- Scarecrow118
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- Noble Heroic Member
I'm not too sure. I think this whole idea is win, but I'm not sure if it's practical. To be able to run 40 players on a single game, including heavy weapons and vehicles would cause some serious networking issues even with dedicated servers.
There is a reason Bungie has a budget in forge. Vehicles and weapons place a heavy load on a players network, which is why they have a high cost to prevent excessive use of those items. This game sounds like it would require a lot of vehicles for transportation and weapons to counter them. Even with dedicated servers, the strain all these items would put on an individuals and the servers network would cause a horribly laggy game.
The idea of a Massive Team Battle is interesting for sure, and it would be something I would love, but the time the game would take would be insane. Objective games would be practically impossible because you have 20 people trying to kill you, and even if your team can kill enough of them, they will likely respawn too fast and overwhelm your team. Theoretically, it would be an interesting game for sure, but practically implementing it would be incredibly difficult to ensure everyone has a fun and fair game.
How many people do you think would be interested in playing this? 1000? 10 000? 500 000? How many dedicated servers would be required to allow everyone to play the game when they please? See, the advantage of P2P connection is that you can find a game whenever you want as anyone can host a game, for better or worse. Dedicated servers would limit that, and the number of open places would be seriously low, preventing anyone from finding a game in a reasonable time frame. Most of the time servers would be constantly full meaning that a lot of people in a similar timezone - say America- would not be able to get a game, as they are competing with all the other people who want to play at the same time. An insane number of servers would be required [/i]across the world[/i] to ensure everyone can get a game when they want, with a reasonable connection.
Unfortunately, there is no way that P2P connection can successfully run with 39 other connections. People complain of lag in a Team doubles game because of a P2P connection, so it can't possibly run a 20v20.
Now for the improvements of the game (if it was theoretically implemented)
1) Rather than drop pods, both teams start at a UNSC outpost on either side of the map. It would be fairly large, and contain many vehicles and weapons that both teams would want to use. This ensures the game can still play fast and reduces the strain a fast moving object like a HEV would put on the network.
2) Weapons and supplies can be scattered across the map, likely in the form of Pelican supply pods or crashed scenery vehicles.
3) Rather than a shop, special weapons like lasers can be "purchased" with points and air-dropped via Pelicans.
4) I know this will sound a lot like CoD 6, but extra support items can be earned like Pelican strikes or transport, bombing runs and the like. Unfortunately, this can create a one sided killing frenzy as obviously the winning team would get more stuff.
5) Heavy vehicles like Pelicans, Scarabs and the like need to be kept to a minimum to reduce the strain on the network. Tanks should be kept as one to a base, and heavy units like above need to be automated, rather than controlled by a player.
6) Heavy weapons will need to be seriously nerfed to allow vehicles to have a chance in a game like this. Obviously, you can't just have one laser, but four is just too many and their range would need to be reduced (depending on the map size). Missile pods could be scattered around, but would have a serious power nerf and reduced range.
I realize this sounds like a scaled up version of Modern Warfare 2, and to an extent it is. What I think most people need to understand is that although Bungie is creating a new engine, the same network issues will arise from each individuals network connection. This would be fantastic in LAN, but seriously, who can get 40 people over to play a game of Reach, and no hub or router has enough ports anyway ;) This is definitely an amazing idea, and I think it would be awesome to play, but the physical requirements to run and play this gametype would be huge.