Poll About Max Player Counts And Server Performance

[=GG= Mr Moe]

Originally Posted by Raneman

...
Anyway, if we had an option D: Mekhazzio's Anti-lag, then that would be the best. Everyone would be happy.

Option D, in your opinion, definitely not mine

[Major_Day]

Originally Posted by Ducky

Reducing the max slots from 64 to 50 will also mean that less players can enter today's top servers. These days only a few servers have a constant head count of 64. If they have only 50 available slots, then players need to look for another server and in time they will find again a "favorite" one. The server owners benefit from this. More servers will have human players. Even so will it increase the chance that for instance east-coast players do find a by humans populated server with acceptable ping.

THIS ^ is why i voted to reduce the max slots to 50.

[Mike_Nomad]

Originally Posted by Raneman

Guys, please just calm down. Let's not turn this thread into an argument between the same 2 or 3 people.

Technically Mike, the majority voted to disable 64 player servers. Option 1 and 2 both voted to disable them, and combined they got more votes then leaving them alone.

Anyway, if we had an option D: Mekhazzio's Anti-lag, then that would be the best. Everyone would be happy.

If this were a legit Vote/Poll/Election, I needn't say which choice would clearly win. Besides, the poll didn't say chose one or more. It allowed for only one vote per choice.

Imagine if they combined all the candidates votes to team up against one other candidate... would that be fair?

In any case, I voted to leave the 64 players alone but you raise an interesting point and yes, I agree with that.

[tixhal]

Originally Posted by Mike_Nomad

If this were a legit Vote/Poll/Election, I needn't say which choice would clearly win. Besides, the poll didn't say chose one or more. It allowed for only one vote per choice.

in germany option 1 and 2 would form a coalition to gain the majority and compromise on their (similar) goals.
as game development is not politics, this poll is clearly undecisive, i guess we will have to trust the judgment of the devs on that matter.

[MarioBava]

While I understand the hand-wringing over a successful free weekend, which is a big deal for this particular game, I personally think it is bad form to reduce features, especially for the sake of only 10 ms latency. 30-40ms is starting to seem significant, but 10?

I should say that again. This is purportedly for the sake of only 10 ms latency. I hate to say I think Mekhazzio is right the elephant in the room is hit detection for which 10ms is thought to be a significant enough improvement to the overall experience that cutting features is considered. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to play RO2 as it is with 0 latency.

Another elephant that only Ramm mentioned is client performance (fps). I can understand that a slight boost to fps for a first impression might be a hypothetically good idea. But again, it's cutting features for the sake of a slight gain.
My idea, probably not as simple as I think, is rather than enforced max player limits, for TWI to implement a "TWI recommended server" program/feature where servers can apply to be benchmarked for official "recommended" status ("recommended," of course, with the disclaimer that user experience may vary). Make a one character column in the server browser for the little medals/symbols (a star, or something like that) that will indicate recommended status so that players can sort the list by recommended status. You could also have an in-between status for "recommendation pending". For the free weekend, introduce a splash tooltip that recommends new players to the recommended servers and to choose one with the lowest ping for them. Servers that get awarded this status can also generally toot their own horn in their names/descriptions/welcome screen to attract players. TWI can even decide --for the free weekend-- to only recommend 50 player servers if they really don't feel comfortable.

Another idea: Maybe start a campaign appealing to sever admins to lower their max player count voluntarily on the free weekend. Tell them it's for the good of the community and therefore, ultimately, their server as well. And if they want to they are heartily encouraged to go back up to 64 after the free weekend.

Maybe limiting the max players is a good idea. It seems to be a popular one, if you combine the hard and the compromise options.

[defektive]

Originally Posted by MarioBava

I hate to say I think Mekhazzio is right the elephant in the room is hit detection for which 10ms is thought to be a significant enough improvement to the overall experience that cutting features is considered.

There is another option: Rather than ruminating over rolling back on one of RO2’s selling points (64 players) TWI could instead fix the anti-lag mutator. That way they keep their 64-player selling point and do away with the biggest problem that has plagued the game since zero hour -- random lead distance on every shot -- all in one swoop. 64-player servers get to keep their 64 slots (even the sh_t ones), everyone gets a weapon that shoots straight (not just the folks with <30ms ping), and everyone has a fine time drilling n00bs on lots of well populated servers! Huzzar!

Okay, so anti-lag isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (I’m still not entirely sure why but each to their own) but playing with it enabled on a full server has to be better than playing with yourself on a nearly empty one, which is pretty much what this game is heading towards. Not being able to shoot straight is by far the loudest complaint then, and it probably will be so again after the free weekend, so why not tackle the problem directly instead of fannying around at the edges.

