[Suggestion] How to solve the biggest problem with Planetside 2

Disagree. The game can have one sided zergs with even numbers on all factions. The problem is that zergs dominate the meta-game since to move along a lattice effectively...you just have to out-zerg. Then eventually you hit a base with your zerg where the opposing faction has such a defensive advantage that your massive armor column gets whittled down by AV spam.

This is my reply to both you guys. Not trying to be a dick about it, but THIS is the problem I am trying to solve. . .




THAT was during "prime time". And it is a much more serious problem than having imbalanced hexes.

And maybe you are not on a server where it happens, but Briggs is very bad for it. It's the main reason, IMO, why Briggs has such a low population. The game is not fun when one side is simply steamrolling the other through numbers. This change will hopefully be the way to stop this happening.

Alright. Give the mercenaries double XP AND double certs to make them play. Solved.

I do not think Mercenaies will solve all the problem, but I still like the Mercenary idea just as a fun thing, and think it would be a neat addition to the game.

Mercenaries COULD help solve the problem of balancing side for Alerts, where the whole continent is trying to stop the other factions from gaining their territory. And having more population will translate to more resistance to zergs.

Mercenaries WON'T help solve the problem during non-Alert time. During non-Alert times, most often each faction just forms into a zerg, steamrolls empty bases, and ignores enemy zergs unless it runs head on into them. Usually, even the lowest pop faction on a Continent will still form into a zerg and be steamrolling enemy bases: the lattice provides enough lattice branches, so that each faction can keep a zerg going and not run into each other.

Players during non-Alerts are trying to farm, and the best way to do it for most is to steamroll bases inside a zerg. Even if a faction has low population on that Continent, most often it will STILL be the highest population in the area that it is zerging. Population is not the problem in uneven fights in this case, it is players forming up into zergs and selecting low pop targets because they are trying to farm.

Mercenaries could work for Alert situations.

For other situations, just put a MASSIVE bounty on the offending zerg (this bounty can climb the more basses it steamrolls or the larger its size gets). This will motivate players/squads/outfits to make dedicated efforts to TAKE OUT THAT ZERG. Not "save base x", but to knock out a specific zerg.[/quote][/quote]

The biggest problem with the game is the one that annoys you the most.

Double post.

This idea sounds nice but there's one thing that bothers me about it:

When I play I rely on sound a lot to be useful, it tells which way an enemy vehicle is going when they're shooting, which direction an ESF is heading to and even where to find that evil Infiltrator that's sniping all my allies down.

It would quite literally make the game unplayable for me when, for example, I'm trying to escape death in my <Harasser> by going towards allied weaponry sounds only to have them shoot me in the face as a mercenary.

If you can think of some way to fix that problem I'd be able to 100% agree with your suggestion.

Hmmm, alright.

What about simply modifying the sounds that the Mercenary units make?

It couldn't be re-doing every sound from scratch, that would take a massive amount of work for the Devs. But what about simply adding a modifier that the player PC's automatically do to all Mercenary firing sounds?

For example, let's say you normally hear the TR weapons as "BRAP BRAP BRAP".
The "Mercenary Sound modifier" could distort the sound of all heard Mercenary weapons. One way could be increasing the frequency and adding a subtle echo. So, a Mercenary TR weapon wont sound like "BRAP BRAP BRAP", it will sound like "BRP-BP BRP-BP BRP-BP".

It will give all the Mercenary weapons a weird sound, that should be easily identifiable.


(I like your questions by the way, they are getting me to think of ways to make this idea better.)

I think you were ignoring my reasoning about the difference between XP and CERTs.

XP = Battle Ranking gain = unlocking rank + CERTs

CERTS = equipment unlocks

The more I think about it, the more I'm against the double XP because you shouldn't get rank credit for your faction while you are a mercenary. I can see giving normal XP but not double XP because people definitely would not "go for it" if it was no XP.

I definitely think any more than double CERTs would be too much.

It maybe that the Mercenary idea should be handled by a stand-alone Mercenary faction that is assigned by the game to a side and auto-joined to squads. This would require making a character that was in the Mercenary Faction. But this would also means that Mercenaries would never be in an outfit as they are always changing sides.
I don't see players going for this route either.

I understand that being on the wrong side of bad numbers is a horrible experience and no fun to play. I understand that some players probably being on the strong side of massive numbers and beating down the defenseless - that's just the way some people are.
At any point, those people on the over-populating side could switch sides and even things out for better game play - but, I have the serious suspicion, they wouldn't do it even for double XP and double CERTs.

I'm sorry to hear that it has gone that way on some servers.
Last week I definitely saw the Vanu doing a good deal of over populating on Emerald. That didn't mean that there weren't good battle to be had even when the Vanu were shutting down continents. But they couldn't be everywhere at once with massive numbers. And they don' t over populate all the time.

Maybe the solution is to make a character on their side and join them? .... and how the DEVs want to handle it when the maps are always covered a single faction rushing to the next continent that unlocks to retake it.

... but then it would think it would be pretty boring to just go to an unlocked continent to rush through and capture all the undefended points.

Maybe the solution would be the inclusion of an AI mercenary force to balance the sides. The AI could even be factional androids of some type - and always keep the numbers near to even on a continent and even a hex/territory. This way it would all be computer-driven and wouldn't rely upon players balancing the population through the regular 3 factions or the incorporation of a mercenary mechanic that players may or may not use.

I'm not sure how much of a drain that an AI mercenary force would put upon the game.
An AI mercenary android wouldn't complain about guarding a point all day or it's death-to-kill ratio for rushing in to attack.

