Many "servers" or just one per region?

[Tatwi]

Basically it boils down to what makes the most sense between,

A. No one is on my server right now, so I am bored and I'll log out.

or

B. Man! There are too many people in that area for me to join, so I'll have to fight some where else on this huge planet...

Would people these days rather know that there will be a busy East Coast, West Coast, Euro, Asia, and Oceanic servers all the time or would they prefer the "tried and true" nightmare of the server population lotto and its associated down sides, like paid character transfers and general boredom?

Personally, I'd rather join a fight on a secondary front on a single server rather than try to find a server that was active at that moment. Furthermore, I would even prefer to do something else on said main server than I would to log into a different server on a different character, so having "something else to do" in Planetside 2 when it's not booming busy would be nice. Think of it like road hockey after all your friends went in for dinner, but your mom is still at work - at least you can still shoot the puck at the net for a while to amuse yourself...

[DayOne]

probably region based? But that would cause a LOT of downtime. I'd like to see global servers but then you get latency issues.

[ThGlump]

Best way this could be handled is like round based fps work. Have one central server that holds you character, and then it doesnt matter which game server you log on. Its best way to survive first month of new players rush, without the need of merging servers later. Just remove one and nobody will notice as they still keep they chars and picked servers by actual population on them. But each region can be separate to have more room for your character name.

It has one flaw. You could feel disconnected from progress of your empire on specified server if you know you can play at any other server any time.

[Goku]

Really depends on how the game is designed in my opinion. Depending on how successful the game is especially being F2P one server with the amount of maps at launch maybe not enough to accommodate everyone. I wouldn't be shocked to see a 1000 players from all empires on one cont, but I doubt we'll see 1000 vs 1000 vs 1000.

[Graywolves]

I think a server per region should be fine.

[Warborn]

I'm sure for all the bad things you have to say about those oh-so-boring multiple-server MMOs, you probably wouldn't want to have to wait in a queue to play on your server because it's full all the time, would you?

[Tatwi]

Best way this could be handled is like round based fps work. Have one central server that holds you character, and then it doesnt matter which game server you log on. Its best way to survive first month of new players rush, without the need of merging servers later. Just remove one and nobody will notice as they still keep they chars and picked servers by actual population on them. But each region can be separate to have more room for your character name.

It has one flaw. You could feel disconnected from progress of your empire on specified server if you know you can play at any other server any time.

That's some great feedback.

I considered adding something like that to the poll, but I left it out due to the nature of Planetside being that of a "persistent world", where the activities of characters effect the "progress" of the server itself. It's a good idea for load balancing for sure, but at the same time you're right in suggesting that it may make people feel disconnected from the bigger picture of the game. With that in mind, it would likely just make it that much more difficult for leaders to build up encounters/activities, given that all of the "content" in the game requires players to be fighting over something.

Personally, I wouldn't go this route for fear of it inhibiting the development of communities, rivalries, and ultimately all that "stuff" that makes a persistant world PvP game fun.

[Tatwi]

I'm sure for all the bad things you have to say about those oh-so-boring multiple-server MMOs, you probably wouldn't want to have to wait in a queue to play on your server because it's full all the time, would you?

No, I wouldn't want to wait to log in.

I'd rather log in right away and be placed in a location of the huge world that did not happen to be full at the time, so I can play there while wait to join the "main battle" - that is, if the secondary battles weren't intense enough for me. :) This is how *I* think the game should be "load balanced", because it gets people playing the game right away and gives incentive to experience something other than the "main battle".

[NivexQ]

The less servers there are, the better, as long as they aren't maxed out constantly.

[Vash02]

With the Pro7 contract signed its pretty damn certain its going to be geographically based servers.

[Graywolves]

I'm sure for all the bad things you have to say about those oh-so-boring multiple-server MMOs, you probably wouldn't want to have to wait in a queue to play on your server because it's full all the time, would you?

In the original Planetside the queue was in Planets/continents.

I'd prefer to have something like that if there needed to be a queue somewhere as instead of forcing the player base to other servers it would just add more battles.

[Warborn]

In the original Planetside the queue was in Planets/continents.

