Figment
2012-10-23, 10:35 AM
1. The inter-continental metagame.
One of the most compelling things about PlanetSide was the conquest side of the warfare, where you conquered territories beyond the single map. This gives the game a bigger purpose, an actual global war that connects all the various fights in the game into one, bigger fight, rather than a local and never ending feel of a map that just keeps changing but never gets anywhere. It gave players purpose and a sense of closure to conquer entire continents and a moment of rest, reflection, satisfaction and pride, plus more importantly, a good moment to "move on to the next fight, to the next continent" and shift sceneries. Nothing is more exhausting than not changing sceneries and being stuck on one continent endlessly makes fighting feel like a drag and a chore. I won't go into further detail, but if there's need for it, I can create an analysis of the historic PS1 lattice context later.
Now, this type of topic has been brought up before, but never in this amount of detail. The question isn't really IF it will return as the developers have indicated their interest in expanding the meta game over time, but how. And the bigger question is, what does this mean for the design and characteristics of continents in terms of the possibilities for linking between continents?
In order to explore this, first we'll look at how a meta game influences the amount of players per server and use that to determine some of the prefered characteristics of a good inter-continental meta game. Secondly, a large variety of concepts based on the current system is analysed in order to conclude and recommend how the future system should work.
The details of how Broadcast Warpgates (neutral warpgates that can be turned to control by one empire) behave upon being conquered is left for another discussion. It is however assumed that they will be neutralised when a continent is being locked (for example by requiring the occupation of certain amounts of territory on both sides of the warpgate to ensure an empire's control over the Broadcast Warpgate itself). This could be discussed in detail as well at some point regarding the effect of warpgate camping but should be left for a different, related topic.
2. Amount of players per metagame setup
To play the game on a large scale, you need two things: population and continents. These two things are directly linked to one another in two ways:
Total population: If you want to support a large amount of players you'll logically need many continents for them to exist and play on. However, it's not quite as spamming continents. I'll therefore first explain how the amount of players is linked to the amount of continents, before I'll explain what the current continent designs means for the initial and next batch of continents and the metagame you can have with those continents.
Population density: The higher the ratio of neutral continents (continents without a permanent foothold) over the total amount of continents, the more dispersed the fights will be. Too many neutral continents can result in a low population density. In low populations under the current adjecency rules, it is very easy to bypass defenders without any resistance. Defenders would be able to stall in some spot, but would be "out-ghosthacked" everywhere else, because there's no intra-continental lattice with clear choke points like there was in PlanetSide 1 (latticed bases), due to the increased freedom of movement the adjecency system provides. Density could be increased with a more strict intra-continent system, but that's for another discussion.
The benefit of having a higher ratio of neutral continents is that it becomes harder to prepare every warpgate for a coming invasion, allowing openings to expand and invade without such an amount of resistance that an invasion would fail. Meaning it allows an empire to gain momentum on a new continent.
All in all, the prefered solution is a system where a high amount of players can play, the fight isn't too predictable and yet not too dispersed. This is a tricky thing to create.
Everyone can understand that the amount of players is directly linked to the amount of continents. What is harder to grasp is that it is a little less straightforward than "we got X continents, thus we got room for X * MAXPOP = Y players.
In fact, the amount of players is related to a specific type of continent: continents with permanent footholds, places where players can continuously poor into the map.
2.1 Sanctuary Footholds
Currently the only type of place for that is "sanctuary footholds", which are the bases at a warpgate.
Per three sanctuary foothold, a meta-game can have 2.000 additional players. Why 2.000? Well, if 2.000 players per map is the limitation, then if you get trapped on one continent as an empire, you can't invade any of the other continents and thus are playing with a third of the maximum pop of one continent. To keep populations fair, the others cannot be allowed to have more pop than your maximum amount of pop in your worst case defense scenario.
Hence the population of a server is limited to the amount of continents you can fight on during a defense, which is directly linked to the amount of sanctuary footholds, or 2.000. This is also because in PS2, unlike in PS1, you could not HART in to "opened" continents and drain and hold a random base as there is no NTU system and the adjecency system prevents this at this time. There are also no alternate types of footholds to enter a continent.
