Hello! I was wondering what should the max players be in a server if I am making a MMORPG. If you hadn’t heard, I am making a pirate game and I am not sure how many people I should fit into my game.
Thank you
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Pirate game? If this is a combat game it should include at least 10 I’d say. You want players to be fighting more and more intense battles.
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It is inspired off of sea of thieves.
I personally used to play sea of thieves a lot, and I enjoyed the game aswell. I am not really sure on how many players were in each server, or what the max was, but I would suggest having anywhere from 25-30 players in each server. This would be considering that the map is considerably big, and can easily house those amount of people without any complications. Hope this helped!
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Time to say hello to the fun world of map logistics 
I’d advise not thinking about how many should fit in a server, rather break down your game into different social areas, such as lobbies, hangout zones, fighting areas, etc.
Determining the Server Ranges Needed to Fit Your Zones
Once you have these places recognized then determine the minimum amount needed to have fun at each location, as well as the maximum. The cap is usually due to lag, but sometimes by just too much chaos above a certain player count.
You may even consider weighting each spot by what percent of time players will spend there during an average play session, like say you have a spawning area and only 10% of playtime is spent there, this can be translated to mean that on average the amount of people in it will be 10% of the amount in the server (unless it is a forced lobby or some other area which will be purposefully filled to the max).
My Guess For Your Game
I would estimate from a general pirate ship game on Roblox that a play session will average around 20 minutes. With that in mind let’s break down how that time is spent:
- Spawn at Spawn Area: 1 minute (5%)
- Sailing on Ship: 10 minutes (50%)
- Exploring on Islands: 5 minutes(25%)
You’ll notice this doesn’t add up to 100%, and that’s okay - we don’t need to account for every bit of time, we just need to figure out how populated a zone of the game will be. So let’s assume some ideal populations for each area. Let’s assume there are on average 15 ships sailing for the game to be fun, as well as 8 islands to explore. So that means:
- Players on (x1) Spawning Area, minimum 5 x 1 = 5, maximum 15 x 1 = 15
- Players on (x15) Ships, minimum 3 x 15 = 45, maximum 12 x 15 = 180
- Players on (x8) Islands, minimum 2 x 8 = 16, maximum 24 x 8 = 192
So let’s figure out what size of sever each area needs to succeed.
- Spawning Area: minimum 5 / 5% = 100 player server, maximum 15 / 5% = 300 player server
- Ships: minimum 45 / 50% = 90 player server, maximum 180/50% = 360 player server
- Islands: minimum 16 / 25% = 64 player server, maximum 192 / 25% = 768 player server
So, we have our ranges. Let’s get the biggest minimum, as well as the smallest maximum. That leaves us with an official game wide range of 100 - 300 players per server! Any range between these two numbers should work for your game, many just split the difference (going with 200) however if your game gets exponentially more fun until the last second you may consider setting it at the maximum.
Conclusion
Your game under the assumptions above could benefit from 100-300 player servers. However obviously that is a lot of people and would require careful planning and optimization, also many of my guesses may be completely off. I advise performing similar math with your own estimates for your game, and going with those results.
In the future if you see too many people in one area, adjust the percentages (maybe even use off site analytics to track this!) to match. If you feel the area isn’t as fun as you thought with the intended player density, adjust the zone density numbers. Over time as you get to learn more and more with how players interact with your game you should get ever closer to the optimal server number.
If you don’t want to do this though, 20-30 is usually a good server number across the board, but I personally think this kind of math can help a ton with player engagement.
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Oh wow, thanks for all that advice.
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Hope it helps! I was a game design major in college and we talked a lot about player density stuff, it’s pretty core to honing in on the goal player experience
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I think 10 or 15 would be good.
i think 25 - 35 would be ok
servers with 100+ players would lag a lot
but depends how the game is made.
I think 30 is good. Too much players in 1 server may cause people to lag and dislike your game with even not joining again.