End Game: Pros and Cons

[Xaine]

Originally Posted by Higby

Yeah, it's something I've thought about from time-to-time. We have talked about "tournament mode", which would be something like an instanced battlegrounds where you could have 20v20, 50v50, 100v100 matches with a clear victory condition so you could have an outfit battle, or fight against rivals on your same empire from different servers, whatever. The worry has always been pulling people out of the primary game mode which many think should be sacrosanct. The very nature of a fiercely competitive game without a victory condition is a conundrum I've been wrestling with since starting on this project, it usually comes down to having to rely on "smaller" victory moments.

I think it sounds good. Again, nothing in the competitive scene of e-sports really has anything larger than 30v30. Planetside could go way beyond that number. It would be very cool seeing a team assaulting a base, 5 squads all working together.

Pulling people out of the main game is a valid concern. So perhaps make it so this Tournament server is only available one or two weekends a month. Maybe only in the evenings for a few hours.

If an outfit wins they could gain some aesthetic changes to their guns/armour/tanks/planes.

I could see it being something people talk in game all the time. Inter-outfit rivalries could finally be let out to decide who was the best.

I think it really has merit.

As for the winning condition. I think there should maybe be something you get after gaining control of a continent. Something small, like an exp boost for everyone for the next hour. Or access to the other empires stuff (obviously the reward can be adjusted for how often you actually take an entire continent)

[Shogun]

Originally Posted by Higby

, it usually comes down to having to rely on "smaller" victory moments.

maybe if those small victorys give some benefit for a set amount of time it would help? maybe the ps2 website gets 3 layouts and the site will wear the skin of the faction that got the most victorys in the last 24 hours. would certainly be cool and make the winners proud

or some visible benefits ingame that the winner can wield for a day. that would give more of a rewarding feeling than ressources alone. like some extravagant flashy colorpattern or special taunt-emotes.

[Mastachief]

You could perhaps look at a tourney long term, sort of like a Football"soccer" champions league with the CUP taking a year to run so that match would perhaps occur 1-2 times per month running it maybe bi yearly.

While i had fun in the previous outfit wars the prep for it was intense and stressful with everything being so compacted. Bad rules and the fact not everyone had played each other ruin it along with it being abandoned before completion.

Outfits split into 4 outfits per group

Each outfit in said group play each other twice. (home and away if you will)

Top 2 from each group progress to knockout stages.

Drawn from a hat matchups again 1 home and 1 away game

Final boils down to quarter and semis etc

[Death2All]

Originally Posted by Bags

Anything that pulls people away from the main fights on a regular basis should be thrown out immediately.

But I wouldn't be completely opposed to bi/tri/monthly outfit olympics or something. Just don't do weekly population killing events imo.

I'm down for that.


An event takes place every few months, similar to outfit wars where people compete for...whatever.


There's no need to have such an event take place every weekend though, that pulls too many people away from the game, and it'd probably be a headache to organize every weekend.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

I'm down for that.


An event takes place every few months, similar to outfit wars where people compete for...whatever.


There's no need to have such an event take place every weekend though, that pulls too many people away from the game, and it'd probably be a headache to organize every weekend.

Yeah in WoW i had issues organizing a 3 man team to all be on consistently... I can't imagine getting 30+ on consistently for these events. Much better and more meaningful if they don't happen every other day.

[Grognard]

Originally Posted by Higby

What do you guys think of the idea of a weekend type event like that? During the week it's your standard persistent PlanetSide experience, during the weekend there are win conditions and you can sort of play "matches" which reset when someone "wins" or at midnight or something?

Maybe there are different servers you can play on that are set up like that?

NOTE: I have no idea if that'd work from our point of view, I'd have to think about it, so please consider this just me contributing to the conversation rather than an actual idea about something being added to the game.

Different server ok. Weekend, I sure hope not... I would rather not have my gameplay choices made by my boss' scheduling needs.

[SgtMAD]

some of the most memorable moments in PS came from the weekend long Mono events

[Mirror]

Originally Posted by Higby

What do you guys think of the idea of a weekend type event like that? During the week it's your standard persistent PlanetSide experience, during the weekend there are win conditions and you can sort of play "matches" which reset when someone "wins" or at midnight or something?

Maybe there are different servers you can play on that are set up like that?

NOTE: I have no idea if that'd work from our point of view, I'd have to think about it, so please consider this just me contributing to the conversation rather than an actual idea about something being added to the game.

Perhaps once a month because once a week will get old very fast.

[Graywolves]

Originally Posted by Higby

Yeah, it's something I've thought about from time-to-time. We have talked about "tournament mode", which would be something like an instanced battlegrounds where you could have 20v20, 50v50, 100v100 matches with a clear victory condition so you could have an outfit battle, or fight against rivals on your same empire from different servers, whatever. The worry has always been pulling people out of the primary game mode which many think should be sacrosanct. The very nature of a fiercely competitive game without a victory condition is a conundrum I've been wrestling with since starting on this project, it usually comes down to having to rely on "smaller" victory moments.

When I first thought of the possibility of eSports within PS2 I got this idea of there basically being the core game and the "Sports" games that occur maybe once a week or a month and was completley optional. It would be like an arena or tournament within the game. Promote the eSport, anounce the winners in-game, maybe have TV's in some foothold lobbies that showed highlights. When a tournament was won something like "Graywolves' team of the Terran Republic has won the Auraxis Sports!" would appear in message box's globally.

