Fundamental Issues with the Metagame and Actual Solutions…

[Quadron]

First let me say that, I've worked on this for a very long time and formatted it much better in a word document that can be used to read instead of this thread. You can view the much better formatted document here:. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4v6...it?usp=sharing

Fundamental Issues with the Metagame and Actual Solutions…
• Why] We Are Constantly Capping Empty Bases and Seemingly Empty Continents

o Metagame – The strategy and reasoning behind how you play and why you play.

o I have now played PS2 for 26 days of play time. I love PS2 and I really want it to succeed in the coming months/years, which is why I wrote out this lengthy message explaining the current issues in the game and how I think would be best going about fixing them. These issues are complex and the solution will be a complex one too, so bear with me please. I have been contemplating the issue for a long time and I believe I have finally placed my finger firmly on the issues and have come up with solutions to fix the major thing ruining the metagame. Please keep in mind that my observations/suggestions are simply from my perspective and experience. Your experiences have differed from mine and you very well may agree or disagree with me. I welcome criticism. This issue needs to be an open discussion.

o The Current Metagame – “The Zerg Cycle”
 The Zerg Cycle is currently what drives planetside player base. It influences how people play the game, what bases they attack, when they retreat to the warp gate, and when they decide to stick it out and defend.
 The Zerg Cycle starts when several platoons (often accidentally) decide to attack the same target, usually due to one faction pushing too close to their warp gate, creating a focal point. These large zergs proceed to roam around the map dominating everything it touches easily. This causes smaller squads to abandon bases in the face of overwhelming numbers. This goes on until the zerg eventually breaks up attacking different bases (for example: If the NC zerg attacks Tawrich Tech Plant, afterward they will usually split up to cap Blackshard Iridium Mine, Gravel Pass, and Arroyo Torro). Once the dissolving zerg has captured enough territory and encroaches too close to the enemy warp gate, it incites the enemy to form their own zerg and “re-zerg” the area that was just captured. Since the previous zerg broke up into smaller sections, it can no longer stand a chance in a battle with the newly formed zerg. The now broken up zerg redeploys back to their wg and proceeds to another front that is potentially winnable or even to another continent where they form new zergs and start the process all over again. This leads to a “Zerg Cycle” of huge zergs capping empty bases, only to dissolve to let the enemy do the same thing in return, which is why I call it a cycle. This is the fundamental thing that needs to change if Planetside is foster balanced battles at all scales from small battles to massive.

 Currently, the only exception to this rule is when two large zergs face each other before one of the zergs splits up. This results in an epic fight and is freaking awesome to participate in (minus the lag… lol). Sadly, a truelly balanced population battle is very rare and usually results in the large zerg dominating the other zerg rather quickly, the larger zerg then proceeds to ghost cap the rest of the bases until another new zerg is formed once more. For Planetside 2 to become a great game, balanced battles need to be happening all the time, all over the map, even at small/medium size bases. I believe my suggestions fundamentally solve these core issues and they should be implemented as soon as possible.

o XP as a Motivator and Crux of the Metagame
 The first thing to understand is that Planetside 2 is a MMOFPS-RPG based around killing/defeating the enemy by capturing objectives on a map in order to advance your EMPIRE and your CHARACTER. The important thing that I want to point out is that since everyone (or at least the vast majority) inherently wants to develop their characters, getting XP is the currently the greatest motivator in the game, which means it is currently the greatest power/force behind the “Metagame”. Currently, I think this motivator is being used inappropriately leading to a metagame the drives players into the “Zerg Cycle” and I’ll explain why in a bit. That said, I think the metagame should be expanded to the benefits a base provides for your empire. Currently, bases are simply a means of earning extra XP/Certs. Bases need to take a larger role, but I get ahead of myself. I’ll get to that in a minute.

o The Fundamental Problem with the Metagame: Lack of Motivation for Players To Defend Bases

 The fundamental problem with the metagame is that people are not motivated to defend bases, especially when outnumbered. The current metagame encourages players to zerg to get cap XP until the zerg disbands and is eventually overwhelmed, upon which they go to new fronts where they outnumber the enemy once again. This means most battles result in one empire far outnumbering the other and crushing the enemy with little to no resistence. This makes for a boring game of ghost capping most bases. The key to fixing this “Zerg Cycle” is encouraging people to defend bases more than attacking them.