I'd prefer to have something like that if there needed to be a queue somewhere as instead of forcing the player base to other servers it would just add more battles.

The original Planetside wasn't terribly popular so population was rarely an issue. I think they'd like this game to do a bit better. The side-effect of that is queues if you don't allow for stuff like being able to put new servers online to handle the large population.

[Tatwi]

The original Planetside wasn't terribly popular so population was rarely an issue. I think they'd like this game to do a bit better. The side-effect of that is queues if you don't allow for stuff like being able to put new servers online to handle the large population.

It's a tough call, which is why I was curious to see what everyone else thought. :D

[WiteBeam]

A server per region allows for less lag and players in your time zone.

[xSquirtle]

having to many spreads the population thin. Having not enough causes lag for many people. So a in between is necessary to finding what works and where.

[DayOne]

A server per region allows for less lag and players in your time zone.

But then people like me who stay up till 2-3 in the morning wont get good server population. you will get a peak around late afternoon/evening then if you go on at any other time there will be hardly anyone on!

[Warborn]

But then people like me who stay up till 2-3 in the morning wont get good server population. you will get a peak around late afternoon/evening then if you go on at any other time there will be hardly anyone on!

If continents are capped at 100 or 200 people per side or something, would it make any difference really whether you have 3000 people playing on the server or 300? Having a single regional server would actually go a long way to ensuring there are always fairly significant fights going on. The only issue is that if the game is too popular you could have every continent be locked and wind up with queues. But having too few people around to fight wouldn't be an issue.

[WiteBeam]

But then people like me who stay up till 2-3 in the morning wont get good server population. you will get a peak around late afternoon/evening then if you go on at any other time there will be hardly anyone on!

The only way around that would be if you lived on the east coast, play on a west coast server. But then you have the problem with lag from distant players. Like when I play Werner. Or when CN play on our shit.

[Shogun]

i would say one per region and if they become too crowded open up alternatives and one free server-transfer per character. or a onetime character server copy so in case you chose an empty server you can still go back until the servers are more even.

[Coreldan]

For what this counts, when APB was being launched they said it's much easier and smarter to have too many servers at launch than too little. You can always merge them later, but if at launch you realize you dont have enough servers, trying to get new server running ASAP is no easy or quick task if you arn't prepared for it.

Failed launch when half of your players sit in queue instead of playing isnt fun either.

[Shogun]

ok good point. i just thought ps2 would require sme really massive servers that surely will eat up a lot of money. and as i know SOE they love to take money more than to spend it ;-) so my thought was they would upgrade when the game makes enough money and shows potency to generate even more with more serverpower.

i totally agree that the few regional servers would have to be able to take all the players at launch. estimating those numbers and prepare accordingly will be crucial.

[BigBossMonkey]

Launch with a dozen servers, because I'm guessing SOE will have this game (like their other F2P games) on Steam.

You'll need tons of servers to handle the initial load.

Once it settles down and the population levels off, merge them around until it's however many works.

[DOUBLEXBAUGH]

I would think they open with at least as many servers as PS1, 2 east coast, 2 west coast, 1 euro. On release PS1s pop could support all 5 servers, and PS2 should have a bigger starting population than PS1 did. Unless they can make the game work with 1000x1000x1000 per cont, it will need 5 servers at launch (probably more).

This is assuming they advertise the game like they keep saying they will, but we haven't seen anything yet.

[Tasorin]

One East Coast, One MidWest, One West Coast.

MidWest servers give NA players with a wide range of geographic locations in North America the chance to play on a server location that provides the best aggregate average ping time across the Clan base. Why should half our Clan be forced into playing on 100+ ping so that half our Clan can play on sub 50 ping, when we could all play on a MidWest server and usually average around 60 ping.

Texas or Illinois have plenty of robust server cluster options to support this.

[Mastachief]

People are thinking too small.

This is a free to play (yourway) aaa FPS they will need lots of servers per region to deal with the demand. There are 30000 people following the planetside 2 facebook page i reckon you can easily add a zero to that for actual people wanting to play once it goes through beta and marketing.

