Victory

[Edfishy]

Most of the reviews I had read for PlanetSide complained about the lack of any real victory or goal. Although SOE is talking about removing/redesigning sanctuaries, I would highly suggest the ability to take an empire's sanctuary.

BALANCE
Sanctuaries would obviously have mechanisms (shields, multiple simultaneous hacks required, limited window of opportunity, etc) to prevent spam hacks and to ensure a sanc cap would take a great deal of effort to pull off.

CAPTURED
If the sanctuary is taken, each member of the losing empire has a choice to EDIT fight alongside their choice of the remaining two empires. This choice would last as long as the window of opportunity lasts before a pre-determined "resistance" rises and reclaims the old sanctuary back for the original empire.

Your character and vehicles would get a themed texture to be similar to your newfound ally, for example a mostly red with some blue paint job if you're the NC working with the TR, and you would spawn at their sanctuary with access to each other's tech.

EDIT This would be designed to be difficult enough to require several months to accomplish a sanctuary cap, requiring a full server, etc.

CEASE FIRE
EDIT Taking a single sanctuary occurs once every few months. Taking the final could take years, and is intended as an "unobtainable goal". In the unlikely event the third sanctuary is taken, the lucky players are treated to merits, exp boosts, and some sort of a "Congratulations" victory screen (to save and show off to others), and then either:

A) The server resets to three empires again. (simplest solution)

or...

THE UNDERGROUND
B) a group of players spawn as "the rising underground" for their original faction in various spawn points in their original sanctuaries (or perhaps it rotates/randomizes). Every kill made by the Underground gives bonus experience returns an old comrade to your side (You'd go from a TR mix to a pure VN for example). The sanctuaries would no longer have the defensive mechanisms, so they'd fall in a hurry. This time would mostly be a "celebration time" (cha-cha lines all around) while things quickly returned to normal.

YOUR THOUGHTS?
Should there be even a chance of some sort of victory? Or should sanctuaries be forever locked off?

[Hamma]

I honestly have never liked the idea of a victory condition in any persistent MMO.

[Sovereign]

^ Agreed, there shouldn't ever be even remote ceasefires or anything that would infringe on the games persistent gameplay and battles..

It wouldn't be planetside anymore it would be more along the lines of diplomacy-side aka civilization the mmo!

[JreaperT]

I dont want to ever log in to find my Empire has lost its Sanc. I dont ever want to fight with or for another Empire. The whole point of Planetside is a never ending war between three incredibly idealogically differant sides.

Simply put. Keep it the way it is. If it aint broke dont fix it. Out of all the things they could change for PS:N, if they do this I wont be playing it.

[Rbstr]

I'm with Hamma. You can't be able to "win" and cause a reset because that ruins even perceived persistence. You can't win and force people to swap empires, because that's just stupid.

The only real "win" conditions in MMO I've found to be decent are EVE-style. Where you can completely take some alliance's space and eliminate them as a space-power...but you can't technically force anyone to leave the alliance...It also only really works with a persistent equipment model and real incentives to hold particular regions (ship's that blowed up stay blowed up, and owning space helps you greatly economically).

[Edfishy]

You wouldn't be swapping empires, you'd still be NC/VN/TR but fighting alongside a different empire (or simply start as "undeground" when your sanc is capped). I don't see this as being too different from the current "Play with enemy weaponry" drop-ins the devs do, only it wouldn't last as long and would be directly correlating to something player's have done.

Capping one empire's sanc would be designed as a very rare occasion requiring an amazing degree of teamwork on a server-packed night; occuring once in a few months, maybe. After the window of opportunity is up, the alliance breaks and the resistance reclaims their sanc.

"Winning" would be something that might happen once in a couple years, intentionally designed as an unobtainable goal. Lore-wise, they wouldn't have actually won, as the temporary alliances breaks up from the resistances and the fight keeps going, but for a brief moment there was peace on Auraxis.

In the end, instead of having to say, "Nah, you can't win the game", I'd like to be able to say, "You'd have to be gods to 'win' PlanetSide".

Thanks for weighing in though, I find it interesting to think of PSN as being the treadmill of MMOFPS's... in a good way! =)

[Wrath]

Originally Posted by Rbstr

The only real "win" conditions in MMO I've found to be decent are EVE-style. Where you can completely take some alliance's space and eliminate them as a space-power...but you can't technically force anyone to leave the alliance...It also only really works with a persistent equipment model and real incentives to hold particular regions (ship's that blowed up stay blowed up, and owning space helps you greatly economically).

you must have missed goonswawm forcing bob to disband :P

but yeah I dont see the need to have the ability to win. I always thought the rare occasions you get a lock out in PS. the days worth of brag rights on the forums was more then enough rewards for the efforts

[basti]

Lets put this easy: Its not possible to win, without breaking the game into a scenario mode of "the same every time again wtf?".

Leave it as it is, you cant make people win without making other loose...

[Raymac]

Planetside doesn't need an end-game victory any more than WoW (another persistant world) and WoW has done pretty well for itself I've heard.

[Miir]

I like the relic idea from DAoC.

If you were to give players something to fight and win like a relic. That would be good enough for me.

[Rbstr]

Originally Posted by Miir

I like the relic idea from DAoC.

If you were to give players something to fight and win like a relic. That would be good enough for me.

Yeah I like this one too. At most you can raid enemy sancs to steal some kind of persistent bonus giver object. Perhaps not even raiding the sanc popper but a certain area of it.

[Duffman]

i would like something more persistent something to go after.

[Teek]

I agree with Hamma, I don't think any larger victory is all that great. I do think that their could be active stat tracking and aggregating allowing an empire to point out that it is winning (and possibly highlight faction imbalance, if any.)

I also think it's important that we take the old reviews with a grain of salt. They, and Planetside itself, are 8 years old now, and fps and online gaming were very different back then. I think that nowadays, with online fps games and mmos far more prevalent, people may warm up to PS:N a bit more in this regard.

[Warruz]

I still support a Meta game. Planetside doesn't have to have win conditions but it needs goals. I think Planetside can take two things from mythic in this respect.

The First is the Relic idea, this gives some constant to keep in mind.

The Other is the Siege the keep esc idea from WAR. Having a special scenario for pushing someone back so far to their sanctuary(picture trench warfare), but because this is planetside(a war of attrition) and cant end and essentially the entire war is to work the otherside down alot, this means alot of resources at disposile so you have a last stand scenario. This barrages the attacking side to essentially a reset.

[demise14]

I definitely think the sanctuary should open up for attack if one empire becomes base-less.

But only if they did it properly and made it out to be epic (with short cinematics or something). Maybe even have a text/email alert system to inform offline players (who agree to being alerted).

When one empire loses all their bases. The remaining two empires get the option to continue what they're doing (to insure some small battles will continue somewhere for people that don't want to take part) or to teleport back to their sanctuary and load onto an enormous aircraft carrier.

The defeated faction spawns at a heavily fortified facility in the sanctuary and awaits the impending beach assault (and gets a few minutes to prepare). Cue epic cinematic scene for all that are involved and have the carriers of both remaining factions set sail to the enemy sanctuary in real-time. The travel time should only take a couple minutes (this would build some crazy anticipation for the attackers).

The defenders by now will be dug into their sanctuary defenses and looking out to the sea to watch the giant carriers closing in.

Unlock the vehicle/air/boat terminals on the carriers and witness a battle so epic it would rival that of DDAY. And it should be the only time in the game where everyone only has 1 life so it doesn't drag on for days. Oh and make the carriers sinkable so the defenders can win and lock their sanctuary (defenders have infinite lives).

I'd play that shit.