Project Reality Online testing with 128/256/512 players

[Neighbor Kid]

Judging from experience with size 16 maps, I'd say that maps could play pretty well without changes up to about 150% players (22, 48 and 96).  Even if the increased player numbers never finds much use in FH2, I hope that the squad size cap can be increased.

I'll guess that the news will have hit most places in the BF2 community within a few days, and that will be when DICE/EA have their say in the matter.  Chances are they will ignore it provided it is kept off of ranked vBF2 servers, but I reckon that if this is implemented by 'funny business', they'll come down like a ton of bricks.

squad size has increased we saw up to 12 players in a squad today.  and the play numbers would mean more targets.. and would be beneficial to a tournament

[Torenico]

Not only the maps are the problem, but also the general gameplay. Some maps dont play well with 64 players and i wont expect maps working excellent with 128 without a major change on general gameplay on all these maps.

If lets say, Totalize gets 128 players, then the whole equipment must be modified, more tanks, more airplanes or, nothing, cant be done, a new map must be done to get 128 guys battles to FIT in the mod.

A little bit more tanks and more planes, but not that much... The majority of the newcomers would reinforce the infantery, which is under represented in FH2 ...

Totalize doesnt play well with 64 and it wont play well with 128 bro, add a few tanks but not that much will do shit to it, nothing. You'll have to re'do the entire map if you want 128 players in it. It'll be annoying, theres alot of tanks in 32v32 and lots of kills per minutes, and with 64v64? Cmon.

I would forget about Current FH2 maps with 128 Players Battles, i'll bet all my money into future maps, since they're about to get started or they are in very early development and can be modified and shit-.

[Hockeywarrior]

I am in the process of making a 1024x2 map and adding another 36 players (total 100: 50 per team) would make the battle extremely intense. Not for every map due to design limitations, but rest assured I would be the first to endorse the increased player count!

Huzzah! Now a positive attitude is what I like to see!

I'm not saying it won't take a lot of work and that these increased player numbers should be used on all maps, but come on, people used to say that breaking this player limit was impossible. Now we know it isn't and I think that's a big step in a great direction, especially for FH2. I agree that most of FH2's current maps wouldnt' work well with more players, but I'm thinking into the future here.

Just imagine how epic some of the Eastern Front maps could potentially be with 100 players!

[Vernah]

Remember guys, that this is 99% probably server side. So in reality, the devs have no control in the matter (because server hosts could just do it anyway). The only issue would be map balance (as they would not be tested with 48v48, 64 v 64, what have you).

Also on the issue of only having 40 beta testers, just get more? Ask every beta tester to invite 1 person and hurray!

I'm VERY interested in if WaW would implement this, no more waiting rooms and the battles will be 1.5x the epic awesomeness.

[Neighbor Kid]

WAW would be epic 50 on 50.  also who said you HAVE to use beta testers? they can use us. just like they did with PR you make an announcement int eh forums that on such and such a day this sever will be running 100 players. here a map in which has shit on it with stuff we can test etc to see if it crashes just like they did today.. 

pretty sure most of the WAW players would come out and show to help figure it out, and many people ont eh forums here.  especially the WAW players cause it greatly benefits us.

[Excavus]

The PR Devs are in complete control of the server side editing, considering they are using a license system that all servers must acquire and stick to, otherwise their server won't work. So basically server admins have limited control over the settings of their server.

[djinn]

I think the balance would require less work than people anticipate.

The bread and butter of FH2 gameplay is infantry combat and ours being a WWII title, it would work well with more infantry.

People would take more risks as they would be amidst more teamates, strategy would get more complex with suppression, mad charges and infantry-tank support being all more practical tactics.

I for one don't think they need to increase a thing mapwise or vehicular. Its WWII, that's how it was fought. Its PR that has the possibility of feeling less like modern warfare, or it might just be what it needs to move gameplay from seek-and-destroy to a rolling firefight.

[Eat Uranium]

So it would appear to be a separate script that modifies parts of the server's memory assigned to bf2_w32ded.exe after it has started.

[Beaufort]

Not only the maps are the problem, but also the general gameplay. Some maps dont play well with 64 players and i wont expect maps working excellent with 128 without a major change on general gameplay on all these maps.

If lets say, Totalize gets 128 players, then the whole equipment must be modified, more tanks, more airplanes or, nothing, cant be done, a new map must be done to get 128 guys battles to FIT in the mod.

