Metagame Redesign

[Rothnang]

Metagame Redesign

Goals of this redesign:

Create more "macro strategy" where minding the whole map matters.
Give more of a sense that your whole faction is working together toward a goal.
Make Zerging less atractive by giving people the ability to weaken large armies by attacking their supply lines.
Give people a better sense that their actions matter in the long run.


My idea consists of two parts. A revamp to the resource system that is aimed at creating more shared responsibility between players and large scale teamwork, and a revamp to the continent lock system that is aimed at making continent locking something you can contribute to meaningfully at all times, and your contribution has meaning hours, even days later.


Resources - Logistics System

The resource system is removed from the game, and replaced with a new logistics system. The logistics system tracks supplies not based on the individual player, but on the individual regional bases in the game. Every base has a large supply pool that is exhausted as people spawn vehicles, respawn infantry or pull consumables. Vehicle timers remain as they are.

The supply pool in a base is replenished automatically over time if the base is connected to the warpgate. The warpgate is considered to have infinite supplies, and anything that has a cost can be done for free there.

Extra supplies can be moved to a base with a specialized Galaxy or Sunderer, that trade their transport capacity for storage room that holds additional supplies. Delivering supplies to a base that is in dire need of them awards a significant amount of XP, while delivering to a base that isn’t in great need rewards less. The map will include a new filter that shows the supply level at all the bases you currently own.

Sunderers and other potential AMS vehicles will need to bring supplies for spawning along from a base that provides them. They can be resupplied by a supply Sunderer or Galaxy like a base can.

The automatic flow of supplies could be further refined by having a lattice of supply lines, so that not every adjacent territory also provides a supply line. This will make it easier to cut off territories, and thereby create a higher stakes strategic game where defending back territories becomes much more essential.



This system will create much better macro strategy, because it will make zerging a lot less effective. Cramming hundreds of people into a single territory will very quickly drain its resources. Cutting off territories will force the players in those territories to retreat, or establish convoys that bring them new resources.

At the same time it doesn’t drive people off a continent they aren’t winning on by depriving them of resources, if your faction holds very little territory it will be much easier to keep supply lines active, while holding a lot of territory can potentially cause you problems.

Including supply runs from vehicles like Galaxies and Sunderers that are essential for maintaining a large army, especially one that operates in enemy territory creates a much more dynamic metagame, where raiding enemy convoys behind the front line is a huge part of what can drive a victory. This makes good strategy more essential.



Continent Lock - Influence System

Continents are no longer locked by simply capturing all the territory, but through a new influence system. The influence system awards each faction on a continent influence points, which accumulate over time. The first faction to reach a certain number of influence points on the continent gains control over the continent, and retains it until another faction reaches the required amount of influence to change ownership.

Influence is gained in two ways:

Every territory a faction holds grants a number of influence points every minute. Larger territories or important stations give bigger influence bonuses.

The game will randomly assign critical territories that have a large number of bonus influence points that can be attained by holding on to that territory for a certain amount of time.

Influence points are gained cumulatively by all factions. They are not a tug of war, but simply a race to gain the required number for a continent lock first. If a faction owned all territories on a continent, and got every single critical territory bonus awarded they should be able to gain enough influence to flip the continent in roughly 24 hours. Flipping a continent under combat conditions will take significantly longer.



This system will create a much more interesting fight for continents, because it shifts the focus of continent control of just waiting for the right point in time to steamroll your opponents with a massive numbers advantage (which usually happens in the middle of the night) to a long term cumulative effort of your entire faction.

An outfit that puts a few thousand influence points on the board by grabbing critical territories and pushing their own land holdings to 50% of the map one night can still see the difference they made the next day. Those points stay there until the continent falls into new hands and a new influence round begins. This encourages more long term thinking. You can’t just quickly flip a continent while the enemy isn’t looking, you need to consistently do better over the course of several days.

This makes the game more interesting because what you do has longer lasting consequences. Fighting for land and critical territories makes a difference you can see when you log back in the next day. Your contribution from Friday night might decide who rules the continent Sunday afternoon. That removes the feeling that nothing you do even matters, because the second you log off someone can completely change it all in your absence.

[Sunrock]

Grate sugestions. But I don't think they need to redesign it. Just add those tings on top of what already exist.

