... By reducing/increasing the amount of XP for any event in fight according to the overpop ratio divided by two to avoid extremes. A fair fight of 10 vs 10, 50 vs 50: ratio is 1 --> 1x XP values to both sides An unfair fight of 2 against 10; ratio is 5 --> 2.5x XP to the smaller team and 1/2.5=0.4x XP to the bigger team A very unfair team of 3 against 30: ratio is 10 --> 5x XP to the smaller team and 1/5=0.2x XP to the bigger team In this way a massive over-pop will be discouraged (as the XP gains will be reduced) and conversely players will rash to join the fight when under-popped because they will get more XP. Zergs will still exist but far less interesting and rewarding - and fighting a Zerg instead will payback a lot more.
In addition to XP Penalties, I think another option we should explore for deterring zergs should be making them challenging to maintain from a gameplay perspective. I don't want big fights to be killed; scale is what makes this game great. But we absolutely need to give players an incentive to NOT just brainlessly steamroll a lattice lane, and on top of that, we need to break the "farming" mentality that leads to zergs and stalemates.
farming and zerging to me are 2 complete opposites. Players that wish to farm go to TI alloys where there's 48-96 from all factions, technically not a zerg in that case. Players in a zerg on the other hand always push the enemy to their spawn, which means nobody is getting any kills and everyone is just waiting around to move to the next base and wait some more there. in short, farmers get XP, zergers don't I don't think this is the most elegant solution. Feels like it incentivises farming even more as people who want loads of XP (and are experienced enough) will just avoid joining big fight and just go where the overpop is the biggest just so they can get loads of XP from killing a few people. But even ignoring this, currently a zerg gets very low XP anyways as it is able to push the enemy into their spawn way too fast, as said above. So reducing XP gains isn't the answer when in the end the zerg gets you the bases needed to get the fat continent lock reward.
No, punishing is always a bad idea. You have to encourage and make being outpopped fun. There's also the "edge" cases, although most of them will be run-of-the-mill cases. - you are defending at the border of your region firing at enemies on the other end. Barely any XP for you because you "outnumber" them in your region! - you are having a good even fight. A platoon is dumped on your region and suddenly you get 0.75x the XP for something you didnt do, and if you leave you arent going to enjoy the fight as it evens out as you will be gone. The other option is to wait for others to leave, getting punished all the while for something your allies did to you. - the defenders start leaving. Suddenly you outpop them not because of what you did, but your opponents. This is especially true just after a large facility has fallen and most of the defenders relocate somewhere else leaving the zerg unchecked. Even if you did add such a punishment for outpopping your opponents, its going to need a dozen rules and regulations to make sure the people who CAUSE the outpop get punished first, and people who didnt cause it will EVENTUALLY be punished as the punishment gradually builds up.
i do like the idea of tweaking XP based on pop in the hex, but i'd make it only a bonus for the underpop, otherwise too much trolling could occur. also one slight issue with the xp idea, if i go to a base far away from my factions controlled territory and there are 90 players there fighting eachother, if i kill a dude do i get 9000xp (90 X 100 kill xp) because my faction has a 1:90 ratio? XD (and at the same time, would my presence make the other 2 factions get 1xp for kills? XD) a fix for this would be requiring a connected base for the xp boost, and max ratio could be 3:1 so you'll only get the xp bonus in either controlled regions or ones connected to them, and xp would cap out at 3X, and as i suggested, the overpop shouldn't be effected, it should just be a buff for the underpop. we should also be giving defenders a small amount of merit, even if they lose the base. that way they're guaranteed to atleast get something, if more defenders come and they defend the base they get the full amount, but if more defenders don't come then the valiant heroes trying to fight the zergwave atleast get something for their effort. whereas attackers will only get merit if they take the base. (as it currently is) DBG have no idea what they're doing, they're encouraging zerging and making defending a fruitless task, they shower zergs with rewards, and if you're dumb enough to try to defend a base against the zergball you get nothing. currently the game is in the zergiest state its ever been in, no matter what faction i play i have trouble finding a good fight, every base is either getting zerged or zerging.
Yeah, i was gonna say, otherwise some farmers could just dump nukes or pull up with their bastion to ruin a fight between the two other factions, and get HUGELY rewarded for doing so. Most of the bases aren't really designed to encourage fun/fair fights. Some are either way too easy to defend, others force you to run an outdoor marathon before reaching the point from the spawn room. I would try to find a way to design bases that are a bit more interesting to fight in, and encourage/accommodate fair fights. Especially the 3 center bases should be focused on to allow for fun/fair 3 way fights, because that's where most people are pushed to go after a continent opens. Stuff like T.I. where the poor guys coming from Ceres are just stuck in a pit where both sides can easily shred them before they get up the hill doesn't make for some very fun/fair game-play. They should also add some incentive for outfits to defend faction controlled bases, not just the one's they captured. Rewarding only attacking is one of the things I suspect is the reason why many outfits zerg, instead of actually clashing with each other. It's very silly if you think about it: the system promotes zerging/ghost-capping, in order for outfits to be able to participate in the Outfits Wars - where they finally get to fight each other - in order to obtain little to no reward for winning.
