What determines who wins more often? Player skill, Population, or Faction imbalance?

[elementHTTP]

Population imbalance and level of organization

[fierce deity]

Originally Posted by CraazyCanuck

Defense has to become just as vital as offense with the rewards to match or atleast be comparable. Other then a direct xp reward what if they implemented a hold bonus. The longer you fight in and hold an area from attack, the greater the rewards improve up to a maximum that makes sense? Or you receive a morale bonus in HP or some other buff that makes it worthwhile to stick to defense.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. It pisses me off every time I help regain control of a base then get no reward for doing so. Heck, I've been in tech plant fights where the attacking faction almost took the facility, then the defenders somehow managed to push the attackers completely out, with no reward. Time based base holding rewards would be great since it would give an incentive for sticking around to defend it. As you probably know, most bases become ghost towns after the battle is over.

Originally Posted by Gimpylung

Faction switching must have some kind of meaningful penalty, you should not be able to do it on a whim.

This issue need to be resolved before account wide unlocks are made available or chaos will ensue and empire balance will go to hell.

Base defences and attacks need to operate based on the same scoring as PS1... based on your contribution to the fight. You killed a load of people, rep'd gens, supported in general during a successful defence you get a huge proportional reward. Keep the existing 15% bonus for defenders too.

You were part of a big zerg that captured a base that had a squad defending it and you barely fired a shot, you get virtually no reward.

2 zergs meet in a base, big fight ensues, whoever wins the fight gets a big def/cap reward but everybody is happy because there was a big fight and people were earning regular XP anyways.

There are flaws with this idea but its better than only 15% defence bonus and no ultimate 'Defended' reward in conjunction with a 1000xp base cap bonus for just showing up at a ghosted zerg capture.

In the existing reward structure, your average casual player is just gonna join the zerg and get the free capture XP.

I would love to see such scoring implemented.

[Xaine]

The game just isn't good enough for enough people to play it.

At launch, when the game was 'worse' because of more bugs and issues etc thats when I had the best time.

There were enough people around to make all the glaring issues seem smaller.

I play Infantry almost exclusively, and its getting harder to score kills on your own because either you outnumber the enemy hugely, or they outnumber you.

There are some exceptions, but its not like it was at launch.

Its been months since the game came out, and there STILL isn't a good reason to fight.

No one gives a fuck about new helmets. If you can't think of anything else, bring back the PS1 lattice system. DO SOMETHING.

Server merges already. Something is clearly wrong, yet they refuse to do anything about it.

Classic SoE.

[MrBloodworth]

Originally Posted by Xaine

The game just isn't good enough for enough people to play it.

That's not true.

[Xaine]

Originally Posted by MrBloodworth

That's not true.

Then why are they having to merge servers.

Why is it that on most servers, only Indar has enough pop for a decent fight.

The facts are against you my friend.

[Omnimon]

Population > all , just like IRL . Skill and such helps but only gets you so far........ Just ask the Germans in WW2.......In this game #'s mean everything. You can have a squad of extremely skilled players and a commander that knows his stuff, but they won't hold out ( consistently ) against an entire platoon + . Besides if we'd have it such that smaller #'s + skill consistently holds out against entire platoons, there WILL be a ton of posts crying out for nerf XYZ tactic or weapon or such ( As we've seen with air, and now tanks , pretty soon it'll be HA and Maxes and LA ) . Players in general won't adapt to the situation from what I've seen . If they had I wouldn't be seeing the same people rushing the same areas over and over and over and over with the same class , load out , vehicle and tactics ( if any) . Its pretty rare that i'll see people switching their class/load out/ vehicle to adapt to the situation . Frankly as far as i can tell, if your doing that your probably in the top 5-10% for PS2 players in terms of skill .

This isn't like Quake 2/3 or such where an extremely skilled player CAN turn the tide of battle ( Springfield CTF servers ftw ) , given the nature of this game, the larger the battle the more important positioning is which means that with more bodies you can cover more different firing points along the front / area .

[MrBloodworth]

Originally Posted by Xaine

Then why are they having to merge servers.

Why is it that on most servers, only Indar has enough pop for a decent fight.

Natural progression of any online service. At launch demand is high, many servers are opened. Then it evens out as the hype is over. For many MMORPG's this does not matter, but for a PvP only game, population is content. So the servers are merged.

"Not good enough to play", is wrong, there are clearly people playing it.

[EVILPIG]

Originally Posted by Assist

You're speaking about weapon imbalance, and I disagree with all your opinions on the ranking of 'best'. As I said, weapon imbalance is hardly there at all, to the point that it's one of the last things that should be debated because of the amount the imbalance effects game play.

You brought up weapon imbalances. I didn't say that it was the "problem". I'm illustrating that the game is fairly balanced as far as strengths and weaknesses of each empire, which supports your view. But since you disagree with it so much, rate the empires in the same format I have. I would love to see your view on it.

