Higby looking for GU06 Feedback! via @mhigby

[Mordelicius]

https://twitter.com/mhigby/status/320209324016279554

Post your GU6 and Alert system feedback.

Some preliminary observations of the Alert system:

First of all, it's a hit. It's well received and the fights have been good. It still needs a lot of tweaking.

Faction Alliance exploit - NC just got tagged teamed at Esamir. They were losing so they stopped fighting us and combined forces. Taking a continent shouldn't be an alert at all unless they change the win mechanics. If two faction start colluding, it's no longer a competitive fight especially when there are cert rewards involved.

One suggestion is winner-take-all. No rewards for 2nd place. This way the players who don't fight like they are supposed to aren't rewarded.

Population balance - Alerts shouldn't activate unless the population for each faction is within 15-20% of each other within the continent. Yesterday NC had 38%, TR 38% and the rest Vanu at the Amerish alert. As much as i'm not sorry for Vanu :rofl:, it's not balanced, fair nor competitive.

4th Faction Switching - When players realize one faction is going to win, they relog and switch to get free certs. There should be a 2-hour cooldown on faction switching so the alerts aren't abused. Or at the very least, switching within two hours shouldn't reward certs.

Overall, there should be a different or hybrid point system so 2 factions can't make truce and gang up on one. It's exploitation and not in the spirit of competition.

I'll make a separate suggestion thread but I've got an idea where NC can only attack TR. TR can only attack Vanu territories while Vanu can only attack NC territories. This way, the effect of two factions making peace is minimized. That would also be great for facility-specific alerts. For example, NC should capture TR Tech plant. TR should capture Vanu Techplant and Vanu should capture NC Tech plant. Again, i'll make specific suggestions in a separate thread. This alert system has so very little limitations is RvR objective fights.

Pump Shotgun nerf - I tested the shotguns and it still kills in 1-2 shots. The reload should be much slower, since this is a cqc burst damage gun. It's still being spammed now that players have realized the nerf were negligible.

Phalanx Turret offensive buff - Imo, phalanx was already very capable. The only downside to it is it breaks easily especially with the new ESRLs. Other than that it was unnecessary at all.

[coconut]

Post your GU6 and Alert system feedback.

4th Faction Switching - When players realize one faction is going to win, they relog and switch to get free certs. There should be a 2-hour cooldown on faction switching so the alerts aren't abused. Or at the very least, switching within two hours shouldn't reward certs.



A better way is simply to award points proportionally to the amount of time you have been participating in the challenge (been on the continent to capture). No more full XP wins for those who switch continent for the last 5 minutes of the alert.
Similarly, if you have to log out 15 minutes before the alert ends, but have been participating for the other 15 minutes, you should still get half the rewards.

[Gatekeeper]

A better way is simply to award points proportionally to the amount of time you have been participating in the challenge (been on the continent to capture). No more full XP wins for those who switch continent for the last 5 minutes of the alert.
Similarly, if you have to log out 15 minutes before the alert ends, but have been participating for the other 15 minutes, you should still get half the rewards.

Yeah, I'd definitely agree with that. Base captures should work the same way IMO (and XP for bases should scale based on how big a fight it was...)

For my money the big problem with the alerts is that they promote a combination of mega-zergs and rampant ghost-capping. Every fight I go to in an alert always seems to be either a massive zerg steamroller or a base completely empty of enemies, slowly capping. Fights that are even remotely balanced are rare, and any fights you do find are massive, laggy cluster-f*cks.

So yeah, this might be heresy - but some way to spread the battles a little more evenly over the continent would get my vote.

Agree with OP about shotguns and turrets BTW.

[Roy Awesome]

Holy fuck this thread is full of wat.

You really thing 2 factions actively collude with each other to win these alerts? It's more like one faction balloons up to 40%ish territory, a majority of edges border your territory, so both factions have no choice but to attack into you at the same time.

It's self-balancing. This is technically what SOE invisioned with the eternal 3-way when the hex system was designed. It's not designed for any one faction to win. Once a faction takes enough territory...Both factions have no choice but to attack the largest. It looks like they are colluding with each other, but they very much aren't.

[ringring]

The third thread on this topic?

[Babyfark McGeez]

Well the "alert" system itself looks like the perfect tool for directing players, a very good troop-distribution device.

They just need to refine it and tie it to the real gameplay, because the current, random alerts are completely disconnected to the actual status of the continents.

