2 rants

[happs]

MMO's not really getting more massive?

I used to play a lot of Battlefield 2 on PC and it was great fun playing 32-a-side battles and looked forward to playing even bigger games in the future. That was a bout 2-3 years ago, I'd reckon that the average broadband speeds have increased in those times, an 8mb connection is fairly common these days but why does it seem like we have a 64 player ceiling in online games. If online gaming has taught us anything it's that more equals better, Halo 3's single player campaign was a little 'meh', what everyone was excited about was the online stuff. I hear that Huxley plans to have 80 v 80 online battles, it's still a long way off but hopefully this will be the start of some bigger online rumbles.

Where's the heli games?

Lets cut to the chase, Apache helicopters are bad-ass and by extension helicopters basically rock. So where are the games? The last helicopter game I played on a console was in 2-D on a
SNES. Does anyone know if there are any whirly-bird titles to look forward to in the near future?

 

[Geoffrey42]

Bandwidth != faster. (Think along the lines of... larger highways don't increase the top speed of the automobile travelling on them, they just make it easier for the automobile to achieve their top speed) The major killer of larger games is the exponentially increasing number of interactions between a growing number of online players, and lag. Extra bandwidth certainly helps lag (at least the part that really hurts, which is rapidly fluctuating lag), but it doesn't eliminate it which means that the servers are still having to account for 10ths of seconds difference between what one player did, and how that should affect all other players.

So, FiOS us all up, we still won't get much better than 64 player matches (something around 2^64 possible interactions to track at any given time... ~18446744073709551616).

A potential solution being worked on currently is to reduce the number of interactions that the servers care about. See Microsoft's project in that vein, code-named "<a href=http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/09/10/new-technology-promises-a-thousand-players-per-map-in-deathmatch>DonnyBrook".

As to your other rant, get a computer? I don't think you're ever going to find significant satisfaction from a console "whirly-bird" game.

 

[gameloftguy]

Lag, Lag, LAG!

COH has a couple of areas where the battles you seek can sometimes come about. They are a bit one sided and if your computer isn't up to par you can do little more than stand around getting in an occasional pot shot.

Examples: Hami Raids. You would go and get about 10 or more teams together, which is 60-100 players. Then you go on a series of raids fighting the big Giant Monster at the end. so it is dozens against one but at least part of your quota is reached.

Invasion. The newest issue introduced invasions, which in the third sequence a group of enemy are spawned attaking a certain zone. The spawns equate to the number of players congregated in a certain area. I've seen dozens bunch together in Talos on the hill and the corresponding enemy (NPCs) were equal in size so it was like 100 v. 100. Again that isn't player v. player.

Base Raids or PvP zones: both can theoretically get dozens fighting against each other but since I have yet to take an active role in this part of the game I can't vouch for when it happens. I might be wrong but I believe it is possible, barring computer restrictions, of having 100 v. 100 here.