Max player limit thoughts

[rm5248]

Goto 64-player limits considered harmful

 

As I've been playing again the past few weeks, I have some thoughts on the player limits on the servers.  Frankly, I believe that the 64-player limit is much too high for the type of gameplay that Renegade is.  At it's core, Renegade is not a free-for-all game, the base aspect of it gives a very different feel from the "kill everybody" vibe.  There is a certain amount of strategy that is involved that doesn't involve just shooting anything that moves.  You have the resources, character upgrades, and vehicles that you can buy, which set Renegade apart from other free-for-all games.  The large player limit means that it becomes much harder to have a good game, where there is more of a balance - it tends to devolve into one side repairing all game and the other side attacking all game.

Next point, the maps themselves aren't that good for 64 players.  Most of the maps are much too small to effectively have 64 players at once - I think immediately of all of the Westwood maps.  The possible exception to this is Walls, but even that gets very crowded when you have a full server.  Even the maps that are large(e.g. Outposts, Eyes) don't work effectively with 64 players.  It is still quite possible to have one team totally dominate the field, while the other team stays locked in their base.  Some maps have different problems - the map name escapes me at the moment, but the one where the Tiberium silo is in a low point between the Nod and GDI bases(Steppe?).  There is a lot of open area directly in front of each of the bases, but this chokepoint makes it hard for a team to effectively push forward.  The game just becomes a slog at that point, trying to gain an upper hand against each other, and often not really doing anything for 40-60 minutes at a time.

Some maps have made this less bad(Field X), but others don't effectively help to spread people out in the map(Islands X).  These map changes are in my opinion not solving the problem, as it is certainly possible to play a very small map if it comes up for a vote.  They simply go with "If we make a bigger map, things will be better," which I have found to not be true in all cases.

Ultimately, I think that a better experience is had with a smaller number of players(40-50), rather than the 64 that currently exist.  This should also help with the long stalemate games where one side can't effectively mount a counterattack against the besieging enemy.  For example, I just came from a ~1.5hr match on Field(not Field X), where I joined at the ~10min mark.  At that point however, it was pretty likely that Nod was going to lose.  We were locked in our base at that point, and because the server was full it was effectively impossible for us to do anything to dislodge GDI from the base entrance, or to mount a rush through the tunnels; there were too many GDI players to overwhelm in either direction.  There were even tunnel spamming MRLS in the GDI base, so even when we did manage to get to the tunnel entrance we couldn't do anything effective.  This implies to me that the player counts are too large, since it was possible for GDI to attack from the main entrance and tunnel at the same time, as well as having enough people left over to tunnel spam their base entrances.

 

Thoughts?

[Handepsilon]

We had 40 and 50 limits before, but people keeps crying for 64.

Unfortunately this still won't solve the other issue, which is how people just likes to spam join on the already full server instead of going to the emptier one

[slashes]

lowering the player count on the maps wont solve anything.the people that play renegade x arent in such a large ammount heck even people dont join if the player count is low like 20-30.thats also me included i like the bigger player count i would even like if it it was possability to up the player count to like 80.

other then that why not add an anti base lock mechanic in the maps for example. gdi keeps baselocking in nod,due to the baselocking in at around 10-15  minutes if the airstrip is still alive the game could airdrop in a  tick tank/bradley's to try and get out of the baselock. the same mechanic could be done for gdi just airdrops in some prototype titans,hover mrls. the other team gets 1 vehicle every 240 seconds untill the baselock is removed. to remove the baselock there building shield or hp need to take any typ of damage.

how the baselock mechanics could works tho is to put in a base aura if things get damaged on there it counts or, make it so that if a building gets hit in a short succesion that it counts. for example if any nod building gets hit it gets a 30 second timer of baselock if the building hit in that time it refreshes the timer. when the other teams building get hit the baselock timer is entirely reset to 0.
so for example gdi hase baselockt nod in for 8 minutes nod try's to push the field and, fails and gets back in the baselock due to there low health vehicles. the timer is stil 8 minutes. now if they take the field entirely if they dident had a massive ammount of mammoths and they hit the wf. meaning gdi gets baselockt nods baselock timer is 0 again.

[rm5248]

On 11/19/2020 at 12:16 AM, Handepsilon said:

We had 40 and 50 limits before, but people keeps crying for 64.

Unfortunately this still won't solve the other issue, which is how people just likes to spam join on the already full server instead of going to the emptier one

 

This is probably wishful thinking, but it does seem like there are enough players to fill two moderately-sized servers instead of one large server.

 

Personally, I think that the people who push for 64 are crazy people.  The maps and game mode just aren't built for that number of people!

[isupreme]

I used to be Hardcore for 40.   But i could try 52.   Never 64 for me.

[GDIViperM]

On 11/19/2020 at 1:40 AM, rm5248 said:

Thoughts?

I absolutly share to opinion of you rm5248.

Renegade and its gameplay style is not made for 32 vs 32.

On classic Renegade my favorite amount of players for the best game experiance incl. tactic gameplay was 16 - 24. But Ren X maps got bigger so more is okay.

But 64 is to much. But some people like Renegade just because of that camping that happen, when you play with so many players... such a pity

[NodSaibot]

I think once the doors were opened to 64 player servers, they can no longer be closed. A lot of people don't know RenX without 64 player servers. Their whole experience has been 64 player servers, and that's the game they love. They love the chaos, the long-lasting action and the crazy rushes.

