Population... underestimation?

[Grognard]

My premise is "based", on the following map:
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3766/battlelines.png
...pulled from this post (thank you Xyntech):
http://www.planetside-universe.com/showpost.php?p=720199&postcount=10

So, I am wondering if they are (gu)estimating low. Those numbers on that map seem very reasonable to me, and yet... look how little of the map is being used on one continent. It appears, to me anyway, that there could be far more, perhaps even double that amount, once optimizations are complete.

I understand there are other factors, and that is precisely why I am posting this. I would like to hear opinions from others with more tech savvy than myself, weigh-in on the likelyhood, or unlikelyhood, that we might have even bigger populations.

Points? Counterpoints? Definitives?


Edit: What this map makes me hope for is: 1000x1000x1000. Support opinions, so no follow ups with "why?", please.

[i see you naked]

dont care because the VS will reign supreme and take away the whole planet, oh wait, new safe zones.. lolz

[Canaris]

dont care because the VS will reign supreme and take away the whole planet, oh wait, new safe zones.. lolz

VS are well documented for their delusions, wasn't the cult leader that set you up always talking to a barney doll

steering back around to the topic, that picture is only a mock up Xyn did. The thing you have to remember about PS is the chaos factor of such a large game, you can guesstimate that the battles will be spread out but from what we've seen in the original is most zergs tend to congregate together,

I'd forsee having one large scale battle going on or two depending on if all three empires are engaged, then you'll have various outfits or squads that will dictate certain stratgies and the direction of the battle.


For instance the TR zerg is attacking an AMP station and the VS are well entrenched and are having a happy farm.
usually a clever TR cmdr will decide enoughs enough and will lead his squad/platoon to another base say a nearby biolab in the hopes of catching it's defenses unprepared.

Now either 2 things will happen the TR zerg seeing that the biolab is a better choice will go charging at it and support the attack or the VS will need to strip out enough defenders to try and secure it also opening up the AMP station for the TR zerg to swarm over.

It's kind of a situation that repeats itself again and again on PS1,

I think clumping up of players will just happen.

[Otleaz]

After playing Arma 2, where the map is even larger, I can't help but feel like these maps will be completely flooded. Especially when the fights are all going to be along the front line.

[SKYeXile]

After playing Arma 2, where the map is even larger, I can't help but feel like these maps will be completely flooded. Especially when the fights are all going to be along the front line.

oh its gonna be zerg all day and all night, at least on my Blackrock 2.

[Figment]

You forget that you need room to maneuvre, push and pull, flank and pincer to have any sort of strategic combat.


If anything, it will feel very crowded and overwhelming to attempt anything behind enemy lines with less than 50 troops.

[Grognard]

So... 650x3 to 1000x3... not feasable? not probable? likely, almost certain?

Technical issues, server issues, soft cap for sake of clumping control... what are we talking here?

What about the other side of the coin... looks likely, due to... current technology, forgelight, map size, some other pros?


Edit: Im interested in the reasoning behind the opinions.

[Knotz]

I'm gonna wait and see how things play out... as long as I don't have to wait more than 2 minutes to spawn me a Mosquito... I'll be happy

[Toppopia]

What i am wondering, What if we make a character on a server, but for some reason it is always full the whole day and i can't join. Then does that mean i can't play with my outfit or friends? Or will we beable to move our character to another, more empty server so i can play with my friends? Because unless they make it only 2000 people can be signed up to a server, i can see very long wait times. Which most people will hate.

[Knotz]

What i am wondering, What if we make a character on a server, but for some reason it is always full the whole day and i can't join. Then does that mean i can't play with my outfit or friends? Or will we beable to move our character to another, more empty server so i can play with my friends? Because unless they make it only 2000 people can be signed up to a server, i can see very long wait times. Which most people will hate.

No, Maggie said on the day 2 coverage that it is 1 char per server.

[AThreatToYou]

I want a lot of players on the map and I have no problem with an extremely thick battle...
honestly the numbers per zone on that map are kind of depressing

As far as technical limitations, I would be extremely surprised if they could pull off 2000 players per cont all at once. 3000 is even better, but that I have a very hard time seeing. Servers experience a good amount of lag nowadays with even 32, 64, or 128 players... 2000? 3000? That is a serious stretch...


Also, at toppopia, it's 2000 per continent. If they continue with the 2000 per cont limit, that means there's 6000 max players.

[Toppopia]

I want a lot of players on the map and I have no problem with an extremely thick battle...
honestly the numbers per zone on that map are kind of depressing

As far as technical limitations, I would be extremely surprised if they could pull off 2000 players per cont all at once. 3000 is even better, but that I have a very hard time seeing. Servers experience a good amount of lag nowadays with even 32, 64, or 128 players... 2000? 3000? That is a serious stretch...


Also, at toppopia, it's 2000 per continent. If they continue with the 2000 per cont limit, that means there's 6000 max players.

But the other 4000 people don't interact with the other 2000, so as far as the 2000 is concerned, they are the only people on the 'server' till they decide to change, so technically the game would only have to keep track of the people that you are in contact with, so client side, you only have to worry about 2000 people, but the server i guess would still have to register the other 4000 people, unless the separate the work load so that the 2000 has a dedicated machine for it. But i don't know much about servers so this probably isn't correct or possible.

[Grognard]

It's a gut feeling.

