Ideas for the "Rich get richer" problem

[EVILPIG]

Originally Posted by WildVS

Well now you are talking about a "lattice" type structure again and that certainly helps against double teams if you play it right.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with double teaming, that is the purpose of the 3 empire model. It will happen to all empires and with the resources or benefits, it will be an incentive for the weakest to double team the strongest.

Similar to lattice, yes, I believe that if we are talking about benefits gained from a facility, you should have to be to draw a line through owned territories to share it with other facilities. It is currently not like this.

[sylphaen]

Originally Posted by EVILPIG

There is absolutely nothing wrong with double teaming, that is the purpose of the 3 empire model. It will happen to all empires and with the resources or benefits, it will be an incentive for the weakest to double team the strongest.

There could be something very wrong with double teaming:
Imagine TR 48% / NC 48% / VS 4% and linear resource income only from territory controlled.

Congratulations, Planetside effectively became a 2 factions game where the game for the 3rd is to get back into it until the other 2 decide to stop doing a 66% vs. 33%.

Have this happen often and it could get annoying very fast.

Edit: just to be clear. I agree there is nothing wrong about double teaming except for that specific case which was the theme of this thread ("the rich getting richer").

[Grognard]

Originally Posted by Malorn

One of the Reddit questions I had asked was:

How do you plan on addressing the "rich get richer" problem where as an empire gains more territory and resources, they gain more power over the other empires?

Higby's response
...

Perhaps we, the illustrious PSU community, can assist with some ideas to help address this hard problem.

Part of the reason this is a tough problem is because solving it could render motivation to take territory useless. For example, if we had a welfare system it might not motivate people to take territory, or if we penalized large territory ownership it might motivate an empire to not take too much territory in order to optimize resource gain.

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?

What do you think could be done to help solve this problem?

No welfare, no math, no reduction in desire to take territory...

My idea is just the history of war... What do underdogs do when they are out of stuff? Steal... destroy... sacrifice... I think the mission system would be perfect for this... I'll illustrate some basic missions that would be used as a proactive way to "adjust the economy" without sacrificing the will to conquer territory...

1. Partisans...
Back hacking in the enemies rear areas allows for a resource gain for each minute the hack is in progress, regardless of success or failure. So, the needy empire always gets something for the effort. It puts a similar drain on the owning empire for each minute also, which simulates supply line interuption abstractly. Resource gain should probably tie into the hack timers to simulate the value of "fresh / untouched" areas which should be considered more productive for having seen less war ravages for longer, as an abstraction... If the hack succeeds, then this territory would produce very little if it is recaptured, due to an implied scorched earth policy of the back hackers efforts. IE... typical partisans...

2. Sabotage...
Missions in the rear of empires that attempt to destroy infrastructure. These could be hacks that are quicker, but do not allow control, just a destruction of resources. Sometimes you just want to jack them up, you may not need the territory... so the timer for the missions hack is far less to complete.

3. Raid...
These missions are similar to sabatoge missions, but if an empire needs resources more than they need to deny resources, then this is a marauder mission on "depots", abstracted... Think in terms of attacking baggage trains, depots, convoys, etc. Similar to sabotage, but there may be an element of extraction involved, much like PS1s LLUs.

4. Scorched earth...
If you presently own a territory that is in danger of being taken, there could be a mission(s) of scorched earth, where you destroy a territorys usefulness for a period of time, and this means if you keep ahold of it, you screwed yourself too... It could be as simple as multiple hacks on your own structures, each one reducing, or lengthening the resource degredation of a given territory. This one is cool, because you never know who gets hurt, or helped by this, so feints and diversions could cause the enemy to damage themselves.

All this could be done with no damage to the resource system for territory aquisition, and fleshes out the mission system even more, since it would interact with the meta economics, for more strategy. If tuned well, this could even things out meta-wise, and really FORCE empires to maintain villigance on the rest of the map or really SUFFER from complacency.


Edit: Spelling stuff

[Whalenator]

I don't see what was wrong with Planetside 1's experience bonus/detriment system for server populations. It could be applied to current territory too.

