What if the PC population was increased?

[Rhyden]

Moofassa and I were having a conversation about the current PC population of Armageddon. The thought came up about what Armageddon would be like with a highly increased player population. Let's say on average 1000 players, peak-times;more. Of course, there wouldn't be any lag since we're all dreaming here but I was wondering what you guys would think about this highly player populated Arm.

What would be the pros? What would be the cons?

My Pros-

:arrow: The groups in Armageddon would be massive: Raiders, desert elves, thief guilds, houses would be huge, mercenary groups, hunting groups, magicker groups, several nobles involved with politics, numerous soldiers lead by templars in the cities.

:arrow: There'd be sooo much more corruption, so much more death. Your 5 day rinthi character wouldn't be famous to most Allanaki PCs, most characters would be a speck in the dust.

:arrow: Independant characters would be wiped clean. You're independant? You're a joke. You'll die the second you step foot into the deserts from the perillious raider groups, tribals, increased halflings, gith, mantis, etc.

:arrow: Travelling would be difficult. If you're not in a group heading North to South, you're dead.

:arrow: Ever get those times where nobody's on? Wouldn't be exactly so if there was 1000 people around on average.

:arrow: You'd get some hardcore 50 vs 50 battles going on. Wars breaking loose most likely.

:arrow: Say goodbye to a few needless NPCs.

Cons-

:arrow: Spam, yeah, there'd be lots. Most taverns would be pretty much filled up.

:arrow: You're a speck in the dust. To some people, this concept would be amazing, but surviving in Zalanthas when you're competing with a 1000 other PCs? It's gonna be difficult.

:arrow: Immortals. There probably would need to be a lot more.

Would more area have to be added on? Nothing changed? New city-state? Allow PCs to play as different races (mantis, halfling, gith)? What do you guys think?

[Kennath]

I say VOTE! now! We will try for less then 1000 but a larger number would still be ok!

[Revelations]

Not even that amount would be needed to make a large, noticable difference IG. If on average there were 100-150, there would still be enough things to keep Zalanthas buzzing.

[Larrath]

Things would be much, much better if there were that many PCs.  Though the merchant houses would probably get seriously overloaded.

Don't think we'll ever get 'enough' though.  Enough players, to me, would mean roughly 110 players on at average and 180 at peak.

[Ktavialt]

You forgot there would be (likely multiple) gith tribes. That
would be awesome. Yae yae gith tribes!

[Kankman]

1000 is far too many and I would quite likely stop playing. 100-150 might be cool.

[Arabian Nights]

Yeah 100-150 would be about perfect. We'd be able to fill out the existing clans and still have room for some indy clans.

[amoeba]

The most I remember on at one time is around 160 during the mantis invasion of Tuluk. While it was fun then, it was obvious that it is possible to get too many PC's.  I think around 100 on average for the current size of the world fits it about right.

[Kankman]

Great, now someone get us some more players! Anyone still in highschool? Anonymously post information about it in various nerdly gathering spots. More nerds! Must eat more nerds!

[Kennath]

KRATH DAMNIT VOTE!

[Eniriah]

I have a handy-dandy Armageddon bumper sticker on my car with the url to the web page.

I am a driving billboard for the game. You could join in on the fun!

I say we must distribute more bumper stickers so all the public can see. Draw them in my pretties - help us all to cast the Crackageddon spell.  :twisted:

[bloodfromstone]

Group based combat would need serious tweaking at this point.

[Synthesis]

Random thoughts....

If we started logging in 1000 players, the game's economic system would need some serious rebalancing, or nearly everyone would start dehydrating and starving to death.

As it is, 3-4 days after a reboot, every water source in the (commonly) Known World is depleted (except for sources that respawn continuously).

Additionally, the hunting situation would just be ridiculous (i.e. impossible).   Either there would have to be a change to how much stuff you get per corpse, or there would have to be a huge increase in the number (and variety) of critters out there.

Again, as it is, every NPC merchant that buys skins is tapped out within a few days, except for those few PCs who can tan the skins and then sell them.  Increase the playerbase ten or twenty-fold, and trying to sell to NPCs would be virtually impossible.  Selling to PC merchants would be equally impossible, because 9 times out of 10, the way the crafting system is wonky right now, you can't sell the vast majority of items made from ordinary skins for an amount that would support both the PC merchant and the PC hunter, even if you do have l337 haggling skillz.

Eventually, given the relative impossibility of making an honest living, independents would be forced to turn to raiding as essentially their only recourse.  And eventually, unless the raiders had some sort of coded safe-zone, they'd get wiped out.  So essentially the only raiders you'd have left would be desert elves, gith, and halflings (assuming they opened the latter two races up).  

Now, given that all of these are karma-required races, and hella cool to boot, most of the veteran playerbase would flock to them or magickers, and you'd be left with a heinous influx of newbies running the show in the cities.  Which just doesn't appeal to me in the least.

