Players per hex

[The Kush]

I am curious about the "ideal" amount of players per hex the devs are shooting for. Without a solid front line, more places to hack, and some new features it seems the game is pushing away from massive battles and instead is attempting to setup "smaller battles" that mimick the size of other fps by "spreading people out". Essentially you are left with a bunch of small CoD battles taking place next to each other but not necessarily coordinated together. I for one was a fan of huge battles with more then 50vs50vs50 in one base or now for PS2 reasons we can call a "hex". I guess I just want to know that a decent amount of players can be in a hex at one time. What do you guys think? What's the max? Can a dev speculate on what the target number of players is per hex? Thanks!

[The noob]

The devs never said anything about limits or anything of the sort for hexes, so I assume pretty much any number can be in a hex. I'd say the more smaller scale fighting would be reserved for the outpost hexes though, with larger numbers in the facility hexes, but we practically have no clue how they will play out.

[Mechzz]

One scenario I hope to see is that over an evening's play the battle builds through stages. First off with small, probing attacks to find the weak spots. Then a few resources-strategic hexes are capped. As the enemy responds, the main zerg battle develops and the evening rounds off with huge 666 v 666 v maybe 50 (full 3-way less fun imo) night battle for a major walled base.

One advantage of the new design is that if game performance suffers when too many of us congregate for battle, we can get away to other meaningful places on the map to "make shit happen"

[Atheosim]

Yeah, and additionally, the server will actually create missions that players can complete, which is the team's nifty little way of spreading the pop out across the cont.

[Mechzz]

Yeah, and additionally, the server will actually create missions that players can complete, which is the team's nifty little way of spreading the pop out across the cont.

True this. There's so many levels to the new game, it's hard to keep them all in focus at once!

[Atheosim]

True this. There's so many levels to the new game, it's hard to keep them all in focus at once!

So insanely excited for this game.

[IMMentat]

more than 1
less than 2000.

Somewhere around 1/3 of each empire fighting over the primary goal per continent, so 450 on a BIG basefight, plus satalite and backhacks and roaming squads.

[Atheosim]

more than 1
less than 2000.

Spammy :doh:

[The Kush]

Yeah, and additionally, the server will actually create missions that players can complete, which is the team's nifty little way of spreading the pop out across the cont.

Yup this too. It all contributes to trying to spread out the population into small battles.

[Zekeen]

more than 1
less than 2000.

I dunno, the devs did state the word THOUSANDS for the PS2 scale, and who knows, they might all fit in a single hex.

But really, the hex count will be so variable at all times, that's the beauty of it. It'll be so dynamic it won't matter.

[Miir]

Higby has mentioned in a few interviews now that the mission system will be used to help spread out the battle. Here's one of the latest ones:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-05-24-sony-onlines-planetside-2-can-it-grab-the-call-of-duty-audience

The Mission System kind of solves a couple of different goals for us. At the easiest level, at the basis level, what it does is it lets us create missions to go do things on the continent to spread players out. I don't want everybody to be fighting at one base, so I'll create some other missions that tell people to go fight over here and over here. And the server can kind of balance people across the battlefield a little bit that way.

This however does not in any way stop everyone from going to one hex.

In searching further I came across this message from Higby on the reddit AMAA. Which is sort of similar to what you are asking and probably relevant.

The original question was:
Is it possible for the PS2 server to handle thousands of players in one hexagon or at one base? or is there some kind of in game system thing that stops this from occurring?

Truthfully any time 1000 players decide to stand next to each other you're going to have some problems. Luckily in Planetside you'll be most likely killing some percentage of those guys before they totally fill up your screen. We don't have any planned heavy handed methods to keep people from travelling where they want to within a continent, but we will be doing things like putting missions up to encourage players to spread out and keep around optimal player populations in battle areas.

Likely they won't know until beta and they start to ramp the population up to do some stress testing. But it sounds pretty promising that it will be a high number.

Couple questions I have from this is:

What happens if the game can only handle 500 players per hex before it hurts performance. How do they stop the other 1500 people from coming into the hex in an open world MMO?

[Mechzz]

What happens if the game can only handle 500 players per hex before it hurts performance. How do they stop the other 1500 people from coming into the hex in an open world MMO?

Good research Miir.

