Gameplay: Continent Benefits & Differentiation (or Why should I fight on Hossin?)

[Malorn]

We can get that scaling with very simple logic and formula.

1) The cont benefit goes to the empire that has the most territory on that continent.

2) The size of the benefit is the fraction of territory * the benefit.


So if a continent's max benefit is 20% training bonus to aircraft and there's a 3-way fight going on the continent with even distribution, the empire that squeezes ahead and gets 34+% would get about a 7% training bonus for owning the continent during that 3-way battle, and they could get more by gaining more territory up to a maximum of 20% for owning the entire continent.

So you'd get value for every single territory up until the entire continent is captured.

That's a good way to scale it naturally and provide continual rewards for further domination and to value even the wilderness territories.

[MooK]

I don't like the concept of a continental benefit. In the beginning, I do not remember ever considering one continent to be worth more, in any other realm but strategy and tactics. Our primary goal was to secure the world, and so, we would take whatever continent offered us the best continous foothold to do so.

When I returned through the multiple free opportunities to play, I found that continental "benefits" were actually very distracting and counter-productive. We would fight endlessly on continents that we had very little chance of taking, for the sake of a benefit we didn't even really need. All the while, rejected continents with little or no benefit sat, unguarded and ripe for the picking.

Personally I don't like that kind of reward system at all, and as such, I've never thought of a replacement for it. I'm not convinced that people need that (though it does make sense to restrict certain aspects of the game to certain continents.)

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by MooK

I don't like the concept of a continental benefit. In the beginning, I do not remember ever considering one continent to be worth more, in any other realm but strategy and tactics. Our primary goal was to secure the world, and so, we would take whatever continent offered us the best continous foothold to do so.

Thanks for the feedback, MooK! On Emerald that was our goal also (we achieved it - twice go NC! )

As fun as that was for us, I know it wasn't fun for the VS or TR, so I doubt that will even be possible in PS2. It was also only possible when the TR/vs pop was quite low late at night. Certainly didn't happen in prime-time.

While the cont benefits weren't in at the beginning they were something I liked from a strategic perspective. Something that differentiates Planetside for me is that global scale. And players have options on what continent they want to fight on, moreso for PS2 with the lack of lattice and the uncaps. You have option to fight wherever you want. I believe this adds a lot more depth to the game if you have more factors that can go into your decision.

Rather than having "oh we need resource Y, lets see which front has access to it..." they might say "we need resource Y, but if we go to Ceryshen we'll get a bonus for that resource if we can dominate that continent". They have a choice on what they want to do and there's something unique about each continent. As per some of the other ideas presented here, it could also be that continents provide training bonuses and other types of rewards. The goal is strategic depth.

When I returned through the multiple free opportunities to play, I found that continental "benefits" were actually very distracting and counter-productive. We would fight endlessly on continents that we had very little chance of taking, for the sake of a benefit we didn't even really need. All the while, rejected continents with little or no benefit sat, unguarded and ripe for the picking.

First, I'm not proposing the same sort of benefits as PS1 where you had to own the entire continent to get the benefit. The idea has also evolved to be a scaling benefit given to the empire with the majority territory on the continent, but the benefit increases the more territory they own on that continent.

Also, in PS1 the benefits were quite lopsided. The repair/rearm was extremely good. The amp station benefit from Ish was also quite good. The others were sort of "meh". That's some rather poor balancing there, and the reason you saw people gravitating towards one continent over others is because the benefits weren't well distributed. There's other factors too. That continent was the one where "the fight" was, while the empty continent had less intrinsic entertainment value. I found in my days of commanding that "the good fight" was a strong motivator as well. Players are reluctant to give up the guaranteed good fight to take a chance on maybe getting a better one, and an empty continent doesn't look too promising. But if that empty continent had something they might want, such as faster vehicle training time or something like that, they might be more inclined for it.

I think we'll see very different conquest patters in PS2. I expect it'll be distributed on more continents since resources are tangible value whether there's opposition or not, and you effectively have a lattice link to every continent so nothing stops that from happening.

Personally I don't like that kind of reward system at all, and as such, I've never thought of a replacement for it. I'm not convinced that people need that (though it does make sense to restrict certain aspects of the game to certain continents.)

Well, "need" isn't a word I'd use to describe this. "nice to have" is more fitting. The game can work and likely be quite successful without this idea. However, I do believe it will add another layer of depth to the game and give the devs some new options on making continents distinct to the average player and also from a global command perspective. Just like different bases have different values, different continents having different values just adds do strategic depth.

Also, I think your experience with the PS1 system may be giving you a bad impression. Not talking about that system, rather taking the idea and improving it so it doesn't have the same negative effects. The benefits do need to be balanced with each other so they are tradeoffs and there is no clear "best" benefit that everyone gravitates around. That's an important thing to add to the idea. I would expect with all the telemetry technology that exists today that they can see distributions across the continents and tweak continent benefits accordingly.

I will also add that I believe without this idea the global strategy will be rather bland.

[Hyncharas]

So far we've talked about the "ore" and (possibly) "gemstone" equivalents, but what about a third type: energy?

On most of the maps they are a surrounded by ocean with a number of lakes inland, but Hossin, Searhaus and Cyssor have much deeper ones where there might be the opportunity fo underwater mining platforms as energy-based fuel fo aircraft, or to power the particle weapons of the VS.

In PlanetSide the engine couldn't accommodate underwater bases, but now might be the opportunity for them if empires are also fighting over a resource that can only be found on certain continents, in deep trenches.

[Malorn]

I'm bumping this since the topic of "End Game" and the impact of footholds has come up a lot lately and I think these ideas in the thread are still relevant.