Implications of 100-150 Player Servers

[Rags! 1966]

Multiple times I've heard from the makers of this game that they want to have around 100 or so players in a server come the final release. I heard that Dean himself say that he wanted about 150 players in Chernarus at once. It's an interesting concept to think about, and we're still a long way from release or that many players being in the game at one time, but it did get me thinking about what kind of implications that would cause...and how we would go about avoiding the multitude of problems that just dumping a higher players count would cause without some serious Chernarussian overhaul...

 

ISSUES THAT 100-150 PLAYERS WOULD CAUSE WITHOUT MAP CHANGES

 

- Player Super Saturation - Adding this massive amount of players at one time into Chernarus would over saturate certain areas of the map, making already overcrowded areas such as Cherno, Elektro, Berezino, and Novodjarsk Polana even more crowded. Theoretically three times as crowded at times. The lack of elbow room in a game like DayZ would be tragic. If you met another player every six minutes, your lifespan would severely shorten and meeting other players would no longer carry with it the "wow" vibe that is still has even after hundreds of hours of play time for me. Where there are constantly too many players, we arrive at the next issue...

 

- Loot and Item Scarcity - Introducing such a huge influx of players into Chernarus would severely deplete the amount of resources in the game, especially around the coastal area where new spawns enter the game. Players would spawn into a server of 100-150 players and be met with...nothing. The Coast would be bone dry, the loot having been taken long ago by the older Bambis. And since with higher players counts, players would be dying and then respawning over and over in higher numbers, you would see servers forcing restarts to occur at higher and higher frequencies to force the world to populate itself with loot so that new spawns would have a chance at survival before every piece of warm clothing, every melee weapon, every bullet, and every firearm was taken and eventually lost. As players dread dying because they would look forward either endless meandering before hoping to find a scrap of something useful, more and more of them would turn to an effective, if not frowned upon method of gearing up...

 

- Server Hopping Would Skyrocket - Players would realize that spawning as a new character wouldn't any longer be an adventure or the start of a new journey, full of opportunity. The massive amounts of players would force loot to become so scarce or simply spawning become so dangerous that players would simply turn to server hopping as their primary method of gearing up. Since Military Bases and Airfields would become super saturated with players, firefights, and would become warzones as a result, empty servers would be the only safe-ish way to gear up. I hate server hopping. I loathe it. But it would become something that even I would end up doing, as would many others, simply because it would be the only way players could have a chance at surviving in such high population areas where spawns and already geared players coagulate. 

 

WHAT CHANGES HAVE TO OCCUR TO SUPPORT 100-150 PLAYERS

 

- Scatter Spawn Points - Spawn points can no longer remain almost exclusively on the coast. Spawning must take place over the entire map, allowing for the playerbase to be spread out upon their deaths in the game as well as incentivizing players to travel all over the map to find players, not just heading to the few hotspots that exist or heading to the coast to watch the Bambis run up and down the Highway of Death. The problems with coastal spawning is evident in the game currently with only 40 player servers, but the game will not function with the same spawn locations and 100-150 players in the game at once. This means that players start their characters off without being almost definitely plopped down in a place where their survival is immediately at risk. 

 

- Add More Points of Interest - The game currently has a very high amount of military installations and other points of interest that are scattered across the map, but the game doesn't necessarily suffer as a result of it. This issue isn't so much that there would be too little military grade loot in the playerbase on the server, the main issue would be that the places where high grade items can spawn would become super saturated with players if new bases and airfields are not added in locations that would encourage players to not all clump together. Also, Military Bases and Airfields act as player magnets, incentivizing players to travel to these places in search of good loot...and as a result, other players. Traveling from these bases along roads scattered with smaller towns of varying value acts to slow down players, causing them to meet at higher frequencies, and as a result...having less players reach their end destination which helps these bases not become overpopulated. The places that these bases are added and moved to will affect player flow around the map and what towns players are more likely to meet each other at. By placing these opportunity points in the corners, and then having some in the center, it creates an organic flow for players to travel, and doesn't make them feel like they are spawning into a barren wasteland where they have to travel excessively long to find something of use or to defend themselves with.

