5 ms·

Just to add on to this: it doesn't often even make sense to have more people in one area even if your servers and net code could handle it fine. The players the

Just to add on to this: it doesn't often even make sense to have more people in one area even if your servers and net code could handle it fine. The players themselves will likely run into severe performance issues with too many people on screen. In an MMO you want player character models to be heavily customizable (costs lots of draw calls, but also effects budget), which means that the usual tricks for rendering lots of animated things on the screen don't work as well. As a result, basically every 3D MMO runs poorly if there are too many people in the area, even when the server runs fine. Some games will start just not drawing the models for other players. At that point it doesn't really matter if your game is instanced or not. You're still not going to be playing with thousands of players on the screen. The funny thing is that the maximum number of people on the screen before performance issues really hasn't improved much in MMOs in 16+ years.

hnick 6y ago
> The funny thing is that the maximum number of people on the screen before performance issues really hasn't improved much in MMOs in 16+ years. They're probably pumping up the graphical effects and maintaining a stasis there. But there are also hard caps to how much data or how many position updates you want to be sending in packets before perceived latency degrades too. FFXI in particular had a famous meme "PS2 limitations" where the game was being held back technically due to supporting the older platform, not to mention it was built with dial up internet in mind and a very low update rate. Many MMOs in general want to cast a wide net and will rarely improve to the point where players with older systems can't join in. That's for the sequel!
- Mirioron 6y ago
  I don't think the network side is the issue in almost any MMO when it comes to the client. The amount of data that is sent and received is tiny. It's most likely the number of draw calls that is the performance bottleneck. A high end machine in 2018 can handle around 2000 draw calls per frame (remember, this has been single threaded until recently!). You could easily have a single draw call per player, sometimes even more. That alone could take a system to its knees in an MMO with lots of players.

hnick 6y ago

> The funny thing is that the maximum number of people on the screen before performance issues really hasn't improved much in MMOs in 16+ years. They're probably pumping up the graphical effects and maintaining a stasis there. But there are also hard caps to how much data or how many position updates you want to be sending in packets before perceived latency degrades too. FFXI in particular had a famous meme "PS2 limitations" where the game was being held back technically due to supporting the older platform, not to mention it was built with dial up internet in mind and a very low update rate. Many MMOs in general want to cast a wide net and will rarely improve to the point where players with older systems can't join in. That's for the sequel!

Mirioron 6y ago
I don't think the network side is the issue in almost any MMO when it comes to the client. The amount of data that is sent and received is tiny. It's most likely the number of draw calls that is the performance bottleneck. A high end machine in 2018 can handle around 2000 draw calls per frame (remember, this has been single threaded until recently!). You could easily have a single draw call per player, sometimes even more. That alone could take a system to its knees in an MMO with lots of players.