We're in the year of 2024.
Even though we're using an outdated engine that is put together by hopes, dreams, tears and duct tape, I don't think there's any real reason why this should be the case. Yet, it happens, every single time.

And I believe there is one culprit at hand; Great Six.

It's practically a barren wasteland at this point. I don't think it's had more than single digit players in the last month. Almost every house so far has been abandoned and forgotten and the continent as a whole sees no real use nowadays. It's become little more than a resource hog that... well... results in exactly the problem I wish to discuss and fix in this thread. The server chugging over the most minor of things during events.

Now. I'll say this in advance before you get your pitchforks and torches; Great Six should not be removed. Period.

Even if it's hardly more than a legacy/nostalgic thing by this point, I think attempting to just phase out the continent would cause more problems than it fixes. I don't think I would want to see it go, among many others who had a lot of memorable and great experiences with it. It still serves as a fine enough "tutorial" for newer players, since it lets you level up and grasp the mechanics of the game a little bit easier(although this is not a point I fully agree with, many could argue in the favor of this. I thought it would be fair to mention in it's defense). Not just that, but there's several keys with both G6 and Korvara characters. Trying to phase one out, or separate them to different servers is just not a solution.

However, I do believe we should cut down on the amount of the mechanical events the server has to handle in G6. Starting with:

• Dungeons
  

With G6 generating BDPs, each with their own set of mobs to clear out, it's no doubt one of the heavy hitters to the game's performance. I do believe that the number of BDPs generated on G6 should be at the least halved, if not quartered. Every single dungeon has to handle it's generation, the mobs inside of it, it's eventual deleting... I do believe by reducing the amount of dungeons that spawn every cycle, the server load would definitely decrease. With how much G6's player base has dwindled, I doubt it would make levelling anymore of a chore.

• Global Events (Fishing Contests and Black Beasts)
  

This is no doubt gonna be one of the more... disliked part of my thread/suggestion...

But I do believe that the global events in G6 also have a heavy hand in affecting the server performance every hour shift or so. I'll start with the first change I believe would require less work to implement;

Just... outright remove fishing contests.
Nobody does these now. Nobody ever shows up, nobody ever attends it, and I'll be honest; Nobody really cares, either. I don't think this would give as significant of a change as the aforementioned cutting down on dungeon spawns, but again, we're running a game on Byond. A game engine that literally shits itself and breaks over the most minor of updates. Every tiniest bit of optimization counts. The fishing contest shop could simply be changed to a regular shop that sells it's wares for Murai. Having these hosted every couple of in game hours is just not really worth it.

And now, the heavy hitter;
Black Beast events need to go too. Well, not fully...
I do think them naturally spawning should, at least.

This is/was one of the most popular events in G6. It's one that people generally always flocked to - had dedicated 'militia' showing up to deal with them, and it's without a hint of doubt a staple in G6. Outright getting rid of it would more than likely just bring an uproar from older players, and it would make it harder to enjoy 'legacy content'. I'm sure people will eventually want to try reliving the old days and gather a couple of friends to do them with. So for this, I would suggest replacing Black Beasts' naturally spawning with it being a player-summoned event. One Black Beast raid at a time, at one specific town. It would trigger the Black Beasts like it always did - but manually in a specific spot rather than a randomly picked one every few hours. Costs some sort of resource to do so and has a cooldown to avoid people just spawning it over and over and over.

Both of these getting removed would also fix the age-old issue of RP in Korvara getting interrupted/clogged by global announcements that do little to inform people and more so irritates them. It may be minor thing, but I'm sure people would still like to see that go.
Again, it's not like people attend these. If I had to take a shot every time I saw a "non existent" defence effort announcement, I'd probably die of alcohol poisoning before the day ends.

Mines are minor enough that I don't think they need to be adjusted. They're literally just a node you walk up to to start an encounter. If we are leaning into extreme optimization, they could very easily go as well. They don't give anything you can't get anywhere else in G6, as far as I'm aware.

Now,

I'm not gonna pretend that these would be "be-all-end-all" fixes. Nobody apart from Dev has real numbers on what really strains the server, and these suggestions are little more than guess work hoping to fix the issue of the server practically begging to be killed every time an eventmin dares to spawn more than 2 encounters. I do believe that optimizing what G6 does/uses is where the key to fixing this issue lies. G6's player count has severely dwindled and I don't think the masses should suffer for the enjoyment of few. I've called G6 'legacy content', because that's what it essentially is by this point. It's seen no significant update ever since Korvara's release. It's old, deprecated and sees no real use.

I've made this suggestion thread in order to not just spark discussion regarding optimizing the server, but also to potentially give Dev the encouragement by the player base to take potentially more "drastic" measures to help lower server load(such as loss of functionality i.e. my suggestion to remove fishing contests).

If you've any suggestions regarding the matter, I think this thread would be the best place to put it.

tl;dr: server go brrrr when event. not good. g6 not used as much. g6 does lots. make g6 do less. make server not go brrr. thank.