 

 - Dynamic Loot Spawning Must Be Made Effective- With restarts now currently the main way that loot is put back into the world, with 100-150 players restarts would be occurring much more frequently to compensate for the loot that is being picked up, ruined, and lost at a much much higher rate. In order to keep loot in the world for players to use, especially a lower gear levels with new characters, there must be an effective and semi-predictable method of filling the world back up with things for players to pick up that does not disrupt the gaming experience. Every restart would affect all players on the map, and it's almost a guarantee that with 100-150 players in the game, somebody is either getting ripped off...or somebody's getting a deus ex machina. 

 

So...

 

Personally I would love to see the amount of players eventually raised to these levels, but these are just some of my thoughts on the matter. I'm certain I'll think of more things to add later, and I'll keep up with this topic if it gets attention in order to clarify my thoughts. I have to go to work in, like...ten minutes, so I'll flesh this topic out as best I can upon my return, or upon and other person wanting it.

 

PLEASE, LET'S KEEP THIS TOPIC CONSTRUCTIVE

[Rags! 1966]

- reserved for clarification posts -

[Cpanther 221]

How the game is at the moment....you will just have 150 people respawning none stop, and getting out of the coast will be a nightmare..it will be easier to just make the map the size of de_dust2 and put all the 40 players in there.

Edited September 26, 2014 by Cpanther

[boneboys 7988]

100-150 is too many, 75/85 will be the sweet spot ;)

[weparo 613]

100-150 is too many, 75/85 will be the sweet spot ;)

 

I agree. Any three didget player count is too much to handle for the map.

 

I also don't fancy the Idea of adding more military bases. Less is more. Instead increase the amount of civilian rifle spawns... Less M4/MP5, more Mosin, more Blazer, and longhorns.

[BugZ (DayZ) 49]

I would like to see 150 slot server but this is not going to happen. Maximum 64 or 100 slot servers can be usable without performance issues. Who wants to deal with laggy game in full version?

[LucidHills 94]

(Can we please not to use blue text. On the black background, it's really hard to read. Sorry for the inconvenience).

 

I think it'd be amazing if we get to point where we could have 150 players playing all on one sever and it running smoothly. If we get to this point, servers will have to be able/allowed to set lower limits. 

[Odrakis (DayZ) 20]

I hope it will never come, limited by whatever.

 

Even today I never play on server with more than 10 players :/

[Evil Minion 943]

- Player Super Saturation

With 40 players most parts of the map are far from populated. Other places have a higher population and would become crowed - for some time. Now overpopulation in cities might cause more people to move elsewhere as the pressure is simply too high. So this "super saturation" might actually help the less popular areas. More reasons for players to move away from their spawns and the closer cities is a good thing.

- Loot and Item Scarcity

Some here - loot being more scarce does increase competition and might cause more travel/interactions which improves gameplay.

- Server Hopping Would Skyrocket

Server hopping has to be dealt with anyways - key is to make it unattractive enough for people to rather not attempt it without hurting basic server switching too much. There are some good ideas around. Be it 40, 80 or 150 player servers excessive hopping will always be very unhealthy for gameplay and reduce the overall experience.

 

- Scatter Spawn Points

Bad. Very bad in fact Just as competition for loot and possible overpopulation in coastal cities is a good thing this would hurt the gameplay. Why?

