WDS Preseason 2 Changes and Feedback

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Malorn, Feb 10, 2014.

  1. daemonDX

    There is a possibility of unaccounted multi-account usage for 4th-factioning.
  2. HadesR


    Would a personal cooldown suffice, such as you can only bases X defense points once every 5 minutes , or do you feel this would cause players to get their points and leave ?

    But long time I really hope you move away from just Capture / Defense points and reward them for more actions and thus for actual contribution, rather than just for being in the same area whether you are contributing or not .
  3. RoyAwesome


    I am willing to bet many dollars that this will be a smaller number of people than those on the same account.

    You can buy NS guns and they are shared cross faction. If you invest into an account, you want to use that account.
    • Up x 1
  4. HadesR


    I Can't remember how long the time period was with one char per server .. But some dual accounts might have been made at that time to bypass the one char rule ..

    As for numbers .. Pfft that's anyones guess :p
  5. RoyAwesome


    It was less than 1 month. It was changed in GU1, which was December 2012.

    Like I said, lots of money that this number is less than the single account switchers. 4th factioning is simply NOT a thing.
  6. zukhov

    I now pronounce Zurvan and Freyr amp stations the cheese capitals of Auraxis.
  7. ArmedGoose

    No.
    And how would you define a "paying customer"?
    Subscription or not is not a true indicator - a lot "free" players pay a hand and leg for station cash... how much would be enough to be qualified as "paying customer"?
  8. Doomzzg

    It is a thing. Stay ignorant (his is not my login screen)
    [IMG]
  9. BetaGuru

    We'll see. Nice to see something is being done... but we'll see.
  10. laovniux

    Rofl SOE this made my day... Could you perhaps ask some 1 who tried defending a base instead of looking at the mindless randoms who wouldn't know which base to cap if there wasn't a line leading them?

    Defensive rewards are OP. EXTREMELY OP. You let the attacker capture 1 point and then cap it back 1ce it is turned - instant points. You do not even need to wait 3 minutes for an easy base to cap. Every coordinated and experienced player would rather defend if there is an equal population but this never happens due to certain people perfering ~20 points in 5 minutes rather then 20 points every 10 or so seconds of focused defense. The problem is not in the points its in the average player not realizing what he is missing.

    This update will fix that however after 1 week of every 1 defending you will switch back to the past values anyway....

    And if this goes live expect a certain outfit going to a random base on say amerish that has a decent defensive bonus and staying in the spawn room waiting for a point to cap and then killing every 1
  11. Bullborn

    High defense values is also potentially exploitable. You could easily have 1 guy log on as opposing faction and start caps for easy 1 sec resecures.

    You need to reward actively defending to solve that or have some sort of contribution system where participating in the fight matters.
  12. Posse

    I see how this will end, with 200 people responding to a 2 squad attack in a Tech Plant or Amp, I don't understand why the drastic change, at least make the scores even for capture and defense first. The bulk of the WDS personal score should be based on the score you're earning by killing, reparing or whatever (and exclude capture XP bonus from giving WDS points aside from the reward that already is set), that's the only way you're going to promote even fights

    As it was up to this day, zergs ghostcapped, from this day on, massive zergs will respond to any medium sized attack, not that much better.
    • Up x 2
  13. JonboyX

    So;

    1) No changes short term for challenging encounters
    2) More points for defending than attacking

    How I think it will pan out?

    Everybody will zerg in attack, because if you're going to miss out on defence points, you've gotta be sure you get that cap.
    Everybody will zerg in defence. Because if that Bio lab resecure is about to tick, you definitely want to ghost that one.
    = tentative jabs at big bases to encourage a swarm of defenders, then go sit in another base and watch each other collect points.


    Frankly, I think you're better not changing anything until the encounter difficulty modifier is in place. You need to encourage attacking and defending in equal measure, and purely as a suggestion: note the percentage population as a cap goes on, at 50% through, and at the end of the cap timer. Then apply the inverse %age as a points modifier.
  14. Giggily

    At least the latter gets you an actual fight, and it's not like that isn't already every faction's policy for dealing with DA.