I can cough up a bunch of rationalizations like people here like to do so much, but I'm not really afraid of being wrong every once in a while, so I can live with the uncertainty.

No, no, thats completely acceptable. I prefer the honesty. Every once in a while I just get the feeling there was more to someones answer, and I couldnt infer "the rest"...

[KTNApollo]

2000 per continent isn't going to happen. Beta will show why not. I'm guessing they're going to halve it within 3 months.

You must be some kind of netcode programmer that works at SOE with inside information on their code and engine to know what they can and can't do...

[AThreatToYou]

But the other 4000 people don't interact with the other 2000, so as far as the 2000 is concerned, they are the only people on the 'server' till they decide to change, so technically the game would only have to keep track of the people that you are in contact with, so client side, you only have to worry about 2000 people, but the server i guess would still have to register the other 4000 people, unless the separate the work load so that the 2000 has a dedicated machine for it. But i don't know much about servers so this probably isn't correct or possible.

Actually, toppopia, you're on to it even further.

I'm not worried about how much information can be sent across the internet from a server all at once. Plenty of other MMOs & websites have handled this fine by various methods.

I'm also not worried about how well the client processes over 2000 players at once. With network disregarded and a performance-saving complete lack of AI, there are certainly other engines out there that can run hundreds if not thousands of rigged bodies moving about and "fighting" in real-time. I recall an engine demo of UnrealEngine 3 having about a thousand or so Locusts (from Gears of War) all converging on a single point. Proper optimization can certainly make 2,000 or 3,000 "player objects" a possibility as long as you don't look at every one of them in supreme detail all at once.

What I'm more worried about is how a single server can process, run, and host a game tracking 6000 players at once. From my memory, however, a single "continent" was a single server box in PS1, so they could easily chunk a single server into basically 3 servers linked to a final server that processes all of the overflow over a LAN network. Prioritizing the assets can help to where things like map data, resource amounts, experience gains, kill credits or certification gains are all dumped to another machine as soon as the first one gets loaded. Still, other modern engines such as CryEngine 2/3, Unreal Engine, or Source run into serious problems as soon as all of those 2000 players start shooting, throwing grenades, ducking, dieing and re-spawning. The most powerful server boxes and most modern engines these days just can't handle 2000 players, let alone 1000 players, let alone 200 players. Most engines start to die as soon as they get past 100 players--and this isn't network lag, it's where the server just can't keep track anymore. PlanetSide 2's achievement of 2000 players all at once is, on its own, freaking amazing. I honestly believe we just have to leave it to the programmers who know the ins-and-outs of process management to push the player limit as high as it can reasonably go with today's hardware in a situation where it isn't limited by today's software.

[Toppopia]

What I'm more worried about is how a single server can process, run, and host a game tracking 6000 players at once. From my memory, however, a single "continent" was a single server box in PS1, so they could easily chunk a single server into basically 3 servers linked to a final server that processes all of the overflow over a LAN network. Prioritizing the assets can help to where things like map data, resource amounts, experience gains, kill credits or certification gains are all dumped to another machine as soon as the first one gets loaded. Still, other modern engines such as CryEngine 2/3, Unreal Engine, or Source run into serious problems as soon as all of those 2000 players start shooting, throwing grenades, ducking, dieing and re-spawning. The most powerful server boxes and most modern engines these days just can't handle 2000 players, let alone 1000 players, let alone 200 players. Most engines start to die as soon as they get past 100 players--and this isn't network lag, it's where the server just can't keep track anymore. PlanetSide 2's achievement of 2000 players all at once is, on its own, freaking amazing. I honestly believe we just have to leave it to the programmers who know the ins-and-outs of process management to push the player limit as high as it can reasonably go with today's hardware in a situation where it isn't limited by today's software.

Now imagine all 2000 people running to 1 spot, then fighting eachother, we might end up blowing the whole server complex into a million pieces :lol:

[Mechzz]

Now imagine all 2000 people running to 1 spot, then fighting eachother, we might end up blowing the whole server complex into a million pieces :lol:

If that happened, they'd have to go to CCP and buy their "time dilation" technology used to handle big space fleet battles in EVE. That would give SOE the chance to use a new strapline:

Planetside - bullet time on a planetary scale.

That might be fun, really!

[TeaReks]

Planetside 1 was able to handle 500? people per cont without too many problems on tech that's at least 9 years old. The other engines you brought up are not built from the ground up for MMO needs unlike Forgelight.

SOE is not some startup company trying something new. They had EQ, the first real 3d mmo. Planetside broke the mold of FPSs. I think these guys understand better than most what it takes to make a game like this.

[Astrok]

2000 per continent isn't going to happen. Beta will show why not. I'm guessing they're going to halve it within 3 months.

100 years ago they told us that flying trough the air wasnt going to happen.and they laugh at the people who wanted to try it.
Right now most people travel by plane.

So why 2000 people cant be happening?
Because u say so?

[Otleaz]

100 years ago they told us that flying trough the air wasnt going to happen.and they laugh at the people who wanted to try it.
Right now most people travel by plane.

So why 2000 people cant be happening?
Because u say so?

That isn't quite the same thing.

[aceshigh]

Relax guys. With their newly discovered VS technologies, 2000 won't be a problem.

[Astrok]

That isn't quite the same thing.

Tell me the differents then.

for me its the same principle.

Relax guys. With their newly discovered VS technologies, 2000 won't be a problem.

I think that if they want they can go even higher.