[Ghoest9]

You will be hard pressed to ever have a meta game until you can trade and stock pile at least 1 resource in a game world.

[Mietz]

Resources - Logistics System

The resource system is removed from the game, and replaced with a new logistics system. The logistics system tracks supplies not based on the individual player, but on the individual regional bases in the game. Every base has a large supply pool that is exhausted as people spawn vehicles, respawn infantry or pull consumables. Vehicle timers remain as they are.

The supply pool in a base is replenished automatically over time if the base is connected to the warpgate. The warpgate is considered to have infinite supplies, and anything that has a cost can be done for free there.

Extra supplies can be moved to a base with a specialized Galaxy or Sunderer, that trade their transport capacity for storage room that holds additional supplies. Delivering supplies to a base that is in dire need of them awards a significant amount of XP, while delivering to a base that isn’t in great need rewards less. The map will include a new filter that shows the supply level at all the bases you currently own.

Sunderers and other potential AMS vehicles will need to bring supplies for spawning along from a base that provides them. They can be resupplied by a supply Sunderer or Galaxy like a base can.

The automatic flow of supplies could be further refined by having a lattice of supply lines, so that not every adjacent territory also provides a supply line. This will make it easier to cut off territories, and thereby create a higher stakes strategic game where defending back territories becomes much more essential.



You mean like NTU and ANTs from Planetside 1, no wait, I... I mean Battlefield 3?

[Rothnang]

Yea, Planetside 1 had a system similar to this, and that was pretty solid for what it did. In the case of Planetside 2 it's more about creating an incentive to divide your forces every once in a while and attack in multiple places at the same time by making it more difficult to keep a huge monolithic army supplied.

[Veraxes]

Good suggestions Rothnang. I could see the outposts becoming more important targest because of this system as well. To help this out here's one thing that would help I out with the Hex System

I would like to see Supply Caches pop up at the different outposts surrounding the major bases. The reason these would appear after a successful capture would then be to transport them to the major base to keep them stocked. Then Adjaceny would be created when each Supply Cache was transported safley to the base and more xp bonus would be rewarded.

This would tie in with the race aspect of it and the supply lines being created. I could also different 'trade routes' being created around those bases that would be protected by the controlling empires 'no fly zone'.

These would make for a much more interesting meta game for commanders and an actual reason to get command points.

[Rothnang]

The automatic supply lines themselves could be managed by a network of small network stations that you can flip to disrupt the flow to give people guerrilla war objectives.

All good ideas.

[Rolfski]

In regards to the resource system: I haven't played PS1 but doing logistics runs seems kinda boring to me.

As for the new influence mechanic: Could be interesting. I like the idea of making a difference over time.

[Kerrec]

All sounds very good to me.

Also, logistics runs may suck for some people, but there WILL be others that would do nothing BUT logistic runs.

There should be enough population on a server to cover all play styles.

[Mutant]

Very nice ideas going on here.


As for supply lines being boring, some of us like to play RTS games that require thought and planning, not just twitch skills.

[Beerbeer]

Ant runs were fun as hell. So were ant bombs.

Kerric is correct: there were a lot of people in ps1 that did almost nothing but ant runs and I would imagine the same would happen here.

Regardless, they need to add a meta game, whatever that may be, fast.

[psijaka]

Resources - Logistics System

The resource system is removed from the game, and replaced with a new logistics system. The logistics system tracks supplies not based on the individual player, but on the individual regional bases in the game. Every base has a large supply pool that is exhausted as people spawn vehicles, respawn infantry or pull consumables. Vehicle timers remain as they are.

The supply pool in a base is replenished automatically over time if the base is connected to the warpgate. The warpgate is considered to have infinite supplies, and anything that has a cost can be done for free there.

Extra supplies can be moved to a base with a specialized Galaxy or Sunderer, that trade their transport capacity for storage room that holds additional supplies. Delivering supplies to a base that is in dire need of them awards a significant amount of XP, while delivering to a base that isn’t in great need rewards less. The map will include a new filter that shows the supply level at all the bases you currently own.

Sunderers and other potential AMS vehicles will need to bring supplies for spawning along from a base that provides them. They can be resupplied by a supply Sunderer or Galaxy like a base can.