• Map Layout goes to waste: You either got a boring homogenous map with loot spawns scattered as well or a heterogenous map that would result in vastly better spawns. Now in order to prevent suicide spams you would have to increase the penalty for dying by a lot causing frustration for people who really didn't want to die. Now death should be harsh - but it should not prevent you from playing as long as it would have to with all map spawns.
• Lack of Migration: Why would you move to another place if its pretty clear that there are people who already spawned in this place and picked it clean. Better stay in the city or town close to your spawn point as you won't lose as much time and the chances to find something are probably higher. No reason to look for high value areas because its very likely that someone already spawned closeby.
• Lack of Pathway Coverage: With people spawning everywhere there will be less pressure on them causing less people to move over the map and more people to stay in place. So the paths between cities and towns would experience much less traffic. There is simply not much reason to move elsewhere so the few who do might actually experience less encounters while the other will stay in their hometowns knowing that every other place is already claimed
• Lack of Progression: You spawn somewhere and get some of the loot in this area. Well done you are finished. What you can't find in your home town you won't find in other places either as people spawned there just like you. With coastal spawns moving away from the coast would create some natural progression as more and more players will be left behind and the ones who don't will have better and better gear leaving items people at the coast would fight over. And of course the chance of meeting geared players would increase as well.
• People pop up everywhere: There is a much higher chance of a feshspawn sudenly appearing in an area you just secured. In fact at every time someone could spawn right next to you. And as freshspawns have nothing to lose chaos and insecurity ensue. Can be countered by increasing the death penalty - to unfun amounts.

In short: All map spawns destroy game mechanics by homogenizing the experience and will most likely create a very stagnant gameplay. Its better to keep coastal spawns and make game dynamics fill the rest of the map as this makes for a more interesting and heterogenous experience with far more movement and basically more things happening on the map.

 

However with coast spawns we should not have single easily predictable spawnpoints but rather an area along the shore you can spawn in. The exact point should be based on both a random factor and some weight that depends on:

• player density (the lower the higher the chance of spawning -> allows for less spawnkilling and a little higher chance of finding basic gear)
• storage density (same as player density to reduce the chances of gearing back up quickly)
• the location of your corpse (spawns should tend to be far away from the place of your death)
• player locations (you should never spawn too close to other players)

- Add More Points of Interest

Definitely a very good thing. Give people a reason to travel - and make sure to not destroy this reason by adding things like all map spawns.

- Dynamic Loot Spawning Must Be Made Effective

Right - loot respawns should create a robust system that allows for dynamics to unfold. Frequent resetting hurts this so server restarts should be rare and their effect on game dynamics should be minimal. Somethings that might help:

• Loot Persistence: Server restarts should not chance the location or properties of items. If you build a fire and drop your gun next to it after restart there should be a fire with your gun next to it. Half cooked meat would still be half cooked and so on. So if you log abck in after a restart you would encounter the same conditions you left. This effect may or may not be limited to the immediate surroundings of players active at the time.
• Time Consistence: Server restarts should not chance the time of day. the serve restarts at 0:00 it will be 0:00 when it comes back up and the weather should be the same as well. Evey server should be forced to go through a 24 hour cycle though owners might change to have a specific time of day correspond with a specific time in real life or speed up time. So you could just shift time by 6 hours to allow for more daytime or more nighttime experience or speed up time slightly to make for a more diverse experience at the same real life time. Now forcing a 24 hour cycle would also allow to set server restarts to less popular times (might correspond to less active real life times as well) thus affecting a low number of players.
• Player Count based respawns: More players on a server might more players would compete for loot. So to avoid low population servers being a superior source of gear the loot spawn/respawn rate should increase proportional to player count. Empty servers hsould only spawn loot to a (fairly low) minimum amount to keep them from becoming uninteresting. In the end the (risk+effort)/reward ratio should be roughly the same for all servers regardless of player count.
• Density based respawns: Loot should be more likely to spawn in areas on the map with low player density and it should not spawn close to players. This would also help emphasize travel over camping the same place and waiting for spawns and as players get to expect this helps scattering players all over the map. The difference to all map spawns? The disadvantages above would not be an issue and the whole gameplay would be much more dynamic and rewarding (as you travel further there is a higher chance of getting a reward).

This - together with the necessary fix to server hopping - is probably the most important part to create the right dynamics that offer a challenging but not impossible, dynamic, exciting and diverse experience.

Edited September 26, 2014 by Evil Minion

[hotcakes 348]

what is there to discuss, they already did 100/85/50 man denomination servers in experimental .3X.

 

it was pretty hilarious to play and everyone liked the idea of some 100-man servers. 

[dirrly 70]

100-150 is too many, 75/85 will be the sweet spot ;)

 

this! :-)

[Baker. 1484]

100-150 is too many, 75/85 will be the sweet spot ;)

This^.

