General Discussion

I have no techinal knowledge on servers but I was wondering,

If a MMOG had a server size of say 200, would that allow the game to do more?

Like more twitchy combat, destructable enviroments, player housing etc.

And if it could do you think anyone would want to play it.

Not saying I am making a game, just wondering.

Eh? Server size of 200?

Originally posted by fischsemmel

Eh? Server size of 200?

He means people.  He's asking if limiting the number of people per server to perhaps 200 people would allow for better game mechanics.

WurmOnline is based around the player limit of 500 people actively playing on a server(logged in), 1,500 active on the server(call it home and have stuff placed down that's theirs), and a grid of 28,000 servers(if you quote me on the last figure I'll choke you).  While a lot of that is indy scope, I'm sure that at the same time a lot of it isn't.  That's just a game covering everything except the twitch combat.

I dont believe there is a perfect server size number. The perfect server size is there is enough players to make it seem your not alone, yet not too crowded that you hunt where you want without too much competition

Torrential

My experience on the Development side (2 MMOFPS that were published... one shortlived) is that there's definately a "players per area" sort of limit that you can hit... but it doesn't effect any other systems.

Endless Ages worked for years, the pop-cap was fairly high (thousands).

So no, I don't believe pop-cap has as much to do with game mechanic.

I think the effort the programmers put into the different sections is what is the "trade-off" you're thinking off.  You have finite resources and decide if you want to support however many players or however many features.  1 programmer can only program so much in a certain amount of time... it's not his/her fault, it's just the truth.

So I guess it's both "Yes." and "No." depending on how you look at it.

Ah, the reason I ask is because I figure for certain features, like housing, it would be more practical to do if there were fewer players per server.

And other things like twitch combat, the reason most people say it couldn't be done in an MMOG is because having a lot of people + collision detection + the internet = a lot of lag.  So I figured that maybe having not so many people + collision detection + the internet = not so much lag, simplistic but you get my point.

I think Planetside had a max of 200 people.

Huxley will have a max of around 200 people per map as well.

Originally posted by fischsemmel

Eh? Server size of 200?

hehehehe