I'd love to experience fighting at outposts rarely fought at but how?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Tharovinn, Jan 24, 2023.

  1. Tharovinn

    Intro
    I've been playing Planetside 2 since May 2021 and there are bases on all continents that I simply have not fought at more than a few times or not at all as infantry and I have a few things to blame for that.


    1) Alerts are won by territory majority
    If everyone is "playing for the alert" then all a faction needs to win is 34% total territory controlled. All territory captured beyond that is redundant but it is for a good reason - to act as a buffer, to strengthen your lead against the other two factions, I understand why its done at all scales personal, to faction-wide. Unless it is for a cut-off there is no reason be delving so close to an empires warp gate where some of the outposts like The Old Stockpile on Indar, Nott Communications on Esamir, or Matsuda Genetics on Hossin need to be captured.

    2) Lattice links
    The Lattice system places strategic value in the capturing of bases that support hard spawning for the bases in front of it. Its restrictive in that, even though a base might be 100 meters away you need to capture the 3 other bases its supporting on the lattice first.

    3) Outpost Guarding
    Crater Firing Range on Indar is a base I've never fought at. What stands in its way is the rarely attacked J908 Impact Site. Without this ever being taken from by the faction on the south east or west warpgates

    4) No mechanics to encourage attacking outposts near enemy warpgates

    Back to me
    So why am I complaining? Well I want to experience everything the continent has to offer, which means fighting at all the bases, and I can't do that organically due to current mechanics and inconvenience discouraging fights ever happening at these bases.

    These base near warpgates could be really fun or hell, ever really broken but I and the rest of the playerbase doesn't know yet. We haven't gotten enough or any experience at these bases.

    Solution via a different Alert type?
    Risk, the board game has a secret mission gamemode where you are given a few cards with set objectives on them which are kept secret from other players until you completed them. Most of them involved capturing a certain continent, eliminating a certain colored player, gaining a certain number of territory, etc.

    For Planetside 2 this could be:
    • The alert starts
    • 5 random territories are selected that need to be captured (which could include some of the bases I've never fought at)
    • The normal 1:30 timer starts
    • The first faction to capture all 5 territories OR have the most key territories captured wins the alert.

    Conclusion
    Despite my idea for a different alert type there isn't anything I've thought of that I could really get behind and support to push for giving these rarely fought at bases, particularly ones near warpgates, more attention during normal gameplay.
    • Up x 2
  2. RabidIBM

    Hey man, this has been a problem since the current alert meta was introduced. I've brought it up myself many times, and sometimes lead platoons to bases just because we don't fight at them often. Be aware that the closer you get to warpgates, the less polished the bases generally are because they haven't been looked at in patches as much over the decade this game has been out. For example, I think the bases in the canyons near Indar's east gate are mostly still their beta versions, meanwhile TI Alloys has been fully rebuilt a couple times...and even deactivated once.

    Anyways, what you probably don't know is that this game once had a system which motivated players to reach beyond the middle of the map with Victory Points. Objectives like "capture all bio labs" or "touch a warpgate" and even "touch both enemy warpgates at the same time" were worth points. That, plus a floating value for total territory owned, and when 1 faction reached 20 they locked the continent. Therefore, if one faction saw another getting close to their warpgate, but were close to getting the 3rd tech plant, they were motivated to let the warpgate touch happen as a trade for the tech plant points. This meant movements away from the center of the map.

    There were "2" problems with this system, but really only 1. First was HIVEs. The construction system had a building which refined cortium into VPs, which combined with the old system which allowed for invincible player made building created some seriously toxic, unkillable bases which were going to lock the map and nothing could be done about them...as a builder main I am saying "Good riddance HIVEs" and they've been gone for years.

    Then...the real reason VPs were taken away. This game went though a weird phase, a phase where it was run by people who wanted to compete for the Call of Duty crowd. Now, the CoD crowd may have fast reflexes, and even good situational awareness as the small scale, but they don't like to open a big map, think about the big picture, or reconsider whether the base they're at is the base they should be at. These players whined that the map locked "for no reason", so the devs changed to a system that was "easier to understand"... apparently holding your mouse over the faction victory point score and seeing what is and isn't already checked is too complicated. Apparently seeing the faction with 17/20 points driving hard to your amp station when they already have 2 amp stations and don't yet have the 3 points for owning all amp stations yet is just too many dots to connect for some people, or at least the people this game's dev team hoped to win over.

