In praise of large servers
Martigen
Australia Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 2714Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Reinforced - Onos
Australia Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 2714Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Reinforced - Onos
By now some of you have found Wooza's 42 player server, and if you don't know about it yet, well now you do.
And after spending some 25 hours on it so far, I have just one thing to say:
It's epic.
In fact, when I play on a traditional 12-20 player server now it just feels... lacking.
You haven't played NS until you're charging a hive as a marine with 20 aliens hurtling at you, or truly reveled in a base rush as a Kharaa until you're hearing marines dying left and right among a torrent of gunfire. This is, for want of a better phrase, the penultimate expression of what NS is.
I know the competitive players among you may disagree, and that's fine, I get it -- I used to play NS1 competitively -- but as far as having fun goes on publics, of experiencing a real infestation ('6' aliens do not an infestation make), and a rush from up to forty players joining an intense firefight, it's freaking awesome.
But what about balance? It'd be interesting to see the stats but from my 25 hours or so it actually seems to be about 50/50. There are quick marine wins, and quick alien wins. Long games where marines win, long games where aliens win. It is, as always, about the players on the teams. It's also a testament to UWE's design in that the player count can scale to 40 people and still be balanced this way.
That's not to say it doesn't play differently -- it does, and there are some positive and negative effects. In the positive boring tasks like eating RTs happen quickly when you lots of players piling on. So it's more fun actually playing, instead spending a minute chewing. But that's not to say nodes are hard to keep either, quite the opposite -- you've got more marines covering a map and nodes get recapped quickly and, like munching, built quickly too. Even so with more players you've got more people able to defend nodes for both sides, so in the end node ownership actually ends up feeling about the same.
Having more marines means more mines early on, but this doesn't unbalance it, as it helps offset more skulks. More shotguns on the field? Also more Fades. Bilebomb rushes? Works just the same, but despite more gorges these can be stopped just the same as there's more marines. Hives go down quicker? Yep, when enough people get in the hive, but you'd be surprised how many times marines are stopped at an entrance with an army of aliens pushing them back. As with smaller servers, it comes down to the skill of the players.
On the negative side comming is harder -- you've got twenty children to look after now, but if you can comm on a 42 player server and adapt you'll find your skills improved if you play on a smaller server. Look at it as training, probably the best you can get for comming.
Now Wooza's will be, for some of you -- including me, being an Aussie -- high ping depending where in the world you are. Firstly -- join to have fun -- and secondly ping doesn't matter.
The better players know that NS is a more strategic game on the field than your average FPS, and your success as a marine or skulk is as much dependent on how you play as how well you can aim, so ping is less important.
So get on, and experience NS on a whole new level.
Wooza's is the only 42 player out there at the moment. Anyone wishing to setup more, please do. This goes for you too UWE -- how about an official larger server or two?
Mart
And after spending some 25 hours on it so far, I have just one thing to say:
It's epic.
In fact, when I play on a traditional 12-20 player server now it just feels... lacking.
You haven't played NS until you're charging a hive as a marine with 20 aliens hurtling at you, or truly reveled in a base rush as a Kharaa until you're hearing marines dying left and right among a torrent of gunfire. This is, for want of a better phrase, the penultimate expression of what NS is.
I know the competitive players among you may disagree, and that's fine, I get it -- I used to play NS1 competitively -- but as far as having fun goes on publics, of experiencing a real infestation ('6' aliens do not an infestation make), and a rush from up to forty players joining an intense firefight, it's freaking awesome.
But what about balance? It'd be interesting to see the stats but from my 25 hours or so it actually seems to be about 50/50. There are quick marine wins, and quick alien wins. Long games where marines win, long games where aliens win. It is, as always, about the players on the teams. It's also a testament to UWE's design in that the player count can scale to 40 people and still be balanced this way.
