Unique bases that affect every continent

[The Janitor]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

There has been quite a lot of discussion on a variety of these types of idea.

Orbital Strikes from the first game are not a good benchmark to measure balance from. Originally they were balanced against the fact that there wouldn't be that many players who had CR5. Then eventually practically everyone had CR5. Not well thought out.

While something like "+5% to xp" may not be the most motivational thing, having more general bonuses that apply to everyone in the empire without giving them something potentially unbalanced would be the direction to go.

I do see your point, however, since everyone had CR5s with Orbital Strikes, it sorta balanced itself out. It might have taken the "cool" part away with so many being used, but it's not as if it broke the game or anything.

[Xyntech]

It went from a tactical strike, where players would communicate to CR5's the locations of enemy AMS's and other priority targets, to a spam weapon for some free kills. 'Better use it asap, so it can finish cooling down quicker so that you can get some more free kills.'

Not everyone did it, but it certainly wasn't any kind of balanced when you compare it to any other way of getting kills in the game, even the more killwhorish ways.

[The Janitor]

And yet anyone could get it. If may have been annoying to use for killspam, but all factions could do the same thing. That is balance, even if what was being balanced was still annoying as hell. And yes, it was very cheap, especially when all you had to do to get it was grind for xp and it was handed to you.

The artillery base idea requires that you fight for it. You're not getting it for free, and certainly not very easily, and even when you use it you're not guaranteed to get any kills. Not only that, but when you do use it, you might not be able to use it again the next time the cooldown is up. Or heck, just let the players who can activate it only do so once per capture AND stick a cooldown on it, so you can't just swap the base really fast and use it again. Another way to balance and make it more rare is to have only certain continents be able to use it at the time of capture. The chosen continents rotate randomly perhaps, and if you're on a benefiting continent and if your faction has the arty base, then you get to use it. That makes it a little too scarce, imo, but it's an idea.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by Shlomoshun

While this seems like a good meta-game type of implementation, the thing I'm really struggling with, and why I burned out on PS1 in the old days is figuring out what to do for eldergame/endgame...etc. Once people are pretty well geared, all that's really left is capping bases, which is exactly when I burned out on PS1...I had tried out most specs, picked what I liked to do, and done it a ton. Not much left to do from there on.

You've got two scenarios, the way i see it. The MMO route, which essentially puts no 'winning' condition on empires, but provides so many meta-game types of gameplay like you listed that there's always more to achieve, along with the straightforward capping hexes/bases. This takes develpment money and such to keep churning out new content.
The other route is a FPS type win condition, which allows for some endgame overall goals, but comes with it's own list of downsides as well. (4th empire, etc...)

But the basics of your post are taht Base/hex capping is eventually going to get old, no doubt about it, so what can they provide to keep us interested for years is the big question.

One way that traditional MMO's do it is by providing 'daily and weekly quests'. By putting into the mission system some daily's or weekly's that would provide unique resources to buy unique things, that would keep people striving to do those thigns for a long period of time...
Just a thought.

The meta game is the end game. If you take part in empire command or occasionally be a continent comannder you are participating in the end game.

[Xyntech]

Sorry, but that's exactly the attitude towards "balance" that plagued Planetside from conception to present.

'Heavy Assault is balanced, because all 3 sides have reasonably balanced HA,' ignoring that most of the important fights happened in poorly made indoor structures which often rendered many other weapons nearly useless, or that bolt drivers were only 'balanced' because they were common pool.

If this were the case, then any game where everyone on either side can use anything would be automatically "balanced." Why should Valve bother to balance TF2, or Hi-Rez bother to balance Tribes Ascend? Both sides in those games can use every class and weapon, so it doesn't matter if one thing is overpowered, right?

A well balanced game has to have weapons and vehicles that are balanced against other weapons and vehicles that fill other roles, not just balanced against what the enemy team has access to (although faction specific equipment does make balancing those particular items that much more critically important). That's where I think Planetside 2 is going to go very right, with things like the fact that they are taking base layout into account when balancing the game. Map design has always been a key component of game balance, but unfortunately the original game was too hard coded and locked in to do much about that problem.

