The 3-way mistake?

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by Pyreal

Does a faction have to sequentially capture hexes?

I mean this: In order to capture Hex 5, you must first capture Hex 1 thru 4 in order.

You dont have to have a hex touching the hex you want to capture, however if you do, the cap timer willbe shorter if you own nearby hexes to your target hex.

[bkx]

It's not gay if it's in a 3-way

[Chinchy]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

I'm not really concerned. Yes, 3 ways will happen especially at the "T" section of the map, but we have to remember most of the map is not around that section. There will probably always be a 3-way going on, but majority of the fights would still be good ol' faction vs. faction.

I like three ways, not as the primary way of fighting but it's a nice change at times.

You also need to remember TTK's are a lot faster so skilled solo talent will shine just a tad brighter than dull in this game. Compared to PS where you had to rely on lemmings to back you up. Battles should be a lot more fun and fast paced, not to mention from the footage I saw infantry combat outside doesn't seem to be like PS stick your dick in the meat grinder type of game play we are used to. 3 ways could be a lot of fun to play if not, very pretty to watch. :P

[Sabot]

A well organized assault can use 3 ways to their advatage. IMO this game only works as well as it does because of the possibilty of a 3 way. Only in PS and in DAoC has PvP worked as well as it did... and that was only because we have three factions clashing. I mean you all know the problems with only 2 factions and only 2 way fighting all the time. Pop. imbalances due to a number of reasons, entire armies circumventing fighting all together because it's easier to just cap as fast as possible... the list goes on.
I say embrace the three-way... use it to win.

[Dreamcast]

3 way is awesome.

When a battle turns to be 3 way, is just so much fun.

[Shade Millith]

I'm going to go against the grain (At least the grain of the first page) and say that I LOVED a good threeway.

It was also a needed equaliser to prevent total domination. Two factions is all well and good, right up until one side starts dominating the other. With only two factions, there's nothing that can be done, you simply get pushed back until you can't be pushed back anymore, then get camped in by a larger, better equipped force.

With three factions, the winning side is going to be the one with all the land, thus the third empire is going to attack the winning empire while they're busy.

[The noob]

I suspect that the hex system might eleviate some troubles with this. If everyone pushes towards the center of the map at once, of course you'll get a three way. If you decide to push alongside the borders into an empire's territory, you'll likely only get a response from the faction you're pushing into, and not the third one, since they may have no territory nearby, they likely won't take the effort to participate in that fight since they'll likely have too large of a cap penalty to compete.

[Kalbuth]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

Ah, so he's on our side then...if I understand correctly now...

So what makes this happen? The smallness of the continent and the resulting inevitable entrance of the 3rd empire into the battle? In other words, the close proximity of any 2 way battle to the borders of the map in any direction will very soon result in the 3rd empire pushing into it?

Imho, exactly that. Conts are too small for the number of players envisionned. As well as number of hexes which are too small to, creating too few objectives.

There's 2 way to looks at this, the old PS1 way, and "something else".

In the old PS1 way, your objective is going to capture the whole continent. With 3 continents only and sanctuary for each faction, you can forget about doing this, and the issue is in fact the lack of continent in this case. More conts, and you'll spread each armies across conts, resulting in 2-ways on some conts, and 3-ways on others. In this case, solution will be to wait, because new continents are supposed to be released in X months, etc...

