[Suggestion] It's time to have that chat again. Make people give a damn.

I know I'm not the only one to notice this, but all too often you'll have one faction utterly ignored while it conquers the map. Why? because upwards of 2/3 of both the other factions armies are mustered on 1 or 2 bases beating seven shades out of each other.

Now, maybe I just have rose tinted goggles for the past, but I don't recall this being such a big issue back when locking was done by Victory Points.

Of course, the game was very different back then, there was no participation bonus for losers and the rewards for the victors were incredible leading to a much-enhanced likelihood of winning the next continent in a snowball effect.

Yes, there were obvious flaws with that system but people REALLY cared, especially on Indar and Esamir, 50% off your vehicles was something you desperately wanted. And wanted to prevent your enemies from having.

To contrast, aside from Hossin which remained the same can anyone name the current lock bonuses? Can you match them with the continent that grants them? Honestly, without looking them up. I can't match them and it took some concentration to recall the two other effects are auto repairing generators and better cooldown on base turrets.

Now, I've made lots of suggestions on how to make people care in the past, this is me asking others to share their ideas. I may yet share the latest refinements to my own thoughts but I'm first and foremost interested in the input of others in the hopes that some new and exciting motivations might be considered.

This has largely always been an issue and was absolutely still a problem with VPs.

I think the issue isn't with people wanting to win but people wanting to have an easy fight. Zerging has always been an issue, overpowered stuff has always been spammed, and mostly everyone only uses the "best" equipment. I don't think there is any legitimate way to solve this, it's just a fact of life.

Intense fights have an avalanche effect to them with the 'Instant Action' spawn. That's why.

Yes, a revision of the algorithm behind Instant Action may be in order. The same point was raised on a prior thread regarding double teaming. Since it typically sends you to the biggest fight it doesn't take into account whether or not that fight is logical/balanced.

If it instead identified imbalances in the populations on each front then picked the best available fight on the quietest front it could serve to negate some of what you've identified.

It's true that imbalances will have occurred periodically, but I'm of the opinion (rightly or wrongly) that they are more pervasive an issue these days. At least under the VP system, there were logical reasons to attack the smaller or weaker faction. NC might be on only 20% territory but due to a won alert earlier and Hive earned VPs they could win if they reach 23%. Or maybe TR has 45% territory but Vanu holds the last Tech plant so NC attacks them to seize it and get the VPs from owning all three.

Under the present system, it's very transparent when people aren't giving a damn. Because there is literally no good reason to warpgate another faction now, no VP to be gained only their attention and ire to be drawn against you going forward.

Build a simple game and you get simple players.

A faction which is warpgated with 50 mins left to go of an alert can still win. In fact starting an alert as the underdog can be advantageous because the other two factions will fight each other more. Everything which happens before an alert starts is unimportant, and it is only the last hour there is something to care about. Intense fights take longer than this to die off.

Which is exactly my point, there's no benefit in running one faction back to its WG before or after the alert begins it's an invitation fot the faction you WG to turn the bulk of their population towards pushing you back. At least under the VP system warpgating an enemy gave you a notable benefit.

Not wishing to sound like a stuck record BUT the two biggest issues with PS2 right now are:

1. Population imbalance
2. Double-teaming

I'd agree with the statements above - it honestly doesn't matter what chunk of the continent you have at the beginning of an alert.

The winner of the alert will be the faction who is double-teamed the least.

Now generally speaking, you would think that the two smallholders will pick on the big guy and if so, the big guy will always lose.

That isn't always the case though, more frequently i've seen some pretty random double-teaming - last night on Cobalt, VS started the alert with 20% continent and ended with 13% after being double-teamed for the entire alert.


There have been many threads coming up with ideas on how the issues could be addressed but absolutely nothing has been implemented or even tried. Meanwhile, the fun factor continues to diminish which is a crying shame.

