I like everything I see. But there are a few gamebreaking problems that weren't addressed. Harasser is too tanky Ranger and Striker are OP as **** Faction swapping is worse than ever Purgatory is killing this game Daybreak, plz fix!!!
Rather than make people wait in Purgatory to get on to continents, we should see more penalties for overpopulation AND incentives for underpopulation rather than just making people wait. For instance, players who are vastly overpopulating continents could receive a slower income of nanites, or overpopulated territories could have longer spawn timers, or slower ammo pack resupply, or slower repair guns. Little changes in this game result in massive effects, and as such can balance the field of play WITHOUT KEEPING PEOPLE FROM PLAYING THE GAME. Daybreak Games, we WANT to play your game, and we are willing to play it even if we must wait in purgatory. No matter how hard you try, overpopulation will happen. Instead of trying to PREVENT it, you need to try to COUNTER it. That is what will fix your population issues.
The problem is that a faction does not deliberately overpop because it hits the cap. Overpop happens (I guess) when other faction players leave. So the devs would be punishing a faction for something not of their doing and beyond their control - you can imagine the outrage that would cause. But I definitely understand the feelings of people stuck in VR for long periods, although, ironically, they must be stuck there because their faction is the one that is overpop. The waiting times that people have reported on some servers or at some times are outrageous though. I'm lucky not to have experienced long waits myself but maybe my time will come. IDK the answer except to say that people in the queue must be able to go somewhere they can actually have a fight while they are waiting.
Agreed Ranger still seems pretty rubbish - Striker super-range is a bit crazy though I haven't experienced this - unless you mean - when people can't get onto their favorite faction due to population imbalance, they swap (which incidentally is a good thing to others who steadfastly want to stay in the queue). ...but it's achieving population balance like nothing before ever did. Incentives / penalties made no difference or didn't go far enough - if someone can come up with a system to fairly balance uneven populations, i'm all ears. Until then - i'll happily play the underpop on the basis that, the fight will still be relatively fair (and you categorically couldn't say this before).
um... can you please say that again backwards....let me know if that makes any sense after you do that.....I must be playing the wrong game or Im on the wrong server. did reve erofeb gnihton ekil ecnalab noitalupop gniveihca s'ti tub <-- if your curious that's basically what you said in your reply to purgatory
He said purgatory is a side effect of a population balance that we never had before. You can play an underpop faction now and the underpop won't be unbearable like it was previously. Incentives/penalties never achieved this balance.
This is true, but it is still not good. Incentives/penalties will never be a deterrent, forum goers with ideals often imagine that the mass of people playing share their "I want the game to be better" attitude... they don't... they just want to win... and now they just want to farm ISO... no matter the quality of the game... forum goers just can't wrap their minds around that. Purgatory is going to kill the game, it needs to be fixed.
I don't think you can jump to that assumption about forum goers. I have about as low a respect for what's left of this game's community as I could have. I believe that with zero restrictions we'd see 95% on one faction or another, locking continents with zero resistance for that ISO, at least on Connery that's how it would play out. The game has to balance the reward addiction that a quarter of players have, with the desire for a good fight that another quarter has, balanced with another quarter of those who have to win, and then you've got the loyalists in the last quarter that just play the game and are going to stay where they are regardless. So while incentives/penalties will never deter everyone, they will hopefully deter enough of the right people to balance things out. PS2 has never gone close to far enough with incentives, and the only penalty they've ever had was keeping customers from using their product. I just don't understand how they could be so incompetent in this regard.
I only agree with the last one. It's pretty preplexing to log in and be tossed into VR with 70 other people, all waiting on the single open continent that has a 30-minute queue.
Designers (and Players?) have chosen a game that: 1) rewards winning, does not reward losing 2) gives performance force multiplier boosts to both larger forces and forces that are winning 3) does not disincentivize picking on the weakest faction The consequence is: 1) players jump onto the bigger team 2) players log off from the weaker team 3) the stronger 2 factions pick on the weakest faction Designers and Players choose the ingredients they like, instead of the ingredients that would get them the dish they want. Also, there is a huge issue regarding different Players and Designers actually wanting different dishes... and being unwilling to have multiple dishes be made so each person can get something they want. Hey, what was the name of the system that was briefly implemented and showed the value for taking each hex? Where the hex's value would go up the longer it wasn't attacked. They pulled the system because it was motivating people to go after the high value hex's, and ignoring actually going after the enemy.
