Battlefield 3 announced, is superior on PC.

[Aaron]

Yeah, I'm fine with 24 players, big fucking deal. If at some point it increases on the 360, great.

Note: I said plenty, not great, plenty.

Otherwise, go fuck yourself.

[Mr Bean]

Yeah, I'm fine with 24 players, big fucking deal. If at some point it increases on the 360, great.

Note: I said plenty, not great, plenty.

Otherwise, go fuck yourself.

It's okay Aaron there is help for your condition, but if we are going to get you help your going to first have to admit you have a problem.

Once you admit you have the problem the healing can begin.

[Aaron]

[Artemas]

Not that I know shit about making functional and fun online games, but I'm still more or less looking forward to FPS games with a couple hundred players on each side. We've been peaked at 64, MAG excluded, for some time now. Is there some kind of threshold technologically involved, or is that just about the maximum number of people you can throw into a modern FPS at once before things aren't fun anymore?

I think part of it would be scaling. Battlefield 2 attempted this to some degree, but even then the server doesn't dynamically adjust the playable map area based on the number of people in server - it just loads a different map (well, the same map, but with different borders and objective locations) based on how many players you've configured the server to allow.

So if you run a 256 player map, and the server population drops, it might get a bit lonely or weird with only ~40 players in a map designed for 200.

Additionally, you'll probably want to incorporate support for smaller sessions, which means someone has to go through and create and balance maps suitable for varying session sizes - and the game will need to be thoroughly tested and stressed under the maximum player count, which could be more expensive if you want to throw professional testers/QA people at it.


Ultimately, the proportion of people wanting to join a huge combined-forces battle - whether an organized clan match or a pubbie mob melee - is going to be smaller than the proportion of people who just want to hop into any server and shoot guns at some other dudes while yammering over voice chat. Hell, there's people who think a 24 player server is way too much. So the cost/benefit thing doesn't indicate "huge servers" to the people with capital.


I feel for you, though, I really do. I remember having a blast on BF1942 and BF2 and thinking "man this would be even more awesome if we had enough dudes to fully man all these vehicles and still have dudes left over to run around on the ground".

Yeah, i would rather play a game that has a smaller map overloaded with players than a larger map with too few. It was hugely annoying in BF trying to find something to do, and sometimes I would go like 10 minutes not seeing anyone and then BAM i bump into a tank a half-dozen enemy infantry. Respawn.

In contrast, playing COD4 on 50 person servers was a blast, even though the maps were only designed for 18-24 people. You really needed to use cover and work as a team to move forward.

BC2 has a good balance, where some of the maps are still pretty large, but they don't take forever and a day to cross on foot in case there are no vehicles around. And the actual objectives are reasonably close or otherwise important enough to capture outside of getting points to do so. IE, they're farms or towns on your axis of advance, and they usually dominate the surrounding area. I remember some of the capture points in BF2142 being way the fuck in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, i'm glad prone is back in. There are a lot of places in BC2 where cover is only like 2-3 feet tall, and you can't quite hide behind it. On the other hand, fucking snipers.

Bean: You are a huge douchebag. Get fucked.

[Uraniun235]

If they could pull it off where the server was able to dynamically change the map boundaries and objectives based on server population, that would be dynamite.

[Artemas]

That would be pretty sweet. How hard would it actually be? BC2 has much larger maps than are actually traversable, would it just be a matter of extending the "die by mortars" boundary?

[Mr Bean]

If they could pull it off where the server was able to dynamically change the map boundaries and objectives based on server population, that would be dynamite.

Bad Company 2 can do that, the engine BF3 is based off of. Screwing around with the files showed that it was possible to change the reason why a Rush map's boundaries were extended. It was theoretically possible in engine to set a trigger that says "when players = X then use boundaries Y" They use the setting on rush map to change the map boundaries every time both objectives are destroyed but they could be used on player numbers.

But will they do that or just use the BF2 method of if 24 players use the 32 player map even if two minutes later twenty four more people hop in and you have 48 people on a smaller sized map.

[Edward Yee]

For anyone wondering: MAG sidestepped the issue by having each map be mode-specific, not least since they were designed for that mode. For example, "Isla de Magma," "Radiant Barrens" and "Silverback Ridge" are the game's only three-way maps and only ever come up for Escalation (32 vs 32 vs 32).

Also, the program is Xpadder -- 5.3 was the last freeware version, but I believe that the most recent paid version ($9.99 for lifetime free updates) is 5.7, which pretty much acts as a keyboard emulator for controllers; it doesn't detect the "Guide" button and I don't think it can do the diagonal directions, but can utilize all other buttons.

[weemadando]

24 players is a console limit which must be designed around and it limits games because of it.

Wait, are you seriously making the argument that a game designed around 24 player multiplayer is quantitatively worse than a game designed around 32+ player multiplayer?