The automatic flow of supplies could be further refined by having a lattice of supply lines, so that not every adjacent territory also provides a supply line. This will make it easier to cut off territories, and thereby create a higher stakes strategic game where defending back territories becomes much more essential.

I like this a lot; gives much more meaning to the resource system.

Not sure that we need the added complexity of a lattice though; would work perfectly well within the Hex system that we have now.

SoE - DO THIS!

[Realmofdarkness]

Sounds alot more fun. more variations to the battle plan. I just imagine a sniper on a hill spotting a convoy of supply sunderers, making it a mission in the mission system and as long as the sunderer is spotted, allies can see and follow the movement of that sunderer on the map. So it should be tagged or be in a different color on the map. making it easy to plan a ambush along the road.

[Babyfark McGeez]

This resource idea sounds quite cool. I loved doing ANT runs in PS1 and i'm 105% certain me and enough other players would love to do something similar in PS2 to make such a system work.

We are in dire need of a more complex resource/logistics system, it's another piece that could make this game feel like more than "just a shooter"

(just like proper mapped continent boundaries, sanctuaries, voice/animation macros, holstering, etc. - stuff lacking that i really like to nag about ;) ).

[Satanam]

This would tie in with the race aspect of it and the supply lines being created. I could also different 'trade routes' being created around those bases that would be protected by the controlling empires 'no fly zone'.
What do you mean with 'no fly zone'? Like, we wouldn't be able to get our ESF, Liberator or Galaxy and fly on enemy hexagons? It would make the aircrafts useless for attack. We would be able to use aircraft for defense only, and it would bring 'OP' advantage for defenders. I mean, imagine a group attacking the enemy hexagon without air support, while the enemies would be waiting on a line of Liberators and ESFs (with Hellfire Rocket Pods, to make it worse for the offensive team) waiting when the enemy ground vehicles cross the line of the hexagon.
It would be really unfair, unless they make it 'no fly zone' on the hexagons not connected to your faction's hexagons, it means you could fly on the enemy hexagon next to your faction's hexagons but wouldn't be able to fly on the next one where's just enemy hexagons around one hexagon. But anyway, it would be really hard to 'cut places', like attacking enemies from behind to cut their resources from Warpgate.

[Veraxes]

What do you mean with 'no fly zone'? Like, we wouldn't be able to get our ESF, Liberator or Galaxy and fly on enemy hexagons? It would make the aircrafts useless for attack. We would be able to use aircraft for defense only, and it would bring 'OP' advantage for defenders. I mean, imagine a group attacking the enemy hexagon without air support, while the enemies would be waiting on a line of Liberators and ESFs (with Hellfire Rocket Pods, to make it worse for the offensive team) waiting when the enemy ground vehicles cross the line of the hexagon.
It would be really unfair, unless they make it 'no fly zone' on the hexagons not connected to your faction's hexagons, it means you could fly on the enemy hexagon next to your faction's hexagons but wouldn't be able to fly on the next one where's just enemy hexagons around one hexagon. But anyway, it would be really hard to 'cut places', like attacking enemies from behind to cut their resources from Warpgate.

Nothing automatic I mean the no fly zones would be created by the empire who controlled the trade route. So the air dominance would come into play while protecting the transport of the Supply Caches.

That would add another part to creating adjacency in order to get access to the large bases. It would also create a reason to defend the smaller outposts. Which are some of the most fun to set up and dig in when someone other empire is trying to get the Hex.

[BIGGByran]

I wrote this a while back but never finished it. Thought I would go ahead and throw this out there. I think alot of this was influenced from the short time I played PS1 and a few other idea. I haven't had time to research PS1 or to much time to read the OP, but i'm sure there are a few things I said that the OP said and that is in PS1. Hope I alteast have some good ideas that could be implimented with the OP's post. Let me know what you guys think. Maybe OP create a new list of things people like and maybe we can submit it to the Devs and make it happen.


NTU: (The return?)

• ANT Vehicle: (2 Seat Vehicle. No defensive weapons. Can have defensive armor.)
o Used to resupply base NTU silos. EXP gain.
o Used to resupply Repair Guns (Engineer) and the Medic Guns while deployed in the field.
o Can resupply NAT vehicles.
o Can drain from major facilities to replenish its own nanite supply.
o Map Edit: Only 6 places to get Nanites from NTUs: 1 at each warpgate and 3 evenly placed on the map. Must control territory to be able to harvest Nanites.

