How hardcore would you want in a server if you wanna enable 24 players?

[Kai]

Enemy Damage to players being 300%? Everything is lethal if it hits you?
Item stacks reduced, so everyone better share stuff and not hoard?

All enemies detects you 200% faster, sneaking is hard?
Sinks don't refill often. Items respawns (because a lack of spawns will softlock progress if players grief each other).

Friendly Fire is 100%? I wouldn't want it higher because some player weapons do like over 50 damage, like thrown explosives.

Enemy damage to props can stay the same, and item durability is meh, if you increase it, all gear durability goes up as well as furniture.

I wouldn't want to increase enemy HP mainly because they have high damage resist for soldiers anyways, and HP scaling are off the charts as you enter each new sector.

And outside of sandbox settings, griefing and stealing items and leaving them as loot bags can be a constraint on resources, because people can steal everything you have, suicide, and it becomes a locked bag that you cannot take from, and they can leave loot bags everywhere to deny you from building in that spot (the game doesn't let you build if entities are in the way)...

[AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA]

Both damage received and dealt including friendly fire for the lols cranked up to 11 sound like a fun way to play for lots of people until they add a spawn rate slider or something, making enemies actually scary specially soldiers.
Don't get too crazy with the equipment durability and keeping items on death because managing resources for each one is gonna be ASS unless you tick the resource respawn option, like imagine the late game stappler struggle with 24 eggheads trying to build their own stuff, unless each player sticks with their own starting roles its gonna suck.

[MechWarden]

While I play tested the heck out of some games, I'm really no expert on this kind of thing (crunching numbers to make difficulty settings). All I do know is that you can't simply ramp up numbers willy nilly and expect it to work. There are too many other factors in play to make that viable.

For 24 players you'd have to fundamentally change how the game is done. Weaken players a bit, maybe even force specializations, buff up enemies some (but not a lot), and allow for more things to spawn, ranging from loot the enemies.

Even then, I don't know if the map itself is accommodating enough handle this. Having 12 people fighting in a hallway would be rough.

At this point, you might be better off looking into team vs team mechanics, but with one team being NPCs and likely a role or class system.

Unfortunately, such a game has much faster game loop and the ability to swap roles/classes easily, so I don't know how viable it is for this idea either.

[Kai]

Publicado originalmente por MechWarden:

While I play tested the heck out of some games, I'm really no expert on this kind of thing (crunching numbers to make difficulty settings). All I do know is that you can't simply ramp up numbers willy nilly and expect it to work. There are too many other factors in play to make that viable.

For 24 players you'd have to fundamentally change how the game is done. Weaken players a bit, maybe even force specializations, buff up enemies some (but not a lot), and allow for more things to spawn, ranging from loot the enemies.

Even then, I don't know if the map itself is accommodating enough handle this. Having 12 people fighting in a hallway would be rough.

At this point, you might be better off looking into team vs team mechanics, but with one team being NPCs and likely a role or class system.

Unfortunately, such a game has much faster game loop and the ability to swap roles/classes easily, so I don't know how viable it is for this idea either.

On roles and such, since any class can level up any skills, over time it becomes moot since that cook becomes just as good as sneaking as a sneaky marksman who picked up the ability to cook soups because of a pot of solder.

Would actually be interesting if they twist things around on the story content...
And make a 4v4 PVP mode where 4 scientists vs 4 'invaders' who comes in as Order soldiers.

Maybe restrict it to specific sections of the map as 'scenario' mode, where scientists and Gate security are trying to barricade and do objectives while the intruders are trying to destroy the objectives.

Maybe a bit better as 6 scientists vs 2 'invaders' who can possess enemies and control them?

It can be a interesting mode to make things not stale or boring, 2 players being 'monsters' and keeping the scientists on their toes. Or is this basically SCP multiplayer essentially? LOL!