Project Reality Forums

Official Announcement from [R-DEV]UK-Force regarding 128 player test servers. Please read this before commenting as well.Original Thread

All

There has been some discussion regarding the 128 player (SISU) server, as well as other servers purportedly exceeding the 64 slot player limit in BF2.

With regards to the SISU server, let me clarify the PR team position:

When running in 128 player mode it is required to remain locked (passworded). The password can be displayed in the server's forum thread. If it has been unpassworded in the past, that was an error on the part of those running it and will not be repeated.

The server is only to be run for the purposes of testing the >64 player functionality, in order to collect crash dumps and performance info. At all other times this server must run in 64 player mode (with no password requirement).

This server running must not be at the detriment of the wider Project Reality server community. [R-DEV]epoch is currently waiting for [R-CON]Soppa to provide a test plan so we can ensure that testing does not conflict with peak gaming times. Testing will not re-start until I have received that. This of course needs to be balanced with the requirement to get players onto the test server. However, the needs of the wider server community take precedence. After all, they're paying for their servers, and it's unfair for PR development work to impact that.


We appreciate that this development exercise is of interest to a great number of PR players, but the others servers have been providing this community with somewhere to play for a long time, and their hard work (and expense) should continue to be rewarded.

Clearly this is ongoing development, and as such the server files are not available for wider release. There should be no other server running >64 with the exception of the [NEW] clan who are running an event. This one-off event has been allowed as a 'thank you' for previously hosting the 128 player testing.

With regards to UKWF's server, they do not have access to the code that we are using, and are doing something different. [R-DEV]epoch will be speaking to them shortly before deciding what action - if any - is necessary.


This post should be taken as an Official Project Reality Management response to this issue, and is therefore not open for discussion






- Project Reality Management

READ BEFORE POSTING:

This thread is for the collective feedback of anyone who had a chance to participate in the more gameplay-normal portions of the 128 player test; now that we're a few days clear of the test, our thoughts are certainly clearer.

Post about:

-Experiences in the game(s) that excited you or depressed you. Anything that reflects how you responded emotionally as a gamer.

-Technical PROBLEMS you had while playing; don't go into too much detail.

DO NOT POST ABOUT:

-Things you want/could see the Development team to do to make 128 players work in the mainstream mod. NO SUGGESTIONS. The team is NOT taking suggestions for this element of the mod at this time, as many details are not yet set in stone and the final implementation is a few months away. STATE WHAT YOU FEEL, NOT WHAT YOU WANT.

-Discussion of other people's experiences posted on this thread. Let's keep the thread's content focused to your individual stories; I mean this as much to be a useful resource for the team as it is a thing to read and contribute to.


Should this thread be appropriate on its own, I would like to request moderation of the thread to keep to these points and whatever other constraints the developers want, in order to best suit their work. I know you guys are making the mod YOU want to make, but I want to facilitate the community doing our part to help inform that vision, if you'll have us.

My first few moments:
It was total cool to spawn with around 64 people on MY team! But right at the start the small name tag bug confused me a bit, since I am still total new and have problems to identify enemies by uniform. Else the game felt even more right than with "just" 64 players.

Overall Impression:
This level of player amount in PR is really enhancing the fun to a next level. I am totally looking forward for more playtime with 128 players and can't wait to have the name tag bug fixed.

Things that shouldn't change:
In my opinion, map size shouldn't grow higher than the current 4km maps. Of course now the twice amount of players have to play on the same field, but so it feels more like a battlefield instead of a small recon group fighting against another recon group.

Hope i could help you with this post and it was what you wanted to read.

Keep the work!

Agreed with Atlantis. Some people are hoping on an increase of assets to cope with the players (tanks, cas etc.) But I hope the current asset load-out (apart from some additional trans/supply) stays the same. Hopefully than Kashan and Qinling wont be all for the asset players and have a place for the infantryman to enjoy himself.

Very exciting at first. However the stability of the server, and how it played out in-game, made me a bit disappointed. First off, and for obvious reasons; The lag/de-sync/morphing (or whatever) really made the overall "feeling" somewhat jagged.
Secondly the nametags: Even though we aim for reality when playing PR, and even though I know its a know issue, nametags is essential for a smooth gameplay as of today.
Punkbuster-kicks, heartbeat and handshake, seemed to occur more frequently on this server. I am not sure of the reasons.
Further on, I would really like to see an increase in the number of kits. I believe a 1.5 ratio compared to how it is today, would tweak the gameplay to the better.
Maps should not be made bigger. This because of the amount of players and the feel of fighting an opposing army, but also because of performance-issues.
The number of assets should not be tampered too much with. I imagine a few personal-carriers such as a transport-truck or an adittional chopper would be fine. Today's gameplay really misses the inf-vs-inf action. By keeping the numbers of tanks and apcs to today's "standard" we would get a nice and smooth balance.

All in all a really nice supplement and/or replacement for the 64-version. Keep up the good work! I am very much looking forward to see the outcome of this.

Stian

Good feedback so far; keep the suggestion tone out of it, state more what problems you perceive: instead of saying "More kits need to be added!", say "I felt that the lack of limited kits reduced the quality of the infantry gameplay". State what you feel, not what you want.

The immersion was awesome, the map didn't feel deserted and empty like it otherwise sometimes does. And I think that with 64 players on a team the proportional amount of infantry and assets is more realistic. Usually there are up to 2 infantry squads on a 64 player server and the rest of the team is comprised of different assets but now the assets made up a smaller part of the forces and it felt like it should be so.
Also the more players there are, the harder it is for a lone wolf or ninja to accomplish anything and I really enjoyed it, you really needed the joint effort of infantry squads and supporting assets to accomplish anything against a team with at least some coordination.
Achieveing that coordination seemed a bit hard though but that's must probably because everyone was really amazed with the 128 player server and didn't focus on tactis much.
Definitely looking forward to seeing it polished and implemented in a future release, it was kickass.

there is a server running 128 ??

