Base Benefits discussed on Higby Pls

I like the fact that something is brewing in regards of base importance, but do we really want to make it easier for the winners to win even more by having these benefits?

You can't have no benefits (meaning not gaining more power) and have meaningfull base importance.

It's either :
- bases are worth it to take because of the buff, making the winning faction stronger.

or

- bases are not worth it to take because buff is not meaningfull enough to care (like we have now) but everyone is on the same ground.

Thats pretty much why I posted earlier in this thread in a particular way. If base benefits are not something which is a direct advantage, it seems less likely people will be interested in enough in acquiring said benefits. The most applicable function for this would be to directly benefit the faction which owns the buff, thus making said buff desirable to each faction.

Would be nice if they could alleviate some of the " winner " get's stronger issue by giving bases a secondary " enemy " buff

Ie: NC owns a Tech plant and get the associated Tech plant buffs / advantages .. But owning a Tech plant also gives the opposite two factions a 2% quicker resource gain ..

Now when Tech plants are equally shared that "enemy buff " evens itself out ... But if one side is stronger , and starts to have a Tech plant monopoly it would soon build up to be a nice counter buff for the other two factions ..

Now the buff doesn't want to be that strong that it actually makes not owning the facility a better option and the resource gain was just an example for the purpose of this post .. The buff could actually be anything ...

It was like that with old ressources system. The problem was not that you were loosing as much as it was cattering your gameplay. Because you had less to no ressources income, it was frustrating to not be able to play anything else than infantry.

I'm not against winners winning more if i can pull my MBT when i want to. It might also ends up unbalanced situations faster : the winning team 'll win faster and lock continents faster making less 96+ vs 12 situations (as you'll concentrate populations faster)

I like the ES abilities tied to base ownership. However, I'd prefer to see a "Region" system than a global one.
The reason is that if an empire can throw more people, they'll get the best advantages, then will get even more powerfull.

In a region-based system, even if your empire controls only a small region of a continenet, the defenders still get the full benefit from this region when the attackers doesn't, even if they own the other regions of the continent.

Global benefits could be introduced, but they should remain "minor" not to introduce too much imbalance when an empire acquires said benefit.

orbital strike incoming to

IMO a Global system is asking for trouble as it would just enforce avoidance as people Ghost capped continents ... It happens now for the continental lock benefits so it's pretty much a given that other Global benefits would make it worse.

I really like where this idea is going... When I first read about the suggestion from Higby I thought to myself, "What? Give the winning empire more benefits so they can win even more? To what end?". But your suggestion with the nantie resources I really like... More things could be added to the idea I think too... Like, what if you gave the winning empire the ability to supplement the amount of nanties they have by doing ANT runs? They could inject the nanites into a silo tower in the area they want them to flow from, giving the players in that area a boost in nanties. The enemy empire could steal from the silo and put it into their own silo if they want as well...

*Population imbalances can and ruin this as well so something probably needs to be put in place to help with that issue as well.

Bases should be important, before anything else, because they produce a strong position to defend against enemy advance and a strong position to field ally forces. They should be important because they provide a meaningful wedge against which the enemy has to present considerable offense to reprieve from enemy grasp. The problem is that this usually dissolves into zerg activity due to any number of circumstances. The most important one in my opinion is that bases are not defensible, except by an inordinate number of players. Since the base is that much less dangerous than the inordinate number of people needed to maintain its defense, the only way to properly assault them is also through an inordinate number of players overwhelming what little defense can be provided. I understand the sentiment that players should be the dirivng force behind a defense, that is should be active, but designing bases that are poorly defended is not the answer to that.

The modus operandi is that attackers can often just waltz right in and, during an attack, some level of attacker penetration is expected, even if it's an S-AMS hugging the wall. That shouldn't be "plan A" of a base assault because that diminishes the importance of the regions between bases and destroys the concepts of building strong positions and fortification.

As to actual benefits of bases, two kinds of benefits might be best. The first is a "basic" benefit, a kind that is reflected in all sides of a continental confrontation that because an aspect of balanced combat, because of its accessibility to the closest gate. The second is a "bonus" benefit that is acquired through owning a combination of uncontested bases simultaneously; the benefit should be transient, not overwhelming, but noticeable and desireable; and, moreover, the bonus benefit should come with a negative impact that makes pursuing it a cost-benefit tradeoff. (A cut from factional nanite distribution per resource tick is the only idea off the top of my head right now.)