[Krawanan]

what an interesting thread this is :)

Im kinda into servers and hosting myself, so when i heard of planetside 2 like 6 months ago, i couldn't believe it, since as some posts in this thread state, it is just not possible with the resources we have now.
but since they could handle 500 players before(9 years ago!)

i think SOE might have found a very efficient way to do this.

i think we'll just have to trust them on their word, also they wouldn't have begun a project like this if they had known it would be impossible, would they ?

and i think they have done enough research and simulations(like with bots) to be sure that is possible, because again, sony would not invest this amount of money in something they wouldn't be 100% sure of was doable

[Landtank]

I think that if they want they can go even higher.

I agree, 2000 seems to be the sweet spot in terms of leaving enough open space on the map, but also making it seem like there is a war going on.

They have been promising 2000 players for too long for them to cut it back, that's how I see it.

[Baneblade]

PlanetSide 1 made the 500 player thing work by using CSHD instead of SSHD. PS2 will apparently be using a hybrid system.

[Kayos]

Obviously it can support 2000 or they wouldn't advertise it.

[Xyntech]

Higby has stated that there would be problems if 1000 players try to stand in one tiny area all at once, so clearly they are aware of some the of the major capabilities and possible limitations of their current system. The big questions are how effectively they will be able to keep too many players from going into the same area at once, and exactly how many players can be in the same area before it becomes a problem.

That mock up I did was essentially just for illustrative purposes, to show how players distributed mostly along front line battles would look. It was mostly for my own thought experiment and self education. A lot of players were trying to divide up the 2000 players evenly across all hexes, which just doesn't sound like it jives with the devs battle line style territory system that they are trying to achieve.

While the mockup does show slightly smaller battles than some may have expected out of PS2, don't forget that this is only a generally even spread across the borders. If Forgelight allows it, we may see some of those larger population battles I put in there being consolidated into 2 or 3 even larger battles, with the rest of the border skirmishes taken up mostly with smaller 5-30 vs 5-30 player conflicts.

We really don't know how the player distribution will work out until we get into beta and test for ourselves how well the territory system works. I feel that my mock up is a pretty good representation of the developers intention (at least based on what I could deduce of their intentions), but that doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of room left open for those battles to be quite a bit more spread out or clustered together than I showed.

I'm not going to hold my breath on PS2 succeeding at 2000 players, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility. I also don't think that the 200 - 300 player large battles I illustrated will be that tiny either, if that's the largest we end up with. The first game had a limit of 400-500 players per continent, and it was pretty rare that all of them would go to the exact same spot.

I think that Planetside 2 will tend to have similar, if not slightly larger average battle sizes compared to PS1, but it will go a step beyond by having many more of these battles packed relatively closely together. It will be like if you had 4 PS1 continents worth of population all crammed into one continent, but still spread out in a way more reminiscent of how they were spread out in the first game.

[Kurtz]

2000 per continent isn't going to happen. Beta will show why not. I'm guessing they're going to halve it within 3 months.

^this.

I hope for the best, still.

[kaffis]

As you suggest, I don't think Xyntech's number speculations are an unreasonable snapshot of player distribution.

However, take a look at that, and consider... the three-way at the center is 332 players in that one 5-hex region...

E3 was 100 players in a 7-hex region.

So Xyntech's guess at how 2000 would distribute on the continent already has quadrupled the player density of the most ambitious real-world test we're privvy to.

I'd say that given that, it's a bit hasty to declare that the 2000/continent estimate is already too conservative... Performance was good at what we can sort of assume might be a quarter of the load, and even that is assuming that the server and engine do a good job of partitioning space, so all we have to worry about is local density, and not increasing overhead for distant load.


To work off the border and grid distribution in Xyntech's map, we can see that regions adjacent to faction borders comprise 134 hexes' worth of area. We know that the E3 setup was a little more than 7 hexes' worth of space, with, reportedly, around a hundred players. So E3 density is ~15 players per hex, meaning that if the entire frontline supports a similar average density, you're talking about 2010 players.

Gosh, that number looks familiar, doesn't it? Could it possibly be that the E3 population was tuned around their performance goals? And that those performance goals are what yield a good experience, hopefully with a little slack built in to account for less even spreads?

But no, making assumptions like that would imply the developers know what they're doing, or have done some testing... ;)

[Turdicus]

It's a gut feeling.

I can cough up a bunch of rationalizations like people here like to do so much, but I'm not really afraid of being wrong every once in a while, so I can live with the uncertainty.

Lol elfailo I'll take that bet!

[Envenom]

As you suggest, I don't think Xyntech's number speculations are an unreasonable snapshot of player distribution.

However, take a look at that, and consider... the three-way at the center is 332 players in that one 5-hex region...

E3 was 100 players in a 7-hex region.

So Xyntech's guess at how 2000 would distribute on the continent already has quadrupled the player density of the most ambitious real-world test we're privvy to.

I'd say that given that, it's a bit hasty to declare that the 2000/continent estimate is already too conservative... Performance was good at what we can sort of assume might be a quarter of the load, and even that is assuming that the server and engine do a good job of partitioning space, so all we have to worry about is local density, and not increasing overhead for distant load.


To work off the border and grid distribution in Xyntech's map, we can see that regions adjacent to faction borders comprise 134 hexes' worth of area. We know that the E3 setup was a little more than 7 hexes' worth of space, with, reportedly, around a hundred players. So E3 density is ~15 players per hex, meaning that if the entire frontline supports a similar average density, you're talking about 2010 players.