In the "new way", your objective is going to capture only a sub-set of the whole continent. Because everything is bigger, capturing only a portion of a map can be a success in itself. We could go so far as to consider a base as the equivalent of a PS1 continent, in terms of work and time needed to capture it. Who knows, maybe?
In this scenario, 2-ways are happening on a local basis, like 2-ways are happening on a continent-wide basis in old PS1 system.
There are drawbacks imho in this way of thinking :
* Map is small, and has few Hexes. That makes very few sub-set of continent possible, which means the few 2-ways occuring are easily reachable by the 3rd army, and interesting to them beause "not that far".
I don't see how SOE can correct that seeing how they describe the map making process (hand made, etc...)
* There is NOTHING technically preventing a 3-way. In the old PS1 days, the lattice layout could prevent completely an empire X to enter a 2-way fight between Y and Z, because they had no way to reach the cont through the lattice network, so they couldn't even put a hack attempt on any base.
In the hex system, there's nothing. Any empire can attempt anything, anywhere. They have a safe zone everywhere, and can try taking an hex anywhere.
This could be solved by putting some kind of lattice between continents disabling the safe zone on cont X if empire has no "link" to it, and adding the equivalent of PS1 Sanctuaries to make a "link check" for each continent. A king of going backward.

I think the better hope we can have is that SOE adds new continents asap after release.

[SGTalon]

3 way battles are great, It just means more targets for my MAX to mow down.

I personally loved turning battles into 3 way fights. And when you are a defender and a 3rd faction comes in and hit your attacker, it makes for a great time.

I don't see a problem with this. I have a feeling that we are reading too much into this whole foothold thing. If the continent is sufficiently large, and there are enough bases, the number of factions is not really going to be an issue.

I suppose one way to look at it is, if this were reality, and we had a planet that we were fighting for against 2 other factions, would we want these arbitrary limits put on what we could do? Would we want all these stupid rules about what we can attack and what we can't?

If you had a base that had to be linked to the other one before you could capture it, wouldn't you go in and rewire some stuff to remove that stupid link?

Reality is our goal, not random rules. No arbitrary gameplay mechanics. We want realism... well future realism

[Kalbuth]

Originally Posted by SGTalon

Reality is our goal, not random rules. No arbitrary gameplay mechanics. We want realism... well future realism

I'm sorry, but talk for yourself. Gameplay >> realism, in case of Planetside

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

I'm not really concerned. Yes, 3 ways will happen especially at the "T" section of the map, but we have to remember most of the map is not around that section. There will probably always be a 3-way going on, but majority of the fights would still be good ol' faction vs. faction.

I like three ways, not as the primary way of fighting but it's a nice change at times.

This. The majority of the front will almost always be a two-way.

Most of the time, there will be one 3-way meeting spot on the front that may or may not have a big fight around it.

Sometimes, another 3-way might pop up.

This isn't terrible.

[Kalbuth]

Originally Posted by kaffis

This. The majority of the front will almost always be a two-way.

Most of the time, there will be one 3-way meeting spot on the front that may or may not have a big fight around it.

Sometimes, another 3-way might pop up.

This isn't terrible.

This is entirely dependant on the size of the map vs number of players and vs number of hex on it. I don't see much hex on the screenshots unfortunately

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by Kalbuth

This is entirely dependant on the size of the map vs number of players and vs number of hex on it. I don't see much hex on the screenshots unfortunately

[Meecrob]

Ide like to give my 2 cents here. The PS community seems a bit schizophrenic. At one time their screaming "we don't want one man pwn machines", but now when i read this it seems people do want the ability to influence a battle of 2000 people by backhacking with a squad of 10.

This.... does not compute to me .

[Kalbuth]

Originally Posted by Meecrob

Ide like to give my 2 cents here. The PS community seems a bit schizophrenic. At one time their screaming "we don't want one man pwn machines", but now when i read this it seems people do want the ability to influence a battle of 2000 people by backhacking with a squad of 10.

This.... does not compute to me .

Mmmh, no. The point is about being able to "do something" on lower scale than zerg-fest, not "win the war" on this scale
Gen holds, backhacks didn't win the war back in the days, they helped doing it.

@coreldan : spot on, on the map you show, I see 2 hex with 2-way potential, the VS / NC westernmost ones. All the rest has 3 empires in close proximity and having a legitimate claim on them.
Note that they group hex togethers, I'm counting grouped hexes, not individual ones, as fighting objectives.