I went and watched the Higby Pls from 12/3/2014 where he talks about this. It starts about 38 minutes in. What utterly shocked me is this game is 2 years since release (and who knows how many years since conception) and he's just now talking (admittedly on the fly no less!) about a system that adds depth to the game. Two years in and we're just now getting a fragile wisp of an idea to add depth!? I guess better late than never, but it was so revealing about the development process of this game. I always assumed there was some plan in the works since day 1 to add "meta", probably using the resource revamp, but I guess I was wrong. Wow. Just... wow.

This. One of the biggest drawbacks to the game is the lack of custom factions based around outfits. It would fix so many issues. Wouldn't be forced to play with so many free loading, team killing idiots. People might actually start caring about facilities since it wouldn't be one of the stupid and meaningless empires trying to take a facility or defend it, but your own. Might actually get some politics and drama going as well which is always a big plus as it provides meaning and incentive for people to log on and actually do stuff.

ONE THING we ALL should know is that Matt and Mr. Smedly have had no shortage of ideas for Meta Game improvements. Over 2 years ago, just before public release; Smed spewed out an insane amount of Meta ideas for the game; including Bug Invasion PVE styled ideas and the ability for players to build their own bases from scratch on a living world - and slews of continent designs.

However, the budget must have said other wise and just like this Meta game brainstorm here, vs their brain storm 2+ years ago?

There's still no end goal.

No end game.

I can have my faction capture enough facilities to spawn tanks for FREE at any AMS spawn if I wanted but to what end? Ease of Spawning Force Multipliers for farming Certs?

EXP and Certs should simply be a guide rail to learning and introducing the game; not the sole point.
That's what they need to realize. There's no "point".

Have it to where we can actually have REAL VICTORIES, like, Seasons where each "War" is 30 days long (on time with every warp gate rotation) and in that time, the faction with the most points wins the war and gets some goodies!

THEN
and ONLY then, will attempts at Meta actually mean something.

Having tangible resources and objectives is the right way to go; getting rewarded faction wide or at least in large groups is they way it SHOULD be; but it's only as good as the End Victory is. Give us a Victory setting, and EVERYTHING will fall into place.

A confusing solution to an easy fix. They have the answers literally right there in front of them. Located downstairs by the Elevator vending machine right next to the IT departments break room.

The PS1 servers.......literally Rosetta's stone in the offices but no one wishes to look to that for solutions. Let's throw away 10 years worth of work simply because "it's old"

I would disagree. Its pretty easy to throw out basic ideas like that, really anyone can do it. The hard part of the creative process is to flesh them out into working systems that make sense, are balanced and most importantly are fun. They have completely failed to do that so far and their 'three year plan' and the complete lack of any progress towards it is a pretty good example. More examples are scattered through the game all over. NC always gets shotgun stuff, why? Because they literally lack the creative ability to come up with anything different. Charge mechanics for VS? Same thing. It would be cool to have one or 2 examples of each of those, but since they completely lack any creative abilities they keep recycling those ideas again and again to the detriment of the game.

The core idea sounds like it could be a step in the right direction. Planet side desperately needs things like this to make the game more than a glorified team death match with vehicles. I've (I think) mentioned the idea of unique bases with unique benefits before, like a massive airbase built into a mountain that allows players of the controlling faction to purchase experimental fuel for their aircraft for improved speed and acceleration or whatever.

I'm still hoping Ps2 gets a meta game sometime soon, but both my faith in the team and general interest are waning. My thoughts on a lot of the newer changes or features have been 'this should have been in the game over a year ago'.

I wonder what Higby is smoking if he thinks that a Faction specific affinity to this would be a good idea. God knows we get enough ******** about Minor variances of Infantry weapons. You add something like this and it will be nothing but "Faction Passive is OP".

I also want to point out that we still have a TON of systems that are only half done (Outfit ownership/ benefits, Resource revamp, Mission system,, etc..). Do we really need to add yet another new system to the pile?

I honestly think that for the next year the focus really needs to be on completing all these half done systems before adding yes another one that will only be partly completed.

Higby: "I'd love to increase faction diversity and make bases matter! Your feedback is important!"

Playerbase: "Why are you doing this?! Bad gaem! It took you two years!? Ded gaem!"