According to this definition, all you players who don't try to win are stat padding

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by NotsiMadz, Feb 25, 2021.

  1. DarkStarAnubis

    That definition of Stat-Padding is so wide to be Lapalissian in its nature,

    Let's take the classic "Don't kill the Sundy" meme.

    Should I (or our small team) wait and kill the enemies spawning from the Sundy and reap kills at leisure or instead destroy the Sundy and redeploy to do more useful work for the faction?
  2. NotsiMadz



    Yup, (and for anyone else who didn't read through the thread, which is normal, I'm not criticising), there are lots of different definitions of "Stat Padding". That's why the title of the thread reads "according to THIS definition", and that definition is wrong.

    You call it a kind of bait, I look at it more like a creative way of re-introducing an old topic!

    _____________

    With regards to what you (or your small team) should or should not do, and killing sundies is good example, that depends not entirely but mostly on what you are trying to achieve. If you want to lose weight, you should eat less and do more sports. If you don't want to get arrested you shouldn't do anything illegal.

    If you want to gain certs and xp, you should do what rewards you with the highest score (score, xp and certs are linked with a constant ratio), so that means flip points and destroy vehicles.

    So it depends on what you want.

    But if you want to play a game, any game, from a game of cards with your grandmother to a game of monopoly with your cousins to a game of football on a sundy (typo and pun intended) afternoon with the lads, then you should try to win whatever game it is you are playing.

    After all, playing any game emplies trying to achieve victory at whatever objectives that game provides you with. Without those objectives, there would be no game in the first place.

    To take that last example, if on a sunday afternoon you have a game of footie with your friends and don't try to help your team win, it isn't only your team mates that will get angry at you, it's your opponents too.

    The main question this thread raises is whether Planet Side 2 is a game in the same sense as snap, monopoly or football and whatever the case, what is the aim of the game? What are you supposed to do? What did the devs have in mind when they made this game? What should you and your squad do?

    _____________

    To answer your question though :

    There's only 2 ways of saving a base. The first one is to destroy the enemy spawns and the second is to back cap it.

    If you are trying to achieve victory, then those are your two options.

    if you are trying to achieve anything else, then that depends. For example, you may choose to not destroy the enemy sundy on purpose so as to keep the fight alive, but that'll very often backfire since once you lose the base, the fight is dead anyway.


    ---------------------

    edit --> I just thought of something else

    If you keep an eye on the popualtion while you play, not just the base and fight's population, but the faction population on the continents, you will probably notice something most people already know :

    As a general rule (there are exceptions) when a faction is successful and conquers territory, the population of the losing faction drops and the population of the winning faction increases.

    This could be due to different reasons and probably a mix of reasons :

    1. Losing faction players quit, log off.

    2. Losing faction players relog and switch faction

    3. If more than one continent is open, players not already on that continent will tend to join the faction that is winning and if their faction is losing, will tend to go to another continent.

    This post is long enough as it is already so I won't comment on this last point, but isn't it intersting? What could it mean?
  3. Demigan

    Nope nope nope. Rock-paper-scissors is a horrible method of gameplay balance in an MMOFPS. You should never die just because someone showed up with your counter as that's boring and punishing. Its also not actual combined arms, as you dont need to combine them to be successful.

    Good balance would let players fulfill roles that augment each other, and reward the teamplay rather than the individual. "Reward" in this case being cold hard XP and statistics rather than some idea of a soft fuzzy feeling of helping your team since you want everyone to enjoy this not a small group. You could have a tank perform a spotter function and guide a nearby aircraft with the right tools to them. You could similarly have an aircraft perform a spotter function and guide AV infantry towards a target, or even cooperate within the arm itself letting one tank spot for another for example. That is actual combined arms, not just in-game but the way we do it in actual real life.

    Besides spotting you can add features that buff or nerf their target upon hit, like a vehicle that provides a few high-powered infantry weapons to infantry that stick close to it, or a weapon that nerfs the targets speed when hit or saps their ability energy.

    The result should be greater than the sum of parts, you should not "win" because you happened to bring the right tool.
  4. DarkStarAnubis

    All the games you mentioned have a clear endgame and a equally clear reward associated to it.

    In Planetside you have individual rewards (a lot of them, too many to list), squad/team/outfit reward (XP and material/currency) and a Faction reward for securing a continent (some silly weapons which now you can buy and other stuff you get in other ways as well)

    Rewards conflicting with each other thanks to our wise game designers...

