Ideas for the "Rich get richer" problem

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Dart

Similarly a system which leads many of the 'veteran' players to switch to the underpopulated Empire because they are receiving superior benefits is also daft.

Why is this daft? I know plenty of people around here are all 'Ooo-Raaah! Go TR/VS/NC! Elmos/Barneys/Smurfs suck!', but there are some that simply do not care one bit about what fictional team they happen to be on at any given time.

I look on the empires like I look at red vs blue in TF2, it doesn't matter which I play for. I'd be perfectly fine temporarily switching to an underpopped empire if asked nicely, and especially if I received some consideration.

[sylphaen]

Disclaimer: all ideas expressed in this post are opinions and if I state something without saying "I think" or "IMO", you should still consider as an opinion rather than a fact. I do not claim to be an all-knowing superior being: that would be Vanu.

This post will mainly aim at giving propositions and answers to:

So how can we both reward players for conquest while simultaneously handicapping them so it is still possible for the conquered empires to strike back and regain territory?

Doing so, I address issues such as "richer gets richest" and double-teams.

I. Disturbances in the force

Assuming all variables (population, resources, equipment, player skill, player organization) are even between all empires, we could say that in theory, an equilibrium should exist between all factions in the long-run.

However, game mechanics can create "disturbances" in this equilibrium and destroy the carefully balanced chaos we know as Planetside.

I believe that winning should come from skill and organization (i.e. player variables) so before exposing some ideas and solutions, let me restate what I consider to be systematic sources of dis-equilibrium.

1. Resources
I think the problem is not stated properly. yes, "the rich getting richer" is a problem but we may all agree that it is the natural by-product of a game with resource mechanics. If equipment depends on resources and assuming all other variables are the same between factions, winners get more resources and more resources make winning easier.

If resources did not give a benefit, no one would care about them and they would serve no purpose. However, by providing benefits, resources increasingly favor winners (since winning gives you more resource to win) like new snow feeds a snowball rolling down a hill.

We all agree this is what we name "the rich getting richer" problem. Assuming all variables to be equal, once an empire starts winning (let's explain this through luck since all variables including skill is equal), resources would only help the winner to win more.


2. Factions
Another factor rarely mentionned and that I believe to be critical in Planetside is "3 factions". More territory is also linked to more benefits (facilities benefits and continent benefits in PS1, facilities and resources in PS2) so for an empire, it's always better to control more territory. Controlling more territory is also a source of pride and a feeling of achievement for players of an empire.

The problem with 3 factions is that there is a natural tendency towards double-teaming. I think so because as an empire player, controlling 40% territory makes people feel good even though it could be through a double team.

In the end, there are huge differences of difficulty in how your empire achieves control of 40% of global territory. A share of 40% TR / 40% NC / 20% VS share of total territory is significantly easier to achieve than 40% TR / 30% NC / 30% VS. The difference is that in the first case, you have a double team. In the latter, your empire conquered territory vs. 2 empires at the same time.

As long as people only see 40% territory as a victory and not how it was achieved being the victory, there will be double-teams. This issue compounded to resources would simply make the game unplayable for one empire once equilibrium is broken.



II. Maintaining equilibrium

1. How the Planetside system should behave

Planetside is a game about players interacting through a system. I believe that this system should have an equilibrium state and have mechanics that pushes it to return towards equilibrium. I also believe that, while the system should revolve around an equilibrium state, there should be room for disruption of that state through quality (skill & team organization).

A team of better players should be able to beat even odds. They should be able to keep the system out-of-balance through skill while the system itself pushes towards the equilibrium state. Beating the odds is what I call a victory.

2. Tendency towards equilibrium

The biggest threat to equilibrium between all empires is a double-team. It is much easier to rack-up kills and dominate while doing a 66% vs. 33% pop because numbers are a greater factor than skill. It is also much frustrating to be on the double-teamed side because there is little that can be done to prevent losing territory once 66% pop decide to roll over you.

