What if maps were constantly lost/created?

[Vancha]

This is a very loose concept that came to me after re-reading "The 1%" article on Rock/Paper/Shotgun

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008...netside-the-1/

He describes how fighting felt so much more important when their existence was on the line. Now obviously you couldn't have entire sides being destroyed, it'd be a player and development nightmare...but what if sides could be pushed back, beyond their home continents? What if sides could permanently gain bonuses for having taken ground?

I can think of a couple of ways this could happen...

For the first way, say TR lost all their bases and got pushed back to Sanc, four things would happen...

- A random map generator would produce two new home conts for TR below Cery and Fors.

- Cery and Fors would become neutral continents.

- NC would claim Oshur and VS would claim Searhus as home continents.

- Solsar and Amerish would disappear off the map, becoming inaccessible.



Now obviously the bonuses would have to be small, and possibly on a timer. Some randomly generated bonus that decreased weapon draw time by 1% or something. Over the years each side would change noticeably, but hopefully the bonuses would be small enough not to make things unfair.


The second way would be to have a progressing storyline of some kind. Perhaps every 3-4 months they aim to release a patch, and with it progress the story by doing something similar to the above, where the army that's done the worst gets pushed back and the other two armies get a slightly more substantial reward (a new weapon attachment or something).


This would of course need to be adapted to whatever shape Planetside Next takes, and there's some obvious issues that would need to be addressed, but I just think a constantly changing "map-scape" could keep the game fresh, keep people returning to the game and give some more importance to winning or losing a fight.