Also, just for the sake of immersion: Who is starting these alerts and why? They...just pop up for everyone because...well, for no apparent reason at all.
Keep in mind this game needs to make a bit more sense than your average FPS if you want to call it a "MMO" in its real spirit.

[Hamma]

https://twitter.com/mhigby/status/320209324016279554

[Canaris]

Shotgun changes has done nothing overt in changing the game play

Ribbons are fine I guess

Alerts are to new to judge changes to the game overall, come back next week or so for an answer to that last one.

[Iconoklasm]

Other'n TR Matterson being a crapheap most of the time, alerts are fine. Good reward, and I do like fighting on continents other than Indar.

Ribbons are fine. Shotguns are still kinda strong in medium range, but it's better.

[Bocheezu]

Alerts are nice because all three sides are guaranteed to be poplocked during prime time, so there's a lot of fighting. Unfortunately, this also means no one will ever win. I've yet to have an alert not be Indar, so it hasn't changed where I'm fighting.

Ribbons are just invisible XP for me. I don't change my gameplay to try to get a ribbon, I just keep doing whatever it is that I'm doing. I'm not going to suddenly switch to medic and try and rez dudes just so I can get a ribbon.

[CraazyCanuck]

Experienced an Alert on Waterson last night on Esamir for the first time. Was fun. VS pushed hard toward the end to take the majority. Anyone know whether the reward base for the Alert is the same for each continent?

I like the ribbons, but I couldn't find anywhere a listing of what was required for each of them. Would like to see a listing of possible ribbons and their description with a mouse over status for each. I change classes alot to fit the need of the situation, so this would be handy.

Edit: On a side note, would like for the deployment after your death to remain on the last place you deployed if its still available instead of what the game thinks it should be. That or choose a more definitive way to identify which one is selected so it stands out better. Too often thought I was on the same deployment spawn and ended up deployed well away from the conflict I was just at.

[Dragonskin]

Experienced an Alert on Waterson last night on Esamir for the first time. Was fun. VS pushed hard toward the end to take the majority. Anyone know whether the reward base for the Alert is the same for each continent?

I like the ribbons, but I couldn't find anywhere a listing of what was required for each of them. Would like to see a listing of possible ribbons and their description with a mouse over status for each.

Edit: On a side note, would like for the deployment after your death to remain on the last place you deployed if its still available instead of what the game thinks it should be. That or choose a more definitive way to identify which one is selected so it stands out better. Too often thought I was on the same deployment spawn and ended up deployed well away from the conflict I was just at.

If you look at your weapons in your personal tab it will tell you the ribbons and your progress towards earning one. I know for the TMG 50 it showed I had 6 out of 10 kills.. I didn't repair anything or heal anything, but those 2 items have their own tab now with a ribbon display which should show your progress. Something like 10,000 points for healing ribbon and 15,000 for repairing.

[Lucecarentes]

Shotguns are still the same
The New Alert system is terrible for underpopulated empires (VS on Ceres don't stand a chance with only 25% pop)
GU06 added more weird glitchy walls with no textures
example : http://i956.photobucket.com/albums/ae48/Nightmare639/2013-04-03_00001_zps57322ac9.jpg
GU06 for some odd reason gave me a free Uppercut shotgun for my TR on Connery

[LeilaniRock]

Do like the alerts,everytime i spawn a scythe without checking,my defensive upgrades are not there as saved in the loadout -((

Btw,hi all my first post@psu

See you guys and girls around


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Vashyo]

I earned 8800XP for doing an alert on amerish, though we had like 50% NC domination so it was quite lucrative endeavor. I earned 100 certs in 2 hours without double XP, I earn about half of that in 2 hours normally!

Personally I'm quite happy in the XP gain atleast, I would expect it to be just as good with the 20% boost when sides are balanced since it rack up quickly.

We need some base objectives too soon, and maybe some multi-capture objectives where u need to hold a set of bases simultaneously on one continent. (with smaller bonus maybe and less time ofcourse)


I really like how we get more and more ways to earn certs since the shop is really expensive with most of stuff costing 1000 certs and skills being quite high-priced too in the end levels. I'm trying to coax some of my friends to return to the game, most of them quit cause they just arent "pro" enough to rack up the certs effectively so progress was really slow.

Really happy =)

[Assist]

NS guns aren't working with Ribbons! Please 2 fix! Reported it a couple times already!

[Mastachief]

Went too far on the NC max nerf, but only so far as the nerf to clip size. Bring the clip size back up by half of what it was and go from there. Factoring in lag/bunnyhopping/hitreg issues and engagement range the max has become even more specialised to CQB as the reloads take too long and are required more often.

