i think it's time to try player caps.

[Spyritdragon]

I'm open to the idea of population caps but I think:
- 65 is too low
- It should only count players in game otherwise people are going to idle on the title screen to "save their spot" and we're going to have 50% idlers/observers taking up the cap
- Classic should either remain uncapped or have a much higher cap as it works a lot better at high (even 100+) populations

I'm sort of also with Leah on this one.

I think it's not a bad idea to testmerge. If anything, what a testmerge couold achieve is that it sort of jumpstarts 4 again to an existing playerbase or 1 during the off-times, and even if the testmerge is then reversed hopefully some of these re-established communities would balance things out more. I'm a little bit opposed to it in the long run seeing as, while I'm always happy to RP with new people, I'd like to know I at least have a chance to continue all the fun stories and interactions I've got going on my character, perfectly open to others joining in the process, rather than having to look at eachother from across a server border.


One big thing, however, that I think is worth mentioning is that while I definitely won't deny that high playercounts make RP hard, I have to say that I've had high-pop 3 before, and it felt less problematic.
I'm 100% cool with classic, I've played it myself, and I don't think 'classic mentality' is in and of itself bad, but I do feel that it makes RP a lot harder when it comes over to 3 and 4, and the amount of 'classic-style' players we've gotten on 3 has made RP feel a lot more difficult to me. Not necessarily people who don't escalate or break the rules, but I've definitely noticed a marked uptick in players who mostly care about playing the game, and dont really seem to bother with immersion much or really getting much RP going.
As a practical example, when playing roboticist it's lately gotten up to maybe half of my rounds where I have to Ahelp a self-surgery, something that if you stood still for even a brief second is a ludicrous idea in RP. Even during previous bouts of high-pop, it was never this bad. And I think it's worth acknowledging that even if the population becomes more spread out, things like this that are making RP harder wont necessarily be addressed, and I'm worried that the people who do like in-depth RP might even find themselves forced to spread out over more servers.