    Which reward is more important? You know? I know?

    With this kind of mess I wouldn't even punish stat-padding at all.

    if someone wants to do it and he/she is happy to destroy hundreds of unmanned turrets on a empty continent for hour and hours to get a directive weapon ... So be it.

    Moronic ways to get a reward promote equally moronic behavior. It is a proven fact.
  5. NotsiMadz



    I'd say a huge banner with in capital red flashing letters saying A L E R T !!!!! Is pretty clear.

    I'd also say the timer counting down to zero is pretty clear, along with each factions % points.

    But even without the alert, losing a base is "clearly" a defeat. Winning a fight, whether it's saving a base or capturing a base is "clearly" a victory....

    You're right about the rewards though, that's a dev decision that I still don't understand ..

    As to stat padding, that's an issue when it provides the player with an unfair advantage over others. It's also an issue in cases where it provides zero advantage and only serves to boost the stats (such as the KD, or rocket launcher kills to get a Kraken directive). Though I"d agree with you, if the stat padding only changes the stats and provides no advantage, I personally couldn't care less.

    PS. I don't consider killing turrets as stat padding because doing so is not exploiting the game in any way. You kill a turret, you get a kill, you kill another, you get another kill, I don't see anything wrong with that. Way I see it, stat padding usually involves the collaboration of an accomplice; he lets you kill him then you let him kill you. That's obviously not intended gameplay.

    The mods however disagree with me, I got suspended for "stat padding" after killing hundreds of turrets with my rocket launcher to achieve the Kraken directive.

    The "joke" I did about "stat padding" refers to "intended gameplay". One of the main things that defines stat padding (from the moderator's perspective) is whether that gampelay is intended or not.

    Which raises the question : what IS the intended gameplay of Planet Side 2???

    It's a simple question, yet no one seems to agree.

    Which is why (in another thread), I went to the source and checked how it was advertised. It is "clearly" advertised as a massive faction based MMO in which players use "teamwork", "skill", and "strategy" to "achieve victory".

    So if you never really "win at Planet Side 2", which is by the way the same thing for pretty much every other MMO out there but in particular MMORPGs ---> you can never beat the game, you can never ever win, in PS2, because as soon as a war is finished another one starts.

    That doesn't mean you can't win inside the game, and whether it's a pvp encounter when you come faced to face with an enemy, or whether it's group effort victory to save or capture a base, or whether it's a faction wide effort to win an alert, all those things are clearly and obviously achievements and challenges which you can win or in which you can be defeated.
  6. DarkStarAnubis

    What If couldn't care less about the banner and the timer and bases lost or won, since all I want the Betelgeuse so I spend all my time killing as many enemies as possible?

    You see, not only I can do that. But I am even encouraged to do that, because I will get a fantastic reward.

    One more time: why should I care about the banner and the Alert?
  7. NotsiMadz




    Doesn't matter what you care about.... who ever mentioned what you care about?

    You said all the games I mentioned had a clear endgame. Alerts are and have a clear endgame.

    Care or don't care, guess what, I think I really could care less than you ;)
  8. DarkStarAnubis

    m8,

    that's what you do not get.

    What I (or any other player) care does matter most than anything else. Because it conditions how people chooses to play: playing for XP, directive weapons, air knight, sniper, building etc.

    Some cares for alerts. Some for bases. Some for their teams. Some for weapons.

    You think "I look at the timer so everyone looks at the timer obviously". Nope...
    • Up x 1
  9. NotsiMadz

    No, it doesn't matter. What you care about doesn't matter at all. Why would it? What are we even talking about here?

    And you changed the subject.. But I can follow you on any subject you want. What is it you are actually talking about now?


    In the meantime, here is a copy paste of something I wrote a few posts above and which -even though I wrote it already- you could consider to be my reply.


    --> copy paste <-- -I highlighted in this colour the point that is particularly relevant)

    With regards to what you (or your small team) should or should not do, and killing sundies is good example, that depends not entirely but mostly on what you are trying to achieve. If you want to lose weight, you should eat less and do more sports. If you don't want to get arrested you shouldn't do anything illegal.

    If you want to gain certs and xp, you should do what rewards you with the highest score (score, xp and certs are linked with a constant ratio), so that means flip points and destroy vehicles.

