So You Can't Kick a Faction Out?

[CidHighwind]

Originally Posted by Zolan

The solution is quite simple.

1 foothold per faction, based on a single "home" continent for that faction.

This means that a faction can be completely pushed off of a continent, but they will still, always, have a single foothold on the home continent to fall back to.

All other warp gates, and those on non-home continents would be neutral and could be used by anyone to get from one continent to the other corresponding continents.

The current foothold system makes the entire game seem like a series of small wars which are boxed into single continent arenas, as you can NEVER push the enemy off of the continent no matter how hard you try.

Players need to feel like they are making progress in the big picture, and moving from one location to the next because they have won several victories over the other factons. Rather than fighting over the same bases every single day for an eternity, there needs to be movement across the overall map and the different environments.

The home foothold system as I've suggested would allow the factions to have one final unconquerable redoubt, but still allow the iconic continent locks and map locks from the original Planetside that made it feel like you had actually "won" something over the other factions.

Hopefully the current foothold system gets changed by launch, as it's going to be a complete letdown if they go forward with it.

This. 'Nuf said. Make it happen devs.

[ArmedZealot]

Originally Posted by CidHighwind

This. 'Nuf said. Make it happen devs.

Home continent poplocked. Other empire's home continents cont locked. What now?

[megamold]

Originally Posted by Mechzz

But there is a hard lock of 666 empire players on each. So if the other 2 continents already have 666 each on them, how can you spawn there when you lose the third continent?

Remember, if this game is as successful as we all hope, the servers will be full!

yeah full servers will indeed be a problem i think, but thats an entirely different discussion

personally i think that a server will have a pop limit of about 8000 ( wich is 2000 more then the max for all continents ) this would average out to anywhere between 4000 and 6000 players on a day fluctuating between low and high pop.

this way to continents are never really full but are always populated.
you might see a locked continent but there should always be one that has some room

edit: disclaimer : i'm no mathemetician, i'm just geussing at the numbers here

@satch : just make sure your blade doesnt fall off the hilt you ducktape using barbarian

[Mechzz]

Last post of the day.

As long as there are only 3 continents, each with a hard capacity limit of 666 players per empire then pushing an empire off one leaves up to 666 players with nowhere to play. They will need to go to another server. Another server where they may not have their characters levelled up, or they may get separated from their outfits.

Once there are more than 3 continents, then sure, we can start to think about continent locking so we can at least have some 2-way fights for a while, but as long as a lock means ruining an evening's play, I for one hope it is not allowed.

[megamold]

Originally Posted by Mechzz

Last post of the day.

As long as there are only 3 continents, each with a hard capacity limit of 666 players per empire then pushing an empire off one leaves up to 666 players with nowhere to play. They will need to go to another server. Another server where they may not have their characters levelled up, or they may get separated from their outfits.

Once there are more than 3 continents, then sure, we can start to think about continent locking so we can at least have some 2-way fights for a while, but as long as a lock means ruining an evening's play, I for one hope it is not allowed.

they will set up the server population in such a way that everyone should always have a continent to spawn on

it worked for ps1 , i dont see why it wouldnt for ps2

[Satch]

Originally Posted by Mechzz

Last post of the day.

As long as there are only 3 continents, each with a hard capacity limit of 666 players per empire then pushing an empire off one leaves up to 666 players with nowhere to play. They will need to go to another server. Another server where they may not have their characters levelled up, or they may get separated from their outfits.

Once there are more than 3 continents, then sure, we can start to think about continent locking so we can at least have some 2-way fights for a while, but as long as a lock means ruining an evening's play, I for one hope it is not allowed.

I think the devs will be aware of issues like this, as mentioned before this is a different topic to OP. Original had like 3 servers and was barely ever a wait to get on and never a problem getting on pretty much any continent. With the new game im sure this will still be the case as the engine is alot better and id asume the networking etc will be alot better.

edit: lol, u beat me to it this time mega. This means WAAAAAARGHH!!!

[Raymac]

I've said it in other threads about this topic, but I'll repeat it here. The chances of stagnation are LESS likely in Planetside 2 because we are not pigeon holed into where we can fight by the lattice network. The Hex system alone will have a profound effect on the ebbs and flows of the battles.

[Xyntech]

Just keep in mind that 10 servers at 500 players each in PS1 was 5000 players total. That means if there were more than 5000 on a server at one time, a lot of people didn't get to play.

Planetside 2 is planning to ship with 3 continents at 2000 players per. That's 1000 more players per server.

The game simply needs to have enough servers. If you have too few, players will always have to wait during peak hours, no matter how many continents you have.

The ideal server number will probably tend to have 5000 players per server (at launch, before more continents are added), with the remaining 1000 slots providing slack for slightly higher peaks than usual. Those missing 1000 will also provide the opportunity for one empire to focus more on one or two continents instead of all 3, so I don't think getting pushed off of a continent will be so unheard of. They may just not stay pushed off for very long.

[Zolan]

Alright, back from class.

I'll attempt to better explain what I was proposing earlier with some pictures of the original Planetside.

Let's assume that PS2 will later have somewhere around 9 continents like the original. Rather than each continent having three unchanging footholds, I would suggest that there only be a single faction foothold on a single continent which would be the faction "home" continent.

So this would be the idea...