Undoubtedly 64 player count servers are very different from 40 or below, but I think the game changes very dramatically somewhere in between 64 and 40. My most recent implementation of a "fix" for this type of situation was adding a manual activated command that splits 1 64 player server into 2 40 player servers, but we never tested it out. I think it would require it to be after a PUG or something, and have the PUG players all join after. We might be able to have 2 or near 2 40 player servers, but that would only be on short times during the weekend. I'm still willing to try it, but I think it would be an exclusive weekend only type thing.

That's a very simplified version of it, as a lot of variables come into play, and I don't know with any certainty if player counts would be stable in that type of situation. I imagine players reactions to this would vary greatly, and that's the most unknown part so far.

[roweboat]

I think once an in-launcher lobby is available, the problem will be less.

Many times now if a server isn't full, people will boot up the game, see there are only 10-30 people in a active server, and then leave without joining. Now if they could also see, okay 30 people in game, but another 10 sitting in the launcher lobby, they might be more willing to join an active game because they know others might do the same relatively soon.

 

 

[rm5248]

To roweboat's idea, that seems plausible to me.

 

I wrote some quick code to get the player count every 5 minutes, and over the past almost week I have accumulated some data on actual player counts, and not just theories.

Anyway, these times should be in UTC.  The first spike is larger than the rest, I believe when the PUG is on.  Basically, two servers are full at that time.  During the week, the player counts spike for several hours.  However, this spike is contained mostly within one server, given that it is 64 players.

 

Anyway, pretty graph time:

 

It seems that player counts go high and low rather quickly, but the baseline does seem to be ~5-10 people.  Really the question that I have is: if you make the servers smaller, does the player count average out to be the same, or is it depressed?

[roweboat]

That's really awesome info!!

 

I think from what we found from experience before, was that, simply - less people played. 

 

Majority of people don't want to be the "first" or even "fifth" to join a new server, when another server shows 40-50 people.

 

my 2 cents.

[Mystic~]

Quote

I think once an in-launcher lobby is available, the problem will be less.

Maybe there is a way that Discord can display a list of servers and let people meet and join a game from here? It's also nice to jump between games when servers are either full or not enough people to make a viable game.

[kira]

10 hours ago, Mystic~ said:

Maybe there is a way that Discord can display a list of servers and let people meet and join a game from here? It's also nice to jump between games when servers are either full or not enough people to make a viable game.

yes there is , a discord bot called LEGION .  Sarah started working on it, using rcon commands that bot can display data related to renx in realtime about the match.

[Tytonium]

I've been in moments of this game where 40 players are the max on a server, usually resulting from a recent update. It is the most depressing and sad experience I have ever had with a game as each round starts with like 30 players instead of the usual 50ish or so. So lonely...

[kira]

14 hours ago, Tytonium said:

I've been in moments of this game where 40 players are the max on a server, usually resulting from a recent update. It is the most depressing and sad experience I have ever had with a game as each round starts with like 30 players instead of the usual 50ish or so. So lonely...

yes you right @Tytonium YOU ARE ALWAYS RIGHT.  lol .

because there are always a percentage of people that do random stuff and doesn't really support or co op.  so higher the better.

[em0_g0blin]

google translate:
I like 64 players on the server. Especially on small maps like Oasis (no sarcasm).
40 people on a server is good when they are all experienced. But there are always noobs, newbies, afk in the game, and 64 compensate for this. 

Remember the situation in the summer when x2.5 new players came. No teamplay, no one is repairing buildings, they ran chaotically and tried to attack enemies with a repair gun

[Mystic~]

I think 64 people on small maps is a bad idea, personally, I feel attacks become very spammy, and this isn't usually the sort of game where it's one shot kills, there's a lot of meat grinder fights, unless you're being constantly hit with a ramjet, so many airstrikes, so many people that can repair in buildings and so many repairers that can stay with a tank. There's no proper resupply option in this game either, you kill one or two people and then get killed yourself.

[Madkill40]

On 12/5/2020 at 12:53 AM, rm5248 said:

To roweboat's idea, that seems plausible to me.

 

I wrote some quick code to get the player count every 5 minutes, and over the past almost week I have accumulated some data on actual player counts, and not just theories.

Anyway, these times should be in UTC.  The first spike is larger than the rest, I believe when the PUG is on.  Basically, two servers are full at that time.  During the week, the player counts spike for several hours.  However, this spike is contained mostly within one server, given that it is 64 players.

 

Anyway, pretty graph time:

 

It seems that player counts go high and low rather quickly, but the baseline does seem to be ~5-10 people.  Really the question that I have is: if you make the servers smaller, does the player count average out to be the same, or is it depressed?

@Fffreak9999 got any relatable stats?

[isupreme]

Quote

Really the question that I have is: if you make the servers smaller, does the player count average out to be the same, or is it depressed?

Exactly the question I have been asking myself lately.

[Fffreak9999]

If you have 40 man servers, you tend to only have 40 players per night. Barring a couple of random players on servers

[isupreme]

But what about during peak times. ?  

  Lately I cannot get into the game because the 64 server is  full for hours everyday during the time I can play.    I have seen some secondary servers with some folks... often 12  to 20.    When i join them we go a little while and then a few folks leave and it collapses.

Now, Do Not Get Me Wrong....  I am very happy that there are more players playing the game.  Is now the time to consider if peak times limit of 40 or even 52 - would create two active servers and allow me to play ?

Many is the day I would play but I am unable to join the ONE full server.   I  miss out on play  3-5 days a week.  I wonder if others are similarly affected.

Edited December 10, 2020 by isupreme
added a bit more grumbling

[N4CR]

Few months back when corona-chan first hit there were two full servers at many times!! That was where Ren-X needs to be. I'll have to look at spreading Ren-x gameplay videos and encourage anyone else to tell people about it.