I host https://babbl.xyz https://babbl.xyz on DO with a single $10 server for the socket and the web, and a $10 server for mysql. This can support around 500 ac

I host https://babbl.xyz https://babbl.xyz on DO with a single $10 server for the socket and the web, and a $10 server for mysql. This can support around 500 active players. I also did a more action asteroids clone (http://triangle-wars.com http://triangle-wars.com), and this would only support I guess 50 players on a $10 server. The limiting factor seems to be the number of packets / sec that need to be broadcast to all players. If each player is changing state 2/sec, and you have 50 players, then the sever needs to relay 100 packets/sec... Unlike some other comments in this thread, I didn't find JSON parsing to have any effect on performance.