Global Strategy & PS2's Territory System

[Malorn]

I've always been a huge fan of the macro strategy of Planetside. For background understanding on this topic, please see my Planetside Manifesto (http://www.liberty-clan.com/topsecret/psm.pdf), Section 2. It's context will help for better understanding of this discussion.

First, I want to say I'm hugely excited about the territory changes and believe they are really, really good for this game. They've far exceeded my hopes and expectations with such a design. However, there are still issues I wish to discuss that will still be a factor in the new design.


There are three problems I would like to discuss in this thread.


1) Preventing the Rich from getting Richer

This is a problem that mildly existed in PS1 in the form of continental lock benefits. For example, the empire that held Oshur (battle islands) got the repair benefit on all continents. This helped them on assaults and defenses on other continents quite significantly. In PS2 this will be a much more pronounced issue if not addressed due to resources being the reward for territory control. As an empire accumulates more resources it will assist them in winning further victories. Conversely, the losing sides will be resource-starved and have a harder time reclaiming land from the dominant empire. Basically if you win you get rewards - which then helps you win more. The loser is denied those rewards and so they have a harder time competing. Its a positive-feedback loop where the rich have an easier time staying rich.

One simple way to help counter this is to add a ratio of territory ownership into the equation for how quickly an empire can conquer any territory from the owning empire. The desired result is that as an empire gains more territory it starts taking longer to capture additional territories, and its easier for opposing empires to capture territory from them. This puts natural brakes on conquest and helps the underdog empires dig out of a bad situation. Of course once things start evening out then the bonuses/penalties go away.



2) Countering the double-teaming behavior and motivation

In PS1, those of us who participated in the Global Strategy metagame had two goals: 1) capture as much territory as possible (tangible domination), and 2) provide as many victories as possible (winning is fun). From the information released about PS2 this past weekend that goal is going to be even better supported in PS2, except that the first goal will have a resource element motivating the capture. That is, the goal is to capture as many resources as possible (which requires capturing territories).

A major problem with PS1 is that the best way to capture territory is to attack an empire that is already defending, more commonly known as the double-team. Since each side only had a certain amount of population if one empire was spending most of its manpower fighting one of the two empires then they would be unable to handle an assault by the 3rd empire. This usually led to losing on both fronts if they tried. For example, if TR is attacking NC on Solsar (NC is defending), if the VS wanted to gain territory their most strategically sound option is to attack the NC. Attacking TR might cause them to withdraw from Solsar, leading to the VS having a two-front war. This led to the majority of global strategy tactics revolving around either engaging-in or avoiding being double-teamed. This would continue until one empire was backed into a corner fighting both empires on different continents, or the 3rd empire decided to create a 3-way on one continent (this was not always possible due to population lock limits on continents).

With the current details we have I believe this problem will be exacerbated in PS2 when there is something tangible to gain by gobbling up lots of resource-rich territory. The preferred tactic will end up being the same as PS1. Commanders will ask a simple question - What is the most beneficial target to attack that will grant us the most captured resources? The answer will always be the targets who's owning empire is least-fit to defend. In addition to creating some un-fun situations, it also has another detrimental effect...


3) Removing motivation for the 4th Empire

The disasterous consequence of 2) is that the empire being double-teamed is generally losing on all fronts, sometimes lopsidedly. This isn't fun and often leads to "the 4th Empire" effect where players log off the losing empire and log onto one of the other two where they can avoid being in that situation. If an empire is in that position going into primetime it usually meant they're going to stay there all night and so the 4th empire became quite prevalent after a time. This only exacerbates the problem for the losing empire. PS2 will have a 4th empire if it has any form of free play option (which it should if it understands the FPS market, but that's another discussion).

There is something mentioned that will help with both 2) and 3) though it is not a complete solution, and that is the Missions system. The missions system could take global dominance into account when deciding where to put default empire missions. It could favor missions against the larger enemy empire, or if the larger enemy empire has a very large amount of territory it could not attack the weak empire at all. Likewise, it could also give missions to the dominant empire such that it is 'greedy' and ends up attacking both foes, which increases its chance to bite off more than it can chew and lose some ground.