    So it depends on what you want.

    But if you want to play a game, any game, from a game of cards with your grandmother to a game of monopoly with your cousins to a game of football on a sundy (typo and pun intended) afternoon with the lads, then you should try to win whatever game it is you are playing.

    After all, playing any game emplies trying to achieve victory at whatever objectives that game provides you with. Without those objectives, there would be no game in the first place.

    To take that last example, if on a sunday afternoon you have a game of footie with your friends and don't try to help your team win, it isn't only your team mates that will get angry at you, it's your opponents too.

    The main question this thread raises is whether Planet Side 2 is a game in the same sense as snap, monopoly or football and whatever the case, what is the aim of the game? What are you supposed to do? What did the devs have in mind when they made this game? What should you and your squad do?
  10. DarkStarAnubis

    Says who?

    Again, why should I (or anybody else) play as you think the game should be played? What makes your gameplay choices righter than the others :D :D :D ?

    What makes getting an high HDR better than getting an high SPM, or amount of bastion carriers spawned, or alerts won, or players rezzed, or number of directive weapons achieved, or air kills?

    I can decide to "win" any of those individually or a combination of those... And discard what I do not care about.
  11. NotsiMadz

    Says anyone who plays any game oO

    To use those 3 examples again, if you play a game of SNAP with your grandmother, you will both try to win. Says who?

    If you play a game of monopoly with your cousins, they will all try to win. Says who?

    If you play football with your friends on a sunday afternoon, 100% of them, all 22 players on the field will do what they can to win.

    Says who? really?




    As to PS2, no one ever said you should play one way or another. You can't win at PS2, like most other MMOs out there, you can't win at WoW, like I wrote it in this thread myself :


    So if you never really "win at Planet Side 2", which is by the way the same thing for pretty much every other MMO out there but in particular MMORPGs ---> you can never beat the game, you can never ever win, in PS2, because as soon as a war is finished another one starts.

    That doesn't mean you can't win inside the game, and whether it's a pvp encounter when you come faced to face with an enemy, or whether it's group effort victory to save or capture a base, or whether it's a faction wide effort to win an alert, all those things are clearly and obviously achievements and challenges which you can win or in which you can be defeated.




    I mean I'm not gona keep answering you with stuff I've written already, we aren't evolving in the dicussion, we are literally back tracking, I'm copy pasting what I wrote to answer your current question. I'm not doing that again, you don't want to talk, then we don't talk, no problem.
  12. DarkStarAnubis

  13. Demigan

    I already told you this before but let's try and make it more clear. Let's divide the game into Goals, Objectives and Features+Mechanics.

    Goals are what the game tries to achieve.
    Objectives are what the game uses to let you reach the goal.
    Features and Mechanics are the tools you have available to reach those objectives. In this case the Features and Mechanics are mostly our selection of weapons and vehicles.

    Now let's go back to PS2 at launch. The goal of the game was relatively easy to spot: It's about providing a fun and entertaining MMOFPS experience with hundreds of players fighting on large continuous continents.
    The Objectives to reach that goal were capture points in bases. By trying to capture a base you gave people a framework to find each other and have a battle where it's clear what each player is trying to achieve: One side tries to take and hold the point, the other tries to prevent capture and tries to destroy the opposing side's spawnpoints.
    Thos weren't the only Objectives however. There were many smaller objectives, like trying to reach high KD (which is an objective we need to remove), unlocking new weapons and toys and attaining medals for weapons you've bought. Such goals would offer the player base other things to do when the objective of capturing bases bores them. The great part is that in many cases you can work on multiple objectives together, which means that players with different objectives they are pursueing would still be playing together.

    Then calamity struck: The developers added another objective (not goal!). They let us capture entire continents and lock them down. The reasons behind this are great! It gives players an overarching large objective to work together for and try to be more stragetic. It's execution has been a horrorshow.
    Again, the goal of the game is to get a fun MMOFPS experience together. Most objectives encourage players to meet and fight with each other and can be accomplished somewhat simultaneously so players will do more or less similar things while playing. However the capture-the-continent objective fails at this. It encourages players to avoid the other objectives and worse it encourages players to avoid the actual goal of the game.

    We can see how objectives can work against each other in the game when we see complaints. For example KD whoring has been a thorn in the game's side since it's been added as it encourages players to pick cheese tactics by picking the biggest and strongest guns to hunt down the smallest and weakest unit in the game rather than hunting down other big stuff with it.

