Winning condition - Page 6

Ragotag · 2012-03-02, 04:56 PM

I think a winning condition is a very bad idea, especially for a persistent world MMO. Pushing your opponents back to their sanctuary and reaping the resource benefits of controlling the majority of the bases/facilities/land on any given continent should be enough of a reward for any faction.

Shogun · 2012-03-02, 05:04 PM

if you really need a sort of winning condition, there was some good form in ps1 that would work in ps2, too.

don´t remember what exact system it was, but it was a reward for the empire after a whole continent, cave or battleisle was locked down. this reward stayed with the empire until another empire captured the whole thing back what could take a long time.

we got no contlocks in ps2, but this would work with certain clusters of bases or hexxes. they have all to be captured in order to gain a reward advantage, and this reward will be active until all capturepoints of the cluster are captured by another empire. so it will be a fierce battle to gain such an advantage.

Fenrys · 2012-03-02, 10:28 PM

I like the idea of having a hard time fighting back out of your sanctuary against a superior (in terms of resource income) force.

Likewise, if the VS have successfully conquered the world, I want to get resources from it as long as possible. I'd take 50% of our pop and camp the TR sanctuary bubble, and send the other half to camp the NC bubble, and send metric shittones of tank shells and flak at anything that dares leave the protected areas.

Victory conditions that reset the map to an easier or more 'fair' state seem lame to me.
If the losers want to get out of the hole they're in, let them work for it.
And let the winners reap the benefits of their success.

Whalenator · 2012-03-02, 11:40 PM

Originally Posted by Fenrys

I like the idea of having a hard time fighting back out of your sanctuary against a superior (in terms of resource income) force.

Likewise, if the VS have successfully conquered the world, I want to get resources from it as long as possible. I'd take 50% of our pop and camp the TR sanctuary bubble, and send the other half to camp the NC bubble, and send metric shittones of tank shells and flak at anything that dares leave the protected areas.

Victory conditions that reset the map to an easier or more 'fair' state seem lame to me.
If the losers want to get out of the hole they're in, let them work for it.
And let the winners reap the benefits of their success.

I think capturing all bases is a victory condition.
Players would definitely swap factions if you were waiting outside their sanc bubble to kill them.

Fenrys · 2012-03-03, 12:47 AM

Hopefully the commanders could put together an organized push. "Everybody get in a tank, then on the count of three, we'll all start driving that way."

Worst case scenario - they'd probably just go to bed. Then we'd get bored of camping and go to bed also, feeling like we've won. Then the folks in Europe would wake up, be like "WTF mate?", then they'd sneak out when nobody was watching and get some bases.

cellinaire · 2012-03-03, 12:48 AM

Originally Posted by Warborn

I like the idea of winning conditions. I like how WW2OL, for example, has campaigns that progress and eventually end and then start anew. It's, personally, a lot more interesting if your empire is actually able to make real gains that contribute toward an ultimate goal. Taking a really hard-fought base one day, and the next seeing it and every other base on the continent taken back, is kind of a drag.

That kind of thing(bolded part) can also happen in WW2OL and any MMOFPS. The difference here(between PS and WW2OL), would be these two :

1) PS doesn't have campaigns and the world reset thing only happens when world domination is achieved, which would normally takes a loooooot longer than WW2OL's campaigns.

2) PS has many indivisual goals, but only one empire-level goal(world domination). One more problem is, the one and only empire-level goal didn't actually have noticeable reward or booty attached to it.

3) In PS, there's no separation between 'small goals' and the 'ultimate goal'. Game mechanics wise, in my thinking, only ultimate goal(world domination) exists, partly due to the fact that each and every locations in the entire game world are constantly used, simultaneously.

Whalenator · 2012-03-03, 01:50 AM

Also WWIIOL is fucking massive.
(and old)

stordito · 2012-03-03, 04:55 AM

I think that the lack of winning conditions was not a lack of scope.
On the contrary.
As someone stated you can play arcade shooters alla day long and feel like "now what?" after each match.
On the other end if you have no scope,but a general purpose,you start enjoying all small things like capturing a minor objective,advance under fire,or even flee to regroup,without being obsessed by the final goal.

when you are in planetside you are right there, doing what you can do for your empire, no matter if your K/D ratio stinks or you sacrificed yourself for rushing in a door first.

I think this is very Zen...enjoying the moment,not the goal.

so winning conditions coul exists as long as it does not reset the world or prompt you with a scoreboard.
In the past planetside had his winning conditions we "made up"... like kicking someone out of a cont, something you can accomplish only after some hard work and maybe days of fights...i think that would be sufficient.

ringring · 2012-03-03, 05:36 AM

No winning conditions in ps? pshaw!

Last night we had a very good fight in annwn. Bought 20-22 from each side TR vs VS. The fighting was tretty tactical, mostly around the core, the farmer building and the roudabout.

And, after about 2.5 hours, we won!

@warborn ... so you fight for a base, you win it and then 'it's a drag' to see someone else win it back later. How much more of a drag is it for it to be reset? Answer, lots.

Warborn · 2012-03-03, 07:04 AM

Originally Posted by cellinaire

That kind of thing(bolded part) can also happen in WW2OL and any MMOFPS. The difference here(between PS and WW2OL), would be these two :

I'm advocating some kind of win condition for Planetside 2, not Planetside 1. This is a new game. It isn't beholden to the flaws and shortcomings of its predecessor.

