Game mechanisms encouraging defense?

MrC · 2002-12-13, 12:48 AM

Well? Are there any?

Is there anything that encourages people to wait around defending, or will we be attacking empty buildings?

Incompetent · 2002-12-13, 01:02 AM

Facilities are absolutely essential to victory. In Planetside you have to work as a team to achieve your goals and a good team player will stand around a dropship center to make sure the offense can do there job. And nothing quite matches the satisfaction that comes from mowing down Vanu that just wandered into your minefield.

MrC · 2002-12-13, 01:12 AM

Errr yes, but just because it's necessary doesn't mean people will do it. =)

If the servers are crowded enough it might not be a problem, but if heavy fighting isn't happening at every base constantly, most people will go looking for action instead of sitting around defending when they might not see anyone ever.

That was a major problem when I played World War 2 Online. Of course, that was when it was essentially a retail public beta so the problems might have been fixed. However, it was pretty bad when you could sit around defending a front line base for an hour and never see any of the enemy.

Or attack and capture a front line base and see hardly any enemy forces.

�io · 2002-12-13, 01:31 AM

Well obviously if there is no one attacking a base you don't stand there and wait. Leave a minimum crew if any and lots of auto-defenses and go defend the bases that are under attack.

MrC · 2002-12-13, 01:40 AM

Then it becomes a game of scrambling to be at the right base.

There's no fighting at one base so you head to another base. Before you get there the attack ends and another base is under attack. You head in that direction, etc. =)

The point of keeping a defense at a base is because you don't know where the other side will attack, and you can't very well predict until it's too late. So instead you save spawn/travel time by having a reasonable defense everywhere an attack might occur, as well as having people attacking and others reinforcing where necessary.

cujoman39 · 2002-12-13, 01:44 AM

why defend when you could attack?

i hate campers!!!

Doobz · 2002-12-13, 01:44 AM

thats why mobility will be key in this game.
those outfits who can move the fastest and have the best intelligence of where to be at the right times will be the most successful.

knowledge is power, and speed is ur weapon

MrC · 2002-12-13, 01:45 AM

Cujoman: What fun is attacking if there's nobody defending? Are you really interested in walking into an empty base?

cujoman39 · 2002-12-13, 01:48 AM

no base is going to be empty their will always be people suiting up and as soon as a base hears gun shots everyone will scramble.

�io · 2002-12-13, 01:58 AM

Ok

1-Bases don't get taken over in 5mins, when you get alerted a base in under attack you'll have plenty of time to get over there and help if you so choose.

2-MrC i'm curious do you actually like PS? No offense but all your posts in this thread sound like you want to find something wrong with the game, first you complained about defending now it's about getting to the right base. At least wait till you play the game, maybe it will be the best game you ever played.

cujoman39 · 2002-12-13, 02:10 AM

anyone agree with me?

Doobz · 2002-12-13, 02:13 AM

yerp

MrC · 2002-12-13, 03:07 AM

Dio- Seeing as I haven't gotten the chance to play it yet I can't say whether or not I like it. =)

I am very interested in it, and though I've never played a pay to play game before I'm quite sure I'll play this.

I'm not looking to find something wrong, I'm asking what solutions the Devs are taking to prevent a major issue I've seen before. It's an issue that is inherent to PvP games with multiple simultaneous objectives. People only defend where there's already a battle so they know they'll see action. When the other objectives are attacked they're easily overtaken because of insufficient defense. Overtaken so quickly that any defense there might be doesn't have time to reinforce.

This can be prevented by adding incentives for people to spread out. If attackers spread out, defenders can see action anywhere and will spread out. Another option is to somehow reward people for defending evenly, regardless of whether the base they are defending is under attack at the moment.

Anyway, it seems I found the answer without your 'help'.

"Also, there are protections in place to keep certain areas from becoming �too popular� causing players to ignore everywhere else. As more friendly troops arrive in a specific area, or at a specific base, the threat level will go down. Which means, less BEP�s and CEP�s"

Hamma · 2002-12-13, 09:36 AM

Honestly we wont know if many of these things are at issue until they get a full compliment of people in game.

Lexington_Steele · 2002-12-13, 10:08 AM

There is a problem that many persistant games suffer from that other online games do not. The problem is finding evenly matched battles (which are the ones that are the most satisfying to fight in)

Plantside will not be like Tribes, Global Operations, CS or SoF2, in the regards that you not will usually have two even teams coming to battle in a relatively small area at the same time due to the persistant nature of Planetside.

You will probably find that most battles, in planetside, will be very one sided. Only once in a while will you find two relatively even forces coming to battle.