MAG Could Have Even More Than 256 Concurrent Players

The DSM

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I can see it turning into pure clusterfucks quickly, for 200+ people you would need maps that take 10 minutes to walk across and if you thought a team of 8 people camping on conventional shooter was bad try 36. With teams that big its going to be huge zerg rushes all the time.
 

notyouraveragejoe

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Nov 8, 2008
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Oooh...aaaah. This seems really cool. I just wonder how they'll do it. How will it play out? Will there be squads of people competing or will it really just be massive teams?
 

Asehujiko

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Greg Tito said:
but the PS3 itself is very, very powerful and it takes a custom effort that asks you to think about things in all-new ways to best utilize it." He went on, "That's why MAG only runs on the PS3 by the way - because the system's SPUs are so powerful that they give us the technical capability to simultaneously run 256 players in the way we do.
Yes, it's so powerful that it has the same amount as RAM as a PC i purchased in 2001 and there are now GPU's out powerful enough to pretend being a Cell 2 all by themselves.

And, correct me if i'm wrong, i can't remember seeing ANY gameplay footage at all from this game, which makes me suspicious that it's going to suck quite badly with it's supposed
massive* player count as only redeeming factor.

*There's this niche little game called ArmA with a sequel called ArmA 2 that has it's player count only limited by how good the server is. There are videos of battles involving well over a thousand AI soldiers and the reason that doesn't happen with humans is because it's impossible to coordinate that many people into joining the same game at the same time.
 

tragicdwarf

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Daedalus1942 said:
tragicdwarf said:
Daedalus1942 said:
Jonny49 said:
I'm really looking forward to MAG actually, ever since they announced it at E3 years ago. I From what I've seen it looks good, I just hope it plays well.
I'm praying that it can handle 256 players without lag, but I don't believe for a second it could handle more than that number in a single server.
It can, i've seen it with my own eyes. 256 players with no lag or framerate drops even in the most intense fights. And It's epic parachuting in and seeing the shear scale of the battle.
Source? And if you played the Beta, what type of connection do you have?
I was in the Beta from phases 2 to 4. I have an 8mb connection with Virgin Media and a Belkin N+ router, although at peak times it can bottom out to well below half a mb. Even during peak times MAG ran perfectly much the same as say Warhawk.

And for anyone who doesn't know how the MAG battlefield works i'll give you an idea.

No matter which mode you play you'll always be in a squad of eight with a squad leader. The squad leader can issue secondary objectives which become FRAGO targets. You will receive a FRAGO bonus which will double your XP for anything you do in the area of that target. If the squad leader doesn't issue targets the game sets default targets so you will always have an opportunity to earn double points. The squad leader also has the ability to call in UAVs, Air strikes etc if available.

In larger games you will also have a Platoon Leader who sets primary objectives. The Platoon leader can communicate privately or openly with their squad leaders to give orders.

When the battle starts it will be a large number of small skirmishes across a very large map. There is no need to go wandering off aimlessly because you will always have a target to defend or attack. As the outer defences (Bunkers, turents, anti air / motor guns and gates) of the defending team are weakened and destroyed their spawn points fall back to their main base. The attacking teams spawn points move forward in the form of either helicopters or parachuting in. This is when the battle reaches its climax. Squads will have specific targets within the main base to attack and defend.

That?s a very basic run down of how a Domination battle works. There?s obviously a lot more to it than that.

I will say that the Domination games I played in were fantastic. I think the fact that it starts off with small skirmishes then ends up with such a large scale battle gives the game a great sense of progression and achievement.

And on a side note there are no classes of soldier to choose from in MAG. It's totally up to you how you want to level up and what equipment you want.
 

Azhrarn-101

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ChromeAlchemist said:
Greg Tito said:
and it's a little more PC-like from a development standpoint, so I like that,"
Is that the opposite of what other developers have said about the PS3 though? That the 360 was more PC like?
The 360 is more PC-like from a software point of view, it's essentially a heavily modified version of Windows (it even has DirectX 9) running games on x86 hardware, although not all versions have a HDD.

The PS3 is more PC-like from a hardware composition point of view, it has basically all the components a PC does, although it runs pure x64 for software, meaning that most software won't really work on it without some serious modifications or even a full rewrite.
 