Additionally, factoring in total global domination into the capture times as mentioned above for 1) solving the rich-get-richer problem also helps with this problem by changing the underlying motivation. If the larger empire gets a penalty to capture times and the smaller empires get a relative bonus depending on the global domination of their opponent then the answer to that question of "how can I acquire the most territory" changes! Since capturing territory from the larger empire will be faster they are motivated to going after those territories instead of picking on the small empire being hammered already. Likewise it helps the empire with the smallest holdings reclaim territory faster. If capturing territory yields benefits then it motivates players to stick around on the underdog and fight it out. The larger empire is still motivated to stick around also because they're reaping the benefits of a lot of territory. I believe this will help lessen the # of players who are fair-weather and logon to the winning side and counter the 4th empire behavior.

---

I believe the most desirable result is a landscape that globally shifts around and favors each of the empires roughly equally. They'll win some, they'll lose some, but the net resource gain over time will be approximately equal across the empires. The empires will have periods of stronger success for a time, but the goal is for them to not last too long and to minimize the situation where any one empire is being exclusively attacked by the other two (unless the empire being attacked owns a huge portion of the world). Its also desirable that the populations of all three empires is roughly equal and doesn't have dramatic shifts due to fair-weather players abandoning their empire when it is in an unfortunate position. Weighting the capture times by relative global domination between an attacker & defender could go a long way to helping encourage this behavior, as could a mission system that takes such data into account when assigning missions.

Thoughts?

[CutterJohn]

This is a problem that mildly existed in PS1 in the form of continental lock benefits. For example, the empire that held Oshur (battle islands) got the repair benefit on all continents. This helped them on assaults and defenses on other continents quite significantly. In PS2 this will be a much more pronounced issue if not addressed due to resources being the reward for territory control. As an empire accumulates more resources it will assist them in winning further victories. Conversely, the losing sides will be resource-starved and have a harder time reclaiming land from the dominant empire. Basically if you win you get rewards - which then helps you win more. The loser is denied those rewards and so they have a harder time competing. Its a positive-feedback loop where the rich have an easier time staying rich.

If there were two sides you would be correct. With three, it will self balance. If TR becomes dominant and gathers like 40% of the land, they can push more, sure. They'll push towards the VS lands, and the NC will be biting off chunks of TR lands as a result.

Plus, if you'll recall, they said you use the resources to purchase upgrades to the weapons and vehicles, but nothing about using the resources to purchase the weapons and vehicles themselves. To me, this means that the armies will never lack the base capability to fight, they just can't purchase the nifty extras.

So, even if the TR holds most of the land, the VS and NC can still fight 80% as good. Since TR holds most of the land, they'll be fighting the TR, not each other(since an inconvenient lattice won't force it).

Land ownership will constantly fluctuate, but so long as the 2 underdogs don't fight each other, and as long as populations are reasonably equivalent, any situation where one empire holds a majority of the land won't last long. They'll all hover around 33% ownership over the long run.


You do say that it will be likely that the two dominant empires will team up on the not dominant one, but that didn't really happen in PS in my experience. The decision on who to attack was based on the lattice, and that pit you against the team that was winning as often as the team that was losing. In the more open system of PS2, the choice to attack the current aggressor is equally valid. It doesn't matter what they are occupied with so long as they are occupied.

[SKYeXile]

I like your idea of the larger empires territory getting captured more quickly by the other empires. while its always going to be hard to combat empire hoping, 1 empire per faction helps that. you can always give incentives to joining underdog factions. Hell I choose VS because it was under-popped 8 years ago, and never looked back.

Some of the incentives are obviously XP, but to play the lower populated empire you could also get more resources for the land you own. or alternately, since we dont know how resources are divided up between the empire, simply capturing land or having a smaller empire could result in a bigger resource share per person. skills could also level up faster for the underpopulated factions(though i believe skillups could be based of resources???).

[NCLynx]

Hopefully we see populations high enough to more or less have the ability to fight on 2 fronts.

I'm sure it's just because NC is all I've ever really played but lately it almost always seems to be 2v1 with NC being the 1.

IIRC though back in 03 04 and maybe 05 all empires had population enough to fight on 2 continents or 2 fronts and stand a chance.

[CutterJohn]

while its always going to be hard to combat empire hoping, 1 empire per faction helps that. you can always give incentives to joining underdog factions. Hell I choose VS because it was under-popped 8 years ago, and never looked back.