Alert/Reward system is pretty broken and needs far more incentive 30000 xp should do it that would make people want to partake like rabid dogs. If you looked at the animosity thrown at ps1 event you would see that the majority of players didn't want them, how ever as you've gone and done it now you need to deliver and fast because it seems to be yet another half baked introduction. At the current level you will get far more xp at indarside over ghost capping points on esamir/amerish.

Still hit reg bugs and my insert key crash.

Oh and TESTSERVER.

[CraazyCanuck]

If you look at your weapons in your personal tab it will tell you the ribbons and your progress towards earning one. I know for the TMG 50 it showed I had 6 out of 10 kills.. I didn't repair anything or heal anything, but those 2 items have their own tab now with a ribbon display which should show your progress. Something like 10,000 points for healing ribbon and 15,000 for repairing.

Thanks Dragonskin, I didn't noticed the tracking on specific weapons. I would still like the information to be listed all in one spot for ease of tracking it. They list how ribbons you've achieved and how man are yet available on the main information map tab, it would be nice to have a drop down or mouse over on that display to see where you stand. I'm picky that way :)

[Badjuju]

I like the ribbons, shotguns are still awful.

[Boildown]

Shotguns are NOT the same. The only reason I haven't gotten rid of it yet is that I need to cert out its replacement still. That will be done today, and then my Piston will only see the light of day during Biolab cluster****s when its platoon on platoon. But outside of point blank range, the Piston and presumably the other shotguns were devastatingly nerfed. The tradeoff of having a very good weapon inside 10 meters is not worth being completely inept from 15 meters on out, and that was NOT the case before GU6. Not when there's weapons like the Blitz or GR-22 available.

What worse, shotguns have already gotten at least two previous balance passes. The first, they tightened the pellet spread, because they thought shotguns weren't good enough, and the second, they nerfed the slug velocity, because they thought slugs were too good I guess. All of the sudden they introduce a completely OP one hit kill shotgun and so they nerf ALL shotguns, even though they've looked at the other shotguns previously multiple times. It doesn't make sense and non-pump action shotgun users are being forced to change weapons (or deal with being sucky) because of SoE's pump action cash grab.

Were there other changes in GU6? Oh yeah, ribbons. They're ok I guess. I find it difficult to predict when I'm going to get one. I've rezed people in a biolab for an hour wednesday and didn't get one, then got one in a minor skirmish yesterday. No progress bars towards it, so its hard for me to say, "if I heal and rez a bit longer, I'l be rewarded with this ribbon", like it appears they want me to say. I would say overall ribbons haven't changed how I play the game one bit.

The alerts/objectives thing? My outfit has ignored them completely. It really isn't worth leaving Esamir or Amerish to go try to capture Indar when you can plainly see that you don't have the Crown or the Skydock. What was that thing I learned in my HR class? Something about goals being Achievable in order to be an effective motivator? Yeah, this fails that check.

So, to sum up. All GU6 has done is nerfed my shotgun, and the rest was a few things that didn't affect me, except for the additional bugs introduced. Nothing I look at positively. 3000+ kills on my Piston and now I'm certing into a new weapon. Not happy about that.

[ringring]

1. Shotguns. I'd hoped the one-shot-kill would have gone. :(

2. Service ribbons. I must admit I'm confused by them is there any information on the profile or other info screens?

3. I've been invoved in 2 completed events. I did quite like the focus it brought however I wonder whether they will become annoying, ie they occur too often but my big fear is that they will distract from the intercontinental metagame which I know we are a long way from getting at present. One thing to remember is that events were not much liked on PS1 which the exception of those for Planetside Day prior to PS2 beta commencing.

Oh and the xp award seems too easy.

[Gonefshn]

I have seen no alert other than capture Indar. Time for alerts is too short. And it is also a pain that logging off 10 mins before an alert ends robs you of the benefits

[Ghoest9]

1 The ribbons are nice. not a big deal at all but I like them.

2 Shotguns are definitely nerfed. I dont really see why old ones were.

[Rumblepit]

great work on the on the patch for the most part, but the alert system will only favor the faction with the high pop. lets use connery alert on amerish right now as a example , there are around 500 nc 100 tr and 50 vs on cont. 10 mins into the alert i pulled my platoon off cont and did so knowing there will be 500 nc on amerish standing around with their thumbs up their asssses for 2 hrs.

what else can ya do when there is wave after wave of steam rolling zerg. atm nc have 50% pop on connery

alert over,,,,, only took them 50 mins to cap the cont...... yea this wont work until they balance the pops.
62% nc pop 27% tr pop 10% vs was the end result

[Timealude]

I personally like the alert system, it adds some tension that alot of the battles were missing, Im sure once factions figure out that ghost capping is the key to winning then it will work alot better on certain sides. But Im actually really interested to see how this will work out with the new hex system coming.

