Gameplay: Rogue Regions

[Garem]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

Having it only be an occasionally accessible area would solve most of the issues I have with it.

It's not that you couldn't find a balance between balance and reward, it's that it would be too fine a line, which would take way more dev time to balance it than would be worth the return on overall gameplay value added.

If there is too much reason to go there, it detracts from the giant battles of the rest of the game. The very thing F2P is trying to solve, this system would hurt. Then again, if it weren't interesting enough to take players away from the fight, the region would be underpopulated and it would be a waste of resources to have developed in the first place, like the caves ended up being in PS1.

But putting it like an event would certainly work. For one thing, you could have the region used for it also be used for other events, such as PvE battle scenarios, where all three empires team up against ai controlled monsters. You would get a lot of use out of the region by using it for many events, without hurting the ordinary battles during non event times. The ordinary game wouldn't suffer and developer time wouldn't be wasted.

It just dawned on me- this balancing would/could actually be quite easy. Simply make the available resources or resource extraction rate be directly parallel to the number of players on the continent.

So if there are 100,000 units of W, X, Y, and Z resources with 100 players you'd have 150,000 units of those resources with 150. Or add a slight increasing return, thus incentivizing greater activity levels (100k with 100, 155k with 150, and 215k with 200...).

Anyways, what is it about Planetside that means it must at all times be a game with 3 factions against one another in balance? I'm somewhat confused at how that argument can get thrown around with no qualifications whatsoever! We need not be pigeonholed nor have creativity stifled with such a fantastic opportunity for game experimentation as we are afforded by a truly novel game like Planetside.