Large Game: Analysis and Discussion

I meant it will allow for 90 different teams to be clearly identified by their strat icons.

Read my post on 1st page in response to this. The stripes only appear on the units not the strat icons. We need a more robust system than just colors.

Can I just chime in and say that no, I don't think increasing game size should be a priority yet.

That involves prioritizing optimisations which I believe is premature at this stage.

Big games are fun but we are still beta testing - content is far more important. Optimisations can wait.

Very large games are mostly playable when players are able to communicate quickly by voice to set up strategies. Random players won't be able to communicate efficiently in such games and it could be frustrating.

This is why such large games should not be a priority until the optimizations for games up to 10 players are excellent and the unit pool is enlarged.

I agree that communication is a big issue, but that can be solved with the abillity to add bigger smaller teams. so instead of 10v10v10 you have 3v3v3v3v3v3v3v3v3v3. Three members can still pretty easily communicate.

I think 1v1 (and 2v2) ladder and galactic war games should take top priority.

It creates for good grinding at balance.
It is good for a competitive atmosphere.
And sets a sort of rhythm for PA the game, (ladder season, patches, content releases) .


Since a massive game seems possible, why not make it a crucial part of Galactic War meta game?
So Uber can always how X-number of large scale games.

Leave the custom and non-ladder stuff to the rest of us.
If Uber builds the scalability, there will be no shortage of people renting out servers for this game.

I definitely think it would be awesome to see larger games prioritized more, but certainly not before we get the unit cannon/teleporters and some more work on orbital. With so many players, it just turns into "who can build the most orbital fighters".

You don't draw stripes on the icons. You just use the stripe color for the outlines of the icons.

I agree with this.
Whilst it is undeniably awesome to see large games working, to an extent, I think it would be somewhat selfish to request that this be prioritized over, I don't know, getting a full unit roster, or fully working game

Although, I did a little "squee" when it was suggested that 40+ player games could become a norm in the finished game

Yup. I agree with this.

I don't know about the full roster, but I think the orbital stuff definitely needs to happen first.

Current Zaphod video has this hence its name Orbital Madness

I am for making this high priority.

First it was the most fun i ever had in PA.
It is something where all can have fun. Good people can lead and help their team much. Not so good ones, can also help and be of use, also they wont lose immediately if teams are ok balanced.

Still there are somethings that are worth thinking about:
At a not specific ammount of player-slots in a game, it will change from arranged teamgames to players joining and playing random teams. The only thing i can compare it to is 32 to 64 player games like bf or general fps style games. Nevertheless playing pa big games i realized there is a bigger need for communication possibilities, only thing usefull is voip you simply dont have as much time to type.
Another thing is. I love shared controll and shared resources, but in these big games there will be abuse and trolls, so there should be the possibility to have hierachically controll distribution models, together with a visual feedback for everyone to show which player controlls what stuff atm.

Also fighting on one planet talking to teammates on ts and getting shared resources from another planet and infos from the orbital layer by ts. I had no real need to zoom out, i could concentrate on my part. So maybe one game doesn't need to be on process or even only on one server.....

Saying this i will conclude, making this high priority could change the game. I will go as far as to say it will change it. This is something new something i never experienced in a RTS before on this level. As much as i would love it if you go down this road, as much i think you will fade away from what you originally had planned for it. Think about that. We saw the possibilities. But maybe you should finish PA first and make World of PA later as a sequel.

Yeah but 10v10v10 is totally different from 3v3v3v3v etc in terms of gameplay.

Without sounding ungrateful I think we were just happy with something different. Large FFA team games don't appeal to me so my biased opinion would like other features please.

On the performance question I had no problems whatsoever so great work on this side of the game. I felt sorry for other players on the same server when I found out about how it works.

I'l still buy a server for games though if this becomes an option in the future.

We limit the outgoing bandwidth and it's simply a hard cap. Memory is trickier to deal with.

Keep in mind each of our servers has a gigabit connection so we can support the bandwidth for hundreds of players on a single box. Memory has simply been the bigger issue and it's one we are working on making better.

Thanks

Chat issues issues in the larger games is rather surprising.
One of the often requested UI features is "map pings" or "drawing on the map".
If text is already an issue, would the same problem block the implementation of these?


And on a related note, can somebody remind me what is happening with voice integration with this game?
It's a feature take for granted on consoles, but few games on PC really have it.
I find anytime I can chat with teammates, fun, gameplay and teamwork increase immensely.

I did a quick search for both any "voice" threads or the feature conformation thread. Neither seemed to state anything.

To be honest, I'm not sure too many RTSs have voice chat integration. Since the game is on steam, one could use the steam chat. Or in the case of a clan, use TS3, Mubble, etc. However, since they are putting in things like Twitch.tv integration, I would be interested in seeing them add it(if it isn't too much trouble, for the non organized players). However, I hope it doesn't end up with random 12yr olds screaming or people playing random music or sound clips(hopefully also mute options).

As for whether or not I see a performance hit in large games, the 36(5 teams of 4) game didn't really lag until Realm decided that they had to literally NUKE EVERYTHING THAT MOVED(if there had only been one planet...).

Anyways, tons of units? Not really a problem for me. 4-9 Nukes going off every 10-30 seconds? Creates a bit of lag.