By not allowing hopping you hurt gameplay, since you lose it as an immediate population balance tool. You can't stop people from logging, but you can stop them from jumping to an overpopulated empire. Undoubtedly the first few will get through, but that will stop before long. Then you get to offer nice incentives to people going to the underdog empire. Example: swapping to the underdog doubles cert training on all characters for the day.

Just because PS1 had a poor implementation doesn't mean it can't be implemented correctly. Swapping sides is a common tool in FPS games to keep the populations even. Waiting for new players to join to fix populations won't fix temporary imbalances, and takes a while to take effect.

[Malorn]

It does't balance itself out with a 3rd empire. It didn't in PS, and we have no reason to believe it will here. The suggestion in my original post was to help encourage the 'balancing out' by providing motivations to attacking the empire with the largest territory domination (its faster/easier to take), and making it progressively more difficult to dominate a significant portion of the planet. Not impossible, but hard to do. Likewise, it was also to help out the underdog by making it easier for them to recover from the bad decision (which will reward them with captures, xp, and resource gains).

This will still happen with large populations because it isn't the size of the population that was the issue, it was the idea of attacking multiple locations and both sides escalating the conflict. Its easy for a conflict to escalate because it's a "good fight" and it absorbs the majority of two empires. Now that fight could span across an entire continent, but then what is the 3rd empire doing? They have only two options - attack territory elsewhere and gobble it up or join in on the fight and make it one big 3-way. If they choose the first option, then the most logical option is to attack the territory that will be difficult to defend or be unlikely to be defended strongly.

Population limits on the continents actually helped put a cap on how much of the population of an empire could get absorbed into a single continental battle. Without a limit it could very well engulf the entirety of two empires.

I guess you could say that there's a 4th problem here, and that is allowing a battle to engulf an entire empire's population. That might not be something they want to prevent, as that would be truly massive and epic (afterally, PS2 is going for scale, so more the merrier, right?), but I fear it will eventually lead stagnant 3-way battles on a single continent, with some land-gobbling along the way by the empire not locked into the epic struggle. But after they gobble some land eventually they'll decide to join in on the big fight. Missions might be able to help here too by encouraging folks to attack other fights after a battle escalates to a certain point to try to spread the fight around.

I think the load-balancing aspect to missions is to just do that - spread out the fight across continents and within the continent and try to prevent it having the entire server in one territory hex at the same time.

[SKYeXile]

3 empires does work, because the moment an empire captures a majority of the map, they will have no choice but to fight the 2 weaker enemy's on different fronts because the 2 weaker enemy's have no bases near each other. you don't get that with 2 factions.

lets say this is a planetside map at the start of the day, TR has 50% of the pop, vs 20 and nc 30

http://future-crew.net/images/skyexile/jge/1.jpg

after awhile the map looks like this:

http://future-crew.net/images/skyexile/jge/4.jpg

you cut the vs off from the NC, and give the vs no choice but to attack the TR, the tr is then forced to fight on 2 fronts.

and after awhile the maps back to looking like:

http://future-crew.net/images/skyexile/jge/7.jpg

[NCLynx]

Look at eXile, whippin out them charts.

I like it though. I know it doesn't balance itself out with there being 3 empires, I'm just saying (or hoping) that each empire will have enough population to hold there own on more than just one front.

Hell the TR still have the pop to do that, sometimes even the VS.

[CutterJohn]

There are multiple resources. Lets say TR had an absolutely shitty night, and are down to 15% of the land, and VS is attacking them. I doubt the NC are going to look hungrily at the bit they have left. No, they'll be eyeing the rich deposits the VS are sitting on, and go for those. Now who's getting double teamed?

And like I said, you can fight with no resources. So if you do get pushed back far enough, the other empires will have little interest in taking more of yours.


Edit: I was beaten, and by a chart at that!

Good point about the missions though.. They could surely be used to balance out who attacks who a bit.

[NCLynx]

I'm sure we'll see quite our share of an empire being backed all the way to it's "sancs" on all conts until they have nothing but those left. Once you have nothing left there sure is a lot of opportunity on the map and then it happens to a different empire etc and so on.

[Malorn]

3 empires does work, because the moment an empire captures a majority of the map, they will have no choice but to fight the 2 weaker enemy's on different fronts because the 2 weaker enemy's have no bases near each other. you don't get that with 2 factions.

lets say this is a planetside map at the start of the day, TR has 50% of the pop, vs 20 and nc 30

after awhile the map looks like this:

you cut the vs off from the NC, and give the vs no choice but to attack the TR, the tr is then forced to fight on 2 fronts.

and after awhile the maps back to looking like:


<snipped charts>

Your charts do illustrate one way it could play out, but there are a few problems.

