Will New Content Thin Numbers?

PoisonTaco · 2012-06-20, 01:05 PM

I never played the original Planetside so I have no idea if they added any new continents or not over the game's life. Either way let's speculate a bit here.

So Planetside 2 is going to have three continents at launch and each continent can have 666 players per faction. That's just two shy of 2000. So based off of that, each server can handle a max population of 6000. What happens when SOE adds a new continent? Now we have 6000 players on a server that can handle 8000.

If the game continues to grow, all is well and good as everyone gets their friends on board. But as we add new continents and playable space it could potentially thin servers out as time goes on and the game could potentially lose its massive feel to it.

Anyways, food for thought.

NivexQ · 2012-06-20, 01:07 PM

Not every continent was fought on at all times in Planetside.

Stardouser · 2012-06-20, 01:08 PM

I think this is very much a non issue, and at any rate, it's no reason to intentionally handicap the game from diversifying and adding new content.

Also, beta will prove one way or the other, but I think it's going to be very player dense early on; and we will welcome it when the game can handle 8000 per server but the servers are populated from when it was 6000.

The Kush · 2012-06-20, 01:08 PM

Yea when new continents are added I hope they add sanctuaries back in the game.

Raymac · 2012-06-20, 01:12 PM

It's a good question. The only time they added content to PS1 was the caves, and those weren't exactly very popular. Now a whole new continent will be extremely popular. There are 2 ways I can think of dealing with this:

1. Return poplocks to funnel the players together. Personally I don't like this idea because I always felt poplocks created the most downtime in the game. I know people like the meta game of "winning" a continent, but the lead up to the actual lock was about 30 mins of 9:1 odds, followed by another 30 mins of starting a new fight somewhere else. (But that's a whole other thread)

2. Server merges. I think this is far more likely since server merges are basically inevitable in MMOs. Server merges will happen so they might as well happen at the same time that new content is released. That should help with the perception that the game is "dying" that server merges tend to convey.

Sabot · 2012-06-20, 01:15 PM

Completely new, never heard of continents I dont think they will add for a very long time. Those will most certainly be full at all times... I'm guessing the old conts in new packaging ala PS2 will also be very popular when they go live, but not like a completely new one.

zomg · 2012-06-20, 01:41 PM

I have a feeling that changes in the maps at release will be more prominent than actually bringing in whole new maps. They have talked about how their tooling is much better and allows designers to do their thing nicely.

I think it would be cool if they had sort of events or such that would change the terrain. Let's imagine there's a space battle and a starship crashes or something and now that's in one of the sectors. (PS noob, honestly I have no idea if there are space battles in the Planetside "lore" or not but it felt like a nice example anyway

)

Otleaz · 2012-06-20, 01:42 PM

I hope they plan ahead for server mergers. That would make things go much smoother later on.

Silencer22 · 2012-06-20, 01:59 PM

In the original PS, I think most people would tend to go to where the action and biggest fights were occurring. So I think the pop balance would likely work itself out. You will have some smaller scale fighting on some continents and then a few larger fights where the bulk of the people will be.

bjorntju1 · 2012-06-20, 02:09 PM

I think Smed talked about having multiple planets (and on that planets different continents) later on in the game. This way you play on one server, but technically every planet is its own server.

QuantumMechanic · 2012-06-20, 02:11 PM

This is a very good point. TRay has mentioned they have plans to add back all continents from the original game, and you can be sure this won't happen with just a single update. The game world will likely steadily expand over a period of years.

PS2 won't have the usual MMORPG "problem" that all the high level characters will only be in the "new lands" and new characters will be in the "newbie lands". But I don't necessarily see server population increasing with the new continents being added. If anything only temporarily as old players return to check out the new continents and then return to play BF4 or whatever.

I would like to hear other people's potential solutions. The only thing that makes sense to me is server merges as Raymac suggested. When done in the context of increasing a server's population limit above and beyond what it used to be, I don't think a server merge has any negative connotation to it at all. In fact it's something people should get excited about.

Stardouser · 2012-06-20, 02:19 PM

I think server merges is probably a good solution, but, what I want to say above all else is that the population density of a server does not need to be so dense that there is fighting going on everywhere at once. If there are 9 continents and 2 are left without fighting sometimes, that's fine. Provides options to players.

**RadarX** · 2012-06-20, 02:23 PM

We've gotten really good at keeping numbers where they need to be. I assure you all this has been considered.

Stardouser · 2012-06-20, 02:24 PM

Originally Posted by RadarX

We've gotten really good at keeping numbers where they need to be. I assure you all this has been considered.

Are we going to be able to relax a bit when we get to more continents or will numbers be kept so dense there will be substantial combat on every continent at all times?

Geist · 2012-06-20, 02:26 PM

I believe they mentioned that they are definitely putting in new continents post launch such as Searhus, but it might take a while.

My hope is that once there are more continents, Empires can actually have the ability to capture continents.