Higby in China, plus some minor infos came out of the chat

[Crator]

Originally Posted by basti

As for the base flipping: First of all, we need to get rid of this crappy capture mechanics. The whole "stand at the point and do nothing" is not helping.
We need hack and hold again. A simple, easy to read timer till the base flips, starting to count down once the base got hacked. Time depens on how many surrounding territorys you owned when the hack started, and the timer doesnt change counting down even if you loose all surrounding territorys.
That would allow resecures again, especially those awesome last second resecures.

I agree, hack-n-hold is superior to tug-o-war. I also agree that the PS1 hack-n-hold was too simple. 15 minutes for every hack was too long. As you said, the fix is to make the hack time less if you own adjacent hexes.

Of course, that's the first step. Next step is to redesign locations with appropriate attack and defense vectors providing varied game play for different class types. More defensible locations but with different attack vectors. Balance the attack vectors with the defensive capabilities of the location giving more of an edge to defenders.

[SGTalon]

Isn't this basically what we have now? Hack and Hold, 15 minute base. Decreases for Adjacency and decreases more if there are more people holding the control area...

Sounds like exactly what you are asking for.

As to the other targets in the base, they have several generators and an SCU. Some are inside some are outside. Seems like it is almost where you want it to be.

Personally I think that the Gate Generators need to be inside the Wall Towers. Make the walls an actual defense point.

[Mriswith]

Well the point is that defending gives you just as many points as attacking as long as there are actually people to defend against, no one wants to just sit alone in an empty base hoping that someone might... attack it.
It's just much more efficient to use the drop in ability to emergency defend when the base is actually getting captured or are under a heavy attack.
Sadly at the point where you actually need to defend then your usually already at a supreme disadvantage due to force disparity.
Personally I'm hoping that this issue will work itself out when there are more outfits around, so you can get an entire squad/platoon deployed to defend at the same time, instead of random people arriving one at the time just to get slaughtered by the opposing force/outfit.

I'm personally disregarding the entire "reward" system here though, because even if your attacking and capturing bases or destroying important nodes/generators the rewards for doing 'important' work for your team is to low.
Even capturing a major 1000 reward base, normally it goes like this -> intense fighting (for a varying time), then you have 10 minutes of simply standing around doing nothing except maybe killing people trying to escape their spawns (that are getting heavily camped at that stage).
And honestly standing around 10mins for a 1k reward is just much less then what you would get from actually killing people / turrets / tanks that I don't feel it matters much in a attack/defense versus points argument.
True getting snubbed off points because your successfully defending instead of attacking is annoying, but the main source of scores is still from actual kills.
And as I mentioned no one wants to simply sit around waiting for a base to get attacked.

I do feel some things should be better rewarded tho (maybe with diminishing returns to reduce any kind of farming).
Some things like standing on capture points (the [#/#] ones) just doesn't give you any return at all.
There are a lot of times I see only 1/2 players standing on a #/6 tech lab capture point for example simply because it just doesn't give you anything while at the same time covering the entrances gives you 200-300 score/minute (which is low if they're actually trying to take the base back) and you still get all the points once those standing at the capture point have succeeded taking the base.

But please do add some defensive bonuses (for people who've actually fought in the base > to prevent afk farming), and some bonus points for capturing a base (maybe dependent on the duration the player spent being one of those at the capture point).

You might even consider increasing the reward for most of the others 'mission' specific objects as well since right now just farming in a heavily populated area gives you waaaay more then any kind of base capture/defense.
Which is a bit sad since a capture/defense objective gives your team a much bigger overall advantage then simply sniping 5 people next to a sunderer ever will (even if sniping 5 people gives you much more points).

Anyway I love the game (although I didn't play PS1 so I don't know what I missed there ;D) but it's starting to feel like it's become a bit of a zerg > objective score farm atm, especially for non squad/outfit players.

[Timealude]

Originally Posted by basti

As for the base flipping: First of all, we need to get rid of this crappy capture mechanics. The whole "stand at the point and do nothing" is not helping.
We need hack and hold again. A simple, easy to read timer till the base flips, starting to count down once the base got hacked. Time depends on how many surrounding territories you owned when the hack started, and the timer doesnt change counting down even if you loose all surrounding territories.
That would allow to resecure again, especially those awesome last second resecures.

I like how they had it in alpha, where you had to walk up the the term, hold E before it started the influence bar. I also think we do need that encryption back simply to just stop a constant zerg of people. Hell Just make the encryption for the Main points rather then the outer garrisons and im sure fights would be alot less fatiguing on defenders.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by SGTalon

Isn't this basically what we have now? Hack and Hold, 15 minute base. Decreases for Adjacency and decreases more if there are more people holding the control area...

Sounds like exactly what you are asking for.

As to the other targets in the base, they have several generators and an SCU. Some are inside some are outside. Seems like it is almost where you want it to be.

Personally I think that the Gate Generators need to be inside the Wall Towers. Make the walls an actual defense point.

No, hack-n-hold allows the empire to know how much time they have left to respond.