To optimise the amount of players per server, it is possible to make every foothold permanent (Tri-Home Continents, one foothold per empire), but this would come at the cost of having no meta-game. Note that in the systems below, no use has been made of Bi-Home Continents. Bi-Home Continents could increase the amount of players per server as well, but would result in maps not being conquerable.
2.2 Alternative footholds
It is possible to increase the amount of players by adding in additional foothold routes to continents without actual footholds. One such an example would be to have naval invasion routes, including landings etc etc, which, in a future free-roaming world (which has been alluded to by SOE could happen: free naval travel between continents), could provide alternative entrances to a fight.
I'm sure this is going to need a lot of future thought, but I can already derive several key points from this: Though this would allow for larger populations on the server by making more fights available, the problem lies in population density control. If you can only start at permanent footholds like the sanctuary footholds of today, you would not be able to reach these entries to continents anyway! This would lead to the suggestion that we'll need actual Sanctuary Continents again. Global placement of Sanctuary Continents could influence the feasibility of naval invasion routes by proximity in addition to the "permanent foothold" and conquered/opened up "broadcast warpgate" routes. However, how do you stop an invasion force from entering a continent that already has 2000 players on it and is therefore maxed out in population already without making some sort of forced and unnatural limitation? Adding a random queue to travel a few meters ahead in a free, open world would be weird, especially if you're engaged in a naval fight at the time.
It would also require the continents to be designed with proper landing areas at the various coastlines. The amount of the options have to be taken into account per continent.
Population Density Management in a free roaming world is therefore a major concern and should not be taken light, but require proper planning in all aspects before it can be considered an option. In the following lattice analysis, the consideration of alternate means of entry is therefore not taken into account to limit the scope of the analysis and draw some more general conclusions. Not having any other links to said continent could be a good reason to open up the possibility of opening a sea lane to that continent. It could be that the free roaming world is limited to navigatable sea lanes and limited in other areas of the continent, or that the free roaming is not complete, but relative, where sea-gates or separate island links are created as alternative, off-shore invasion staging grounds.
3. Lattice variations under the current 3-link design
I've made the variations possible for 3-12 continents using 3 continent links, which is the Link Design used for the first generation of PS2 continents. Note that in the absence of more continents, servers are limited to variations on whatever continents exist, and with the concept behind the metagame, the player population per server (or depending on how it's executed in game, instance within a server, they could start with "parallel universes" within a server so you could still use the same character and still play with your outfit on the same server).
With that in mind, a lot of Continent Copies are used as placeholder for future continents. The benefit of this is that as more continents are added, the game could be updated without having to completely redesign the meta game itself, while having larger servers with a metagame. The drawback is that it makes maps feel more like linked instances, than part of a world if you just use one map of each kind. Which of course, is always the end goal.
In the images below, a number of meta-game intercont lattice setups are depicted which are pretty much most if not all feasible options from 3 to 13 continents. You'll note that there are no options for 4 and 8 continents. Why did I skip four continents? If you ask people like the person below, this would seem like a logical thing to do, right?
If they give us at least 4 more maps, develop the meta-game(which is non-existent atm), and work out the major bugs I'll be happy.
Well, if you want a meta game with four maps, you'd need a fourth continent with six links. Why? Because you have 6 open links from the "Home Continents" (continents with a sanctuary on them). With three Home Continents, you can't link each home continent to another home continent and then also link to a fourth continent (two would have an open link, one would link to both other home conts and that's not a fair setup). For any setup, all empires would have to be linked the same way to enemy and neutral continents, or other home continents of their own. Hence the amount of gates must always match symmetrically.
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/PlanetSide%20Map%20Concepts/Startup_InterContLattices01.jpg (http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/PlanetSide%20Map%20Concepts/Startup_InterContLattices01.jpg)
3.1 CONCEPT A - 3 continents - 1 sanc / empire
Let's start with concept A and go down the list. Concept A is the most straightforward thing you can do with the current setup. There are however a lot of consequences to this type of setup.