That's not to say it doesn't play differently -- it does, and there are some positive and negative effects. In the positive boring tasks like eating RTs happen quickly when you lots of players piling on. So it's more fun actually playing, instead spending a minute chewing. But that's not to say nodes are hard to keep either, quite the opposite -- you've got more marines covering a map and nodes get recapped quickly and, like munching, built quickly too. Even so with more players you've got more people able to defend nodes for both sides, so in the end node ownership actually ends up feeling about the same.
Having more marines means more mines early on, but this doesn't unbalance it, as it helps offset more skulks. More shotguns on the field? Also more Fades. Bilebomb rushes? Works just the same, but despite more gorges these can be stopped just the same as there's more marines. Hives go down quicker? Yep, when enough people get in the hive, but you'd be surprised how many times marines are stopped at an entrance with an army of aliens pushing them back. As with smaller servers, it comes down to the skill of the players.
On the negative side comming is harder -- you've got twenty children to look after now, but if you can comm on a 42 player server and adapt you'll find your skills improved if you play on a smaller server. Look at it as training, probably the best you can get for comming.
Now Wooza's will be, for some of you -- including me, being an Aussie -- high ping depending where in the world you are. Firstly -- join to have fun -- and secondly ping doesn't matter.
The better players know that NS is a more strategic game on the field than your average FPS, and your success as a marine or skulk is as much dependent on how you play as how well you can aim, so ping is less important.
So get on, and experience NS on a whole new level.
Wooza's is the only 42 player out there at the moment. Anyone wishing to setup more, please do. This goes for you too UWE -- how about an official larger server or two?
Mart
Comments
I appreciate all the different servers out there. It is the unique personalities of these communities and server ops that helps make the NS2 community so diverse and interesting. The different size servers provide a variety of experiences for NS2 that you can't appreciate sticking to one playercount.
It's fun to play a few rounds 20 vs 20 but all the time no way. Many tactical aspects of ns2 like player movements are taken away by the mass of players
Edit: To Nexus -- yeah even Wooza's beefy box does strain in some intense firefights I've noticed too.
That's a good point, Wooza is running it on a beefy server.
Time for a change, then
As for the strain, it happens on every server where a large number of marine players choose GL/Flamer and spam it in the same place. Not only does it gunk up the screen with visual spam, it also seems to cause a lot of rubber banding.
Also, it completely changes the game. It's no longer economical to drop meds and ammo, you have to drop friggen armories! Exos are still crap though.
But yes, it does need to be balanced better. Marines always win late game there, and the GL spam is ridiculous!
Yea the lag is pretty unbearable, but that's why I command! :P
Because I got a bit bored with regular pub-play (no, I don't and won't play competitive), and wanted to try something else.
My experiences are kinda meh on this one.
Despite Wooza stating he has a "beefy box" so it should be able to handle the load, I still think the max.player-count is to high.
Big battles turn into a framerate struggle - imagine all Alien players attacking a Marine turtle-base, 20vs20 in a tight space, that's more than my machine can handle.
I'm running NS2 on DX11, and on Wooza's I can see my RAM-usage climb steadily towards 70-80% (45% is normal on most other servers), and it won't be long untill players start getting red-plugs (up to 10 secs, IF the game manages to continue at all!).
Some memory-leak, I guess, which becomes more evident on such a big server.
Furthermore, I've encountered many weak Alien commanders here...no idea why they would want to start practicing on a 42player-server lol.
As for valid strats, there seems to be a trend to go for nade-spam vs xeno-spam.
Every Alien player who's played there, knows that when Marines get mass GL's, the battle will soon be over, unless Alien comm decides to go for 3 fast hives, to get xeno ASAP.
That's the only way to counter the massive nade-spam.
This can be fun for a couple of rounds, but in the end it's just boring, because it means Aliens have to play a large part of the fight without any significant upgrades (because all team-res goes into the 3 hives, with xeno at the end of the line).
Which brings me to another point > new players.
