Testing crowd limiting (now on EFP, SFH and DAV)
We have decided to do a test run of crowd limiting before turning it on on all playfields. This to ensure it's working as intended, and to gather feedback from you players on how it affects land control battles.
{Update
The crowd limit testing has now been moved to Eastern Fould Plains, Southern Fould Hills and Deep Artery Valley, and the values are tweaked to a cap of 50 and a delta of 5. This to get more people in the testing areas.
The limiting will be disabled December 5th at 9am GMT.}
The test run will be done in the playfields Mort and Perpetual Wasteland, and run from 5pm GMT December 3rd to 9am GMT December 5th. We will have a character cap of 80, and a delta of 5, for this test. (See below for explanation.)
Please post your experiences with this test in this thread, plus any questions about the explanation below.
How crowd limiting works
Areas and tiles
We check for crowds in areas of 3x3 tiles. Each tile is 40x40 meters, and the areas overlap, making each tile a part of 9 areas.
Numbers
We operate with two tweakable numbers
- Cap: The absolute limit on number of characters allowed in an area.
- Delta: The number of non-defenders that risk being deported to a safe spot.
Uncontrolled areas
In an area without land control, or a land control area without a controller, the only number used is the cap. If entering the area would mean the number of people would go above the cap, you will be denied entry (by hitting an invisible wall) until the number is lower.
Controlled areas
In a land control area with an operating controller, we differentiate between defenders and others. "Others" are everybody not belonging to the organization owning the controller.
To better explain the rules, let's use the numbers from this test:
- Cap : 80
- Delta : 5
The cap will be split in half, assigning 40 to the defenders and 40 to the others.
As soon as the defenders have 40 characters in an area, no other defenders will be able to enter (hitting an invisible wall again).
Others are also limited to 40, but here a number of people will be deported out to make sure others are able to enter. This ensures characters with no intentions to attack are not able to fill the area to deny attackers entrance.
As long as the others are above half the cap, minus the delta (in this case 35), people will be deported until they are no longer above this number.
When selecting characters to deport, members of organisations that have done damage to towers in the entire land control area are placed last on the list, and will not be deported (unless they're all of the same organisation, in which case novody will be 'safe'). This ensures that any non-attacking organisations will be moved out first, as long as the attackers have done at least some damage to the towers.
Deportation points
The deported characters will be moved to set locations in the playfield. Each playfield has three points for each side, and the characters will be deported to the closest one.
If you have any questions about the system, please post them here. However, please let this be a thread for this particulat test only, and take discussions, questions and suggestions to other threads. I'll make sure to have a look at them all.
does teaming with a defender
remove the "other" status from you and turns you into a "defender"?
i am thinking about a guild trying to help out a friendly guild.
*edit: how fast will these "pulses" happen?
if it is a big messy battle people will flood to the place and out again. does the system check every minute, every 30 seconds or so?