The Plaza in 2026

Suggestions
1

First off, let me start by saying this isn’t me bitching, and I’m not looking to try and tell you guys how to make your game. All comments and critiques in this thread are made out of a love for the game and a wish to see it flourish. Some has been discussed on Discord, but I figure I’ll lay out my arguments here instead of complaining into the void.

It is my opinion, and it hurts me to say this as I need a bunch of condo-side stuff done from you guys, that re-working the plaza server system needs to be a top priority.

The Main Issues:

  • High population plaza servers run crappy, that’s just a fact.
  • Plazas tend to feel empty, even when full, and participation in multiplayer things is lacking.
  • Players doing nothing at all and taking up resources.

Why These Are Major Issues:

Plaza Performance:

At face value, we (your current player base) all get that heavy loaded plazas are less performant, and accept that as a trade off for the value this game brings to the table, and if we do need to do grindy stuff we can always go to an emptier plaza. It’s something we’ve become accustomed to.

For new players however this is very bad, and hindering your growth in my opinion. A brand new player is typically going to want to see what everyone’s doing, and head for the most populated plaza, and going into a plaza that’s running like absolute garbage isn’t the first impression you want to make. To put this into perspective, there’s a LOT of people that consider RDR2 complete trash because they never finished the slow-paced prologue and got into the main game. Society today has the attention span of flies, and form snap opinions about things and dismiss them without giving it a chance, so there’s a good possibility a lot of people have tried the game then bailed after a laggy plaza, or even refunded.

Empty Feeling & Idle Players:

It can be discouraging to new players when they join a lobby with 49 people in it, but come to find out 30 of them are in the casino, 8 are in the arcade, and the rest are idle, leaving them virtually playing alone in a game touting a social experience. Now, you’ve got a ton of players clogging up plaza resources that aren’t even doing plaza things, making social interactions very difficult, and multiplayer events virtually impossible.

What Can Be Done To Fix These Issues?:

Now I know you folks, especially Johanna, put in a lot of effort into trying to optimize the plaza experience, but when you’re also constantly adding more shit to it, especially stuff like Boardwalk where a bunch of logic is being computed, the optimizations basically wind up being a break-even at best. I know a lot of of this is due to devs still building their game engines stupidly single-threaded, and you guys have to work within those constraints.

Here are several things I feel need to happen, some of which have been Discussed already on Discord:

  • Separate Casino into its own server like Condo Hub. This would immediately take at least half the performance strain off a main plaza server without the CPU having to handle all the Casino logic.
  • ↑ Do the same for Arcade
  • ↑ Do the same for Bowling, this will probably REALLY improve bowling performance as well.
  • As I know was discussed, make pooling servers. Like one Casino server, when it’s full, a second opens for overflow, etc. Do the same for the plazas, just have a US East and West, etc. Pool the players that want to do certain things in certain areas together to do said things together.
  • Make sure your plazas and new servers are assigned different core affinities permanently so that they aren’t fighting to use the same CPU cores. (I know Linux has this built in and you probably know about it already but listing JUST in case).
  • Drop multiplayer Plaza Mini Game Events (snowballs, chainsaws, planes) and only do solo ones so even if someone IS alone, they can still go play the event mini game. No one EVER plays the multiplayer ones, even in a full lobby.
  • Institute an AFK auto-kick system. There’s no point in people standing around for hours AFK taking up server slots and resources. 30 minutes seems fair.

Closing Statement:

I know all of this is boring as fuck on the development side, as fixing coding isn’t nearly as enjoyable as creating, but had stuff like this been done beforehand, I think 1.0 launch would have went better. Separating people grinding money in the casino and tickets in the arcade would be beneficial to the overall health of the plaza, both in performance and sociability.

Thank you for your attention in the matter,
OuTSMoKE

2

This makes perfect sense, and I would argue, it’s good that ANYBODY at all has finally brought this up. Tower’s performance has ALWAYS been garbage though, and that’s no matter the PC you own or the internet connection you have. That’s also a fact. Despite all of these improvements over the years, the game still largely feels as though it hasn’t improved in the slightest, or, at best, very minimally so. Something’s just fundamentally broken there and I’m not sure who would really know what, seeing how even developers themselves don’t know how to handle their own code to make it work better, and are instead throwing excuses like “we are still improving things” or “well, the team’s small and the scope and ambitions for the game big” (I don’t think this one should even need an explanation)

However, this, while I can understand it, I think a lot of people, especially those more socially anxious, introverted, etc. would probably appreciate it. Yes, the issue you describe does exist, but I think you are making it far too big for what it is. It all depends on the region and time you are playing from what I have seen - At times, most people will be in either the Casino or Arcade or both at once, but I have also seen times and played at times where this was literally not a problem, and, in fact, I was annoyed with just how many people were going all over the Plaza, annoying others, doing completely random things, etc. So, yeah, no, you are scaling the problem up and giving it big, scary eyes, when it’s only a half-true statement to begin with.