Disclaimer: Anti-lag will not directly equate to full servers, but it certain won’t make matters any worse particularly within the context of a free weekend.

[Dr.Phibles]

leave it as it is! suppose it does make a bit of sense but 64 players is why i enjoy this game so mcuh..

[Grabbed_by_the_Spetsnaz]

Originally Posted by Mike_Nomad

If this were a legit Vote/Poll/Election, I needn't say which choice would clearly win. Besides, the poll didn't say chose one or more. It allowed for only one vote per choice.

Imagine if they combined all the candidates votes to team up against one other candidate... would that be fair?

In any case, I voted to leave the 64 players alone but you raise an interesting point and yes, I agree with that.

They have this in New Zealand. It's called MMP!!

Me in cool either way, most severs here don't quite make it to 64 anyway.

[MarioBava]

Originally Posted by defektive

. Not being able to shoot straight is by far the loudest complaint then, and it probably will be so again after the free weekend, so why not tackle the problem directly instead of fannying around at the edges.

I agree, "hit detection" issues are a big turn off, whether understood properly or not. New players will think a great game just plain sucks if they perceive getting robbed out of every other hit, which will happen on a widespread basis regardless of 10ms here or there (I guess very very few people will be playing below 50 ms).

If it is indeed true that the anti-lag mutator's issues originate in more fundamental memory management problems, then sealing these cracks could hypothetically improve client-side performance in the bargain, am I wrong?

[Ducky]

Originally Posted by Raneman

---SNIP---
Anyway, if we had an option D: Mekhazzio's Anti-lag, then that would be the best. Everyone would be happy.

AFAIK, TWI did contact Mekhazzio about integrating the AntiLag mutator in RO2's code-base (see Mek's post about it here). Mek's mutator is an awesome thing, but it still will not solve problems with servers that are running with an overloaded CPU load. Sure you will have a better chance to hit the target, but also a higher chance that the server crashes due to the overloaded CPU. If a servers CPU is overloaded, then the server can give all kind of unstable behavior, from stutters to crashes. And that is what TWI is trying to prevent by reducing the number of slots to 50. I personally voted for ranked 50, unranked 64. Just for the sake to get more stable servers and 2nd but not least to get the player base spread over more servers as I said before.

[TheRealGunther]

While I enjoy and have no problems on the main 64 player US server. I voted for 50 players it would make the game more stable for alot of people.Also as a long time RO fan im all for getting new players in and things that will help keep them.I think a more stable gameplay experience would do that the game has alot to offer the fps fan looking for a change from arcade shooters.

As for the drop in numbers making the game less awesome.I don't think that would be the case.Its more about how awesome the teams are than the numbers.The most fun I have had in RO2 to date is small clan scrims or bloodbath type matches.

Either way I will still play and have fun.Just trying to look at the big picture here.

[Susi]

Originally Posted by mattlach

I wish that rather than a blanket player limit, there could be some kind of runtime benchmark that tests the server's CPU capability, and sets the max players based on its abilities.

There would have to be some validation activities to correlate benchmark results to server playercount activities, but I don't think it should be difficult. Once the validated tests are performed, it's just a matter of a simple lookup table...

This way, if a server truly is capable, let it run 64 players. (I don't believe there is such a server today, but maybe once Intel's Haswell based Xeons are released we'll see one), but if a server is slow enough that that high of a player count would add significant latencies to the gameplay, then automatically reduce it.

Best possible solution.

[Machinist]

personally i dont really care about the ranked crap but its a feature of the game i prefer to have on when i play and i dont see why i have to play on lower player server to have in my opinion a lesser experience then what was stated in day one, what a find funny reguardless of it this goes through or not... is 64 players was intended it was a selling point of the game, people went ape sh!t on the BF forums when DICE suggested it might not happen, now with TW they are suggesting to pull it after improving server performance, so clearly there is something extremely wrong with the game engine/networking/something.

it just screams defeat to me.

i can just imagine people looking at the back of there RO2 game box which they have had for months and months and thinking "o 64 player battles" then coming on to a cap of 50. personally through 11 years of PC gaming i have played all genres, tons of games and i have ever come across a games company lowering there original player cap.

TW does the UT3 engine suck that bad you cant effectively do stuff with it?

i mean seriously its the only logical reason i can come up with to make this to make sense to me.

[wazups2x]

Reduce the player counts to 50 across the board.

