Systems: Global Map and Empire Statistics

[Figment]

Now, I believe we'll be getting something along the lines of the old global map with its information on the current situation of the fights per continent.


In the past, the information we got with this was the amount of bases held every minute of the day (you could play the base caps of the past 24 hours for instance).

We'll also be getting some other information per player, kill tallies and all that sort of thing.


How about we also bring this sort of information graphically to empire wide statistics? Basically, give us a real time and over time breakdown of the fight. We could see per day, what region of the map was fought over how long, by which empires, how many kills were generated per empire in that area, who controls the map how much % of the time, how often a capture attempt is made for the area, what type of units were used, etc. All sorts of things you can think of (you can list them below!)

Not only would this be a tool for players to stay in touch with the events of that day and provides some sense of who won the fight and all that sort of things, it also would give the developers visual feedback on where chokepoints are or where players gravitate to in a fight, they can get a sense of the flow of battles, popularity, if certain areas are designed as intended (favour the appropriate units), if balance is okay in certain situations, you name it.

Basically, it could be an extremely handy tool for both gameplay analysis from a developer point of view, as well as for recreational purposes like "oh yeah you remember that fight?" and "Dagda really is attacked as much as we always thought!".

This could help greatly in the design and development of future maps or tweaking existing maps, resource availability/distribution and even check the popularity of weaponry for indicators of imbalances or underuse for instance.

[Figment]

For a large version, click on the image!

Here's a sample interface for it based on the interface shown earlier for Indar.


For the continental one, you could use the entire map itself as a means to show statistics. For example, you could bring up pie charts per sector regarding territorial control (pie charts are always awesome :P), you could use colour gradiants and hatching to similar effect, or simple use a percentage to indicate how much fighting is done in a specific area over the course of the day.

Multiple time periods could be used here as well, such as "Current", "Minute by minute", "Day", "Week", "Month", "Year", "Forever", you name it.

You could even have a "real time" change, so you can watch the flow of battle for a day for all these statistics.

It could also include "(mean) time between ownership change", "time since last ownership change", that sort of thing. All these sorts of statistics could be used to get a feel of how well balanced a map is, as well as giving a sense of "we owned there! Literally!"

Or even claim "ownership", ie create some emotional attachment to owning it since it's traditionally yours. More or less what Oshur had in PS1 for the TR and home continents in general. "Home turf" would be that which you owned most. In theory if you'd take that even further, you could have that influence the capture timer a bit in your favour, as a faction would have a "historical claim" to that area. You could add capture tresholds to the percentages, say 33%, 50% and 75% would give a minor capture time decrease for your faction or increase for the opposition.

[NewSith]

This can also be topped with the same statistics, but for outfits. It would imply adding capture rates, ownership time and probably some sort of outfit roster thing for the amount of caps. For example "Jarilo (I always thought PS 1 lacked Slavic mythology) base was captured the most by "L33TK1LLA" of "TH3 H4XFIT" - 12%"

This way you can have that "home turf" thing not only for Empires, but for outfits aswell. This way some, say, "Soul Reapers" outfit can plan its attack accordingly, so it doesn't touch hexes that belong to, say, "MercenaryS", because it risks to get raped otherwise. Also, constant appearance on the map is a good recruitment factor for the outfit thing. It's working for both big and small outfits, for example - some little known outfit can concentrate its resecures on "Bes" base so they get a certain percentage of hacks (and thus rehacks), and the name of the base will be tied to them, meaning that they WILL be present for those who are interested.

Moreover such system even adds some sort of inter-outfit competition inside Empires. And if you say it's easy to grief, - I counter it with the new BFish capture system that allows for multiple persons to contribute to the hack.

[Noivad]

I like this this is an excellent Idea. Outfit leaders could realy get a lot of Planning Information out of this if it was implimented.

[Gonefshn]

Im pretty sure this will be available at least in some form. For example I would expect they will have a way to "rewind" the map if you get what I am saying. Basically the map is constantly changing based on what is going on but it would be simple to go back in time and watch it progress.

Either way great idea. I think some of these elements will probably be in the game in a basic form at least.

[RSphil]

something like Guild wars 2 is doing in WvW? like a pie chart showing the empire's domination plus other info at the side?

sounds like a good idea. would be a good APP aswell for a phone so you can keep up with the war and go home early to help win lol