A little bit more tanks and more planes, but not that much... The majority of the newcomers would reinforce the infantery, which is under represented in FH2 ...

Totalize doesnt play well with 64 and it wont play well with 128 bro, add a few tanks but not that much will do shit to it, nothing. You'll have to re'do the entire map if you want 128 players in it. It'll be annoying, theres alot of tanks in 32v32 and lots of kills per minutes, and with 64v64? Cmon.

  I simply disagree. As it is now, Totalize has way too many tanks compared to the infantry. We should get closer to St Lo's ratio, hence keeping Totalize assets as they are, and just increase the infantry.

But hey, I'm not saying I don't want 4km maps in the future (actually, I am working on some).

[cannonfodder]

...But I will let you in on a little secret that Kev told me; this is mostly a server-side hack, so if it gets out, we'll see it on FH2/vBF2 servers regardless.

*shudders* What a horrible thought, vanilla with 128 knuckle-draggers...

[Kradovech]

This is good news for PR no doubt.

I'm being very sceptical about FH2 though. We simply don't have the playerbase for this. Yes, 128 players would be a nice change from time to time. Right now we have 2 full servers on weeknights, right? If we switch that to one full 128 player server, everyone will be pretty much forced to play there all the time.
How many maps do you think are suitable for 128 players, or for 100 for that matter? I'd say about 30%. This would mean a major decrease to the number of maps we would be able to play. Not only would it be doing injustice to the hard work put into those maps, this might in fact lead to people getting bored and stopping playing altogether, reducing our already small playerbase.

Servers need to be very careful with this: start small, 80 people or so, and make sure we have one 64 player server running at all times as well.

[THeTA0123]

We have the playerbase alright. But every version before a major release is often the less populated

[hslan.Corvax]

Not only the maps are the problem, but also the general gameplay. Some maps dont play well with 64 players and i wont expect maps working excellent with 128 without a major change on general gameplay on all these maps.

If lets say, Totalize gets 128 players, then the whole equipment must be modified, more tanks, more airplanes or, nothing, cant be done, a new map must be done to get 128 guys battles to FIT in the mod.

A little bit more tanks and more planes, but not that much... The majority of the newcomers would reinforce the infantery, which is under represented in FH2 ...

Totalize doesnt play well with 64 and it wont play well with 128 bro, add a few tanks but not that much will do shit to it, nothing. You'll have to re'do the entire map if you want 128 players in it. It'll be annoying, theres alot of tanks in 32v32 and lots of kills per minutes, and with 64v64? Cmon.

  I simply disagree. As it is now, Totalize has way too many tanks compared to the infantry. We should get closer to St Lo's ratio, hence keeping Totalize assets as they are, and just increase the infantry.

But hey, I'm not saying I don't want 4km maps in the future (actually, I am working on some).

Actually same here. I too think that totalize could use some more infantry. You wouldn't need more tanks, since that would just blow the ratio again. We have way too much tanks driving around, even tanks capping th emost flags. What we need is more common infantry. We dont need more tanks for the increased numbers of players, we need more players for the tanks we already have.
I only see benefit. Tankers wouldn't drive alone since there would be enough people to man the hull MG's too. There wouldnt be only like one dedicated infantry squad on the map. Tanks wouldn't need to go to cap flags, since there would be general infantry that is supposed to take a flag, with tank support !

Hell i would love to play totalize with lets say 100 players just the way it is now. Even El Al would work fine imo. Yes, there wouldnt be a tank for everyone, but hell, there are so many AA guns, AT guns and trenches that are unmanned because of the lack of players, since everyone is driving tanks. Thats no combined arms battles, that a damn tank arcade with some lone wolfes doing other stuff because they already got bored of it.

Face it, on most maps we have more vehicles, guns, and hell knows what that players to use them.

[THeTA0123]

Thats where the increase of the player numbers per map come in handy

Totalize, cobra, Alam halfa, Gazala

All of these could use extra infantry players.

[Fuchs]

Thats where the increase of the player numbers per map come in handy

Totalize, cobra, Alam halfa, Gazala

All of these could use extra infantry players.

Thing is, nobody wants to be infantry on those maps.

Totalize sucks as infantry, Cobra sucks as infantry, Alam Halfa is mostly a rapefest for infantry and a kamikaze job at the very best with the AT kits. Gazala can be fun as infantry as long as there are no tanks nearby, which there always are.

So nice ideas but I mostly skip maps like these, die hard infantry player.