i think it's time to try player caps.

[Zamujasa]

My only concern is how this might translate into people fighting for a spot to play on goon3. Meta shenanigans and locker naps in order to hold a place so they can play later or something.

This is a culture thing. It will be something people have to look out for.

That said, I don't really see this as a bigger problem than what we have now. Even if 4-5 people do this a round, which seems unlikely... I dunno. If they sit in one place and don't move the whole round that'd be suspect, but that's the sort of thing that (if it becomes a problem) can be checked for. If you don't do something every x minutes, any online admins get an alert.

At that point someone would have to be getting pretty deep into the weeds for holding a spot, like macros or otherwise just being persistent.

Would it be possible to put the limit on the amount of living players in round (e.g. 55 or 50), rather than on the number of people in the server? That way people could still spectate if the 3's full. Not sure how feasible that would be to implement but I think that could solve some of the issues of observers 'taking up slots'. I know you talked about raising the limit and possibly kicking idling title screen players after a set time, which also works. Then again, those players would still appear connected on goonhub... pros and cons to both implementations.

the problem with dynamically counting living/dead is that it's very easy to go from one to the other. someone dies, then gets SRed shortly afterwards, or cloned, or uses a ghost critter spawn, or is borged, or...

setting a flat limit simplifies a lot of the logic.

I'm kind of curious about the logistics of a player cap as well, the actual mechanisms of it. What happens when someone tries to join anyway? Do they get shunted off into goon4 or does a pop up appear? I've really only played here so I've never encountered a player cap before.

that's up to us. if we keep it rp-only, we could redirect someone to the other server automatically and show a message; or allow people to connect but not actually join (i.e. only allow them to click on something that redirects them with a message, rather than automatically). i think giving people a visible "queue" type thing would lead to people just sunk-costing themselves to it given how long it takes players to disconnect, typically. (plus the grace period for rejoining.)

What about if both 3 and 4 fill up at peak hours? What happens then?

then we open up 5. or we leave 4 uncapped for the time being (until something like that happens). this is a good question that definitely deserves more attention if the tide really picks up, and might be a good reason to consider a higher cap; e.g. if both servers are full, then the cap grows to allow more, but otherwise tries to keep them balanced; sort of like how tf2 let you join an arbitrary team as long as that wouldn't unbalance them too much

These have probably been considered but I thought i'd bring them up. I think that this would overall be a good thing for RP even if some people complain. Much more controversial things have gone through, after all. As long as a PR introducing this is well thought out and covers all the points brought up in this thread, I don't see why it shouldn't be implemented.

if the point hasn't been discussed in this thread then i dont think you can consider it being discussed, if only for the sake of ensuring everyone here is on the same page. i said this in discord, but to repeat it here: shit you say in discord will not be remembered. it will be forgotten. it is impossible to find anything in a sea of random crap.

if you think something is worth discussing or mentioning then the best thing you can do is to bring it up and discuss it.

P.S.

I am personally against it because I worry it will just cause a deduction in population.

Isn't this... the whole point? To make it less chaotic? That's the whole idea.

in this case i assume they meant that it would have a net-negative effect overall and not just on 3. which is correct, imo, at least at first.