'Mavericks' Promises 1,000-Player Battle-Royale Mayhem

[DooKey]

Newcomer Automaton is promising a new battle-royale game that features the ability to battle with 1,000 players at a time. The game is pretty ambitious and plans to take on Fortnite and PUBG. At first they will release the capability to have 200-400 player battles and then will upgrade capability to include 5-member teams in 1,000 player matches. The battles are going to be conducted on 10x10 km maps and will even have destructible buildings. Sounds like a big deal to me and I hope they can deliver. Check out their teaser trailer.

Watch the video here.

Mavericks' battle-royale mode will sit inside a vaguely-defined MMORPG experience. The game will have a town called The Capital, which acts as a lobby for the last-man-standing matches. Here, the company says, you'll be able to customize your character and upgrade your weapons before heading into the fray. There will also be banks, shops, auction houses and a range of quest-giving NPCs. The Capital will be part of a "persistent open world" that launches in 2019.

 

[katanaD]

sounds like a slide show waiting to happen


i remember how on MMO's our guild would gather and crash the server.. fun times.

 

[andrewaggb]

I suppose if they design the maps, drop zones, etc so that you can't have 1000 players anywhere near each other at one time it could run ok. People tend to want to spread out anyways. Whether a 1000 player battle royale is a better experience than a 100 player one is I guess something we'll have to find out. It's certainly got some bragging rights behind it.

Graphics and gameplay look good from what they've shown but it was a pretty cheesy video that I don't think is very representative of how people actually play.

 

[whatevs]

Best case, they have some sneaky mechanic that limits number of players in any region or this isnt a typical FPS/MMO so the number of packets per second is limited somehow.
Worst case, all bullshit.

Typical case, all bullshit.

 

[bizzmeister]

Too much going on here, don’t think it’ll do well at all.

 

[AlphaAtlas]

Neat, but it's still free-for-all battle royale, so it's not going to feel like a 1000 player battle. The skirmishes will be the same as any other game, thanks to the giant map size.

I just want more games like PlanetSide 2, where you can participate in a single battle with 200+ people you can (more or less) see/shoot all at once. Then drive to the next base. The chaos of it all is just brilliant.

 

[Lakados]

Queue times for 40 people were a nightmare, I am sure queue times for 400 will be a wet dream.

 

[AlphaAtlas]

Queue times for 40 people were a nightmare, I am sure queue times for 400 will be a wet dream.

It would have to have some kind of drop-in spawn mechanic, or something similar given their talk of a "persistent open world".

 

[gamerk2]

I suppose if they design the maps, drop zones, etc so that you can't have 1000 players anywhere near each other at one time it could run ok. People tend to want to spread out anyways. Whether a 1000 player battle royale is a better experience than a 100 player one is I guess something we'll have to find out. It's certainly got some bragging rights behind it.

Graphics and gameplay look good from what they've shown but it was a pretty cheesy video that I don't think is very representative of how people actually play.

The problem with that is from a sever perspective, it doesn't work the way you are thinking. The server has to process EVERYTHING, regardless of how far apart people are. Unless each region of the map becomes its own stand alone server (which has problems; how would sniping between zones work?), you're stuck with everyone in the same server at a time, which is a massive performance hog.

It's doable; EVE Online does it. Barely.

To me, the old axiom holds: If it sounds to good to be true...

 

[Gweenz]

I guess writing netcode is easy!

 

[fuzzylogik]

It'll have to be good to have 1000 players playing at the same time - so... until they get there we'll have to see! huge battles are great fun. PlanetSide2 is evidence of that and I'm not sure what the largest single battle is (I'm sure some that i've been in have been with a couple hundred people in the same area?)

 

[AlphaAtlas]

The problem with that is from a sever perspective, it doesn't work the way you are thinking. The server has to process EVERYTHING, regardless of how far apart people are. Unless each region of the map becomes its own stand alone server (which has problems; how would sniping between zones work?), you're stuck with everyone in the same server at a time, which is a massive performance hog.

It's doable; EVE Online does it. Barely.

To me, the old axiom holds: If it sounds to good to be true...

Again, PlanetSide 2 handled 1000+ people on a single map years ago. And unlike EVE, it's an FPS.

It is hard, but not quite as bad as you think. The server may have to handle a bunch of people at once, but the clients don't have to render all 1000 people at the same time, which means the server only has to send info about a dozen other players to each client, or maybe a few dozen in rare instances.


