New WDS broken; Needs serious, immediate refinement

[Crator]

Defending is easier to get steady WDS points from. Go to a base your empire owns and there are enemies trying to take it. Allow the enemy to flip a point. Now flip the point back, wait for the capture timer to finish, and get the WDS points for defending. Rinse and repeat. WDS point values are not reset on a successful defend, only on a successful capture. So defenders get more points this way quicker because it is easier for them to do so.

Of course you must have enough friendly empire players needed to defend the location. The higher the WDS point reward is the more likely a larger force will attack it.

I'm guessing SOE was hoping people would realize the above and things would sort of balance out. But instead, we just got mindless zergs attacking for captures only, ignoring the defense aspect... I guess more players will start realizing this soon enough and change their methods.

[Babyfark McGeez]

Oh my god...they are still trying to shoehorn this arbitrary scoreboard mechanic into the game? What the heck is wrong with these people?

Since they started developing PS2 they keep playing to its weaknesses. "Let's take everything other games are doing better and put that into our game. Also let's not capitalize on the features that let this/PS1 stand out from the rest, infact let's flat out ignore everything remotely original or clever this game could offer."

It saddens me to see how they are constantly butchering the potential of this concept for the sake of being "casual daah *drool*" (tm).
Why take this franchise to defile it with this F2P, bland, call of duty shit? Just make a battlefield online instead with some generic, shitty name, like "fightforce" or "warfield" or whatever. That would atleast be an honest description of this "game" and we could keep our fond memories of "Planetside" without knowing its annoying, obnoxious, loud and dumb jock stepbrother is running around ruining the name for everyone.

And this is not some "elitist i'm too good for casual shooting" rant. Infact, i'm totally fine with such games exisiting. But mind you, this was the ONLY fucking "high budget" fps game that was (supposed to be) different.
But no. Conform, confooorm!

You know at this point i only have two possible explanations for this behaviour:

1) Every tiny little detail in this game's development has to be signed off by this guy:



2) There is some kind of fraud scheme going on here, where they are intentionally screwing up this project. Like in "The Producers", just with video games. And possibly with matthew broderick.

BRRRFFFF *makes farting sound with hand* Hopefully there is some game left when they finally add the basic, core game mechanic with hossin/intercontinental warfare. Rant over.

[almalino]

Usually I get 5-8 WDS point for capture but once I pressed Instant Action , deployed on some arbitrary AMP station that we NC were attacking I think and after 2 minutes being there I get 100 freaking WDS points.

Any explanation of that? I want to repeat that

[Emperor Newt]

Originally Posted by Crator

Defending is easier to get steady WDS points from. Go to a base your empire owns and there are enemies trying to take it. Allow the enemy to flip a point. Now flip the point back, wait for the capture timer to finish, and get the WDS points for defending. Rinse and repeat. WDS point values are not reset on a successful defend, only on a successful capture. So defenders get more points this way quicker because it is easier for them to do so.

That's a nice theory but only works if everybody is aware of that (which will never be the case) or when you have an organized group. And in the later case one could argue if this isn't stats padding. Not that I say it is or that it is a bad thing. With their freakishly arbitrary scoring system they basically enforces such behavior with being completely oblivious how people play games and especially how the John and Jane Doe plays PS2. The result is what we see now.
If this "ideal defense flipping" was their intention for people to go for (which I think gives them way too much credit considering how f*ed up their scoring systems have been in the past) then it still runs contrary to what the game should be (better: is) about. Like actually defeating the enemy and driving it out of the territory. Not playing capture point ping-pong.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by Emperor Newt

That's a nice theory but only works if everybody is aware of that (which will never be the case) or when you have an organized group.

Not a theory, it works that way. I've seen it happen while I was playing. It didn't happen on purpose but rather my empire simply was able to successfully defend multiple times at the same location. Each time defense was successful we got awarded the amount of WDS points that the base gave out, and the points value on the location was not reset after the defense.

Successfully defend means the enemy started the capture timer but the empire who owns it was able to flip the timer and wait for it to complete which then initiates an on-screen indicator that the location was defended.

