[Suggestion] Improvements for the Meta Game (Real Suggestions Inside!)

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by LupeFiasco, Jan 13, 2013.

  1. LupeFiasco

    Issues:

    Planetside 2 has solid core gameplay, weapons feel good, flying is enjoyable and the world is beautiful and expansive. But the game lacks a depth that so many other MMOs have; It lacks a meta game(not for lack of trying). So here are what we see as the underlying issues:

    • The map is too unrestrained
    • The flow of battle is too unpredictable
    • There is no way of laying siege to a defending force
    Because the map is covered with capturable hexes it is inherently difficult to predict where people will go. This unpredictability leads to an inability to find a large battle. Look at the map and pick a territory. Now count how many adjacent territories it has. You'll likely find it has anywhere from 4-8 adjacent territories. This means that if squads were to only move from one adjacent territory to the next, that squad would have 4-8 options of where to go. But this doesn't take into account all of the other territories on the map that you can go to.

    In addition, if we wanted to lay siege to a strongly defended base, there is no way for us to do so. If the enemy can continue to acquire grenades, tanks, and aircraft while defending then there is no way for my team to grind down the enemies defenses. Even if we were to cut off the base from the rest of the defending empire's territory, the defenders would still be getting resources. 200 people, no matter how well organized shouldn't be able to hold a base indefinitely. It makes no logical sense and it makes gameplay stale by keeping the large battles at specific bases instead of allowing the fight to move across the map.

    Those are the big issues, boiled down to the core, as we see them. So here are our solutions to the issues:


    Solutions:

    • Neutral Territories
    • Attrition of resources at cut-off bases
    The first solution that we propose attempts to make the game more predictable in terms of the flow of forces across the map without hindering the choices that an individual player or outfit would have at any given point in time.

    We call the idea, Neutral Territory. Below you'll see a map of Esamir with hexes whitened out. These are the proposed Neutral territories. The idea of neutral territory is that no empire can capture the territory and thus no empire can use this territory as adjacency to capture other territories or to use as influence. These neutral territories will help to focus battles and the flow of people across the map.

    [IMG]

    This map is meant as an example. We aren't advocating for the map to look exactly like this. However, we did spend time thinking about the ramifications of implementing neutral territory at these locations.

    As far as rendering issues go, it shouldn't be any better or worse than things are now. With the neutral territories the game will incentivize multiple large battles on multiple fronts instead of one massive battle at one small location. People will still be spread across the map but there will be more than one large battle at a time.

    [IMG]

    How the map might look at any given point in time. Notice that there are still multiple fronts to the battle.

    Our second solution is a siege mechanic. Something to help break the stalemates at overly defensible bases. Basically, in order to get empire wide resources for your grenades, tanks, and aircraft, the territory that you are currently in must be either connected to the warpgate or adjacent to a territory which is connected to the warpgate. Even if the territory you are in is held by the enemy you will still get empire wide resources while attacking. Therefore, if you're sitting in a bio-lab farming and cut off from the rest of your empire you'll only be getting resources for the territory you're currently in. If you're connected to the warpgate then you receive the resources that the rest of the empire is getting.

    [IMG]

    In this picture we see that the TR are defending Haven Outpost. They have been cut off from the rest of the TR empire and thus all TR fighting in Haven's hexes are no longer acquiring the empire's global resources

    This adds an attrition mechanic to the game, a way to whittle down an enemy's defenses over time. Can't get past that one choke point? Does the enemy keep pulling tanks or aircraft? You can go around and cut off the enemy from their supply line or you can continue to attack the front. Now every tank they purchase is more valuable and every one you kill will actually make a difference, by reducing the amount they can pull until they regain warpgate connectivity. The defending force won't feel an immediate impact, but it affects them over time. The idea is to give the attackers another alternative and incentivize moving of the front lines.

    [IMG]

    The VS have been cut off. Troops can still reinforce the area by doing Gal drops, driving in tanks, or fighting their way out of the corner. But they won't be able to hold indefinitely.

    The Benefits:

    With this, new players will be able to easily find a fight. Forces will be concentrated so finding a battle won’t be difficult, in fact you may have to pick and choose which battle you want to fight. In addition, players both new and old won't need to learn much new information. The concept of non-capturable territory is quite simple. In fact PS2 already had territory like this not too long ago. The hexes both to the north and the east of the VS Indar warpgate (over the water in both locations) were at one point neutral. You can still move through the territory, you just can't capture it or use it for adjacency.

    One of the biggest upsides is that these solutions are very simple. They do not require re-drawing of territory, the changing of base layouts, changing capture mechanics or that you increase/reduce the amount of XP per base capture. What it would require is a well thought out process of where to put neutral territory and possibly taking another look at the math for influence.

    [IMG]

    The Terran Republic have a few choices. Fight at Nott, bypass Nott for Frostfall, or leave some forces here and attempt a larger push on another front.

    Another big advantage to this system is that it can be easily changed. If the flow of battle has become too stale and predictable then the devs need only change which territories are neutral or make a few capturable again, thus changing the dynamic.

    Conclusion:

    Planetside 2 is marketed as a massive game, that size always matters. We believe this refers to the size and scale of the battles. So then the game direct the flow of forces into these large and engaging battles. Large battles with tanks, aircraft and infantry are fun. Not the grind it out XP fest that we used to see at Tech plants, but the actual battles where empires fight for every inch of land. The armor columns blasting away at each other while the bomber soar overhead. Those are the moments that keep us coming back to the game again and again. Once you've been in a fight like that you know there's no other game that can match Planetside.

    Every player should have the chance to experience large scale engagements that leave you wanting more. These changes will help create more of those awesome moments for veterans and new players alike.

    If you like our ideas please comment and put your questions in the thread below. Also tell your friends about our post and spread the word. We want to start a serious discussion on the meta game and the ideas that might help improve it.

    Thank you for your time and we hope our message gets through.

    tl;dr: Start from the beginning.


    Special Thanks to RogueComet for the maps, Nobel for some of the ideas and Fistshove, Yama, Lush and Antithasys for the editing. Also thanks to other outfit members who helped in the process.

    I'd like to say that these ideas may not be new or novel, I don't claim to be the only one to come up with these solutions. The point of this thread is to point out the biggest issues, in relation to the meta game, and then make suggestions on how to fix said issues. This doesn't cover every issue in the game and it's not supposed to, we are not trying to nit pick or cast blame, we are simply trying to address a big issue of the Meta game.
    • Up x 19
  2. Cyridius

    That's a very well presented post.
  3. Rusky

    You've clearly put some thought into this, and I would welcome anything that would add to the metagame right now.
  4. clantix

    A. lol unless an outfit decides to do it only 20 people bother defending a disconnected base
    B. I like the neutral territory idea because we could get rid of the weird phenomenon where owning an outpost can give you huge.... tracts of land. Also reduces number of outposts that were put there just to fill space.
    • Up x 3
  5. Arsinek

    The thing that effects metagame isnt "not finding big fights" or "bases being too easy to defend" its the fact that there is little to no reason to capture territory. Why capture territory when it doesnt do anything? I will be just as rewarded by spawn camping in this game if not more than I will capturing territory. This gives an overall feeling of in-consequence to the whole game, which in turn makes it the opposite of epic. Battles in this game mean no more than the battles in Tribes or Blacklight, Cod or BF.

    Take a look at Battleground Europe or Warhammer if you want to see a good example of war in a video game.
  6. Deranius

    You'd be surprised how often non-outfit players will commit to big, cutoff bases like tech plants and bio labs on their own accord, especially when their faction has reduced control of the maps. That ties more into cert farming issues though.
  7. Nogrim313

    don't like your example map just due to blue never having a shot at the lower right corner due to the adjacency that said the general idea isnt too bad, if you consider the terrain and what the enemy is using at one hex you can already predict their movements (tank columns wont go over the mountains, etc)

    i think until people have made use of the /orders channel certs we shouldn't mess with this as intel and scouting will greatly increase

    i would like to see them split up orders a bit better /infantry /armor /air and the default /orders would be nice people could toggle the ones they need off and on as required

    edit:
    also imho the drop pods need to go they remove all concept of battle lines or defense if anything these should be rethought to only a squad beacon, a galaxy ability, or an AMS alternate. as they are they make galaxy's obsolete and make base defenses too easy to bypass
  8. Badgered

    Well written suggestion Lupe. Y'all did a great job brainstorming this. It seems to me that the lattice system was less complex and did a fine job of funneling players into huge fights but your suggestion should have a similar effect while allowing some amount of flanking and player choice.
  9. UberBonisseur



    You forgot to mention active resource gain (1 resource per 25 XP) defeats any form of resource lock.
    Infantry in a biolab would still get infinite infantry resources


    About the siege part:
    Influence does a far better job at this.

    If you are familiar with Indar, Saurva biolab is by far the best example of Influence could (and should) work.
    There are 4 control points.

    But only 3 are inside.
    D is located below the biolab, inside the walls, in a building in the courtyard

    While the base can be heavily defended from the inside, it does not prevent a faction from capturing the base.
    With a big Influence superiority, you can cap the base by just holding D.

    It's faster and more reliable than resource exhaustion
  10. LupeFiasco

    Arsinek, I think you make a good point. That there is no "reason" to capture territory. But in game right now there is just as much reason to capture bases and land as there was in PS1. PS1 worked well. Yeah its an endless war, but we don't continue to capture territory for any reason other than having fun. Or at least that's why I play, I play to have fun not to advance my character.

    In reguards to Uber's post: Not all bio-labs have infantry resources. But yeah they would continue to get the active resource gain and I think they should

    Also not all bases have that capture point that's outside of the well defended territory. So some bases can be near impossible to capture. I don't think the point is to make it easier to attack, I think there just needs to be a way to break the stalemates. Usually when your cut off and surrounded the advantage goes to the Attacker. No so much in PS2.
  11. MceeD

    Brilliant!
  12. TrilokJ

    Nice read. This is a really well-thought-out idea. It might have some flaws, but it's a solid plan to further contrive the game mechanics. Here's my like.
  13. Solaries

    In addition I think we really need to see a return to a Planetside 1 system of base capture or defense experience. Planetside 2 already tracks your stats during a "battle" (viewable with tab), it should be a relatively simple thing to measure the size of a battle, modify that by some degree depending on that players actual involvement in the battle, and then pay them those points upon capture or defense regardless of where they are in the map.

    This would reduce incentive to ghost cap, increase incentive to be involved in large battles, make base captures more friendly to mobile forces such as ESFs, Liberators, or tanks, allowing forces defending a cap to take up defensive positions outside of the small SOI of a base, and keep the battle flowing better as it removes the necessity for everyone to wait for a capture to go through for points.
  14. Seqea

    I like this idea, gives much better variety for strategies. Because current strategy is avoiding defense, and winning easy fights.
  15. Bloodlet

    I'm not sure I agree with a lot of the post. I can agree that cut off areas should not get supplies as effectively and I know the territory resource contribution from those areas gets subtracted from the total resource pool refresh rate.

    When talking about big battles and the lack therof I do not think that it is due to unpredictability in the map. I think it comes do to many bases being undefensible with so many windows and supposed defense towers being wide open to enemy shots. I think that battles happen way too fast in PS2 due to this also possibly due to lack of incentivization of defending bases.

    I also think that at certain times when a base IS well defended then certain attackers give up too easily. I know at times in the outfit a vote is taken on whether to continue pressing an attack or not and some people get frustrated with not taking the base quickly. I'm certainly not one of those people. I like a hard fight that lasts until one side cannot possibly continue either by the attackers taking the base or the defenders pushing the attackers away and counter attacking the adjacent territories.

    I do think that territory control should mean more. If I were to suggest how it could play more into the meta game I would change the way the map works slightly. As it stands you can go to any of the three territories at any time. I would like to see more of a continent based lattice system between the 3 conts we have and future continents. I would like to see certain continents act like the home territories for one empire with the other two warpgate being capturable areas that lead you to the enemy home continent.

    I don't think this change would take a lot of defeloper time since I would think you pretty much only need to add capture points to the warp gate areas aside from one warpgate on each continent intended to be one factions home sanctuary. With a change like this I think you could introduce a metagame, make territory control matter more and bring the game closer to one of my other favorite MMOFPS' (WW2:Online).
  16. Hamster

    I don't know if fixed neutral territories is a solution...maybe there could be a system for 'neglected' territory behind the front lines that could fall neutral and accomplish the same thing?

    As I stated earlier in our (AT's) forums, "I'd like to see NTU silos brought back into the game and if an empire neglects a base (by not transporting NTU's from a warpgate to the base via Ant's like in PS1) the base would eventually go neutral.

    The PS2 devs could learn a lot from PS1's metagame. We need control consoles, LLU's and many other things from PS1 to be phased into ps2."

    SOE desperately needs to attend to 3 things:

    1: They must stop the tidal wave of hackers that is ruining the game.
    2: They must optomize the game so that most of us can play with decent FPS.
    3: They must give us a satisfying and deep metagame.

    Hamster

    (edit) p.s. I also strongly believe that Time to Kill is lightning-fast and needs to be changed significantly and I have already mentioned that in other threads.
  17. forkyar

  18. Chemicalnurd

    Great post, I agree 100%. The only problem I have is that it would be better if the landscape was shaped more in a way that effectively creates a 'hidden' lattice instead of making these things obvious. But that would be impossible considering all three continents are already made. What I mean is, if you look at a place like Quartz Ridge Camp on Indar, there is a natural direction to fights either going straight south from the tower above it to attack the tech lab, or the opposite. This isn't due to neutral territory or anything, simply that the landscape makes it a whole lot of effort for no reward to try anything other than this route (or going east and hitting West Highlands Checkpoint then the nearby biolab).
    Personally though, and I'm not a Planetside 1 vet so I'm not just biased by happy memories or something on this, the lattice looks like it'd be a much better system than the hexes we have now. Something I'd propose is the edition of some sort of dynamic lattice which gives people recommendations of which base would be the most worthwhile to attack next, and advice regarding which base you are most likely to have attacked next - not sure how this could be achieved, we'd probably need some fairly large changes to resource and/or cert gain that it could work alongside.
  19. Nobel

    Whats really great about these proposed changes is that they all utilize already existing game mechanics, add immense amounts of strategic depth to the game, and maintain the original design of Planetside 2.

    Think of some major points the vets miss from Planetside 1, and how to reconcile those things with Planetside 2's new gameplay, these two relatively easy changes, create SO many new emergent game play situations, while adding real strategic depth to the game.

    Players want to be able to use a small group of players to strategically impact the battlefield, lets say by denying tech, or denying resources, these in combination create supply line choke points. Say the NC are deep into your territory, your small outfit, could fight on the front lines at that big base, OR they could capture territory on the outskirts, making their way to your supply line choke point. Suddenly, once they take that territory, the NC have just been cut off from all Tech AND resources. Your small outfit has just greatly impacted the battle, and are about to get a great fight defending that territory. Sure, a big NC outfit might come and crush you with 100 people, but that means you have just pulled 100 people off the front line, and your forces have moved forward.

    Alternatively, a smaller NC outfit, could see this occurring, and decide they want to capture territory to provide another supply line route to the front, providing a way to strategically provide benefit to their empire, without fighting at the front lines directly. So then, you have these smaller outfits fighting for supply line routes, that rely on being nimble to be successful, you get real situations that you'll remember and that have impact.
    • Up x 1
  20. Solaries

    I'm uncertain that the siege mechanic would be enough to provide a significant reason to defend and remain connected.

    I'll use a biolab for example, since it's the most extreme case. Inside a biolab's dome there is essentially no impact from air or ground resources for defenders, and they all provide infantry resources. So by simply continuing to fight the defenders of a biolab will gain the only resource that is important to them. Additionally, the only infantry resource-buyable thing that cannot be stocked up earlier and then bought to a long biolab farm are maxes, but at their relatively low cost these are still easily purchased and 7 or 8 of them can be bought from reserve points alone.

    I think this is fairly applicable for other facility battles as well. If my techplant is cut off I can still fight there, earn ground resources, pull tanks and air. Infantry resources are unnecessary for infantry to be effective, except in the very long term (burn through 40 health kits/grenades/c4/etc.).

    So, while this change may be easy to implement, test, and see how it works out, additional changes will be necessary to improve the siege aspect.





    I believe a combination of more defensible, interior, bases and facilities, with a siege mechanic that grows in severity over time will increase the depth of gameplay we see.

    Similar to the NTU silo idea, but without any actual player interaction, a base would simply start losing power without a connection to the warpgate. At first penalties would be losing resource connection as spoken of here, but over time the base would start having penalties to respawn timers. As the NTU nears the bottom the base would naturally shift resources to protect the most important system: spawning and vehicle drawing. Sequentially wall turrets would cease to function, wall shields would go down, and then vertical and horizontal shield generators.

    But for this to be balanced and still allow for great battles bases need more interior spaces to force infantry battles. Facilities need far more of these spaces to make them feel epic.

    All together people would be given incentive to keep surrounding territory connected to the warpgates in order to hold their territory, but still able to mount an effective defense in the short term. Tension is created by the timer ticking down, and more strategic options are made available to players. Interior spaces in facilities create more opportunity for underused infantry tactics, and recreate the feeling of the tiered base capture.