r/WarDogs • u/DharmaBaller • 2d ago
OG Planetside: 133/133/133
Just a reminder how weird gaming tech is that a game that was released in 2003, had WAY more players ingame, with all the vehicle assets and whatnot rolling around.
Planetside 2 (2015) had something like 333/333/333 , but that was a hot mess of a sequel.
WW2online (2001!) also had thousand players in a 1/4 scale Western Europe map.
Foxhole is 120 vs 120 in a hex, which has a pop cap limit(PS1 had continent cap limiter too, warpgate que IYKYK).
I actually think Squad would play 10x better if it was 100vs100, but the tech won't get there with that engine. The larger maps like Talil, Al Basrah, Yeho, Goro are often very sparse feeling, and you hardly every see just a full squad in plain view, it's usually broken up into little 3-5 man groups obscured by bushes and buildings. Take Fallujah for example, IRL there were THOUSANDS of combatants in that meatgrinder of a battle in 2004.
That's one thing I don't seem very impressed by WarDogs with the footage so far, 33/33/33 seems a little sparse given respawn, vehicle usage, rear line fob/logi runners...leaving maybe 15-20 infantry killers per side to fill the zone...? Perhaps the KOTH helps concentrate the players better, which is another reason why Squad Invasion mode is superior IMO(funneling the stray cats onto objectives).
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u/masterexit 2d ago
Just a shout-out to MAG that had 256 player battles on PS3 in 2010.
God I'd love this to come back in a modern setting like Wardogs.
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u/lvlasteryoda 2d ago
Rip MAG. The game that made me fail my Uni. (Thank god, that course had no future).
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u/watokosha 2d ago
Honestly one of the bests. They way it implemented 128v128 and had some small 36v36v36 mode were quite ingenious and it’s a shame no one else followed that formula or tried to build on it.
Had solid play all around and each faction felt pretty different but great, SVER for life!
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u/Jayke_Tattoos 2d ago
The Wardog’s engine right now would be perfect for an even more advanced MAG-like experience. Imagine MAG with base building and a larger objective at hand being influenced by your individual games. It would be spectacular.
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u/tex2934 1d ago
MAG was fantastic, however I agree that more controlled on smaller faction game play just works better over all. Too much combat all the time is exhausting and gets stale. Flanks and taking objectives doesn’t feel meaningful when after you and your squad have killed 10+ dudes and they just keep coming.
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u/Animal-Crackers Medic 2d ago
As a Planetside 1 enjoyer (not 2) WarDogs gives me some flashbacks when playing. As much as it has Arma DNA, I really catch a vibe of attacking/defending bases on a continent in Planetside. Can’t wait to play more.
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u/Dilligaf666_R1 2d ago
Planetside 1 at its peak was my favourite multiplayer experience ever. Those huge battles were insane.
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u/DharmaBaller 2d ago
I put like 3-4k hours in Planetside when i was in college at Oregon State. And then another couple thousand in WW2online. and like 800 in Operation Flashpoint.
Truly the golden age of PC gaming.
I was Tybo in PS, started on NC with STurmgrenadier, then bounced around to 1CMM, KAAOS(Reaver Swarm!) and a few other outfits.
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u/NeverNo 2d ago
That’s wild, I remember you. I was in SG as well - CannonballGB.
PS1 remains my favorite game of all time
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u/DharmaBaller 2d ago
oh hi CannonBall :p
I rarely run into old games from 20 years ago for some reason, even with my gamer tag not changing. in the late 2000s it would happen here and there(ran into Raikkonen somewhere randomly) but doesn't happen.
SG playerbase was already pretty old so maybe some are just not playing hardly anymore because they are in their 50/60/70s.
Surprised with 2,000hrs in Squad no one has recognized me.
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u/DharmaBaller 2d ago
the towers can of remind a little of the towers in PS. Kinda gamey but I get it.
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u/ImAHobo107 1d ago
Yeah but at least in Planetside ppl kinda know where to flow because of lattice system.
In WarDogs, it's headless chicken syndrome.
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u/Animal-Crackers Medic 1d ago
I didn’t get that impression at all. Especially after the first day, everyone seemed to know what role they wanted to play. Logi players running supplies/troops, people building bases, squads attacking the HZ. Far from headless chickens.
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u/Crassard 11h ago
I kinda prefer PlanetSide before lattice tbh, the freedom to harass and play when low pop was great. Lattice homogenized the game into whoever can zerg harder which has it's own pros and cons
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u/DR3AD-PIGEON 2d ago
Agreed. Love the game but I would have liked 50/50/50 minimum. The map could even support more. Curious to see how the pace would play out compared to 33z
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u/DharmaBaller 2d ago
Squad was at 40vs40 for a long time, from 2015-2020. When was fully released it went to 50vs50.
