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2012-04-10, 03:50 AM
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[Ignore Me] #1 | ||
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Contributor PlanetSide 2
Game Designer |
This is a proposed model, not the current design.
For the current design model, please see this thread: http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=40416 To address some concerns expressed in the current model (expressed in the thread above), I have thought through some alternative ideas for a Tug-o-war type system to wrestle control of territories gradually as opposed to initiating a capture and then having a control race. The Idea The core idea behind the tug-o-war model is to move a control indicator point from one faction to another by having a higher net capture strength than the opposing faction(s). One way to think of it is a metal object is between two magnets, with each magnet pulling the object. The magnet with the stronger pull will move the object towards itself until the object reaches the magnet. In the case of Planetside2 there are 3 magnets (one representing each empire), each vying for control of the metal control object. The strength of the pull of each magnet depends on how much friendly territory borders the contested territory, and how many control points each faction has. The goal is to create the same behavior as Higby and the other PS2 designers have intended, but doing so with a tug-o-war system because it is more natural and avoids some of the quirkier problems of a race-style system (the current design). One of the challenges in a tug-o-war design is the presence of 3 factions. Many games have a tug-of-war system in the past, Old school WoW had a tug-o-war system in Eye of the Storm (I think this has since changed). In WoW's example, the number of people indicated the strength of the capture. Then the direction the control moves is simply the difference of the two populations within the capture area. This is trivial with two factions because it's a point along a line, a 1-dimensional space. Three factions makes it a two-dimensional space, specifically a triangle. I will address this later on, but first we must work through how territory adjacency affects the strength of the capture and how capture times are calculated with a tug-o-war system. I'll start with two empire scenarios and then describe how to handle a 3-way contest. The Tug-O-War Model Strength of capture is proportional to friendly adjacent territory, just as the current design for capture. The main difference is that instead of adjacent territory granting starting tickets it will directly impact the rate of ticket accrual. In order to make things simple, I have a basic "Tickets per-second" calculation, which when combined with maximum tickets gives us a time to capture. From what Higby has indicated their intended design was, I came up with the following rough constraints. It should take 30 minutes to capture if there is zero adjacent territory. It should take 15 minutes to capture if the adjacent territory is exactly half (50%). It should take 4 minutes to capture if the adjacent territory is entirely friendly. (Note on the last one - since this is a tug-of-war system, the actual re-secure time in a back-hack situation could be significantly shorter than 4 minutes, but it would be 4 minutes if the enemy succeeded in capturing and they were re-capturing. This might seem a bit off from Higby's expectations but I think it will work out well in-practice). Since I am looking for a target 15 minutes and looking at tickets-per second, instead of using 1000 tickets, I shortened it to 900. 900 tickets is a nice number because a rate of 1 ticket/second is exactly 15 minutes to generate 900. I made this my target rate for exactly a .5 territory adjacency ratio. If 1 ticket / second is a 15 minute capture time, then .5 tickets / second is a 30 minute capture time, which gets me the backhack-scenario rate. For the last one I played around a bit with a few formulas until I found numbers that looked right. T = Territory Adjacency ratio (# of friendly edges / # total edges) For a facility, the total edges is 18. Now to for the magic formula that fits our constraints. R = (T+.5)^(2(T+.5)) I arrived at this formula by much fiddling with the numbers until I found a growth rate that fixed expectations. Below is a table showing some territory adjacency values and the resulting maximum capture rate. Formula Results Table The number on the left is the % adjacent edges that are friendly, the number on the right is the resulting maximum tickets generated per-second that is possible (like if all control points were owned). Notice that .5 = 1, as designed earlier, and 0 = .5, also as designed. The top constraint of 3.375 worked out well to have a cap time of 4.5 minutes, which is just about right. You can see how other rates grow mostly linearly until about 70% territory ownage when it grows rapidly to fit the model where adjacent territory really matters. This encourages battle at the front and makes non-front territories more difficult to capture. If a territory has multiple control points, then the rate per control point is determined by dividing the rate by the number of control points. Now for some scenarios & examples to illustrate how this works. Example 1: Near-even adjacency matchup (55-45) Suppose the NC own 55% around the edges in a facility, and