Autobalance this game or why bother

population balance sucks in PS2... most battles are unbalanced by 20-70%. There's a reason successful games auto balance team populations and do matchmaking on skill levels. PS2 is not a successful game

the irony is that pop balance would be easy to achieve through some simple programming on the base/hex level

PS2 has been abandonware or benign neglectware for some time. server populations have decreased dramatically and continue to do so monthly. it's already fading away

I......I......... so much wrong in this

I play VS on Cobalt, so I've been on in the low pop faction (prime time) since the beginning. It can be quite frustrating from time to time (esp. when the prime time server pop is below 30%). But to be honest, I can't see a way how to fix this.
If ppl don't wanna play faction x, you can't force them.
Lets imagine DGB would hand out some incentives for playing VS or disincentives for playing the overpop faction(s). The forums (here and reddit) would be overflowing with toxin and salt. On top of that, it would encourage the wrong people to switch sides. I'd rather be outnumbered than having all those 4th factioners in my team.

It hurts to read such posts.

1. I think the hard truth is this game isn't CoD.
2. This game isn't instanced based.
3. Unfortuantely, there isn't any other fps game this size.


The only unbalance this game has may come from factions population. That a base is being captured with more than 100+ people while there's 1-12 enemies, on a base that's rather useless and easy to cap, may only show how ****** up of a zerg that is. That pushing faction may be cut off from the warpgate at the very same time because of that, or whatever. It may look like they're steamrolling, the zerg, but all they're probably doing is playing some1 else's game. If you're stuck in this instanced-mentality, and think the game is lost because that zerg is not just taking this one base but 3 bases in a row with nearly no resistance, while not realizing your faction has just wrecked that zergs faction on other fronts, then yea... blame the game all you want. It won't make you better. Just cut off their ***** if you will, and all the hard work of the zerg is lost (usually a zerg pushes out as if their goal was to stretch their ***** looking territory. Though, sometimes it evolves in a ******** manner)

Skill here may be looked at in a whole different way. Teamwork. Rather than one's achievements individually. Although the skill of an individual matters too, only not so much as you'd want it to.


(2.)Now, coming back to the second point I brought out, consider an alert as an instance. It's usually 33%vs33%vs33% on prime times. It's balanced as ****. It even locks me out of it when i relog. And then tosses me in to a 99 player queue if i wanted to join in. But consider this, when you join that instance alone, you're only taking away a spot from a person belonging in to a team, essentially screwing your faction in their efforts to actually win.
(1.) What seperates a team from an individual. Just think about that. Now, a group from a team?
(3.) Name one game in comparison. CoD and such are out of the question, obviously.


These are merely my personal opinions on the matter.

People in zergs often don't complain about them. It's usually those facing them.

The game does not have the Coordination Tools for the standard player to "get a force just as big". Zergs form by one of 2 ways:
1) people spawn and seek out their zerg
2) players in a Faction win a battle, then those winners all move together (in a zerg) to the next base on the lattice

It's not like those players Coordinated to form the zerg. They are just following the uncoordinated momentum of the game. Zergs are like rolling a Snowball.

Current PS2 is not very friendly to trying something new. You gotta Unlock a ton of stuff, and unless you know the new thing really well, you risk blowing a ton of Certs/Cash on unlocking the wrong stuff. Also, now there are Veteran Players farming each type of thing players might try.

Early PS2 was very open to trying new stuff: cause nobody had much Certed up, so you didn't need a Certed up thing; and nobody was a Veteran farmer, so you could try most things with reasonable success.

Meh. I try new things all the time with varying degrees of success, even on the same day.

But I'm also not pretentious or arrogant enough to think that when I try something new I will just dominate players who have been doing it for some time, and I react accordingly.

Anyone saying it would be "easy" to auto-balance a game of this scale, with this many variables, isn't someone who needs to be speaking here.

So basically for the benefit of a small number of players on any given night, you want to risk screwing over and pissing off a MUCH larger percentage of the players?

Yeah that's brilliant!

What type of new things are you referring to? I could be completely wrong, simply because I am not inferring correctly.