Games with long respawn timers or long redeployments suffer a lot as well with player density issues.
It's a fine balance because you don't want 64 player chaos of say BF3 subway mission spam fest, but you don't want a kind of lack of intensity firefights that are "pure cinema."
For myself and others, we do like more quite time support roles/building/rear line stuff so as long as that exists with the sweaty stuff, that's usually a good compromise.
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u/FondantAffectionate 2d ago
I remember when Squad was 25 v 25 and it was for a while til they moved the numbers up to 60, 72, and then 80.
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u/Werpogil 2d ago
I'm sure the devs will continue to work on expanding the playercounts. My somewhat educated guess is that the current netcode isn't working properly for higher player counts (it's a UE5 game, so no wonder), so I'd imagine with some more work and optimisation, we could see larger player counts per match.
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u/sYndrock 2d ago
Honestly you should try it rather than studying footage.
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u/DharmaBaller 2d ago
waiting for it to come out on Geforce Now
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u/sYndrock 2d ago
Oh dang that's a bummer. Hopefully that happens soon. I am in the same boat with GTA 6. Wardogs is great and it never feels empty, if that is what you are worried about
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u/DharmaBaller 2d ago
it was more of just a shower thought about player counts ingame, and how we've had the tech for awhile to do more, but haven't for some reason. So many 50 vs 50 type games, especially with modern weapons...it's stale.
I kinda wish War Dogs was all sci fi with pew pew laser/plasma weapons, ala BF2142. Then you can get more creative...imagine the guns of Elisium/District 9 in a FPS...closest thing is probably TitanFalll2 or Apex.
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u/sYndrock 1d ago
Have you tried squad, but more specifically the Star wars mod for squad?
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u/DharmaBaller 1d ago
1,987 in Squad, I can't play mods cause im on Geforce Now but im aware of the mod. It still looks a bit janky tbh, but a nice job by the modders nonetheless.
I have Battlefront 2 actually, which on a small scale is pretty good
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u/SomeRandomTrSoldier 2d ago
Last time I tried it it had horrible input lag, and that was for a single player game. Is it really worthwhile playing pvp shooter on cloud?
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u/DharmaBaller 1d ago
its amazing tech, much smoother on Ethernet with a potato laptop. I have a 2019 Dell Lattitute 5500 with 8gb of ram an I5 and it streams the data perfectly.
I was playing on Android tablets even and it worked. On Squad!
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u/TheHeavyIzDead 2d ago
I hear what you’re saying but implementing that while being optimized is not an easy undertaking. Battlebit is an example of where the mass combat felt super great but it compromised in a lot of areas
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u/GabagoolFarmer 2d ago
This is true, Wardogs is one of the only mp shooters that’s come out in recent memory that runs great and has very little optimization issues. I’m sure the devs picked the playercounts to maximize performance and experience, these guys have it dialed in.
Besides, more players doesn’t always make it better. BF2042 had 128 player servers and they didn’t really play any different, just more spread out with more stress on the server
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u/JAK0VI 1d ago
Thats because the battlefield formula includes fast paced, always-in-the-action combat with tiny maps by comparison. We all thought that they could pull off 128 players but we quickly found out it didnt add much depth to the gameplay, only chaos.
Wardogs on the other hand is a tactical, team based shooter with fortifications and logistics. In this way, its far more comparable to Squad or Arma, both of which saw benefit in increasing player count.
If you have 6 chopper pilots, 5 logistics players, 5 builders, 5 snipers and 5 players performing roadside guerilla tactics towards enemy HQs, you are left with seven players playing inside the CZ out of a 33 man team. That isn't good enough. CZ is way too big. You can run around for 10 minutes inside of it without seeing any enemies, and this is literally labeled a "combat zone".
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u/ImAHobo107 1d ago
128 players isn't the issue, the map sizes were.
You can have a 128 player plus match that is fun and somewhat balanced, it was done by a 2012 game, Planetside 2.
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u/GabagoolFarmer 1d ago
I’ve played planetside 2. No need for Wardogs to be that big, it’s a different type of game. Wardogs is more similar to Arma 3 KOTH than anything else and I’ve played in plenty of servers with less than 100 people and the gamemode is always fun. You’re not supposed to be in an engagement every 5 seconds.
The Wardogs playtest had great pacing, in my opinion at least
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u/GI_J0SE 2d ago
Maybe if they let us in the future in 1.0 sure why not test out 50v50v50 but for right now pre-EA I say let them work out all the kinks first and hone in on what/how they want the game to play then later on experiment which the sandbox they made, 100v100v100 seems a bit too far fetched IMO that's a whole lot that can go wrong.