In other words, you just apply classic LoD/occlusion culling techniques to the players themself.

It'll have to be good to have 1000 players playing at the same time - so... until they get there we'll have to see! huge battles are great fun. PlanetSide2 is evidence of that and I'm not sure what the largest single battle is (I'm sure some that i've been in have been with a couple hundred people in the same area?)

I've seen 400+ people in 1 or 2 hexes for sure, maybe more. But in those cases infantry render distance starts to get pretty short.

There isn't enough pop for those kinds of battles anymore though.

 

[jardows]

The problem with that is from a sever perspective, it doesn't work the way you are thinking. The server has to process EVERYTHING, regardless of how far apart people are. Unless each region of the map becomes its own stand alone server (which has problems; how would sniping between zones work?), you're stuck with everyone in the same server at a time, which is a massive performance hog.

It's doable; EVE Online does it. Barely.

To me, the old axiom holds: If it sounds to good to be true...

Hey, with AMD Epyc, we now have the cores to do it!

 

[BaGGy]

They are achieving this by using multiple servers per "lobby," similar to how SpatialOS works. Which in their closed testing works well obviously, but scaling will be the bigger issue.

 

[greenman]

I love how a battle royale trailer shows the player kick ass. On average, the player dies without knowing where it came from. Or kills one and dies by another. heh

 

[fuzzylogik]

Again, PlanetSide 2 handled 1000+ people on a single map years ago. And unlike EVE, it's an FPS.

It is hard, but not quite as bad as you think. The server may have to handle a bunch of people at once, but the clients don't have to render all 1000 people at the same time, which means the server only has to send info about a dozen other players to each client, or maybe a few dozen in rare instances.


In other words, you just apply classic LoD/occlusion culling techniques to the players themself.



I've seen 400+ people in 1 or 2 hexes for sure, maybe more. But in those cases infantry render distance starts to get pretty short.

There isn't enough pop for those kinds of battles anymore though.

Yeah, not anymore - realized it's been over a year since I've launched it last I think. I wanted to say "few hundred" but I can't remember... but I do remember them being...epic.

 

[Shmee]

If they can pull it off that would be sweet, but 99v1 is already hectic enough, but 995v5 would just turn in to a sniper's paradise. Much like Tic-Tac-Toe, the only way to win is not to play...

 

[oldmanbal]

Upon closer inspection the game looks circa half life 2, so the netcode could probably handle that many people at this point. Modern games start to vomit over 40 people.

 

[F.E.A.R.]

Well assuming they could do it can it really be fun with that many players? I'm not so sure.

 

[Chupachup]

So, has PUBG announced anything regarding sicking their lawyers on them for appropriation, theft or some other nonsense, yet?

 

[DedEmbryonicCe11]

The Unchained engine can handle this many characters in the viewport at the same time and it was designed as a FPS engine at its core. I'm also really hoping the new engine for Mount & Blade 2 can handle more than the ~230 their old engine can handle. Modern warfare is a lot easier to simulate with lower player counts on a server than any sort of medieval through the US Civil War era is.

 

[velusip]

They are achieving this by using multiple servers per "lobby," similar to how SpatialOS works. Which in their closed testing works well obviously, but scaling will be the bigger issue.

Doesn't it say they are using SpatialOS?

I suspect that it won't really matter how many people are playing simultaneously. BR type gameplay naturally distributess relevant events over space and time, so the event workers will never have to aggregate more than a known, set number of actions, which can be directly controlled by the progress of a match. e.g. If not enough people have died in group A to make a safe/lagless merge, reduce the active play zone for just that group of players before directing them toward group B with another zone reduction.

Of course, SpatialOS is releatively unproven, so time will tell.

 

[tangoseal]

At least it's not some dumbshit cartoon rediculousness like Fortnite.

 

[TheOne&OnlyZeke]

If it works, hey I'd have a go
I won't hold my breath though....as I can only do that for maybe 2 minutes anyway...and I'd pass ut

 

[Shadowed]

I'd prefer 500v500.

 

[ScuNioN]

Just because you can have a 1000, or 500 does it make it a better game?

Give me combined arms and vehicles then you have something that truly feels dynamic and epic. Oh, we already have that with Planetside 2!

Teamplay > Battle-Royale

 

[Schtask]

Playing an fps that's rolling time dilation ala Eve online is going to be....stupid. lol