Global Strategy & PS2's Territory System

[Forsaken One]

Originally Posted by Malorn

4th Empire

This isn't as much of a problem as it would be in other games. In Planetside do to the amount of teamwork defending even a hard losing streak can be fun.

In fact I'm sure that many Planetside Vets can tell of having a badass time defending when all is lost. (A certain story about a bug where sanctuary's became unlocked and it was a last stand to where a massive amount of 2 empires beating on the last base/tower a empire had hoping to take them out of the game forever comes to mind here. ]

That is the difference between Planetside and many others. Teamwork can do miracles, no matter what you have a good fight with smart, mature players and you know if you lost it wasn't because of some fat Cheetos eating drool bucket kid on the enemies team that has no life and high hand eye.

[Malorn]

Yeah that is true and while it can be fun for some people there's a significant amount who either logoff or switch sides when that happens, often after the empire gets on a losing streak from being double-teamed. I've seen it countless times, and before the empire-hopping was possible.

The phenomena I'm referring to is when empires are roughly equal or a little off, then two empires get engaged and all is going well, then the 3rd empire sandwiches and soon after the empire getting sandwiched drops to teens/low-20's due to people either logging off for the night or switching sides. This then lasts for the entire night.

Its fair-weather players who have accounts on both empires and they switch when the empire they are playing that day gets into a bad situation becuase that bad situation often lasts all night of non-stop losing territory. They switch to one of the other two empires that is enjoyable.

Thus one of the topics of the discussion is how to avoid that situation and encourage a relatively balanced distribution of fighting. Another topic is how to keep a resource-rich empire from getting richer while the resource starved empires have difficulty competing due to that fact.

[Sifer2]

The automated mission system is probably going to fix a lot of the behavioral problems if you can call them that. People will have less incentive to double team an win easy fights if the game tells them they get double exp or whatever for going an starting a fight over here instead.

I do like the idea however of having some sort of penalty for the larger empire to balance out their higher resources. Lots of strategy games often do that with some form of maintenance cost or something just so the smaller side has some hope of getting back in the game. Preferably I would like to see the penalty be something that requires more teamwork an coordination to overcome than just a hard debuff. So that it is possible for a highly coordinated Empire to actually do better an hold more territory.

[DviddLeff]

On a smaller level I am really looking forward to capturing the individual territories without the restriction of the lattice... pincer movements around strongholds, cutting enemy supply lines, etc

[Malorn]

One important part of what I consider "Planetside" was the ability to impact the battlefield in many different ways. Whether you were severing benefits & lattice links by cutting power, ninja'ing towers, resecuring bases away from the main front or simply running an ANT, there was always an impact that a single soldier or a small group could make without having to be in the meatgrinder.

Alas, that's a bit of a digression. The macro global strategy is more of the focus of this thread. It indirectly affects every player by shaping the landscape in which the battles occur and controls the ebb & flow of territory.

I want to ensure that ebb & flow is reasonable and doesn't get us into situations where one empire starts to think they'r ein a hopeless situation and just logs off/ switches servers to play in a different situation. This gets us back to having good rewards to encourage the underdog to stick with it and show they have everything to gain and a little advantage on their side in the form of capture bonuses and not direct gameplay handicaps. The dominant empires of course have the rewards of having tons of resources from territory so that shouldn't be too much to retain them. Getting the balance correct will be tricky, but will have a profound impact on how the daily battles turn out.

[Hamma]

Yea I foresee the resource/territory system really making it so there are TONS more ways to effect the battlefield.

[Malorn]

Bringing this discussion back up again. When I was watching the PS2 Public Panel I saw this problem was specifically brought up and it was one of the few things they didn't have a good answer to and recognized it as a difficult problem.

Josh said that the Mission System can help here (as I surmised earlier in this thread), and Smed mentioned that resources can spawn and despawn dynamic as an elegant solution.

Basically if they detect that an empire is overwhelming an underdog and the underdog is having a hard time competing they can spawn resources in territory the underdog already owns as one way to give 'em a leg up out of the bad situation.

I think that combined with the global handicap system I mentioned earlier would be really good for solving this problem. The global handicap suggestion was one where they take the Adjacency system where territories are easy/difficult to capture based on how many nearby territories you own. The handicap suggestion was to augment those rates based on the global territory owned by an empire. So if you're the juggernaut empire who owns tons of territory and resources then you'll have a little harder time gaining more territory and the underdog you're beating down on will have an easier time taking your turf. The more territory an empire owns, the bigger the handicap.

This is also intended to encourage the 3rd empire from not attackign the underdog and instead attacking the juggernaut since it will be easier for them to take back that territory as well. Two birds with one stone you could say.

[Headrattle]

It would make sense to have a system that allows the largest empire to be forced to stretch their lines too much, or have a weakness if they expand too fast. I have ideas of ways to do this other then just incentives, but not sure if my ideas would be feasible for the game.

However, the fact that the other little guy will attack the area that is weakest, and that being the empire that is already under attack, is just human nature. There may not be a very good way to do that. One thing I do remember, is using tactics to trick the other two empires into fighting each other because of the lattice system. Example, I remember once taking my outfit out to destroy TR generators that would give the nearby VS an opportunity to attack and capture that base, rather then attack us.