Punishing players for playing the game never worked the intended way. Players just left the game in frustration. Is that what you want? Less players? But at least you won't get stuck in Purgatory. Also I see that you have "All Access" tag, which means that you don't get stuck in VR for more than couple of minutes, cuz I sure don't. So why the drama? Also I play one faction, and I will not switch to the others even if my faction overpops. I ain't no filthy 4th factioneer. And being punished for that? It's not MY fault that my faction overpops. As other said that might happen because other factions have left.
The reason people are stuck in VR is completely because of 4th factioners jumping on the winning team. It's all related. Don't be so naive. Sit in VR when an alert starts and watch. You'll see 3 guys, then 10, then 30, then 40...... These kids would rather not play the game that evening and wait 45 minutes in VR after switching factions in hope of a cosmetic item. Things are so ****** up this patch. I've proposed rewards and penalties so severe that we'd never see such drastic pop imbalances. In the end, 4th factioners would follow the rewards granted to under-pop, things would balance out and no one would be punished. Daybreak just needs to crank up those rewards/penalties till we stop seeing imbalances, and those penalties (re-spawn timer and nanite generation) need to not keep people from logging on with friends.
The thing is, you're talking about hopping to the team that is "winning". No, they're hopping to the faction that have started the alert, but that doesn't mean winning said alert. It's not the said hopping that winning alerts, but organized platoons who know where to strike and where to defend. 4th faction is mostly just zerg that keeps some population at other areas but not enough to do something meaningful, so they just stuck between couple of bases. And that's it. Such faction hoppers might create such queues for ordinary players. But as I have mentioned before many times, even if there is 40 people in the line, with 15$ per month you will get through it withing a couple of minutes. You get nice perks and 500 DBC. It's not that much, even I with monthly income less than 1000$ can afford that.
Ok, here we go: -Harrasser and ESFs are to tanky. They benefit from increased TTK from CAI the most. -Coming from Vanu on Miller, i can state that pop balance is out of control. Having 23% at prime time on main continent results in NEVER having the chance of winning an alert, unless TR+NC get stuck in a Biofight/Meatgrinder. -Ranger/Striker are powerfull, but if they are OP i doubt. The ranger is useless for anything alse (hint C.A.I.) and Striker is held by a very fragile target. I hold my comments back on waiting times in VR, you know... Vanu Miller...
Of course it does. I play NC myself. I've got a bad connection and dropped disconnected right before triggering an alert. We went from a sever underpop to me waiting in VR, still in my squad, for 5 minutes before an alert and the entire 45 minute alert duration without being able to get back to the continent. NC finally squeezed out a win and 4th factioners jumped to the alert-starter side, drastically overpopping it. Faction hopping to farm alert ISO and cosmetics is completely killing the game. It's not at all about the money for me, it's about bad mechanics. Turning away potential customers is just terrible business. I've got a ridiculous amount of free time and I've been dying to drop some money in to this game, but with things such as non-refunded thermals and getting locked out of my faction I just can't justify it.
***Any*** solution that results in more 'wait in VR' time is a Bad Plan™. xp penalties, resource costs being dynamically adjusted based on regional populations, respawn speeds, etc - all could be leveraged to address local and regional population disparities. Just dumping people into VR and making them wait so that the populations are roughly balanced everywhere is an indication of no more budget or a need for a new project manager.
This is inaccurate, unfortunately. DBG/PS2 has basically no idea what a second is, or how to calculate a wait time. I play with a good friend in FL for a couple of years now (we're on 4 - 6 nights a week) - I'm a paying member and he's not - when we're in the queue, it's even money who goes to the continent first. It's usually me, but even when I go first, he's not more than a few seconds behind me.
"people heavily dislike the random punishment of getting stuck in VR and show no inclination whatsoever to switch sides. So we remove the VR punishment and replace it with a milder but still random punishment as an incentive to not overpop even though the Heavy punishment currently in place proves that negative incentives dont work" Just to get it home: NEGATIVE INCENTIVES DON'T WORK. Especially when population is concerned. You cant punish 50% or more players just because someone else joined and caused an overpop. You cant punish players for joining the faction they want even though they can only know if they will overpop after joining. PS2's gameplay at its core is about an unbalanced fight where one team has more players or force multipliers than the other team. The solution is to make fighting a more powerful foe fun. Better ways out of the spawnroom such as being able to drop-pod out in a region around the spawnroom, bigger area the more underpopped you are. Underground teleport grid to allow players more safe exits but no safe return once out. Easier access to safe vehicle spawns such as underground terminal+spawnpoint and multiple shielded exits and/or the ability to spawn those prototype crates from a while ago and spawn in a vehicle of their choice, better choices when underpopped. More things to quickly move through the base when underpopped such as faction-only jumppads and gravlifts.