[KaskaMatej]

Player skill averages out in big enough conflicts. Sure, a squad with good player will be able to take on two squads of average players, but with enough players, everything evens out.

Faction imbalance is also a small factor. There is enough sidegrades and good enough asymmetrical balance when there isn't a direct counter-part in other two factions.

Population, or at least faction population is the biggest factor of the three you mentioned. When one empire has very often below 30% total population, that is a big problem in overall balance. It becomes even worse if other two factions gang on the smallest because the third empire cannot defend nor attack in a successful manner so the players leave, making the imbalance even worse making even more people leave. Ganging up happen for on all three empires but it's worse for the least populated.

[ChrisLand]

Agreed with the OP.

Although player skill and balance can play a factor nothing sways a battle like population. Population balance = better game for all.

[Assist]

Originally Posted by EVILPIG

I would love to see your view on it.
Best infantry weapons - TR,VS,NC
Best MAX - NC,VS,TR
Best ESF - VS,TR,NC
Best Tank - TR,VS,NC

Well it's going to differ player to player is my guess, even by a small margin. Which is just a testament to the balance done originally by SoE.

Best infantry weapons - NC,VS,TR
Best MAX - NC,TR,VS
Best ESF - TR,VS,NC
Best Tank - TR,VS,NC

Really should start another thread about this, like I said above I think most people will have different opinions on it in one way or another.

[Pella]

Well said Assit.

And the PS2 forums are a joke and 90% of the people who post there are a complete joke also. Littered with what i call Scrubs.

Half the rants are from people with 1 week play time, And a terrible looking K/D.

Now K/D means nothing i know. But when your trying to put across a point. Then someone with absolutely no idea how to play this game, trys and explains to me. that they know best! gets right on my tit.

How can players like this argue a fact about any type of balance is beyond me.

Today, A BR21, With a -K/D Was arguing the fact that i have no idea about ESFs... And he knows best.

Jog on.

[Calisai]

Originally Posted by Kerrec

After GU2, most of my deaths were to NC BR10's or below using 1000 Cert weapons. To me, it's obvious. And I'm sure the NC and VS were seeing TR BR10's or below kill screens too..

This is a major pet peeve of mine. The amount of below BR10's I've encountered since GU2 is amazing (both killed and died to).

The reason it pisses me off is Mattherson was a pretty balanced server prior to GU2... primetime it was usually all three factions in the 30's, none higher or lower. Now VS is lucky to break 28% (during primetime) and I actually saw a record (for me noticing) of 17% the other night (albeit a few hours past primetime)

This on a supposedly medium population server. And yes... this is GLOBAL pop, not Indar pop or some other cont.

I expect to lose a fight when outpopped... but I also hope to be able to move somewhere else to fight somewhere I'm not outpopped... and the cycle of ghost/wiped due to overpop fight/ghost/overpop fight is getting old fast.


As for the weapon balance/vehicle balance/OP/UP, etc. Most fights come down to position, who sees who first and who has the most weapons firing on them.


Oh, and I lay the blame firmly at SOE's feet for this one. Whether the buffs/nerfs/warpgate switch were needed or whatever... I say having them all at the same large patch caused a huge PERCEPTION that VS was getting nerfed hard... and it's that PERCEPTION... whether correct or not... that causes the 4th empire to jump ship like the rats they are. If they had spread out everything over a few patches and given time to adjust... it might not have been so dramatic of pop swing.

[Xaine]

Originally Posted by MrBloodworth

Natural progression of any online service. At launch demand is high, many servers are opened. Then it evens out as the hype is over. For many MMORPG's this does not matter, but for a PvP only game, population is content. So the servers are merged.

"Not good enough to play", is wrong, there are clearly people playing it.

So you'd call the population of the game dropping by about 50% natural progression, would you?

[raw]

@Assist, yes it is complete bullshit what is being posted on the offical forums. the signal-to-noise ratio is so high, I can't bring myself to read it anymore. I wish RadarX would come down hard on all those people that post nothing but hyperbole 24/7.

PS2 isn't the only game plagued by these people: http://www.firefallthegame.com/commu...eedback.35147/

Regarding playerskill, the game is so demanding it all comes down to FPS i.e. the size of your rig. I guess in smaller areas that will be used for competition performance will be less of an issue, in which case we are left with Call of Duty in Space, so not too much in terms of playerskill. The farmability of infantry by vehicles in this game is reminiscent of CoD's doomcopters. Weapon handling is OKish, but nothing out of the ordinary.
There are some mind games involved around small (tiny) scale objective offense/defence, otherwise it comes down to tubespam pretty much. Turning this game into ESPORTS will be quite the challenge.