Originally Posted by ringring

@warborn ... so you fight for a base, you win it and then 'it's a drag' to see someone else win it back later. How much more of a drag is it for it to be reset? Answer, lots.

In my hypothetical PS2 win scenario the world resets, the characters and outfit don't. It would also be rather satisfying for the winning empire, especially if there are little rewards tied to it. Furthermore, every individual base or tower captured would be more meaningful as you know it's another step on the road to victory. I think these are all positive experiences.

Now, the question that this thread hasn't done anything to answer is why not have a win condition? What does it take away from the game? So far, as is typical for threads where someone suggests the game depart from how things worked in Planetside 1, it's just people providing content-less posts which say nothing more than "no". If you really can't think of any reasons why there shouldn't be any win conditions, beyond "no" or "it's Planetside there should be no win conditions" or the equivalent, it really speaks volumes about how weak and unsupported the contrary position to win conditions is.

sylphaen · 2012-03-03, 07:32 AM

@Warborn:

Concerning that win condition, when do we reset ?

1. After one empire is eliminated ? (leaving the 2 empires left dissatisfied)
2. After two empires are eliminated ? (which means only 2 factions left for a long time while the 3rd faction stops playing or 4th empires)
3. After an empire controls X% of territory ? (which will make people wonder why the game stops while your empire is on a winning streak)

All those 3 issues have their own problems.

Let's look into other possibilites:
4. After X amount of lives, when an empire reaches 0, a points-based score will determine the winner ? (promotes camping, unoriginal, tasteless)
5. After X amount of days, a points-based score will determine the winner ?
(basically downgrades PS to a large scale round-based game)

The current winning condition I assume will be in PS2:
6. No reset. The dominating empire keeps blocking other empires inside their safe-zones. (until everyone gets bored, this will suck even more if there is a snowball effect for winners)

To be honest, I like none of the above solutions as they kill the game by killing the fight. If anything, playing better than other empires and winning should make winning that extra territory harder, not easier.

There should be diminishing returns from controlled resources once you control more than the other 2 empires. And there should also be mechanics in place to disincentivize double-teaming vs. one empire.

The PS1 population incentives is a good example of an auto-balancing mechanic that promotes even fights.

If you want winning conditions, they should not be end-game based but battle based with screens popping up when a territory hex changes ownership for every player who participated in the battle.

Planetside is a FPS, there is no more game when there is no more battles. No win condition should promote end-game behavior.

If you have a good idea of a win condition, please, share it as I would like to discuss it and haven't been able to find one myself.

I have one idea but it's nothing like the end-game most of the pro-end-game people would imagine. I'll link it a bit later, there was already a thread where I discussed about it with SkyExile a while ago.

Figment · 2012-03-03, 08:50 AM

"Why is there a need for a win condition?"
-To avoid the situation where you fight and it feels pointless an end up getting sloppy or uncaring about anything other than you getting lots of kills. ie. people dumbing down the 'win condition' to mean nothing but a bodycount tally.

"Is or are there already win conditions in PlanetSide 2?"
- Mission System: missions can be accomplished
- Acquiring bits of territory and resources
- Completely occupying a continent or even the world (is this at all likely?)

"If combat continuous 24/7, can we even have aform of win conditions that feels meaningful?"
Yes and no. No, because battles get reset continuously. But yes, you can declare things like daily winners (like back on PS1), derived from the amount of territory gained on a day, empire kills, etc. You could create some sort of empire efficiency rating for instance based on amount of troops fielded vs terrain gained or lost. In PS2, you could expand this with the amount of resources obtained, missions accomplished and more of that sort of thing.

I would personally love to see the website graphics return that shows the battles of that day per server on a graph. In that sense, I would try to make win conditions less personal (less killstatty relevant), but on a larger scale for the empire. This way, some empire pride should be stimulated, where you want your entire empire to do well.

What I fear though, is that battles will be TOO balanced. Meaning rather than it being impossible to win, it's impossible to lose as well, as too much of the same territory is fought over through threeways. The game should not feel like trenchwarfare where people tire over doing the same thing over and over again and not fighting over territory that's on the other side of the continent, just because it's the farthest away from your empire's local sanctuary.

NewSith · 2012-03-03, 09:41 AM

Originally Posted by Figment

"Why is there a need for a win condition?"
-To avoid the situation where you fight and it feels pointless an end up getting sloppy or uncaring about anything other than you getting lots of kills. ie. people dumbing down the 'win condition' to mean nothing but a bodycount tally.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!

sylphaen · 2012-03-03, 01:06 PM

Originally Posted by NewSith

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!

WHAT VANU DEMANDS, VANU COMMANDS.

Graywolves · 2012-03-03, 01:35 PM

A de facto win for an empire kills the planetside taste for me.

If one empire never makes a win condition in X amount of time then players might jump ship to other empires simply because they want to win.

As stated in an earlier post, we could probably track resources collected, territory gained, missions accomplished, etc. on the server map thing like in the original Planetside and have the concept of a winner each day.

I think there were a couple times when a CSR would 'reset' Auraxis after a few hours of a world-lock. (could be mistaken)

The idea that it isn't satisfying to take something just to have it taken back a day later seems very lame to me. For starters there are other places to go and in other games you literally have nothing but fighting over a limited amount of maps.

Persistent conquest makes it feel more meaningful for me. Retake ground, defend the home continents, attack their own. If everything just abruptly ended it's like "so what?"

I want that never-ending war for territory.