1) You are leaving out the other continents. This is a "Global" problem, not a localized continental problem. The VS could ignore that continent and go attack the NC on another continent. They do, in fact have a choice.

2) You are making an assumption on map layout. We don't yet know how warpgates play into the design, nor how the empire bases are situated.

3) Attacking TR isn't the VS's best option in your scenario after initially reclaiming their territory. If you look strictly at the best option for the VS & the NC, that is the correct move. However the VS aren't thinking that. They're thinking of the best option for them without consideration for what is good for the NC. The VS, after initially retaking their bases from the TR could attack the NC once again since they would be unlikely to be capable of adequately defending their eastern territories while the TR most certainly can and would put up resistance if they took too much or went after meaningful resources. They could then lock up a decent chunk of the territory into a 3-way near NC territory and maintain resources. They will do this because they are outnumbered by the TR and they will want to keep the TR occupied with the NC to protect their own interests and not get pushed back out of the continent again.

[Malorn]

I'm sure we'll see quite our share of an empire being backed all the way to it's "sancs" on all conts until they have nothing but those left. Once you have nothing left there sure is a lot of opportunity on the map and then it happens to a different empire etc and so on.

That is a bad situation. The players on that empire will either log off for a while or switch to the other empire, further exacerbating the problem. What I'm discussing is a means of avoiding that scenario as much as possible. It shouldn't be a common occurrence.

[NCLynx]

I shouldn't have put it in terms of "It'll happen often", but back in a day where servers weren't all merged and there were times when the majority of players logged off sometimes you'd wake up the next day and a few squads of nightowls had taken everything.

Granted every faction will have there share of late night players but how that works out won't be determined until we actually play the game.

[Malorn]

There are multiple resources. Lets say TR had an absolutely shitty night, and are down to 15% of the land, and VS is attacking them. I doubt the NC are going to look hungrily at the bit they have left. No, they'll be eyeing the rich deposits the VS are sitting on, and go for those. Now who's getting double teamed?


That's not how it played out in PS1. They would look at the NC for 2 reasons.

1) They can't defend their remaining resources; the TR can - NC's resources are easier pickings.

2) The fight is at the NC/TR conflict, so they will move to join in on that.

Missions can help here by encouraging them to go to the better place (which is something I mentioned in the OP).

However, the missions should factor in global domination (and population) into them, that's all. If the missions are purely evenly distributed amongst the opponents then it will actually encourage the VS to attack the NC in this scenario, at least partly. The smart way of doing it is to recognize the situation and put most if not all missions against TR-territories.

Also, has it been divulged as to the rewards for following a mission objective? If the system recognizes a bad situation and puts missions to correct it and those missions provide significant reward then that could go a really long way to stopping this most irritating phenomena.

[hippieschuh]

I think without knowing details about the new system its all just speculation and you should not care to mutch about it.

All what we do know is that the region/resource system is far more complicated then PS1 so it will be a complete different gameplay (stratigic wise) then PS1.

[NCLynx]

I think without knowing details about the new system its all just speculation and you should not care to mutch about it.

All what we do know is that the region/resource system is far more complicated then PS1 so it will be a complete different gameplay (stratigic wise) then PS1.

Without speculation posts this forum wouldn't have even a fraction of what it does. What with Higby reading out threads as well, I wouldn't say speculation posts shouldn't be cared about. A guess or speculation post could very well be looked at and be the next patch.

That and it's fun as hell to imagine what could be in the game and how it'll work.

[SKYeXile]

with the new outposts it would seem you can always attack any continent, so it would be likely you can always backdoor the larger empire.

also whats your saying is the point of 3 factions malorn, you have more options to different things or strategies with 3 factions, it creates a wildcard element, it may not balance itself out, but at least with 3 factions you can get a decent fight some of the time even if you're the underdog.

[Malorn]

I will of course disclaim that this very well may not be a issue with the game, but I haven't seen anything to say it won't be, and it was a significant issue in PS1 that led to a lot of crappy situations. I think it's quite a good topic to bring up and at least discuss and think about. Perhaps its a dynamic not yet considered. Or maybe it is and the mitigation just hasn't been revealed. Either way its a good discussion to have.