ALSO IDEAS GO IN THE IDEA SECTION GHGNNRGHRNG

[NewSith]

Originally Posted by Whalenator

ALSO IDEAS GO IN THE IDEA SECTION GHGNNRGHRNG

Those are debates. It's a little bit different.

Ideas are ideas and are demonstrated for the sake of being applied.
Debates exist solely for the sake of debates.

[StumpyTheOzzie]

That was a lot to wade through.

The Warcraft 3 system was pretty good. Tax you the more resources you had. I like that idea but it can be more gradual in PS2.

How about: For every 1% of territory over 50% you own, you get taxed 1%. That way you will still want to grab "that next bit" because it still gets you resources, but in the end you're getting taxed at 50% for a sanc locked continent.

Just to spell it out for the non-thinkers: You're still getting more resources if you capture more land. You own all the resource piles on the continent. There is still incentive to keep that land.

I think the more important question is: If you see a whole mess of one colour, how do you support the underdog? As an Australian it's a cultural thing for me to ally myself with whoever's coming last but this isn't a universal cultural constant. Other countries/cultures around the world have a bias to "join the winning team" and grind the losers into the dust.

I said elsewhere on the boards that when you log in to PS1 and see that the VS have 8% server pop, they only get a 50% bonus to XP. Even though they are outnumbered almost 12:1 instead of the more normal 2:1. Therefore, at 8% server pop they should get +600% xp. This will encourage people to log on their VS alt to get more XP (4th Empire HOORAY!) and pops become more balanced.

So you can still pull the basic variants of whatever (because they don't cost resources, correct?) but you're getting huge XP/kill, which looks nice and make you feel awesome.

And the sanctuaries should have HHHUUUUGGGGEEEEE resource nodes in them. So everybody gets X units of resources regardless of how it's going "outside".

And, if you're still with me, how many times have you ever seen the PS1 world 1 colour without that colour having more than 60% pop?

33% pop and 0% land is only a theoretical construct and will not happen IRL so let's not worry about that. (Famous last words...)

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by StumpyTheOzzie

How about: For every 1% of territory over 50% you own, you get taxed 1%. That way you will still want to grab "that next bit" because it still gets you resources, but in the end you're getting taxed at 50% for a sanc locked continent.

How does reducing the resource income of the empire with all the resources fix the problem?

Does it motivate the underdogs to fight?

Does he help the underdogs compete?

Does it make holding the territory any more difficult?


The whole diminishing returns thing has come up a few times but I don't see how it helps the problem. Even with diminishing returns on rewards it doesn't change the fact that the empires with little or no territory still have nothing, and the empire that conquered them still has more than enough told them down.

[Grognard]

Originally Posted by Malorn

How does reducing the resource income of the empire with all the resources fix the problem?

Does it motivate the underdogs to fight?

Does he help the underdogs compete?

Does it make holding the territory any more difficult?


The whole diminishing returns thing has come up a few times but I don't see how it helps the problem. Even with diminishing returns on rewards it doesn't change the fact that the empires with little or no territory still have nothing, and the empire that conquered them still has more than enough told them down.

I did offer an alternative to all of that. Must have a flaw somewhere that I didnt notice, but its definately an alternative, using present game mechanics only...

[StumpyTheOzzie]

nothing...

[Boomzor]

Originally Posted by Malorn

How does reducing the resource income of the empire with all the resources fix the problem?

It doesn't fix the problem, but in my mind it goes a long way to postpone the issue. It takes a lot more for the underdog to get to the "helpless" state.

I also do agree with what your saying, there needs to be some additional mechanic to help them bounce back once things have gone down the shitter.

The rebate and reduced timers are excellent compliments.

[StumpyTheOzzie]

The post I deleted from above could be politely be summarised as:

It won't happen, and who cares if it does?

1. Biggest difference between super 10 year veteran and total virgin newbie is 20%. Dev stated goal.

2. This game will cater to the instant gratification "I demand this" generation so there's going to be more resources than you can spend. 13-18 year olds will form the bulk of the player base and as a general rule they are whinging spoilt losers who will scream and stamp their feet and SPEND THEIR PARENT'S MONEY so the devs will listen to them and free up some resources for nothing.