Gosh, that number looks familiar, doesn't it? Could it possibly be that the E3 population was tuned around their performance goals? And that those performance goals are what yield a good experience, hopefully with a little slack built in to account for less even spreads?

But no, making assumptions like that would imply the developers know what they're doing, or have done some testing... ;)

I like the way you roll. I have full faith that SOE will pull this off. They wouldn't be advertising this if they couldn't.

Tech has come SOO far since PS1, and I think we will all be pleasantly surprised. :)

[Xyntech]

As you suggest, I don't think Xyntech's number speculations are an unreasonable snapshot of player distribution.

However, take a look at that, and consider... the three-way at the center is 332 players in that one 5-hex region...

E3 was 100 players in a 7-hex region.

Thanks for the retrospective analysis kaffis. I actually made that mock up back before E3 even happened, so it was really just a vague guestimate, but it seems more and more clear that it's close to what they are actually shooting for.

Only beta will tell if they meet their goals, and if they don't, how they will go about fixing it. They would either need to lower the population numbers which would probably also require that they redesigned the maps slightly, or they would have to fix and improve their systems for keeping players distributed.

I believe I've already made a strong case for Indar being approximately twice as large as Cyssor, but regardless, even if it's the same size as Cyssor, it clearly has more contestable territory (70+ capture points that affect continent control on Indar versus Cyssors 17). Clearly four or five hundred players is going to be spread too thin, and even 1000 may not be enough. Based on the number of territory control points, it really seems like 2000 players is an appropriate number to keep up with Planetside 1's scale, except that instead of being spread over 4 continents, the 2000 players will be on a single continent.

So while I have doubts that they would be able to get more than 2000 players on a single continent, I suspect that less than 2000 would be equally problematic. It all comes down to their solutions for keeping players distributed, hopefully in a natural way where we don't feel too much like we're being guided by the hand to where they want us to fight.

But 2000 players, if they succeed in getting that many to work, should be enough. I think it would give us just as many smaller and larger scale battles as the first game, with a few supersized PS2 exclusive scale battles on top of it for good measure. The first Planetside never saw a 600 player battle ever, so if they can find a way to achieve that then they will have gone above and beyond in my book.

[Eyeklops]

Could a modern computer architecture handle 2000 players? Let's do some research.

1. CPU: Reference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second)
2003 Pentium 4 Extreme Edition = 9,726 MIPS
2011 Intel Core i7 875K = 92,100 MIPS.
9 times more MIPS

2. RAM: Reference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates#Random_access_memory)
2003 PC-3200 (DDR-400) 3.2 GB/s
2011 PC3-12800 (DDR3-1600) 12.8 GB/s
4 times more bandwidth

It is typical for servers (not supercomputers i.e. cray), to use an architecture similar to their desktop counterparts, so performance vs date should have the same slope.

If Planetside 1 could hold 400 players per continent, a modern CPU should be capable of 3600 players, assuming a linear scale. However, when looking at RAM bandwidth, 1600 players is the basic theoretical max.

Answer: Inconclusive. We'll see in beta.

P.S. I would still be happy with 1200 players per server (300 per empire).

[Goldeh]

There isn't going to be 2000 players per cont...MAYBE in the beginning there will be ONE full and half of another and a quarter of another iunno, pulling out of my ass. but like all new game releases the population explosion will die down after the first month of release.

The way I see it the 2000 players per cont is a hype generator, I doubt that every cont is going to have the maximum 2000 players on it. Because also remember they're planning on adding new conts down the road. So those new cont's are gonna spread the player base around.

[Nemises]

Could a modern computer architecture handle 2000 players? Let's do some research.

1. CPU: Reference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second)
2003 Pentium 4 Extreme Edition = 9,726 MIPS
2011 Intel Core i7 875K = 92,100 MIPS.
9 times more MIPS

2. RAM: Reference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates#Random_access_memory)
2003 PC-3200 (DDR-400) 3.2 GB/s
2011 PC3-12800 (DDR3-1600) 12.8 GB/s
4 times more bandwidth

It is typical for servers (not supercomputers i.e. cray), to use an architecture similar to their desktop counterparts, so performance vs date should have the same slope.

If Planetside 1 could hold 300 players per continent, a modern CPU should be capable of 2700 players, assuming a linear scale. However, when looking at RAM bandwidth, 1200 players is the basic theoretical max.

Answer: Inconclusive. We'll see in beta.

P.S. I would still be happy with 1200 players per server (300 per empire).

hmm..folks,
When they say "server", they invariably mean server cluster...
...or some virtualised modern equivalent...
Back in the "old days" they would have had 20 or 30 servers, aggregated via an entry point, and handing off responsibility of certain areas to certain servers (aka WoW) ...assuming a similar paradigm exists, or some other clever highly parallel processing plant exists, you are not talking about "a" server, but a number of, all sharing the load (processing and network IO ).

From a client perspective, it's allmost the opposite...
Your client is never going to have to be responcible for handling what 2000 other clients are doing (that's the servers job!)..
The Server(s) will determine, based on your in game location what other clients are possibly visible, and what their updates are...and so, your client is only really:
- Drawing the game
- sending information on your actions
- receiving update packets from the server as to "possibly visible" clients and /or world events..

Your client will (perhaps arbitrarily) be handed off to a particular cluster node for updates...