Uneven situations create a flurry of issues (players switch empires or stop playing which increases the problem) so Planetside should have mechanics which favor even populations and promote even fights.

PS1 had incentives and benefits for lower pop empires (more XP, faster spawn rate). It's not perfect but it did promote balance and while it did not stop from losing vs. 66% pop, it did make it a little less frustrating until the other 2 empires started to attack each other again.

I believe that PS2 should provide incentives for an empire to attack the other 2 evenly to promote equilibrium. If all empires attack each other evenly, the most skilled should naturally control the most territory. In any situation that is not a double team, skill and organization should be a determining factor for territory control.

Double teams should not be incentivized.

2. Equilibrium with a resource system

With a pure resource system where % of territory controlled is proportional to resources accrued, double teams are being rewarded. Getting into a 40% TR / 40% NC / 20% VS situation is easy-mode for the NC/TR and they both would get more resources from double-teaming the VS. Such a system will effectively wipes out an empire as its player population and resources will drop along with decreasing territory. Planetside could become a 2-faction game most of the time once a double team starts.

Of course, the situation could return to equilibrium once the other 2 empires start fighting each other again but in the mean-time, an empire was wiped out: not from skill but from incentives to double-team an empire. Incentives which are also compounding through the richest gets richer issue. Worse, if a double-teaming empire managed to conquer territory faster than the other double-teamer, the game would transform into a game of quantity (what's left in the double-teamed empire in stock equipment+double-teamer in ok equipment ) vs. quality (the "winner" of the double-team in decked out equipment). It could be a long readjustment process during which the game is frustrating for the losers (i.e. the majority of players) and overall, this could kill Planetside pops.

Of course, this is just theory and it may not be as terrible as I think when it happens but still... It doesn't sound great.

To prevent such a situation:
- there should be decreasing returns on resource per territory controlled as your empire's total territory increases vs. other empires (in order to limit the strength of the snowball effect)
- decreasing returns should kick-in much faster if there is a double team in order to not incentivize it (if you progress vs. 2 empires, you are rewarded. If 2 empires progress vs. 1 together, they are not rewarded).

e.g. by controlling TR 40% of territory, you are naturally getting more resources. Then a modifier could apply where:
- NC 30% / VS 30% = 1 so no penalty
- VS 20% / NC 40% = .5 so 33% at 100% return and the remainder 7% at 50% return

Of course, this is just an example. The key point is that double teams must not be rewarded. It could even go as far as decreasing XP given from players from a double teamed empire while a double team is happening. The point is to promote 33% vs. 33% vs. 33% instead of 33%+33% vs. 33% which would naturally happen in a 3 factions game.

3. Promoting domination through skill

As many of you know, I am openly against end-game or resets in Planetside because I think they create more problems than they solve. However, I am not against victory conditions that can happen during the game. While I have described ideas to prevent situations from happening (i.e. maintain equilibrium), there should be mechanisms which promote a behavior that favors equilibrium.

So how should player skills be linked to territory mechanics ? One solution I see is through a victory mechanism. In the end, the reason why players want to control the most territory is to have a feeling of victory. It's one thing to win battles and engagements but it's another one to dominate the world.

Here is how I envision a victory condition that would fit Planetside:
- the victory condition should promote all 3 empires to compete against each other (i.e. it should be desirable)
- the victory condition should involve all 3 empires at the same time in order to promote even fighting between all empires and decrease the prevalence of double-team behaviors (i.e. it should promote competitive behavior)
- achieving the victory condition should be difficult enough in order to become a rare event (i.e. it should not be trivial)
- a victory should not happen in unfair conditions

How would each of those goals be achieved:
Desirability:
- victories should provide rewards (I think of unique merits with numbered victories such as "Markov - Victory n.1 - VS - 04/10/2012")
- victories should be visible (character stats and merits page, "Victories Hall of Fame" with links to players who achieved them)
- victories should be difficult to achieve and rare
- essentially, the drive to achieve victories is pride and recognition

