Honestly, with that many players dying becomes a non-issue since there's always somebody spawning, I really don't think the game works properly with that many people. I think after 8v8 the game starts to lose balance.. so anything up to 16 players is alright with me
Someone had a 100 player sever once. We only got to 44, but it was awesome :P
Endar and the monash servers...got up to 80 odd players...was amazingly still playable (great server) even with those high numbers.
Walking into marine spawn and seeing 30+ marines is pretty scary...even with 30+ skulks behind you.
Someone had a 100 player sever once. We only got to 44, but it was awesome :P
Endar and the monash servers...got up to 80 odd players...was amazingly still playable (great server) even with those high numbers.
Walking into marine spawn and seeing 30+ marines is pretty scary...even with 30+ skulks behind you.
I'm not surprised as his box is an 4.9GHz OCd beast.
Someone had a 100 player sever once. We only got to 44, but it was awesome :P
Endar and the monash servers...got up to 80 odd players...was amazingly still playable (great server) even with those high numbers.
Walking into marine spawn and seeing 30+ marines is pretty scary...even with 30+ skulks behind you.
I'm not surprised as his box is an 4.9GHz OCd beast.
Yeah he has looked after us aussie NS2'ers rather well. Plus was great fun for all of us who happened to join
I had thought it was a glitch...then I joined and saw 60+ ppl actually in game and it grew from there.
Honestly, with that many players dying becomes a non-issue since there's always somebody spawning, I really don't think the game works properly with that many people. I think after 8v8 the game starts to lose balance.. so anything up to 16 players is alright with me
But hey, your servers, you can do what you want!
8v8 is the bare minimum and anything under that does even function properly (for starters, most advanced tech becomes worthless). Balance doesn't even start to tip until 10v10, which seems to be about ideal. 12v12 is well within acceptable parameters.
matsoMaster of PatchesJoin Date: 2002-11-05Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
edited April 2013
One of the major reasons to introduce the alien commander and the pres/tres system was to allow for balanced gameplay over a larger playernumber than NS1. Unfortunately, performance issues kept the game from being tested on larger than 20 players during the beta - squeezing enough performance to run 24 player servers on a high-end server was only achieved 2 weeks before release (with the multithreaded prediction and limited input sampling patches).
24 player servers was surprisingly balanced up until 239/240 when skulks became a lot easier to kill due to hitbox fixes, lower skulk acceleration and generally increased performance.
This has revealed a couple of major issues with 24 player servers, like the non-scaling alien spawn system.
One of the major reasons to introduce the alien commander and the pres/tres system was to allow for balanced gameplay over a larger playernumber than NS1. Unfortunately, performance issues kept the game from being tested on larger than 20 players during the beta - squeezing enough performance to run 24 player servers on a high-end server was only achieved 2 weeks before release (with the multithreaded prediction and limited input sampling patches).
24 player servers was surprisingly balanced up until 239/240 when skulks became a lot easier to kill due to hitbox fixes, lower skulk acceleration and generally increased performance.
This has revealed a couple of major issues with 24 player servers, like the non-scaling alien spawn system.
It is known.
It will get fixed.
Well at least someone know the issues of 24p servers. Yes it is part of the problem but like Matso said 24p servers were surprisingly balanced until 239/240. So why is that it was somewhat balanced with the same egg system that is the supposed problem? As Matso said, coupling performance and hitreg increases AND nerfing the skulks at the same time makes the skulk target practice. More skulks dying means that the egg system is not working as well because more people dying as skulks due to the nerfs=bigger queue. Before it was less frustrating because while not perfect, the mobility as a skulk allowed you to survive longer and perhaps pick off more marines/escape from a bad encounter. If you play on a wide range of player counts you tend to notice these things.
Heck recently we just learned that marines were stomping aliens early game until fades in some competitive play. The solution was to nerf marines for all playercounts instead of making skulk fun to play again and give it more mobility to not be so defensive. Of course this was done quickly for the tournament (since skulks is being reworked in the balance mod) but even prior to the tournament I have seen nerf after nerf. I just hope the solutions in the future will be looking at what is wrong with the enjoyability of the game instead of looking towards the other team and asking what can be nerfed to accommodate the balance. That is not fun for anyone.