So really, your client doesn't necessarily have to be any more powerful than for any other normal FPS (forgelight notwithstanding) , and their "server" architecture will be highly parallel (or some other fancy abstracted method the kids use these days!).

It would be interesting to know about how the architecture is organised at the back end BTW SOE chaps...even just an over view (x front end, Y backend, z processing per cluster)

[Thoreaux]

2000 per continent isn't going to happen. Beta will show why not. I'm guessing they're going to halve it within 3 months.

I second (third? etc?) this. I wish I didn't, but I do.

I believe that they can build a system which can host that many (or more) players spread out reasonably. It seems technically possible on both the server and client side. But I am dubious that they can stop players from just making a beeline to the center of the map with the missions system. 80-90% of players are gonna want to be part of the "big fight", just like in PS1. When that happens, graphics cards will melt, unless they've got some kind of voodoo up their sleeves.

IF on the other hand, they can get players to spread out in a T or Y shape so that there are always 3 fronts and a fight where they meet; perhaps then. They might still have to resort to soft instancing, whereby some players are simply unable to spawn in areas the game deems "overcrowded", as a means of pushing them to start fights elsewhere.

[Rivenshield]

This has been a private worry of mine for months now. I've never bought that they're going to be able to carry off 2K per continent. It might be possible so long as they aren't within eyeshot of each other.... but what happens when, not if, all three empires go at it hammer and tongs over the same base? I just can't see that working, no matter how many clever tricks the devs employ and how expensive our video cards are.

The bases are twice as large. The continents are fecking HUEG. In order to get the same population density you had in PS1, you're gonna need 700-800 people. 333x3 would be even better. A thousand people all shooting at each other at once with only minimal stuttering/lag would be flat awesome.

[Eyeklops]

hmm..folks,
When they say "server", they invariably mean server cluster...
...or some virtualised modern equivalent...

I know this. My comparision was just simplified for the window lickers.

A thousand people all shooting at each other at once with only minimal stuttering/lag would be flat awesome.

This has already been done by another company. Actually it was 999 players.
1000PlayerFPS (http://www.muchdifferent.com/1000PlayerFPS/)

[maradine]

Could a modern computer architecture handle 2000 players? Let's do some research.

1. CPU: Reference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second)
2003 Pentium 4 Extreme Edition = 9,726 MIPS
2011 Intel Core i7 875K = 92,100 MIPS.
9 times more MIPS

2. RAM: Reference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates#Random_access_memory)
2003 PC-3200 (DDR-400) 3.2 GB/s
2011 PC3-12800 (DDR3-1600) 12.8 GB/s
4 times more bandwidth

It is typical for servers (not supercomputers i.e. cray), to use an architecture similar to their desktop counterparts, so performance vs date should have the same slope.

If Planetside 1 could hold 300 players per continent, a modern CPU should be capable of 2700 players, assuming a linear scale. However, when looking at RAM bandwidth, 1200 players is the basic theoretical max.

Answer: Inconclusive. We'll see in beta.

P.S. I would still be happy with 1200 players per server (300 per empire).

Were it only linear. Adding actors to a firefight probably has a linear relationship to memory footprint, but a geometric relationship to message queueing and bandwidth. Put simply, if there's two of us, we need to pass two messages when shooting our guns. If there's three of us, we need to pass six messages to shoot our guns. If there's 4, 12. 5, 20. 6, 30.

Obviously, this only applies in a localization where everyone needs everyone else's updates. There will be many clusters of these localizations that scale linearly. My money's on O(n log n).

Your answer, however, is spot on. We don't know what hackery they're doing on the back end. Let us observe this thing called beta.

[Broadside]

What I really want to know is if 2000 per continent is a hard cap. Does this mean that once we are on a continent we can't go to any others if there are already lots of people on it? What if your entire faction gets pushed off a continent? Can they all retreat to a neighboring continent that already has 2000 people or are they stuck there in their warp gate forever?

[kaffis]

What I really want to know is if 2000 per continent is a hard cap. Does this mean that once we are on a continent we can't go to any others if there are already lots of people on it? What if your entire faction gets pushed off a continent? Can they all retreat to a neighboring continent that already has 2000 people or are they stuck there in their warp gate forever?
By all indications, there will be a hard cap. Whether that shakes out to 2000 is less sure, but likely the devs' goal.

You can't get pushed off a continent. The worst that can happen is you get pushed back to your uncaptureable foothold and mount a counter-assault from there. Your scenario is exactly why there are uncaptureable footholds in the first place.

[OutlawDr]

I already find 2000 to be suspect. Now we want 3000? It looked like the E3 demo had somewhere between 50-150 players at the base. Imagine multiplying that by 10. What happens when all 2000 players decide to hit a base at the same time? A very rare event to be sure, but lets just say a 1000 players ..hell 500 players all in one base. Are we expecting SOE to preform miracles and produce a feat no one else has even gotten close to pulling off? If PS2 can manage even 300 players all in one base no problem, I'll be damn impressed with their forgelight engine.

[maradine]

I already find 2000 to be suspect. Now we want 3000? The E3 demo had somewhere between 100-200 players at the base. Imagine multiplying that by 10. What happens when all 2000 players decide to hit a base at the same time? A very rare event to be sure, but lets just say a 1000 players ..hell 500 players all in one base. Are we expecting SOE to preform miracles and produce a feat no one else has even gotten close to pulling off?