    A better example: You.
    You complain that everyone else is the problem, even though your objective can almost never be satisfyingly concluded. Yet you are the one advocating an objective that goes against the goal of the game, and you are asking the developers to outright remove the gameplay of others to force them into your gameplay.
    You complain that everyone doing a Biolab having the MMOFPS experience by fighting there is wrong because they take away players from the objective you chose to pursue. Every time you say that it's their fault, rather than your own. Yet population imbalance will always be a factor of your chosen objective even if every single player stopped doing biolabs and became a lapdog to your chosen objective. If your objective can't deal with population imbalances like that it's a bad objective.




    TL,DR:
    The goal is to have an MMOFPS experience.
    Capturing the continent is a broken objective that doesn't play well alongside the existing objectives in the game and discourages players to try and achieve the goal of the game.
  14. Somentine

    Capture points and Alerts are there to start and facilitate fights, which is the whole point of the game. You don't play the game to capture territory, you play the game for the fights, and capturing territory is the result of winning those fights.

    Of all the things to complain about in this game, Alerts are probably the lowest priority thing I could ever think of, right there beside spelling mistakes. Especially because if you fix the other issues, then it would probably 'fix' alerts as well.
    • Up x 1
  15. NotsiMadz

    obviously, if you don't try to win alerts, then alerts don't matter, and if they don't matter, then complaining about them wouldnt matter either.

    logic !

    tell you what, have the devs delete them?

    I mean if no one wants to play them, why bother? Just delete them?
  16. Somentine

    You're going to extremes. People still play alerts. Some still care way too much, like you. Some just use it as another small goal to strive for but don't sacrifice the fun and overall purpose of the game for a pretty pointless objective.
  17. NotsiMadz



    Not at all.

    In the same way as you need 11 players on a football team to play football, and you can't still try but it's harder with 10 or 9, but if you have less, you simply can't.

    You need enough people in the game trying to win an Alert, to "play" "Alert". Same thing.



    That's the biggest issue ; those who don't care about the alert, when there are too many of them, mathematically prevent those who do from playing.

    On the other hand, those who care for the alert and try to win, don't ever prevent those who ignore the alert from having their fun.



    edit -> forgot my point lol, so if the people trying to win an alert represent a minority of the players, they can't ever succeed, unless from chance. They can't play, not at that game anyway.

    Delete the ******* alert already. The devs are hypocrits they say and act like "oh PS2 is outfit wars, it's tactical and strategy faction war requiring teamwork and coordination" when they very well know, they've known for years, that it's anything but that.

    All the game is these days is a massive, never ending, constant, permanent and almost absolute grind. Ironic right, seeing you don't need to grind for anything in this game. It's the only game I ever heard of where you have access to all the content from day 1. So it's the only game where grinding isn't required, yet that's literally all everyone does.
  18. Somentine

    You're so delusional it almost physically hurts. Go cry some more about it in another thread in a week, probably titled something like: "Here is the secret the Dev's didn't want you to know" with a link to a 2012 article about continent locking that you've still somehow taken out of context.

    No one cares for your hot takes; they're trash.
  19. NotsiMadz



    I've got genius advice for you. It's super smart, so .. I know, you might not understand it .... but it's also super simple !


    If you don't want to talk to me. Why do you talk to me?

    Just don't talk to me and then you'll be happy, I'll be happy, everyone will be happy! win win :)
  20. Somentine

    Why don't you take your same advice, but apply it to the whole forum? Your incessant creation of threads about Alerts, spawned from flawed logic taken from out of context quotes, definitions, or really any information you can twist, borders an almost obsessive need to repeat the same argument to justify your opinion.

    The funniest thing is, many people don't entirely disagree with what you're saying, but you can't have that; they have to agree 100% with everything you say or else they're not only wrong, but arguing for argument's sake.

    Here's a news flash bro, the game isn't in 2012 anymore. Even back then, everyone didn't drop everything to try to win an Alert. To this day, there are still people that play to win Alerts. If you want change, then organize players in game to do it; if you can't, or are unwilling to do this, then you are either a hypocrite or it proves that people don't want what you do. If you succeed, then it's win-win.

    Stop creating the same thread over and over and over and over.
    • Up x 1