What if they were auto added into squads and went to secure what ever squad way point was set on the map and always spawned at the closest spawn point to the squad way point?

Would they just spawn at the closest front-spawn point necessary to balance out the forces and simply attack or defend whatever the computer tells us to do as players?
Automatically moving to defend points and defend/repair generators on defense? Automatically moving to take points and destroy generators on attack?
And squad up with themselves as necessary to balance sides?

I can understand the need for a solution, but I'm not sure using the manpower to program the option of a player choice to be a mercenary is going to be a sure thing and it seems to be a long shot. I don't think that the players are going to react to stabilize the sides.

Are you going to be willing to play a mercenary? Would you want to play a mercenary all the time?
I'm not sure I would want to do it, but I might if it meant better game play, but I'm not the average gamer and I have the feeling that the average type of video gamer these days would not want to use this option when they are trampling other players.

If that is really the case with the population then this is definitely a huge problem and it ought to be solved.

I was just wondering why should the Mercenary be tied to any faction as what comes to the weaponry and equipment? I mean what if the Mercanaries would simply become the faction character they choose to work for? If you for example have purchased certain NC weaponry then the counterparts from other factions would be available for you as well.

I think this would make the game more interesting to play for everyone. I for example play NC 90% of the time. I have characters in other factions as well, but I have hardly played them due to the fact that I don't have any items purchased for them and there's absolutely no way for me to do that. Still I would love to check those other factions out.

Play on a different server at a different time maybe?? Your massive-outlier of a screenshot does not justify your case. Sorry.

please. SOE will never add in mechanics that are innovative and game changing. they have made this perfectly clear. everything must be cookie cutter to appeal to as wide of an audience is possible.

hey, there's one problem with your idea, which is otherwise great. The problem is:
-faction identity : switching factions for XP gain sounds like betrayal to me (especially for TR I think). Also what would happen if you had an outfit and switched to play as an enemy mercenary? Would you be rewarded for killing your friends? Nah, I don't like it.

The sollution:
-4th faction.Well, not entirely a faction but an organisation. Nanite Systems Mercenaries - NSM (No don't quit just yet, just wait)
Faction traits:
-Must serve one of the three major factions (TR/NC/VS)
-Can only be played when an outnumbered faction (Maximum 25% pop) offers to employ you
-Can only capture facilities for the faction you currently serve.
-Has full access to NS weaponry and some NSM specific weapons (TR/NC/VS can't use) without spending certs
-Has limited access to the weaponry of the faction you currently serve. Additional weapons can be bought for certs as normal.
-Has access to the vehicles of the faction you currently serve
-As an NS Mercenary you get both XP and a new currency called Credits. Credits can be shared across all your characters.
-Credits are an equivalent of certs but they are shared across all your characters. They are also much easier to obtain (2x/3x faster).You can mix certs and credits if you want to buy something expensive ( for example if you have 300 certs and 700 credits then you can buy a weapon for 1000 certs). Certs are always spent first.


What do you think?

This idea seems pretty cool. Would be interesting to turn Gauss Saws on the NC.

Adapt. Problem solved.

With NS weapons being somewhat prevalent I seriously doubt sound is 'that' important. I mean its something I have to deal with all the time fighting Vanu using NS weapons. I hear dakka when it should be pew pew.

You've got a point there with the NS weapons but should you really have to fear every <Phoenix> because it may or may not be allied fire? Fights can be chaotic enough as it is without you having to carefully check whether the <Lasher> that's shooting belong to your side or not.

I do like the OP's idea of distorting the sounds so that one can tell the difference between friend and foe.

If you play NC long enough, you treat every shot fire as hostile until proven otherwise

When you play with 15 FPS and occasional freeze / ctds, pop imbalance is really not such a big deal in comparison.

I am not sure its the biggest problem with the game imo.

But I played RIFT and they had the Mercenary concept also when entering pvp instances.
I hated it.

I have only NC toons.
I do not play for my enemy.
Ever.

I think I may be a dying breed...

All that being said it may work in this game.
I find that a lot of youth today don't care bout the things I care about.
I see other issues that are a problem.

I live in New Zealand. Which means that the only server I can play on is Briggs.

What is Briggs normally like?



That. That is the normal population balance on Briggs. It might not look like much, but it means that for every 100 NC players there is only 87 VS players. That makes a big difference.

Why? Because on Briggs, we normally only have one continent unlocked. That means that we can't go to another continent and choose another fight, instead we have to be part of a massive force stomping a little force, or be the guys being stomped. There is no other option.

All we need to do is convince 3% of those 36% NC players to switch to Mercenary. That is about 8% of the NC players on the server. Once that is done, the sides are going to be on a ratio of 1:1:1, and EVERYONE on the server will benefit.

The fights will be better, more even, less people will get frustrated, and more people will join and play. Everybody wins if we add in the Mercenaries.

That does sound interesting, but it would also be a lot of work for the Devs.

The thing I've tried to do with my idea, is make it so that there is as little work for them to do as possible. You still only have the 3 "factions", which means that only 3 sets of stats need to be recorded, and there are still the same weapon types. The only thing that changes is which side is "friendly" and which two sides are "enemy". So it's a very minor change for the Devs to implement.

Adding a whole new 4th faction, while it could very well solve the issue, is a lot more work.

It would be much easier to add a respawn time penalty for overpop faction.

Yeah, you're right. And if they don't put this Mercenary idea in place, then I hope they do that idea you just said.

The Mercenary would add a lot to the game, and it wouldn't take a huge amount of effort to implement . . . but adding a penalty timer is going to be much, much easier still.