In a word, yes. Whether you think it is miraculous or not is largely a matter of perspective. And if they don't, well, I don't see anyone else out there pushing the envelope, so I'm not going to be particularly hard on them if they shoot for the gold and wind up with a silver.

[OutlawDr]

In a word, yes. Whether you think it is miraculous or not is largely a matter of perspective. And if they don't, well, I don't see anyone else out there pushing the envelope, so I'm not going to be particularly hard on them if they shoot for the gold and wind up with a silver.
I agree its good that they shoot for gold, but some are asking for platinum and diamond here.
The premise of the OP is that 2000 is almost a given and maybe even not enough.
We'll be lucky if we really do get 2000. anything over that is just greedy
But who knows, for all we know, the forgelight engine is a huge technological breakthrough for gaming

[Grognard]

I agree its good that they shoot for gold, but some are asking for platinum and diamond here.
The premise of the OP is that 2000 is almost a given and maybe even not enough.
We'll be lucky if we really do get 2000. anything over that is just greedy
But who knows, for all we know, the forgelight engine is a huge technological breakthrough for gaming

My premise is a suspicion that perhaps its possible that they might be claiming 2k so as not to get hopes up too high, but underlying that is a real possibility of higher numbers. Pure supposition on my part... but not without a little inspiration, and admittedly, limited knowledge. The Devs modus operendi has been to claim low and deliver high, as E3 can attest to. So, I speculated here, that 2k might be a similar claim.

Hence the discussion, and why not? I am not convinced one way or the other yet, given the opinions so far, which have all been in good order. The only way to ferret out the difinitive yes or no, is to get it out there. I consider it an excellent pre-beta topic, since some of their concern for how many get in, and how fast, might have roots in the population capacity equation.

Similarly, the technical aspects of a project like this, facinate me, just like a good Vanu soldier :D There is nothing wrong with a little platinum, or diamonds... its a AAA title after all.

[Envenom]

I will relish the day when I see 2000 fully camoed Zebra soldiers fighting over a base. YES!

[Eyeklops]

999 players in an arena has been done, it is possible. 2000 players on 64 sqkm gracefully guided to disperse is also doable IMO. It's unlikely you will see 2000 people on the screen at once. If every person on a cont went to the same base, the death/respawn part should keep allot of them out of view. They have already stated that restrictions will be placed on respawning inside enemy SOI's, so the people that die will be forced to spawn out of your view/update area.

Another thing is TTK, a lower TTK sends people back off the crowded front line faster than a long TTK, less people will survive to heal, this will help with congestion. There is a ratio of TTK vs respawn/travel time to front line. The faster you die and the longer it takes to get back to the front line, the less general congestion everyone will see. The only place I expect to see any lag is the first time two major forces collide. But after a few min with players getting killed, they will just turn into a line of bodies moving from respawn to the front line, more evenly dispersed along that route.

Also, I would think the base designs will allow a large defending force to spread out and setup far enough away from each other as to not need updates on all 2000 players.

And, as a last ditch effort, the server will just start lowering the update radius for players if congestion gets too severe. PS1 did this, in a heavy firefight people would appear out of thin air allot. If PS2 could double the minimum radius, that may make the "appear out of thin air" problem not nearly as noticable.

;TLDR: PS2 will have many mechanisms from the ground up to help deal with overcrowding & congestion, wait for beta and let the devs tweak the settings, we will get 2000 on a cont.

[Eyeklops]

I also want to add the "if your in a plane over 2000 people" scenario. In that situation, if your high enough to see the whole battle, your probably far enough to not notice a tick rate reduction on most of the moving bodies. At that range they could use a heavier motion prediction system with less updates and you may never notice.

[Broadside]

I really hope the 2,000 hard cap doesn't screw up our ability to launch large scale invasions of already populated continents.

[Zidane]

I agree its good that they shoot for gold, but some are asking for platinum and diamond here.
The premise of the OP is that 2000 is almost a given and maybe even not enough.
We'll be lucky if we really do get 2000. anything over that is just greedy
But who knows, for all we know, the forgelight engine is a huge technological breakthrough for gaming

I agree, forgelight is a very impressive technology, cant wait to see it in action!

[Xyntech]

I really hope the 2,000 hard cap doesn't screw up our ability to launch large scale invasions of already populated continents.

You really shouldn't worry about that. The first Planetside only allowed 500 (later 400) players on a continent.

Also in the first game, you would reached an empire population cap, so while one empire could have a slightly larger share of the population than the other two on a population locked continent, you could never have a single empire fill up all of the slots.

If a continent is full, then there is already a large scale invasion going on.

[Noivad]

My premise is "based", on the following map:
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3766/battlelines.png
...pulled from this post (thank you Xyntech):
http://www.planetside-universe.com/showpost.php?p=720199&postcount=10

So, I am wondering if they are (gu)estimating low. Those numbers on that map seem very reasonable to me, and yet... look how little of the map is being used on one continent. It appears, to me anyway, that there could be far more, perhaps even double that amount, once optimizations are complete.

I understand there are other factors, and that is precisely why I am posting this. I would like to hear opinions from others with more tech savvy than myself, weigh-in on the likelyhood, or unlikelyhood, that we might have even bigger populations.

Points? Counterpoints? Definitives?


Edit: What this map makes me hope for is: 1000x1000x1000. Support opinions, so no follow ups with "why?", please.

