The Ideal Match Size (Player-count)
CD121
Join Date: 2013-04-04 Member: 184635Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
Join Date: 2013-04-04 Member: 184635Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
I personally think the game is most enjoyable with six to eight players on each team. Nine is alright but 10 kind of pushes it-anything beyond that and the game experience seems to goes down the toilet.
With the smaller numbers on both teams each player becomes a more valuable asset, and each player can potentially make a bigger difference. This I like.
For the 20 slot and beyond every engagement is just a mess. There is often so much going on that many decent machines may still experience performance drops in the midst of combat. Just as well I've yet to encounter a single server that can fully handle anything 20+ player-wise as I universally encounter skips and jumps of varying frequencies whenever I've joined one.
I Just can't seem to wrap my brain around the popularity of these servers with high player caps. But I digress.
Share your thoughts, I'm just testing the waters here.
With the smaller numbers on both teams each player becomes a more valuable asset, and each player can potentially make a bigger difference. This I like.
For the 20 slot and beyond every engagement is just a mess. There is often so much going on that many decent machines may still experience performance drops in the midst of combat. Just as well I've yet to encounter a single server that can fully handle anything 20+ player-wise as I universally encounter skips and jumps of varying frequencies whenever I've joined one.
I Just can't seem to wrap my brain around the popularity of these servers with high player caps. But I digress.
Share your thoughts, I'm just testing the waters here.
Comments
Anything lower than 5v5 is bad too.
Us Americans love a good clusterf*ck of a match, I guess.
16 is much more forgiving because dying isn't as major, because dying in the 5v5, can cause you to lose an entire area in seconds
Plus, as a hard-working ninja, all chances of stealth and surprise go down the drain with 24 man servers. To each his own.
One of my favorite servers is something like 18 or 20p (depends on the reserved slot thing) and I think this is a good number. I've never gone as low as 6v6 but someday I might try a pug.
As someone who only plays on 1 NS2 server exclusively, which is a 24 man server, I'd like to refute some of your points. While it may not "feel" like anything you do matters, it actually does, it is just not as readily apparent. Sometimes what you do makes a much larger difference... just like any other server. With that said, if you are just running into a large pack of marines over and over again by yourself and keep dying, then you obviously are not making a difference.
I can't tell you the number of times what I've did by myself in a 24 man server caused my team to win or gave us a much better chance to win.
I still see plenty of ninja'ing go on the 24 player server I play on, plenty of ninja phasegates, plenty of "ninjas" taking out alien upgrades. Granted it may be a little harder then lower player count servers, but it is still possible and happens frequently enough.
It is also commonly disagreed around here.
Presenting your view is fine, but please don't present it as a consensus.
This thread alone has 12 votes for 18 max, and only 4 advocating for 20+. It appears it is "commonly" agreed that 16-18 is the sweet spot.
16 player servers are the limit for me. Even they push it a little too far, 14 players is my favourite amount, as you can have one commander and 6 people (3 teams of two) engaging in small skirmishes around the map, yet can still organise large pushes of the entire ground force.
No it doesn't, it says that most people agree that 16-18 is the best. Which is true. He didn't say "unanimously agreed," he said "commonly agreed." As in, it is common for someone to prefer 16-18 over 20+.
Choose your poison.
Only on these forums. The vast majority prefer the higher player servers or else there would not be so many thriving 20p+ servers and people complaining about how there are so many of them compared to lower player servers.
IMO, the sweet spot is whatever players find the most fun for them because that is what keeps them playing.
8v8, 9v9 for game with people I know and some randoms
10v10 for fun, but not so balanced matches, could go with totally random teams
12v12 purely for fun
Anything might work under certain circumestences, 8v8 is the best in general.
The benefit is that you don't feel the leavers as much, and even in 20 man servers, the games can often start out 5v4 for the first couple of minutes because of quick commanders, slow loaders and temp afkers.
For example in NS1 some people might have ultimately liked playing smaller NS games, but got stuck playing combat or massive pubs because they are the more accessible ones. Once they learn the habits of a combat or big pub, the transition to smaller NS games is far more difficult.
Obviously some people simply like large pubs, which is completely fine, but at the same time I feel there were also a lot of big server players who would've loved the finesse and trickery of smaller games if only they had kept playing on small servers a little longer to appreciate all the subtleties there.
I don't know if it's a good idea to push people to learn the finesse of the less accessible styles of gameplay, but I feel it's still pretty good that there's lots of talk about benefits of different server sizes. At that point more people become aware that there are alternative ways to enjoy the game and after that it's their business to figure out what they want out of their gaming experience.
This is just an observation-but I believe that in Europe there are, on average, more smaller matches that are going on than in the U.S.
(Assumption made on ping values, Locale: East Coast U.S.)
Yeah. I'm jelly.