    This was part of the great dumbing down of PlanetSide which led to so many of it's vets who were here for the strategic element leaving for games like Foxhole, leaving the dev team scratching their heads over why the players they had left wouldn't leave TI Alloys, hence they deactivated the base for a while.
    • Up x 3
  3. Tharovinn

    Teaching how continents lock and the objective of alerts should have been the priority of the devs at the time, not simplifying the objective at the loss of depth. Too late now. If anything they should have made territory majority a new alert type so we could have both that and victory point based victory conditions.

    Ignorance, refusal, or lack of understanding from the CoD crowd about the macro part of the game could have been why what we got has been dumbed down but I think the real problem would have been lack of value to player. I'm glad to see continent ownership bonuses go away cause for the individual it doesn't matter. Players don't log in to see what continent bonus they can take advantage of for their play session. Certs and Iso-4 is closer to what players should be fighting for although I don't believe its should be the primary motivator. But what? I don't know. Progression does end eventually.

    Call of Duty (at least the games I've played - Modern Warfare 1,2,3, Black Ops 1, Ghosts) is more about individual skill, snowballing via kill streaks, 10 min matches, gun, and class customization. Catering to a crowd of players already invested, and loyal to an existing IP would only work if that crowd is looking for something that CoD isn't providing anymore that your IP can. Battlefield 2042 wasn't the battlefield long time players were looking for in the newest title, of course those players are going to look elsewhere (Battlebit? CoD Warzone?) or play older titles in the franchise.

    If you think about it we still have the Victory Points system in place. The value of all the territories are the same; 1 victory point.

    Oh man the creative juices are flowing. What about an alert type that takes something from both systems? VP and territory majority?

    When the alert is announced and starts, The whole faction's goal is get the most amount of victory points. Every single territory on the continent will grant points to your faction. Naturally some territories would have more value than others and the initial value that can be balanced later would be based on how easy it is to attack, defend, how many lattice links connect to it, to a minor extent what kind and how much outfit resources are gained from capturing and owning the territory, and proximity to a warpgate.

    With something like this there could be a case where a faction has a lot of territory but is in second place cause the faction in first has less but more valuable bases.

    The win condition could be either:
    • Timer based - Have the most amount of victory points by the time 1 hour and 3 minute passes. I'm only using the current alert length as an example. How long alerts last can be changed.
    • Point limit based - After a faction reaches a certain amount of victory points the continents locks. This limit would have to be percentage

    As for rewards you would get Certs, and ISO-4 based on how many victory points your faction got when the alert ends so you can expect the winning faction to get a huge payout. As for the other two factions who knows that they about to lose, it would be in their best interest not lose anymore territory cause just giving up just means less currency in the end.
    ----------------------------------------------
    To expand my Original Post there is something I like about Esamir, and Oshur; The continents are smaller than Hossin, Indar, and Amerish. They have less territories yet it takes the same amount of population to trigger an alert for them. It makes me think either there is more push and pull due to trying to fit more players into a tighter space or if the bases on both of these continents, particularly Oshur are more attacker favored (I'm looking at construction outposts mostly)
  4. Signaldooo

    It would be cool if we could encourage more fights all over the map. As RabidIBM mentioned, there were different challenges before - like capturing all three bio labs. This could still be implemented with the current system - for example by making it the winning requirement in 10% of alerts.

    I love the grassy area outside Indar southwest warpgate and wish more fights would happen in that area. Feldspar Canyon Base is also an Indar base I'd wish to fight more over. Maybe we could implement a system for higher capping rewards per base the longer it has been in the hands of an enemy?
  5. Shadowpikachu

    Unironically a long time ago i suggested to have some smaller bases that are more unique sometimes get traded with others at the front/popular side.

    The interesting thing comes by how a base may have different surrounding terrain, making the same base sometimes play differently.

    Very important ones and big 3+ cap bases untouched naturally.
  6. Demigan

    I’s like that too but your current setup wont get you there.

    I assume you dont just want to see the base, but have a good fight there. Otherwise you would just join a Zerg and hope it passes the bases you want occasionally. Your current idea would just encourage players to create a Zerg and move to the mystery base(s) while the opposing teams do the same thing. You will see those bases, but you wont be having a good fight there.

    So lets change it up to see how we can create good base fights at those locations:

    - reveal objectives when captured, have a timer before you win.

    Say your faction needs a few bases and they capture one. Now this base is revealed to all factions as one you need for your secret objective. It means that even if you zerged to the location, you now have to hold on to the base until you capture the rest of the bases. Capturing all bases would then start a timer for your faction to hold on to them and then win.
    A timer if you hold all bases could be exploited by other factions by just capturing one revealed base and holding it. As an addition/alternative you could make it a domination mode: you gain points for holding on to the objective base, and an increased amount for holding multiple objective bases.