that facility has 5 control points. The VS own the other 45% and are attacking. This is a fairly close matchup territory-wise, with a small advantage to the NC. The rate generated per control point for the NC is 1.1079 / 7 = .1582 The rate generated per control point for the VS is .9071 / 7 = .1296 If the VS were to control all 3 of the 5 points, they would generate .3888 tickets every second, but the NC would generate .3164 from the other two. The net rate for the VS is .0724, which would take the VS about 3 hours. They are winning, but not significantly enough. For the VS to really start moving the capture along they need at least 4 of the 5. And this is the expected result - VS have control over the facility but not a strong grip. They would need a stronger grip to move that capture along faster. If the VS controlled all 5 points they would capture the facility in about 16.5 minutes. Example 2: Large Adjacency advantage (70-30) Suppose the TR own a facility and 70% of the edges around that facility, and that facility has 7 control points. The NC own the other 30% of the edges. The rate generated per control point for the TR is 1.548 / 7 = .2211 tickets per second, per control point. The rate generated per control point for the NC is .6998 / 7 = .1000 In this example, the TR (due to adjacent territory advantage) have a little over 2:1 capture rate advantage over the NC. This means the NC will need to control more of the facility to compensate. If the NC own 5 of the 7 capture points, they will gain tickets at a rate of .5 per second. However, the TR will be pulling against that rate directly, with a rate of .4422 because they own the other two capture points. That means the NC are slowly gaining control of the territory, but at a slow rate of .0578 tickets / second. At this rate, the NC will capture the facility in about 4.32 hours. The rate is so slow they are effectively being held off by the TR's foothold and would have to take another capture point to secure the territory in a timely manner. If they did capture one more control point, they would be gaining control of the facility at a rate of .3789, which is way faster and will capture the facility in about 40 minutes. If they exercised complete dominance of the facility and had all 5 control points it would be captured at a rate of .6998 and be captured in 21.4 minutes (which is the maximum listed above). The major obstacle for the NC in this instance was the territory advantage which the TR enjoyed. Example 3: Behind-lines Capture (100-0) Suppose the TR own a facility and 100% of the edges around that facility, and that facility has 7 control points. The VS attempt to captures this facility with a daring gal drop way behind TR-VS lines. The rate generated per control point for the TR is 3.375 / 7 = .4821 tickets per second, per control point. The rate generated per control point for the VS is .5 / 7 = .0714 Clearly the odds are against the VS pulling this off, and even if they capture all 7 control nodes they are looking at a long 30-minute cap. Further complicating things for them is the high cap strength of the TR. If TR do show up they will only need a few control points to thwart the VS effort. If the VS own 6/7 points, they are effectively stopped, as their capture rate is .4285, and the TR capture rate for their one point is .4821 - a gain for the TR. The only way the VS will succeed is by holding all the points for the duration of the 30 minute cap. It is OK for them to lose control of a node for a short time, but if they lose more than one any progress made will be quickly undone in a very short time. This does not prohibit a back-hack in completely hostile territory but it certainly makes it difficult and will likely require a lot of manpower to secure the territory. Even once it is secured it only takes 4.5 minutes for the TR to reclaim that territory, so they must continue to defend it. Modeling Three Empires As mentioned above a significant challenge is modeling 3 empires. The above design will work to model three empires, but the modeling becomes a little more complicated (which is why I suspect the devs may have avoided this implementation). Conceptually, a 3-way Tug-O-War is a 2-dimensional space, with the control "object" having different forces acting upon it to move it towards one empire or another. This can be represented as an equilateral triangle, with each empire in a corner of the triangle. Calculating movement of the object is a matter of assigning a vector pointing to an empire's corner. The magnitude of the vector is the capture strength of the empire. Here's a simple example of the capture object being "tugged" in two dimensional space. The vector notation shows that in this example the object has a strong VS component and so the object is moving towards the VS.  