 I think there are three main reasons people are de-motivated to defend bases:

• The first reason is that the current metagame for defense relies upon boosting whatever XP you earn while defending by 10% (most veteran players know this, but many newer players still do not, even though they tried to make it more clear by breaking down the XP boosts you receive if you hover your mouse over it). Of course, if it is a balanced battle and long engagement, this bonus XP can sometimes exceed what the attackers earn from capping (which is definitely the way it should be), but the thing is… bonus defense XP won’t do you any good if you are getting farmed by a zerg.
o The solution to motivating people to defend are these three things:

 1) Find a way to make battles more balanced so that the defense XP becomes more worthwhile in a longer battle. I believe I have come up with a solution to achieve this. I will get into that in a bit.

 2) Make defending XP clearly worth more than attacking XP (make it a 25% boost, 10% isn’t nearly enough to pull people away from big base captures). This alone will motivate players to find the front where their empire is being attacked, rather than where it is capping bases with ease.

 3) The extra Defense XP you earn from defending needs to become extremely apparent. This can be done by making it a separate bonus that is listed every time you kill a vehicle/player (with a separate animation like a headshot bonus or group kill bonus). Because there is a tangible amount flashing before the players, it will make players realize how much extra they are actually earning while defending, which is crucial when motivating players to defend.

• The second reason people aren’t motivated to defend bases is because bases do not give your empire a notable advantage.

o The solution is simple enough: Their needs to be a much better reason to hold each and every facility. Currently, the tech plant is the only base that is noticeable since you can’t spawn a Main Battle Tank at many bases without one. But even that is not important enough to become central to the metagame.

o Each facility needs to be a catalyst enabling that empire to do/have something that they clearly did not have before. The loss of not having at least one of each facility needs to be truly detrimental to an empires fight. This will motivate players to defend important bases, even inspite of overwhelming numbers (again motivating people to defend). Here are some ideas for upgrading the main bases, but these could be fleshed out quite a lot.

 Tech Plant: For each tech plant an empire holds on that continent, the cost of purchasing mechanized vehicles is reduced by 5%, their cool down timer for that type of vehicle is reduced by 1 minute, and that empires vehicles are supplied with 5% additional ammo/health.

 Amp Station: For reach Amp station, the cost of air vehicles is reduced by 5%, cool down timer reduction of 1 min, and air vehicles receive additional ammo.

 Bio Lab: Base health regen is currently given to players is tripled, cost of infantry purchases reduced by 5% for each bio lab owned on continent, spawn timer is reduced by 2 seconds for each bio lab owned that faction on that continent.

 Each of the smaller bases around the map should give similar bonuses. For example, a tech based research base could give tanks additional ammo when spawning, reload 2% faster, or increase their move speed by 2%, etc. Similar bonus could be done for air/infantry.

 The Main Point here is: capping bases MATTERS, because each base actively affects your empire significantly and is felt across the continent. For example, when someone gets damaged and naturally regens quickly because of the 2 Bio Labs that they just helped cap, it gives them a sense of satisfaction for what they accomplished and will motivate them to want to do the same thing in the future to get the same benefits.