[Mr Bean]

Wait, are you seriously making the argument that a game designed around 24 player multiplayer is quantitatively worse than a game designed around 32+ player multiplayer?

Yes and no, Yes because it limits your flexibility in what you can do in your multiplayer. If I can run 500 players on the same map I have much more freedom in my design decisions about how your multiplayer matches are going to run and what kind of modes your going to have.

No in that a console multiplayer running a 24 man multiplayer will be no theoretically different then the same PC game running a 24 man multiplayer game.

At the end of the day you don't need 500 man matches but the fact you can't consider them limits you just like the current consoles lack of ram and slower hard drives limits you on what kind of levels your going to make. On the PC your limit is what you except the average system to be in two years, on Consoles it's the inbuilt limits of console itself. With current console generation looking like a decade long generation that's going to be more and more a limiting factor.

*Edit the what computer should be limit does not of course applies to Crytech who still design their games on the "what will just barely run out game three years from now" but even they are falling back and Crysis 2 looks pretty but runs decently on mid-range systems.

[CaptHawkeye]

Game mode and game play options have a lot more to do with design of the mechanics than a player count in a server.

[weemadando]

Game mode and game play options have a lot more to do with design of the mechanics than a player count in a server.

Thank fuck someone else got in here before I did.

And thank you for having a brain.

[Mr Bean]

Ahh but you see Battlefield series is a classic example of what I'm talking about.

Take Wake Island circa Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 1943 (The console edition)

This was the demo map for Battlefield 1942 that got everyone interested in the game way back in August of 2002.
On that map featured air combat, sea combat and ground combat with armor combat within the ground combat.
There was a aircraft carrier where the Japanese planes and landing craft spawned off of. As well there was a destroyer that could be use to bombard the shore and could also be sunk to reduce the Japanese to a single spawn point off shore that is facing MG nests. The Americans have five flags to defend including their own airfield so they can be capped off the map if they are not careful. Because if aircraft re-spawning you could see four on four matchups in the sky if the pilots were good enough to live long enough. It was a fun as hell demo where the Americans had to spread themselves thin because the destroyer could push up on any flag and attack it while the Japanese best bunch up slam a flag with as many people as possible to get a toehold so they could push the Americans off the island. In addition there were Naval guns to scare off destroyers and tanks to fight the infantry and shoot up the incoming landing craft.

You can not do Wake Island with 12 on 12 there are simply not enough people! You need more people to make that type of game work. It's why the console version had to reduce much of the equipment the old 1942 version had including losing the destroyers and removing the ship combat that was in the 1942 version. You see the same game type neutered for the console experience because they could not do what they did in 2002 in 2009 because of the Console restrictions. You had to give up the Naval combat, and with only 12 people a side the allied mainbase had to be moved from a flag they had to defend to their own aircraft carrier because with only 12 people it's nearly impossible to defend five strategic points. You went from six people per flag plus two flyboys in the air down to two people a flag at best with your two flyboys. The Japanese meanwhile went from being able to throw eight people at two flags plus having a destroyer double manned shelling the shore to forced to load up their entire team in two landing craft and hitting two flags at once at best.

A battlefield type game HAS to have more people, this is not Call of Cloned Duty where combat is pure infantry so 12 on 12 or 6 on 6 or 128 on 128 does not matter you have to give up sections of the game. You can't design past that simple point of having to few people to man to little equipment. You can't have an air fight/sea fight/armor/infantry fight. With 12 on 12 you kinda have to pick two and half ass a third.

[Aura]

Are you trying to say that having less options on the console versions doesn't make them inferior? Because the PC version will be able to do everything the console version does in terms of 24 player games, plus the ability to play on larger maps with up to 64 players. This means that the actual content of the game is superior on PC, not just the usual PC advantages of being able to use K&M and having much sharper image quality and better graphics.

Although I am being partially joking with the Console Peasents / PC Gaming Master Race stuff, the PC version is definitely looking like the indisputably superior version in this case.

I always thought having 32 people in a game was overdoing it, 64 just sounds like a pain. Besides its your use of the word "superior" that's making you sound pretentious. At a certain point more people = less fun. This might be one of those cases.

[adam_grif]

I always thought having 32 people in a game was overdoing it, 64 just sounds like a pain. Besides its your use of the word "superior" that's making you sound pretentious. At a certain point more people = less fun. This might be one of those cases.

The game doesn't force you to run the max player count, and can do everything the console version can. This "less players = more fun" is irrelevant even if it's true (and it's not), because you can do that too. This gives more options, i.e. it is the superior version because it caters to both crowds.

[Aura]

Don't twist my words Griffo (the nickname grew on me). At a certain point "more people = less fun". I didn't say it as general rule.

[Losonti Tokash]

This is such a stupid argument. It'd be nice if the console version had more players, but it doesn't, and it's like is going to make it a bad game, as the Battlefield games that are already on console have shown.