    - everyone has the same objective bases.

    Instead of making it a secret you simply designate 2 bases of each faction as an objective base, and the objective is to hold 4+ of them. The selected bases would always be based that arent often frequented. This means that any zergs can be countered as their direction and objective are clear.
    Same as above you dont instantly win if you hold enough bases.


    I had a different idea as well to fight at other bases: change the starting frontlines. Often fights happen with the median being the starting frontlines. By having different starting frontlines you create different average fights.

    The simplest variation of this would be just to draw up different frontlines, possibly with a different lattice on top.

    A more difficult to realize variation would completely relocate the warpgates. For example Indar southeast warpgate could be relocated to scarred mesa skydock, southwest to Indar Excavation (because air terminals) and the northern one to Howling pass. These bases simply get a shield and painfield while the warpgate area’s get a few capturable points. These are just semi-random picks actual balance and the like needs to be done ofcourse. The starting frontlines then use these new positions as their center with the old warpgates as bases on that frontline, guaranteeing that the least used bases now see a lot of action. You can make several versions of each continent with a shifted warpgate for increased variety. Its a much lower effort way to make use of continents than making brand new continents that are simply wasteful dumb projects despite many players thinking its the golden standard to make a bunch of continents all suffering from the same structural problems and then some extra.
  7. Tharovinn

    I would love that but there would have to be more objectives than just capture all 3 bio labs to be more interesting.

    Each of my play sessions is different based on what directive I'm working on but what comes first before that grind :rolleyes: are the missions that are reset and randomly generated. Faction-wide objectives for the alert can be done the same. A list of random
    objectives is selected from a pool and all factions are given the same laundry list to complete to win the Alert.

    There could be some general objectives that can apply to every continent but also continent exclusive objectives. I'll list those below. These lists would have to be public info (display it on the map screen at least) to keep track of how close a faction is to completing their list. The longer these objective lists would be the longer the alert could potentially be, plus, its more things to keep in mind while playing the macro game. I wouldn't want too many items to be on the list.

    Legend
    # = a number. This number will have to adapt to the context of the continent.

    General
    • Capture # territories
    • Capture # territories have an air terminal
    • Control # "Tower" bases
    • Control # "Large" facilities (Splitpeak Pass, Waterson's Redemption, Quartz Ridge Camp)
    • Control # territories that generate Sytheium
    • Connect to another warpgate as RabidIBM mentioned. (Esamir/Oshur only since they are smaller continents, making this easier to do)
    • Control # Conduit bases

    Indar
    • Control The Crown and all territories adjacent to it.

    Amerish
    • *shrugs*
    Esamir
    • Control 1 Techplant, Amp Station, and Containment Site

    Hossin
    • Control Nason's Defiance for at least 10 mins

    Oshur
    • Control 2 Tridents
    • Control 3 Interlink facilities
    • Control # Seaposts (cause players don't take defending seapost bases seriously)
  8. Tharovinn

    Scratch my previous post supporting the idea of the objective lists to win alerts - I think I like this better:

    As of now, when a singular territory is not connected through other territories controlled by your faction to the warpgate, hard spawning onto that single base that your faction controls but is not connected cannot be deployed to.

    Two // Halves
    Remove the behavior that dictates that all territories must connect to the warpgate. Instead the largest amount of territories connected to each other takes over the behavior the warpgate had. Anytime there would be two groups of territories the group with smallest amount of territories is "cut off" making hard spawning at those bases disabled.

    My two problems with this are:
    • What happens when you get down to your last territory? You could make it uncapturable yes but what if it doesn't have hard spawns like Berjess Overlook on Indar? Yes you could join combat but that has a long cooldown.
    • If a split in territories would be equal what would determine which half gets "cut off"? The half with the least population on it? In a way, players can "vote" on which half they want to keep be fighting on their half they think is worth saving.

    The fate of warpgates
    Repurpose it as a new facility type that can be fought at. Have the outer 3 spires that act as the frame for the bubble shield around warpgate have generators/capture points that must be overcome first before taking a lone capture point in the base somewhere. The Bubble Shield would allow all players/vehicles to pass through it but not fire through it like the citadel shield.
  9. OSruinedPS1

    Them's a lot of words.

    Everyone's at the Crown because that's where the outfit leaders earn their cancer inducing I-win buttons: orbital strike, bastion, fat tank, and anvils for lazy players.