Footholds Archetypes: "Food for Thought"

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Dagron

Just finished reading the OP, still working on the manifesto... a little much to absorb at once, but it'll sink in.

So far it gave me some insight on home continents and continent connections.

I'm starting to get why people are suggesting that all 3 factions shouldn't have footholds on every continent... and how much fun it could be to push empires back, kick them out of one continent after another, making their territory shrink until they're cornered into their homes.

Glad it's helpful in understanding. They're difficult concepts, especially without playing the game!

And yes people really liked that dynamic, and it was fun. I personally really liked it. It's why a lot of folks around here want to see home continents again and better lattice linking. I wanted that at first also, but after a while I came to conclude that it won't work out with the current 3 continents.


However, there is a darker side to it which I dont' go into in the manifesto that has become apparent to me more recently - downtime & staleness.

It created a lot of stalemates and had downtime. People would leave continents that were being lost, and many times the last several bases that you took on the continent were uneventful. It would waste quite a lot of play time. It was also very hard to crack into a continent without a full invasion force staged from sanctuary.

And it also led to only seeing a small portion of the game world without a lot of variety. It was the same battles, same bases, same opponent, same continent, day after day. We mostly only saw 4 continents and small pieces of the others. Only seeing that small portion of the game world made the game seem stale. Day-night will help a lot with that, but so will having a presence on every continent. Always something different to do and if you want to change things up you can.

The footholds help alleviate those challenges and make it easier to attack. It also allows you to see more of the game world, which is particularly important when you only have 3 continents. PS1 had 10 continents at launch. If we only had 3 continents and a locking mechanism, the game world will be very small, the global strategy would be simple with so few continents, and I don't think it would pan out well.

But once we get more continents down the road...well, maybe we can revisit PS1-style continent invasions and locks and linking. I'd like to take a new stab at it with the PS2 mechanics and see what works out, but as other posters in this thread have indicated...we need more than 3.


If you're curious about more, I had a few threads in the Idea Forum where I discussed some of the global & continental strategy elements and how to bring them into the current game design.


Here's the PS1 metagame & Global Strategy issues mapped onto PS2's known design:
http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=36476


Continental benefits & domination and reasons to fight on one continent vs another:
http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=36627

Facility Benefits and how they can make for more interesting continental strategy:
http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=36780


So if you want to drink from the fire hose, there you go! Lot of thoughts and relation to global and continental strategy there and learnings from PS1 onto PS2.