4AM on a Tuesday morning.

[CutterJohn]

You work odd hours. Perhaps you live someplace weird. Whatever the reason, you are here, playing PS at 4 am on a tuesday morning, along with 20 or 30 other people. On maps designed for hundreds or thousands.

No matter how awesome prime time is, there will be times when populations are tiny, and the gameplay designed to support thousands will pretty much fail completely when trying to support dozens.

Aside from just abandoning your character for the night and switching to a different server, What can be done about this?

I have a few thoughts.

-As population dwindles, lock down continents for the night(this also serves to protect the land fought over that evening from a one sided 75% pop that happens frequently at these times).

-Taking the first a step further, Have a couple tiny maps that open up, suited for and designed specifically for populations in the sub 100 range.

-Somehow allow players to temporarily move their character to a more active server and play there, or combine the server populations.

[Senyu]

Combined US servers with Asian and there will always be someone playing


Lol, prob not gona happen

[Azren]

Actually they said it may happen. Something about having more servers at start, then limit them fast.

[Malorn]

I like the idea of scaling continents based on number of players. They could simply lock continents with few or no players on them and port those players to some other location (or simply make the hexes uncapturable and make it so no additional players can go there, and empire missions cancelled). Like a cave closing the warpgates could just be powered down. They can just start with the continents with the fewest players on them.

Its a good concept to help funnel people into the same area. PS isn't much fun when the pop is that low. It would be good to shepherd people to a handful of continents.

[Sifer2]

They actually seem like they wanted to go with 1 server with multiple planets if they are able to. The game has serious Eve online envy in more ways than one lol. Maybe its cause they don't want Dust 514 to have anything over on it.


Anyway about locking stuff down I dunno. Might be hard to strike a balance between giving late nighters even less of a reason to log on an stopping the 3 AM surprise raid for territory. One thing for sure I think they could do would be to have resource mines output less during the off peak hours. So that it matters more during prime time when people are really there to fight over it.

[CutterJohn]

Yeah, if they do go with one server eventually, that will be very nice, for more reasons than population health. It would certainly solve this little issue.

[Azren]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Yeah, if they do go with one server eventually, that will be very nice, for more reasons than population health. It would certainly solve this little issue.

Because everyone in Europa just loves playing on NA servers. We like LAG you know... One server/continent would work though

[dachlatte]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

-As population dwindles, lock down continents for the night(this also serves to protect the land fought over that evening from a one sided 75% pop that happens frequently at these times).

-Taking the first a step further, Have a couple tiny maps that open up, suited for and designed specifically for populations in the sub 100 range.

that doesnt fly well with the sandbox sticker on the ps2 box and if you restrict people at night pops will sink even more

[SKYeXile]

YOU MAKE THE NETCODE GOOD SO I CAN PLAY ON THE US SERVERS!

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Azren

Because everyone in Europa just loves playing on NA servers. We like LAG you know... One server/continent would work though

Obviously one would hope they only do it if the lag is minimal. My ping was worse 8 years ago to east/west coast american servers than it is now to europe.

Originally Posted by dachlatte

that doesnt fly well with the sandbox sticker on the ps2 box and if you restrict people at night pops will sink even more

And 'MASSIVE EPIC BATTLES!' Is obviously untrue in the wee hours of the morning.

Sandbox doesn't mean you get to do whatever the hell you want. If it improves gameplay, most will approve.

[dachlatte]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

And 'MASSIVE EPIC BATTLES!' Is obviously untrue in the wee hours of the morning.

Sandbox doesn't mean you get to do whatever the hell you want. If it improves gameplay, most will approve.

i guess we have a very different understanding of what sandbox means then. i understand it in a sense like eve does and there you can do exactly whatever the hell you want.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by dachlatte

i guess we have a very different understanding of what sandbox means then. i understand it in a sense like eve does and there you can do exactly whatever the hell you want.

So. Built an outpost in a wormhole recently?

Flown your titan into Jita?

I bet you do a lot of reverse engineering of faction and officer loot too.

Found the blueprints yet to make rigs from materials instead of having to have the silly step of using scrap from a ships explosion?

Also, found the blueprints yet for implants?


Sandbox is a mindset, nothing more. If the game shipped with 2^256 continents that could be fought over at any time, I've little doubt people would want there to be some restrictions so that people can actually find a fight.

[dachlatte]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Sandbox is a mindset, nothing more. If the game shipped with 2^256 continents that could be fought over at any time, I've little doubt people would want there to be some restrictions so that people can actually find a fight.

you are absolutly right and i dont want to see 2^256 conts in ps2. but the point is i want the same x amount of conts anytime i log in.

[CutterJohn]

And I want a good fight when I log in.

[dachlatte]

valid point