Then when in the core game people would see recognized faces from the eSport games and be like "Oh I've seen this guy play on twitch.tv/ ran into him in the arena games, he's really good." Or "I Keep seeing this guy in tourny and constantly stomping him!"

[Rat]

I think if there is going to be a end game event, it cant be on a seperate server involving a mix of players from other servers...there isnt going to be the hate factor, I think a single continent should picked for the event, and who ever owns the most realestate wins....sure that cont will be poplocked, but perhaps somekind of a que could be developed to get people in the fight as people log out. That way the battles on on the non event continents can continue and people wont be sitting in a warpgate waiting to get onto the event continent.

[OnlinePirate]

Although I like the idea I would not add any type of tournament mode or end game to planetside 2. Tournament mode on weekends will just take away players from the main battlefield reducing the epic scale I'm really hoping for. Weekends will be my only play dates because of school & work and I would really not have such type of event take away some of my experience.
End game results would just give someone a reason to just stop playing.

[Captain1nsaneo]

End Game:
"You enter the end game when you step out of the spawn tube." PS starts at end game. This is why dealing with repetitive gameplay is one of the core problems with long term success. Once again It's very hard to find anything that you could take examples from to come up with a way to maintain it. RTS's have some ideas in this, Starcraft remains popular thanks to its tournaments and unchanging internals allowing for metagame evolution. Luckily I've heard of PS referred to as an FPSRTSMMO by other commanders so lessons from RTS may have more value than would typically be thought.

Competitions:
Instances are a bad idea. ClusterF- battles are bad for tournaments as it's very hard to setup a metagame that can be advanced. If I were asked for an idea I'd recommend looking as Wargaming. Limit the number of troops you can bring have a fixed amount of resources that can be brought to the fight. The resources can be spent on anything the team wants but there's only so much. This will allow the growth of a metagame as people argue about how many tanks or galaxies should be brought and such. Don't worry about balancing it at the start, you can't balance it before people start heavily looking into it competitively. If something is too cheap (for example galaxies) the player base will let you know through abusing it and forum posts.

Make the fights 1v1 rather than 1v1v1 as trying to come up with a tournament bracket style that ends with VSvNCvTR at the end is just about impossible to have and still make sense. Have all practice matches be setup through SOE and the CSRs but allow for setting up a time several days/weeks in advance so people aren't constantly looking for a CSR to let them into one of the competitive maps. As for maps, look to Starcraft tournaments. There's a set of different maps balanced for competitive play. Some factions will have advantages on various maps. That's where coin flips come into play. Don't feel married to simple maps with 2 bases though. Look at UT's assault gameplay and TF2's payload for additional ideas. PS2's world combat is casual play, to make the competitive scene stand out it should be treated in a serious manner.

Ways to fight repetition:
Have the resource that each territory gives change in both type and amount.
Have footholds lose their protections on one cont at a time allowing for sides to switch which way they're defending breaking up the direction factions are fighting allowing for rotation.
Have territories that all 3 sides have access to go neutral with a long capture timer but with a large bonus of resources to whoever gets it first.

[Skitrel]

Originally Posted by Mirror

Perhaps once a month because once a week will get old very fast.

Once a month? Are you kidding? 12 times a year is nothing. 7 days is an age digital land.

[SUBARU]

Originally Posted by Higby

Yeah, it's something I've thought about from time-to-time. We have talked about "tournament mode", which would be something like an instanced battlegrounds where you could have 20v20, 50v50, 100v100 matches with a clear victory condition so you could have an outfit battle, or fight against rivals on your same empire from different servers, whatever. The worry has always been pulling people out of the primary game mode which many think should be sacrosanct. The very nature of a fiercely competitive game without a victory condition is a conundrum I've been wrestling with since starting on this project, it usually comes down to having to rely on "smaller" victory moments.

Then why did you take out the sanctuary? If we have the sancturay back and no permanent foot hold on continents we could have continent conquered and there is you wins.Stop changing PS1 before you look at what you had

[PrISM]

Originally Posted by Gelnika

There's been talk of a potential end-game in some other threads but it's all been pretty disparate so far. Let's do some definition of terms:

The 'end-game', as I see it, would be the end of recurrent 'cycles' of the game. The game would end at a specific time and the factions would be granted bonuses based on how much territory they control. A game could last for example a month or three months, the entirety of the efforts in the game's timeline is all leading up to the end of the game, and a rush to capture as many points as possible before the timer expires.

In my opinion, this would give players a greater sense of purpose, as there is a more concrete objective and a time in which to complete it by rather than a never-ending war.

Any takers?

You've missed the concept of Planetside entirely.

Originally Posted by Higby

What do you guys think of the idea of a weekend type event like that? During the week it's your standard persistent PlanetSide experience, during the weekend there are win conditions and you can sort of play "matches" which reset when someone "wins" or at midnight or something?

Maybe there are different servers you can play on that are set up like that?

NOTE: I have no idea if that'd work from our point of view, I'd have to think about it, so please consider this just me contributing to the conversation rather than an actual idea about something being added to the game.

No. The sorts of events you should be looking into are those similar to Planetside in that they don't change the core concept on which the game is based upon. Aside from the TERRIBLE Black Ops events, most of the original events such as a weekend of enemy tech or perhaps the cowboy events on Oshur were perfectly suited to give a nice little change of pace to the game without affecting the overall persistency.