The 2000 Player per server number is a arbitrary number. Until BETA the actual number of people that can be on a map is unknown. They can simulate load testing, but 2000 connections to one map globally will affect the results. They had to pick a number though, so why not 2000.

In PS1 the number was 500, but in reality the coundown to a full planet / cont / server started at 33 people. The command /who allowed you to see 25 people. But a total of 133 people locked the planet. the other two faction each had somehere between 0 and 133 as well. So total actualy was really 399 people.

When a cont/planet got full you either waited in a line/queue to get into the pop locked planet, or you just went to one of the other 9 planets.

Higby has stated that the mission system will take you to fighting if you pick a mission. SOE trhe game will be able to redirect players coming online to different maps to move load.

Since this is a persisant world, with the map never changing, is different then what most people are used to in an MMO. There are no shards here. Your character will have access to everything it owns no matter what map your on. The servers are related, not unrelated as is the case for sharded games.

Most MMOs have 90% of their players all playing in a relatively small area on a map. PS1 and PS2 will spread the player base over several smaller areas, because the mission system will drive most of the players to different areas of the map.

[Stew]

http://i959.photobucket.com/albums/ae76/stew360/indar64.png

This will be the map with 64 km2 ! 2000 players/64km2 = 31.25 for each square kilometre if equally disperse around the maps wich barely impossible but if so their will be 32 players almost in each BF3 medium size maps its enough to have a decent figth

but like i said this is the (( worst senarios )) most of the time their willbe 32 player enconter and some 300 players war and some 100 players war etc.. so yeah most of the time the action will spread in around 6 to 10 Hot spot so thats mean 333 player figth or 200 player figth at least ;)

[xnorb]

No clue why so many people want meatgrinding clusterfucks.

I'll try to get some footage of insane vehicle-heavy combat in Beta and
from that on i'll try to take the more tactical route and leave the "hot zones"
to the ones that prefer meatgrinding.

[Karrade]

No point speculating on things people haven't experienced, your just inventing things if you do that.

A solution - Concentrate spawn points on areas that are less populated, for flanking. This will benefit the side anyway, and ideally will be possible for people who are in command ranks in the faction. (If that still exists from PS1).

This way, while not commanding the zerg, you can position it to your sides advantage and break stalemates.

If that isn't possible then have the spawn points just lock automatically for new arrivals (not those already in the fight), and spread out the battle lines a bit if any spot becomes too entrenched to move.

[ShadowDemon]

I am worried about this for a couple reasons. I want to play this game because of it's large scale, but I don't want to just be in a massive zerg.

They are designing this game to encourage people to be on the front lines all the time. There are also dis-incentives to discourage play away from the front line. (ie. harder to capture bases)

With a population cap of 1000x3 per continent, all of those people will be fighting at the same points. The problem being is that they describe the bases as "each one is as big as a battlefield map." The average battlefield 3 map is made for 32 - 64 players. That is not even close to 3000 players.

Let's try to be fair and say there are 15 bases per continent. That is 3000/15 which is 200 per base. That is saying that all bases will be used at the same time, which they won't be. 200 people in a map designed for 64 people is going to be crowded.

Even if you say 33% of those people will be flying, that still leaves 132 people. That is still double the normal size of a battlefield map population.

I will play devil's advocate now and say that you will not be reaching the population cap. I still think people will migrate to the fighting. No one wants to be off in the remote parts of the continent capping bases by themselves. In fact, that is even discouraged by the game.

The question will be, what are the server caps. If the server is capped at 3000, then most likely the whole server will not be all on one continent. But never bank on something like that.

I really hope that PS2 isn't going to be a zerg fest. I know it will be for the first month, but maybe after people get over the initial rush it will be more manageable.

[Karrade]

I am worried about this for a couple reasons. I want to play this game because of it's large scale, but I don't want to just be in a massive zerg.

They are designing this game to encourage people to be on the front lines all the time. There are also dis-incentives to discourage play away from the front line. (ie. harder to capture bases)

With a population cap of 1000x3 per continent, all of those people will be fighting at the same points. The problem being is that they describe the bases as "each one is as big as a battlefield map." The average battlefield 3 map is made for 32 - 64 players. That is not even close to 3000 players.

Let's try to be fair and say there are 15 bases per continent. That is 3000/15 which is 200 per base. That is saying that all bases will be used at the same time, which they won't be. 200 people in a map designed for 64 people is going to be crowded.

Even if you say 33% of those people will be flying, that still leaves 132 people. That is still double the normal size of a battlefield map population.

I will play devil's advocate now and say that you will not be reaching the population cap. I still think people will migrate to the fighting. No one wants to be off in the remote parts of the continent capping bases by themselves. In fact, that is even discouraged by the game.

The question will be, what are the server caps. If the server is capped at 3000, then most likely the whole server will not be all on one continent. But never bank on something like that.

I really hope that PS2 isn't going to be a zerg fest. I know it will be for the first month, but maybe after people get over the initial rush it will be more manageable.


I know a lot of people that liked capping things behind the lines. If you are not 'most people' you cannot speak for them. I often played the guy opening up a new front to steer the zerg in another direction, we'd be a 3 or 5 man team and change the entire battlescape at times. - That was fun.

I think you have to give the regiments more credit than you are seemingly doing, and if you want a more structured organised attack join one, if you want in the zerg join it.