- 1 home continent per faction (w/ 1 Foothold and 3 Warp gates connected to various nearby continents)
- All other continents (w/ 4 Warp gates connected to various nearby continents)

For instance, the VS Sanctuary warp gate on THIS picture of Hossin would instead be the single VS foothold. This would be the final fall-back (as far as ownership) for the Vanu Sovereignty. On this home continent there would be three warp gates which connected to three other continents based on proximity. In this case those would be Ceryshen, Solsar, and Oshur.

This would allow the faction to attack any of these other continents via any connected warp gate available on the home continent. So, being stuck on one side of a continent because of your foothold location wouldn't be a problem unless, perhaps, you chose to take those hex locations nearest to the initial warp gates off of the home continent. Perhaps a small bonus to capture speed could be given to the locations closest to the warp gate from a continent that your faction owned, but that isn't important.

What I'm proposing is a kind of warp gate web or lattice for traversing continents, but not for capturing bases. Once on the continent you can capture whatever base you feel is more important to your strategy.

For instance, you would enter Oshur via the Hossin gate in THIS picture, but once on the continent you could capture any base/hex locations you wanted. The same would be true for the other continents attached to the home continent. You have to enter via one location, but you can capture anything you want once you get there.

You could even just hop past the continent entirely and take another warp gate to a continent which was two jumps from your home continent, like Foresal, Amerish, or Esamir. In other words, you would be able to attack any continent, anywhere, at any time. Rather than attack the same continent from the same foothold direction, all of the time, for all of eternity.

In response to the whole "I'm not going to have anywhere to spawn if we get pushed back to the home continent" argument, just run with the idea and maybe have two home continents or perhaps an orbital space station with launch pods for each faction so that you can occasionally (maybe once every 10 minutes) drop onto any open area of any continent at any time.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by I SandRock

My concern is continent rotating. You go to an empty continent and start taking over everything. As soon as you get serious opposition you just go to the next empty continent. I know this happened in PS1 but with lockouts and lay lines you couldn't do this in such a fashion, you could still push forward as an empire and keep things secured. Unless they expect all 3 continents to be fully in use all of the time due to server populations, so each continent would basically be a semi-server within the main server.

I expect at least two of the continents to have moderate to heavy use 24/7, with one or two of the continents becoming underpopulated during off hours.

But during those off hours, if one group decides to go hack thee emptier continent while nobody is looking, some of their enemies could respond and create some awesome smaller scale fights.

It's really pretty much the same thing as PS1 in a lot of ways, except with each PS2 continent being like 3 PS1 continents put together. Some dynamics will be new, many will be the same.

[Raka Maru]

Don't forget, no lattice, so no need to attack near any warpgate. You can choose to attack anywhere anytime, especially on a new continent.

Footholds may tend to cause you to attack the next hex, but a smart big outfit can go anywhere and establish a good base.

[ElectroEsper]

-Wrong tread-

[Meriv]

Originally Posted by Raka Maru

Don't forget, no lattice, so no need to attack near any warpgate. You can choose to attack anywhere anytime, especially on a new continent.

Footholds may tend to cause you to attack the next hex, but a smart big outfit can go anywhere and establish a good base.

And here is where ps1 and ps2 difference will kick in, we can compare ps1 with blitzgrieg, fast attack outfits using veicles to move, infantry fights mainly indoors , the distances are quite big so walkings is not a good option

now lets see ps2 there is less space beetween facilities(or better to say there are a lot more facilities) a lot more players, veicles cost resources to fight for soo not spammeable for trasport; it is easy to walk/advance from one outpost to another. Plus the hexagon rule(time cap determined by how many confinant zones you have) that means behind lines cap realy hard plus tablet/pc app to monitor ingame.

Less ttk, more spawn . I call this a POSITION WAR just like ww1. That is the reason of the footholds because if you loose the continet it wil, be near imposible with the game rules like now to regain it, the enemy not only play in defense, knows from where you come, when you are coming, and has 1/6 of the time you got for recapturing, I call that imposible.

[Hamma]

Originally Posted by NivexQ

I honestly believe that the footholds aren't going to work, and that Sanctuaries will be added in Beta. I'm prepared to put my foot on my mouth if it turns out im wrong though.

Be sure to put some salt on it just in case

[Malorn]

I don't think footholds are the issue at all so much as only having 3 continents that are designed for a 3-way stalemate.

The footholds are an optimization of BWGs & Sanctuaries. I'd like to rotate those gates around, but apart from that I think the concept is correct and will lead to more streamlined invasions and encourage pulling vehicles when you have little to no territory on a continent.

The thing I dislike is that there's nothing to really look forward to in successful conquest. In PS1 it was the locks so you got the benefit and had a tangible victory. It also opened up a new continent for attack so you got a change of scenery.

In PS2 it's pretty much the same scenery, and if you don't like it you can move to one of the other continents, where your empire will likely be in the same position it was in several hours ago.

The map changed in PS1 throughout the day. I don't think the PS2 map is going to change all that much throught the day.

Only having 3 continents hurts, I hope adding more is a top priority. Once we have more they can start doing more interesting things with them. For a start it isn't bad, but I really worry that we're going to get really sick of having the same fight along the same handful of territories against the same opponent day after day. The day/night cycle will add some variety to that, but that will only take us so far.