So I HOPE both skulk and the egg system are accommodated properly and not only the egg system that was working before. Since skulk mobility is being reworked and the spawning system shows a few changes I would hope it turns out well.
So I HOPE both skulk and the egg system are accommodated properly and not only the egg system that was working before. Since skulk mobility is being reworked and the spawning system shows a few changes I would hope it turns out well.
Having 32 v 32 is nice but trying to run a temporary server with that many people and you playing NS2 on that machine would probably not help with the lag.
Like has already been stated, the game just isn't balanced for that many players, 24 is pushing it, if players knew what they were doing I feel marines would win 80% of games in 24 slot servers, 32 is just asking for complete marine domination.
Like has already been stated, the game just isn't balanced for that many players, 24 is pushing it, if players knew what they were doing I feel marines would win 80% of games in 24 slot servers, 32 is just asking for complete marine domination.
Sorry but thats not entirely true, as I said in my earlier posts I have actually played on a stupidly high player count (60+) and actually found the game better balanced at those higher levels than at 12v12 for aliens.
Even with a marine team that knows what they are doing its very hard to win when you have 30 odd skulks rushing into your spawn.
Most marines struggle once they have more than 4 targets to shoot at...and higher player counts allow skulks to move in packs.
Alien spawn system still needs work on higher player counts but marines also struggle as they need 4 IP's or have long queues also.
Final pushes into marin spawns was not exactly easy...but I would not have said marines had the upper hand on higher player counts.
@DarkflameQ Yes UWE have said that they intended this game to be played with higher player numbers...but its been reliable servers that has held things back as its hard to balance at that level if your not actually playing games of that size.
Sadly UWE did not have access to good servers, and most pub servers can not cope with anything above 18 players until late in the beta....Us ausies had the Monash servers which are almost bullet proof...and performed as well with 80 players as some other servers did with 24.
Over time either the code will improve or the standard of server will....needless to say bigger player numbers is still one of the focuses that UWE has.
Sweet, i think it was pretty obvious they are looking to increase the numbers since Decent is a lot bigger than the previous maps.
I see a lot of people moan about servers above 20 people but i've always played on 24 man servers and had nothing but fun, sure there are some infuriating matches where the commander is a newbie or the team are newbies, but that's just part and parcel of it all, but if you get a few regulars together by having a good server to meet on, then you have pure fun on your hands.
Right now i think Decent is too big even for 24 players, i won't risk having it in my map cycle as sometimes the server will drop to 16 people and the map is just way to huge for that many, people just end up quitting.
32 is actually quite achievable now with the performance improvements of the last couple of builds
Thats nonsense.
There constant hitches on your "great" 32 slot server.
I hope UWE block these kind servers in serverbrowser soon. They giving new players an unaccepable first impression of the game with 90% marinewins, balance for the a** and bad perfomance.
These servers help to lower the playercount, thx man.
The game was balanced for smaller player count becuase the game could not physically run larger player counts at any reasonable speed. This has changed over time but servers the size of what we saw in NS1 will simply never be possible until the game is multi threaded or 100% C++.
The devs had said that they were working on multi threading in the past so hopefully this can open up some new possibilities for the game.
Comments
The game is balanced best for 6v6 through around 10v10. Anything above that... well, you have to want it to like it.
Yeah, server performance. As the game gets better optimized you will find that number increasing.
Someone had a 100 player sever once. We only got to 44, but it was awesome :P
But hey, your servers, you can do what you want!
Endar and the monash servers...got up to 80 odd players...was amazingly still playable (great server) even with those high numbers.
Walking into marine spawn and seeing 30+ marines is pretty scary...even with 30+ skulks behind you.
Yeah he has looked after us aussie NS2'ers rather well. Plus was great fun for all of us who happened to join
I had thought it was a glitch...then I joined and saw 60+ ppl actually in game and it grew from there.
Balance might go out the window, but it's far from "unplayable" at any level, at least if you discount framerate and tickrate issues.
