[Suggestion] Balance

I don't understand why you guys still haven't balanced this game out and I don't mean damage on weapons. I mean more players on one faction then the other. It is so simple. You make an account not attached to a character with a faction. Then you make all factions like NSO with different colors that don't blend in with any world. Now, depending on how balanced the world is it puts you and your friend where more people are needed. The only thing that changes for you is your color. Even weapons are the same across all factions. You can still make money of emotes, and other design helmets and xp boosters that don't give you an advantage by having more battle points that allow you to spawn more vehicles and much more frequently. I mean, is like you guys don't want to fix it. It's so simple. If I can figure that out of the top of my head, you can. That is if you want to revive it. But, what ever.

Frankly I think harsher faction balance rules would do the trick. It's especially bad off-peak on European servers when one faction reaches or passes 50% on a continent. Shouldn't happen, but it does—and the queue just doesn't kick in off-peak.

The solution is not to switch players to copy-paste factions or to punish overpops, but to make being outpopped fun.

Add systems that ramp up the more outpopped you are to give outnumbered players things to do other than sit in a spawnroom being camped and being insulted for being "spawnwarriors" even though its the spawncampers that cause them.

Examples:
- attrition system for the defenders. If they are outnumbered they start adding time to the cap timer with every kill&vehicle destruction. The more outnumbered they are the more time is added.
- drop-pod terminal in the spawnroom. The more outnumbered you are the farther you can drop-pod in from the spawnroom.
- lower resource costs the more outnumbered you are.
- ANVIL system as it was originally proposed: for defenders to get vehicles without needing to control the almost uncontrollable vehicle pads. More outnumbered means larger area you can call it in from.


A legacy system would remember for an entire lane how overpopped it is and apply the advantages gradually, so the defenders leaving wont suddenly boost the remaining defenders.

NSO was meant to address this. After two rounds of NSO and we're still having these issues it might be time to recognize that they didn't get the job done, so here goes another round of Rabid's easy tweak to fix the problem. 1. make certs an account asset instead of a character asset. 2. multiply the underpop exp boost by 10. This would max it out at 500% instead of 50. Moving a decimal is dirt simple. This only needs to move some players to be successful, as every player who joins the underpopulated faction came from an overpopulated faction.

Also, if it turns out I'm not as smart as I think I am and this doesn't work, I didn't consume two major updates or leave half finished content in the game for 3 years.

Changing the XP reward does not really do a lot of good. If a player sinks his time in gameplay they do not enjoy just because its efficient then they will simply burn out sooner. The XP reward will just make it efficient, not necessarily fun.

The better solution: make it fun. If being outnumbered is fun (and beyond just an acquired taste kind of fun) then the entire problem of dealing with an overpop disappears, because its just normal gameplay then.

idk i see every big continent has 33% average, idk about low pop tho.

I'm doing my part as a new NSO main.
Problem is I'm literally doing this to either improve my personal skill or out of a love for the game as I receive very few rewards when it comes to alerts and outfits

Granted, people do not expect seeing people thinking outside the box in their cert farms which gives me some nice counter farm here and there.

Does anyone remember the "alien" weapons from Planetside 1? I'm wondering if it would be possible to give a temporary resource boost of +100 to the side that is out-popped and then allow players to temporarily equip these weapons at a high resource cost (I know that currently, only vehicles use these but this would be something that could be incorporated into the game). This could include that electric gun called the Maelstrom that had a vortex whip and grenade cannon, something similar to the ORIGINAL spiker (not the current underpowered VS one), those vehicles that convert into anti-infantry guns, and maybe some other powerful exotic weapons to allow the out-popped side defend itself until they are able to beat back the attackers.

This game is 90% FPS and 10% MMO. The only way to truly hit some sort of balance would be either an MMR system with continents locked off to some players, or some sort of in game advantage. Like, hear me out:

1) Each player has a hidden ranking based on their skill. After a certain point, they can no longer pull MAXes.

2) Create a MAX for each class. We already have Heavy and Engineer, next do an LA MAX.

3) Its a self-correcting system. If MAXes are overpowered then people will "level out" of them.

4) Memberships would skyrocket as new/bad players want more nanites.

5) Sweaty outfits will have motivation to recruit newer players

6) If one faction gets too sweaty, well then they don't get as many MAXes.

I'm not sure that skilled players should be punished (forgive me if I mistake what you mean by "sweaty" outfits). I think that the OP was only discussing the issue of being out-popped. You kind of lost me about the different MAX types. In the game, the three types of MAX center around being Anti-Infantry, Anti-Air, or Anti-Armor. They are not linked to classes so when you say "We already have Heavy and Engineer", are you talking about MAXes? I'm just trying to understand what you are getting at. When you mention an LA MAX, are you talking about a MAX with a jetpack? In the original Planetside, this used to be the Vanu-MAX special ability. I think they chose not to implement it in PS2 because it made the MAXes too hard to kill.