• But even if you made the two changes I listed above, I don’t think it would ultimately completely fix the current “Zerg Cycle” metagame. There is still the issue that when facing an enemy force that doubles the defending force numbers, the defenders have no chance to successfully defend. Once the first base is lost in the face of overwhelming numbers, the remaining squads/platoons redeploy to a new front to fight. Who wants to fight an impossible battle where they are being farmed non-stop?

o This brings me to the primarily solution to balancing population. To help understand my solution, I would like to create a new term I call “Effective Population (EP).” I define Effective Population as “the amount of players actually alive and fighting in a particular server/continent/region.” Effective population is extremely important in battles because it dictates the ebb and flow of a battle.

o Let me illustrate this with an example:
 There are 200 VS attacking a tech plant being held by 50 TR for a 4 to 1 ratio. If at the start each TR kills one VS evenly and say for example ¼ of the total players are dead at any given time, then there is 31 of each faction dead at any given time. Meaning that each faction’s effective population (players alive) is 169 VS alive but only 19 TR. Now the VS outnumber the TR 8.8 to 1, instead of 4 to 1. Of course if a faction is outnumbered, then they are far more likely to be killed, rending the outnumbered faction to lead to even smaller EP until they are trapped in their spawn room and farmed.

 The change I would like to implement would do two things:

• It would motivate people to fight in areas where there is even population or their faction is even outnumbered.

• It would help balance the amount of Effective Population that is actually in the firefight at any given time, making fights between varying sizes of armies much more balanced (though not completely), last longer, and make them tremendously more fun [Don’t forget, increasing fun is the goal of this post!]

 The change I would like to implement is this: If one empire significantly outnumbers the other factions in that region (i.e. one empire is zerging), then the “zerging” faction in that region receives an increased spawn timer relative to how much of a population advantage that the empire has (the increased spawn timer would apply only to that region, meaning that if they wanted to spawn back at warp gate or in another region, they could do so at the normal time/calculated spawn time based on population). On the flipside, if your empire is severely outnumbered, your spawn timer is significantly reduced.

 How exactly would this work? Let’s look at an example.

• In the same example I listed above, 200 VS are attacking 50 TR. When the battle commences, both armies are at full strength. As the TR and VS kill each other over and over again, the Effective Population for the VS in that region is significantly reduced due to the increased spawn timer causing people to want to move to other regions where they can back into the action faster (preferably where the spawn timer is low, meaning their empire needs them there). Conversely, the TR population very closely maintains its 50 TR strength because their spawn timer is reduced significantly (i.e. down to 3 seconds).

• After the first few minutes of battle, the population would quickly balance out due to VS either being dead or leaving the region due to increased spawn timers. Of course, once people get used to the increased spawn timer zerging to overwhelm the enemy will become a thing of the past. Put quite simply, players won’t have to rely on zerging to be able to be have effective numbers in combat simply because zerging puts your empire at a significant disadvantage on that continent (since a higher percentage of your overall players would remain dead for longer).

 In addition, there would be a small continent spawn timer increase/decrease based on the current population of that continent for each faction. For example, on Indar, if the NC have 40%, TR 35%, and VS 25%. The NC might have a base respawn time increase of perhaps say 3 seconds applied to all regions to help balance out the fact that they are at an advantage. The TR would have a 1 second penalty applied to itself because they too have more than 33%. And the VS might have theirs reduced by 5 seconds because they are under their 33% standard population.

o The reasons why this is a good way to handle population.

 Increasing/decreasing spawn timers inherently motivates people to fight in regions with balanced populations, thus making planetside the awesome balanced MMOFPS we have all wanted for so long. We all know it would suck to have to wait 60 seconds to respawn, so instead of Zerging empty/almost empty bases, people would want to find fights where they are needed (where there is a short respawn timer). This is especially true for the following reasons:

• 1) There is guaranteed to be a fight there. If your empire is at a pop disadvantage, then that means there are actually people to kill at that location.

• 2) People don’t like waiting and this will help put a stop to massive zergs (unless of course a massive zerg finds another massive zerg to fight, in which case the spawn timer would keep the Effective Popuations even, producing a gloriously balanced battle where skill/strategy wins out over crushing your enemy with brute numbers, which is the current metagame).