The fact is that the zerg wants to zerg, and organized outfits are going to look for weaknesses. I am not that annoyed by the three way battles. What annoys me is that some people believe that you need three way battles to have fun. You hear it in command chat all the time (to be fair, I think it has more to do with population though.)

[brinkdadrink]

I just wanted to throw my two cents in here.

1st is that there are no more sancuarys so were not sure if the last stand will be in a corner or surrounded by the sea of red somewhere.

The main point I have is that as an empire if you dont attack the Big empire and instead go for the smaller one you allow the bigger empire to get more resources and to further increase his arsenal (If that is how resources work). Eventually you will have to attack them so the best thing to do is to do it earlier than later before they become to strong.

I see your side that some will want to attack the loser for easier land and i hope the missions help stop this from happening

When I played planetside several years ago there was plenty of people to keep tragedy's such as the "double-team on the small empire" from happening and i think with the F2P which i feel will be like the reserves (BR6 only) will help keep the numbers high enough to stop this situation from happening for many years.

[Malorn]

The path of least resistance is to attack the weaker empire. While in theory one should attack the stronger empire it rarely plays out that way (as described earlier in this topic). It happened daily on Emerald in 03-05 and still occurred daily every time I resubbed since then. It doesn't even need to be a coordinated effort, it's just human nature.

Two good ways to counteract that nature is to provide incentives to attack elsewhere and to put a little handicap on the big dog that makes it more lucrative to attack them.

The first way I just described is missions. If they are worthwhile and auto-generated by the empire then the empire can detect the situation and put most if not all of its missions on the big empire. Depending on how rewarding missions are that may be sufficient to ward off the behavior.

Additionally having bonuses to attacking that empire (i.e. capturing their territory takes less time) I think would be strong enough motivation to counteract that natural desire to go for the weaker animal. When you have the prospect of getting more territory and also getting some good mission rewards then when you evaluate "what is the best place to attack?" the weaker empire will look less attractive.

I truly believe that's all we really need. It's a simple question - what target is more lucrative? Naturally its the weaker target, but if the stronger one is more vulnerable and you have incentives to attack them specifically then it shifts in the other direction.

[Kurtz]

I agree.

Automated Missions based on Territory held. Benefits for attacking the Empire with the most resources.

[Whalenator]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Basically if you win you get rewards - which then helps you win more. The loser is denied those rewards and so they have a harder time competing. Its a positive-feedback loop where the rich have an easier time staying rich.

Now we come to the problem of realism[1] vs. balance, as is so prevalent in modern FPSs. Do we give into those that are losing and "make the game more fun for them?" I personally believe a challenge motivates. It further instills the ever-so-prevalent "Planetside Effect", that being the notion of being part of a greater cause.

[1]To define "realism" (As this is a Sci-Fi game) I point to the believability and drive of the game. What are you fighting for? Level progress? Epic battles? Of course I'm unsure whether the final PS2 product will have daily resets of territory (I was always thinking a weekly reset would be better), but regardless if progress is slowed to a crawl near the end of a campaign, will the "winning" faction still have the opportunity to "win"; that is, wipe out an entire faction's non-sanctuary assets and be able to focus their attention to the final problem (Which would be even MORE difficult at this point) and finally "winning the game" and likely resetting the map.

PS: Malorn, I read your manifesto years ago and thought it was pure genius. I am a huge fan of your work and pray SOE takes your word.

EDIT: WOOO NEW CONGLOMERATE WOOOO LETS HIT THE GROUND RUNNING PS2 TIME
EDIT2: Super necropost. Whatever. Shameless bump activated.

[Xaine]

The thing about Planetside is, when you're losing territory you don't actually feel bad or frustrated. Or at least i don't.

I care about winning, believe me - but when my empire is losing i just go with it. At some point in the future we will be willing again, so yeah. Its all ebb and flow.

On top of that, if one side is being double teamed on a cont, they tend to fall back and sit in one base and heavily fortify it. So eventually the other two empires have to attack this base, and thats normally when they start shooting at each other. If they aren't already before that, given that there will be far more bases under the control of the two 'allied' empires, than the one being attacked.

[DayOne]

Also take into consideration that we will likely be fighting over territory that isn't always bases. Could really change the play style of battles.

Nice necro Whalenator This is a topic that could really enhance the game if done well.

[Tasorin]

I personally love when its pile on the NC and we have to fight chain gun wielding spray monkeys and barney Lasher spam all at the same time at the same fight.

Granted the population on PS1 has boiled down to a minimum and has turned into mostly Reaver raping and Max Crashing, but hey you find the fun where you can.

In those chart scenarios where one faction is pushed back to the "beach head" this is where you send out a Platoon recon of the 3 Squad leaders and back drop on a hex and then use the spawn on leader feature to quick drop your entire platoon behind enemy lines without exposing 27 other players while the squad leaders get into position.

Granted we don't know the specifics yet of the Beta mechanics, but you get the point.