Fairness
- Possibility of a victory should only be allowed after the game situation has reached "fair" conditions (large overall population, even empire population & even territory per empire would allow victories to be achieved) and stop being active when parameters become "unfair" (e.g. to prevent ghost victories when no one is online, victory conditions would stop being active when total population drops below a certain treshold of players on the server; they would reactivate only when that condition is met again along with all other conditions for fairness, so that it's useless to ghost all territory when everyone is offline).
- victory conditions should not promote double teaming:
45% TR / 27.5% NC / 27.5% VS would be a fair victory
45% TR / 40% NC / 15% VS would not be a victory

Competitive behavior
With high desirability and fair conditions, it would be incredibly hard to reach victory because the closer you are to victory, the more the other 2 empires would not want you to win. By victory being so hard and so rare, it fuels its desirability and competitiveness between all 3 empires who would tend to double-team less. With even odds, meeting the victory conditions would be more about skill than double teaming.

Finally, victory conditions are a rare event and neutral to the overall gameplay: they simply promote fair-play and competitiveness by showing a carrot on a stick. They also provide a feeling of victory for those who want a large-scale objective. The amount of time a victory condition is kept alive by an empire could also be timed and shown in the hall of fame.

Victories are neutral because they would not prevent temporary fluctuations in battle and temporary double teams. However, providing a greater incentive to win than to double-team and giving no benefits for double teaming will likely shorten the time the game spends out of equilibrium.


_______________________________

I hope I have explained my idea correctly enough to share and thank you for reading.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Bazilx

we shall simply make it so that once you are down to a significantly lower amount of bases your empire gets "Emergency supplies" in the form of ONE resource! Preferably the resource that makes plain warfare easier but which still doesn't give you any of the many other benefits of the other resources, thus retaining the motivation.

I had ideas in another thread for a welfare system but the more I think about it the more I dislike giving handouts int he form of resources. Just like the real world people will abuse it. Additionally the problem with handouts is that it doesn't necessarily encourage territory capture and doesn't completely address the problem of the empire with all the territory easily holding onto it. It helps give an empire a fighting chance but that's about it.

I like discounts on very specific things as an alternative. So people who have resources can do more with them. Giving out a very minimal amount of resources as you say of the one resources that allows basic vehicle construction, combined with a discount might work out. But from what we know of resources different resources will be needed for aircraft vs tanks (was on Reddit yesterday).

Might not be able to avoid a welfare system to some extent for the worst-case scenario. Still it might be beneficial to have some minimal resource generation at the foothold, combined with a discount that renders that resource generation utterly worthless for anything but pulling vehicles on the same continent. So someone couldn't go sit on a dominated continent and rack up the resources for doing nothing.

Getting away from your post a bit, that brings another problem to mind - if the dominating empire has all the resources, more people might flow in looking to ride the resource train. I assume more people would mean the resource amount each person is given lowers, but people like free rides, so I see more people piling on into a continent when an empire is dominating it because its a lot of resources. But if they do that they'll lose resources elsewhere.

We want to avoid situations where the TR are sitting on all of Indar, the NC are on all of Amerish, and the VS are on all of Esamir, just reaping rewards of resources and bottling people into warpgates milking the gravy train.

Originally Posted by texico

I honestly think it will balance itself fairly naturally, because there's 3 empires.

If TR own 70% of the continent, the VS and NC would both normally gang up on them.

Not necessarily. If the NC and VS border one another or are locked in a big battle they might not give a crap about the resources and enjoy their fight. Before they know it they've lost everything but they're still adjacent to each other. It could be that because TR are attacking on one side the other empire decides the best course of acting is to take what few resources the other has even though the TR are the bigger threat.

To prevent that they need incentives to attack the bigger empire and not pile onto someone already getting ground up.

Originally Posted by Knocky

Take all the territory from a faction and see how hard it is to dig yourself out of that hole.