Paragon Fury

The Loud Shadow
Jan 23, 2009
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Caliostro said:
Greg Tito said:
set in 2025, when national armies are banned which leads to the rise of private military companies.
This alone makes me eerie... Clearly the "writing" part was, again, handled during someone's lunchbreak or as some designer's kid's third grade homework assignment...

It's a completely impossible situation. First of all it's impossible from the standpoint that if nations were civilized enough to peacefully accept a national army ban, they wouldn't need a ban to begin with. Second of all, how the fuck would you enforce an army ban? What if a country suddenly went "fuck all of you with a rake, we like our army"? What do you do to stop them? Send them disappointed e-mails, with potential escalation to angry letters? Challenge them to a thumb war?

An army is one of those things a country simply can't NOT have... Even if it's a minor and mostly inactive one. It's like asking all the countries with nuclear bombs to destroy them... They won't. The moment one side gets rid of theirs they're at the complete mercy of the other side, dependent on them not being assholes and using their weapons for leverage. And if humans are something it's opportunistic assholes.

BUT THEN, pièce de résistance, they mention private companies have armies... What the fuck? So countries just up and decided "Yes, we're better off in the hands of people with their own independent personal agenda", "Oh wait, we're MUCH better off in the hands of the same kind of people who'd murder their own grandmother with a plastic bag for money". So whatever entity ended up banning national armies is ok with private organizations having their own military forces?

The story so far is a complete shameful and nonsensical piece of junk, it would be better if it wasn't there at all... As far as gameplay goes, while the prospect of 256 online players in huge scenarios seems quite interesting I have to pose the question in the back of any online "veteran" at this point: It's hard enough to find decent 32-36 man servers in most games... How's 256 gonna hold up?

You may have missed it, but the situation here was one of the U.N.'s Top 20 "Bad Shit That Could Happen in the Future" scenarios.

It basically said the same thing that MAG does - private military contractors (or companies in general) gain some siginificant amount of power (probably due to the bungling of something big by a major military power), and then they use this newfound power to bend countries and institutions to their will, either through brute force or more subtle methods, eventually turning it so that they are the only major military powers in the world, effectively having the say it what goes. Your nationality becomes more like your favorite sports team - you might hold it personally, but you'd owe your alliagance to a company, not a country.


This kindof scenario is why institutions like the U.N. and Congress try to keep such a firm chokehold on PMCs - letting people who only answer to money be in control of big toys is a bad, bad idea.


And don't even try to mention WMDs - they would become useless, as either the companies would put their own employees in charge of them, or nations wouldn't use them because doing so would mean using them on themselves.
 

midpipps

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tragicdwarf said:
Daedalus1942 said:
tragicdwarf said:
Daedalus1942 said:
Jonny49 said:
snip
snip
Source? And if you played the Beta, what type of connection do you have?
I was in the Beta from phases 2 to 4. I have an 8mb connection with Virgin Media and a Belkin N+ router, although at peak times it can bottom out to well below half a mb. Even during peak times MAG ran perfectly much the same as say Warhawk.

And for anyone who doesn't know how the MAG battlefield works i'll give you an idea.

No matter which mode you play you'll always be in a squad of eight with a squad leader. The squad leader can issue secondary objectives which become FRAGO targets. You will receive a FRAGO bonus which will double your XP for anything you do in the area of that target. If the squad leader doesn't issue targets the game sets default targets so you will always have an opportunity to earn double points. The squad leader also has the ability to call in UAVs, Air strikes etc if available.

In larger games you will also have a Platoon Leader who sets primary objectives. The Platoon leader can communicate privately or openly with their squad leaders to give orders.

When the battle starts it will be a large number of small skirmishes across a very large map. There is no need to go wandering off aimlessly because you will always have a target to defend or attack. As the outer defences (Bunkers, turents, anti air / motor guns and gates) of the defending team are weakened and destroyed their spawn points fall back to their main base. The attacking teams spawn points move forward in the form of either helicopters or parachuting in. This is when the battle reaches its climax. Squads will have specific targets within the main base to attack and defend.

That?s a very basic run down of how a Domination battle works. There?s obviously a lot more to it than that.

I will say that the Domination games I played in were fantastic. I think the fact that it starts off with small skirmishes then ends up with such a large scale battle gives the game a great sense of progression and achievement.

And on a side note there are no classes of soldier to choose from in MAG. It's totally up to you how you want to level up and what equipment you want.
That is about the best description of how the battles work that I have read so far. I will add that my connection is usually about about 5mb down and I never experienced any lag.

