From deep thought about the topic, despite often complaining about the hit registration issues gaslighting me into becoming a servant of the rat god in my walls, Overall is minuscule compared to the other downsides of lowering it.
The PVP aspect is heavily bought up when arguing against the server slots being so high. From what I’ve seen in reports, a huge portion of the new players actually hate this aspect of the server as it is obstructing their daily activity and no one wants to sit on a curb for 20 minutes waiting for a shootout to end.
The upper management obviously don‘t want to prioritise the need Player vs Player interactions and the people who play to do nothing but shoot other players in some way, shape or form over everyone else, including paying donators looking to generally make the most of their VIP subscription by playing as much as they can. It’s pretty open that the community managers are praising players who are building fun areas for other players to go ahead and enjoy as a public space, and that players who do nothing but PVP are more heavily scrutinised in reports.
What we need to consider is for how long the server has tried to breakaway from being almost solely a PVP server and if hitreg is going to really gravitate as a reason for wanting less player slots, Especially how aggressive and obstructive it has become in terms of people shooting people without warning. New players doing their “buy a house” mission are being gunned down on entry to the apartment completely unaware, and reasonably so, that they’re breaking server rules by entering the shootout. A shootout at bazaar halts crafting and players buying things as well as turns a clear pathway into a hazard they aren’t allowed to cross.
An issue I will elaborate upon in great detail right now is one that the majority of new players who found themselves into shootouts and wound up dead all believe the pvp aspect of the server in its current warzone form is a deterrent to wanting to play here. In general a PVP situation restricts access to that part of the map, which is especially prevalent as the majority of these situations occur in bazaar, apartment blocks, and other areas where a significant portion of player activities are halted for what could be up to 20 minutes at a time in some apartments. The meta is to pick apartments to base in over houses because the apartments are miles easier to defend than houses. A shootout at the wood cabins doesnt really ruin anyone else’s experience.
And consider this, players who are spending the better portion of their playtime turning a sizeable portion of the city scape into a high intensity warzone begging for United Nations military intervention; Beyond an enjoyable shooting game experience akin maybe to a casual match of CS for the few players who are allowed to, by rules, get involved, what benefit does it really bring? I’ve built and partaken in passive RP structures at bazaar just for all of us to have to submit to a godstick enforced mandatory evacuation of the area because someone with an arrest warrant didn’t let said warrant deter them from partaking in the daily stand around bazaar with no real intention world championship.
The undisputed fact is the playercount has not killed PVP at all and shootouts still occur regularly, more than enough for players to enjoy themselves, and certainly enough for players to have their gaming session interrupted by them.
Obviously I enjoy partaking and regularly start said shootouts. I never was going to imply this behaviour is, in general problematic. A large scale shootout is a Roleplay event. Key word is event. The issue arises when it no longer becomes an event but an hourly guarantee. Shootouts constantly breaking out, even over a simple verbal threat, gets old, and people get bored of deciding that they’re going to let it ruin their day. Spending the majority of your playtime as a passive RPer stood on a curb twiddling my thumbs waiting for people to finish killing one another just to take a pot luck guess to see if it’s even over doesn't make for an enjoyable experience in general.
Lowering the playercount, whilst i personally would enjoy having more shots register, would solely to be to ponder for that aspect of the server and nothing else. Maybe to make driving smoother? I’ve only had like 2 lag related crashes lately.
Bearing in mind that the server is regularly full, and this is already with the 128 player slots an obstructive issue. Lowering the count would guarantee the server is consistently full. Furthermore, due to training and recruitment within the PD being carried out on the live server, I have a prevalent issue of not being able to attend said sessions because I didn’t join the server 2 hours ago.
As I previously highlighted, the problem with our solution could mean that we’ll find ourselves a few months later claiming that there was a problem with our solution and that the solution to our new problem was the problem we had before. The problem with our solution is it will create an obvious problem where the solution is to go back entirely on this and make this effort mundane.
Tl;dr: PVP isn’t likely to ever be seen as a reason to want to lower playercount by both new players and upper management and playercount probably won’t be reduced solely to cater for the PvP aspect of the game mode when a huge portion, the majority potentially, of new players already disagree with the fact that they shouldn’t be allowed to enter their homes or access shops, NPCs and other methods of shopping and travel because people started raiding, and that said players shouldn’t shoot them when they clearly and obviously won’t be a threat to them.
The problem with your solution is the problem that called for the solution creates a problem in which the initial problem will be the only solution and wasting time yoyoing between both states would be a complete inevitability.