The first is that your population is limited to 2000 players, but with just three continents, they would have a rather high density.
In this setup, at most fights on two continents would occur with at most some laggards straggling to hold on to territory on a third continent after having been cut off from the home continent link. In the most balanced setup, half an empire fights another half, who also fights the other half of the other empire. In theory this could mean a back and forth through one continent link on either side of the continent. But in practice we find that empires concentrate their forces and let another empire roam free. This would lead to constant double teaming of full zergs and three way stalemates as we have now on single continents with some skirmishes on the other, till one empire is kicked off and either comes back or invades the other empire (who then either loses their own continent or is forced to retreat and is then subsequently the next empire to get double teamed).
The problem with concept A is that there are no real options for each empire to expand aside from two directions. As a result, this will lead to frequent warpgate camping, particularly on specific continents where you reach an enemy warpgate fast as we've seen on Esamir, but in the worst case scenario, all three empires have complete control over their own continent and everyone is camping one another till one let's a zerg in. This would lead to a boring and poor meta-game.
It could mean that the intra-continent has to change, for example by having more territories close to the warpgate and weigh their resource gain much heavier from those in the middle. The main conclusion could be that when one uses three continents tops, the current Tri-Home Continent setup without external links is the best way to handle things till a certain amount of continents is available if it is unwanted to have a meta game with Copy Continents.
3.2 CONCEPT B - 5 continents - 1 sanc / empire
This is the first concept with two buffer continents in between the home continents. The map is still only suited for 2.000 players. However, the population is more dispersed and warpgate camping becomes less feasible since there are more gates to camp. In practice, the more gates there are, the harder it is to camp them. This leads to more dynamic fights as empires can't pin down enemy invasions everywhere. The first conclusion is it is therefore good to have neutral continents in between.
The main challenge though is one that we'll see return in every following setup: too few continents are currently available for this setup, hence we would have to make use of duplicates of continents (the so called Copy Continents, the psychological effects of which have been explained earlier). If one uses copy continents, it is important to try to minimise these effects. This can be done by at least trying to have each continent link to a different type of continent. With five continents and only three alternative continents available, this is not possible and two home continents would link once to one continent of the same kind.
3.3 CONCEPT C - 6 continents - 2 linked sancs / empire
With 6 continents, being a multiplication of three, it is possible to use only home continents and therefore increase the total amount of players on the server to 4.000 while including a meta-game.
Since in most situations the link between both home continents of the same empire would be under control of said empire, you basically get the same effect as with concept A: predictable invasions and warpgate camping. The scale of the continent (now two continents) has simply been increased "with a choke point and an extra sanc". Players will have more optional continents to play on though, especially if you don't make each empire have a set of similar continents.
3.4 CONCEPT D - 6 continents - 2 linked sancs / empire
Again room for 4.000 players. Pretty much the same considerations as E, just that there is no united front from the two factions. It would be a real challenge for an empire to link up with itself, but it would in theory be possible, though they'd be very stretched out and spread over many continents at once.
In essence, the same effects as with concept A would occur once again, with one major difference: An empire could choose to focus on expansion from one of its sanctuaries, using the warpgates of one home continent and only defending with a smaller force elsewhere. Either way, it would lead to more dynamic fights than under C.
3.5 CONCEPT E - 6 continents - 1 sanc / empire
Concept E tackles one of the problem that concept B had (not linking to a buffer continent of the same kind and always to another continent), while creating a new problem: left over links. As you can see with the big green triangle, there are three warpgates left.
You could leave these warpgates empty, or you could create an alternate rule: capture the territories around two of these neutral warpgates to activate them. This could create an additional global challenge and strategic element.
The downside of course is that you can only use 2.000 players.
Please note that for simplicity reasons, this setup is not considered for larger systems of continents.
3.6 CONCEPT F - 7 continents - 1 sanc / empire
By adding an additional neutral continent, the problem of concept E is solved. However, a new problem arises: a third duplicate of one single continent is now required.