• NAT Vehicle: (Nanite Ammo Transport. 2 Seat Vehicle. No defensive weapons. Can have defensive armor.)
o Only vehicle to allow ammo dispensing for Vehicles only (aircraft included).
o Has limited supply of XXXX Nanites.
o Resupply cost: Shell/Rocket Type Ammo – XX nanites, Bullets/Pellets Type Ammo XX nanites, etc etc
o In order to resupply its own nanites, it will need to go to a Nanite Tower or ANT and drain some supply to replenish its own. (Nanite towers are at major facilities, warpgate, 3 locations on map, and ANT vehicles.)
o Gets EXP by resuppling.
o 20 minutes despawn time while having nanites and 5 minute despawn time while empty.
o Map Edit: Removal of all Ammo Towers (including air resupply on the pads and just leave it as basic landing pad) Except at Major Facilities (Biolab, Tech Plant, and Amp Station) and Warpgate.
o Map Edit: Allow a docking station for a NAT to allow towers to resupply ammo for aircraft on the pad and vehicles below.
o A visual indication that this tower has a NAT docked and still has nanite left for resupply. Allow Friendly and Enemies to see this indication for the purpose of strategic attack and defense.


Repair Gun & Medic Gun:

• Repair Gun
o Instead of over-heating, make it have a limited nanites. XXXX nanites and repairing per point of damage consumes X amount of nanites. (Increase ranks will increase capacity of the nanite which allows you to repair longer)
o Base repair will consume base nanites and not the owner’s nanites. It will only consume owner’s nanites if the base has none of its own.

• Medic Gun - follows the same as the Repair Gun. Has XXXX nanites. Healing consumes X nanites and revive consumes XX nanites.

• Both Guns
o Will not resupply when respawn, how much you had left when you died is how much you have when you respawn, unless you respawn at a major facility or warpgate, at which you gun will be resupplied. Respawning at a major facility will drain its nanite to refill your gun.


Major Facilities:

• NTU silo will be installed on all Major Facilities

• Can only be refilled by ANT vehicle.

• NTU silos will be drain based on:
o Number of turrets up. More turrets operational, more nanite drain.
o Number of Generators up. More generators operational, more nanite drain.
o Number of Terminals up. More terminals operational, more nanite drain.
o SCU will drain nanites
o Keeping the lights on in a destroyed(all generator dead, all towers dead, all terminals dead, and scu dead) still eat a flat amount of nanite. (Lights ain’t free)
o Repairs done on the base.
o Refills of ammo for tanks and aircraft.
o Refills on NAT and ANT vehicles.

• When a facility is drained of all nanites
o Facility is still under the control of its owner, however lights won’t work. So inside the base will be dark (night). Only lights will be from the outside, being sun or moon light, or vehicle or flash light.
o None of the operational turrets, generators, terminals, or SCU will be working.
o The controlling faction will not receive any of its benefits.
•


Other:
• Change how the Cooldown (CD) works. Instead of it starting as soon as you get the vehicle, why not start once you lose the vehicle. Making the “Reduce CD” cert more worth it.



EDIT:

@ OP

For the Resource System:
I liked the old NTU system they had in PS1, which is what I stated on this post. You system is pretty similair to it. Just my opinion.

For the Continent Lock System:
I love the Continent Lock system you wrote. I think it would be awesome! Lets get all the good collective ideas and submit them to the devs and make this a better game than it already is!
Edit for the Continent Lock System: The random assistment of critical territories. There should be 6 critical territories randomly assist at intersecting faction control and not deep inside faction territory.
-6 points: 2 on TR/NC territory; 2 on TR/VS Territory; 2 on NC/VS territory (some critical territories may have all 3 factions touching it, so a 3 way fight on a critical territory)
-By having 6 points, it prevents larger zerg to Auto Win and promote splitting up of the zerg.
-By having 6 points, it makes it where you don't have to fight 1 faction but could push toward VS or TR
-By having points on intersecting territories promotes a team to push enemy territory out of the critical territory to gain the bonus

[stargazer093]

all sound very good...

too bad SOE would be unlikely to make any change within a year L/

[Rothnang]

Resource System and Continent Locking revamps are in the Roadmap already, I just don't know if they already came up with a solid system that does what it needs without being crazy complicated.