Like any vector, in a 3-way situation the empires are all pulling on the object and the one pulling the hardest makes it move towards them. In this case the "pulling the hardest" is the effective capture rate. In this example each "Side" of the equilateral triangle is 900 units long, which is our "ticket" size expressed earlier. So it really isn't tickets/s, its a vector magnitude, measured in distance / s, o units / s traveled. Normally this might be fairly difficult to model, but I expect with the physics libraries available to the PS2 team they can actually model this like they would a simple physics system, with an object having vectors pointing towards each of the empire and the vector components are the result of the capture magnitude. Also since we know the current position of the capture object and it's movement vector, we can also calculate an ETA for capture for easy representation to players. This ETA would change if control points or adjacent territories changed hands. It's also worth noting that in this 2-dimensional representation, the "Neutral" state of a facility not owned by anyone could simply be represented as an object that starts in the center of the triangle. The rest of the capture mechanic functions like the empires. This means neutral bases would be captured about 50% faster than non-neutral territories if they are uncontested. Most contests will likely not need the 2-dimensional model as it will be 2 empires contesting over one piece of territory. In those instances the control object will move along one of the edges of the triangle rather than through the middle of it. UI Representation So now that I've described the mechanic - how do we express it to players in a meaningful way? Well there are several key things we want to convey to users: I have a mock-up of the control UI that indicates all of these key piece of information below.  The triangle area itself doesn't necessarily need to be that large. It could be shrunk down a bit. The VS/TR/NC labels may be overkill but there' here for illustrative purposes. These could easily be represented as small empire icons. As mentioned above this mockup shows the control status for each control point at the bottom. Top-center shows the dominant empire & capture ETA. The dominant empire is represented by the color of the timer. An icon next to the timer might also be warranted. Here's a more minimalist mockup where the size of the colored corner is the representation of capture strength. I think this one is easier to read and it clearly tells me the critical information - Which empire has the strongest claim? How long before they cap? Which control points do they have?  Augments This model can be augmented fairly easily with modifiers to capture strength. If we wish to give an empire a handicap or a bonus to capture rates they can be applied flatly to the capture strength formula. For example, perhaps an empire has an excessively low population and we wish to give them a 20% capture time bonus. It's a simple multiplier to the capture strength formula. That empire will now have an easier time capturing territories. Same goes for handicaps. If we want to make it difficult to own a lot of territory we could assign a capture time penalty based on the number of hexes an empire controls. In that case the capture time could be increased by reducing capture strength, which would also make it easier for other empires to capture that empire's territory. This is one good way to help the Rich Get Richer problem by making larger empires harder to maintain and slowing their ability to capture more territory. Another possible augment is to introduce the concept of neutrality. If control moves too far away from an empire that owns the territory it might go neutral and move to a contested state where neither empire controls it. This might have impact on other territory control struggles also but could make "neutralizing" a territory a viable tactic to deprive it from assisting neighboring territories for control purposes. Capture/Contest/Resecure Experience Since this model can result in contests for territories that may span into hours for a large battle at a tightly contested territory rewarding players only for a successful capture is insufficient. One idea to combat this is periodic experience awards for those in the capture vicinity as long as they remain capturing the area. The greater the contest (i.e. the more enemy present, the more control nodes the enemy has), the greater the periodic experience awards. In this way players are being rewarded for participation AS they participate. Actual capture of course should yield a bonus proportional to the amount of time spent in the struggle, which could be substantial. Things that might yield more experience - Being near a control point when it is flipped to your team - Gaining experience near a friendly control point in a contested territory might have a defense-bonus - Gaining experience near a hostile control point might have an offensive bonus applied Also fully capturing or fully re-securing a base should yield xp proportional to the time it was contested while the player was around it. Sort of like the time-slices from PS1. --- I've really done it this time, reached post character limit, lol, TBC in post # 2.
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Last edited by Malorn; 2012-04-10 at 04:13 AM. |
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2012-04-10, 03:50 AM
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[Ignore Me] #2 | ||
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Contributor PlanetSide 2
Game Designer |
lol @ reaching post char limit (Hamma can you up that for me
 ).Commentary This design like any has some pros & cons. The Good
The Bad
Ease of understanding could either be good or bad depending on how well the UI represents the capture mechanic. As long as players can figure out how to increase their capture strength (by having adjacent territories), and how to see which empire is in control I think it shouldn't be all that hard to understand.