By sweaty I mean the try-hards. So yes, give new/bad players a periodic advantage in the form of MAX suits. I was counting the current MAX as a "Heavy" and the NSO MAX as the engineer. Its a pipe dream though. I think most people assume that the devs have the ambition of being the most played game on steam (or whatever). Their main concern is keeping their current income and drastic changes might threaten that.

As for the game itself, well look at what I'm doing. I was a VS main but the only people who fight VS are the try-hards from the other 2 factions. The rest run away pretty quick. Now I play NC and actively avoid VS when I can. Its nice, as I'm not the only NC/TR doing it. I've had a lot of good fights against other bads on the TR side. Something's fundamentally broken when factions actually suffer from new players joining their side.

How do you judge who is skilled and who isnt?

For example I spend much of my time trying to destroy chokepoints for my allies to move through. Its horrendous for your KD, KPM and all those other stats. In the meantime a HA farmer who waits until I and others have breached the chokepoint will pick off dudes consistantly and mop up the remaining enemies once the chokepoint falls.

So who has the higher skill? You cant tell by those stats alone. There are too many ways to farm stats and too many ways to lose stats while trying to play the game to judge them that way.

Years ago, when my computer could barely run this game, I ran around as a medic with something like a .3 soft kdr. I knew that without me rezzing and healing some fights wouldn't have been a success. However, to quote one of my favorite descriptions about this game, "A war of attrition in a world of endless resources." Eventually I just stopped caring and wanted to enjoy myself.

There was a time when alerts offered good rewards and people cared about winning, but that time is over and most likely never coming back. At the end of the day, for myself and I believe most players, the game is about shooting mans. "Skill" in that simple FPS sense is one of the most obvious and quantifiable traits across the entire online gaming world.

You can shoot mans in an HE tank or you can shoot mans while trying to breach a chokepoint. These are the least comparable and quantifiable metrics you can think off. Its not an arena match. Much of the farming is based on what other players do for you. For example an HE tank has a tougher time killing infantry if there are no allies in the area that offer resistance and makes the enemies bunch up. A MAX farmer relies on his allies to keep him revived, repaired and protected from flanks to make their farm possible, while all the players providing those benefits get less stats than the MAX farmer. Is that MAX farmer truly skilled when it is purely by the grace of his allies that he can effectively farm?

Hell your own example is perfect: medics sacrifice their attack power whenever they heal/revive someone. That reduces their possible kill stats unless they dont use their healgun. That does not mean they have less skills if they work to help allies.

This feels like a discussion about semantics. Lets just say there is FPS Skill and MMO Skill at play. FPS skill is turning the corner and shooting the man. MMO skill is knowing that it'd be a good time to pull a HESH lightning, or spawning into a 24-48 even pop fight, dieing, realizing there are no medics, then respawning as a medic.

Now lets divide the MMO part between individual play and outfit play. From PS2's birth the devs went on record saying they were going for a more battlefield-style FPS game. Ever since then, on the individual level, when FPS vs MMO get brought up, the decision has leaned towards FPS.

What's worse, PS2 contains loads of what I call "tricks" to make MMO players more farmable for FPS players. Take the most common advice of all time, don't buy a new weapon at first. For an MMO player, that's logically the first thing you'd focus on. The "trick" is to get them to dump certs on weapons, then not be able to upgrade their kits so that they can't bring the best class to the fight.

The recent NAR change is perfect. If you're an MMO player, this gives you an excuse to run grenade bandolier for more rez grenades, or adrenaline pump so your LA can get to the enemy vehicles/objectives faster. It also makes you worse at turning the corner and shooting the man.

CQC bolters are overpowered? Nah, ohk's are.

HA is overpowered? Not at all. The combination of a shield, LMG, and assimilate just works really well for chaining headshot kills.

I feel like we'd both agree that what makes Planetside 2 unique is its MMO-esque qualities, and I find it a shame that its apparently more profitable to be a lower-case mmo and capital FPS.

Just gunna state that i fail to see how planetside 2 is even remotely even similar to battlefield. You know. Since vehicles in battlefield are absurdly powerful to the extent that you can kill 30 plus guys rather quickly and still end up not capturing whatever objective you were going for. On top of av for infantry. Actually being formidable up to a pretty decent range yet tied to a single class more or less. On top of there not being a HEADSHOT meta. You know. It might have some simularities. But when you can spawn on eachother with quick respawn times. It really gives off that impression of fighting in a much bigger battle. To the extent you get overwhelmed no matter how fast you drop multiple opponents. In terms of overall mechanics/Balance, battlefield is a much different game.

Battlefield 2, maybe. Helicopters and aircraft were super broke back then. I've played BF4 and BF1 and vehicles were nowhere near that strong. Hell, give me a Magrider in Battlefield please.

Compared to Planetside's frequent 100v100 battles?

Also, I was referencing the literal words coming out of the Dev's mouths back when they released PS2.

No this is about quantifying what you want to measure and how to do it properly.