I will say for all the people that are wondering about teamwork. Yes you will run into some people who want nothing more then to run off by themselves or the leaders who do not care about coordination or strategies but I was also in alot of games where the leaders all the way up worked together really well in setting objectives and coordinating the squads and the game really rewards the players for that.

Which is nice because if you follow orders and learn the systems your XP will go up much faster then if you try to run off on your own meaning the good leaders will be up top long before the crappy ones that are slowly taking points by running off on their own.
 

Korten12

Now I want ma...!
Aug 26, 2009
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tragicdwarf said:
Daedalus1942 said:
tragicdwarf said:
Daedalus1942 said:
Jonny49 said:
I'm really looking forward to MAG actually, ever since they announced it at E3 years ago. I From what I've seen it looks good, I just hope it plays well.
I'm praying that it can handle 256 players without lag, but I don't believe for a second it could handle more than that number in a single server.
It can, i've seen it with my own eyes. 256 players with no lag or framerate drops even in the most intense fights. And It's epic parachuting in and seeing the shear scale of the battle.
Source? And if you played the Beta, what type of connection do you have?
I was in the Beta from phases 2 to 4. I have an 8mb connection with Virgin Media and a Belkin N+ router, although at peak times it can bottom out to well below half a mb. Even during peak times MAG ran perfectly much the same as say Warhawk.

And for anyone who doesn't know how the MAG battlefield works i'll give you an idea.

No matter which mode you play you'll always be in a squad of eight with a squad leader. The squad leader can issue secondary objectives which become FRAGO targets. You will receive a FRAGO bonus which will double your XP for anything you do in the area of that target. If the squad leader doesn't issue targets the game sets default targets so you will always have an opportunity to earn double points. The squad leader also has the ability to call in UAVs, Air strikes etc if available.

In larger games you will also have a Platoon Leader who sets primary objectives. The Platoon leader can communicate privately or openly with their squad leaders to give orders.

When the battle starts it will be a large number of small skirmishes across a very large map. There is no need to go wandering off aimlessly because you will always have a target to defend or attack. As the outer defences (Bunkers, turents, anti air / motor guns and gates) of the defending team are weakened and destroyed their spawn points fall back to their main base. The attacking teams spawn points move forward in the form of either helicopters or parachuting in. This is when the battle reaches its climax. Squads will have specific targets within the main base to attack and defend.

That?s a very basic run down of how a Domination battle works. There?s obviously a lot more to it than that.

I will say that the Domination games I played in were fantastic. I think the fact that it starts off with small skirmishes then ends up with such a large scale battle gives the game a great sense of progression and achievement.

And on a side note there are no classes of soldier to choose from in MAG. It's totally up to you how you want to level up and what equipment you want.
make a topic and post that so people will read it and be informed before saying it will have lots of lag problems or that the battles will be a clusterfuck.
 

SantoUno

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Super lag much?

Personally I think it's ridiculous. I mean SURE it has the potential to be revolutionary but still, 256 players is a little too much? How can you have that many players and NOT lag or drop in framerate?
 

ChromeAlchemist

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Azhrarn-101 said:
ChromeAlchemist said:
Greg Tito said:
and it's a little more PC-like from a development standpoint, so I like that,"
Is that the opposite of what other developers have said about the PS3 though? That the 360 was more PC like?
The 360 is more PC-like from a software point of view, it's essentially a heavily modified version of Windows (it even has DirectX 9) running games on x86 hardware, although not all versions have a HDD.

The PS3 is more PC-like from a hardware composition point of view, it has basically all the components a PC does, although it runs pure x64 for software, meaning that most software won't really work on it without some serious modifications or even a full rewrite.
Interesting...wasn't the PS2 similar in that respect also?
 

Nohra

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So, what, is there a dedicated server framework for the PS3? Do they have planned official dedicated servers? If they don't, I don't see this possibly working with listen server connections. Lol @ 256 players on a 1 Mb/500 Kb server connection.

I hope they thought this through, otherwise it's going to be an embarrassing failure.
 

