What? I'm decorating my stronghold with only my second character and already when I try to place another pet or such thing I'm told that I've reached the limit for NPC decorations in my stronghold. How is this possible? The limit seems ridiculously low!

This was pointed out several times during the PTS testing.

 

I can only hope that at some point, being absolutely sure that the engine can handle it, they increase the limit. Other than that, just... Arrange stuff accordingly I guess.

For future reference (and too prevent me from being overzealous in my design) what is the NPC limit? Also, does it extend to the holo-statues of your alts/companions?

never did strongholds on test but i do remember seeing a ton of threads complaining about the 25 npc limit

 

so imma going to make an educated stab that the max number is 25

For someone that is active on the forums you sure don't read many threads...

For future reference (and too prevent me from being overzealous in my design) what is the NPC limit? Also, does it extend to the holo-statues of your alts/companions?

 

The NPC limit is 25 currently. This includes companions and their holos, pets, creature mounts like Taun Tauns and NPCs like the Imperial/Republic guardsmen. Its too low in my opinion.

*Flexes typing fingers*

And what happens when you decide to bring all of your guild over for a party, and they all decide to get their pets out? Then you would have well over 300 animated NPC in the same vicinity and that totally wouldn't cause performance issues.

 

I wish they didn't delete old PTS threads, I really want to copy my really detailed explanation I typed out last week.

 

 

I have already seen many people and guilds talking about how they are going to use their strongholds to host events and such. I can easily see 70 players and maybe more being hosted in a stronghold.

 

25 decoration pets

70 players

70 companions

140 pets (2 per player)

= potentially 305 animated characters in a single stronghold.

 

Now you bring up the fleet, The thing with the fleet though, is that the fleet significantly more spread out (stuff is rendered by how close it is to you) and additionally there is this interesting mechanic called "max visible characters" where if you get too many people in close proximity it won't render a certain number of them. This works on fleet because nobody is going to notice if 10 or so random people they don't care about are not being rendered. However in a stronghold you are going to notice if a bunch of your friends you just invited are invisible or if half you decorations don't show up anymore.

 

That said I had it pointed out to me that the player limit was 50 and not 70, but that still puts the total possible NPC over 200, which would still crash things. Hence limits are in place.

Edited August 19, 2014 by Zoom_VI

The NPC limit is 25 currently. This includes companions and their holos, pets, creature mounts like Taun Tauns and NPCs like the Imperial/Republic guardsmen. Its too low in my opinion.

 

Roger that, no grand army at the entrance.

 

Time to study up.

This was pointed out several times during the PTS testing.

 

I can only hope that at some point, being absolutely sure that the engine can handle it, they increase the limit. Other than that, just... Arrange stuff accordingly I guess.

 

Unfortunately, I don't usually read too much about what's happening on PTS.

 

This really is disappointing, but it can be worked around. Use pets and comps thoughtfully.

Use pets and comps thoughtfully.

at least offer them a beer 1st...

 

 

i'm 5 hours into patching the update so at some point i should conceivably be able to play the damm game. when i get in i am bringing beers over to your house to get elara drunk because mine wont be decorated at all and i know you will do a super job

at least offer them a beer 1st...

 

 

i'm 5 hours into patching the update so at some point i should conceivably be able to play the damm game. when i get in i am bringing beers over to your house to get elara drunk because mine wont be decorated at all and i know you will do a super job

 

There may or may not already be a cantina in my house.

That said I had it pointed out to me that the player limit was 50 and not 70, but that still puts the total possible NPC over 200, which would still crash things. Hence limits are in place.

 

It would make more sense to have a variable limit, such that if you have 50 NPCs you can't let all 50 guests have 2 pets out, or something like that. Rather than restrict everyone because of the chance of problems in edge cases, restrict the people in the edge cases.

 

But what do I know.

It would make more sense to have a variable limit.

 

Agreed. It could be set up as benchmarks. As your surpass X NPC's in your stronghold your max player capacity is now reduced to Y. Have it be in orders of five to keep things simple.

 

I'm very willing to have max 25 people if it would allow more NPC's. Single player, the way I role.

(prepared for volley of stones from MMO-definers)

Edited August 19, 2014 by Kremsau

This came up a lot on the test server and the only semi-official response was from Dulfy that they may look into raising it in the future.

 

Personally I find the limit very disappointing and it greatly diminishes my interest in strongholds, but for now at least it is what it is,

Agreed. It could be set up as benchmarks. As your surpass X NPC's in your stronghold your max player capacity is now Y. Have it be in orders of five to keep things simple.

 

I'm very willing to have max 25 people if it would allow more NPC's. Single player, the way I role.

(prepared for volley of stones from MMO-definers)

 

The best theory I have heard for the limit is that it is not a display problem but that they are worried about spawning to many NPCs at once. For whatever reason pets/animal mounts/humanoid NPCs have health and probably a lot of other seemingly useless details which put a bigger strain on the servers.

It would make more sense to have a variable limit, such that if you have 50 NPCs you can't let all 50 guests have 2 pets out, or something like that. Rather than restrict everyone because of the chance of problems in edge cases, restrict the people in the edge cases.

 

But what do I know.

 

I would like to have the option to restrict the number of PCs anywhere from 0-50 if it would allow me to raise/lower my NPC limit. Maybe this is something they could implement later on?

Keep the NPC limit at 25 for guild strongholds where holding large events involving 50+ players is a distinct possibility. However, the NPC limit of personal strongholds needs to be raised to 100 and player limit should be lowered to 30 or 40. I just don't see how 99% of the personal stronghold will ever come close to the 70 visitors limit. It's not as if strongholds are similar to the housing in TSO or Second Life where visitors can actually engage in interactive activities and stick around on purpose. For the most part, our strongholds is functionally akin to a tour group stop.

 

I don't know, maybe BW is just waiting for a few months to mine some data and find out what percentage of personal strongholds are coming close to the visitor limit before they adjust the thresholds.