• Fighting in a region with balanced population is the dream of every PS2 player. We all already want even battles. This would simply provide a tool for finding where you are needed most.

• Being the underdog would finally give the player a truly worthwhile advantage… more playtime = more XP/certs. Zerging… equals less XP/Certs.

• In conclusion, I do think there are a number of additional issues that need to be addressed such as air in the current metagame. But if the changes I suggest were actually implemented, the role of liberators/ESFs would change drastically because troops would be spread out over so many more bases, meaning that there would not be nearly as many massive flak parties out there to blast them. So… that said, what do you think? Should these changes be implemented? Are they too drastic? Are they not drastic enough? Let’s here your thoughts!

Cheers! Q

[ringring]

Nice post.

I don't think you're wrong but I think more is necessary and some of that more is actually on the way.

I think defending doesn't happen more because it is often not viable.

The zerg cycle is something that has already been identified although not under that name by Malorn at SOE and 'metagame' is the focus he's been given within PS2 development.

Malorn's 'rush lanes' that we will be getting soon are a variation of the ps1 lattice and it adds predictability. You are more able to be able to defend because you can get there before the enemy does.

Other thing that detract from defending are:
- Short hack times: this limits defenders ability to get to a hacked base and do a resecure. Equally the short times enable the zerg mass to roll over one base after another without the defenders being able to concentrate easily.
- It's hard to know how much time there is left on a hack and therfore whether trying to defend will be possible in the time available. Thre's an upcoming change to the capture display to add a countdown time that's easier to interpret than the advancing bars.
- Open design bases: This has been said often. There's been a recent thread about additional engineer deployables such as traps and deployable cover items which would mitigate the openness.

In terms of XP incentives I think there should be two further changes. Capture XP should be dynamic (applies to resecures too), the amount of xp you get from a capture should depend on the conflict that has occurred within the locality. Similar to PS2 PS1 initially had fixed capture xp awards and saw the same zerg progressions from empty base to empty base. This was fixed with dynamic capture xp.

Overall however, I don't think we'll see the real game commence until we have more continents. At present the three continents are independent maps so there is nothing to fight for other than kills and cert. When we get more continent and hopefully the next two will be enough to start, we'll see the RTS that supposed to be here operate.

[Varsam]

Very well-written, well organized post. I especially liked the EP solution.

2 Issues I think, with your proposals.

-facilities already give significant resources of a certain type, there's no need to have them also reduce cost as it becomes rather redundant - it is exactly the same as giving them 5% more resources.
-directly increasing combat effectiveness (damage, health) with base captures is extremely dangerous as it encourages a snowball effect - it gives the already dominant faction an inherent advantage in combat.

[Rothnang]

Reducing vehicle cost of vehicles for holding more plants doesn't make a lot of sense, controlling those facilities already gives you a boost to the appropriate resource. Actually increasing their stats gives too much of an advantage to the faction that's already winning anyways.

Trying to control zerging through spawn timers is IMO only half of a solution, a huge part of what makes Zerging so crazy effective is that vehicles are no longer vulnerable to a lot of their biggest counters when they are deployed in huge groups. For example I don't have to worry about ESFs in my Liberator if I constantly have 10+ friendly ESFs near me. You get to this critical mass where no enemy can even make a dent in your formation anymore without bringing their own Zerg.

That's why I personally believe the effectiveness of Zerging needs to be handled by some kind of logistics system, where you can beat a Zerg army by encircling it and cutting off its supply lines.


Much more defensible bases are also essential though, because in all honesty, a Zerg can capture a huge amount of land so quickly that you don't even really have time to strategize against them. If capturing bases wasn't so quick most Zergs would fall apart all on their own if there is nobody to shoot at.

[Snipefrag]

Nice post, agree with a lot you said. Mostly about doing stuff to give people a real incentive to defend. Breaking up the Zerg and giving everything more predictability. One thing i dont think you touched on was to make the zerg more predictable/visible so that a faction can rally its self for defense.