This is a good test for beta to simulate and see if whatever sort of systems they have in place are working. I'd like to see this test simulated many times to ensure they have a good sample size.

Originally Posted by Kipper

The bigger your space, the more prone to backhacks you are because your territory is 'deeper', and the less players you have in any one area of the front line, assuming you are defending the full length of it.

A team with 30 hexes vs a team with 10 is going to have on average 3x less players in a skirmish, or they're going to have to leave 20 hexes undefended.

It should balance. My worry is that it will balance too well, and just be a complete stalemate in the centre of the continent where every gain results in a loss elsewhere.

I think you're onto essentially the right way to balance this, which is making more territory naturally more difficult to hold.

However, the way the Territory control system works is based on adjacency. That is if you have all the territories in an area it is very easy for you to take a territory back, but much harder for someone to take it. The example Higby gave was that if someone takes a territory deep behind the front it'll take something like 30 minutes to cap but only 30 seconds for the empire to retake it - all because the attacker has no adjacent territories and the defender has that territory completely engulfed.

Now it might not be as extreme as that, but the implications of this are that as you gain more and more territory, the new territory you gain helps protect the other territory you have. It is similar to how in PS1 certain continent combinations had lattice links to each other such that locking one helped protect the other (like 2004's Amerish-Solsar-Searhus combo NC held for a long time).

The result of such a system is that unless your FRONT is ever-expanding you wont' actually have that problem.

If the example Higby gave was accurate then I expect what will happen is the empires will try to claim back-territories, but since it takes so long to cap them the dominant empire has plenty of time to send a response unit to recapture or stop the capture. And since it takes nearly as long as one of the warpgate-bordering territories they have plenty of time to respond to both. So again, the rich get richer.

Because they took so much territory its actually easier for them because their front got consolidated.

This is one reason why I believe the adjacency system should take into account total territory owned by an empire so naturally as you take more territory it becomes more difficult to hold.

Originally Posted by morf

[popup]

Greetings TR,

You're being too successful, so we will now artificially limit your success so those other panzies can feel better about themselves.

-Higby


[/popup]

Is this REALLY the game you want to play, people? Is it even a game at this point? I guess when you guys were kids you played in the little league where they didn't keep score huh? I have news for you: those trophies aren't real and they don't mean anything when everyone gets them.

Territories should give a set amount of total resources, so if you have a higher pop, those resources are split among more soldiers. Furthermore, defending more territory becomes increasingly difficult on it's own - but why limit a team if they have what it takes o win? What's the point in playing if the losers get CPU assistance?

I agree, penalizing the winning empire or bolstering the losing empires defeats the purpose of the resources because no matter what you do, resources will come your way. And if capturing territory is meaningless because of some penalty people simply won't do it and the game strategy devolves.

Capturing lots of territory should be rewarding always, but it should also be difficult to maintain, and nearly impossible to maintain an entire continent lock for a long period of time. This also adds more to the satisfaction of actually doing such a feat.

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Those auto generated missions they talk about? Set them towards the rich empire.

For instance, TR has the most land. The missions generated for NC and VS would be weighted towards combating TR.

If VS and NC are both top dogs, and TR is a distance third, the the missions can push the VS and NC against each other, and less against the TR.

I like this idea. I have a feeling they will use missions like that to do subtle encouragement of the players away from un-fun situations, consolidating populations, and helping avoid ultra-laggy situations.

I think this will help solve the problem, but not utterly eliminate it. Strictly speaking at the extreme end, once an empire bottles the other two into their uncaps then the adjacency system for territory control works in the favor of the dominating empire. The other two empires on that continent already have no choice to attack the dominant empire. But missions can help encourage more people to join that underdog struggle, and missions can help discourage that situation from happening in the first place. It's good for discouraging it, but it doesn't solve it.

I would also advocate that vehicles could be pulled from the uncap for free. Air pulled from uncaps should have a much lengthier timer than ground vehicles due to their mobility.

