WDS is finally not ridiculous

**Malorn** · 2013-10-22, 12:15 PM

Originally Posted by ChipMHazard

One funny thing about the WDS is that you're now punished for focusing on alerts that do not take place on Indar, in the sense that the new rules reward fighting on a populated continent.

If enough players leave indar to fight for the alert then it is the alert continent that gains the point value, not Indar.

This is why we added the ability to award points for winning alerts. We haven't enabled it yet due to negative stigma and culture that has developed around Alerts, and because we need to see the scoring results so we can come up with a good value for them.

To correct this problem we want to make sure Alerts are worth enough that if you avoid them you are handing a lot of points to another empire, and if you attend and lose you are at least earning a lot of points due to enemy population shift to the Alert continent.

kubacheski · 2013-10-22, 01:02 PM

Originally Posted by Malorn

If enough players leave indar to fight for the alert then it is the alert continent that gains the point value, not Indar.

This is why we added the ability to award points for winning alerts. We haven't enabled it yet due to negative stigma and culture that has developed around Alerts, and because we need to see the scoring results so we can come up with a good value for them.

To correct this problem we want to make sure Alerts are worth enough that if you avoid them you are handing a lot of points to another empire, and if you attend and lose you are at least earning a lot of points due to enemy population shift to the Alert continent.

So I'm a little confused. You're wanting to leverage the Alert system into WDS scoring to get populations to move from continent to continent? Is this to even out populations across continents or to get people to fight in more places?

If its to even populations, why not put more worth on lower population continents and the pops will balance themselves out across continents as squads go to the lower pop continent that gives more benefit?

If you're running it to get people to fight on other conts, why not explicitly rotate the continent where scores are calculated? Say, i don't know...when warpgates are rotated. Simply rotate the cont. or better yet, why not explicitly have 9 rounds i mean there are 3 different conts and 3 WG locations so there are 9 permutations.

yes I'm being a bit sarcastic there, (not so much about the first one tho) but if you're going to have to orchestrate such a contrived construct to promote some arbitrary "goal" or "engineer" an engagement, just give up on persistent nature of things and go round based.

Or you could duplicate the continents, flip them and put a "II" or "III" on their names, and put WGs between them so there's some global flow to battles. Then you can replace the dupes with new ones as they're created.

Fenrys · 2013-10-25, 10:27 AM

Originally Posted by kubacheski

why not explicitly have 9 rounds i mean there are 3 different conts and 3 WG locations so there are 9 permutations.

I think it's 3!^3=216 permutations?

kubacheski · 2013-10-25, 01:38 PM

Originally Posted by Fenrys

I think it's 3!^3=216 permutations?

yea, after Rolfski said rotate just 2 empires in a switch, I knew that made my numbers would be a little off. It's actually 3!*3 cause the rounds would be only on one continent at a time. Not globally scored, i guess, is how to say it, so you don't need global permutations.

But either way, I'm getting dragged into the details, noone needs round based competition in a persistent game. Isn't that kinda what the difference is between persistent worlds and instanced combat? Why bother with the larger framework if you're going to simply slice it up into arbitrary timeframes for an arbitrary scoring system? I mean that's the issue here. Planetside (1 and 2) claim to fame is the persistent world in an FPS. Maps don't reset, the fight never ends, so why try to put in a system that does all the things SOE designed Planetside to extend beyond?

My other problem with it is that balance is difficult to achieve in combat alone. Can you imagine how much unnecessary time it will take to balance the scoring system? Introduce a new way to earn exp, or a new OP weapon, or some people leverage an existing mechanism differently. Doesn't the general flow of who owns the most land and who gets wacked the most determine the "win" condition? Or at least "win feel" for any individual player and/or faction. If a player can't determine from feel alone who's winning and need a few numbers to tell you, your name in lights and a ribbon to say "you were there", there's issues. Why not just give participation awards so everyone has a warm and fuzzy?

Seriously what happens after Round 1 in the WDS? all bases magically go neutral and there's a mass land-rush? What exactly will separate the rounds other than some arbitrary decision of "go" and "stop"?