I think there's a distinct difference between "dominate players" and "trying not to chain die without any progress". I think many players just don't realize how much more cutthroat PS2 has become over the years. Just hoping in a new Class/Vehicle with no experience, no Certs, and Iron Sights is pretty brutal. Let alone the hell grind that is the "New Player Experience".

"Easy" is a relative term. I think the process itself to auto-balance this game would take time, and iterative type work, and you'd have to have the right monkey(s) working on it. But it probably wouldn't take extensive Code or Art time (depending on how it was done).

The game has been around for over 3 years, in that kind of time frame you could have tinkered slowly with forms of auto-balance and made some pretty impressive headway. Even starting today, and just spending light designer time, Devs could probably make some good headway after a few months. But PS2 Devs have never really seemed to have auto-balance on the table.

Sure, some methods (like NC Mercs) would take a lot more labor (if done really well), so that's less doable. But there are many things (like adding Underdog Directives, Underdog Ribbons, Extra XP Bonus for killing Overpop Faction, etc.) that could be trialed without a whole lot of labor.

It's really the case that tweaking systems can affect player behavior. Now I'm not advocating putting more "stick" in the game to punish players who do what they want, but I am advocating putting more (non-must-have) "carrot" in the game to motivate more players toward more auto-balance.

Because it's a horrible idea. Auto-Balance mechanics have no place in competitive gaming. Why should I personally be punished, because 100 or so of your buddy's didn't log on that night? Or decided to play for another faction?

That's just nonsense. What are you anyway, Space Obama? We don't need Socialist redistribution on Auraxis.

I personally don't think balance is achievable in a way that would make even the majority happy. We need 128 vs 128 matches. This game will die otherwise.

Give incentives for people to queue to a 128 vs 128 map by letting them earn 15 credits a day or something. This way it'll get popular if its good. And those who just want to log in to screw around can do their world CoD corner camping junk.

Oh yeah let's turn the only MMOFPS into a lobby shooter? Or add instanced zones?

Argh people. No!

I play this game so I don't have to play battlefield. Shoo.

Also, dividing the population of a game with low population - what?

I don't know much about "Auto-Balance". Forced switching stinks and is a loser for making people want to keep playing.

But Balance for sure has a core role in Competitive Gaming. And PS2 Devs should start to spend some thought/time into how to motivate players (with "Carrots") to create balanced play.

Underdog Directives, Underdog Ribbons, Bonus XP for specifically fighting the Overpop faction (Continent and Base). Also explore viability and details of NS Mercs. Explore adding questlike "missions" that push people to leave the zerg. Etc.

Currently, there is just the minor XP Boost system in game to motivate players to play as Underpop. They did take out the old Resource Points system that motivated players to play on the Continent their Faction had the most territory.

+1

Absolutely. Even the largest of zergs can be ground down into a quagmire, leaving the less tenacious players to abandon it.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall! When I'm sorely outnumbered I put this little number on.

If you're outnumbered, you will lose 99% of the time. Not sure what else to add to that.
It's kind of demoralizing knowing your going to lose only 3 mins into a big base fight. Feel like i spend a good quarter of my time watching base population.
And then disappointing when you win, because you see your ally population at the base has spiked to 75%.

Guess a game with absolutely no sense of balance whatsoever works for some people.

For me this game is worth a cheap thrill every 6 months or so. Definitely not worth my money.

^ This, got warpgated the other day so I went in one of the towers near the gate jumped on one of the AV phalanx turrets and had some fun, as soon as the local TR realised there was an enemy about they threw themselves at me trying desperately for something to kill, killed a couple of prowlers a fair amount of lightnings and one very ambitious galaxy and I am guessing it was because they were all so busy competing for the kill and trying no to die to the countdown (which numerous did lol) that I could have such fun.

We held Cairn station two nights ago for about an hour or so with 20% pop. Quitters make bases fall.

You seem really caught up in whether or not you win or lose. Honestly who cares? The game is just a never ending cycle or fighting and different bases. They removed all the good rewards for winning an Alert anyway, even more reason not to care about the whole "global scheme" this game was supposed to have. The new Victory Condition system is just...LAWL! The Lattice herds zergs, etc etc

Honestly this game has way bigger issues. If you need that sense of "winning", you should probably go play a lobby shooter so you can get that "GAME OVER YOU WIN!" gratification.