Development Update: Critical Mass

Get rid of victory points. WW2 ended because one side had been beaten back to its warpgate, not through scoring points.

Refining cortium should grant a benefit the empire can use to win more territory. This would feed the idea that we are fighting a war instead of playing a game. It would feel less arbitrary.

Off the top of my head:

• The empire with the most cortium can hack bases X% faster. Or to make it take longer to hack bases. Let's put those crystals to use... reinforce our lattice security.
• Cortium can be spent to get special, limited use weapons, consumables. Come to me my pretty... a Lasher with the pulse effect ammo.
• Spend cortium to reduce your respawn timer. Cortium, improves operation of spawn tubes.
• Shield generators consume cortium. If we don't get an ANT to this base soon, our shields will come down.
  

Then work out ways to manage Winner Momentum/Loser Inertia. If you're on the losing side of the alert, you get an XP bonus, achievements, yadda yadda yadda.

Bring back the empire lockout rule. For any server, you cannot change empires while there's an alert.

It's your empire's responsibility to stomp enemy hives and to build your own.

I like the idea of empire lockout. In Planetside One it was 24 hrs if I remember correctly.

Ok, here's my two cents;
Suggestion for OverPop/UnderPop fixing: a experience point penalty for the over populated faction based on percent of overpop(i.e. the difference between highest pop faction and lowest pop faction). After all, it is easier to steamroll the rest of the world if you have the most personnel, not a very experience gaining type of situation. Population caps just piss people off, mostly because they can't play with thier friends, or are stuck in que'es forever. So, let them play with thier friends. If, however, that leads to Most folks playing one faction, have it decrease the amount of certs they earn. Keep the exp bonus for the low pop factions, and people will sort themselves out, hopefully ending up with that nice 33% vs 33% vs 33%, or thereabouts. (better than the 41% vs 26% situations I've seen!)

The 2point cap on construction earned "War Effort" points effectively nerfs the value of the whole construction part of the game. The players that spent all that DayBreak cash/Cert Points to get the construction stuff, and who spend all the time it takes to put a base together are probably feeling more than a little marginalized. The construction part of the game initially seemed pointless to me, but in the time since it's introduction to the game, it has proven it's worth. Without it, the game is only "Capture the flag" with only "Rush Lanes/Lattice System" tactics. With construction, the players have a way to set up "unscripted" battles that have an actual impact on the war at large, anywhere on the map. I have noticed a tendency when following the "Territory Control", "Just Take the Next Base" path to ignore player made bases, and then whine about it when the continent locks. Given the amount of effort it takes to put one of the player made bases up, not to mention what it takes to defend it(and it goes without saying the amount of DayBreak Cash/Certs that went into it), the construction part of the game should have more of an impact than a capped 20% of what it takes to lock a continent.

It might be better if there were no cap on the points construction contributes to starting the alert. Then when the alert triggers, the emphasis should go to territory control, and the construction part would then no longer be relevant. Except as strategic bases to defend/attack from. The 2pt out of 10pt system might be kept as 2pts minimum from construction to start the alert. That way, neither technique would trump the other, nor make either of the paths pointless or ignorable, and would give the game a solid amount of depth, and tactical and strategic options.

>end of rant<

Holy Shiz! It's so hard to not hear Wrel's "Hey there folks, Wrel here." At the start of that vid. I had to go to youtube and play his intro in order to continue watching this, And the "sign-off".... He's all grown up now

Bolded above, I can see that happening. It's the first thing I thought of, as we don't even know exactly how much ISO-4 we're getting if we participate but don't start and win the alert. 50? 200? It's likely a low amount, as they still sell implants in the depot.

The very start of the alert is going to make people switch to the faction that started the alert, and then continue to overpop it so that they all win the loot box; they're not interested in the ISO-4. For example, Chinese / Korean outfits on Connery are going to flood the faction that starts it, and make sure they win it. Within a week or less other players will follow suit so they also get the rewards uncontested.

