Compact the Servers

Suggestions
1

As it currently stands, of writing this post, there are a lot of plaza servers being hosted right now. Personally, for me, and someone I was talking to about this, we believe that this only spreads players apart, when we believe the original intentions of the game were to bring people together and unite them.
Back in the old GMod Tower days, there were only two servers, which held more players than the current servers of TU hold.
Why are there 8 western U.S Servers, 4 San Francisco servers, and 4 U.S Eastern Servers?
Actually, why tf are there that many servers in the west? When clearly, most players are playing on the east.

There’s also just a crap ton of EU servers as well, which I again, don’t get

Solution: For the U.S, have one eastern server, and one western server.
Give the Eastern Server at least 105 player slots, and the western server 64 player slots.
The eastern server here is getting more priority because the eastern servers are more active currently.

I’m not sure where you should go regarding the EU servers or any of the other regions, but keep in mind with what I said above, and you should have an idea.

Reason: In the original GMod Tower, as I said, there was only two servers, which allowed for more players to connect with each other as much as possible.
The maps are also very large, and allow for a lot of space for players.

Also, I think space for gameworlds, public condos, and etc, being limited, is healthy.
The original GMod Tower had limited space, forcing people to do other things in the game, allowing them to not do one thing for the entire time (I’m talking to you, casino/arcade goers).
Force people to do different things, and force them to wait in the plaza, actually hanging out with other players.

Waiting for games to start in GMT was actually fun, as you hung out with other players and hung out in different condos.

Conclusion: I seriously want this to be considered, so if you want to correct me on certain things, or tell me why certain things might not work, or otherwise give constructive criticism, I highly encourage that you do, so as to improve this game as a whole.

EDIT: THIS POST IS PRETTY MUCH OUTDATED! I WILL CREATE FURTHER POSTS ADDRESSING THESE MENTIONED ISSUES!
Have a good day, and I hope to see you in the next thread.

             -Ozman
2

We have a lot of servers because when the Arcade update came out, we had over 1,500 players who all needed a spot in the Plaza servers. We still have a lot of players and we have servers up so that they can join servers.

We have a bunch of servers in West because we are planning to phase out San Fran servers.

7 Likes
3

Mhhh, I can see that then.

Well, as I stated in the post, I think it would be a good idea, in the future, to possibly consider the idea of forcing more players to play on one server.
I’m not sure of your company’s budget or capablilities, but I believe forcing players to play on the same server (As much as it is possible to) will help grow the players, and force more social interactions, just how the old GMT servers did it.

4

As for having a higher max players for the servers, when testing the plaza, 64 players at a maximum was the most stable.

4 Likes
5

If that’s the case, then sure.

I’m imagining then, there is no way/not enough money to upgrade the servers to handle more players? Or is this an engine thing?
If this is an engine limitation, then fuck.
If it’s just a accessibility thing, like cost or such, then it’s something to keep in mind.

Again, I still think it’s a good idea if possible, to maximize the amount of players in one space as much as possible without ruining the feel of the game, to allow for more of that “Social Chaos”.

6

So yeah, is it possibly an engine thing, or a accessibility thing? Just to keep in mind for future suggestions.

7

i would say automatic queuing system, because that will help people finding the plazas they can join when it is available without sniping.

1 Like
8

I’ve given this some thought.

What if there were some sort of “quick join/queue” button on the menu that would automatically place you into a server with acceptable ping depending on your location, and help fill in empty servers to distribute the load?

1 Like
9

i think this feature should be implemented when all the official server has 97% of the combined load. for example, all official servers have a combined capacity of 1k, while total number of players on any official servers are 970+.

10

I can see that being of some use.
It would force people to actually play with other people, then just pick some empty server.

This still doesn’t really answer my question whether the servers not having a higher playercount is due to server limitations, or engine limitations.
Which is what I’m trying to figure out atm.

11

I get wanting different aspects of the game to be populated, but in my totally unqualified opinion, forcing players to do anything is bad design.

Forcing everyone into a server would increase social interactions, but with trade-offs. As it stands with the recent optimization, I still might get 80-120 ping in a 55+ player server. While I still get solid FPS and everything is still playable on a server with this population, a server with 15-30 players is noticeable more responsive in multiple aspects.

Thanks to the recent server upgrades, it is WAY less noticeable now, but I still wouldn’t want to be forced into high population servers when I don’t want to be. There is usually always atleast one server that is close to the player limit, and if I am looking for social interaction, I can go there.

1 Like
12

I can understand this.
Being forced into a populated server can suck if your internet can’t handle it.

I may indeed have used the word force a bit much.
Encourage is probably a better term for most of this.
Again, I’m trying to see all the options we have to bring back that old GMT feel, while also having a better game in general.

There is the possible solution to make the map smaller.
The map is just really big, and I completely understand the idea of remaking the map being a very hard thing to do.

Again, I’m not entirely sure.

I will create further suggestions to try and look at our options.
The game is also WIP, which I also understand.
But that doesn’t mean there can still be improvements early on to keep it going.

I think that’s it for this thread, I’ll try and look into some other ideas to fix the mentioned problems in the main post.

1 Like
13

Individual internet connections aren’t the only limiting factor, my internet is great and I can still see a small but noticeable impact.

Yea, nothing wrong with incentivising players to congregate. I think there are some practices already put in place for this, such as EXP rates.

1 Like
14

Good points.

15

This is why I’m trying to figure out how much more powerful can the servers get.
As this can help in future discussions.

16

We recently spent a great deal of work to get to 64 players per server.

With the amount of things people wear and interact with, it’ll be really hard to reach more players.

Each player impacts the CPU load more as you have to calculate their animations, wearables, pets, etc. We’ve done a lot of optimizations and improvements in the Arcade update (and subsequent hot fixes).

Reaching 100 players would be insanely difficult technically and resource wise, and would require us to limit the amount of things people can wear. GMod Tower had issues getting this amount of players as well, which is why we stuck with 64 players per server. Of course with Tower Unite we have a lot more players, and more regions to host servers in than previously in GMT.

5 Likes
17

From my newest suggestion, after what people have said, I’ve figured as much, pretty much.