3. The sancs will form a staging post. The supply lines are therefore short. Therefore frontline losses will be replaced quickly. Therefore the enemy will (slowly) be repelled and the underdog faction will secure some resources.

It's much more important to maintain population balance between the 3 empires than caring about land holding. If pop is evenly spread eventually it should flow into captured territory unless one team has an unfair advantage (ES weapons probably) which will get nerfed after a few weeks of the world being one colour.

Each faction will have outfits that are uber military strategic.
Each faction will have uber twitch 1337 shooter grunts.
Each faction is essentially balanced in terms of the players. The only difference will be populations.

Like i said somewhere before, giving the VS a +50% xp boost when they are outnumbered 12:1 is not enough. You should be outnumbered 2:1. Anytime you are outnumbered more than 2:1 you should get a corresponding increase in XP.

So when you're at 8% population, you should get +600% xp. I'll be quite happy in my 80% effective vanilla tank attacking at horrific odds if the rewards are so big.

[Boomzor]

I dunno, but I read this as resources won't be in abundance.

Originally Posted by Higby from Reddit AMA

4) Can players stockpile a lot of resources or will we always be on the hunt?

there will be a cap to resource pools, ideally you won't ever feel like you have more than enough resources.

I also believe we have no idea of just how much resources impact what you can get. If the opposition can all pull mossies and prowlers, but all my team can pull is lightnings, we'll get chewed up as soon as we stick our noses out of the base.
Or worse, we're forced to foot zerg.

And I'm saying this with PS1 tinted goggles. I also don't know how well a lightning will stand against a prowler, but I assume it'll be at a disadvantage.

Further, I'm not sure an XP boost is the way to go at all. Yes, it'll help you rank up faster and give the ability to play with new toys. But rank does not equal power. Rank will not give you the toys. Resources will. Once you're max BR and unlocked everything, xp won't mean squat to you.

[Coreldan]

Hmmmh. I suppose you get resources at least much less or none if you are not online. Wouldn't somebody who makes an idle macro in the sanc (or just cloaking in the middle of nowhere) be able to stockpile resources while at work/School/sleeping?

[Stardouser]

Undoubtedly I will probably be rehashing something already thought of, but I got in on this late and it's a pain to read all 9 pages.

But anyway, I mentioned in my landmass size thread about how one way to prevent packing of players for lag purposes was to limit the amount of people who can spawn at any one base. i.e., 50 people(or, insert appropriate number) can spawn at a base, and if you want 100 to attack, you need to get 50 from the next closer base to join, if you want 150 you need 50 more from the next farther base, and so on, at some point people aren't going to want to have to respawn from a long way away(squad spawning will factor into this somehow but I guess we have to ignore this for now).

So...firstly, if something like this were done, then, it would by its nature provide a small prevention for driving an enemy into a very small remaining territory area because the player per base spawn limit functions like a sort of...supply line limit.

And, something else...obviously you're going to say- well what if one empire only has 5 bases left? Then they can only spawn 250 players TOTAL...Well, the answer is the second part of my plan! The game will detect when this happens and it will release the player per base spawn limit temporarily(or perhaps just increase it to 75/100, etc, instead of fully releasing it)- this will allow the losing empire to temporarily overwhelm the encroaching enemy and take back some territory.

Driving an empire back to the point where the game does this could be considered an informal "victory" as well.

/flamesuit on

[Boomzor]

That's another thing to keep in mind. It's a persistent world. It won't reset 30 minutes after things go bad (well, save for a server crash, GM meddling and other such horrors). Things will stay bad until you and your empire do something about it.

If you don't get the tools to atleast have a fighting chance, most will either hop to the winning side or just stop playing. The latter is very detrimental to the game as a whole.

@ Stardouser; the spawn/base cap is quite odd. I'd really hate if my tank crew or outfit squad got split up due to different spawn locations beacuse a random number generator gave me an odd number instead of an even. Or am I missing your point?