Daedalus1942

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tragicdwarf said:
Daedalus1942 said:
tragicdwarf said:
Daedalus1942 said:
Jonny49 said:
I'm really looking forward to MAG actually, ever since they announced it at E3 years ago. I From what I've seen it looks good, I just hope it plays well.
I'm praying that it can handle 256 players without lag, but I don't believe for a second it could handle more than that number in a single server.
It can, i've seen it with my own eyes. 256 players with no lag or framerate drops even in the most intense fights. And It's epic parachuting in and seeing the shear scale of the battle.
Source? And if you played the Beta, what type of connection do you have?
I was in the Beta from phases 2 to 4. I have an 8mb connection with Virgin Media and a Belkin N+ router, although at peak times it can bottom out to well below half a mb. Even during peak times MAG ran perfectly much the same as say Warhawk.

And for anyone who doesn't know how the MAG battlefield works i'll give you an idea.

No matter which mode you play you'll always be in a squad of eight with a squad leader. The squad leader can issue secondary objectives which become FRAGO targets. You will receive a FRAGO bonus which will double your XP for anything you do in the area of that target. If the squad leader doesn't issue targets the game sets default targets so you will always have an opportunity to earn double points. The squad leader also has the ability to call in UAVs, Air strikes etc if available.

In larger games you will also have a Platoon Leader who sets primary objectives. The Platoon leader can communicate privately or openly with their squad leaders to give orders.

When the battle starts it will be a large number of small skirmishes across a very large map. There is no need to go wandering off aimlessly because you will always have a target to defend or attack. As the outer defences (Bunkers, turents, anti air / motor guns and gates) of the defending team are weakened and destroyed their spawn points fall back to their main base. The attacking teams spawn points move forward in the form of either helicopters or parachuting in. This is when the battle reaches its climax. Squads will have specific targets within the main base to attack and defend.

That?s a very basic run down of how a Domination battle works. There?s obviously a lot more to it than that.

I will say that the Domination games I played in were fantastic. I think the fact that it starts off with small skirmishes then ends up with such a large scale battle gives the game a great sense of progression and achievement.

And on a side note there are no classes of soldier to choose from in MAG. It's totally up to you how you want to level up and what equipment you want.
Dare I say it? This looks set to blow the shit out of anything EA (or to a MUCH lesser extent Infinity Ward) has ever managed to accomplish. You sir have piqued my interest in this game.
 

Jumplion

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SantoUno said:
Super lag much?

Personally I think it's ridiculous. I mean SURE it has the potential to be revolutionary but still, 256 players is a little too much? How can you have that many players and NOT lag or drop in framerate?
Trust me, the game hardly lags whatsoever. Read this post [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.163048?page=2#4209772], it details what goes on the in game most of the time. I've played the beta, and despite a few glitches and bugs, the game runs very smoothly with hardly any lag whatsoever. I'm very confident taht they could pump it up past 256 players, hell maybe even a free for all with all 3 PMCs on the battlefield or two PMCs working together against another.
 

Geoffrey42

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Given my experience with the beta, it seems like they could scale the number of players up... and up... and up. Its not like you're ever in the immediate vicinity of 256 other players. The maps do an incredibly good job of keeping you isolated, while making you feel like the other groups of people playing matter to what you're doing. If everyone decided to play nice, and not kill each other, and all truck it to one place on the map, I'm sure everything would go tits up lag-wise, but the way they're only ever having you deal immediately with, say 32 people, it kind of avoids those issues altogether.
 

Axle_Bullitt_19

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IdealistCommi said:
I AM GETTING THIS ON RELEASE

I do not care if it comes out the day BEFORE my birthday, I WILL NOT MISS ONE DAY
You and Me Both. For me its just a matter of should I actualy preorder it at Best Buy or take a risk and go with 7-Eleven
 

Lucane

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p3t3r said:
it seems like it would take a long time to get into a game. or that you would not be playing at max most of the time
Shru1kan said:
I find it hard to imagine that this game would be totally maxed out on a server. Good idea on paper, lets see some realistic execution.
Actually matches won't start till about 90-95 % of each team has entered into a queqe for a new match so it might take a few min to enter into a game but the game starts in about 90seconds once it all the players are aqquried with time to seee your squad mates platoon an check your loadouts and a 15 second headstart for the defenders to attemp to get in position from thier spawn points.

Though people can leave once a match starts of course before the battle insues.
 

StarStruckStrumpets

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Jan 17, 2009
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This makes me think, they better spend a lot of time making a functional spawn system, or you'd get PWND real fast. I used PWND for a reason, to express how horrible this would be.