Let me start this off by saying I am having a great time with this game so far and I think SOE has done a great job on many fronts. There are a few issues that need to be addressed to polish the game up but I think within 6 months we will see really solid gaming experience unmatched by any other game out right now. Though I have a few other concerns, what I want to discuss is warpgate placement for each faction and how it is effecting the overall progression of empires. As it stands now, TR have 2 warpgates placed in the "far spawns" (Indar, Amerish) and VS have one (Esamir). What I mean by far spawn, is if you look at the map there is always 2 empires that spawn "close" to eachother, with one being furthur away at the bottom or top of the map. If you have been playing since beta, you will know that the nature of the "zerg" force is to push outward from their warpgate toward the middle of the map. This gives a huge territory advantage to the "far spawn" empire due to the simple fact they have more territory that is not contested around their warpgate. What I fail to see is why the TR have 2 far spawns and the NC have 0. A simple fix would be to switch the TR WG with NC on either Indar or Amerish, effectively giving each empire 1 far spawn. I know I will get the majority of replies to this post as "OMG NC NUBZ QQ MOAR" but I think this would be a simple fix that would even up the overall meta / territory control for each empire. Happy fragging!
Well that would be a quick-fix. But what to do once more continents come in? On the other hand, it shouldn't be that hard to fix, and maybe with the data they can get now they can see how the battles are progressing and make adjustments according to that.
When more continents come out, there will not be three footholds on each. No one does. The Footholds were rotated regularly in beta, no one faction got an advantage depending on a foothold and if they did, the maps were already corrected before launch. Its a non-issue.
If you read my post, you would see that having what I labeled the "far spawn" is a definate advantage just from the nature of being furthur away from the 2 opposing factions warpgates, thus making it easier to control more uncontested territory on the continent. When they release new continents, they will have to get more creative I suppose but for now it would be easy to swap WG's and give each faction 1 "far spawn".
Its not. It was tested. Facts dispute your hypothesis. They edited the maps to remove any advantage. You know that deep gash on Indar to the north? That was not there before. Distance is not the only factor.
I realize that distance is not the only factor to continent / territory control. However, this is taking into account tactical play and organized large scale assualts from multple platoons on objectives. As the current game stands, all 3 factions zerg towards the middle of the map which leaves the far spawn on each continent usually holding 50% of the map while the other two factions hold 25% each with some major battle going on at the middle (think zurvan). Obviously this is a generalization and the maps dont always look like this but I still feel that the "far spawn" has an easy TERRITORY "think map color" advantage. This may not neccesarily equate to resource / important facility advantage, rather just an overall hex advantage.
in beta they switch the warpgates around every once in a while. I think that would be good to do now and again still
This may be very well what they are planning on doing, I am not sure. Just thought I would bring up the topic as I've noticed it effecting my server. If it does end up getting changed great, if not, still alot of fun =).
I think my biggest concern is that the close spawns promote our empire getting double teamed on each continent. I dont care that 50% of the map looks red if we have even resources ect, but when you have the close spawn it is very easy to get sandwhiched by the other 2 empires and get sanc'd. It would be much harder to Sanc TR on Indar than VS. Also, having the close spawns makes it much harder to actually push out of your territory. On Indar, we can push north and begin taking territory, but the VS will just snake us from behind, cut us off, and effectively cause us to lose all of our gains. I understand this is part of the game, just not sure why we dont have a continent were we get those particular advantages were TR has 2 =)
I think what they are planning on doing is continuing to do nothing but work on optimization and other things that should have been fixed during the Open Beta they decided not to do.