[Snydenthur]

Ribbons don't really concern me. I use ns-11c and play as an engineer, so I only see repair ribbon sometimes. It does have unnecessarily large requirements, since I remember reading that guns give it for 10 kills. I could remember wrong though.

Alerts, I don't really care for them. When they come at prime time, there is no way to win unless your faction has more players than others. And come on, 2 hours to cap indar?! When they come at low times, it means people are getting rewards for ghost capping.

Shotguns. Tested them very quickly. They are still about the same but with very annoying crosshair. No need to nerf anymore, since otherwise they will become useless.

All in all, the patch was kind of stupid with all the server issues. Next patch, try to give us europeans a better experience. Or at least break the us servers too.

[SirChronus]

The alert system is very nice. You can get some extra xp if needed. It's a little bit boring that there are only a few alerts at the moment.

The shotgun nerf was totally unnecessary. Stop complaining Auraxians! Stay at a distance and you will kill every person with a shotgun. Just don't be in range. Since Game Update 6 my Piston is unused. Maybe the pump action shotguns are a little bit overpowered. I don't know why people are complaining.

But the ribbons were a great idea and I really enjoy the small xp bonus. It gives me the feeling that I've done something useful for my empire.

Maybe giving an option to go back to the old shotgun "crosshair" would be great. I think the changing size of it is really irritating

Overall a pretty good update.
Keep it up!

[Roy Awesome]

The Alert system is the best thing that SOE has added to the game.

The activity level of my outfit steadily builds during an Alert, when previously we were mostly centered around op hours. There is something to do, and it's great.

[Mordelicius]

@Hamma or any moderators. Could you please merge my GU6 feedback thread with this thread?

http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=54224

I want to reply to some posts but there's gonna be two threads bopping up and down :lol:

One thing I forgot to add was the ribbon system. I like the extra bonus xp. One thing I'd like changed is the sound. They need to put a different sound for the ribbon achievement since it happens a lot. As far as I can tell, it's similar to the levelling up sound which is an excellent achievement ding.

[Mordelicius]

Holy fuck this thread is full of wat.

You really thing 2 factions actively collude with each other to win these alerts? It's more like one faction balloons up to 40%ish territory, a majority of edges border your territory, so both factions have no choice but to attack into you at the same time.

It's self-balancing. This is technically what SOE invisioned with the eternal 3-way when the hex system was designed. It's not designed for any one faction to win. Once a faction takes enough territory...Both factions have no choice but to attack the largest. It looks like they are colluding with each other, but they very much aren't. lol This is Waterson we're talking about. I like Mattherson but it's nowhere as harsh as Waterson. The intensity there goes through the roof.

If it's a normal fight, I don't mind being 2 vs 1, (happens a lot it's ok in a normal gameplay). BUT the problem is it's an event and there's a substantial reward. Two factions stopping their fight to gang up on 1 is not competitive; it's exploitative and gaming the system. That's especially true us NC don't like helping other factions. There's no "self balance" if there's a stoppage of all fights along a long frontline of two factions so they can concentrate on one.

@Hamma / Moderators: Please merge this thread with the official thread: http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=54239

[Snoopy]

I just don't like how it promotes the 4th faction. Heck, I was watching streams earlier today where just before the alert ended, said streamer switched faction for points.

[Tenhi]

Ribbons. I like them alot. Also if you want to see your progress on them go to the Stats Tab. If you have a ribbon it will show the progress to the next one.

On that note they need to adjust the healing ribbon... its incredible hard to get -_-. I have 1 healing ribbon and 9 revive ribbons. People in this game tend to die instead of getting wounded. Also why does it take 15 revives for one ribbon but only 10 kills? Shouldnt they promote revive/heal/(repair is kinda fast enough) by making it the faster one?

The weapon ribbons are fine. There are some that are a little odd... like kills with concussion grenades. I know that you can kill with them but its just very unlikely. The same thing goes for Revive Grenades, they have the space for a ribbon but they count towards the revive ribbon.

