2000/map is huge but enough?

[Trolltaxi]

Seeing recent events around Planetside Day I really have a major concern about the capacity of the servers.

Yesterday evening (EU primetime) we had 4 poplocks and a decent fight for all empires. I saw BRTD running 7 squads, we had 3+half and others are enjoying their reunion for sure.

We made it into the Amerish fight which got full within a minute or less, and there was queue of about 60-70. Some of them were our outfitmates and they couldn't really do anything to catch up with us. Someone estimated more than 3000 players at that time.

When PS2 starts, it will have 3 continents and every continent will have a population of 2000. That is 6000/server. I'm sure that SOE is targeting more than 100.000 players at a time which means a lot of servers. This means

- scattered community
- larger outfits probably will probably have issues that they cannot fit on one continent with their full manpower. Like it happened on yesterday's events - and these were just the vets with their free 30 day playtime.

Adding new continents will increase the number of players (each continent means another 2000 players in the same war at least). But what happens untill then?

[Goku]

Community isn't going to be scattered at all IMO. I fail to see how having say 20 servers at launch will cause this. If there really that many thousands of players on each server they will create their own inter community with their server. Just like how it was done on PS1, but on a greater scale.

Outfits will just have to manage I guess. I still don't see one outfit pop locking an entire cont on their besides say a major event. There will probably only be a handful of outfits capable of pulling that off anyway.

[maddoggg]

I think it would be nice if SOE gives the option to make somewhat custom competitive servers,where if an outfit (or even just a player)does well,they can get reserved slots for the server.

[Goku]

This isn't that kind of game that is going to be granting reserve slots and kicking others out of the fight. They don't own the server.

Lets not turn this into a different type of server thread possibility either.

[Winfernal]

We don't even know if 2000 per cont is possible yet. It might get decreased during beta...

Or increased, who knows?

[LegioX]

Just have 1 big ass map and be done with it.

[Sledgecrushr]

Allow server transfers, so you and your outfit can se up shop on a server that isnt poplocked and you can play with your buds.

[Otleaz]

I don't see how increasing server capacity will help outfits gather together. One server with 12,000 slots will have just as many issues as two servers with 6,000 slots.

Either way, people are vastly overestimating the map size. In Arma 2, the maps are the same size, larger if you take into consideration travel speed. In arma 2 a map with 200-300 players is pretty crowded, and that is spread out over the entirety of the map. With PS2, the players will be congregating to the front line... It will be a clusterfuck in every meaning of the word if they stick with 2000 players.

[Zalmoxis]

I don't think it should be decreased. The continents are 64 square KM, which means they are roughly like 64 Battlefield maps put together. And with 2000 players on them, it means around 31 players per each hexagon, which would be like playing an outdoor BF3 map on a 31 server. This is just a rough approximate, since there will be a lot of clusterfucking around bases and nearly empty areas on a few hexagons. ( note, not comparing the actual games here so no homo please)

If anything, the player count should increase a bit. Would be more fun as well. But, then again, this is just theory since we didn't get our hands on the CB yet.

[ChipMHazard]

Yesterday was special, normally I doubt servers will be that hard pressed.

[exoteror]

I do belive this is a vaild concern but I am sure the developers have thought about this.

I think someone is correct in assuming that planetside will want 100k people playing and as someone mentioned SOE will just have 20 servers or so.

My question is what is 10k people want to get onto one server? you woulden't get chance to play. You can't simply say play on another server as your charcter is locked to it.

I belive that people should be able to swap servers easily and have your same charcter across them all.

[Rivenshield]

If the game takes off like a bat out of hell, the best way to scale up IMHO is to ADD MORE CONTINENTS. I hope they have a couple semi-prepped and ready.

At any event, I would like to see us vets keep our *own* community intact. We should nominate our own server of choice to flock to, so we can keep our solidarity with old friends and enemies alike... but that will doubtless emerge out of beta anyway.

[Rago]

Just have 1 big ass map and be done with it.

:cool: Thank´s my Word , man.

[Graywolves]

My one concern with this is let's say my outfit is on Amerish. All three continents are pop locked. There's no sanctuary so you're in queue for anywhere. You end up on Esamir. Now you wait another queue to play with your outfit.

If this kind of thing becomes anywhere close to common place I'm sure they'll add something like let you queue for the cont upon login or provide something like a sanctuary if not just for these moments.

[super pretendo]

There will always be high pop servers

[CuddlyChud]

I don't think it would be any more fractured than the PS1 community. If you think about it, at launch there were 10 conts (13 if you counts sancs). There was also a pop lock of 400 per cont, so at most you could have 4000 fighting at anytime.

[Kezz]

...31 players per each hexagon, which would be like playing an outdoor BF3 map on a 31 server. This is just a rough approximate, since there will be a lot of cluster...

Yeah. A *very* rough approximation. I reckon you'll get ten times that many in any given actively contested location. If the continent is full.

[kertvon]

So far as pops and server load spreading the community, that is a side effect of scale. Not much can be done about that. I do disagree with VIP server reservation and anything else that promotes splitting up players.

Hopefully PS2 really does utilize the conts better than PS1. There should be perks for dedicated "out and midfielders" that take the fights outside of the parameter of the base to hold off reinforcements. People simply won't have incentive to do so without any progression bonuses and that would drastically decrease the quantity of players near the assaulted or defending base.

[Russ]

I think its a good number. It allows small groups to do behind line caps, but at the same time keeping it balanced with having the timer doubled.

[The Loverator]

We don't even know if 2000 per cont is possible yet. It might get decreased during beta...

