Outfit vs Outfit

Synapse · 2012-05-30, 12:48 AM

I never got to see how this worked in PS1 so forgive me for my ignorance.

It would be great to drive more rivalry and competition between outfits in opposite factions. I'd like to know I'm fighting against a squad of the legendary XXXX outfit, etc, especially if we win

.

Even better would be to have actual rivalries, where an outfit shows up to contest a base, their rivals on other factions will also show up just to fight against them.

All this really requires is more information, not new mechanics.

1. Will there be ways for outfits to go directly up against each other without having to chat and workout an empty battleground in advance?

2. Could you have a notice for each team what outfits have a squad or more in the fight at their current base, so you could at least see who you're up against?

3. If a particular outfit is responsible for the cap of a base or outpost, why not announce that it was their squad that did it?

Bags · 2012-05-30, 12:50 AM

They had outfit wars on a special server once or twice during the original PS. Might see something like that again, hope if so it's infrequent.

For the second part, I don't think they should give away information like that. Certain outfits have certain tactics (IE azure twilight spammed maxes) and knowing who you're up against without visual confirmation is kinda cheap and removes an element of surprise.

SKYeXile · 2012-05-30, 12:52 AM

you're aware planetside is an open map split over 3 different zones, there are no battlegrounds or instances like WAR etc yea? (just clarifying your terminology)

This was never a problem in planetside, i would be good if it did display enemy outfit names or tags(im pretty sure it didnt...been awhile..there were no tags anyway)

but over time you knew who you were fighting, you didn't need any other stuff, you could make a name for yourself and outfit pretty well in PS1.

Bags · 2012-05-30, 12:55 AM

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

but over time you knew who you were fighting, you didn't need any other stuff, you could make a name for yourself and outfit pretty well in PS1.

Yeah, with planetside's fairly low pops you eventually learned who was in what outfit. It also helped that a few ran with their own tags (88s, TRx, some members of DT had DT in their name).

Good sense of community. If you fight the same people over and over, you'll naturally learn who is who. It's not like WoW where you queue for a BG and you fight a bunch of people you'll never see again.

Graywolves · 2012-05-30, 01:25 AM

You will build rivalries and come to know names to respect and fear.

They did do outfit wars in the original Planetside which was run directly by the CSRs with the players directly sent to a no longer used continent.

Higby has talked about doing a competitive game mode in the future but that is a long time from now. It won't happen for some time after release.

Redshift · 2012-05-30, 02:00 AM

I'd like to see outfit wars return, but not too frequently

SKYeXile · 2012-05-30, 02:20 AM

Originally Posted by Redshift

I'd like to see outfit wars return, but not too frequently

I hear some outfits lost, therefore outfit wars didn't prove anything.

Nabeshin · 2012-05-30, 02:27 AM

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

I hear some outfits lost, therefore outfit wars didn't prove anything.

Don't forget that the winners of the Outfit War's got nothing whatsoever which made it even more pointless. If they are going to do it again, should at least get something for it. Though now that they have resources I suppose that could be a reward.

SKYeXile · 2012-05-30, 02:32 AM

Originally Posted by Nabeshin

Don't forget that the winners of the Outfit War's got nothing whatsoever which made it even more pointless. If they are going to do it again, should at least get something for it. Though now that they have resources I supposed that could be a reward.

You weren't a fan of the shafting? and you call yourself a Vanu.

The Kush · 2012-05-30, 02:43 AM

Originally Posted by Bags

They had outfit wars on a special server once or twice during the original PS. Might see something like that again, hope if so it's infrequent.

For the second part, I don't think they should give away information like that. Certain outfits have certain tactics (IE azure twilight spammed maxes) and knowing who you're up against without visual confirmation is kinda cheap and removes an element of surprise.

I was part of that in PS1. Those were some fun times. And somewhere the devs talked about post release developing an outfit battleground that you could duke it out on between outfits. Hopefully they set this up tournament style

Nabeshin · 2012-05-30, 02:44 AM

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

You weren't a fan of the shafting? and you call yourself a Vanu.

I happen to be a Vanu that likes gifts and shiny things.

Bags · 2012-05-30, 02:44 AM

Yeah the outfit I joined for it got destroyed but I got a few merits for participating anyway.

Gogita · 2012-05-30, 02:48 AM

Higby mentioned before that there was going to be a focus on outfit specialization and recognition. They want to have in such a way so that if for example a tank-outfit arrives, other people will know that it is the notorious outfit "x".

I can imagine that outfits of different empires will notice as well. Just imagine 2 outfit specialized tank columns of different empires running into each other and both of them recognize each other.

I think after the game has existed for a while, some outfits will stand out and will automatically get into fights with other outfits in the battle.

Redshift · 2012-05-30, 04:14 AM

Originally Posted by Nabeshin

Don't forget that the winners of the Outfit War's got nothing whatsoever which made it even more pointless. If they are going to do it again, should at least get something for it. Though now that they have resources I suppose that could be a reward.

Dunno we got the right to mock other people for failing hard :P

Skepsiis · 2012-05-30, 10:12 AM

I was one of the players who formed and lead the outfit furious angels next generation (known ingame as fang, and later furious angels when we had to change our name) who finished top on werner in the outfit wars event.

After a while you do learn to recognise the better players from other empires and eventually you also start to notice the outfits that run together. For us as werner VS we had the most respect in terms of player skill for the soul reapers on TR and the mercs on NC.

Now something i can tell you from experience is that it is very very rare to find yourself in a direct confrontation with a rival outfit without any interference unless it is artifically arranged (like outfit wars) which would require all the competeing players to be removed to a private zone and taken away from the main game. And this would be fine as an unusual event/tournament that doesnt hapen very often.

But something we did do was actively seek out and target known players whenever we came across them so i think some game mechanics to support and maybe track this would be a good start.

Being able to declare a rival outfit ingame could be a cool feature. Something that highlights their players with a subtle visual clue like a coloured glow or a mission to clear them out of an area that generates when they are active in an area.

Hopefully the game will be tracking outfit stats like kills/captures/vehs destroyed/deaths/hotdrops and a good feature would be to have tools to compare outfits performance. Not just overall totals but also average rates per player so the smaller elite outfits get recognition over the massive outfits. Id like to see some kind of bar chart layout ao you could easily compare multiple outfits in different statistics.

This kind of stuff can all fall into place on leaderboards of course but should have scaleable time settings so you can check 'of all time' or just 'last week' or even 'yesterday'.

To support rivalries and competetition certain stats could be shown like counters for how many kills each outfit has against each other or total damage done, specifically your outfit vs theirs type of statistics.

There could also be bonus incentives to go after your rival outfit, especially if you both have each other tagged as rivals at the same time (or maybe exclusively so?) to create an outfit war status that somehow encourages confrontation between the two outfits

The customisation that has been mentioned in the past from the developers sounds like it will certainly help outfits to secure a more unique identity and help in achieving recognition both amongst their own empire and the rival factions and i look forward to this being implemented.

I think it would also be good to have leaderboards and the ability to compare across servers as well (so long as they have the same server rules)

Being able to compete in some tournaments across servers would be welcome too (with home and away games to compensate for locational differences).