Joining the PS2 Team

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Laraza

Congratulations Malorn on getting the job, especially with the economy the way it is.

Several questions:

1. Any workable solutions yet on the "rich get richer"/"poor get poorer" problem?
2. Are people happy with the game as a FPS from an E-sport point of view? Meaning is skill really a factor considering TTK, gun accuracy, player movement?
3. Shouldn't there be a new player tutorial or VR for us before we go onto the battlefield?
4. Is the progression model intuitive? Example: why do you get the same amount of xp for an empty outpost as you do for a hotly contested base? Shouldn't the rewards be based on participation rather than flipping territory? Isn't there a lot of cert bloat?
5. As far as game balance do the natural counters have the correct effect?
6. What is the measure of the war itself? Is it simply a K/D ratio for the player and a glance at the map for the meta-game or is something else coming down the road?
7. Are there any more capture mechanics coming or world design that will make this less of a simple numbers game?
8. How's the immersion factor for everyone else? Does the game's internal rules make sense?

1. I've seen quite a few great ideas to solve this and its definitely a top concern. There isn't a silver bullet here, it will take several small things and will likely be an ongoing process of tweaking to get it just right.

2. Can't really talk to the esport thing. Its entertaining to watch!

3. Tutorials are tricky, many people skip them or roll over them, and so personally I don't think you can rely on them to hit every player. To me the key issue is getting new players out of the warpgate and into the fight as soon as possible. Most other games like Battlefield series just throw you into the fight in multiplayer and you figure out the details later. As long as you are in the game enjoying the massive fights I think most of the rest of the other stuff will come in time. So I would say the two things here are to always have good massive fights going on at all times, and then get new players into squads and into those fights as soon as possible.

There could be some mini-tutorials to illustrate specific concepts like how to use an equipment terminal, how to use instant action, switch continents, etc. I would expect those to be anywhere from 15-30 seconds in duration and be primarily voice-overs, like if you had a friend standing over your shoulder telling you the important high level things about the core elements of planetside 2.

4. Progression model is also tricky. You want to reward playing the objective, even if nobody shows up to defend it because you're still doing something good for your empire. I think it would be better to help encourage more fights and some better funneling so fights are more likely. I always liked PS1's system though where capture experience scaled with the number of enemies in the area during the capture. I can see them having some scaling effect here to give increased rewards over larger captures, but 500 points for a capture seems right to me, even if undefended. Of course on the other hand if it's defended you are getting more...in the form of points for kills, assists, and supporting your teammates. In some cases having a simple model is easier to predict, so I actually think the current model is reasonable.

5. Not sure what this question meant...

6. I certainly dont' like K/D as a measure of anything because it doesn't measure overall effectiveness. Score / Time is a measure of contribution and effectiveness. Measure of the war is a good thing to consider. There are several ways you can measure that. One is simply number of hexes controlled per unit time. Another is number of continents dominanted. Another is number of bases assaulted or defended. Another is resource intake or the empire-wide amount of resource accumulation per unit time. You could also factor in population, so it could be hexes per unit time weighted by population distribution during that time.

I would expect there to be possibilities of using these metrics to create weekly or daily contests and have empire winners based on them, or perhaps there are multiple winners. The VS might be really good at captures and defenses, the NC might be better at holding more overall territory, and the TR might be better at holding the most valuable territory in terms of resources. Could be rewards for achieving these different things too, like titles or bragging rights, or temporary boosts or auraxium rewards. No promises of course but all that stuff is certainly in the realm of consideration for encouraging the larger war effort and measuring its progress.

7. I dont' know if there's capture mechanics on the way for the purpose of allowing the overcoming of numbers, but certain areas and mechanics might favor numbers more than others. And the whole rich-get-richer thing involves a counter to that sort of thing and getting underdog empires to fight the big dog as opposed to each other. So I believe there's a lot of subtle things that can be done in that space. At some point though you have to acknowledge that numbers matter, and they do in every shooter. 5 guys go into a room with 1 guy defending, do you really expect the 1 guy to win? Is it possible? Of course! Is it likely...not so much. Asymmetric warfare is a reality and it happens on large scale and small scale.

So I don't think we should go out of our way to undermine a natural advantage in games and life but there are certainly situations and places where small numbers can matter. Usually that's defending choke points (think 300) where the full force cannot come to bear. There's also tactical decisions....for example, when there are multiple objectives to take a facility a large force needs to spread out to cover them all, allowing opportunity for smaller force to attack the now divided force on more even terms. If there is just one objective then it's much less likely that the small force will make an impact like that. Those are subtle ways to spread out a fight and thin out large numbers so smaller forces can be more effective. The influence system is another way for smaller objectives and fights to have a larger impact on the overall war. I think there are some asymmetrical tools available to give small groups a chance to make a difference.

At some point numbers still have to matter, and the successful and efficient deployment of your forces makes a difference. Things like command and player missions can have an impact here as well. There are many ways to slice it, but being outnumbered is something everyone will have to face and learn how to fight against. There are ways to be effective but they aren't conventional. Just like in real life...when you're heavily out-gunned you don't follow the same strategy as the bigger force or you get owned.

8. No idea on immersion factor. Game feels immersive to me!