The act of hacking, if we are talking about that and not a default E button, requires certs to perform faster. It also requires one hold a REK to perform the hack leaving the person vulnerable. It also produces different strategies for defenders trying to resecure a hack as well as attackers trying to defend the hack...

[Pella]

Originally Posted by basti

The Lattice didnt promote outfit play, generators and lattice transmitted base benefits did.

The Lattice in PS1 only promoted zergs, by giving them a clear direction where to go, and where to defend. That may sound good, but once you notice areas like the Akkan Baal Dagon Triangle on Ishundar, or the whole Cyssor clusterfuck, you see how terrible the lattice actually is.


The hex system is actually a better starting point, but it needs improvment. For example, we need proper targets for outfits again. Generators at techplants, those who actually give out the benefit, would work wonders. Amp station and biolab benefits dont matter, they are pointless to being with.
Then, we obviously also need the continent metagame and sanctuarys with it (the two can only exist together. You cant have the continent metagame without sanctuarys).
With this, we actually have proper stuff to do, and fixed the Jojoing thats currently happening on every continent (and it got boring before release...)

Then, later, obviously outfit bases.


As for the base flipping: First of all, we need to get rid of this crappy capture mechanics. The whole "stand at the point and do nothing" is not helping.
We need hack and hold again. A simple, easy to read timer till the base flips, starting to count down once the base got hacked. Time depens on how many surrounding territorys you owned when the hack started, and the timer doesnt change counting down even if you loose all surrounding territorys.
That would allow resecures again, especially those awesome last second resecures.


We shouldnt have left beta, it clearly was to early. But it propably couldnt be helped, so theres no point arguing about that now. Lets just try to get the game in the right direction.

The Lattice system didn't promote outfit play? Sorry but you clearly have no idea what your talking about. PS1 wasnt 1 direction. You had mutiple points to open a continent. Or even more so other continents linked to open. That my friend promoted outfit play.

And the Hex system is ridiculous which promotes the "Zerg". Which has been talked about a Million times already.

Any how Higby has palmed us all off again. This Chinese guy hit the nail on the head.

[Rahabib]

Originally Posted by Higby

...
Just for the record, if lattice or sanctuaries were brought up it wasn't by me. I did talk about how a true intercontinental conquest via connected warpgates would come once we had the right number of continents to support it, as well as that a more robust tutorial and training area akin to the PS1 VR training was in the works. To be clear, there are no plans to add a PS1 style "lattice" system or sanctuaries to the game....

The hex system would be fine if you make a few tweaks. i still stand by my stance that if they slowed the sunderer spawns just a bit making defense spawn more often that solves half the problem. Then you can defend almost at a 1:2 ratio much more making it so you can spread out among different points.

Also, make it so you can choose base spawns further away so you can get to the defensible locations from a larger region.

next, having vehicles etc. cost more or have a shorter cool down timer the further from the warp gate. This makes the teams that are pushed (most likely because of population issues) they can spawn more vehicles from the gate and push back the zerg. This also makes tech plants more valuable for the attacking teams.

Finally, lets make it so that continents can be a bit more level. If any team has more than 10% over population they should enter a queue or have it so that their vehicle cool down timers are increased by the amount of over population. Cool down timers are really the only thing that mean much to the vehicle spammers not XP.

[sylphaen]

Originally Posted by Rahabib

Cool down timers are really the only thing that mean much to the vehicle spammers not XP.

Resources are the only "timer" that plays a role in the current system since the timer cooldowns can be eliminated entirely with certs.

IMO, if it went the other way (i.e. certs decrease resource costs/cooldown timer identical for everyone), vehicle players would feel the pinch much faster.

But then what would be the point of resources ? If resources do not matter (or, said differently, do not matter enough to matter) and only the timer cooldown matters, we are back to a PS1 system (which also worked fined btw).

Of course, I am merely discussing ideas, not judging which is best.

[Rahabib]

Originally Posted by sylphaen

Resources are the only "timer" that plays a role in the current system since the timer cooldowns can be eliminated entirely with certs.

IMO, if it went the other way (i.e. certs decrease resource costs/cooldown timer identical for everyone), vehicle players would feel the pinch much faster.

But then what would be the point of resources ? If resources do not matter (or, said differently, do not matter enough to matter) and only the timer cooldown matters, we are back to a PS1 system (which also worked fined btw).

Of course, I am merely discussing ideas, not judging which is best.

well you are right, resources do very little to nothing right now. making them cost more would do pretty much the same thing. But honestly it would have to be almost double before people start to feel it. Its easy to spawn tank after tank as long as you stay alive for more than a few minutes.

[Mriswith]

Originally Posted by sylphaen

Resources are the only "timer" that plays a role in the current system since the timer cooldowns can be eliminated entirely with certs.