If we did get such a large playerbase, I'd rather the world were increased tremendously in size, logout rules changed (or new logout points, villages, etc. added), and either the thirst and hunger code changed to be less severe, or water sources increased to reflect the new, larger size of the world.

People who play in the cities might not think much of the thirst code, but it's -brutal- for people who make their living outside the city.  It's entirely possible to suck down an entire cask full of water on a single trip.  Now, have 100 people (only 10% of a 1000 player base) competing for such scarce water resources, and you have a lot of people dropping like flies from dehydration, which may be "harsh," but it's also not a lot of fun for anyone.

I don't know why people are so hot on raiders, anyway.  Every band of PC raiders I've ever had the misfortune of playing with has devolved into a society of borderline or outright twinks within a couple of months.  (It even happens to players with karma...I've seen my fair share of twinkish muls and half-giants in my day.)  Besides which, the world out there is dangerous enough without a bunch of halfass raiders running around trying to kill everything in sight.

Eventually, everyone would just create in clans, they'd spar for a little while until they thought they were badasses, then they'd go out for some clan-on-clan action, there would be a swift, mass slaughter, and they'd go back to doing the same thing with a different clan.

And for magickers...the situation would be well-nigh impossible.  It's already hard enough to survive as an ungemmed elementalist.  Imagine if you had 200+ bounty hunters coming after your ass in groups of 10 or more.  Yeah.  Hope you can get real invisible real quick....

Anyway...that's all I have for now.  Maybe I'll come up with more nays later.

[Jherlen]

1000+ players is just nuts. I don't think you could find 1000 players who would actually be true to an RPI environment and get them all to play in the same place. There's a reason that H&S or PvE type games are at the top of Topmudsites... most people just don't appreciate a game like ours.

I'd love to see 100+ people on at peak time. I think it would give us the player base to fill out all the existing clans and have visible, active people in all the sponsored roles (nobles, merchants, etc.) Any more people than that and I think the game world would need to be expanded and some mechanics changed, just from sheer volume.

[jstorrie]

I could mudsex a thousand players. I'm a fast typer.

[Maybe42or54]

Hunting would suck. Unless you were hunting Pcs, which would make me be a halfling or something.

Mudsex. I could mudsexx a new person every night of the week.

[SewerRat_inTheOpen]

50-100 on average will be nice.

There will probably be more "trust" going around because there will be more raiders out there, instead of going to that silting spot alone, people will want to get there in a group.

There will be more rangers/merchants/byners/soldiers/thieves/burglars/assassins/bards..etc.
It will be easier to interact with one another, because there's someone there to interact with most of the time. It will be easier finding that clanned merchant or that ranked bynner who can make decisions.

Maybe we can even get segregated back into the taverns that everyone more or less belong to. The same class of people in the taverns.

Of course, because there are more people about, it will be easier to sell things to one another. There's more people to scam about the steel sword +3.

Immortals will get a lot more work, for there will be increased twinking and what immortals do, like spying on the increased mudsex activities.

[Anonymous]

The game would be ruined

[LauraMars]

I'd like to see about 50-100 more players than there are.  It would make a big difference and still be a managable world.  So...VOTE, EVERYONE.

1000?  No waaay.

[Anonymous]

There would have to be major revisions before that happened. Like fixing the immediately flooded shops, overhunted hunting areas, things of that nature.

[Twilight]

I don't think 1000 players would be good.

Of course, a few years ago (98 or so) I was playing when I would normally see 2-10 people on (maybe what, 15-20 at peak those days?).  So the current situation actually seems a bonanza to me.  That said, 100-150 during peak would be awesome from a social standpoint.  Some things would start to warp there though I think if it was consistent (creatures to hunt, shops to sell to, places to hide your sekrit magicker, etc).

[sarahjc]

Peek we see about 45-50 or so as of late, and that's the norm.  Just before and around the time of the mantis invasions I would see something like 70 on during peak. That was awesome.

But 1000 is just too many. Way too many. The world is not set up to handle that many players, it's just not big enough. Also I can't see an RP based text game even being enjoyable with all that scrolling. Even know when I am in a tavern and there are more than 5 people emoting and talking, I can get lost trying to pick out my own conversation.

If we got up to about 100-125 people on peek times. I think that could be awesome. But then again, you would need to do some expanding and adding on to the resource pools to accommodate that

[Delirium]

The way shops are set up would need some re-working.

The taverns would need PC size-limits.

And the wastes would be alive.

I'd be happy with 200 on peak times, 50 on nonpeak.

But the non-peakers would STILL complain.

[Anael]

But the non-peakers would STILL complain.

*whine whine*
I'd be happy if off-peak player numbers got doubled or tripled.
On the other hand, wait. 3 * 0 = still 0
Crap.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, it sucks coming on at like 7 am PST to 9 players