Hotrod525 wrote:there is a server running 128 ??

not there is, there was ...
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f10-pr ... icial.html

I constantly felt sorry for the Admins who tried to keep that beast in line. Having 64 Individuals in a server can be a challenge - having 128 seems nearly impossible to administrate, when everybody gets excited, some joined to troll and many to chat etc. Sure this will settle as soon as Players get used to it, but still i think that you need a far bigger adminteam for each server.
Playing with 128 was only enjoyable on a map like Kashan, where the teams had some space to maneuver, but tickets where much too low to get really into the game, since the rounds were too quick.

My overall impression... I'm so excited and I just can't hide it.
If you don't like 128 server, better stop reading, I'm just gonna say how awesome it is.

Playing PR on a massive server was a dream come true for me. I was waiting for something like this forever... Once again, thank Tema for his amazing work.

Massive numbers of friendly and enemy infantrymen finally brought the 100% reality feeling to Project Reality. Joining a squad was more like joining a military unit. When I entered the server, I found myself in the main base with 10 other guys, while the massive battle was going on. Trans chopper just picked us regardless what squad are we in, cos it was important to move as many people away from the base and to the front line. And it feels as a real battle, not a "well this is as good as we can make it" 64p one.

As I mentioned earlier to some PR players few months ago, if PR reaches 128p, 70% of the team will be new players who think of teamwork same as EA (good old "paper-rock-scissors" concept). But it becomes obvious pretty much right there from the start how good SL is precious, more then ever. I'm sure massive servers will mix veteran players with hordes of new guys, and PR devs and community will find a proper way to introduce new players to the spectacular world of huge PR battles.

The team acted chaotic, it was difficult to get logy trucks, transport, and to build FBs... but I have to admit even that was enjoyable. You check the map, and realize you got to save one logy truck on no-mans land, and that becomes your squads mission. The overall feeling of being just a tiny insignificant part of a huge army was so new and refreshing, even on a squad level. Squad leader became even more important (great, just like in real life), and loosing 2 guys was not a big stopper for the squad as on a 64p server. I have been playing PR for the beginning, and I played with pretty much all the good players on this side of the planet, yet most of the guys on the server I saw for the first time. Nevertheless, they were eager to join squad with good command, and help the squad, which was new for me.

I don't think many of you guys will share the same impression, but I actually think learning curve for new guys was faster on the 128 server... or maybe I ran into some special new guys...

The amount of vehicles was spot on, when it comes to fighting vehicles (planes, attack choppers, tanks and apcs). I mean, the infantrymen/vehicles ratio was closer to reality.
I even liked the lack of tags on friendlies, thou it was a bit difficult to tell the difference between players. Pretty fast I start calling guys by their kit, rather then by name, which was kinda enough to get most of the things done.

You could have felt the need for fireteams (which I haven't seen in PR for years) and formations (we actually moved as a real unit in a wedge-line-ish formation with proper spacing while clearing a forest on Wanda Shan), and infantry squad behaved a lot more realistic. There are so many new things to be learned on a massive server... New kind of team structure, new battle doctrine, new roles for squad members and squad leaders. I'm really looking forward helping this kind of development and making PR into something it was made for - to become the best and most realistic battle experience online.

On some of the maps where the entire of both teams seem to flag to one spot, The sound is amazing.

Barracuda, One flag. The Americans ran up on the beach firing from their boats as we fired from the beaches, And that was some amazing sounds.

oh, yes, I forgot to say that... It sounds like a real battle!

bloodthirsty_viking wrote:On some of the maps where the entire of both teams seem to flag to one spot, ...

But that can be fixed by having a good commander. So there is a new piece of gameplay as well...The Commander position would be very important in a 128p battle because you would need more tactics, so then your whole team doesn't just go down the fastest road to the battle. You can now command things like a real commander would!!! AWESOME!!

SeanRamey wrote:But that can be fixed by having a good commander. So there is a new piece of gameplay as well...The Commander position would be very important in a 128p battle because you would need more tactics, so then your whole team doesn't just go down the fastest road to the battle. You can now command things like a real commander would!!! AWESOME!!

Well, a CO is useful now too but only few listen to COs... I dont think that this would change with even more players...

I loved the whole thing!

My rig didn't have any really noticeable performance issues, but its much more powerful than it needs to be for PR BF2. I didn't notice terrible lag really, a bit at the start but otherwise not more than usual for a european server - didn't affect gameplay for me.


I didn't think the limited kits were too bad, even at the worst times my squad always could have an AR, Medic and Specialist. I actually thought that the AT kits vs # of vehicles was good, since both were still setup for 64 players. Just forces a more reasonable number of regular infantry, which I liked a lot.



I think the gameplay suffered a bit from "OMG, 128 players!" madness, people were not listening to SLs etc, but when we actually moved out and hit the bunkers on Kashan it got very epic.

Anyone has any footage of Kashan 128 player battles?

Guess I fail at posting videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lunn6Pw6 ... r_embedded

Megagoth1702 wrote:Anyone has any footage of Kashan 128 player battles?

this guy streamed the whole thing

Justin.tv - pesticide - Project Reality Battlefield 2 mod multiplayer with 128 players!!

1:53 hours of gameplay, droping suplies, spotting, sniping and dieing xD

If we have 8 man squads, would we get fire team leaders?

You can always assign one yourself.