[hippieschuh]

Im sorry, you both got a point there.

Watching the videos with the interview gives a deep insight of the plan how they want to lay out the strategic and map design.

Like the Information on using Hexagons, sounds realy interessting.

[Malorn]

with the new outposts it would seem you can always attack any continent, so it would be likely you can always backdoor the larger empire.

also whats your saying is the point of 3 factions malorn, you have more options to different things or strategies with 3 factions, it creates a wildcard element, it may not balance itself out, but at least with 3 factions you can get a decent fight some of the time even if you're the underdog.

No, what I'm saying is that there are behaviors and dynamics I directly observed and was a dominant part of global strategic thinking in PS1 that I think are detrimental.

They are not solved by having 3 empires, rather they are created by them.

I thought my purpose of the discussion was quite clear - something to encourage these behaviors to not happen and to encourage people to do the action that will lead to the most fun for the majority of players.

Consider a situation where only one continent remains with NC territory, but they have most of it and are locked in a stalemate with TR. Then VS come in and attack the NC from the side, further screwing them (which they can because they have a base there). That's the sort of behavior that is currently rewarded. If the VS are after resources they have no incentive to attack the TR because they'll just disengage the NC, while if they attack the NC the TR will continue leaving them alone. VS get territory and resources and there's little the NC can do about it other than let them have it and fall back to a position where they can defend against both empires or otherwise get them to fight each other.

That happened on a regular basis in PS1. Consolidation of defenses was the only viable protection against it, which meant losing multiple bases, and nobody likes to fight a losing battle. That's where the empire hopping/logoff starts happening and NC is not very fun for several hours as they lose on all fronts.

What I'm suggesting is providing more carrots for the VS to attact the TR in this scenario and NOT do a double-team on NC. If there is no such incentive then the same thing will happen as happened in PS1 as I describe above. If there's some incentives or mechanics to make it less-attractive for the VS to attack NC then they'll do so. Making the TR's territory a little faster to capture than the NC's and slowing down the TR's ability to advance due to having large amounts of territory both contributes to helping the underdog. Additionally it also makes it more promising that the NC will be able to regain territory for the same purpose.

I'm not suggesting anything that's fundamentally against the design of the game, just a way to provide a subtle yet powerful way to protect against behaviors that led to un-fun situations and short-term population imbalances.

[NCLynx]

Missions will probably give higher rewards if you attack an empire that controls more. The more they have the more there is to take.

This has probably already been said, sorry skimmed the thread.

[Malorn]

Rather than providing higher rewards I think simply weighting the system such that it prefers to put missions against the empire that has the most territory is a natural solution.

How rewarding missions are in general could go a long way here. If missions are very beneficial then the empire's "high command" could basically work against the forces that would try to take the path of least resistance and instead encourage empires to fight each other roughly evenly or counteract the tendency to double-team.

For example the mission system could give the empire that controls the most territory an even distribution of missions to attack both enemies. Or when the empire that's not locked in the big fight gets a mission, the other two empires also get little missions that would thin out their forces a bit and attack the 3rd empire.

Lots of potential in the mission system to help correct the global situation. I'm writing this hoping that global territory and the patterns of global movement that we observed in PS1 can be taken into account for PS2. This mission system can be used to prevent blobbing into all one area and keep all the empires attacking each other rather in a way roughly consistent with both territory ownership and current population taken into account.

[DviddLeff]

Great post Malorn, and good to see you here.

Totally agree with you that there needs to be subtle in game system to avoid double teams against the weaker empire taking place, and your suggestions seem solid.

Increasing base cap times for the larger empires attacks and decreasing them for the smaller ones would work very well, as would setting less missions against a smaller or weaker empire.

I am really excited to see how continental and global strategy changes in PS2.

[nathanebht]

Some PS2 info I didn't see included in this discussion.

Current decision is that you can't switch sides on a server. You have to go to a different server to play a different side. Not sure if this will help with the losing side leaving issue.

Adjacent territories are much quicker to capture.

Territory capture provides resources which are used to add additional weapons to your vehicles. From what I've read, resources can be spent to make you more flexible/capable in combat. It sounds like this isn't a one time purchase thing but a continual expense.