[adam_grif]

This is such a stupid argument. It'd be nice if the console version had more players, but it doesn't, and it's like is going to make it a bad game, as the Battlefield games that are already on console have shown.

Yes it is stupid, because people are acting like the PC version being better means the console versions are shit when nobody said that.

[Losonti Tokash]

Yeah, my post got a bit mangled when I actually wrote it out, but I agree. Bad Company 2 rules, on console or PC.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I always thought having 32 people in a game was overdoing it, 64 just sounds like a pain. Besides its your use of the word "superior" that's making you sound pretentious. At a certain point more people = less fun. This might be one of those cases.

It's really not.

[xthetenth]

I think that for something like battlefield with some very powerful vehicles, it's definitely better to have more than 24 players max. If you get a game with less than 24, all of a sudden those vehicles become lords of death because nobody can hit them hard enough for long enough to actually take them out. A half full or even three quarters full 24 player map with two or three tanks a side becomes a ridiculous armor match where the tanks aren't likely to run into any threats other than each other that can actually output enough damage to take them out. It just turns into a nightmare where you drive or run for a minute or three and then after ten seconds you're back to the running stage again. Battlefield does not fare well with servers that aren't nearly full, and with fewer players the margin is small enough it can turn into sucky fail pretty quickly. In contrast, with 64 players, somebody is going to be close enough to an AA turret to shoot down that marauding chopper and keep it from running roughshod for upwards of five minutes for example.

Migrating players could work, but considering how much more Battlefield emphasizes the team, that's annoying as hell, so the 24 player mode is just generally more fragile. I know that I've had a lot more games of BC2 turn into underpopulated annoyance than BF1942, 2 or 2142, and frankly I consider the conquest mode in BC2 a bit of a joke because of this. It only just starts working right when it's close to full, and even then the sacrifices in map design and freedom to get the player density needed for the battles to generate that fun level of chaos instead of running around with random potshotting make it feel not as fun as the main Battlefield games.

What I do think would help is scaling vehicle spawns to player size. Part of the problem with underpopulated maps is that vehicles are cheap and losing them isn't much of a big deal, so if anyone's running as infantry they have disposable light vehicles to get anywhere, totally breaking down any sense of order and just making the game far too disjointed to enjoy.

[Steel]

At the same time, underpopulated servers are where you need the light vehicles to get to where you can actually do something in reasonable time...

I like the higher populations, however I dont like it when the density gets too high. A full BC2 server is great, but if there were 32 players on most of those maps then it would be a bit much.

[xthetenth]

At the same time, underpopulated servers are where you need the light vehicles to get to where you can actually do something in reasonable time...

However, when each spawn has enough vehicles to supply the entire team with one for their very own, it quickly becomes a competitive version of being the dutch boy with his finger in the dike rather than a game which involves shooting or other cornerstones of the FPS genre. That's my main problem with it, that you can grab a light vehicle, cap a point, then grab another without any concern. Even worse when players start stealing tanks, and one team ends up with a heavy armor brigade to take on the other side's five man squad. Plus, that kills kit choice because you need to be able to deal with tanks personally.

I like the higher populations, however I dont like it when the density gets too high. A full BC2 server is great, but if there were 32 players on most of those maps then it would be a bit much.

I think that the BC2 conquest maps peak at 24, so by 28 or 30 they're at capacity if not full. However, the solution is the same as for BF2, just make bigger versions. The Bf2/2142 32 player maps were bigger, and I personally preferred their feel because they tended to have less of a tight terrain funnel around the points than BC2, and I prefer that feel. The 16 player maps got a lot of the BC2 feel anyway, so it's not like if they go back to the traditional model we're losing a lot. I would like some specialized small and large maps though.

[Artemas]

BC2 on pc has a 32 player cap on conquest and rush, and for the most part the only maps that really bog down are ones that have ridiculous numbers of chokepoints, like the vietnam maps (fucking rush vantage point) or cold war. But the main BC2 maps play fine for the most part, generally being more open, allowing the higher player population to more evenly diffuse. Anyway, the problem of riding around ninja capping undefended points was, i felt, even more prominent in the "core" battlefield games, due to their larger size, and the fact that even with higher populations they tended to get clumped up in a few points. BC2 maps generally have the points within striking distance of each other. I think one of the big things is less actual server size, and just good map design.

[MKSheppard]

Is there some kind of threshold technologically involved, or is that just about the maximum number of people you can throw into a modern FPS at once before things aren't fun anymore?

Wait till 2012 or so when XBox 360 II and PS4 come out.

Right now, if you want to do a crossplatform game across PC/XBox360/PS3, you have to basically make sure the basic game remains playable on a system with only 256 MB system / 256 MB VRAM.

That's a pretty big deadweight, particularly if you want to do something that has enough room and space for 100+ players to run around in.