The answer to your question is "time dilation". As you enter the hex of doom, your FPS will crash and your reaver will facepalm the nearest rock due to input lag. You will then respawn at least 5 hexes away, never more to enter the "Bermuda Hex". Pretty self-regulating, I think?

[Lonehunter]

I think the battlefield is going to evolve constantly. Yes with more places to play with this completely usable map it could be more spread out. But we only have 3 major Facilities now. When the front line gets close to those, I expect forces to converge. Or a front line could span across a whole continent, but Commanders could coordinate their missions to blitzkrieg a certain hex and therefor draw more defenders.
There will certainly be days when people just want to join the biggest fight, to see the epic themselves

[Rozonus]

This is one of the many, MANY things that we can test as a community in the beta! It shouldn't be too hard to organise testing events like this.

Things such as, what happens when 2 Sunderers from different factions with the high torque engine sidegrades have a head-on collision? What happens if you were to put a tank in between them?! The possibilities are endless.

[MCYRook]

What happens if the game can only handle 500 players per hex before it hurts performance. How do they stop the other 1500 people from coming into the hex in an open world MMO?
They shouldn't. If anything, players will voluntarily avoid the superbig slugfests if performance there is really that bad - in fact, that's pretty much what happened in PS1. But they shouldn't limit the freedom of movement in an open-world game just because framerate drops when people all clump up, and I highly doubt they will.

Maximum player count per continent will certainly be adjusted with general performance in mind, but as Higby said, having them on the same cont is one thing, having them on one screen is another.

[Figment]

In principle the edge skirmishes should draw people away from the fight. If continent design funnels players in different directions too, it shouldn't be that bad.

You should expect around 1200-1500 people in one battle on a regular basis though: When three zergs meet somewhere (one zerg held of other zerg, third zerg is left free and arrives at stalemate situation eventually).

[Stardouser]

What happens if the game can only handle 500 players per hex before it hurts performance. How do they stop the other 1500 people from coming into the hex in an open world MMO?

This could indeed be a flaw of using continents this small. I know 8km X 8km is vast compared to a BF map but it's not vast compared to 2000 players.

[Mastachief]

They shouldn't. If anything, players will voluntarily avoid the superbig slugfests if performance there is really that bad - in fact, that's pretty much what happened in PS1. But they shouldn't limit the freedom of movement in an open-world game just because framerate drops when people all clump up, and I highly doubt they will.

Maximum player count per continent will certainly be adjusted with general performance in mind, but as Higby said, having them on the same cont is one thing, having them on one screen is another.

This ^

Any artificial limitation would be against the very idea of the game.

[Sabot]

You can still go cap hexes that aren't directly next to the one the zerg is at. If there's over 1000 players in that big battle, you'd be better off trying to cap other hexes anyway (unless it's the last one on the cont or sometihng). Not only would it help your faction, it draws enemies away from the larger battle and helps with performance that way. IMO, zering a cont hex by hex wont be doable, if there are equal numbers, and the enemy faction knows what they're doing. your faction will be concentrated on one thing and you'll lose resources for it, and eventually start losing battles because of that.

[Figment]

This could indeed be a flaw of using continents this small. I know 8km X 8km is vast compared to a BF map but it's not vast compared to 2000 players.

An additional problem with a small map is the ease with which those players transfer to a nearby "separate" battlefield on the same continent.


The hexes should provide a bit more incentive to using the entirety of the map in comparison to PS1. That is to say, at least the entire front is an option. With PS1, fights were funneled into chokepoints (specific bases) and people were generally not imaginative enough or too lazy to create other routes than the straightforward one or even if attacking the straightforward one, by their own (longer) routes.

Basically, PS1 maps were fine as in created for players who created their own routes, but the players were lazier than PS1 devs expected. Meaning the PS1 map design did not quite match the player psychology: the game itself did not entice them to use alternate routes with small, clearly visible rewards if they take the route. A lot of the rewards you got in PS1 for taking those routes were non-visible for those who did not have the wish or need to see it: a potential strategic advantage.

The problem with PS2 map design is that the sanctuaries may undo a lot of those advantages.

[Stardouser]

I just think that a larger map, continent in this case, with more space between bases is best. The travel time helps spread people out as well, in other words. This would mean, for example, literally taking the current continent and pulling them outward by the corners, stretching them until they are more like 12km X 12km, and use that for 2000 people. Same number of bases, but further apart. This would create a meaningful travel time(still kinda short though), but which is offset by deployed galaxies and squad respawning, which basically mean that yea, you may have a full 5 minute journey from whatever base you started from but you set up your forward bases and then it's not so long on the respawn.