[Malorn]

They also said they weren't going to be dogmatic about the server restriction, and we don't know how the "free element" will work, so it could still be possible to easily switch sides. I also saw conflicting information about how they were going to handle server consolidation. They did talk about consolidation too, and I wonde rhow they'll handle it if you have characters on different factions on a consolidated set of servers. In PS1 they kept the characters which is where the empire-hopping started.

I'd prefer to see character-transfers as a better solution. As long as there's 3 servers in north america then you could still have an experience playing each faction wihtout the empire-hopping potential. so if they are going to consolidate servers, give you the option to move alts you might have to one of the other servers.

But I digress...

[Hamma]

One of the more annoying things they added to PS was allowing people to run multiple empires on one server. It led to people switching sides constantly when the going was tough.

[Malorn]

I really hope that when consolidation time happens (and it will eventually happen - it happens to every MMO) they force players to make a choice:

Either

1) Convert a character to another empire such that all your characters are on the same Empire

or

2) Transfer a character to another server such that all your characters are on the same Empire.

As long as there's at least 3 servers this will work. Free conversion/transfer of course.

It seems reasonable to me, since the likley reason you had the character on the other server was to try out another empire, so rather than allow empire hoping on the same server, give them an option to transfer to another server so they can retain that ability to try out another empire without disrupting the game.

They can take a big learning from Rift in that sense. Rift recently had to consolidate servers and one of the big things they did was
* Allow free transfers to a variety of destinations.
* Allow guild-transfers, so when your guild moved you could always follow them and you'd end up in the same guild on the other side.

To prevent disruption in PS2 they can do this same thing with outfits and allow outfit transfers off a consolidated server to another server of their choice and all members can follow. Or they could convert the outfit to another empire. The members have hte option of following the outfit.

It went really smoothly on Rift and populations got better and was a good thing overall. They took the pain out of it and made it stupid easy.

[wildcat140679]

I wonder if capturing and maintaining control over a piece of land requires resources (upkeep) of some kind.

Possibly even limit how much land an empire can control at a given time, forcing them to give up land, in order to maintain control of the more important land pieces.

[Hamma]

I don't believe I have seen anything on that, I do know resources will be used to do things like upgrade weapons so their importance will be rather high. Whether or not territory requires upkeep though remains to be seen.

[Malorn]

Territory upkeep is one way to sort of balance it, but I don't think its the right way. The whole purpose of territory is to gain resources, and so I don't think you should be penalized or have diminishing returns on the territory that is captured. However, making it harder to hold it all by making it progressively easier/faster for the enemy to capture helps ensure you can't have that spike of resource goodness forever.

I think a better use of upkeep would be outfit-owned towers and similar constructs. Outfits could plant those on valuable resource nodes or tactical positions to help hold the territory, but it has a steady upkeep cost. The advantage is that if you hold that territory your entire empire benefits from it (as do you). Also these would of course be destroyable structures and not a permanent part of the landscape. I expect they'll do something like that with future sandboxing. I'd be surprised if it wasn't in "the 3-year plan".

[Forsaken One]

4th Empire



This isn't as much of a problem as it would be in other games. In Planetside do to the amount of teamwork defending even a hard losing streak can be fun.

In fact I'm sure that many Planetside Vets can tell of having a badass time defending when all is lost. (A certain story about a bug where sanctuary's became unlocked and it was a last stand to where a massive amount of 2 empires beating on the last base/tower a empire had hoping to take them out of the game forever comes to mind here. ]

That is the difference between Planetside and many others. Teamwork can do miracles, no matter what you have a good fight with smart, mature players and you know if you lost it wasn't because of some fat Cheetos eating drool bucket kid on the enemies team that has no life and high hand eye.

[Malorn]

Yeah that is true and while it can be fun for some people there's a significant amount who either logoff or switch sides when that happens, often after the empire gets on a losing streak from being double-teamed. I've seen it countless times, and before the empire-hopping was possible.

The phenomena I'm referring to is when empires are roughly equal or a little off, then two empires get engaged and all is going well, then the 3rd empire sandwiches and soon after the empire getting sandwiched drops to teens/low-20's due to people either logging off for the night or switching sides. This then lasts for the entire night.

Its fair-weather players who have accounts on both empires and they switch when the empire they are playing that day gets into a bad situation becuase that bad situation often lasts all night of non-stop losing territory. They switch to one of the other two empires that is enjoyable.