One of the most compelling things about PlanetSide was the conquest side of the warfare, where you conquered territories beyond the single map. This gives the game a bigger purpose, an actual global war that connects all the various fights in the game into one, bigger fight, rather than a local and never ending feel of a map that just keeps changing but never gets anywhere. It gave players purpose and a sense of closure to conquer entire continents and a moment of rest, reflection, satisfaction and pride, plus more importantly, a good moment to "move on to the next fight, to the next continent" and shift sceneries. Nothing is more exhausting than not changing sceneries and being stuck on one continent endlessly makes fighting feel like a drag and a chore. I won't go into further detail, but if there's need for it, I can create an analysis of the historic PS1 lattice context later.
Now, this type of topic has been brought up before, but never in this amount of detail. The question isn't really IF it will return as the developers have indicated their interest in expanding the meta game over time, but how. And the bigger question is, what does this mean for the design and characteristics of continents in terms of the possibilities for linking between continents?
In order to explore this, first we'll look at how a meta game influences the amount of players per server and use that to determine some of the prefered characteristics of a good inter-continental meta game. Secondly, a large variety of concepts based on the current system is analysed in order to conclude and recommend how the future system should work.
The details of how Broadcast Warpgates (neutral warpgates that can be turned to control by one empire) behave upon being conquered is left for another discussion. It is however assumed that they will be neutralised when a continent is being locked (for example by requiring the occupation of certain amounts of territory on both sides of the warpgate to ensure an empire's control over the Broadcast Warpgate itself). This could be discussed in detail as well at some point regarding the effect of warpgate camping but should be left for a different, related topic.
2. Amount of players per metagame setup
To play the game on a large scale, you need two things: population and continents. These two things are directly linked to one another in two ways:
Total population: If you want to support a large amount of players you'll logically need many continents for them to exist and play on. However, it's not quite as spamming continents. I'll therefore first explain how the amount of players is linked to the amount of continents, before I'll explain what the current continent designs means for the initial and next batch of continents and the metagame you can have with those continents.
Population density: The higher the ratio of neutral continents (continents without a permanent foothold) over the total amount of continents, the more dispersed the fights will be. Too many neutral continents can result in a low population density. In low populations under the current adjecency rules, it is very easy to bypass defenders without any resistance. Defenders would be able to stall in some spot, but would be "out-ghosthacked" everywhere else, because there's no intra-continental lattice with clear choke points like there was in PlanetSide 1 (latticed bases), due to the increased freedom of movement the adjecency system provides. Density could be increased with a more strict intra-continent system, but that's for another discussion.
The benefit of having a higher ratio of neutral continents is that it becomes harder to prepare every warpgate for a coming invasion, allowing openings to expand and invade without such an amount of resistance that an invasion would fail. Meaning it allows an empire to gain momentum on a new continent.
All in all, the prefered solution is a system where a high amount of players can play, the fight isn't too predictable and yet not too dispersed. This is a tricky thing to create.
Everyone can understand that the amount of players is directly linked to the amount of continents. What is harder to grasp is that it is a little less straightforward than "we got X continents, thus we got room for X * MAXPOP = Y players.
In fact, the amount of players is related to a specific type of continent: continents with permanent footholds, places where players can continuously poor into the map.
2.1 Sanctuary Footholds
Currently the only type of place for that is "sanctuary footholds", which are the bases at a warpgate.
Per three sanctuary foothold, a meta-game can have 2.000 additional players. Why 2.000? Well, if 2.000 players per map is the limitation, then if you get trapped on one continent as an empire, you can't invade any of the other continents and thus are playing with a third of the maximum pop of one continent. To keep populations fair, the others cannot be allowed to have more pop than your maximum amount of pop in your worst case defense scenario.
Hence the population of a server is limited to the amount of continents you can fight on during a defense, which is directly linked to the amount of sanctuary footholds, or 2.000. This is also because in PS2, unlike in PS1, you could not HART in to "opened" continents and drain and hold a random base as there is no NTU system and the adjecency system prevents this at this time. There are also no alternate types of footholds to enter a continent.
