Outfit Wars, Alpha 1 - Scoring Fixes and Fairness

MARCH 31 6:00 PM PDT UPDATE: We're overlapping tomorrow's Outfit Wars global patch with a planned network maintenance on EU PC servers (Miller & Cobalt). PC will come down in *EU ONLY* at 5:00 AM PDT (2:00 PM CEST). All other PC servers will come down at 6:00 AM PDT. Maintenance in all regions is expected to last until 8:00 AM PDT (5:00 PM CEST).

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Hey there, folks. We're on the cusp of completing the Outfit Wars Alpha 1 cycle now, with loads of Outfits per server currently participating in the Qualifiers.

With this being somewhat of a landmark for Outfit Wars, the fairness of scoring has come into question as we lead up to this big moment.

We set Alpha 1 up with the expectation that we'd be able to see what kind of meta developed, and use it for a baseline moving forward. And thanks to the enthusiasm around the feature, we were quickly able to come up with a list of potential changes for our next round of testing.

However, there were a couple exploits that surfaced that ended up devaluing the hard work that many Outfits had been putting in, and that's certainly not what we want our first foray into Outfit Wars to look like.

Given the severity of the exploits discovered, we'd like to take a mulligan on the Qualifiers with some changes and fixes to the ruleset.

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This will entail a reset on all of the current Outfit Wars scores starting when servers come back online.
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We realize this is abrupt, but also feel that bringing all contenders back to an even playing field will result in a healthier, more satisfying Qualify phase and Outfit War, as a result.

When servers come back online tomorrow, Qualifiers will continue where they left off, with all scores at zero. You won't need to re-enlist your Outfit, and this does not affect your Outfit resource bank in any way.

This timeline gives Outfits about 5 days left of time to get to the top of the scoreboard, with the Qualification phase ending on April 6, and will likely be more akin to the length of our Qualification phases in future Outfit Wars.

Below is a list of the changes going Live tomorrow:

• When participating in a base capture, the top 10 scores of players within the same Outfit are combined to equal the Outfit's capture score. Previously, it would combine the scores of all outfitmates at a base. "Score" is raw experience gained during a base fight, unmodified by boosts.
• Some of the more passive or farmable experience types will no longer contribute to base capture score. This includes ammo pack experience, repair, revive, healing, spawn experience, etc. Base objectives now matter more than they once did.
• Capturing bases on locked continents and earning resources from bases on locked continents should no longer be possible.
• Standing at an uncontested enemy base when the continent locks should no longer grant your Outfit base capture credit just for being there.

What does this mean for Outfits moving forward?

• Being early to arrive at a base matters more, as you'll have more time to accrue score.
• Capturing and defending objectives at bases matters more, as these types of experience still count toward base capture score.
• Small Outfits and extremely large Outfits are now on a level playing field when it comes to claiming a base.

In the interests of preventing further exploitation, we're keeping the list of what exactly contributes to Outfit score a bit close to our chest, and instead encourage all players to play as you normally would.

Please help spread the word about these changes so that we can make the remainder of this Alpha phase as fair and fun as possible. The more feedback and data we get now, the better this experience will be in updates to come.

-Wrel, Lead Designer



P.S. The current number of Outfits enlisted per server are below:

• SolTech: 20
• Connery: 26
• Cobalt: 30
• Emerald: 45
• Miller: 47