How Much Does Multiplayer Population Matter?

[Elijin]

As an Australian, oh boy let me tell you it matters.

There are games which aren't even dead that are functionally dead here due to lack of player base.

Hell, there are games which aren't dead, but you can only get a game within certain peak windows.

So it's easy to speculate how much does a population matter from the US or Europe where the population density means a game really has to be done to be unplayable, but from down here...
It absolutely makes or breaks games.

 

[happyninja42]

As an Australian, oh boy let me tell you it matters.

There are games which aren't even dead that are functionally dead here due to lack of player base.

Hell, there are games which aren't dead, but you can only get a game within certain peak windows.

So it's easy to speculate how much does a population matter from the US or Europe where the population density means a game really has to be done to be unplayable, but from down here...
It absolutely makes or breaks games.

Yeah, back when I played a ton of MMOs, I do recall a distinct shift in the ambient geographical population when it would hit a certain time of day/night. The Aussie Shift we use to call it in our guild. We'd actually have to try and schedule raids accordingly, when certain key players only logged in during a certain window, and we required their character to fill out the roster.

Given the Aussie Shift tended to happen in the late PM/early AM hours for the US, I would generally only see them for a few hours before I had to log for sleep. I also remember the weekend shift of kids, as you would see a massive spike in very immature players once the school week was over. Friday night-Sunday, and it would be an amusing, if annoying, marked increase.

So yeah, population can have a lot of impact, on multiple variables.

 

[sXeth]

As an Australian, oh boy let me tell you it matters.

There are games which aren't even dead that are functionally dead here due to lack of player base.

Hell, there are games which aren't dead, but you can only get a game within certain peak windows.

So it's easy to speculate how much does a population matter from the US or Europe where the population density means a game really has to be done to be unplayable, but from down here...
It absolutely makes or breaks games.

Yeah, I know a lot of Aussies in Ark played on the NA servers cause the Oceania's were dead (or full of, to use an unfortunately stereotypical term, Chinese Bots).


On the overall topic, obviously you need players to make multiplayer work (unless the multiplayer is just lazily tagged on). Your more competitive games tend to need a massive field to achieve any sort of fluid matchmaking without lopsiding skill wise or throwing people across such a distance that the connectivity factors ruin any actual semblance of reasonable competition. And of course, the BR phase-du-jour needs 50-100 people for a single match to play.



Your more co-op or social type games tends to work reasonably well, if not better on a middling playerbase. Speaking of Ark, having only 30 or so regulars on the 60 person server is probably ideal. If it was maxed out and you couldn't get on it'd be generally disruptive to the experience, and the roster of regulars tends to smooth out some of the trading or diplomatic aspects of the server vs piles of fly by night randoms.

 

[Dreiko]

Australians also lag something fierce in fighting games due to the distance with the US and europe so the more of them there are to play eachother the better it is for the rest of us as well. You legit can't play the game properly in that environment.