Losing side will be discouraged...

MrVicchio · 2002-11-11, 02:16 PM

I have noted, based on responses ot my thread about a nuke event in game... a line of thought that is.. bothering me a tad here.

It seems some people are afriad of a dominate empire, and the effect that is going to have on the losing side. in my example, one side would get to nuke another sides base, just one, and take it. That seem to provoke fears of demoralizing the oppostition.

How to word this...

If anyone thinks the servers are going to be balanced, your nutz. there will be a dominate empire, period. Its just human nature. Too many people don't want to play on the losing side. If say one Empire starts to win, new people will start playing THAT empire, unless there is a cap in place, but even then, one empire is gonna be percieved as the Dominate empire, and people will flock there.

Some one is gonna lose, and I think you will see a few situations where on a server, one side tottaly looks like the french during WWII and loses VERY fast. Its going to happen.

what then to do about it?

I say nadda. Why do anything about it? They already have stated a few examples of enticements they will offer to people to switch empires to the underdog, there are those of us who LIKE the challenge, and use the loss to get fired up to make a come back.

Look, I think the big thing here is, there are gonna be losers in this fight, big time losers. And there are gonna be big time winners. Don't worry about it, eventually it will even out, and then a new power house will arise. Any gamer that quits because his side in a fluid game like this is losing, would find some other reason to flee just as fast.

If your side gets its but handed to it, then use that to motivate yourself and others to return the favor vistited upon you. Otherwise, don't even bother playing.

War isn't nice, not even the Virtual ones....

Hamma · 2002-11-11, 02:38 PM

Well they will not let an empire be anihilated, because thats not what the game is about. Its about a constant war, for example the home bases cannot be capped or attacked.

There will be things placed that take the heat off of an empire that is loosing badly. For example if you start attacking an area that already has a high level of friendlys you dont get many BEPs or CEPs. So why keep attacking it?

�io · 2002-11-11, 02:44 PM

Well as you said some of us like the challenge of joining a losing team. I know i won't be switching teams to go to the winning side, far from it.

But this raises an interesting point. Can your player decide to switch camps? I would hate to lose my character i leveled up for months just because i have to switch to the losing team to have some fun.

MrVicchio · 2002-11-11, 02:48 PM

Yeah, I think it was the PSI dev chat correct me if i am wrong, that addressed this. You CAN switch if one empire is losing bad, that would help keep the populations even.

Validuz · 2002-11-11, 02:49 PM

As far as I understand it... theres actually a /curve/ so-to-speak so people will be encouraged to switch to the losing empire because their BEPs will go up faster..

correct me if im wrong.

Hamma · 2002-11-11, 02:55 PM

In a sense you are correct. More battles, more enemies = more BEP's and CEP's

I think empire switching will not be done on the fly tho, like you cant switch in the morning then go back in the evening

Tobias · 2002-11-11, 02:59 PM

Guess im lucky that im Vanu and Vanu are going to win.

Lexington_Steele · 2002-11-11, 03:25 PM

The losing side won't have it that tough.

Which ever side is losing will probably have the smallest front to worry about. It will also see a greater % of its troops in a smaller area. It will have a smaller percentage of the continents, but it will still be able to win a good amount of battles.

jamikey · 2002-11-11, 04:04 PM

Good post. I don't believe that most people would flock towards the winners. I know i wouldn't at least. ANd you are right there will be huge losers, and even bigger winners. I've been keeping up on alot of future games that are in beta right now. And one of the games is called shadow bane. A huge faction is trying to dominate the Whole darn game ,but all the little one are rising aganist it and causing huge probs for the big one. I think maybe we might see allainces formed for a certain battle ( if thats aloud).

MrVicchio · 2002-11-11, 04:16 PM

I am basing all of this of course, from FPS expeirence, and DAoC, the only MMORPG so far that has similarites.

Look at CS or DoD, if the server doesnt have auto balance, there are always people that unbalance the teams in favor of the dominating side.

Flashingfish · 2002-11-11, 04:25 PM

Dosen't anyone know that the losing side gets bonuses?

And believe me, you will rarely have a huge battle, if you take into consideration the size of the continents. If you do a mission, it's not guaranteed enemies will be there. And it's even less likely that the whole of another empire's men will be there.

It'll be fair enough.

Hamma · 2002-11-11, 05:16 PM

Originally posted by Flashingfish
Dosen't anyone know that the losing side gets bonuses?

This is true

CrazyMike · 2002-11-11, 05:22 PM

Probably just a case of poor wording but..

If say one Empire starts to win, new people will start playing THAT empire, unless there is a cap in place, but even then, one empire is gonna be percieved as the Dominate empire, and people will flock there.

If there is a cap.. how exactly will people STILL flock there?

Oh and just for the record..

Yeah, I think it was the PSI dev chat correct me if i am wrong, that addressed this.

The dev chat was organized by me on behalf of the whole community, not PSI. It just so happened at the time that PSI was the only place to post about it.

As for the topic..

In a game like DAoC you did see a lot of people flocking to one side when it was perceived that realm was winning. It was more than that though.. they quite often flocked there because it was also percieved that realm was the better one. You see when you talk about ballance you need to talk about more than just the amount of people. The game itself has to be balanced well and it needs to be that way right out of the box. It took DAoC far too long to ballance the realms.

PS has something that DAoC didn't though. (Not sure about now since I only played the first 8 months or so after release) In PlanetSide they are going to offer up incentives to the sides that are lower in player population. What this is going to mean in the actual game no one truely knows. It may mean that instead of flocking to winning empires, they flock to the losing ones instead.. Only time will tell.

CrazyMike

MrVicchio · 2002-11-11, 05:27 PM

I ment that new people, who read online that X Empire is teh bomb will find a server that hasn't been capped. Sometimes I get carried away whilst typing.

Balance of course is the key, i didn't want to mention DAoC because the DAoC solution to realm balance was to NERF one realm and ENHANCE another. Which, is one reason among many I quit that POS game.

I have the highest hopes for PS and please dont get me wrong, I just have a principle that makes me seem rather crass.

"People Suck"

Plain and Simple.

BTW I just remembered reading that Dev Chat somewhere. Props to you for making it happen.

Splatter · 2002-11-11, 07:30 PM

I can't speak for everyone else, but if my empire is dominating, I'd actually want to switch empires. My reasons why:

1. I like a challenge

2. More enemies to kill (if the winning side has more players)

3. More leadership opportunities / CEP's (if the side is doing so badly, they'll want a fresh leader)

I'd suspect most of the top-notch players would want to switch sides too, because once that losing side gets back up to the par, they'll have gained an enormous amount of B/CEP's in the process.

BTW, this is my first post here, although I've been ghosting around a few forums for a couple weeks. Some info about me:

Been playing FPS's on-line since doom 2 on a 9600 baud modem

Played competitively in a vast amount of games in different leagues/competitions, mostly FPS, some strategy.

Can't wait to see how this game turns out!