Gotta be careful with this. People can always spawn at the uncap and for vehicles like aircraft there would be little reason to not always pull from the uncaps.

Another mechanism might be rather than giving resources, simply make things cheaper. Like if the territory is direly low, they could offer a discount on the vehicles continent-wide. That discount creeps up as territory is lost and lowers in magnitude as territory is gained. So nobody is getting handouts but they are getting some stuff cheaper to help them wage war effectively. It gives more refined control over simply handing out resources or making stuff free all the time.

I do like the idea of possibly making all vehicles free from the foothold if you have 0 territories, and then scaling back the discount from there. Example:
0 territories = 100% discount
1 territory = 75% discount
2 territories = 50% discount
3 territories = 25% discount
4 territories+ = no discount

So if you have nothing, free vehicles! That might not only allow you to wage war, but it also might encourage people from other continents to come help that effort because of the free vehicles. Since it doesn't give resources there's no gravy train to ride and those resources can't be used to get implants or certs or anything else - just free tanks for helping break out of a bad situation. Once the empire starts to recover, the discount fades and it's back to business as usual.

Originally Posted by Eyeklops

How do we know this problem even exists yet? We probably won't know until beta. I get the feeling this will not happen for the same reasons Nazi Germany lost WW2.

• population too spread out
• fighting a war on too many fronts

Its fairly easy to reason this problem exists from what we know (see my previous replies in this post). Between getting more resources and the way the adjacency system work, I dont' see how it it is not a problem.

Also your list may not be correct.

Take a look at the map of Indar - as an empire wraps itself around one of the other empire's footholds their front doesn't get bigger - it actually decreases. It is smaller than the front when all 3 empires have the same territory. Additionally that front has the full power of the adjacency system working in its favor - lots of friendly territories, only one hostile territory, which means it will take a long time to capture one of those territories and fairly easy to retake it. The adjacency system protects the rest of the territories not on the front as mentioned earlier in this post.

Originally Posted by sylphaen

With a pure resource system where % of territory controlled is proportional to resources accrued, double teams are being rewarded. Getting into a 40% TR / 40% NC / 20% VS situation is easy-mode for the NC/TR and they both would get more resources from double-teaming the VS. Such a system will effectively wipes out an empire as its player population and resources will drop along with decreasing territory. Planetside could become a 2-faction game most of the time once a double team starts.

Of course, the situation could return to equilibrium once the other 2 empires start fighting each other again but in the mean-time, an empire was wiped out: not from skill but from incentives to double-team an empire. Incentives which are also compounding through the richest gets richer issue. Worse, if a double-teaming empire managed to conquer territory faster than the other double-teamer, the game would transform into a game of quantity (what's left in the double-teamed empire in stock equipment+double-teamer in ok equipment ) vs. quality (the "winner" of the double-team in decked out equipment). It could be a long readjustment process during which the game is frustrating for the losers (i.e. the majority of players) and overall, this could kill Planetside pops.

This is a good capture of what I believe to be a very realistic scenario for PS2. It happened all the time in PS1, even without resources. Resource rewards for doing it will only make it worse.

To prevent such a situation:
- there should be decreasing returns on resource per territory controlled as your empire's total territory increases vs. other empires (in order to limit the strength of the snowball effect)
- decreasing returns should kick-in much faster if there is a double team in order to not incentivize it (if you progress vs. 2 empires, you are rewarded. If 2 empires progress vs. 1 together, they are not rewarded).

e.g. by controlling TR 40% of territory, you are naturally getting more resources. Then a modifier could apply where:
- NC 30% / VS 30% = 1 so no penalty
- VS 20% / NC 40% = .5 so 33% at 100% return and the remainder 7% at 50% return

I don't think a system that penalizes people for conquering territory is a good solution. Holding more territory should always be rewarding.

Alternatives I like for this are making it more difficult to hold the territory, which means its more easy for the underdogs to retake it. A discount system as opposed to a welfare system would be another way to give them a hand-up until they established a reasonable foothold.