 

50 was the magic number with the original Chernarus, Chernarus+ has enough space I feel for this exact number. If anyone played the mod they know that with 50 people on you were tripping over people on a regular basis.

[Briljin 102]

100-150 is too many, 75/85 will be the sweet spot ;)

 

+1, this would be about right.

[DocWolf 146]

Multiple times I've heard from the makers of this game that they want to have around 100 or so players in a server come the final release. I heard that Dean himself say that he wanted about 150 players in Chernarus at once. It's an interesting concept to think about, and we're still a long way from release or that many players being in the game at one time, but it did get me thinking about what kind of implications that would cause...and how we would go about avoiding the multitude of problems that just dumping a higher players count would cause without some serious Chernarussian overhaul...

 

ISSUES THAT 100-150 PLAYERS WOULD CAUSE WITHOUT MAP CHANGES

 

- Player Super Saturation - Adding this massive amount of players at one time into Chernarus would over saturate certain areas of the map, making already overcrowded areas such as Cherno, Elektro, Berezino, and Novodjarsk Polana even more crowded. Theoretically three times as crowded at times. The lack of elbow room in a game like DayZ would be tragic. If you met another player every six minutes, your lifespan would severely shorten and meeting other players would no longer carry with it the "wow" vibe that is still has even after hundreds of hours of play time for me. Where there are constantly too many players, we arrive at the next issue...

 

 

- Loot and Item Scarcity - Introducing such a huge influx of players into Chernarus would severely deplete the amount of resources in the game, especially around the coastal area where new spawns enter the game. Players would spawn into a server of 100-150 players and be met with...nothing. The Coast would be bone dry, the loot having been taken long ago by the older Bambis. And since with higher players counts, players would be dying and then respawning over and over in higher numbers, you would see servers forcing restarts to occur at higher and higher frequencies to force the world to populate itself with loot so that new spawns would have a chance at survival before every piece of warm clothing, every melee weapon, every bullet, and every firearm was taken and eventually lost. As players dread dying because they would look forward either endless meandering before hoping to find a scrap of something useful, more and more of them would turn to an effective, if not frowned upon method of gearing up...

 

- Server Hopping Would Skyrocket - Players would realize that spawning as a new character wouldn't any longer be an adventure or the start of a new journey, full of opportunity. The massive amounts of players would force loot to become so scarce or simply spawning become so dangerous that players would simply turn to server hopping as their primary method of gearing up. Since Military Bases and Airfields would become super saturated with players, firefights, and would become warzones as a result, empty servers would be the only safe-ish way to gear up. I hate server hopping. I loathe it. But it would become something that even I would end up doing, as would many others, simply because it would be the only way players could have a chance at surviving in such high population areas where spawns and already geared players coagulate. 

 

WHAT CHANGES HAVE TO OCCUR TO SUPPORT 100-150 PLAYERS

 

- Scatter Spawn Points - Spawn points can no longer remain almost exclusively on the coast. Spawning must take place over the entire map, allowing for the playerbase to be spread out upon their deaths in the game as well as incentivizing players to travel all over the map to find players, not just heading to the few hotspots that exist or heading to the coast to watch the Bambis run up and down the Highway of Death. The problems with coastal spawning is evident in the game currently with only 40 player servers, but the game will not function with the same spawn locations and 100-150 players in the game at once. This means that players start their characters off without being almost definitely plopped down in a place where their survival is immediately at risk. 

 

- Add More Points of Interest - The game currently has a very high amount of military installations and other points of interest that are scattered across the map, but the game doesn't necessarily suffer as a result of it. This issue isn't so much that there would be too little military grade loot in the playerbase on the server, the main issue would be that the places where high grade items can spawn would become super saturated with players if new bases and airfields are not added in locations that would encourage players to not all clump together. Also, Military Bases and Airfields act as player magnets, incentivizing players to travel to these places in search of good loot...and as a result, other players. Traveling from these bases along roads scattered with smaller towns of varying value acts to slow down players, causing them to meet at higher frequencies, and as a result...having less players reach their end destination which helps these bases not become overpopulated. The places that these bases are added and moved to will affect player flow around the map and what towns players are more likely to meet each other at. By placing these opportunity points in the corners, and then having some in the center, it creates an organic flow for players to travel, and doesn't make them feel like they are spawning into a barren wasteland where they have to travel excessively long to find something of use or to defend themselves with.