If we have a 10 paces quickdraw game then its all about shooting skill and your KD reflects that perfectly.
If we have a tournament shooter then you basically measure the combination of reflexes, knowledge of the map, movement and weapon handling.
If you now introduce a goal, like capturing a flag, the act of capturing the flag is the most risky act in the game. It forces you to take the most risks to win points for the game goal. Someone who then decides to farm KD could try defending the flag, which is OK but far less skillful than having to fight through multiple enemies to get to the flag. then the moment the flag is taken they could decide not to pursue the goal to preserve their KD since going after the flag means risking run-ins with multiple enemies trying to help the carrier.
You would not be measuring skill anymore with that system, but the willingness to farm.

This is quite literally the first problem you have to solve in any science project: how can we quantify what we measure? This is by no means semantics.

Again: your (allusion to a) suggestion to use metrics like KD to measure skill is wrong. While skill is involved, it is extremely heavily polluted with noise from alternative ways to gain such stats. The willingness to farm, the refusal to pursue worthwhile and risky tasks, the widespread suggestion to "pick your fights" and leave tough fights to others. It makes these stats worthless as a low-skill player can easily attain them through farming.

Oh, we're back to my original suggestion of a built-in MMR system. There are two things to consider here:

1) Math is a surprisingly easily thing for devs to implement. Most dev teams have at least one person who has a doctorate in statistics or something related.

2a) I fully understand the "noise" you're talking about, but you're not taking stakes into consideration. Lets ignore all the noise and simply say that what if a mediocre player has an extremely lucky week and gets MAX-banned for the next week? Is that really such an awful thing? Do you think anyone would regret this? We have countless games with an MMR system and how many people actively regret winning games and progressing? Dota is a perfect example here. In low-MMR hero selection doesn't matter all that much. In high MMR a player will have to pick one of the ~5 heroes that they perform well with or their team will get stomped. Should Dota delete their MMR system so high-performing players can have the freedom to play whatever hero they want?

2b) Lets bring "noise" back into it. The simplest example would be focusing on kdr and tank mains. Lets consider someone who is awful at turning the corner and shooting, or what we would call FPS skill, but does really well at sitting on a hill and HESHing doorways. Because of this their kdr is extremely high and they get MAX-banned. Is it really so bad to say, "Hey, you're already exploiting one facet of the game, now you're temporarily locked out of exploiting another?" Again its worth pointing out that it'd be incredibly easy to tweak something like a .3x multiplier to vehicle weapons when calculating true-kdr.

It truly is a pipe dream of mine. In this way, Planetside is a cursed game. It will never, ever, be a "fair" game FPS-wise while also being newcomer friendly without nerfing things like head-shot damage, move speed, cof. If those things got nerfed, it'd still be fair and it'd be more newcomer friendly, but the game experience would feel like trash. I think all of us running Nanoweave, which is to say most PS2 players, agree that the game is noticeably less fun to play now.

You're take is a perfect example. You obviously value the MMO experience, possibly even more-so than the FPS one, however you seem pretty staunchly against making the game "not fair" to the high achievers.

I never went away from that topic.

The math of what? KD and the like is not a good measurement for skill.

Yes it is a problem, as regardless of an MMR system working perfectly you are actively punishing players by removing content from them. Rewarding is always better.
On top of that your MMR system would punish playstyles rather than skill. A mediocre player who is unable to do certain playstyles and mostly farms would constantly be punished for it. Players who play a lot of vehicles would be almost continuously banned from MAX's purely because vehicles are an easy way to farm stats. It is not a working solution.

This works for extremes, but will also work against non-exploitative gameplay methods. Someone who is great at holding chokepoints but doesn't have the skill to fight elsewhere would be punished purely because defensive gameplay like that gains KD more easily than being the one having to take that building. Since you can't filter those out unless you specifically target playstyles an MMR system doesn't work, since it would already no longer be an MMR system. You would have to create a filter for each playstyle, recognize each playstyle, find the mean stats that define it and then apply your banned-from-X to it. Which also starts begging the question at what percentile on a bell-curve do you start applying this? Do you even use a bell-curve or do you use another metric?

Again, newby friendly and trash watered down gameplay are not synonyms. There are plenty of ways to make it newby friendly and still have great gameplay. For examply by introducing a series of goals and objectives with different difficulties and rewards. The higher difficulty objectives would be designed to attract veteran and skilled players, but being higher difficulty they would be slated in favor or the opposition. Such tasks would be great for newbies since they would be in a position of power to hold off a veteran, which would increase their enjoyment of the game since they won't get face-stomped, they get to see a variety of gameplay skill levels while they fight and they get to learn the game and advance. That does not mean that the newbies have to be defending exclusively, there can be a dozen small-scale objectives to complete and fight over which have a small but noticeable impact on the overall game. That way you can attract newbies to such objectives and have low-skill players engage each other there while higher skill players would pursue more efficient and difficult tasks to futher their objectives.

You're take is a perfect example. You obviously value the MMO experience, possibly even more-so than the FPS one, however you seem pretty staunchly against making the game "not fair" to the high achievers.[/quote]