It doesn't have to happen to locations that have a high point value, but it can. What I mean is, you could have a location that only gives out 5 WDS points. There might not be a big push from the enemy to capture it but let's say there is one enemy trying to take it. You could go defend the location and get 5 WDS points over and over again if the enemy stays and keeps flipping a capture point. That's more lucrative then trying to capture a location for hours and not get any WDS points. Of course, the same is true for any defense size. Meaning, if you have 48+ zerg of enemies going after a location that has a point value of 50 or above and you counter that with a 48+ zerg of your empire troops you all could be getting 50 WDS points every time the location is defended successfully. Defense is more lucrative as long as there are enough players to successfully defend it.

[CheeZeX]

Originally Posted by Crator

Not a theory, it works that way. I've seen it happen while I was playing. It didn't happen on purpose but rather my empire simply was able to successfully defend multiple times at the same location. Each time defense was successful we got awarded the amount of WDS points that the base gave out, and the points value on the location was not reset after the defense.

Successfully defend means the enemy started the capture timer but the empire who owns it was able to flip the timer and wait for it to complete which then initiates an on-screen indicator that the location was defended.

It doesn't have to happen to locations that have a high point value, but it can. What I mean is, you could have a location that only gives out 5 WDS points. There might not be a big push from the enemy to capture it but let's say there is one enemy trying to take it. You could go defend the location and get 5 WDS points over and over again if the enemy stays and keeps flipping a capture point. That's more lucrative then trying to capture a location for hours and not get any WDS points. Of course, the same is true for any defense size. Meaning, if you have 48+ zerg of enemies going after a location that has a point value of 50 or above and you counter that with a 48+ zerg of your empire troops you all could be getting 50 WDS points every time the location is defended successfully. Defense is more lucrative as long as there are enough players to successfully defend it.

This is 100% on the money. The problem is more people just aren't aware of it. That and the WDS rewards are kinda crappy, but I'm sure a big tug of war battle will make anyone happy regardless of rewards.

[Belhade]

The problem with that tactic is that you need to ensure your defense is up to the task of recapturing. That isn't going to be nearly as reliable as being part of the attacking zergforce which would just back off and look for another base to hit (under the current game conditions).

[Emperor Newt]

Originally Posted by Crator

Not a theory, it works that way.

I did not doubt that it works. I doubt that it is actually feasible for most of the players/fights. To make this work the defenders do not only be able to push the enemy out again and again (so have the upper hand anyway) but also need to deliberately not go for enemy sunders and deliberately not push the enemy out of the hex but instead give the enemy time to regroup and push again.
It only works if the defenders do not play the game how it is supposed to be played. And it doesn't work in pretty much every fight that is not driven exclusively by outfits/people who are organized and know about this. It might happen in a few singular instances by pure chance, but for pretty much all fights going on this simply isn't an option.
And even if more people know about this then players will have an even bigger incentive to only attack undefended bases as they don't want to give free WDS points to the enemy and/or be stuck in an endless loop that doesn't yield any points for them. It might be a nice farming option right now for people who know how to do it, but as a gameplay mechanic (which I guess was introduced to create fun and fair fights) it is broken by design and cannot work.

[typhaon]

All any WDS scoring system does is emphasize what PS2 will apparently never be...

Counting points is NOT fun.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by Emperor Newt

I did not doubt that it works. I doubt that it is actually feasible for most of the players/fights.

As a test I logged in with the express intent to gather WDS points using this defense method. I found a large enemy force working it's way to one of our biolabs on Esamir that had 30 WDS points on it. I got 30 WDS points from an early bird that had flipped one of the points in the biolab and we quickly flipped it back. The enemy zerg was too much for another one though. We did not have a counter zerg to continue in this fashion.

I moved on to Amerish, this time an Amp Station that we owned with 30 WDS points. 1-12 enemies showing on adjacent hex they were about to capture. I went to the base and waited for them to break the shields and capture the point. They were showing around 12-24 count and so were we now. They took the point and we quickly took it back. There was a little bit of fighting and I even killed a max at the point but overall it was pretty boring. So, I got another 30 WDS points there too. The enemy was having a hard time getting back to the point to flip it again though. Like you said, everyone else has to know to allow them to flip it again. I even tried to tell them in chat to do just that but I don't think they were listening.

So in the end I got 60 WDS points and that all took about 20 minutes. But, like I said, the waiting part sucks... But if people really want to farm WDS points, defense is the way to go as long as you can keep the enemy flipping the point and taking it back. Or just hunt around for where the enemy is striking next and grab those quick points like I did above. But that's trying to do it solo. Finding a small fight might be best for solo stuff.