Hello there o/ ,

I am about to fine tune details about a browser gaming project and I consider including PvP into game play. But I have a problem about timezones.

Assume that there is a fight between (for example) US and Russian players. Depending on timezones , sometimes US / Russian player ratio will be 10:1 or vice versa.

This way, one of parties will not be able to find competition.

So,

What would you suggest to at least 'ease' the problem of huge gap between players?

Thanks in advance.

Hello,

I'm sure a lot of us would like to help you, however, you'll have to put up a little more info about the game for us to give answers that can actually be applied to your situation.

I guess your game would feature some sort of guild system (official groups of players with the players themselves deciding who may join the group)?
What is the combat system? turn-based, realtime?
strategy, rpg or petsim? (could be any of those, given your description)
when would you like to allow pvp? anytime without proclamation, in certain areas, if both parties agree to combat, an arena (where you get a random opponent)?
is there some sort of leveling or other advantage that long-time-players have over newbies? How do plan handle that gap?
Is there anything special about your game that might be important in pvp-situations?

It's a pretty general rule around here, if you want answers, you'll have to give some info. Don't worry, most people here have enough ideas of their own and those who don't won't be capable of copying your idea faster or better than you.

bw,
Tobl

First, thanks for replies.

And my bad. I had thought I have given enough details, apparently not.

I guess your game would feature some sort of guild system (official groups of players with the players themselves deciding who may join the group)?
What is the combat system? turn-based, realtime?
strategy, rpg or petsim? (could be any of those, given your description)
when would you like to allow pvp? anytime without proclamation, in certain areas, if both parties agree to combat, an arena (where you get a random opponent)?
is there some sort of leveling or other advantage that long-time-players have over newbies? How do plan handle that gap?
Is there anything special about your game that might be important in pvp-situations?

There will be small groups (probably 8 people, more like squad) to keep a 'room' cost effective in bandwidth terms. Combat system will be realtime.
And PvP will be possible when someone participated in war (there is no open-world exploration or such, remember this is a browser game)

There will be leveling mostly adding to hp and/or damage.

-----

in most MMOs there are races (orcs, humans, whatevers) so this problem may not be so intensive.

But if you design a game people being part of their e-country, it is natural for people to chose to fight under banner of their country. In that case, there may be shortages (simply lack of people to fight against) not only in extreme cases like timezone difference but generally too.

So what can be done for the masses not finding opponents to fight?

I'm not sure what you mean by participating in a war, but I'll assume it's a must-take-challenge system (for every fight one partie has to challenge a specific other partie. if the second partie has ever participated in a fight before, it has to accept the challenge. Remember, if they don't have too accept the challenge, they can simply decline whenever they are too few players)

if you expect certain countries to have very few players at all time, it might be best too restrict who can challenge who, for example: a group can only challenge a group that has at least half the manpower as themselfes (10ppl challenge 5ppl: okay; 10ppl challenge 4ppl: not permitted; 4ppl challenge 10ppl:okay). Similar systems can also be used too cover huge level-gaps between groups.
The other way round would be too let any group challenge any other, but reduce how many people may partake in the fight (10ppl challenge 4ppl but only 8 of the 10 may fight). As you can probably guess this system is not the most popular one. ^^

If you expect the problem to happen mostly because of acute shortages on players (for example the timezones) you've got more options:
One would be of course the aforementioned restriction on who could challenge whom, just change "total players" to "players online".
If the groups are permanent it might also be possible to have certain entities or actions be property of the group. In a strategy-game this could mean that only the player himself might be able to build new factories with his resources and similar army-building-activities. However, when under attack any player might take control of inactive players' troops in order too defend (army-using-activities).
Another option would be a "declaration of war": instead of fighting instantly, a date for the fight is set, at least x hours in the future. This gives both parties time to gather as many players as possible. This method is most often unpopular with the players, but in very certain cases it fit's the game just right and works perfectly; only you can decide, whether yours is one of those cases (however, most of the cases where it could work have really, really huge guilds, so it might be unlikely).

Hope that one of these is appliccable to your game,

bw,
Tobl

Edit:
It would still be nice to know whether its rpg or strategy, I simply assumed that it's more likely to be strategy based on your wording.
Oh, and secondly (does such a word exist?): there most certainly are browsergames with open-world exploration, at least one of them even in 3D. But yes, I know that that is way harder too implement.

Dear Tobl,

Thanks again for caring to reply. Seems I sometimes forget how 'classic gaming' oriented this place is.

In game, country A declares war to country B. Then they attack to region X. People from both parties (countries and their allies) participate that specific war for the region. So there is no attack-on-sight, explore world or such MMORPG features.

War can be point based (first party getting 1000 point wins) or time based (24h for example).

In that case, it is not a war for the sake of fighting but to conquer a region. So I wonder ways to avoid saying "sorry there is no one to fight against, (they are sleeping atm) wait 4 hours until some wakes up" or even if this extreme doesn't happen, there will simply always be difference between parties.

in RL , this problem would be solved simply by changing ratio of parties in room. But I doubt if a 14:2 party would have a chance.

And for challenging, I think it is a clever approach thank you but it is not always squads challenging squads.

So I am a bit stuck , I am currently on the page of offering another ways of 'fighting' to those not able to find opponent.

Is there any specific reason that you're making this for real-world countries?

One obvious way to ease the problem is to disassociate the game world with the real world. If every player simply chooses their factions from made up associations, then you should (hopefully) end up with a spread of players through all timezones within each faction and you don't end up with the problem of one timezone being represented at one time.

Well, it is partly due to my intention to stick realism and partly to use 'patriotic' instincts as a motive without exploiting.

Defender plays a game that is closer to tower defense(set before log off and can't have their character "interfere" so there isn't the thought of if I was there).
Attacker plays whatever form of combat you want, with resources more limited than defense, and total damage thresholds. To force attacks to happen over several days.

Thanks for reply.

In case defenders set their character , it leads to multi accounts and also people prefer fight by their own. There is another problem of people not knowing when war starts.

And finally what I think of is a TPS with relatively fast pace not allowing tower defence style.


Btw, I don't know if it is a crime to be forum member but never played MMORPG , but I wondered how it is handled at WoW or such games. I mean what if there are far more Orcs vs Humans, does it mean Humans are crushed all the time?