i think it's time to try player caps.

[Wander]

Personally, I believe a cap would be worth trying at this point considering the difficulties with alternatives. If it does not work it can of course be reversed just as easily as it was introduced. The one thing that I would propose is that “ghosts” count towards the cap while “observers” do not. Additionally, observers can be prevented from joining ongoing games through the standard methods while ghosts can work as normal. This would allow for observing to become a choice to commit to watching a round that does not affect the cap, meanwhile active players can flow back and forth between life and death within the cap. This should help with some of the concerns regarding how non-active players affect the cap.

After considering it further, the buffer for observers Zamujasa mentioned would probably be for the best rather than splitting things into ghosts and observers. My reasons for changing my mind being thinking over how allowing infinite observers would affect population shifting and the complexity of what would be required to create a system that would work with that. Currently very much for the current proposed cap, if only to test it and see how it affects things.