I've noticed on this server in particular (and on The Tick server as well - 28 players max), that some very young players join up....and I mean, 10year old kids.
It's only logical, that they seek big servers, right?
That's ok, I enjoy their fresh input, and funny voices, and they ask many many questions, and learn quick.
But whether this is the best way to get to know NS2?
The Tick-server has a requirement, to have a min of 10hrs of playing-experience...I think Wooza's should have this too.
...and probably a lower max.player # as well.
42 is too high, way to high, without some sort of large-server balance mod.
The guy who runs the Tick-servers is experimenting with that.
So either I missed something that makes you guys disagree with his post or you guys just hate large servers. I think I like large servers but they do have their flaws.
As for big servers. Glad you like them.
I for one prefer servers which wont nuke fps as strategy as much. If I want to zerg ill go play starcraft. (I do like zerg in starcraft hehe)
But I will admit its all opinion and move on.
See that shows how dependent it is on the skills of a team regardless of server size -- my experience has been that aliens generally win late game, specially once xeno shows up. And there have been some truly incredible xeno kill lists with this many players!
That's largely a function of the local client and hardware, as opposed to lag from the server (though this does happen too at times). Incidentally, I found DX9 around 10% faster than DX11 with no visual difference whatsoever, so that's what I use. Edit: On Nvidia, in case it's different with AMD.
I've seen GL spam take down hives quickly and also GLers getting torn up by onos, fades with gorges/lerks supporting. Too many GLers get creamed when onos and fades charge in as they're not prepared for melee. Xeno though, that's pretty much unbeatable. Not much marines can do vs xeno spam.
if you know it gives an awful experience because it is way beyond your hardware's capability, then you also know that what you're doing is falsely advertising bad game performance to the many people who don't know this is a hacked, unofficial game mode.
I'm sorry but I can't condone that sort of behaviour: it does more harm than good to the community as a whole.
op: I'm glad for you that you found a game type you enjoy, although it is not for me. But please spare a thought for those who don't know that ns2 isn't 'usually' a spammy, rubberbanding lag fest!
Most people are aware that these big servers have issues, but play on these for the more casual 'fun' experience.
NS2 is a pretty hardcore game, and some of us appreciate the game, but need to play it in a more casual way to avoid getting demoralised with how bad we are at the game we love
It's a fact that people play shooters to kill things, and when you go a long time dying without ever killing anything, it can get a little demoralising, and thus not very much fun. Skill is more evenly balanced out when hunting in packs of 6 skulks or 6 marines, than it is in 2 or 3's. More chance to make the feel good kill. Generally in is not k:d that makes people feel good, although it sure helps, but the feeling of regularly killing during a game that makes it feel like fun.
NS2 in 6v6 means you need to be everyone to be evenly matched to get that experience of killing regularly for all parties, while on bigger servers, you can all experience killing regularly, although your K:D may not be any better. It's the frequency of making a kill more than the k:d that a lot of shooter fans enjoy at a casual level.
I wonder if people take their NS-ing a little too seriously. It's a game, remember?
I don't think we're in danger of that when there's a hundred other, smaller, servers that don't exhibit this. And thankyou, I also appreciate it's not for you.
Maybe if it was on gldsrc without huge performance tanking I'd agree.. NS2 just isn't designed for that many players.
Make big map, unleash the zerglings.
Have comm manage 50 players, then let his head explode.
These servers just wont stay populated unless they are the only ones available since people (like celestial bodies), always gravitate towards the largest object.
Also, what I've learned from the many times that KingKahuna has had to defend his 24p count servers, they ARE a lot less likely to die when half of one team rage quits from the server. (12v12 teams - 6 players rage quitting = 9v9 next game = still playable in pubs)
The performance is bad enough on 22-24 player servers, I can only imagine how bad it would be on a 40 player server.
I might actually enjoy up to 30 player games, but NS2 server performance starts to drop pretty quick once the player count goes over 18.