This is a discussion about making a deeper, more persistent metagame.
Required reading:
http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...t=39563&page=8
We often hear that PS2's maps and world will be persistent. While this is true, PS1 vets know this is really only half the truth. How you leave the map for the night is not how its going to look the next day. All the gains you and your outfit made the night prior could be completely altered by the handful of people playing in the early morning and afternoon before prime time. Thats the nature of Planetside, and it is what it is. Not much you can do about that directly.
However it can leave you deflated after awhile. I played PS1 for about a year and half, but left once I felt I was just doing the same thing over and over with no direction. There were no persistent, over reaching goals to shoot for that go beyond the night. In other words the metagame was shallow. Outfits can help with this, but only for so long. I'm amazed by people that stayed with PS1 for so many years. However, I get told the same by people when I tell them I played PS1 for over a year.
The good news is I think creating a deeper metagame won't be that hard, and would require simple enough additions that won't affect the gameplay at all (for those who are perfectly content with the way things are). The simple solution: keep score. Keep score of each empires holdings per server. Nothing gets people more fired up to play than good ole competition with bragging rights on the line. I'm NOT talking about matches, events or resets. Simply an official and robust system that keeps tabs on whats going on. Something that players can look at and see clearly whats going on. Nothing will pull players away from the main fight. Everyone is playing the same game. Its still going to be the same never ending war we all want. And at the same time nothing forces players to care about "the score", and they are free to ignore it and play as normal. For those that do care, it would give them that appreciated extra incentive to continue playing for the long haul. Its something that both casual players and competitive outfits can participate in and enjoy.
For example, at the end of each hour the game tallies the number of resources nodes an empire holds in their server across the continents and then assigns points for them. More important bases can go for more points. Those points are then tallied for the daily score. Daily scores can be tallied for the weekly, monthly and yearly...you get the idea. The reward for "winning" for that day, week, month ect..can be nothing more than bragging rights for that empire on the server. Honestly this enough for most people...its good enough for the endless amounts of non-professional gaming leagues.
The one caveat I would add here is that the game only keeps score for hours during peek prime time (usually between 7pm-11pm). The main reason for this is to dissuade any farming and gaming of the system during off hours. Its easy for a groups of players to plan 4am base farm session with the use of cross faction alts. Server mods can combat this, but it will be an never ending battle which will leave suspicion and questions on the legitimacy of the scores. Limiting scoring to just prime time will side step all that. Plus this is when it will matter the most anyway, as most players will be on during that time and competition will be at its fiercest. EDIT:I've altered this part based on feedback. Points scored per hour are modified by current population compared to that empires peek population on server
and by server faction population imbalances. If an empire is at 50% of peek population it translates to 50% of points scored per hour. At the same time empires with lower populations compared to the other empires score higher than normal and vice versa.
In the end, it really changes nothing on how the game is played, and it really is just a glorified and spruced up stat tracking system. But I think something simple like this can go a long way in making the metagame more meaningful, and help make players care a bit more about the daily happenings of the never ending war.
2012-06-11, 02:37 PM
Hybrid Mode