Problem is, what is a fair fight ? Even equal population fights more often than not can be completely one sided farmfests. Just look at a tight squad of skilled 'headshot-only' pro veterans on high powered gaming rigs vs a random follow-waypoint platoon of hapless newbies on casual stock machines. An 'unfair' fight any way you look at it, but in that case certainly not for the smaller team. There are some fights that are ruined by population imbalance. For others, that imbalance is the only thing keeping them alive, so you can't just count heads. Furthermore, wether outpopping enemies is even a problem in the first place largely depends on if you rather view the game as being about clicking heads or fighting for territory. A solid argument can be made for not trying to balance population anywhere but on continent or even server level, even though it might conflict with your personal preference on how to play the game, so any 'solution' needs to acknowledge that. From my Experience, zerging already is the least interesting and rewarding way to play the game. I doubt making it even worse will have any significant effect. Fighting a Zerg however provides you with a target rich environment of players that quite often stopped being alert to someone sneaking up on them with a shotgun and placing c4 right in the middle of them quite a while ago. (The old misconception of 'we're so many, someone will surely take care of watching our back' at work here, even though it would have taken just a quick look at ps2.fisu to see that 'someone' is not playing this game) Even when I once again happen to be the only one thinking that we shouldn't give up a base without a fight, I see it like this: I get to run and shoot and fight the whole time, mostly only short ways from the spawn. I might not get too many kills, but the enemies have to share me with 95+ allies, so I'm still having a clear advantage. Why make this any more rewarding ?
So true. Long-time zerglings tend to be among the weaker players in this game, because they are used to always outnumbering their opponents and spawncamping. Doesn't mean they're all terrible and useless to a soldier, but on an individual basis players that habitually play in smaller groups tend to perform better in whatever it is they mainly do, because they don't have that fallback of 5 other people doing the exact same thing, so they need to get it right themselves, and that learning shows.
They are absolutely the same sort of mindset. Zerglings and Farmers want maximum reward for minimum effort. That means easy territory captures or easy kills; in both cases it's easy XP and certs. Zergs go about getting easy XP by steamrolling bases with few or no defenders with a full platoon or even two; at this point in time this tactic also nets them the most War Asset resources, since they get the free resources-per-minute from owning the base on top of the 1x tick of resources for a successful capture. Farmers get easy XP by going to the biggest fight they can, and by making sure the fight stays a stalemate for as long as possible. Both are harmful to the intended metagame. Zergs tend to abandon lattices when they meet stiff enough resistance, and are usually the root cause of a faction getting double-teamed since they're extremely difficult to counter without mustering a zerg of your own, and on top of that they take a ton of territory uncontested. Farms are population sinks that end up doing the opposite; while people are farming, no strategic goals are being met. What needs to happen is a comprehensive game mechanic change that accomplishes three things. First, it makes sustaining a huge population of players a logistical challenge, meaning Zerging becomes less profitable since it will take a lot of effort to sustain. This also means Zergs can potentially be countered by striking their supply chain. Second, it needs to encourage players to break stalemates, thus ensuring huge fights flow from base to base, and don't get bogged down in farms unless it's over a very important strategic map asset (IE Eisa Tech Plant, since it's the sole tech plant on all Esamir). Third, it needs to rebalance and/or rework how bases on each continent are connected to each other, and what they offer from a strategic point of view, such that big fights naturally gravitate towards more critical objectives, and it's more effective to send individual squads to pursue smaller objectives.
The idea is interesting, but it solves a nonexistent problem. The player in the big Zerg and so almost does not get experience, he has no one to shoot and basically they have to just wait until they get their share of XP for capturing an object. This is a very slow way of farming, which is suitable only for those who have just started playing and just want to get something, and not just be food for other players. In addition, excessive numbers on one hexagon can lead to a loss on the continent, at the expense of the loss of other hexagons. Of course, this works if the number of players of each faction on the continent is approximately the same.
Yet people still zerg. Clearly low XP gains from lack of kills doesn't discourage them, since they still do it. They also don't care in the slightest about overall continent objectives. I highly recommend you read my post, just above yours.
I read it. But I can't imagine how to change this in a game that is completely built around certs farm. All the options that come to mind lead to the idea that it is easier to make a new game.
That's also something people talk about quite a bit - it takes a ton of certs to flesh out your favorite playstyle, even more if you want to be a vehicle pilot. I think it's within reason to tone down how expensive things are when it comes to buying them with certs.