Get real. The truth of the matter is that PS2 isn't as large and expansive (3 vs dozen conts and no direct intercontinental linkages) as PS1 was in 2003. graphics it wins hands down, big whoop. What's good graphics do for ya when FPS goes to hell in a mid size fight? How long has it taken to introduce a new continent because they have to hand craft every square km? and they're spending their time splitting up the game into weekly rounds of who held land the most. How about make more land so that not every base is contested every 10 minutes? Make intercontinental lattice so there's movement across the universe instead of interior to each of the continents. There's no progress being made... you don't move from one to the other like ants marching across a park from picnic blanket to picnic blanket gobbling up all the sandwiches and cookies. We just sit, swinging from the right battle line to the left battle line. Get bored, jump a cont, oh wait, we're being "urged" to now that alerts will count towards our "score". (Which I'm convinced is just to have a pop lock somewhere other than Indar.)

Bleh....I'm tired of bitchin....WDS is a waste, and PS2 is quickly becoming one too, maybe I should have just said that first.

Natir · 2013-10-22, 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by Malorn

If enough players leave indar to fight for the alert then it is the alert continent that gains the point value, not Indar.

This is why we added the ability to award points for winning alerts. We haven't enabled it yet due to negative stigma and culture that has developed around Alerts, and because we need to see the scoring results so we can come up with a good value for them.

To correct this problem we want to make sure Alerts are worth enough that if you avoid them you are handing a lot of points to another empire, and if you attend and lose you are at least earning a lot of points due to enemy population shift to the Alert continent.

Alerts are still a joke and just go to whoever has the highest population. People can look at a map where the alert is on and tell who is going to win just by the population numbers and who controls the map. While I was playing a NC character on Mattherson, it was just painful. Not only are the NC inept from organizing, they are on the bottom of the barrel when it comes to population. The times when they are above, there might be maybe one or two fights to even play at while the rest of the continents are completely empty. Alerts and the WDS are not solutions to any of the population imbalances/extremely low populations and the lack of wanting to do anything other than kill people.

Played a little bit on Connery since they are the highest pop server and omg the lag. So much lag I just said fuck this. Those optimizations better be good enough to merge waterson and mattherson or I guarantee people will continue to leave. No one wants to invest money in a game where they can barely find a fight or when they get to a good one, everything just lags and their fps goes to shit. I might add that at least on Connery, you weren't getting killed by random players who are in the top 1% of all players... Funny how all those MLG PRO top players flock to Mattherson..

When I did play and there was an alert, the territory control went to the highest population and the biolab alert went again, to the highest population. We had one biolab and there just were not enough NC on to even hold 1 base... The easiest to defend I might add. There was no "tacticool tactics" involved in taking that base, just numbers and that is what overwhelmed us.

ChipMHazard · 2013-10-22, 02:33 PM

Originally Posted by Malorn

If enough players leave indar to fight for the alert then it is the alert continent that gains the point value, not Indar.

This is why we added the ability to award points for winning alerts. We haven't enabled it yet due to negative stigma and culture that has developed around Alerts, and because we need to see the scoring results so we can come up with a good value for them.

To correct this problem we want to make sure Alerts are worth enough that if you avoid them you are handing a lot of points to another empire, and if you attend and lose you are at least earning a lot of points due to enemy population shift to the Alert continent.

Good to see that you've already planned for it.

kubacheski · 2013-10-22, 03:15 PM

Originally Posted by ChipMHazard

Good to see that you've already planned for it.

One would hope. It definitley appears that the Alerts were the first pass at trying to calcualte a "score" in PS2 and WDS is the second. Alerts only exposed too much offense, and WDS exposed too much defense. Combining the two may hit the sweet spot for scoring and rating all 3 factions against one another.

This will then most likely extend an MLG match to the 3rd dimension of 48v48v48 instead of just 48v48. Not only will PS2 have the largest teams, but the addition of a 3rd team to a single match. Anyone know of another game where more than 2 teams compete in the same match? I don't follow eSports and can't seem to place one.