I think the population control has been fixed as well as it is able. It's fairly rare to see extreme imbalances outside of 4am when no one is on. Typically the range tends to fall within 30% to 36% for each faction which is a damn sight closer than you used to get.

It is of course not perfect but without the use of supplementary AI bots to flush out the low pop faction(s) you can't dictate populations.

As for Double teaming, I think a lot of that comes from ignoring the objectives. If losing an alert was nerfed, and the faction wide continent lock bonuses were augmented to a competitive or even memorable level you'd see an appreciable fraction of those who presently double-team because they don't care would refocus on winning the alerts rather than coasting through them without caring.

I generally agree, I've been noticing a trend of late where it's not always double-teaming, sometimes two factions go to war with each other in massive battles that absorb as much as 80% off all their players, leaving the third faction to roll up both factions until they have a virtually insurmountable lead.

From the perspective of either fo the first two factions, it would appear as though they are being double-teamed, since the third faction would outpop them on all fronts but it's not exactly the same issue, just a related one.

Clearly you don't play on Connery. NC regularly at 40% pop, while VS fall somewhere between 20 and 30%. TR get the rest.

Odd, I can only assume that this must result from players logging off or exceptionally low continent pop overall.
I'd imagine that they servers all use the same system and Cobalt is pretty good. What tends to create imbalances these days is people logging off. If say TR is getting drubbed by double teaming you'll see their pop decline and people give up but most of the time it's fairly closely balanced.

That said they might actually use a different system on different servers as a method of testing effectiveness of proposed systems. The idea being to consolidate all servers into the best system at a future date.

Nope. Pretty much around the clock every day, VS is dead. And this server has the highest population of any by far. It's entirely due to a single unit who was carrying that faction breaking up. Everyone left for the greener pastures of NC.

This is why Koreans need their own servers.

I'd prefer we just set a ping limit of 250 on Connery. I don't want this place dead like Emerald. Koreans get around 100ms. They're not a problem. Even my friends in China get around 150. It's people tuning their ping to 400 or so that warp around and exploit the game, and I know Americans that do that.

Huh... I don't recall any point where we had Alerts and this was 100% the case. 2 or even 3 years back, I specifically remember getting SOME noticeable amount of Certs at Continent lock despite the Vanu winning the lion's share of them.

I agree with everything else though... "Infantry Farms" have always been my main problem with this game and was the main reason I quit years ago to go play FireFall and then BlackDesert (which has also basically Shut Down design-wise recently).

To elaborate on that...The infantry gun game just isn't "replayable" enough for "exploration/social oriented" players and more Casual players because while it might be a Mile wide, it's literally only an inch deep in its "Meta" with its massive HS critical on Automatics/Shotguns. And the only Weapons you ever ever consider using in an Infantry Zerg Farm, is Automatics/Shotguns. It's nothing like a 12 vs 12 where players are not automatically bottlenecking constantly against a wall of Respawning n00bs. MOST weapons get a chance to shine in a hex that's too sparsely popped to have constant "Camping" of the enemy's only respawn lanes ... IoW: this game literally becomes a Rail-Shooter in those Infantry Farms ... especially the ones where the facilities are just tubes & corridors, closed off entirely to all Vehicle & Sniper interference

Only if you follow the herd. It sounds like you've never joined a decent outfit.

That's not the only problem with Koreans. Their level of seriousness when it comes to gaming is at least a generation or two ahead of America's. They train and raise their skill to such a level that we have cases like FPSK absolutely dominating a server while only being a single outfit.

You want them gone because they're too good? :/

Do you make the same argument against Recursion or other leetfits?

Should we start banning Asians in universities because we can't compete with them? And that's actually in real life where things actually matter. We already knock points off their entrance scores, which is awful.

People should focus on improving themselves instead of blaming others.

While this very well may be true, (my memory is a little fuzzy) the point was grounded in the notion that Alerts were their own reward because of the 30% xp boost. And winning an Alert only gave your faction 5 VP which wasn't always enough to lock the continent.