To combat this, population balance would need to be enforced on a much greater level. 34% max on one faction, seriously. Not 60%+ as it's going to be.

Can we maybe get some performance improvements sometime? I know its nothing to stress on but i really have a problem with it now.

With my GTX 960 4gb, 8gb RAM, SSD and i5 2400 im only getting around 40FPS in average size fights ON LOWEST SETTINGS. Not only should my system be running much better, but when got this PC a year after planetside 2 released I had a i5 750, 4Gb RAM and an GTS 250 1GB and I was able to play at medium settings, 30FPS in the same size of a fight.

Seconded. I'd do anything to be able to relive the Nov. 2014 mass SOE optimizations they did. It was amazing. Then July 2015 came with C++ 2012 Redistributable. Performance was killed along with many happy faces turned to frowns. ;(

what about warpgating a faction? Will that mean anything anymore?

Good luck doing that. Aside from the times one side has a 40+% population, it doesn't matter how many HIVEs you stomp if the other side can keep building. Hell if you're already down in population building & defending HIVEs can result in an even quicker defeat as it pulls people off the front lines where they're needed. Not to mention any idiot can build a HIVE and keep it going if they're faction gets ignored (ex. VS on Emerald) while one side tunnel visions on taking out the last one, and in doing so rack up a huge edge in VP. Not to mention all the times someone builds a cheater base where its physically impossible to destroy the HIVE or other key elements due to terrain exploits.

You added his when continent are lock you go on the island on bats for next continant has unlocked frankly really that revised the concept
of the Island of battle for added to the games

I agree with the ISO-4 it's fair & gives a chance instead of spending $45 of chance & get nothing that is what allot of players were complaining about that they got nothing just same duplicated over & over. The currency is way too high & take many $45 dollars to get allot of currency that is also an issue players are talking about.

I'm an All Access member and I have bought additional character slots. They are not cheap.
I'm against anything that is going to stop me from being able to log in my alts so that I can get the free CERT log-in CERTs for my alts.
I should be able to log them into the game one-after-another for the CERTs (which I do), and I shouldn't be stopped from doing so for any reason.

I understand that some people abuse alt-jumping for multiple reasons.
I'm not one of them.
I'm not against the proposed penalty for changing sides once a Critical-mass alert has begun.

"Not to mention all the times someone builds a cheater base where its physically impossible to destroy the HIVE or other key elements due to terrain exploits. "

I agree that is a huge issue.
It does happen too frequently.

It isn't just terrain exploits.
People are putting hives, silos, and modules under the terrain.

I've run into several "invincible" bases that whatever was above ground simply took no damage with no visible modules whatsoever.

sarebbe bello che lpanet fosse aggiornato in DX11

Yes it might encrourage people to attack them, but no one does becausee its boring to do and you could make far more certs going basically anywhere else.

what will matter is that once a alarm is started that the faction who started it needs to defend/keep a ammount of territory .. so i imagine if your faction has started a alarm and you then proceed to gain territory to the point of warpgating a faction .. well then you simply got them into their corner .. it won´t give any bonus VP as it did before i imgine ..


if a faction, that has not started the alarm, warpgates the faction who started the alarm you will simply stop that factions alarm and instead start your own in which case it would be your factions turn to defend its territory against the other two ..

i wonder what changes they will bring to PMB´s adding "weakspots" on them .. maybe they add nodes similar to how the silo works were you deplete your gathered cortium into which power modules and turrets instead ... but those have to be deployed outside the corebase .. something along those lines iirc ..

Yup. All Access members should never be locked from being able to at least log in and get their certs. Most of my current "play" time is, in fact, not playing at all -- except to quickly log in to collect my membership certs on all alts.

And relevant to the main thread: the ISO-4 grant and loot box may even be enough to get me playing for real again.

What if x amount of ISO-4 was spawned on every continent in y intervals of time, and it was distributed to everyone. However you could pull a larger portion of it towards your faction by refining more cortium than other factions?