Obviously players will adapt and overcome to underpowered equipment, and Planetside was a great testament to that fact, but that doesn't make the overpowered or underpowered equipment any more balanced.

Also, giving sole access to said equipment to a single side, no matter what the conditions are, is begging for problems. There have been many discussions of ways to deal with the problem of the rich get richer issue, and giving such a powerful weapon to every member of an empire for holding a specific territory would be giving huge amounts of power to an already powerful side.

Add in the problem of people wanting to swap to that empire to gain access to the artillery. Even if you make it so that only people who were there when the capture went through get it, people would just log off and switch sides early when they knew one side was about to gain the territory.

Maybe the idea could work if it met some strict conditions. For example:

- There was another form of artillery that all empires could set up and use at all times that was comparable, but different than the benefit artillery.
- Calling in the benefit artillery also cost a significant payment of resources, possibly in addition to a cool down

That way it would be more like an alternative to a deployed artillery system, where you would just have the advantage of being able to fire it at a moments notice if you were willing to spend the resources required.

I like the idea of places that really make empires want to have drag out fights, but you have to temper that with never giving one side an unhealthy advantage, or damage the balance of population numbers either.

Keeping the populations relatively in balance is why it's a bad idea to give one side a new piece early for meeting some 'win' condition. Players would rush to the side who got the new toy to try it. You see this behavior in many games where new content is unlocked, a flood of players using that new item.

If one side gets a new ES item, all 3 sides need to get a comparable new item at the same time. If it's a new common pool item, it needs to be available to all. No continental or base benefit should ever be so good as to imbalance the sides or so fun as to encourage players to abandon their side and join the side that has it either.

Balance takes many forms, and for all the things I hope Planetside 2 keeps from the original game, the original games sense of balance is certainly not one of them.

The trick is to find that sweet spot I guess. Something that will make players really want to fight tooth and nail over certain places without otherwise disrupting the game. It may end up being that the current resource system will already do the job. Hard to say until we get our hands on the game.

Until then, it's still worthwhile kicking around these ideas, even if we disagree about certain points.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

There has been quite a lot of discussion on a variety of these types of idea.

Orbital Strikes from the first game are not a good benchmark to measure balance from. Originally they were balanced against the fact that there wouldn't be that many players who had CR5. Then eventually practically everyone had CR5. Not well thought out.

While something like "+5% to xp" may not be the most motivational thing, having more general bonuses that apply to everyone in the empire without giving them something potentially unbalanced would be the direction to go.

Funny you shoud say that but there were way more OS's in 2005 than there were in the latter years.

You can tell a vet from those times by looking at the veh pad of a Bio Lab. If a player now, joins the queue for a vehicle and then goes and takes cover in the wall stairway, he's old time.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by ringring

Funny you shoud say that but there were way more OS's in 2005 than there were in the latter years.

You can tell a vet from those times by looking at the veh pad of a Bio Lab. If a player now, joins the queue for a vehicle and then goes and takes cover in the wall stairway, he's old time.

Don't forget constant infiltrator boomers, flail spam and the occasional liberator. Good times

[The Janitor]

As you pointed out, most fights usually end in the cramped hallways of a building. The artillery would not be so useful there, and would in fact be detrimental to the assaulting force. I don't have a problem with one faction getting a temporary benefit that the others don't get, that's what makes it worth fighting for; it's an advantage. You can scale it way down to prevent it from being the "I win" button, but something unique is something that people will really want to go for.

I agree that if it's too good or too spammed, it'll cause problems, but giving a faction a reward for fighting hard that is plainly visible is something that I believe will really drive players toward wanting. It's why people wanted the largest shoulder pads or most oversized weapon in WoW, it's a visual aspect that people can see, something that will make people know what you did. That sort of mentality can be applied here with global changes to a single faction that controls a hard-won objective.