Cooldowns can only be reduced to aprox or exactly 50% of the original spawn time last I checked.
So both the cooldown and the resources makes constant vehicle spamming impossible atm, especially on a continent that you don't "own".
I know that resources are *plenty* if you can glide around not dying a lot but honestly if your playing on any continent that you don't have a major territory advantage on then your resources will be pretty sparse.
Especially if you for example need to spam tanks (both the heavy and the normal one) to combat enemy tank groups.
Btw I've got double c4 / dual grenades on my light assault, and oh man I'm running into some serious resources shortage, almost to the point where I would complain that c4 costs to much (it usually forces me to switch from infantry to air/tanks just to regenerate grenades and c4's).

[Rivenshield]

Originally Posted by Pella

And the Hex system is ridiculous which promotes the "Zerg". Which has been talked about a Million times already.

Zergs aren't the problem. The problem is that they almost never meet... and when they do, it's a mutual high-speed slaughterfest. It's not even attack and counterattack -- it's two attacks running headlong into each other.

I miss the old days when you could actually, you know, DIG IN and wait for your moment to sally forth. Or even dig in and buy time for the cavalry to show up. Can't do that anymore. Defense is all but physically impossible anywhere except the Crown.

But all of this is a moot point. If you don't like getting stomped by the enemy zerg, just switch sides and instantly join them. Soon you'll be able to take all your certs with you, too. Yay. There isn't a point in adding a cooldown timer, either; people can just install another client. Right? This line of logic is now firmly entrenched in game design, and it can be stretched out as far as you please... and it bids fair to murder this game in its grave.

[basti]

Originally Posted by Pella

The Lattice system didn't promote outfit play? Sorry but you clearly have no idea what your talking about. PS1 wasnt 1 direction. You had mutiple points to open a continent. Or even more so other continents linked to open. That my friend promoted outfit play.

And the Hex system is ridiculous which promotes the "Zerg". Which has been talked about a Million times already.

Any how Higby has palmed us all off again. This Chinese guy hit the nail on the head.

Links between continents have nothing to do with this. We will get that once we have 6 continents.

The "multiple points" is simply not true. You have defined points, sometimes more than one, that you could attack directly. But it wasnt just you who saw those options, it was everyone. The zerg just went to the nearest base, knowing that enemys are there. Outfits could do something more sinister (Kusag-Enkidu LLU, Akkan-Hanish LLU, or flanking in general), but the majority of options didnt help you in the long run at all, as they just put you in between the frontlines, resulting in you getting crushed on two fronts, while your zerg is somewhere else.
That isnt outfit play, thats just stupid.

However, what PS1s lattice offered was the ability to kill benefit connections to the frontline, like blowing up Enkidu gen resulting in the enemy loosing the Marduk + Neti (or was it Neit?) + Zarqar + Enkidu benefit, wich hurt a lot if they didnt own Baal and Girru.
So that was a big + of the system.

It wouldnt work in PS2 tho. for once, you absolutly need to spread out people. You cant have two full zergs clashing each other, thats more than 1000 folks in one area, propably even in just one base. That WILL melt the server and result in this annoying render issues.


But i think we can give this a try. Devs said one of the 3 new continents, i believe Oshur, is going to be set up like the PS1 continent. While no details where given what exactly they ment with that, i would love to see the whole thing have a lattice. You can easily fake one together with the Hex system, by simply only giving major bases territorys, have smaller bases only use one single hex (or even none if possible, its just towers without means to pull vehicles anyway), let base territorys connect with each other, and hack up the lattience by deploying uncapturable neutral hexes between bases.


I grab myself a oshur map and make an example, brb.

[Canaris]

Originally Posted by basti

Matt often appears like he is an arrogant prick, but he really is a nice guy. Its easy to misunderstand him.

that's like the opposite of what Matt has been to us, I should know I'm arrogant prick and it takes one to know one and I can say hand on heart he ain't ever come across as such.
Sounds to me like misplaced frustration on other peoples part.

[basti]

Originally Posted by Canaris

that's like the opposite of what Matt has been to us, I should know I'm arrogant prick and it takes one to know one and I can say hand on heart he ain't ever come across as such.
Sounds to me like misplaced frustration on other peoples part.

I never understood it myself really. Dude is cool, he listens. You are propably right with the frustration part, we humans always search someone or something to blame for stuff we dont like, and for someone who doesnt like PS2, who would be the first guy to blame other than the creative director?




Anyway, Oshur, with a hex lattice thingy ish abomination.

Sorry for the red propaganda, first picture i found.




Greyish is Neutral, uncapturable territory. Rest is bases.
Towers would be capture points without any territory attached to them.

The lattice is intact, you can only go specific directions, based on what you own, but with the current capture mechanics of "own more surrounding stuff to cap faster" this map simply wont work.

Could propably do a better job at it, especially on other continents (Oshur was a fucked up map really).

[Ruffdog]

Originally Posted by basti

We need hack and hold again. A simple, easy to read timer till the base flips, starting to count down once the base got hacked. Time depens on how many surrounding territorys you owned when the hack started, and the timer doesnt change counting down even if you loose all surrounding territorys.
That would allow resecures again, especially those awesome last second resecures.

I approve this message!