To optimise the amount of players per server, it is possible to make every foothold permanent (Tri-Home Continents, one foothold per empire), but this would come at the cost of having no meta-game. Note that in the systems below, no use has been made of Bi-Home Continents. Bi-Home Continents could increase the amount of players per server as well, but would result in maps not being conquerable.
2.2 Alternative footholds
It is possible to increase the amount of players by adding in additional foothold routes to continents without actual footholds. One such an example would be to have naval invasion routes, including landings etc etc, which, in a future free-roaming world (which has been alluded to by SOE could happen: free naval travel between continents), could provide alternative entrances to a fight.
I'm sure this is going to need a lot of future thought, but I can already derive several key points from this: Though this would allow for larger populations on the server by making more fights available, the problem lies in population density control. If you can only start at permanent footholds like the sanctuary footholds of today, you would not be able to reach these entries to continents anyway! This would lead to the suggestion that we'll need actual Sanctuary Continents again. Global placement of Sanctuary Continents could influence the feasibility of naval invasion routes by proximity in addition to the "permanent foothold" and conquered/opened up "broadcast warpgate" routes. However, how do you stop an invasion force from entering a continent that already has 2000 players on it and is therefore maxed out in population already without making some sort of forced and unnatural limitation? Adding a random queue to travel a few meters ahead in a free, open world would be weird, especially if you're engaged in a naval fight at the time.
It would also require the continents to be designed with proper landing areas at the various coastlines. The amount of the options have to be taken into account per continent.
Population Density Management in a free roaming world is therefore a major concern and should not be taken light, but require proper planning in all aspects before it can be considered an option. In the following lattice analysis, the consideration of alternate means of entry is therefore not taken into account to limit the scope of the analysis and draw some more general conclusions. Not having any other links to said continent could be a good reason to open up the possibility of opening a sea lane to that continent. It could be that the free roaming world is limited to navigatable sea lanes and limited in other areas of the continent, or that the free roaming is not complete, but relative, where sea-gates or separate island links are created as alternative, off-shore invasion staging grounds.
3. Lattice variations under the current 3-link design
I've made the variations possible for 3-12 continents using 3 continent links, which is the Link Design used for the first generation of PS2 continents. Note that in the absence of more continents, servers are limited to variations on whatever continents exist, and with the concept behind the metagame, the player population per server (or depending on how it's executed in game, instance within a server, they could start with "parallel universes" within a server so you could still use the same character and still play with your outfit on the same server).
With that in mind, a lot of Continent Copies are used as placeholder for future continents. The benefit of this is that as more continents are added, the game could be updated without having to completely redesign the meta game itself, while having larger servers with a metagame. The drawback is that it makes maps feel more like linked instances, than part of a world if you just use one map of each kind. Which of course, is always the end goal.
In the images below, a number of meta-game intercont lattice setups are depicted which are pretty much most if not all feasible options from 3 to 13 continents. You'll note that there are no options for 4 and 8 continents. Why did I skip four continents? If you ask people like the person below, this would seem like a logical thing to do, right?
If they give us at least 4 more maps, develop the meta-game(which is non-existent atm), and work out the major bugs I'll be happy.
Well, if you want a meta game with four maps, you'd need a fourth continent with six links. Why? Because you have 6 open links from the "Home Continents" (continents with a sanctuary on them). With three Home Continents, you can't link each home continent to another home continent and then also link to a fourth continent (two would have an open link, one would link to both other home conts and that's not a fair setup). For any setup, all empires would have to be linked the same way to enemy and neutral continents, or other home continents of their own. Hence the amount of gates must always match symmetrically.
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/PlanetSide%20Map%20Concepts/Startup_InterContLattices01.jpg (http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb180/HanSime/PlanetSide%20Map%20Concepts/Startup_InterContLattices01.jpg)
3.1 CONCEPT A - 3 continents - 1 sanc / empire
Let's start with concept A and go down the list. Concept A is the most straightforward thing you can do with the current setup. There are however a lot of consequences to this type of setup.