[Tasorin]

Until SOE defines "Free to Play" for PS2 who is to say what free really means.

[Scrima]

All depends on how many players there are. You can have ten continents each with a 1000 player per empire pop lock and you're "only" at 30,000 players. Games like WoW which have many many servers have millions of subscribers, if PS2 is anywhere even remotely as populated a simple "East, West, Europe" server system ain't going to cut it. Would be great if there was a dynamic server somehow that created new servers if the populations were too crowded and merged them if they were too empty, but for all the above reasons I do not know how this would be possible.

[fod]

1 speed optimized server per geographic region

a server anywhere near australia would be AWESOME
australia/new zealand/asia any of them would be much better than the 300+ ping i get in PS1

[KALU]

Even if i had Oceanic servers i would still play on the U.S West coast servers as I would rather play with my Outfit.....

[IronMole]

I think they should start small, like the original PS servers and then add new servers "if" needed.

[Xaine]

This is one of the problems i've been thinking about for a while, and i have no idea how to solve it.

Too many servers, and the population is too thin. Which is ok in some games, really fucking bad in this one.

Too few and you have queue times, but no lag as conts should be capped at a number of people. If there is a cap, the game should be able to handle that cap.

Storing your character on a centeral server like in other FPSes sounds good, but then you fast lose the sense of community that a server has. You also stop caring so much about 'your' world and 'your' empire, because you know tomorrow you won't be playing with the same people, or in the same world.

Its a tough one, no doubt about it. I wouldn't like to solve it.

[basti]

Once again, logic strikes:

The matter has nothing to do with what anyone wants. Its simply based on what is possible. And a single server isnt.

You have a poplock on each continent. Thats a hard limit, once the continent is full, its full.
You have a certain amount of continents. Once all continents are full, your screwed, as the server is literally full, no matter how many free hardware ressources you have.
You would need to start instancing, and that is a bad idea :P


So, they are literally forced to have multiple servers, if 2 many people show up to play (and they will). And since they have to split us anyway, no reason to not have local servers in Europe etc.

[BlazingSun]

I hope there will be a russian server and one for western europe. :angel:

[ringring]

The real question is ... can you play on any server you choose?

Will they compel current members of outfits to play on local servers and therefore split friend from friend.

The other issue to bear in mind is, will it be one empire per server?

[basti]

The real question is ... can you play on any server you choose?

Will they compel current members of outfits to play on local servers and therefore split friend from friend.

The other issue to bear in mind is, will it be one empire per server?

There has been talk about one empire per server before, and it strongly seems like they go that route. A good choice i think. :)

And the splitting happens at least between china and the rest of the world. No word on how the Pro7 deal is going to affect us, i REALLY hope i still use my SOE account for European servers...

[Xaine]

There has been talk about one empire per server before, and it strongly seems like they go that route. A good choice i think. :)


I really hope they do something like this.

Either that, or have it like it is in PS1 where you can't log onto a NC/VS character for a few hours, after you've logged a TR one.

[DOUBLEXBAUGH]

The problem with F2P and 1 empire per server is that you can just make a new account. Even if they put a 1 time purchase fee of $10 I'd pay that if I really wanted to play with some people from another empire on the same server. Only other deterring factor is if you buy something from the cash shop on your main account, you would need to buy it again if you want it on the second account, but that wont matter to me if cash shop stays cosmetic only.

[Hmr85]

There needs to be a server or 2 for old planetside 1 vets that we can only see for the first day or two. After that open it up to the public. I know its not realistic. But It would be cool to see familiar faces compared to us all thrown around again.

[Crator]

Would be great if there was a dynamic server somehow that created new servers if the populations were too crowded and merged them if they were too empty, but for all the above reasons I do not know how this would be possible.

I like this idea, if it's possible, it may actually work. Give outfits server assignments. If the server your outfit is assigned to is full then you are logged into a server that isn't full but put in a queue to your outfit assigned server which gives you priority over other queued players.

We don't know yet how the net code will work via regions. It might be really bad lag in high density situations if your trying to play on a US server from the UK for instance. If that's the case we'll defiantly have to have servers per regions.