Multiple Places in Game or All Maps in One Place?

[Planet_Dad]

WARNING: Wall of Text Ahead!

I am working on a game that I am considering using multiple places instead of keeping things in one place as is common for most games. My concern is that the limitations of the teleport system keeping friends together, among some other things, might have impact on the user experience that outweigh the benefits. I am writing in the hopes of people who are more experienced developing on this platform, being able to give me some insight to help with this design decision.

First I will talk about some of the basic systems I am aiming for and my reasons for considering multiple places, along with a short list of my perceived pros and cons.

The game involves players gathering resources to craft into other usable items, this being the primary mechanic of game play. Combining resources into other usable resources will be done in a central lobby area where most of the hanging out aspects of the game will happen. This is not a survival genre game in any way, these resources are just fun, silly things.

The idea of places is that, to get resources the players will need to go on short “missions”. These are essentially a timed round of perhaps 2-3 minutes where a smaller group of players, perhaps 8 or so, run around a smallish map and do their best to gather up as many resources as they can. This is meant to be slightly competitive and whoever gets the most resources at the end of the round, gets a win. After that players will teleport back to the lobby where the other types of game play happen, such as crafting and socializing.

Think of games such as Murder Mystery, Death Run, Flood Escape, etc. These all have a variety of maps. However, I don’t think any of those use places, they just teleport the players to the map within the same place being sure when building, maps cant see each other. I get the reason why they do this, players who enter a game together can stay together.

So why use places at all for my concept?

Firstly, I want as many players as possible in game without lag and putting all of that other type of game play and a diversity of maps off into other places will allow me to push the limits of the servers in the lobby area more than I could if I kept it all in one place.

Another nice thing is that by using places, multiple parties of people can go to the same map but a new instance of it, this will make it so players must never wait for a map to open up.

Yet Another fun consideration is that by using separate places, I can have extra fun with the 3D skyboxes possible with viewport frames.

OK and finally, my concerns and why i think it might be risky.

I just don’t see many games doing this at all, let alone popular games. Why is this? I am generally of the opinion to emulate best practices and it seems using places for this type of concept might not be best practice.

One reason developers keep everything in one place might be because keeping friends in game together gets harder if they don’t. We can teleport parties of players to other places easily and we might even be able to try and bring them back to the same lobby they left, but its likely that this wouldn’t work out too well. As servers fill up, the party of 8 players might not fit in their old lobby and so would end up in a new one.

Is this a big deal? Are the pro’s worth more than the con’s?

I would love to hear any thoughts and opinions on this. Whether you had experience with this decision or not. We are all Roblox gamers and we all understand the platform and whats types of games that our players like to play.

Thanks for wading through this huge ramble!

[GreekForge]

The advantage for the viewportframe sadly isnt one because the server currently does not have the capability of handling them. They can only be handled by the client and often to use them on any surfacegui’s it has to be placed in the playergui and then given an adornee.

As for getting maximum potential out of the servers, the latency advantage of having multiple places is minimal if you know enough to not overload your resources.

@Planet_Dad

Another nice thing is that by using places, multiple parties of people can go to the same map but a new instance of it, this will make it so players must never wait for a map to open up

Depending on the connection to the roblox servers, a client can take some time to fully connect to a new place. Do realize that everytime the player leaves and joins another place, he often has to load things all over again which can be jarring. Also, although im unsure of this, the client would have to reload any assets that are in both places because of the server change.

Often other popular games wont use this method because it breaks work flow and can be inefficient. It would make sense to use in games such as Project Ressurection because it is more of a hub world and the games are only 4 players while the hub world can have as much as 50. Used in that context the player flows better through game transitions. But in any other context, the idea would work against development because you would have to debug and make not only every teleport script but also every other unique script inbetween places.

But those are just my rambles, i could be completely wrong.

[Affenity (Visual)]

I would love to play a game where I’m not being teleported around (places) all the time.
It gets boring & time-consuming and eventually making me leave. This could be a potential reason.
I am not a front-page artist and I don’t have insight to a lot of statistics and whatnot.

Joining a game and finding a server instantly, takes 5 seconds, but, joining a game where a server is not ready can take up to 15 seconds, almost as long as a normal intermission.
This is time the player could have spent on other things, like seeing statistics for that round, or prepared on.

Now, an example of when to use multiple places, would be Eclipsis, it’s the perfect example of when to use multiple places the players must be teleported to.

The actual game (where players play) is extremely resource-intensive so it needs to squeeze the performance out of it. Trust me, I once played for 5 hours and the game just got buggier and buggier until it was literally unplayable.

If it didn’t have a separate place, then

• Server would have needed to hold the lobby, and all players there, while simultaneously processing the players’ input and (i.e) projectiles
• Other players would have to wait, and they are in a lobby
• Server needs to replace unnecessary movement for the game players, who really don’t care about what’s going on in the lobby

Now, why doesn’t (for example) Mad Paintball 2 teleport you to multiple places?

I believe some of the reasons are:

1 The rounds don’t last for a long time, and teleporting would make a huge % of the waiting time and decrease the player experience

2 Friends can join directly, without being “redirected” to the game’s lobby and join from there

3 They don’t have to. I believe there isn’t a good enough reason to do it.

• Their players would not benefit from this
• The developers would not benefit from this
• Roblox would not benefit from this: more online servers all the time (yes I know they’re a game platform company, but still)

Still note this is purely speculation from my side, except the joining time

To summarize, this was my speculation.
Based on this post I would have asked myself:

• Would teleporting players to multiple places benefit the players?
• How could it benefit them, do I have good enough reasons?
• How could it not benefit them, are there too many cons?
• Would teleporting players benefit me as a developer?
• How would this benefit me as a developer?