 

 - Dynamic Loot Spawning Must Be Made Effective- With restarts now currently the main way that loot is put back into the world, with 100-150 players restarts would be occurring much more frequently to compensate for the loot that is being picked up, ruined, and lost at a much much higher rate. In order to keep loot in the world for players to use, especially a lower gear levels with new characters, there must be an effective and semi-predictable method of filling the world back up with things for players to pick up that does not disrupt the gaming experience. Every restart would affect all players on the map, and it's almost a guarantee that with 100-150 players in the game, somebody is either getting ripped off...or somebody's getting a deus ex machina. 

 

So...

 

Personally I would love to see the amount of players eventually raised to these levels, but these are just some of my thoughts on the matter. I'm certain I'll think of more things to add later, and I'll keep up with this topic if it gets attention in order to clarify my thoughts. I have to go to work in, like...ten minutes, so I'll flesh this topic out as best I can upon my return, or upon and other person wanting it.

 

PLEASE, LET'S KEEP THIS TOPIC CONSTRUCTIVE

 

 

I'm not sure I'm following you...let's try to look at all the issues

 

 

Player Super Saturation - As long as the gameplay stay the same you're right: adding more players would over saturate certain areas of the map. Cherno, Elektro, Berezino, the military bases....it could be a nightmare. But at the moment those places are crowded because there are, realistically, only two things to do in the current alpha version of DayZ: killing people and searching for tools to kill people faster. We've already seen some changes in gameplay with the latest patches: respawning zombies and loot scarcity are helping decreasing (not cancelling) the frequency of deathmatch-style gaming sessions. With more stuff added to the gameplay (weight management and stamina for example), things that now are common - like quick marathons to Airfields/Bases and lugging around entire gun shops in backpacks will not be seen anymore... and people will, inevitabily, spread out. 

TLDR: now having 100 people per server will bring us DayZ: Battlefield Edition. With a more fleshed out gameplay, it could be an extremely interesting idea.

 

 

Loot and Item Scarcity - As far as I can understand the new loot system can handle multiple players in the same area - and considering what we've already said, that in the future players will not be as clustered as today...IMHO that's not really an issue. The only problem could be for newly spawned players...those will be the only one forcefully crammed in specific zones. There are a lot of possibile solutions, however. Some simple suggestions:

 

* increase spawn rate of basic clothes and low calories food in spawn areas. Strategically place ponds and/or fountains in those areas

* let people spawn without hungry/thirsty status, and with a long sleeved shirt instead of a t-shirt

* create virtual paths for new players - i.e. slightly increase the spawn rate of low-end good quality gear in certain areas of the map, in order to create "corridors" new spawned players follow more or less consciously to help them relocate inland

 

Those are not, obviously, the only possible solutions...merely some examples.

 

 

Server Hopping Would Skyrocket - At the moment server hopping works because there are no private servers. It's an alpha, after all. In the future, when DayZ will be in commerce, there will be private servers...and server hopping will not be possible, considering that player avatars will be saved serverside. 

 

 

On a more general note, I agree with you when you propose adding more points of interest...something that is NOT a military base, an airstrip or another city. More rural buildings/areas should be a priority - especially if they really introduce a weight/stamina systems: we need some kind of rest stops if we want to navigate Chernarus with such limitations. More "scenery" should be a priority too: add more (way more) blood in buildings and outside them...more car wrecks, add streets cluttered with gridlocked cars and trucks...add areas where remnants of police and military vehicles imply a bloody battle against the infected. At the moment Chernarus doesn't look like a country devastated by a bloody and futile resistance against hordes of diseased killers - it looks like country-sized version of Chernobyl. It's an abandoned country, not a murdered one.

 

Not sure about spreading spawn points everywhere. IMHO clustering them on the coast helps the developers (and the players) better managing the map zones.

Edited September 26, 2014 by DocWolf