Thus one of the topics of the discussion is how to avoid that situation and encourage a relatively balanced distribution of fighting. Another topic is how to keep a resource-rich empire from getting richer while the resource starved empires have difficulty competing due to that fact.

[Sifer2]

The automated mission system is probably going to fix a lot of the behavioral problems if you can call them that. People will have less incentive to double team an win easy fights if the game tells them they get double exp or whatever for going an starting a fight over here instead.

I do like the idea however of having some sort of penalty for the larger empire to balance out their higher resources. Lots of strategy games often do that with some form of maintenance cost or something just so the smaller side has some hope of getting back in the game. Preferably I would like to see the penalty be something that requires more teamwork an coordination to overcome than just a hard debuff. So that it is possible for a highly coordinated Empire to actually do better an hold more territory.

[DviddLeff]

On a smaller level I am really looking forward to capturing the individual territories without the restriction of the lattice... pincer movements around strongholds, cutting enemy supply lines, etc

[Malorn]

One important part of what I consider "Planetside" was the ability to impact the battlefield in many different ways. Whether you were severing benefits & lattice links by cutting power, ninja'ing towers, resecuring bases away from the main front or simply running an ANT, there was always an impact that a single soldier or a small group could make without having to be in the meatgrinder.

Alas, that's a bit of a digression. The macro global strategy is more of the focus of this thread. It indirectly affects every player by shaping the landscape in which the battles occur and controls the ebb & flow of territory.

I want to ensure that ebb & flow is reasonable and doesn't get us into situations where one empire starts to think they'r ein a hopeless situation and just logs off/ switches servers to play in a different situation. This gets us back to having good rewards to encourage the underdog to stick with it and show they have everything to gain and a little advantage on their side in the form of capture bonuses and not direct gameplay handicaps. The dominant empires of course have the rewards of having tons of resources from territory so that shouldn't be too much to retain them. Getting the balance correct will be tricky, but will have a profound impact on how the daily battles turn out.

[Hamma]

Yea I foresee the resource/territory system really making it so there are TONS more ways to effect the battlefield.

[Malorn]

Bringing this discussion back up again. When I was watching the PS2 Public Panel I saw this problem was specifically brought up and it was one of the few things they didn't have a good answer to and recognized it as a difficult problem.

Josh said that the Mission System can help here (as I surmised earlier in this thread), and Smed mentioned that resources can spawn and despawn dynamic as an elegant solution.

Basically if they detect that an empire is overwhelming an underdog and the underdog is having a hard time competing they can spawn resources in territory the underdog already owns as one way to give 'em a leg up out of the bad situation.

I think that combined with the global handicap system I mentioned earlier would be really good for solving this problem. The global handicap suggestion was one where they take the Adjacency system where territories are easy/difficult to capture based on how many nearby territories you own. The handicap suggestion was to augment those rates based on the global territory owned by an empire. So if you're the juggernaut empire who owns tons of territory and resources then you'll have a little harder time gaining more territory and the underdog you're beating down on will have an easier time taking your turf. The more territory an empire owns, the bigger the handicap.

This is also intended to encourage the 3rd empire from not attackign the underdog and instead attacking the juggernaut since it will be easier for them to take back that territory as well. Two birds with one stone you could say.

[Headrattle]

It would make sense to have a system that allows the largest empire to be forced to stretch their lines too much, or have a weakness if they expand too fast. I have ideas of ways to do this other then just incentives, but not sure if my ideas would be feasible for the game.

However, the fact that the other little guy will attack the area that is weakest, and that being the empire that is already under attack, is just human nature. There may not be a very good way to do that. One thing I do remember, is using tactics to trick the other two empires into fighting each other because of the lattice system. Example, I remember once taking my outfit out to destroy TR generators that would give the nearby VS an opportunity to attack and capture that base, rather then attack us.

The fact is that the zerg wants to zerg, and organized outfits are going to look for weaknesses. I am not that annoyed by the three way battles. What annoys me is that some people believe that you need three way battles to have fun. You hear it in command chat all the time (to be fair, I think it has more to do with population though.)

[brinkdadrink]

I just wanted to throw my two cents in here.

1st is that there are no more sancuarys so were not sure if the last stand will be in a corner or surrounded by the sea of red somewhere.

The main point I have is that as an empire if you dont attack the Big empire and instead go for the smaller one you allow the bigger empire to get more resources and to further increase his arsenal (If that is how resources work). Eventually you will have to attack them so the best thing to do is to do it earlier than later before they become to strong.