Having empire missions generated automatically favor attacking a larger-population faction on a continent would help avoid the worst-case scenario. If those empire-generated missions are lucrative enough that would hopefully be good encouragement without forcing anything.

[Bazilx]

Originally Posted by Malorn

I had ideas in another thread for a welfare system but the more I think about it the more I dislike giving handouts int he form of resources. Just like the real world people will abuse it. Additionally the problem with handouts is that it doesn't necessarily encourage territory capture

However (also in reddit), it was said the cap for resources would be such that you'd never really have more than enough. My idea was that since nobody would gain from this or really be able to sit around and wait to have 200 tanks worth of resources they would have only one use of it, attacking the enemy. So I understand where you are coming from with the wellfare thing, but I believe the cap on resources makes it relatively unexploitable.

This way the Handouts would be only practical in nature and not give the player anything of worth unless they actually fought to gain something. It wouldn't be beneficial to sit around doing nothing since all you'd have at maximum would be like 2 tanks worth of resources and none of the other resources.

It would be the non-proverb equivalent of giving a man a fishing rod but no fish.

Originally Posted by Malorn

But from what we know of resources different resources will be needed for aircraft vs tanks (was on Reddit yesterday).

Well... This I don't know how to deal with, I guess if that's the case a discount would accomplish the same thing as my idea.


OH! And Even though I will defend my idea to my last breath, I now believe the best idea is the mission idea where the dominant faction becomes the preferred target, it's easy, it makes sense, and it doesn't feel laboured.

[sylphaen]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Alternatives I like for this are making it more difficult to hold the territory, which means its more easy for the underdogs to retake it. A discount system as opposed to a welfare system would be another way to give them a hand-up until they established a reasonable foothold.

Having empire missions generated automatically favor attacking a larger-population faction on a continent would help avoid the worst-case scenario. If those empire-generated missions are lucrative enough that would hopefully be good encouragement without forcing anything.

I agree that the welfare system is a bad idea and those 2 solutions (discount+missions) are a good idea.

I don't think a system that penalizes people for conquering territory is a good solution. Holding more territory should always be rewarding.

The thing is that you would not be penalized for taking territory against 2 empires at the same time. You would just get less if captured it while taking advantage of a double-team.

[Mackenz]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Having empire missions generated automatically favor attacking a larger-population faction on a continent would help avoid the worst-case scenario. If those empire-generated missions are lucrative enough that would hopefully be good encouragement without forcing anything.

Yes, I think this could be key. Even going in the underdog, getting automatically generated guerrilla or hit-and-run missions with large rewards (and maybe achievements/medals for being the underdog?) to spoil larger empire territory holds, even if retaken quickly, encourages fighting.

Of course, you will need resources, and I must admit I haven't seen how these work so its hard to comment on that. But maybe there is some basic kit that you can get for minimal cost, such as a 'hit' squad load out for taking such a mission:

* Galaxy for transport,
* A mix of infantry, plus a MAX or two;
* Maybe one air support.

Not sure tanks would be worthwhile because only adjacent territory would be realistically accessible.

Resource taxation seems lame, and diminishing returns/hex population adjustments might work, but I can imagine it being complex and opaque. And without a good understanding of how resources work, it gets a pretty hand-wavy, at least for me.

Key is that you do the least amount of work to address this to help reduce the unintended consequences.

[Dart]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Why is this daft? I know plenty of people around here are all 'Ooo-Raaah! Go TR/VS/NC! Elmos/Barneys/Smurfs suck!', but there are some that simply do not care one bit about what fictional team they happen to be on at any given time.

I look on the empires like I look at red vs blue in TF2, it doesn't matter which I play for. I'd be perfectly fine temporarily switching to an underpopped empire if asked nicely, and especially if I received some consideration.

