Players per hex

The Kush · 2012-05-27, 12:56 AM

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 · 2012-05-27, 01:03 AM

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 · 2012-05-27, 01:25 AM

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 · 2012-05-27, 01:29 AM

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 · 2012-05-27, 01:31 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

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

Atheosim · 2012-05-27, 01:38 AM

Originally Posted by Mechzz

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 · 2012-05-27, 01:38 AM

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 · 2012-05-27, 01:39 AM

Originally Posted by IMMentat

more than 1
less than 2000.

Spammy

The Kush · 2012-05-27, 01:58 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

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

Zekeen · 2012-05-27, 02:03 AM

Originally Posted by IMMentat

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 · 2012-05-27, 02:04 AM

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/article...-duty-audience

Originally Posted by Higby

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?

Originally Posted by Higby

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 · 2012-05-27, 02:22 AM

Originally Posted by Miir

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 · 2012-05-27, 02:32 AM

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 · 2012-05-27, 04:03 AM

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 · 2012-05-27, 04:32 AM

Originally Posted by Miir

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.