I know a lot of people that moved quickly, and didn't get entrenched in PS1, in fact it was encouraged that we moved our behinds out of lost causes to more useful places to set up.

So many people inventing problems that don't yet exist and speculating on them. If PS2 has a zerg why not use it to the sides advantage?

[TAA]

I am worried about this for a couple reasons. I want to play this game because of it's large scale, but I don't want to just be in a massive zerg.

SNIP

With a population cap of 1000x3 per continent, all of those people will be fighting at the same points. The problem being is that they describe the bases as "each one is as big as a battlefield map." The average battlefield 3 map is made for 32 - 64 players. That is not even close to 3000 players.



I dont think it will be a problem at all. The bases themselves are about the size of a BF3 map, but the fighting will occur between bases as well. In the E3 videos the bases were very close together so that everyone who spawned was getting straight into the fight. It was repeatedly stated that the large bases would be quite a distance from each other, with numerous smaller spawn points and strategic capture points scattered between them.

There will be people fighting it out for control of all the different spawn points around that large base. Every side valley will have something going on in it as troops try to flank each other. The fight for that one base could take days to resolve. Meanwhile smart players will go and attack other outposts on the frontline (or behind enemy lines) where they know that small groups can make a difference and cap points while the enemy main forces are distracted.

In summary: just pick the size of the fight you want to be in. If you dont like the zerg dont go with the zerg. Even if you go cap a base by yourself after a few minutes the enemy will show up to fight you off anyway, so you will get a action after all.

[ShadowDemon]

I know a lot of people that liked capping things behind the lines. If you are not 'most people' you cannot speak for them. I often played the guy opening up a new front to steer the zerg in another direction, we'd be a 3 or 5 man team and change the entire battlescape at times. - That was fun.

I think you have to give the regiments more credit than you are seemingly doing, and if you want a more structured organised attack join one, if you want in the zerg join it.

I know a lot of people that moved quickly, and didn't get entrenched in PS1, in fact it was encouraged that we moved our behinds out of lost causes to more useful places to set up.

So many people inventing problems that don't yet exist and speculating on them. If PS2 has a zerg why not use it to the sides advantage?

Just voicing my concerns.

You are correct though I am speculating, but it's hard not to when no one has been playing it. :)

I just say my piece and trust that the developers are intelligent people who have taken this all into consideration.

I think once beta starts, they will have more statistics to work with and know how battles work.

I applaud your behind the lines strategy. I myself did that too. I wander off and try to draw people away from the main fighting force. I just know that PS2 is trying to recruit a lot of FPS players.

From the games I have played (And I am just using my experience so don't fault me) in battlefield 3, people don't understand objectives. Many times I feel like I am the only one going after the objective while the rest of the team is playing death match. There are some organized groups, but battlefield 3 just ends up with people going for kill counts.

I am hoping outfits will bring some order to these kill counters, but it will take time.


I dont think it will be a problem at all. The bases themselves are about the size of a BF3 map, but the fighting will occur between bases as well. In the E3 videos the bases were very close together so that everyone who spawned was getting straight into the fight. It was repeatedly stated that the large bases would be quite a distance from each other, with numerous smaller spawn points and strategic capture points scattered between them.


This is true. Again We will have to wait to see how it all plays out. I want this game to be good because I want this to be my next addictive MMO :)

[kaffis]

With a population cap of 1000x3 per continent, all of those people will be fighting at the same points. The problem being is that they describe the bases as "each one is as big as a battlefield map." The average battlefield 3 map is made for 32 - 64 players. That is not even close to 3000 players.

Let's try to be fair and say there are 15 bases per continent. That is 3000/15 which is 200 per base. That is saying that all bases will be used at the same time, which they won't be. 200 people in a map designed for 64 people is going to be crowded.

Even if you say 33% of those people will be flying, that still leaves 132 people. That is still double the normal size of a battlefield map population.
I'm just popping in here to point out a few flawed assumptions to help your math out.

First off, we've seen the map for Indar. There are 72 facilities that govern territory, 9 of which are bases the size of Zurvhan (which we saw at E3). So, even allowing for the fighting being concentrated at the front lines, that's a lot more than 15 fights. I figure I'll be shocked if less than 2-3 full-size bases are being fought over at a time (on a full continent, population-wise), and the E3 scenario was around 100 players, and felt like there was room for more, especially when you consider that the E3 setup had artificially close respawn locations with vehicle terminals present.

So figure on maybe 400 players occupied by fighting over those 3 bases. Now, we've got 63 smaller facilities of various sizes. Based on hex-counts and facility counts, we can say that the average remaining facility consists of about 4 hexes, or a little over half the land area of a full-fledged base (which sit on territories of 7 hexes). So we'll call their fights a bit more than half as big, say, 75 players. So with 1600 players left on the continent, and 75 players per fight, that's about 21 additional facilities being fought over.

That leaves us fighting over 1/3rd of the map at the front lines. And looking at said maps, that looks like not a bad estimate.

I don't think we're going to feel all that crowded, considering the back-of-the-envelope math I just did in this post based on a 20% more dense fight than E3 showed.

[ShadowDemon]

Cool thanks for fixing my math kaffis :)

I knew they were taking it all into consideration. But, I haven't played the beta so my math was flawed you are right:)

[Trolltaxi]

That long frontline is the magic behind the 2000 men/cont targetted population.

They must make sure they are in different zones where they can be treated in small groups instead of a huge batch of players. I think SOE knows what they are doing.