I see your side that some will want to attack the loser for easier land and i hope the missions help stop this from happening

When I played planetside several years ago there was plenty of people to keep tragedy's such as the "double-team on the small empire" from happening and i think with the F2P which i feel will be like the reserves (BR6 only) will help keep the numbers high enough to stop this situation from happening for many years.

[Malorn]

The path of least resistance is to attack the weaker empire. While in theory one should attack the stronger empire it rarely plays out that way (as described earlier in this topic). It happened daily on Emerald in 03-05 and still occurred daily every time I resubbed since then. It doesn't even need to be a coordinated effort, it's just human nature.

Two good ways to counteract that nature is to provide incentives to attack elsewhere and to put a little handicap on the big dog that makes it more lucrative to attack them.

The first way I just described is missions. If they are worthwhile and auto-generated by the empire then the empire can detect the situation and put most if not all of its missions on the big empire. Depending on how rewarding missions are that may be sufficient to ward off the behavior.

Additionally having bonuses to attacking that empire (i.e. capturing their territory takes less time) I think would be strong enough motivation to counteract that natural desire to go for the weaker animal. When you have the prospect of getting more territory and also getting some good mission rewards then when you evaluate "what is the best place to attack?" the weaker empire will look less attractive.

I truly believe that's all we really need. It's a simple question - what target is more lucrative? Naturally its the weaker target, but if the stronger one is more vulnerable and you have incentives to attack them specifically then it shifts in the other direction.

[Kurtz]

I agree.

Automated Missions based on Territory held. Benefits for attacking the Empire with the most resources.

[Whalenator]

Basically if you win you get rewards - which then helps you win more. The loser is denied those rewards and so they have a harder time competing. Its a positive-feedback loop where the rich have an easier time staying rich.

Now we come to the problem of realism[1] vs. balance, as is so prevalent in modern FPSs. Do we give into those that are losing and "make the game more fun for them?" I personally believe a challenge motivates. It further instills the ever-so-prevalent "Planetside Effect", that being the notion of being part of a greater cause.

[1]To define "realism" (As this is a Sci-Fi game) I point to the believability and drive of the game. What are you fighting for? Level progress? Epic battles? Of course I'm unsure whether the final PS2 product will have daily resets of territory (I was always thinking a weekly reset would be better), but regardless if progress is slowed to a crawl near the end of a campaign, will the "winning" faction still have the opportunity to "win"; that is, wipe out an entire faction's non-sanctuary assets and be able to focus their attention to the final problem (Which would be even MORE difficult at this point) and finally "winning the game" and likely resetting the map.

PS: Malorn, I read your manifesto years ago and thought it was pure genius. I am a huge fan of your work and pray SOE takes your word.

EDIT: WOOO NEW CONGLOMERATE WOOOO LETS HIT THE GROUND RUNNING PS2 TIME
EDIT2: Super necropost. Whatever. Shameless bump activated.

[Xaine]

The thing about Planetside is, when you're losing territory you don't actually feel bad or frustrated. Or at least i don't.

I care about winning, believe me - but when my empire is losing i just go with it. At some point in the future we will be willing again, so yeah. Its all ebb and flow.

On top of that, if one side is being double teamed on a cont, they tend to fall back and sit in one base and heavily fortify it. So eventually the other two empires have to attack this base, and thats normally when they start shooting at each other. If they aren't already before that, given that there will be far more bases under the control of the two 'allied' empires, than the one being attacked.

[DayOne]

Also take into consideration that we will likely be fighting over territory that isn't always bases. Could really change the play style of battles.

Nice necro Whalenator :p This is a topic that could really enhance the game if done well.

[Tasorin]

I personally love when its pile on the NC and we have to fight chain gun wielding spray monkeys and barney Lasher spam all at the same time at the same fight.

Granted the population on PS1 has boiled down to a minimum and has turned into mostly Reaver raping and Max Crashing, but hey you find the fun where you can.

In those chart scenarios where one faction is pushed back to the "beach head" this is where you send out a Platoon recon of the 3 Squad leaders and back drop on a hex and then use the spawn on leader feature to quick drop your entire platoon behind enemy lines without exposing 27 other players while the squad leaders get into position.

Granted we don't know the specifics yet of the Beta mechanics, but you get the point.