Or increased, who knows?


Lulz i dare to guess they haven't said it for Fun the last Month's that a single Continent shall be able to support at least 2000 Player's playing at the same Time...

But honestly, if they would decrease it by a few hundred Players on each Site - i would not die from it either. But if Player-Counts would decrease to much, then maaaaaaaaany, nice Space gets wasted. ; 3


greeting, LV.

[noxious]

The event was only problematic because the it caused a large activity spike. Typical populations are manageable. The same will be the case in PlanetSide 2. If PlanetSide has been able to handle so many players with a much lower population limit per continent, I see little reason to suspect there will be a problem in PlanetSide 2, which is targeting a much higher population limit per continent.
I don't see how increasing server capacity will help outfits gather together. One server with 12,000 slots will have just as many issues as two servers with 6,000 slots.

Either way, people are vastly overestimating the map size. In Arma 2, the maps are the same size, larger if you take into consideration travel speed. In arma 2 a map with 200-300 players is pretty crowded, and that is spread out over the entirety of the map. With PS2, the players will be congregating to the front line... It will be a clusterfuck in every meaning of the word if they stick with 2000 players.
This is rather tangential, but ArmA II's Chenarus is substantially larger than PS2's continents (256km^2 vs 64km^2).

[SniperSteve]

Why not allow characters to move between servers freely? That would solve the issue, right?

Or have 4-5 maps at launch... :D

[sameer]

beta beta beta. This big of a number has not been tested before. So no one knows if it will stay. Just imagine if 500 from 2000 on a map decide to capture 1 small point. It wont be fun. Spawn and get kills in 1/2 a second. So I hope they let in large numbers of people into the beta :) But I think the server stress with large pop will be later on.

[JoeDragon]

They've been giving out beta keys like mad. I'm pretty certain now that the keys are just a gimmick thought up by advertising and the original intention was to have a completely open beta for anyone who opted in, but people go crazy over beta keys.

They WANT to overload the servers during beta so they can find a solution and figure out how many servers they will actually need before they go fully live.

[fishirboy]

Yesterday was special, normally I doubt servers will be that hard pressed.

What do you mean was there some type of video or something?

[super pretendo]

Why not allow characters to move between servers freely? That would solve the issue, right?



perfect way to destroy any interesting server community, and let losing players just skip out to another server every time. very bad idea.

[Winfernal]

Lulz i dare to guess they haven't said it for Fun the last Month's that a single Continent shall be able to support at least 2000 Player's playing at the same Time...

But honestly, if they would decrease it by a few hundred Players on each Site - i would not die from it either. But if Player-Counts would decrease to much, then maaaaaaaaany, nice Space gets wasted. ; 3


greeting, LV.

Everything is a subject to change, everything. It's in alpha.

We don't know until beta/stress-tests.

[Otleaz]

This is rather tangential, but ArmA II's Chenarus is substantially larger than PS2's continents (256km^2 vs 64km^2).

Oh, for some reason I was under the impression that it was 64^2 as well. I only said it was larger because travel speed is relevant and I believe it will be much easier to travel in PS2.

Regardless, this only fortifies my point.

[Flaropri]

It is possible that larger Populations would be preferable, though I think 2000 is a good number. However, you do have to keep in mind technical limitations, including both Server-side and client side of the majority of the target audience, PS2 is ambitious enough as it is.

Also remember that PS1 has different net-coding and hardware than PS2 servers will, so drawing comparisons to server difficulty during the PS1 events isn't really appropriate.

Plus, it's 2000 Concurrent players per continent... not 2000 players total, I'd fully expect the number of players per server to well exceed 6k, even on servers that don't have as many active players at a given time.

[ChipMHazard]

What do you mean was there some type of video or something?

Just the parade event. A lot of people throughout the day.

[Otleaz]

Just so people know... When only counting the front lines in the in map they gave us, it would leave us at 66 players per hex(not facility). That leaves the average fight at around 150 players, since most facilities involve more than one hex. This number is increased if it involves the third faction as well.

Bases will draw players away from the smaller(lol) fights so you are probably looking at 300-400 players all fighting at the bases on the front lines. 400 players at the base in the E3 video... Can you imagine even 200 there?

Like I said, you guys are gravely underestimating how many players 2000 really is. You have to remember that you aren't fitting 2000 players in 64^2 km, you are fitting 2000 players on the front line.

EDIT: Fixed some numbers

[GhettoPrince]

The pop lock on planetside servers is 600, with 200 spots for every faction and most fights being just 2 factions (400 people). Even with just 400 people the front line fights are crazy as hell and you are always getting backhacked,

[Baneblade]

You also have to take into account that 2000 is a projection, not an absolute. They might overshoot and get 3000 per continent... or miss the mark (more likely) and end up with 1200 or something, which is when the lack of continents will become a real problem.

[Brusi]

It was my assumption that they believe 2000 to be the maximum they believe the server could maintain on a single continent...

[Doxy]

2000 imho is more then enough.
I just hope SOE servers can handle the load =]

[The Degenatron]

I suspect that if the max number of players is 2000 per continent, then SOE will aim for 80% saturation across all servers - 1800 per continent.

To do this they will create additional worlds at first to accomidate the masses and then as the overall population shrinks to its stable size and continents are added, you'll see servers merged to keep the saturation at around 80%.

This gives enough slots for the free flow of players in and out of the game and continent to continent, and it also allows for imbalances in Empire strength which is how you achieve frontline movement and a dynamic battlefield.