Also while the vehicle ribbons work there is no indication... then again there is a short note on the vehicle stats page that that is finaly coming!

Oh and Higby already said that they will add 50+ new ribbons. So I guess we will see many of the missing things soon (like a ribbon for ammo, vehicle ammo etc.)

Alert. I like them. I havent seen much besides Indar for weeks/months now because the VS pop on Miller is low (~25-30%). While its only 2h per alert I still see people stick to the continents even after the alert ends... so it helped alot with promoting the other two continents.

One thing that I think the alerts really need to shine is the new hex system. Right now it becomes a "ghostcap" competition 5min before the end.

Shotguns. The new crosshair is irritating... reeeeeealy irritating. Besides that it seems like semi-auto shotguns are the only ones that suffered really hard. The auto shotgun still is fine because it shoots so fast and the pumpgun still does insane damage. Basically it screwed all the people that used the old-non-auto-shotguns. Overall I can live with it (even thought the Nova is my most used gun) because I like my Carbines/CCQ ARs (and I can adapt ;)).

NC ScatMAXs feel way better from the reciving end. As a VS MAX with Kinetic Armor 5 I feel like I have time to react instead of instantly dieing the moment I encounter one. They still do fine in CQC but they arent as overbearing.

[DeltaGun]

GU6 was my favorite update in a long time. Fixed a huge pet peeve, Shotguns, and added new content - the Ribbons and Alert systems.

The Alert system is becoming as Ghostcap competition, but the idea behind it is fun and people seem to be enjoying it. I've yet to see a faction actually win it 100%.

[Shamrock]

I welcome the changes, the Alerts are a good start, yes they may be open to exploitation, but its best to set up a simple system first, baby steps.

I enjoyed getting the ribbons, I didn't go out of my way to get them, but they were a pleasant highlight during my session.

If shotguns are nerfed to the point of uselessness it will generate as many posts of complaint from all the players that have purchased them as those that were on the receiving end; the dev's are between a rock and hard place with them, this goes back to the old argument of TTK times which I wont go into as its beating a dead horse.

NC MAX's can still one-shot VS and TR MAX's if they cert extended clips, it would have been better to reduce the damage more and increase range and clip size. The balance between PS1 MAX's (sorry Hamma) was fine, how any Dev could have looked at them as a frame of reference and come up with the dynamic in PS2 is mind boggling. I sincerely hope AV MAX's are returned to their role of anti-MAX in the upcoming balance.

I suspect duel flamethrowers will become the weapons of choice for TR and VS MAX's for CQC when released.

[Dougnifico]

Please make a lockout timer for character of different factions on the same server. Enough of these 4th faction traitors.

[PredatorFour]

I think the events need to be shorter in time like an hour or something. This might keep people fighting on the cont. On miller, VS have seemed to really struggle during these events and everyone seems to sod off to indar and not give a damn about the event. This often leaves us with about 15-20% VS which is impossible to get anywhere with apart from be a nuisance.

So maybe if you give the other two losing factions more XP for taking part, that can only be a good thing and give them more incentive to stay against the odds.

[Hamma]

I just don't like how it promotes the 4th faction. Heck, I was watching streams earlier today where just before the alert ended, said streamer switched faction for points.

This really is 100% inevitable especially now that it's free to play.

[Rothnang]

I mostly fly Liberators, and even though I rack up 200 certs in a good night I haven't ever gotten a single ribbon yet. There doesn't seem to be one for what I'm doing.

[BIGGByran]

So maybe if you give the other two losing factions more XP for taking part, that can only be a good thing and give them more incentive to stay against the odds.

This will promote: "Hey guys, there is 30 mins left and we are losing. Lets sit at the warpgate and wait for this to be over with."

Instead of: "If we want more exp, we need to fight to get more territory."

[Falcon_br]

I mostly fly Liberators, and even though I rack up 200 certs in a good night I haven't ever gotten a single ribbon yet. There doesn't seem to be one for what I'm doing.

Yeah, I also noted that, when I see I now could receive something for piloting a liberator I decided to give it a try.
People on my lib hacked kill and more kill, received lots of ribbons with it!
I think each 10 ribbons the gunner get you receive one! I had already give up to get one, but some of my outfit members were getting to many kill in my lib that they keeped asking me to pull one and after like 20 libs and 5 hours I finally got the ribbon!

If I was piloting a mosquito I would have like 20 ribbons on the same amount of time! At least now I am receiving a better deal when my gunner kill a vehicle, but it is still half of what he is getting!