In my time people played to the game, not the timezone. Even in a small Power like Antal we would be on together and there were no shortages of randoms and other powers.
I really wish this wasn’t your first game of this type. Your introduction to this kind of gameplay is practically utopian compared to games I’ve played in the past.
Powers themselves notice when the bulk of other powers are active, to find out when attacks are going on or find windows to attack. How that translates in V2 (i.e. snipes) is anyones guess, but I have a few ideas.
In PP quite often you have to go to places which are dangerous because those are the areas your power needs help. In a V2 context the alternative is to tend a garden further out and hope no-one attacks....but if its based on influence from a system under attack you'll lose it all unless you help.
And if you have a mix of people on at a mix of times? It won't matter- simply as quite often you'll still see others. For me (when I managed to play a different time) I'd meet other players...one day that was just me v a very angry group of PMF players.
In short- Open is opportunistic encounters. Having lots of people playing at random times just shuffles the deck.
My primary concern is that for this type of gameplay, Frontier broke the most important rule of all: don’t allow players to any control of critical data. Then they dialed it up to eleven: they’ve surrendered not just control of critical data, but the host server.
This is fine as long as everyone is willing to play by the same rules, which describes the current status the status quo. That will change once you interfere with the free choice of modes.
But even right now, there is an
extremely noticeable change in instancing in PvP hotspots based on what time I play. And I typically play during the global
maximum, which is European prime time. There are 20% more players online compared to my local prime time, and I’ll see
nobody. But I’ll see players when I play during my local prime time.
This is because there isn’t one server handling the instance for everyone, but dozens, if not hundreds, of micro-servers. Which one you connect to, or if you spawn a private one of your own, is determined by the matchmaker. And it’s priorities are friends first, quality of experience second, and antagonistic gameplay not at all.