Also, the sheer size of PS2 in comparison to PS1 will reduce the effectiveness of any mass-attack weapons, including the OS. There will be so much land and so many more things to fight over, that more gameplay-changing bonuses will not be so easily able to steamroll everyone else. I also do not believe that everyone will simply switch to the side with the global bonuses the second they get them, but instead congregate around the source of said bonus to take it away from the enemy and grant it to their side. I think there's going to be a lot of factional loyalty going on, same as there was with PS1.

And yeah, discussion fuels healthy idea creation and competition. Progress!

[Sabot]

The thread started to feed me walls of text near the end so I didn't read all of it, so I'm sorry if this has been suggested already :P

But what about if we give all factions some kind of giant robot... a "Battle Frame" so to speak.. lolotrolled! Just kidding.. seriosuly though. One thing that might make continents worth fighting over, is erhaps if all conts are "tailored" to suit a specific type of game play... say, one cont is very open. Making it a perfect place for air combat and snipers. Not that air and sniping is ALL that is needed to actually hold the hexes, but tank drivers might wanna watch out on that cont, so to speak. And of course there's another cont where tanks are deadly, because of the terrain. So, cont bonuses could be something that gives the faction that hold that "super installation" some sort of bonus to a few classes or a few vehicles or weapons or any comination of those...

Admittidly I haven't thought this idea through very much, I just thought of it now... so pick it apart and see if it can be done, or if I need smack myself!

[Xyntech]

That is actually an interesting thought Sabot.

If a continent that was mostly about aircraft and snipers (to use your example) somehow gave a bonus to that type of gameplay, it would screw with balance because it would be that much harder for the other sides to fight back against the dominant side.

On the other hand, if holding the continent that was all about aircraft and snipers instead gave you a bonus to your tanks, it wouldn't provide that much of an advantage to you on that continent but would help on the other ones.

Obviously it would still have to be balanced so that an empire who held all of the continents wasn't buffed out the ass and impossible to fight back against, but presumably it will already be pretty hard to hold onto territory the more territory you have.

As long as installations that gave you those bonuses weren't protected by impenetrable shields, so that if one empire held all territory on the entire world, the other two empires could attempt to make their first incursions on those special bases.

Maybe something still pretty subtle, like giving tanks an extra shield like an AMP station gave in the first game.

You may still run into that problem of it either being too large a buff, or too uninteresting a prize to be worth fighting over that hard though.

I still think that adding new content, new objectives, new weapons, etc, are the better course for keeping the game fresh and interesting. I mean, look at other popular successful shooters. It isn't like they don't rinse and repeat the same formula of gameplay, not just in their own title or series, but across FPS's in general.

How do other shooters keep the game fresh? Add another game mode (PS2 could add some new objectives or capture methods), add some new guns (PS2 will presumably be doing a lot of this, with guns, equipment, vehicles, and more), or adding some new maps (new continents, new areas like naval combat or space combat, etc).

It is simply easier to keep an FPS fresh than an RPG, because just pointing at an enemy and pulling the trigger is a lot of fun.

The first Planetside fell apart because they barely gave it any support or updates, and it had a lot of core gameplay and engine issues that just got irritating over time. As long as PS2 has ongoing and engaging development, along with F2P allowing players to drop the game and pick it up a few weeks later without a second thought, I don't think keeping it fresh will be too big a problem.

Of course, as always, coming up with more ideas on how to keep it fresh is never a bad thing. Some ideas may be more difficult than others though.

[cellinaire]

Originally Posted by Kipper

This is why free-to-play is win.

You don't have to burn out on it to get your money's worth, and you don't end up cancelling a subscription when you do - which you're unlikely to restart again.

Rather, when you're getting a bit jaded or want to try another game - you just take a break and come back when you're rested or done with whatever else came out. Getting back into it will be as easy as logging in (and maybe getting a patch if you've been away for a while), you don't have to worry about reactivating a paid-for account.

All they need is the occasional new continent with something different to offer, or one or two well thought out and carefully balanced vehicle/weapon additions now and again and that will provide the variety.

Fantastic =)
Anyone who only thinks that F2P model is pure evil and all about doom & gloom should see your post. As a matter of fact, I still think F2P model can really shine if only it's in the right hands.