I’m sorry if the answer is already somewhere on the forum.
Like the title says
Is it because of the engine?
Is it a design choice?
Will 8v8 be the maximum at the launch?
I’m just curious to know the reason behind it, because for me this is probably a reason not to host any clan server for DB.
I think they want to keep pub and comp play similar.
The only FPS game that I’ve seen work with 32 players is BF3 and that’s because it was build around the concept of huge battles. Without scalability of maps I don’t see how we could get more than 8v8 players to work.
[QUOTE=Ruben0s;428705]I’m sorry if the answer is already somewhere on the forum.
Like the title says
Is it because of the engine?
Is it a design choice?
Will 8v8 be the maximum at the launch?
I’m just curious to know the reason behind it, because for me this is probably a reason not to host any clan server for DB.[/QUOTE]
I’d bet my money on that it’s mostly down to the map design (at this stage). Just think about trying to grab the data cores on London Bridge in a 12v12 (or more) server.
Also, hopefully they are trying to make the transition between pub and comp as easy as possible with a low max player count on pub servers.
I agree, but one of the reasons that made ET so special for me, are the communities built around servers. I just don’t see it happen that you can build a big community around a 16 slot server.
Kinda agree with Ruben0s, 16 slot is too small for a “community” server. Wolfenstein 2009 suffered from this (amongst many other things) in that it was limited to 6-v-6, so you ended up with either not enough players to get a game going, or full servers, hardly anything in-between.
8-v-8 is good, and certainly 16-v-16 would be stupid for this game, but 10-v-10, 12-v-12? Not sure if it’d work at those numbers but I’d certainly like to see how 10-v-10 plays. The bigger the number the more likelihood there will be servers with spare slots, and the less likely a few players dropping here and there will ruin the game. But too big and it becomes a mindless meat-grinder on some maps at some stages.
24 is the perfect number for a community server, 16 like said before is maybe a bit small, but the map does not support more than 20 players, so big maps for 24 players servers can be a good option.
Regarding the actual mapsize, 8vs8 is the max. But with some map changes, 10vs10 shouldnt be a big Problem. Just get rid of some chokepoints where the whole team has to come thru and it should work. If 12vs12 is a good idea? I dont know. But for the normal mass pub player 8vs8 could be too less, especially when you think of the old SD Fans playing W:ET and ET:QW where the teamsize is clearly bigger than in DB. Hopefully SD will release a SDK and some mappers/modders jump in and make decent mods/maps and maybe it will be possible to have maps with an huge playercount and a lot of action 
Oh I’m pretty sure servers will be upgraded to 12v12 or 10v10 later. I think they just keep it 8v8 for now so we are able to test things better and because there are not so many people playing all the time.
Why wouldn’t community servers work with 8v8? If it’s not enough slots you could get 2 servers? Communities will find a way imo.
This will make the community less close + it’s more fun playing with everyone on 1 server.
Like I said, you built a community around a server. If you create another server you will get a new community.
I can agree it’s more fun to play with your friends on 1 server, but I don’t think it should be at cost of the gameplay. Also 8v8 isn’t that bad. 16 players is a pretty solid amount.
The biggest issue is with floaters, people dropping for whatever reason, afks etc and creating imbalance.
i only want to play at 6v6 or higher. any lower and theres no point. if one person drifts off, it throws the whole match.
map size is irrelevant. thats just peoples own opinion. You think ET would have been as successful with an 8 player team cap.
People had fun on big and small. And all these maps could handle more. whether you like it or not is another matter.
But to say the map cant handle it is just being selfish because thats how YOU want it.
And ive said it many many many times before “if you dont like a lot of players on a server you simply go else where”.
no one is forcing you. But with 8v8 those who want more are being forced to do just that or not play at all.
it would be like me saying the maps only suite 9v9 and above and games below that number just cant happen, ridiculous yes?
i think its the biggest issue with this game that i have. ive not heard anything official on it yet but i presume it will stay. and i think it will hurt it.
they may want to make pub and pro be similar but the mainstream dont like pro.
i posted a thread here with a poll if anyone’s interested.
http://forums.warchest.com/showthread.php/33937-Higher-bandwidths-less-max-players-why
in the end there will be technical limitations but to unlock the player cap would be nice. i just dont think its going to happen.