The first is that your population is limited to 2000 players, but with just three continents, they would have a rather high density.
In this setup, at most fights on two continents would occur with at most some laggards straggling to hold on to territory on a third continent after having been cut off from the home continent link. In the most balanced setup, half an empire fights another half, who also fights the other half of the other empire. In theory this could mean a back and forth through one continent link on either side of the continent. But in practice we find that empires concentrate their forces and let another empire roam free. This would lead to constant double teaming of full zergs and three way stalemates as we have now on single continents with some skirmishes on the other, till one empire is kicked off and either comes back or invades the other empire (who then either loses their own continent or is forced to retreat and is then subsequently the next empire to get double teamed).
The problem with concept A is that there are no real options for each empire to expand aside from two directions. As a result, this will lead to frequent warpgate camping, particularly on specific continents where you reach an enemy warpgate fast as we've seen on Esamir, but in the worst case scenario, all three empires have complete control over their own continent and everyone is camping one another till one let's a zerg in. This would lead to a boring and poor meta-game.
It could mean that the intra-continent has to change, for example by having more territories close to the warpgate and weigh their resource gain much heavier from those in the middle. The main conclusion could be that when one uses three continents tops, the current Tri-Home Continent setup without external links is the best way to handle things till a certain amount of continents is available if it is unwanted to have a meta game with Copy Continents.
3.2 CONCEPT B - 5 continents - 1 sanc / empire
This is the first concept with two buffer continents in between the home continents. The map is still only suited for 2.000 players. However, the population is more dispersed and warpgate camping becomes less feasible since there are more gates to camp. In practice, the more gates there are, the harder it is to camp them. This leads to more dynamic fights as empires can't pin down enemy invasions everywhere. The first conclusion is it is therefore good to have neutral continents in between.
The main challenge though is one that we'll see return in every following setup: too few continents are currently available for this setup, hence we would have to make use of duplicates of continents (the so called Copy Continents, the psychological effects of which have been explained earlier). If one uses copy continents, it is important to try to minimise these effects. This can be done by at least trying to have each continent link to a different type of continent. With five continents and only three alternative continents available, this is not possible and two home continents would link once to one continent of the same kind.
3.3 CONCEPT C - 6 continents - 2 linked sancs / empire
With 6 continents, being a multiplication of three, it is possible to use only home continents and therefore increase the total amount of players on the server to 4.000 while including a meta-game.
Since in most situations the link between both home continents of the same empire would be under control of said empire, you basically get the same effect as with concept A: predictable invasions and warpgate camping. The scale of the continent (now two continents) has simply been increased "with a choke point and an extra sanc". Players will have more optional continents to play on though, especially if you don't make each empire have a set of similar continents.
3.4 CONCEPT D - 6 continents - 2 linked sancs / empire
Again room for 4.000 players. Pretty much the same considerations as E, just that there is no united front from the two factions. It would be a real challenge for an empire to link up with itself, but it would in theory be possible, though they'd be very stretched out and spread over many continents at once.
In essence, the same effects as with concept A would occur once again, with one major difference: An empire could choose to focus on expansion from one of its sanctuaries, using the warpgates of one home continent and only defending with a smaller force elsewhere. Either way, it would lead to more dynamic fights than under C.
3.5 CONCEPT E - 6 continents - 1 sanc / empire
Concept E tackles one of the problem that concept B had (not linking to a buffer continent of the same kind and always to another continent), while creating a new problem: left over links. As you can see with the big green triangle, there are three warpgates left.
You could leave these warpgates empty, or you could create an alternate rule: capture the territories around two of these neutral warpgates to activate them. This could create an additional global challenge and strategic element.
The downside of course is that you can only use 2.000 players.
Please note that for simplicity reasons, this setup is not considered for larger systems of continents.
3.6 CONCEPT F - 7 continents - 1 sanc / empire
By adding an additional neutral continent, the problem of concept E is solved. However, a new problem arises: a third duplicate of one single continent is now required.