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Last edited by Malorn; 2012-04-10 at 03:54 AM. |
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2012-04-10, 05:39 AM
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[Ignore Me] #3 | ||
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Lieutenant Colonel
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An interesting alternative - and one I prefer over what we understand about the actual one. I particularly like the UI mock up as it makes what is going to confuse some into an easy to understand system.
However as you comment on, is it still easy enough to understand, compared to the originals "Hack - Hold - Capture" mechanic? It is a lot trickier, but then so is the current dev version. Simplifying either is no easy task, especially as we want to speed up uncontested hacks and slow down back hacks, while taking into account surrounding territory but at the same time not make the system confusing to some. I certainly think that in a one on one fight the indicator should be made linear, rather than the triangle; only have the triangle develop if the third empire sticks its foot in the door.
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2012-04-10, 05:46 AM
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[Ignore Me] #4 | ||
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Lieutenant Colonel
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Nice post. The pretty pictures help a lot to convey your ideas. I really like your visualization of captures status for the tug-of-war: it's very visual and speaks by itself. It makes me think about continental population stats in PS1 but at a facility level.
Anything that can help guess where the enemy is (without actually confirming where they are) can provide a nice guess exercise for command, help read the flow of battle and provide more exciting contests for locations. If I may add something, different capture mechanics for different types of objective could also make the game feel more varied. e.g.: hack-to-cap for a small tower-like structure would be more adapted than a full-scale tug-of-war. Edit: Congratulations for beating the forum, btw !
Last edited by sylphaen; 2012-04-10 at 05:52 AM. |
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2012-04-10, 01:38 PM
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[Ignore Me] #5 | |||||
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Contributor PlanetSide 2
Game Designer |
Another possibility is to get flat out awards or bursts of capture strength. For example, a specific territory might have a special modifier to its capture mechanic that slows it or stops it beyond a certain point as an attacker, but you can do special tasks that create a burst of capture strength, like taking an object from one location to another. In this way we could get simulate the LLU-like behavior from PS1 where attackers can move the capture point away a certain point but in order to capture the territory they must run the LLU. Meanwhile you still have the hack & hold going on back at the territory so defenders can foil the attempt. So its extensible and can offer up different capture mechanics. Also the actual control nodes themselves might have different requirements. They might be triggered by proximity of a tank rather than infantry, creating capture nodes that must be captured by a special unit type. That isn't unique to this concept though - any capture model could feature that, just as the burst-tickets/LLU concept above could apply to multiple capture systems.
The race system I think would be a little less easy to read since the user has to look a control bar for each faction and try to figure out which one will cap first. They could estimate this and put up a timer like I describe above for this model. Seems like it requires more information and isn't as easy to represent visually as a triangle with an object moving between each empire. Maybe not but we'll have to see what they come up with there. The thing I like most about the tug-o-war model vs the race model is that in the tug-o-war model everything a player does to capture a territory is permanent until someone undoes it. It fits naturally into the persistent world. If we're at a tough fight over an evenly contested territory and my team spends 20 minutes on a capture, that effort is not wasted if we lose control for a short time. The enemy still has to overcome the control we gained over those 20 minutes. It might not take them the same amount of time but they still have to deal with it. Likewise if I only spent 30 seconds trying to cap something the enemy doesn't need to sit around for 15 minutes waiting for the cap to be completed as I believe would happen in the race system.
Having the triangle collapse to just a single edge makes sense (current owner & your own faction) and having it only unfold into the full capture triangle when all three factions are contesting would certainly simplify the UI for the common case and make it easy to see how the capture is going. The only possible issue is it may cause funkiness in the triangle's orientation, but that could be reduced by always having the player's own faction appear in the top left or right corners, that way the only sides that would potentially be swapped are the hostile factions. The act of collapse and possibility of factions switching positions might cause more confusion than simply having a static triangle always present in the same orientation. It would also add to the cost of the implementation, but could result in simplified UI in the common case.