    I would like it if this patch netted everyone the same amount of points for attacking or defending, though. Right now 100 point incentive just shifted from attacking to defending, so like Posse said we're going to see more players drop whatever other fight they were at to wait around at a 100 point facility until the capture time goes through. This is still something of an issue because it's going to make certain facilities flipping hands insanely difficult to do. This would be fine, except the attacking force now has nowhere near the same incentive as the defenders, so they'll likely give up much more easily.

    In my perfect world the system would reward players based on the amount of XP they generate at a fight, rather than how long the defending empire has held the base. That way longer, more difficult attacks and defenses produce larger rewards. There should also be a kind of scale for this metric, taking into account how many people were at the base during the capture, and how many points the enemy team earned as well. In turn, everyone who participated in the attack or the defense should be given a reward, then, based on how long they had participated in that battle. I'm not too sure how possible that actually is, but I know that the game already keeps track of how many people are inside of hexes at any given time (or, at least, it did at one point), and what all XP people earn during specific battles. Just take those numbers into account for the 10 minutes preceding a base capture going through and I think that would be a very good system.

    That way players who are at a fight are rewarded for the scale, intensity, and length of the fight, and how long they were personally there, which discourages a lot of undesirable behaviors. Even if SOE decides to stick with the base point system, curving it based on how long a player has been at the base would be beneficial and would end the migratory behavior between ending captures/defenses that occur on live.

    Regardless, I'm still glad this is getting changed at all. I got pretty sick of watching circling zergs whenever I was online.
  15. Pie Chasm

    That is the only valid solution.

    You should be rewarded in this game primarily for doing FPS stuff, not based on population distributions.

    Killing, healing and repairing.. wait.. whatever happened to those medals.

    The game designer needs to incentivize the FPS aspect of the game.
  16. Daikar


    Yes but removing the ability to create more than one char per server won't change that.
  17. Liquidrider

    Thank you SOE glad to see you guys are listening :)
    • Up x 1
  18. o.Solei.o

    I'm pretty sure Malorn knows what "4th Faction" means.
  19. GlennBeckistan

    Malorn and Co., I think you're not seeing the underlying problem through the symptoms.

    People realized that equally popped defenses were worth more WDS points per hour, despite being worth less for each re-secure, as the control point would flip several times throughout a long, even fight. So why did massive zergs form around capturing territory?

    The problem wasn't that defenses weren't worth enough, the problem was that points are only rewarded in two situations:
    1) Successfully capture a base
    2) Successfully defend a base after the enemy has flipped the control point

    This encourages players to go to fights that are a sure thing: fights where friendlies outpop enemies by a significant amount. In an even fight, only the defenders get WDS points, so there is no reason for attackers to hang around and keep trying. So either amass 2+ times more pop than the enemy or don't bother attacking. By not changing the conditions, you're just changing the outcome from 200+ zergs attacking bases against 12-24 defenders to 200+ zergs re-securing bases against 12-24 attackers.
  20. Garrum

    Right now you have absurdly huge zergs ghost cap dancing.

    I have a strong suspicion that now we'll see absurdly huge zergs roaming around looking for any and every tiny little fight to crush without any effort to get their defense points.

    The first situation is bad, but honestly, I think the second is probably worse. We need reasons for people to spread out, to NOT join in the zerg. As much as people like to say how 'awesome' the really large battles are, in truth they are the weakest part of the game. They devolve into HAs and MAXes lobbing explosive rounds into each others doorways and a dozen tanks nonstop lobbing rounds into buildings instead of fighting each other. It's the loudest and most violent and most boring thing ever. This game's combat is far, FAR more engaging when you have at most 4 squads fighting, and when vehicle numbers are low. There, you can actually use movement effectively because the enemy doesn't have enough people to put 4 MAXes at every possible doorway and you don't have 7 tanks, 5 liberators, 3 galaxies, and 37 ESFs in a pear tree that will instantly see any attempt at flanking.