I really hope this happens, 50 players is the perfect amount for RO2.

Edit:
Please make this happen! I will not go back to the chaotic 64 player lag fests and neither will any of my friends.

People who want it to 50 players are ahead in the poll. 155 to 128!

[bazookatooth]

Its a rarity ...but I agree with ramm...it makes sense to reduce player count...the ping is just awful...plus the game gets too unstructured with 64 people..at least take the mid option and make 64it players unranked

[Sensemann]

Originally Posted by Ducky

Reducing the max slots from 64 to 50 will also mean that less players can enter today's top servers. These days only a few servers have a constant head count of 64. If they have only 50 available slots, then players need to look for another server and in time they will find again a "favorite" one. The server owners benefit from this. More servers will have human players. Even so will it increase the chance that for instance east-coast players do find a by humans populated server with acceptable ping.

I disagree on this. Me and some of my steam friends feel it's the other way around. Being unable to connect to the 1-2 top servers that are full will not make us connect to a server with 10 players on it that farm 50 bots. As stupid as it sounds, but what I fear is that a reduction to 50 players max will lead to 14 players less on the server, trying to connect to the server asap rather than trying to populate another one.

Last weekend was the first time (in the beta), that I was playing 4 vs 4 with 4 bots on each team to see that the server ended up with like 15 vs 15 after 2 hours. I didn't play because I liked 4 vs 4, but just to test the beta.

If I want to play RO 2, I want to do that on a server that can give me the max head count. If e.g. 2Fjg server is at 30 players when I enter, I play it, no question. It usually fillls up to 64 most of the time. If it was limited to 50 players I would

1. get the impression that the battlefield is emptier (granted, apartments with 64 players is a cluster****) and
2. the game is losing a feature (Red October with 64 is outstanding)
3. custom maps will become big enough for 64 players. Just imagine Berezina with 64 players for example

[Cpt-Praxius]

Originally Posted by [TW]Ramm-Jaeger

As we're finalizing our optimizations to the server and the client for the coming RO2 update, we're considering an option that I'd like to get feedback from the community on........

I can't speak for others, but in my personal experience in playing RO2 since original Beta and in the Sept Launch, I have never had any issues playing on any server, regardless of player counts.

In other words, I never experienced any performance hits on 64 player servers.

Specs:
Intel Core i5-2300 CPU @ 2.80GHz
8GB of RAM
Windows 7 64-Bit Operating System
Nvidia GeForce 210 - 4GB of RAM
1TB Internal HD
Hi-Speed Telstra (Aus) Internet, Hard Wired (not Wi-Fi)

I am aware that others have experienced issues.... I'm just posting my own experience and thus, voted to leave things as they are & let server admins sort it out.

[melipone]

Living in Australia though I imagine you are used to often playing with a higher ping though yes?

What sort of ping do you play with on RO2 usually in 64 player servers?

[wazups2x]

Originally Posted by Cpt-Praxius

I can't speak for others, but in my personal experience in playing RO2 since original Beta and in the Sept Launch, I have never had any issues playing on any server, regardless of player counts.

In other words, I never experienced any performance hits on 64 player servers.

Specs:
Intel Core i5-2300 CPU @ 2.80GHz
8GB of RAM
Windows 7 64-Bit Operating System
Nvidia GeForce 210 - 4GB of RAM
1TB Internal HD
Hi-Speed Telstra (Aus) Internet, Hard Wired (not Wi-Fi)

I am aware that others have experienced issues.... I'm just posting my own experience and thus, voted to leave things as they are & let server admins sort it out.

This has absolutely nothing to do with how well the game performs on your computer. It's a about server lag, being that the servers can't handle the 64 player so it creates terribly high ping.

There's no way to avoid this and it has nothing to do with the specs of your PC. Reducing the players to 50 is the only way to fix it by putting less strain on the servers.

[Miro]

Originally Posted by Ducky

Reducing the max slots from 64 to 50 will also mean that less players can enter today's top servers. These days only a few servers have a constant head count of 64. If they have only 50 available slots, then players need to look for another server and in time they will find again a "favorite" one. The server owners benefit from this. More servers will have human players. Even so will it increase the chance that for instance east-coast players do find a by humans populated server with acceptable ping.

When my favorite server is full I keep spamming the "join" button until I join. Even if it boots me while I'm on the loading screen (I assume someone took the spot before I had a chance to join) I continue to try to join. I'll rather spare 2 or 3 minutes of staring at the server screen and end up playing on the server I want to play on than play on a server that I don't typically play on.