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Last edited by Malorn; 2012-04-10 at 01:46 PM. |
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2012-04-10, 03:12 PM
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[Ignore Me] #6 | ||
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Corporal
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The whole problem with having multiple control points and tickets makes it all completely like many MMORPG and even some FPS things. Arathi Basin style. As soon as you know your side isn't goin to win the match, why stay? People are simply going to move off and start an attack somewhere else OR simply pull back and allow the fast "win" for the defense to occur and start the whole match over again. Not a fan of this new capture/ticket system.
Having multiple capture points is fine, but once you take them (hack them) they should be yours. It should be used as a road to the CC. Not a "well shit we didn't take 3 pts in the first 6 min so I guess we are screwed. Bye guys....goin somewhere else" This Model does make much more sense. In regards to capture strength and it's display it could be very easy to do if every territory had an odd number of capture pts. As you stated before if it's one, you kind of just hack and hold, throw up a timer and you're done. Now on something more complicated like a base, let's say it has 5 capture pts. One of them being the CC. Let's use your behind enemy lines example a little bit and say it will take 30min to capture it. Let's amend that to 30 min if we hack the CC directly. However, if we hack one of the other nodes first at let's say 20% of the total time(6min), when the CC is hacked the time would be reduced to 27min. Prior to CC hack: 0 Time for CC: 30min Prior to CC hack: 1 Time for CC: 27min Prior to CC hack 2 Time for CC: 24min Prior to CC hack: 3 Time for CC: 21min Prior to CC hack: 4 Time for CC: 18min Essentially, this encourages coordinated attacks. Even if you got in and hacked all 4 nodes before the CC it would still take you 24min to cap the base. Now the catch is, if the enemy comes back and recaps any of the secondary nodes(we'll say CC is primary) it would add 6min onto the CC hack time. If you then went out and recapped that node it would subtract 3min from the time. Solving the empty base long ass cap problem would just be removing more time off the CC hack for holding ALL secondary nodes for a certain amount of time. So if you hold all nodes for 5min straight, 2min could be taken off the CC time. That's jsut an example. You can then increase the amt of time removed from the CC hack as well over the course of things. This way, the only displays needed are times for each node/CC. Last edited by Ruwyn; 2012-04-10 at 03:44 PM. |
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2012-04-10, 03:44 PM
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[Ignore Me] #7 | ||
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Brigadier General
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While it's an interesting idea, I think it puts too much of an emphasis on player numbers. I may very likely be totally misunderstanding it, but the capture and hold, and llu systems both make it easier for smaller spec ops to go up against a larger force and succeed.
For example, I've seen a number of times where a small group saves a hack from going through by using a coordinated counter-attack (i.e. Gal drop) at the right time even though they were vastly outnumbered.
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"Before you say anything, prepare to stfu." -Kenny F-ing Powers 
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2012-04-10, 03:59 PM
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[Ignore Me] #8 | |||
This "modelling" is actually incredibly easy if you forget the vector nonsense and just think ternary diagram and percentages. Then give the capture point rate per control point as a function of percentage adjacent controlled. You're also forgetting that territory control is discrete and based on a hex system. So you can only hold edges in 1/6th (~17%) increments. The whole thing can be done as "If half adjacent controlled, then 5 points per second per capture point controlled" blah blah. Also, if a facility is controlled, do the points need to be drained from the holding empire first and then added to the new empire, or do all empires points reset to 0 upon a capture? In which case, it's actually beneficial to let a facility be captured, rather than try to struggle to take something during a 3-way.
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 All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others. Last edited by Rbstr; 2012-04-10 at 04:02 PM. |
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2012-04-10, 03:59 PM
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[Ignore Me] #9 | |||
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Corporal
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My suggestion basing it solely on time and making the CC still the primary focus allows a tug-o-war to happen at the beginning/middle of a fight for the territory and a hack and hold at the end. A win condition of holding at least 3 points/nodes (including the CC), when countdown reaches 0 would eliminate the control switch while only owning the CC during a recap attempt. |
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2012-04-10, 04:38 PM
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[Ignore Me] #10 | |||||||||
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Contributor PlanetSide 2
Game Designer |
The number of control points was a given based on what Higby said in the AMAA when I asked how many control points per territory (he said 5-7).