Nothing I suggested is entirely new, a lot of people have said similar things, I just took a lot of what they said and tried to boil it down to the most simple and elegant it can be without losing the depth inherent in the ideas I drew reference from.

[wave]

OK so since you were kind enough to critique my system (not being facetious) I thought I would do the same for you.
Let me start off by saying that my first try for designing a resource system was very similar to yours. You can find it here at the bottom of the page headlined "My Take on Changing the Resource System" http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/may-resource-revamp.83018/page-9
Just like you I am also a long time Planetside 1 player and love it. It is easy to see why so many PS1 fans want to bring aspects of its resource system into PS2. However after much thought and criticism of my first try at the resource system I realized that you and I are wrong to think that the PS1 system in some fashion could work in PS2.
PS2 is fundamentally a different game and those fundamentals are not going to be changed no matter how much we PS1 players want it to. PS2 will always have thousands of players per continent vs hundreds for PS1. PS2 will always allow everyone to spawn any vehicle they want vs the one or two vehicles people cert into in PS1. The TTK is much lower in PS2 vs PS1.

So lets get started.

First of all a pooled resource system that has the possibility of running out will never work in PS2. It will only lead to massive griefing, animosity and people leaving the game in disgust. It seems like a good idea on paper but the priorities of people who play objective based and others who just want to get into a tank and go crazy are too big to find common ground. Griefing within the faction would be ridiculous with people killing others to get to the front of a vehicle line up. People killing others to prevent them from spawning vehicles. People changing factions to spawn vehicles and using up resources to undermine that faction. You see the problem here is that people have a huge range of vehicles that they can spawn at any time. Tank blew up? Spawn a Sunderer. Sunderer blew up? Spawn a Liberator, and so on. There is no control to how much some retarded player can waste a bases resources. You think vehicle spam is bad now? This system would have thousands of people spamming vehicles like crazy until the resources were all gone!
Meanwhile, the people who care and understand the system will be the ones who will be doing all the dirty work. Replenishing the bases with resources so the nubs can use it all up. The fact that it will require a lot of teamwork and protection to get the resources to the base will almost exclusively require that outfits with that level of teamwork be responsible for doing the resource runs. Pugs wont give a flying crap about it. This system would leave the Pugs fighting and making XP while the outfits are trying to figure out how to get Sunderers from the warpgate to the front without them getting destroyed by a couple of volleys of LOLpods from enemy reavers who will surely be looking to destroy said Sunderers. It will be a shit show and the players who care about metagame will be the ones who lose out. The thing is that a single player should not have to suffer because larger groups of players want resources to be used "their way".
Another thing that this system does not address is the worth of a base. Indar for instance has something like 70 bases. With this system one base will be pretty much like the last, win or lose, no one cares, it is just another of dozens of bases. They have no worth other than getting to the next base. Casual playing people will get bored of this repetitive and unfulfilling design very quickly. When continents are the only thing of worth and they are rarely captured, how is the casual player rewarded?
Another issue with this system is that it does not address population imbalances within the game. Some serves have factions that never climb above 25% population no matter what time of day. How would they be helped?

As for the influence system, I like it and think in some fashion it could work. However, using an influence system to flip continents does not seem like a good idea. Once a faction has flipped a continent they would not care what happens to it because they know it would take another faction 24 hours to flip it. That would mean the other faction would just take the continent without a fight in many cases because the owning faction has nothing to lose. I prefer the idea of using the influence system for smaller sections of a map, possibly by surrounding a biolab and having that biolab eventually flip after a time if the enemy has not been flushed out.
Overall, I like the idea of an influence system, but it is a system that can be added at any time during the development of PS2 since it is quite separate from the resource system itself.

For those of you who have read this far and want to see my idea for a resource system it can be found here (shameless plug): http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=53397

[Sonny]

Great ideas Rothnang. I think that your logistics system is very well thought out, and is a definite improvement on what is already in game.

[Vashyo]

Your logistics idea is very very good, this would make every vehicle matter much more and we prolly wont be seeing vehicle spam as often so even infantry gameplay can shine outside biolabs.