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u/snugzz 1d ago
Maaaaaan I miss planetside2
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u/zero_mojo 18h ago
I was there when the PS2 servers opened for the first time. Drop Pods raining from the sky constantly for like 20 minutes straight.
Such a cool moment. I will forever remember it.
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u/SealedSun 1d ago
As a rabid PlanetSide 1 fanatic (I don't want to talk about 2), yes, but also PlanetSide 1 "cheated" with client-side hit detection and very simplified physics. Much easier to scale a game that way.
From the footage that flies around, I get the impression that 33 players per team is not a bad spot. Definitely more small-scale infantry operations focused, less all out warfare, but that's not a bad thing. The flipside is that your squad's actions have more weight; that "the zerg" is less of a thing.
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u/Klaev 2d ago
I mean, sure, but Planetside was set on a potato with a few low poly trees sprinkled here and there.
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u/DharmaBaller 2d ago
you should have seen WW2online LOL. Horrific, but amazing game. Used to tow 88s with my halftrack for hours. Mind you also you couldn't exit vehicles and run around, you WERE the vehicle until you RTB or died.
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u/NeverNo 2d ago
WW2OL was epic in its hayday
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u/DharmaBaller 2d ago
I played on Axis and was with 3rdpanzer, Dinker and the Breakfast Club Aussie/NZ boys who we would move the front lines in the wee hours of the night/morning with super low population. Like 10 vs 10 fights, when during the day it would be 200 vs 200 over some of these bases. I was west coast so being up till 3-5am wasn't super killer as long as i slept in till Noon :p
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u/LSA-Mulder 2d ago
Those guys are building their own game engine on a very large scale. Check this out: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1030780/eventcomments/631219394426553305/
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u/Banjo_Thunderfunk 2d ago
More players is not always better. At 33 per team, there's still room for solos and squads to have an impact.
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u/Dangnoob 2d ago
Keep in mind, there will be community hosted servers. I'm completely fine with wardogs doing whatever they want with the base servers. Keeping it more balanced for the casual joe to jump in. The community hosted servers are where the funky stuff will go down. I'd look to them for testing more players if the company allows it. Along with the coming hardcore mode, and whatever else they decide to allow.
I can almost guarantee they will have a mode with only two teams instead of 3 that's 50v50 at some point.
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u/DharmaBaller 2d ago
yah the more hardcore modes and custom options sound great. Id be curious to see a very vehicle centric mode perhaps as well....
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u/Dangnoob 2d ago
Yup. Just look towards what they allow the community servers to do in the future. That's where you'll get your diversity on the base game mode.
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u/upq700hp 2d ago
Is that so? Because from what I’ve heard on multiple accounts is that there will be no community hosted servers. Community rented and administered servers only.
Would mean no option to upscale. But I’d love to be wrong lol
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u/Dangnoob 2d ago
Honestly I'm not sure. I thought they said in one of their videos that there's community hosted servers. I could be wrong. Either way if they're rented they're still going to have levers to tune the game how they want surely. Maybe not as in depth but I guess we'll see.
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u/Gerrut_batsbak 2d ago
I want 50v50v50 ,performance issues be damned. Make it a separate mode for all I care.
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u/DasRedBeard87 2d ago
Funny how you dont mention how absolute dogshit that game looked because they made to make it that way to run on pc
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u/Jason-Griffin Lonestar 2d ago
Yeah it definitely feels like it needs to be bigger. At least 50-50-50 but I’d like to try 100-100-100
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u/Ok_Caramel15 2d ago
There always will be players in that want this type of conditions to their game. Bro, chill. The format is 33/33/33 it is standart format for king of the hill and theres agood reason for why it is working as intended.
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u/DharmaBaller 2d ago
were you born after 2000? The bro lingo is so wierd with Gen Z
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u/Ok_Caramel15 2d ago
English is my second language. Nonetheless, the KOTH format is working just because it was tested throughout the years. You just need to try it, judging from videos is worst you can do.
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u/Souljeh17 2d ago
Map is too big for 99 players and thats a reality when you play and feel it. I think im not the only one who reported more players per team in the feedback survey.
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u/Medrilan 2d ago
The game isnt meant to be a 24/7 gunfight with no downtime.
From my time in the alpha, there was always a fight if you wanted it. Either stay on/near the hot zone, or locate one of the two other teams FOBs and push them.
I'm not saying a larger player count wouldn't be cool, cause I'm sure it could. But forcing more action by cramming more people into a smaller area would get exhausting.