[QUOTE=iwound;428739]map size is irrelevant. thats just peoples own opinion. You think ET would have been as successful with an 8 player team cap.
People had fun on big and small. And all these maps could handle more. whether you like it or not is another matter.
But to say the map cant handle it is just being selfish because thats how YOU want it.[/QUOTE]
Well I disagree with this. Map size is very relevant playing with too many people on a map that was not designed for it is horrible. It completely ruins the game, too much spam and it just turns into a grind. The only reason people play on these servers is to rack up huge kill streaks with a lame tactic or grinding XP / stats.
This isn’t just my opinion some examples:
Also in W:ET the gameplay went bad after 12v12 imo, then it became spam.
On the other side playing LB with 3v3 is pretty boring.
This is just my opinion, so you’ve got me there. While it might be enjoyable for some people to just continuously spawn and die within 10 seconds, I think they just haven’t experienced that FPS gaming can be so much more than that. Also I think SD wants to provide a continuos level of gameplay therefore some restrictions have to be made and I agree player count should be one of them. I do hope they leave some customizability though so we can have silly maps / mods to goof around in.
EDIT: Just remembered your second point, if I don’t like it don’t play there. That’s true and I won’t, therefore it doesn’t matter what size the servers can go for me. But I think having larger servers ruins the gameplay and is only used for grinding the ingame currency.
[QUOTE=iwound;428739]map size is irrelevant. thats just peoples own opinion. You think ET would have been as successful with an 8 player team cap.
People had fun on big and small. And all these maps could handle more. whether you like it or not is another matter.
But to say the map cant handle it is just being selfish because thats how YOU want it.[/QUOTE]
Yes, I’m not saying every pub server should be above 8v8, but i certainly think the maps can be played with more players. The maps become perhaps “silly” and more chaotic, but it honestly is part of the pub experience, that holds true to every game. I have no experience in hosting servers so I have no idea what I’m talking about, but perhaps making a server could hold sort of guideline that says if you wanna play pro have 5v5, more pub 8v8, if you wanna go full retard have 12v12 or whatever the cap might be.
And I thinkit’s true and a real issue that the player count dropping below 5v5 makes the game quite boring and inbalanced for pub playes. If every server is capped at 8 that would happen way too often for comfort, really stifling the players’ enjoyment.
The only backlash of having 12v12 or something be the player cap I can envision is that people will automatically think that hey the more players the better, and vast majority of servers would be at the cap, and people who want to have less chaotic games can’t find populated servers for that. This could perhaps be countered with some form of “education”, both to admins and players, like I mentioned above. One thing I think is true is that we shouldn’t completely remove the cap, 12v12 is still very much playable even though it’s chaotic, but going much higher in these maps is perhaps stretching it.
I think it will be a big mistake to release this game as a 8v8. At least if a lot of people think the same way as I do 
For instance I wouldn’t even bother joining a server in other games if it has less than 20 slots. I also find it hard to accept that we have to play with less and less people all the time. 9 years ago you could play 32v32 with W:ET. With ET:QW it was 12v12, Brink 8v8.
8v8 is for me is more like a console standard. And Dirty Bomb is going to be a PC only game 
I just hope that splashdamage will take a look at valve and TF2 and ask them self: Why would they increase the player cap from 18 to 32? and look at how many people still play in 18 slot servers.
I think everyone should keep in mind that we are still in alpha. I see no reason for the player cap to remain as it is for the future, but right now 8v8 is perfectly fine for getting good, accurate feedback. Also, like previously stated, the current map designs just won’t work with anything more than 10v10, let alone the optimisation still needs some heavy duty work to not lag the server down with more clients connected.
would be cool if game was released with like 2 mappacks, 1 for a 32 slot server and 1 for a 16 slot server
and yes servers with only 16 slots will really divide our communities imo
so im also giving a +1 for beeing able to raise maxplayers to atleast 32, then we just need a mapmaker to import Minas Tirith from ET and il be happy