yesterday I had a epiphany I wanted to share with people who why browser games might be the way they are. I’m talking about the ones where you have some kind of game currency that limits your actions. And they want you to pay real money to get more whatever so you can keep playing else you have to wait a while to continue playing. I used to think those type games were just all about trying to get people to pay money to maximize profits. But I realized there are factors that need to be taken into consideration that people might not realize, that only I just realized having finally finished making a little similar browser game myself.

yesterday morning I woke up to me actually not being able to reach the Agent Trainer game on my browser when I refreshed the page due to a database error. Turns out the site had almost crashed a that moment. I got a automated e-mail telling me the sever for SVP had to kill the process that was managing all the database stuff briefly to prevent a site crash due to low memory.

So it got me thinking about how other online games like these work on other sites with much more users playing. and communicating back and fourth between the server and the game. The server for the site has only 4gigs of ram. I could update to a 8 gigs, or even 16 gigs, that would most likely help. but what happens when I have more games and potentially more people on the site playing them? is the answer just get better and more and more servers? maybe, but no because that is not cost efficient and would tank anyone or company big or small. I’m talking if millions of people were playing, I can’t get a new sever for every 16 or so people. That was when I realized the solution, or at least a solution that I see most commonly, is that annoying ass limitation on certain actions seen in most games. The limits are things like a certain number of times you can refresh some kind of enemy player list, refresh the list of items you can buy, etc. You are basically being limited on things that require a database call. This prevent you collectively from DDoS’ing the site from playing the game normally.

as for the single player limits. I am still of the belief that is it purely for profit. But basically there is more of incentive than just profit get setting you to either stop playing for a bit or to pay money to keep playing right now.

so later on I will need to update the agent trainer multiplayer game a bit. right now i same sending multiple variables, but I will just send the save code which counts as one variable to a database and sever but when applied to the game holds different data. I will also need to put a cool-down on the pvp but you will be able to train against ai also. you will still only get rank from fighting real people but it will vary based on how much rank you have vs the rank of the person you beat. all the wont begin will I finish the savor the moment quest stuff for patreon next month. But I just wanted to let people what what I plan to do and why.

feel free to leave thoughts

upcoming changes:
you will get stats and a lot of resources for winning vs a persons character.
pvp cooldowns to help with sever stress.
you can train multiple agents and save them
you can train vs ai
you will get matched with people in your rank range.
special agent outfit
2 sex images per character
a few more items
more stuff you can’t unlock from buying.