It is the reason WHY you are switching that is the issue. It's about the game-mechanics which motivate you. Unless you and I were playing different versions of PS1 I was never asked to switch Empires by DanB due to population imbalances. Instead it was the ' considerations' you referred to which caused people to Empire-hop. Specifically the exp bonus or module bonuses. That is a clumsy system because, in the case of the exp bonus, you are being rewarded for losing. The less efficient your Empire, the more casual players log off, the more the vets (most PSU members I'd imagine) benefit for an individual exp bonus. To my mind that is NOT an elegant MMO system.

[Eyeklops]

Originally Posted by Dart

It is the reason WHY you are switching that is the issue. It's about the game-mechanics which motivate you. Unless you and I were playing different versions of PS1 I was never asked to switch Empires by DanB due to population imbalances. Instead it was the ' considerations' you referred to which caused people to Empire-hop. Specifically the exp bonus or module bonuses. That is a clumsy system because, in the case of the exp bonus, you are being rewarded for losing. The less efficient your Empire, the more casual players log off, the more the vets (most PSU members I'd imagine) benefit for an individual exp bonus. To my mind that is NOT an elegant MMO system.

Agreed, the PS1 incentives system was not perfect. My reasons for switching from the high pop to the low pop empire was really about who had the most the target rich environment. I gotta think about these things as a killwhore!

[Skitrel]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Why is this daft? I know plenty of people around here are all 'Ooo-Raaah! Go TR/VS/NC! Elmos/Barneys/Smurfs suck!', but there are some that simply do not care one bit about what fictional team they happen to be on at any given time.

I look on the empires like I look at red vs blue in TF2, it doesn't matter which I play for. I'd be perfectly fine temporarily switching to an underpopped empire if asked nicely, and especially if I received some consideration.

Yeah but this isn't really in the spirit of planet side. Its also not really in the tradition of mmos, where you traditionally play a character and remain that character.

[Truemedic]

It is indeed a "Difficult" problem with the assumption that not all players are equal in terms of skill. A couple ideas in this thread are decent but aren't quite there the solution.

The imagination I have with Planetside 2 is there will be at least 1 significant empire outfit per shard. It's a gamble but it also could pay off in the end where if a side gets pushed back, that particular outfit will indeed make a difference in gaining more ground.

The one big downside to this plan is if the separation of the North American's and Europeans is final, that means in off peak times can be not as interesting where as if both were together, there would be always a good battle.

Just my two cents.

[Eyeklops]

How do we know this problem even exists yet? We probably won't know until beta. I get the feeling this will not happen for the same reasons Nazi Germany lost WW2.

• population too spread out
• fighting a war on too many fronts

[Truemedic]

Originally Posted by Eyeklops

How do we know this problem even exists yet? We probably won't know until beta. I get the feeling this will not happen for the same reasons Nazi Germany lost WW2.

• population too spread out
• fighting a war on too many fronts

You're right, we don't, but we try to figure out all potential problems to attempt to keep ourselves sane till beta arrives.

[Bittermen]

It should be easy for an empire to overextend itself.

Even if you have the resources to make tanks,aircraft, other crap it doesn't mean you have enough people to defend those resources.

[Dart]

Originally Posted by Bittermen

It should be easy for an empire to overextend itself.

Even if you have the resources to make tanks,aircraft, other crap it doesn't mean you have enough people to defend those resources.

But when an Empire is consistently dominant, particularly if it is going to have access to more resources, it will attract more people. It does need addressing.

[PoisonTaco]

Why should you take away from a team that manages to take a large portion of a continent? If anything they should be rewarded for winning so much territory. Yeah they beat the other two factions, they deserve to reap the benefits. So here's my idea:

Give rewards factions when they cap territory. A nice fat reward. The longer a faction controls a territory or facility, give a bigger bonus to the faction that captures it. This gives the other two factions more of a reason to fight back against the dominant force. If they get too big and sit on that land for too long, then it's going to be a nice target for the other two.

Display a bonus reward for a territory or facility if it's captured. Show how much of a big payoff a team can expect for rallying together and fighting to take everything back.