Unfortunately, I don't know if we will ever escape that cleanly from the meatgrind of BF3 and CoD.

[Hyiero]

I'm pretty sure nearly 40miles of land space is more than enough to house and spread out a 2,000 man population. The hex system really imo prevents a 2,000 man battle, with so many places to cap the battle isn't needed to play out all at one base. As someone already stated, you will probably see 500-1,000 man battles over a bigger facility but I couldn't see anything higher than that number. But I definitely think it is something that we need to organize as soon as beta starts. Not to hard to make everyone get into a 1 or 2 hex area during prime time if something is setup in advance.

[kaffis]

If I see actual play shake out so we see 300-400 people (distributed amongst 2 or 3 sides, whatever) at a very hotly contested base (which, if we recall, occupy/govern multiple hexes, frequently around 6-7), I think Planetside 2 will have fulfilled its promises of scale. That's basically the entire continent population of Planetside 1 at one fight -- you can't deny that Planetside 1's scale was exciting and felt good. The bonus is... here, that's just one of 5 or more! The 200-man fight could be the *diversion*!

[Miir]

They shouldn't. If anything, players will voluntarily avoid the superbig slugfests if performance there is really that bad - in fact, that's pretty much what happened in PS1.

That is pretty much what I did in PS1... but I always considered that a bit of a design flaw and one I kind of hoped that they would resolve in PS2.

One thing to remember this time around is there are permanent footholds.

In the unlikely event an empire gets pushed back to their foothold you would potentially see a huge increase of players per hex. This increase would be harder to avoid and if there is a performance issue (unknown at this time) this could likely result in the attacking players giving up and moving on to some other area of the map that is less dense.

I never liked having to avoid the larger battles just to have better performance.

It would be cool if they could come up with a way to regulate the population. That gives the players the "illusion of free choice" but really keeps the game running at peak performance. That sounds like what they are trying to accomplish with the mission system. Except you still have the option to ignore it. Which I imagine a lot of large outfits will do if it conflicts with their battle plans.

[IMMentat]

The very idea of hexes encourages a spread out battle, a stalemate between 2 large forces will just encourage the third to fragment and go on a land-grab (mentioned earlier).
The trinity is the least stable political shape, always one person looking to find a back to stab. :p

Thankfully bases can be effectively fought over by 3 empires now, we have seen 3-6 nodes per base as opposed to a single CC to defend.

Even still, teritory advantages and UI warnings of back-hacks (Will require a fly over I hope) will determine if a #Y# shaped frontline will wind its way across the map, or if pushes into core teritory will be a popular tactic, resulting in more random continent ownseship. Maybe 25% to 33% of each map in active use at any time with a #Y# shaped battle line, 50% or more with easy back-hacks. Its down to developer choice and contition tuning.

Base numbers, capturability, placement and benefits will determine the position of the fights.

[Anderz]

I have a feeling that 2,000 players is a maximum I don't think I'll ever see reached. Probably half that would be more realistic, especially if there are any servers where I'm from (Australia).
Even then, I'm sure the battles will be suitably epic. Heck, I've never played a game with more than 64 players in a server -- that's right, I've never played an MMO! -- so a 20% full server would still blow my mind.

[Xyntech]

obviously they intend to spread those 2000 players out a bit, but there is a big difference between spreading it out into 5 battles with 400 players (remember that 400 players is ps1's current continent limit) vs spreading it out over 50 battles with 40 players each.

also let's keep in mind that each hex zone will usually be created out of several hexagons of varying numbers, so there may not even be that huge a number of zones on the map, and I highly doubt that every zone will constantly have an even distribution of players.

the first game had a former limit of 500 players per map, and it was pretty rare to have all of those people fighting over the same area, much less having them all on screen at once. as long as ps2 has at least 300 people or more in the larger battles, it will be as grand or better than the first game.

stress testing the game will certainly be interesting

[Serpent]

Things would look rough if 3000 people were in the same hex, I'd imagine.

But, Zerging around is always something the devs will consider, because that's just how the game will work in some cases. (Actually, most likely in quite a few cases).