32 or 24 players for our maps?

[Criminal]

What do you guys figure more fun with 32? or 24?

Right now it's alot of fun fighting in close up objectives with 24 people but inherently with our maps being much bigger i strongly feel that 16 players per side will be FAR more interesting and action oriented rather than simply 12.

In addition having 16 players on each team also opens up extra seats in particular vehicles to do dual and maybe three people in some vehicles without sacrificing the entire team.

Anyways let me know what your thoughts are.

[death_grin]

I choose....32
Might as well have the capability for 32 then have less and want more

[AoP]

I choose....32
Might as well have the capability for 32 then have less and want more

Completely agreed.

[Keys]

Agreed though will we be incorporating 32 vehicles in a map  , though it will all work out in the end.

[xKamikazex]

32, yes. And the thought I had since we all agreed more vehicles than people, I imagined 32 vehicles when there was only 24 people on the map.... so we may look at 48 vehicles to a 32 player base. But it all really depends on the map so we will see.

[Keys]

48 x 5,000 = 240,000 poly's way to go kami you just made a flat plane with 48 vehicles 

[Criminal]

wait you mean 16 player base....so 20 vehicle MAX per base...and that's IF we decide to put all of them in the same place...damn that's alot of vehicles.

[Inferno]

that is a lot of vehicles.  would anyone play as infantry if there is a nice vehicle or battlesuit laying there?  plus, if vehicles have multiple seating spots, the need for that many vehicles becomes even less.  I guess it does come down to if the maps are that big that people who are unfortunate enough to not get a vehicle would get bored running around.

I would be for 32 players though, greater chance that there is someone out there worse than me that I may be able to kill.  We'll just have to do some play testing on the appropriate amount of vehicles per level.

[xKamikazex]

You guys are all ballparking it too much from what I originally meant. I knew I should of been more specific. Ok, first of all not all vehicles are created equal. They don't all have a 5,000 triangle count. Some have more, others have less. Mechs have a 4-6k yes, but most vehicles already are 2-4k. Second, not all vehicles are all going to be the same. Yes there will be some mechs on the field, but more so there will be tanks, planes, cars ect. The Beefy units can't out number the weaker ones, it just doesn't make sense. And Third, the infantry will be more so played on tight close quarter combat rather than open field. This will apply for all of our vehicle oriented maps. And yes we will have smaller infantry only maps as well.

[Criminal]

What he said. But seriously i forgot to address that...as far as total batch count going on at one time you don't see all vehicles at the same time first of all so to try to batch count your vehicles as a whole is pointless since its a "worst case" scenario. In addition i agree with what kami said as far as vehicles go we are talking everything all the little cars, battlsuits, bikes, mechs, tanks, APC's whatever...but just because there are so many vehicles doesnt mean that any one of them can do a particular objective...and that's where the infantry comes into play.

The players that enjoy 1. playing objective base gameplay 2. Infantry style play 3. CQC (close quarter combat) will be the ones doing objectives where you'll have the hardcore mecha/ vehicle simulator fans sitting out in the vehicles just racking up the kills and supporting the previous type of player. It will definetly make for a very interesting and fun type of gameplay.

[Freelancer_]

I'd have to say go for 32...

From my experiences in dozens of titles the comunity generally demands to see servers servers that can handle the maximum a game is possible of supporting. Hell in some cases they'd even push beyond the what was officially supported i.e.

Mechwarrior only supported 16 but it got quickly upped to 24 and in some rare cases 32, though the netcode was pretty rough and 24 was the highest that could be run with acceptable amounts of lag on the best servers available at the time. I'd be willing to bet that 32+ is possible today on that game with the newer hardware available today.

[xKamikazex]

We need to be very careful with this though. 32 players all in one spot on the map competing for the same objective will get pretty chaotic. It will come down heavy on each level design to balance this.

[Criminal]

Yeah it will be alot having the 16 on 16 in one place but if we do it very similar to way the "island" map is done then it should be okay.....where you can have vehicles fighting it out for superiority over the entrances but once that's attained you really have to get men on the ground inside the tunnels to take the objective....objectives like this will be the staple of our gameplay and our levels.

[Keys]

objectives like this will be the staple of our gameplay and our levels.

Ya hopefully

[Sirrom Nivek]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but if the eventual objective is to ensure that this product is playable by as many people as possible, then what kind of hardware are we talking about that you would need to play it effectively?

Am I going to have to go out and spend $2000 on a high-end pc and video card just to get respectable frame rates?