Casino, Arcade, Bowling, etc. do not need to be their own servers - I argue that this will make the game even worse when it comes to the so-called “social” aspect, and if it happens, I’m never going back to it, despite having invested a lot of money into Workshop commissions and several hundred hours into the game. If you want to make the game worse, under the pretense of that being a better solution, I don’t know what to tell you, but I’m not personally interested in separating out people when most players are already significantly away from one another. Dropping multiplayer Plaza minigames - Another dumb, and honestly pointless idea. People DO play them. I seen it happen - It’s just not that often, and often, once again, depends on the time and region you play in. Now, I get it, this whole thread is made out of love for the game.. But I can not agree with pretty much almost everything you are saying here. It’s for the better of the game and the community if those things do NOT ever happen, and I sincerely hope that PixelTail team never does anything that’s suggested here. PixelTail, I swear to God, do NOT do this - You will be hurting a game that’s already been half-dead for several years now with barely any community to it. If you want to finish it off, just close the servers and declare end of support and development right now - It would be much better than seeing the game slowly, painfully crawl down to it’s death over the next years to come. As a matter of fact, to ANYONE that’s been observing Tower Unite for any period of time since the first early access launch circa ~2016, this has slow decline of the game’s popularity has already been happening, and the game only ever gets more interest around major updates, some special, seasonal events or community contests. Beyond that, most people, including the early, relatively decent player base from early days, has ALREADY left, and most of those people do not care to come back, because there’s not much to come back to at all - This, in and of itself, should already tell you plenty enough about the current state Tower Unite is in, and that it already doesn’t look good. These suggestions are not real solutions to any of the problems stated, and I can guarantee you that they would hurt the game in the long run even more. The only real gains separating things out even further would give would be performance - But sociability? No. Sorry. That would just make the issue even worse - Most of the people playing would just stay over at Casino or Arcade servers, and for those playing on Plaza, you would only have an ILLUSION of life and player activity being there, but comparing raw numbers would reveal that nothing would change in a major way, and most people would just keep doing what they are doing right now already. And finally: The reason 1.0 launch went so bad is because the game is in a horrible shape as it is already, and the problems mainly include lack of proper marketing, performance issues, constant community dramas and other problems (along with some old dirt from years past on the side of the development team - anyone that cares can look into that on their own), and other things - However, people just doing their own thing isn’t one of those problems. Let’s be real - This game will never reach any heights if the core issues unrelated to this suggestion thread, aside from performance issues, are left unresolved, and anyone who has been a part of this community for years on end like me can easily tell you exactly what that is.

3

Separating casino and arcade to their own servers just sounds like such a bad idea and against the core of this game that makes it great.

I think we need to reinstate the small fuel bar for jetpacks to limit their use. You will never serendipitously run into players and chat if you are flying and fast travelling everywhere. This convenience has driven players apart and I think even a weekend without them would show improvement.

4

You already teleport out of main plaza and into the casino, separating you from the plaza anyway. There no point in the same CPU core having to handle all the boardwalk logic, plus all the bowling login, plus all the arcade logic, plus all the casino logic. Spreading that load out would making everything run smoother.

5

I was always against this but now I am not sure. I was recently in a full server but it really didn’t feel like it since I was by myself in most spaces anyway.

On the other side when I played in groups I very much liked actually walking from place to place and running into other players on the way.

I guess my biggest fear is that the unpopular games like Lasertag and the dark ride will completely die out then.

How about instead of making every space its own, it gets separated into Boardwalk Area, Tower Stores, Bowling+Arcade+Casino etc..? So have like 3 separate sections of the plaza

6

@macdguy I know you addressed the logic thing in Discord, but there’s still the player count thing. If you break off Casino and Arcade into their own servers, you can drop plazas to 32 players. People going to arcade and casino would “leave” the plaza.

PERFORMANCE:
If East 1 has 64 people, and 32 of them jump to East 2, East 1 immediately starts performing better. This would be the same logic applied to the people leaving to go to Casino and Arcade. Capping them at 32 after a split would ensure smooth plaza performance, especially for new players getting a first impression. You don’t want them telling their friends that might have bought it that it’s a laggy mess.

BETTER PLAYER EXPERIENCE OVERALL:
Example scenario: 128 players are in the game on East 1 and 2.

Current setup: 56 People are in Casinos and 42 are in the Arcades. That leaves 30 people spread out across two plazas, at least 5 of which will be AFK, actually in the plaza area doing plaza stuff, and having a sub par time of it due to the lag cause by the full server.

Separate setup: The 98 people in Casino & Arcade are removed from the equation, and the remaining 30 players wanting to do plaza stuff are all in one nearly full 32 player plaza that’s running nice and smooth, leading to happy players and recommendations to their friends, and soon you have 2 full smoothly running 32 player plazas, etc. :slight_smile: