Im a BR 99 (Goatsack) and I have been running an outfit of around 130-150 for over 6 months now. We have high activity rates on Waterson and have a very insightful and energetic/positive player base. I would like to impart some of our ideas that I have heard since GU11 on the forums. Im going to write this in the first person because most of these ideas I have written down in notes by my cpu, but I am translating them here myself. I would like to first acknowledge the great job that SoE has done in many facets of the game from the organizational side - making maps a little more interactive and allowing for nice squad layout diversity. Being able to know who is in what vehicle and what their location is from the platoon loadout is very cool. I have loved that change. Here are some ideas that have/havent worked and ways they could be shaped to work for the majority of the community. 1. Lattice - I think the lattice has grown on many people, it creates some very interesting fights, but it does still lend itself to bottlenecking and some zerging. Part of the problem here is not SoE, it is us - the community. By not demanding excellence from our outfits / platoon leaders we have lent ourselves to ravenous mediocrity where simple strategy could win the battle outright or create avenues to jump to other lattice destinations to encircle or bypass the zerged bottleneck. To help alieviate this issue for the playerbase new lattice connections could be introduced giving more variety for attack points. For instance - outside of warpgates the centralized territory should be connected to both adjacent territories. There is no reason that if you push an entire lattice to the other factions WG you cant go right next door. Other spots on indar that would create more interesting fighting for example would be hvar north and southgate having a connection. There are about 10 other places on the map that would help improve battle flow if they were connected. They are logical connections and dont have massive terrain issues with getting there. 2. Test Server - The test server needs to be utilized more as a data collection tool and a bug identifier. Since the implementation of the test server we have seen many items be introduced and have come out of the can tremendously imbalanced or bugged in game breaking ways. Instead of rushing new items out the door for sales, the test server data should be used to iron out the mechanical and balance issues with these items. If the test server is not being used enough, start offering very small rewards of sc or cert bonuses to players who dont mind dedicating their time to being test subjects on the test server. Heck, have 2x cert weekends more often on the test servers to help produce more data to provide accurate balancing for the official release. 3. Flak - Flak has been broken in many of the game updates and usually fixed to a small degree later on, however, it seems like with every GU we get more and more bugged burster maxes, skyguards, rangers, or whatever you are using as a flak based weapon. Its been almost 9 months with this as an issue for the entire community, I move that this gets addressed once and for all. I know that its disheartening to pull a 400 resource lighting and not have your skyguard work.. conversely 350 resource max and so on. 4. Range on G2A lockons is a bit out of touch. The Phoenix has a range of 300m. While its camera guided and not a lockon, its range is about right for all ESRLs. The range on the Phoenix/Lancer at 300m seems acceptable and should help balance the skies for the ESF pilots. I am not an avid pilot, I am more of an infantry player, but I do recognize that it is probably too difficult for air (especially liberators) to roam the skies near infantry... especially since every tr/nc/vs have invested in lock-ons of some sort whether it be annies, strikers, hawks.. what not. It would also help if heavies were forced to tactically choose the best lock on weapon for the situation they are in. The multipurpose lock on weapon (striker) shouldnt out perform exclusive aa lockons for against air, nor should it outperform exclusive ag lockons for ground. Finding a middle ground will lend for more interesting decisions (since this is a MMO - we should be rewarding players who can think on their feet and maximize their classes potential. No one weapon should rule all...) 5. ESF / Liberator Flak protection - this should be increased. Many players run autorepair on their air vehicles because the flak protection does not really offer enough damage mitigation to be worth it. Introducing a flak protection of say 35% max for planes that want to be guarded against flak is about right. There should also be other defensive choices to make gameplay more interesting as well... ie: 35% mitigation versus rockets/tank rounds for planes.... or 10% against nose cannons/rotaries. Even a hybrid option.. say 15% vs. flak and 5% versus nose cannons would be a great and welcome addition. Right now, pretty much everyone runs autorepair... which is boring. This concept can be applied to virtually all vehicles. IE: Sundies could have 70% reduction versus c4 just like they have the same loadout for tank mines... ect. Tanks with armor that lightly encompasses the whole tank as opposed to strongly fortifying one area. 6. A more comprehensive anti-hacking system needs to be implemented. This is one of the big knocks that I hear from many people who have tried the game and left. "Its a free to play, there are so many cheaters." Well, lets get on top of this, I think the elephant in the room is not the fact that there are the warping speed hackers out there that the GMs can easily identify, rather the players that play with aimbots / other hacks which are much harder to spot decisively by the human eye. We all know that these cheats exist and are used rampantly in this game. I have no idea why people would do this as a gamer for many years now, but some people feel the need to. Anyways, coming up with the best anti-cheating system out there would go a long way to restoring credibility in this game. Lets face it... if you do this, this game could be straight up epic. There is no other shooter out there like ps2 and you could literally dominate the shooter scene if you make decisive changes that the gaming community positively responds to! Think how Madden football has dominated the pc/console gaming for sports games over the past almost 3 decades. Get some of these changes right - clean up the game - make the game profitable and fun to be involved with while not breaking players wallets... sky is the limit. 6. Last but not least - population imbalance. This needs to be addressed. Its a huge issue auraxia wide and it is probably the #1 reason behind complaints here on the forums and auraxia wide. Players just want a competitive arena and half a chance. Going against a faction with a 50% world pop or more leaves the other two factions completely hung out to dry.. and it lends to one-sided demoralizing fights which piss off the underepresented factions and it also bores the proverbial crap out of the over-represented one. Something needs to be done.. personally I would put a 24 hour faction change timer on players so the fourth factioners are completely disuaded from switching factions. New players should be given substantial xp bonuses (like a boost) for joining underrepresented factions on the servers that they join ect..... Im not sure I have the best ideas for how to fix this, but I think these are two good ideas to bounce around. ***Here are some ideas for SoE to help monetize the game a little bit better and to encourage players to stick with the game! And hopefully make the customer base happy too. Lets be real here, most of us love this game in our own way and want to see it get better. Sony is in this thing to make money, we need to recognize and appreciate that. To do this we need to encourage membership, boosts, and making the game less pay to win and more play to win. 1. Reduce the cost of the Boosts (one week) 50%xp/re to 300 sc - do not discount them ever. 2. Reduce the membership costs to 9.99/mos or 100.00/yr 55/6mos. 3. Introduce a stackable item that allows you to take your resource pool from 750 max to 1250 max 100 sc/week 4. New items stay at 700sc, after 1 month they disappear from being purchaseable except for in special bundles kind of like station cash weekends. Ironically the ability to just drop 7 bucks on a weapon takes the fun out of the game to a degree and encourages a pay-to-win mentality for players who think if they just get this weapon they will magically become good. This is not the case.... encouraging the usage of cheaper boosts and memberships to get players to invest time into the game and to learn the nuiansces of how to play the game really is much more healthy and better from a long term player base goal. 5. Outfit cert pools... The amount of xp gained by the outfit should be tabulated and a small percentage say .05% be awarded to outfits monthly for the outfit leadership to distribute to their membership (not to the leader) as they see fit. This can go a long way to help encourage outfit pride and participation for some outfits that might have trouble with it. 6. Platoon bonus boosts - stackable 3-5% bonus boosts for players to add to their chars for their squad/platoon mates is a good idea. This is a good way for players to show good will to one another. 7. Levelcapping at 100 - Its fine to level cap at 100, but leave something for these dedicated players to keep playing for. Maybe a system which adds 1% damage and 1% extra health for every additional 2 million xp gained symbolized by a general's star (up to 20 stars - place these stars on the chest of the players who earn them). Give players that kill these players a little bit of an extra xp boost as well.. say 10 extra xp for every medal that player has gained. Ideas from the outfit side of things: -Increase the amount of ranks(customizable) within the outfit by a few. -Allow for banning of public players from platoons and them not being able to rejoin unless reinvited -5% extra xp bonus for players playing in outfit platoons. -leader chat should be refunded to all players that have purchased it and should be repriced to 1000 certs. This will remove some of the trolling aspect from leader chat which has made outfit coordination a little bit awkward. In addition, custom leader channels should be encouraged.. so if you want to opt out of the global leader chat and go into an esamir leader channel you can without creating a custom channel - being able to see who is in the channel easier than diving into the voice options would be nice too. Hopefully our ideas from my outfit will inspire some more positive ideas and upvotes!
I can dig it. Like hex did. Command Staff / Platoon Leaders / Squad Leaders weren't the people moaning about hex. Possibly the PS1 vets who fill that roll wanted lattice, but hex was/is a fantastic system. From the screenshots of PS1 Auraxis I've seen, It looked like continents had 6-12 bases each, and the lines connecting them were practically connecting adjacent bases anyway. Hex mirrored PS1 lattice's functionality, with more bases. Exp modifiers based on server populations would go in the right direction for balancing things out. Don't underestimate the Alert Victory bonuses role in entrenching imbalanced pop. It's a exp incentive to play on the over-pop side. Like playing Rummy, if two players combine their hands and play as one person with twice the cards, highest ending score wins. Twice the cards or players, larger pool for winning. Alerts need to focus experience point gain on playing during the alert, and less on the final outcome. Bigger exp bonus for doing the alerts activity, less ending jackpot. Campaign Ribbons and ribbon bonus at end of alert. Big prizes for playing, small prize for winning. Most people don't swap characters for a major facility capture, 1000 exp, but they will for 5,000 to 10,000 + boosts.
totally agree with ya on the pop imbalance point, that was something I noted but forgot to mention. If your faction is rolling +10-20% global pop you are pretty much guaranteed 10k xp every alert. That right there massively offsets any xp bonus that the minor populations get by a landslide.
Just want to touch on your number two. The problem with Test environments is that they are almost always a separate download and launcher. Most players and myself included don't feel the bother to go play on a server where it doesn't matter for the time periods of the day I have to play. Most of these imbalanced items do actually make it on the test server, but when you don't actually have people testing these things. There is so little data to conclude anything meaningful. Test servers, an item people scream for because they think they'll make the bugs disappear and game balance a reality, but really is just another server with less people, who'd rather just play on their home server.
First, you are not a Rabbi. Second I read through your wall of text, my eyes hurt now. So lets go into a few things. #4 Range of G2A lock-ons: While I completely agree with your assessment of the stalker and the idea behind the stalker you know damn well it will not change as it would just turn into another set of Grounders and SKEP's. If you where just talking about the range of the Stalker it self but leaving the dedicated lock-ons range as is then I am all for it. But as we sit right now infantry is being abused by ESF's on a constant basis with little to do at the moment for defense. Overall I really was not sure where you where going with this suggestion as it was not all that clear. #6. Population imbalance: Love the idea of having a lock out but 24 hours is so like you to take the idea to an extreme. 6 hour lock out would be much better and maybe a bit to much still but 24? Yeah that is just to much. The biggest thing when it comes to the pop imbalance is the fact that there are attributes to each faction that is not true to form, unadvertised and/or ugly to the eyes of newcomers. Lets take the Vanu for instance, who really wants to play a character wearing purple spandex? Their technology advancements over the other two factions is not advertized very well allowing new players to see the positive attributes of the Vanu, for instance, like no bullet drop. The NC is advertized to have slow but hard hitting weapons, but that is not really the case for most of the NC weapons which falls into my statement of not being true to form. The idea of giving incentives to play a faction that is lower in population doesnt make much sense as a new player would not understand the xp boost in the first place due to the unfamiliarity of the game it self. Think about it, when you first started creating your character if you saw a note above say the Vanu stating double XP would that immediately draw you to choose that faction?? This is just one of many questions that could be raised about this one subject. Trying to force people to go toward the lower faction would ultimately fail once the incentive wears off. SOE needs to go the route they went with Everquest by invoking a form of feelings toward the race for which a person is fit to wield. One note of addition to the outfit thing; have platoon chat only broadcast to squad leaders only. Allowing the the squad leaders to communicate the orders to the squads as needed at that point. Currently there is just far to much chatting going on for all to hear. I am surprised you didnt go into the balencing of ESF's in your write up. But I guess that will be left to me to do some day. And yes, this thread has been Knarfed Knarfis
Also another issue I did not address was the lag on the servers currently. Since I am not a tech genius I was going to leave this alone, however I would ask is this due to: 1. The coding of the game or 2. The hardware not being sufficient to handle to the player base. If it is item #1 - developers really need to get to threading out this game a bit better, because when this launches on ps4 and if players run into this kind of lag that can hit, it wont be good for business. PC gamers seem to put up with more than console kiddies. item #2 - if this is the problem, the hardware needs to be upgraded or a solution needs to be found to remedy the problem. A year past beta in a game, it should not have constant lag issues.. these are things that beta should take care of. If they stressed their servers out too much by merging the playerbase, can we open up one or two servers for people to move to for free to help alieviate some of the pressure on the servers? Im not saying take the whole population away that merged, but maybe 10-15% from each server and entice them to move over to a new server would do the trick? Just thinking outside the box.
I got Knarfed hard! Great suggestions knarf. Ill just go point by point quick 1. Im trying to stress that launchers that specifically do damage to one sort of vehicle (air or armor) should do more damage than launchers that have the multipurpose ability to hit both air and armor. Right now, the multipurpose weapons seem to dominate and have no disadvantages and in most cases do more damage than their air specific or ground specific counterparts. That is really backwards - and goes against the grain of an MMO mentality where choosing loadouts for situational combat is valuable. Right now its basically one ESRL to rule them All... kind of lord of the ringsish. This goes for the Phoenix and Lancer. If you want the utility, you lose some of the damage output.. im not saying a ton, but im saying enough where it makes sense in some situations to pull a AA only launcher or a a2g launcher ie: decimator..... instead of always the striker, phoenix, lancer. 2. 24 hours might be too much, but 6 is probably too little. Basically you can fourth faction every other alert and switch over.. that's too little. Maybe no faction jumping while alerts are active? or 12 hours? Im not quite sure what the best solution is.. but all of these solutions are much better than the status quo. 3. Platoon chat is fine. Platoon leaders need to step up and do their job. I know we can sound like we are being dicks by keeping platoon chat relatively clear..but sometimes it needs to be done because there is quite a lot going on in this game! I guess its a platoon by platoon basis and outfits/squad leaders need to communicate how it is in their platoons. If you dont like the way your platoon leader is running things, tell him to shape it up!!! I know the guy that runs your platoons.. he's a total ________. Oh wait.. that's me. Strike(r) that. 4. SoE is going into ESF balancing next month (July) its not as bad now that the nose cannon is fixed. I think across the board performance has gotten better since they made this simple fix that probably should have been corrected in beta. They need to keep the unique traits of the ESFs - Reaver being a sluggish hard hitting brick, mossy being a quick turning fast esf, and the scythe being something in between with a small frame... and apparently an underside that can ohk any esf known to man. knarfd
David Koresh says leave me alone. Seriously though, take the tinfoil off your head and join the conversation meaningfully... that's all i ask.
Goat you just love to complain. If its not hackusations its excuses. As it is right now any BIOLAB alert on waterson will net the NC a win with VS holding more points than TR. There is only one reason its always like that. I'd love to see the striker removed from the game, but I want to see VS and NC max brought down in close quaters. Right now infantry is all about who has more of the most OP max in CQ combat. TR max is just trash compared to the others (And I love my VS max before ZOE was even added).
They are buffing the TR max slightly - stats say it was slightly underperforming. They are balancing it. Dont worry, your dreams are coming true. TR wins most alerts because of sheer numbers on waterson. When the numbers are even, they get smoked. Population balancing needs to happen soon. Hopefully they remember to balance that fracture too.. but you failed to mention that and the anti-hacking system needs to be put in place. I love how people think the honor system works in gaming, just because you say you dont hack doesn't mean you dont. It's akin to major league sports.... they say they dont take hgh, but really, they do... because they can currently beat the system. It's really no different... outside of the huge monetary difference. Once SoE gets a viable anti-cheat system in place you will see more gamers stick with this game in the long run and not get frustrated by players who are cheating the system.. and frankly ruining the game for both new and established players.
I guess Daltons and tank busters are also not registering hits as well as flak.... what's goin on here!