The point being, if there was a bonus for coasting your way through and being on the losing side it was so insignificant that it didn't even register against the 50% vehicle discounts.

I'd like to see a limited return of the vehicle discounts for that reason. I'm thinking a lock earns you 20% off of a specific vehicle type, MBT, Liberator, Lightning etc, put in some controls to prevent ASP getting too big a discount (say they only get an additional 10% or nothing at all [NB. the 10% option is preferable, people would feel cheated otherwise.]) and add in a control where less potent rewards were available to factions which already had control of other continents and their bonuses.

I did a breakdown of such a bonus system,

Tier One
20% off MBTsor 30% for ASP
20% off Liberatorsor 30% for ASP
20% off ESFsor 30% for ASP
20% off Galaxiesor 30% for ASP
50% off Expendables

Tier Two
20% off Lightningsor 30% for ASP
20% off Harrasersor 30% for ASP
20% off Valkariesor 30% for ASP
30% off ANTsor 40% for ASP
30% off Sundereror 40% for ASP

Tier Three
50% off Flashesor 80% for ASP
Ammo Tower Healing
Auto-repair Generators
Turret Heat Increase

If it was your first lock you'd be getting a pick from the Tier One options, if you had one existing lock (already giving you a T1 bonus, you'd be unlocking T2 and likewise if you had locked the last 2 continents and you managed a third you'd get a T3 bonus. If your T1 unlocked before you completed locking the third continent you would of course now be entitled to another T1 bonus.

To make it more varied you could blur the lines a little Lock 1 might have an 80% chance of being T1 and 20% chance of being T2, and Lock 2 could have an 80% Chance of being T2 to 20% chance of T1, just put in a line of code that prevents the same bonus being won twice by one faction. The limiter of the Tier 3 bonuses and the limited forms of the T1 and T2 bonuses should minimize snowballing.

.........

You know come to think of it when you were talking about the depth of the game, I got thinking about how VPs gave you so many more ways to fight for your faction than a pure territory numbers game.

I don't actually see any reason not to return to the VP system of continent locking. There were more tactical options and the only reason it was scrapped as far as I can tell was because Hives were too powerful in the VP system, but now that Hives are gone I see no reason not to return to a more vibrant locking system.

50% cheaper expendable, include revive grenades, C-4, Med-kits, grenades in general.
Try fighting when your opponent's ability to spam Med-kits , Revive-Grenades & C-4 is twice as high.

VS gets the 50% off for Flashes, and enemy MBTs will cease to exist at all.
As for a grenade's price, a Starfall or Fury flash can kill off the heaviest ground vehicle...
VS gets it at 80%; Someone paid 450 nanites for a MBT, or 325, They pay like 5 nanites to 2-burst a damn MBT from the front.

TR for cheaper valks, would be cheaper striker valks.
Paired with MBT's, and you basically just wiped out enemy armor.

VP's gave some more tactical options, until Hives Happened.
As the value of a Lattice VP was 0-1 per every so many hexes, or large-facility, while kept.
A Hive VP was 1 permanent VP, that didn't require dynamically expanded land to defend & take.
With the present; You basically could have some interest, but likely a few dozen Hexes would be ignored due to their low Value.
Or just for the Warp-gate Points instead.

Maybe could be revived, maybe not.
Either way, cheaper flashes, that are armed & cloakable, with the AV they bring? Please no. Just no.

Not to mention, the expendables.
Or the ease of stack-up, like can you imagine the number of battle-ants?
Or Endless sunderer balls? Or even cheaper ESF's than the present ASP bonuses?

As this leads to the exact same problem, not as severe, but also just as dynamically bad.
The moment this wide-spread bonus is worth it, is typically when it's also Brutal as hell, and easiest to snow-ball the next.
IE the moment, the cost-effectiveness of something changes enough to be worth winning, is typically, when your opponent is always having a bad-trade, with the same effort or more effort.

-- But at least you're being a bit creative.