The current dev design and this proposed one both favor easy/fast resecures for captures that have a lot of friendly territory around them. Higby's description illustrated that a defender might only need 2 out of 7 control points to stop the cap. With fewer required control points a smaller group could at least manage to stall the attackers and prevent the cap, if not completely reverse it. I listed those examples in the OP.
http://i.imgur.com/LPElr.jpg The smallest a territory can be is a single hex, but they go up to as many as seven hexes. The arrangement of the hexes that compose a territory also changes the number of edges it has. They have irregular shape. So the minimum number of adjacent edges is 6, but it easily goes up to 18, and may yet go higher. Even still, the formula works regardless of number of edges.
If you get points for fighting there regardless of outcome it's always beneficial. Remember also that as long as you own something you are gaining resources passively, so sacrificing a territory so you can re-cap it would cost you in lost resources at the least. Not to mention the loss of territory would also weaken your empire's claim to others.
I played many matches in AB and with the similar mechanic in SWTOR's Alderaan warzone where once you reach a certain threshold its' essentially impossible to realistically win the battle and people do just give up and move on. I like the idea of victory being obtainable no matter how close it gets.
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Last edited by Malorn; 2012-04-10 at 04:44 PM. |
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2012-04-10, 05:24 PM
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[Ignore Me] #11 | ||
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Second Lieutenant
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As long as the ticket advantage isn't given to the side with greater numbers in/around the capture point, I'm all for a system like this.
A squad of very skilled players should be able to hold a cap against a much larger number of unorganized players. |
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2012-04-11, 11:38 AM
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[Ignore Me] #12 | |||
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Contributor PlanetSide 2
Game Designer |
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2012-04-11, 01:25 PM
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[Ignore Me] #13 | ||
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Brigadier General
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I like it. Preventing instant resecures will drag fights out further, but only hotly contested ones. It may even prevent some fights from dragging out by stopping a small resecure team from singlehandedly destroying 14 minutes of defending a capture.
Resecuring back hacks would still be relatively quick, while actually still giving the back hackers a chance to hold on to the territory and potentially draw it out into a larger ongoing fight. One thing that I think would be important is that whoever owns the contested territory has it count towards their number of friendly adjacent territories. In other words, home team still has an advantage in their number of tickets, but only slightly. I also like the idea of things like LLU's being able to give a temporary boost to one of the sides tickets. This would give the devs a lot of creative freedom to make fun objectives the players would want to try to complete to help their cause, especially on hotly contested stalemates, while being relatively easy to balance and not undermining the standard capture mechanic. Good ideas. I hope the devs take this into consideration. It seems plausibly doable since it is based on the same territory system and would essentially just be a few tweaks to the capture timers. |
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2012-04-11, 01:49 PM
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[Ignore Me] #14 | ||
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Major
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Some good ideas. Just makes me feel like i miss the old hack system already tho. Id take the old system over the new one anyday.
I know the capture times are stated with speculation but given soe want to get players into fights quicker (no sancs) how could they justify taking 30 mins to get a base when thats twice as long as it takes in PS1? For the record i think your idea is better than the proposed one btw, was an interesting post 
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2012-04-11, 02:09 PM
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[Ignore Me] #15 | |||
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Contributor PlanetSide 2
Game Designer |
The old system had its problems too. Typically the battle was over by the time the hack went on and you sat around for 15 min doing nothing, as most of the critical fighting occurred before a capture was even attempted. In PS2 barracks (spawn rooms) can be independently captured and there may be other objectives like shield generators that can help restrict movement in the base. That should keep the fight potentially interesting for the duration of the capture. If it isn't then the capture times are still comparable to PS1. In cases where you are capturing territory that has a lot of friendly territory around it you will see capture times faster than PS1. The resecures in PS1 were also easy to do and it was a bit lame that 25-30 minutes of hard work fighting into a base and then sitting on the hack could be undone by people getting bored and moving on or not paying attention to the very end of the capture. In the proposed mechanics above it is possible for a small group to come in and stop the capture and begin to reverse it, but they will not instantly erase all of the progress players made getting it close to capture.
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Last edited by Malorn; 2012-04-11 at 02:10 PM. |
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Tug-o-War Territory Capture Model
Linear Mode