8v8 is the bare minimum and anything under that does even function properly (for starters, most advanced tech becomes worthless). Balance doesn't even start to tip until 10v10, which seems to be about ideal. 12v12 is well within acceptable parameters.
24 player servers was surprisingly balanced up until 239/240 when skulks became a lot easier to kill due to hitbox fixes, lower skulk acceleration and generally increased performance.
This has revealed a couple of major issues with 24 player servers, like the non-scaling alien spawn system.
It is known.
It will get fixed.
Well at least someone know the issues of 24p servers. Yes it is part of the problem but like Matso said 24p servers were surprisingly balanced until 239/240. So why is that it was somewhat balanced with the same egg system that is the supposed problem? As Matso said, coupling performance and hitreg increases AND nerfing the skulks at the same time makes the skulk target practice. More skulks dying means that the egg system is not working as well because more people dying as skulks due to the nerfs=bigger queue. Before it was less frustrating because while not perfect, the mobility as a skulk allowed you to survive longer and perhaps pick off more marines/escape from a bad encounter. If you play on a wide range of player counts you tend to notice these things.
Heck recently we just learned that marines were stomping aliens early game until fades in some competitive play. The solution was to nerf marines for all playercounts instead of making skulk fun to play again and give it more mobility to not be so defensive. Of course this was done quickly for the tournament (since skulks is being reworked in the balance mod) but even prior to the tournament I have seen nerf after nerf. I just hope the solutions in the future will be looking at what is wrong with the enjoyability of the game instead of looking towards the other team and asking what can be nerfed to accommodate the balance. That is not fun for anyone.
So I HOPE both skulk and the egg system are accommodated properly and not only the egg system that was working before. Since skulk mobility is being reworked and the spawning system shows a few changes I would hope it turns out well.
Skulk mobility is being reworked? rejoice!
Sorry but thats not entirely true, as I said in my earlier posts I have actually played on a stupidly high player count (60+) and actually found the game better balanced at those higher levels than at 12v12 for aliens.
Even with a marine team that knows what they are doing its very hard to win when you have 30 odd skulks rushing into your spawn.
Most marines struggle once they have more than 4 targets to shoot at...and higher player counts allow skulks to move in packs.
Alien spawn system still needs work on higher player counts but marines also struggle as they need 4 IP's or have long queues also.
Final pushes into marin spawns was not exactly easy...but I would not have said marines had the upper hand on higher player counts.
@DarkflameQ Yes UWE have said that they intended this game to be played with higher player numbers...but its been reliable servers that has held things back as its hard to balance at that level if your not actually playing games of that size.
Sadly UWE did not have access to good servers, and most pub servers can not cope with anything above 18 players until late in the beta....Us ausies had the Monash servers which are almost bullet proof...and performed as well with 80 players as some other servers did with 24.
Over time either the code will improve or the standard of server will....needless to say bigger player numbers is still one of the focuses that UWE has.
I see a lot of people moan about servers above 20 people but i've always played on 24 man servers and had nothing but fun, sure there are some infuriating matches where the commander is a newbie or the team are newbies, but that's just part and parcel of it all, but if you get a few regulars together by having a good server to meet on, then you have pure fun on your hands.
Right now i think Decent is too big even for 24 players, i won't risk having it in my map cycle as sometimes the server will drop to 16 people and the map is just way to huge for that many, people just end up quitting.
So yeah, i'm looking forward to more player slots
Thats nonsense.
There constant hitches on your "great" 32 slot server.
I hope UWE block these kind servers in serverbrowser soon. They giving new players an unaccepable first impression of the game with 90% marinewins, balance for the a** and bad perfomance.
These servers help to lower the playercount, thx man.
And the servers you may be speaking of are not mine, there are other 32 man servers currently running but they are nothing to do with me.
The devs had said that they were working on multi threading in the past so hopefully this can open up some new possibilities for the game.
You really think serverperformance is the only reason of 24players max?
So you increase your serversize by 2 to 23 cause your server can host this @ an reasonable speed since version 249?