But I would like supplies for warpgates too since people are just gonna pull aircrafts as they do now since it doesnt matter where they're pulled, they get to the frontlines in seconds.

[Rothnang]

Supplies on the warpgate is going to cause problems I think, because one of the core ideas behind the system is that fighting an enemy never becomes completely pointless. The closer you push someone to their warp gate the harder the fight should get for you, not easier and easier as it is right now. Since the continent control system functions differently you don't have to take every last territory to win.

As far as aircraft are concerned, yea, they do have somewhat of an advantage since pulling them from the warp gate isn't a huge deal, but the effect is going to be no different than what you currently have with a faction that controls an amp station or two - the vehicle timer provides the restriction. What it doesn't do is just kick any faction that's outnumbered out of the fight completely.

Once a faction has flipped a continent they would not care what happens to it because they know it would take another faction 24 hours to flip it. That would mean the other faction would just take the continent without a fight in many cases because the owning faction has nothing to lose.

That doesn't make any sense. The influence race is reset once the continent is flipped to your side, so if you want a chance to hold on to it you need to continue to fight for that continent. If you had to work for days to flip a continent to your side, why would you just walk away and let someone else have it the next time it flips?

[Lord Mondando]

Ok lets be clear, this idea of a resouce pool and refilling it by player actions has been around since beta. Lets be careful about plagerism guys.

That being said I am about getting a logistics metagame into the game with the resource revamp in a big way

My take on it.
http://www.planetside-universe.com/showpost.php?p=897526&postcount=190

Its not just that mate, without an extra layer of strategy which gives small units something to do, bar be a tentacle of the zerg. You have to admit there are serious grounds for concern. I'm sure there's magical stuff going on behind the curtain and all, but I can only go on what I've seen. What I've seen, screams "zergfest or go home" to me. For large outfits and causal players, that's great. Kills the game if you fancy doing something a bit more strategic as my lot kinda do.

Resource revamp

Basic idea and its not entirely my own. We all stand the on shoulders of giants etc. Call it the DL Plan if it must be called anything.

All bases to some extent generate 'Raw' resources, which go towards warpgate (or whatever) in raw format, through pipelines, several points these come above the ground (there are several all ready so makes the job easier in terms of mapping) that can be destroyed/repaired depending on who you are (i.e in your own territory, you can't destroy them, too open to abuse), every tick so many resources go through them. Importantly there should be several 'nodes' throughout the map where these converge, getting more convergent and thus more important the closer you get to WG, thus taking one out deeper in enemy territory = greater effect. Hell why not have existing AMP stations as convergence points.

What comes out of WG (or have a refinery at the WG, whatever) - comes out 'ready to use' nannite format, as the raw material for all vehicles and importantly, player spawns. Have to be transported in something like ANTs (player or AI controlled), to bases in order for them to be able to actively spawn vehicles and units. Make these a single resource or split them up into player, vehicle and air. Undecided.

It also works if you switch them around, raw resources only by trucks, nannites by pipeline. Whatever. But it makes it more dynamic if you in some sense have to engage with both. Gotta defend the pipelines and defend/drive the trucks. A second level of stuff to attack/defend across the entire map. A logistic network. And the more effort and better defended your side manages to keep your logistics network, measurably easier to play the normal pew-pew take the point part of the game. Likewise, the better you attack your enemies, the weaker they get on the battlefield.

Especially if fights for bases are going to reduce to zergs whamming into each other, little subtle changes as a result of smaller battles behind the lines, will effect these battles.

Also for all those pilots complaining, hunt/defend the trucks and bomb/fly CAP around the logistics nodes, becomes the new fun thing to do away from all that nasty AA.

Very small stock trickle in both directions as default. Successfully defending pipelines and nannite transport vehicles to and from bases, drastically more efficient.

Furthermore incentivise this with plenty of certs/murdercash/learninpoints and you'll find people happily guarding nodes and driving/defending the trucks.

Tada. Metagame.

More to come, but that's the barebones of it.

[KodanBlack]

The automatic supply lines themselves could be managed by a network of small network stations that you can flip to disrupt the flow to give people guerrilla war objectives.

All good ideas.

This idea would definitely give smaller units the means to effectively contribute to the larger strategy.