https://www.planetside2.com/news/ow-alpha-v3-retrospective Honestly... look at this thing. WHEN was the last time we got a response from any Developer that was this Wonky/Spergy and Detailed and ... just this dedicated to a clear direction?? We certainly haven't had anything like that when it comes to having a retrospective on the game's terrible Gunplay and obsolete Netcode "Fairness". I'm not dismissing the Elite/Bigger outfits by the way, my own outfit is favored to be in the final round now that [FEAR] and [R18] both got heavily screwed over by the "random" tourney Seed matchmaking. But that doesn't make me personally feel the least bit excited about any of this. In a nutshell, it's just really obvious at this point where the Bias exists with the people who make all of the actual decisions about this game. They don't actually care about the Quality of life or skill-curve mechanics or even the Social aspects of it unless those social aspects revolve around other "E SPURTS"-Marketing wannabes and Youtubers like themselves.
You only have to google these past events all the way back to 2013 efforts to find hilarity. Core game, meh. MLG, yay, let go!
yeh, but I really thought/hoped we were finally done with this mentality after Arena flopped so hard. "Creator types" not being able to learn anything after doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, is a cognitive behavior I literally can't understand
What bugs me is that the devs went into this MLG road before, and it hurt the game badly. They dropped it back then without actually reverting most of their horrorshow changes which hurt the average player and only benefitted the top players. That's great for the top players, but they tend to take up a microscopic part of the actual playerbase who are kind of important in an MMOFPS gameplay without any matchmaking. I've said it before and I'll just keep saying it because for some reason this is an almost mystical idea for many: Make it fun.
First off, thank you for the link. That said, I think this thread is needlessly negative. Outfit Wars is not a problem. I wouldn't want it every weekend, but having a bit of a season where people turn their sweat on and prove what they can do is good to have. And I'm speaking from an outfit who are not sweaty at all (expect in the morning when we're sweating the booze out). There have been many mistakes with this game, and this franchise. If the campaign, which turns MMO into MSO had been laughed out of the room when it was first pitched, if the sanctuary had been a menu screen, and if Planetside: Area had never been a thing, I can just imagine how much better of a state the core game could have been brought to with the resources which were flushed on those bad ideas. It actually saddens me to imagine what we don't have because of those. Outfit Wars is a good thing. It gives us a chance to have a climax event, to watch others' events and see what this game can be when the noise is screened out and a specific number of players who are all in on the same plan go up against each other. Does it need ironing? Yes, it needs a metric **** tonne of ironing, but at its core Outfit Wars is a good thing to have. As for your usual point Demigan: "make it fun", I agree with you, and guess what? It is! Maybe not to you, but nothing is to everyone's liking. The number of people who are showing up to this, and who are populating the streams show that there is interest, that there are people who find this fun. Sorry to hear that you're not one of us.
...And there it is. The Exact "mentality" I was talking about. The only thing out of that long description of stuff you couldn't do before this, was play this exact setup on a completely barren map where all 3 Warpgrates were directly accross from eachother. But make no mistake, every other thing we can do in Desolation, can be done in Northern Indar when everyone agrees to the same ground rules (it even looks the same). Except this time, you are expecting .... different results ... only because it's half-***** officially "sanctioned" by a couple Devs and has a timer that runs out. No improvements what so ever were made to Flying or Construction (and ironically they're the 2 biggest metas to abuse for easier wins here). No improvements to the deployment system and especially no Exploit fix for bypassing Beacon respawn c/d. What's actually different here from every other day that BWAE and Recursion and a couple nerds from Miller go tryhard capping 8 bases in a row? It's definitely not the lack of n00bs injecting themselves into the match thanks to this new Enlistment approach that last year's Desolation matches actually prevented. This thing's chock full of n00b players who will throw most matches between 2 otherwise evenly matched Teams ( ...just like every Alert on the live servers too) and make everyone completely resent "the POOLS" phase of the playoffs.. And we know they're n00bs b/c we can check their stats as Arshee is misreading their names left and right. Face it, you just think you can talk down to me about my pessimism b/c you think I haven't been here before? That's mostly what it is, isn't it?
Since it saps away resources to make the actual game better, yes it is a problem! It also means that many balance decisions are made not with the main game in mind but with outfit wars in mind, screwing over balance. We actually see that mentality back in how the devs actively maim and remove bases like TI Alloys because people were having more fun there than with capturing the continent, and rather than make the capture-the-continent gameplay more fun they decided to simply remove the fun instead. Nothing is to everyone's liking, but that doesn't mean we can't make sure that the goals you pick to focus on are either good for both types of gameplay or not negative to one. The opposite is true: The devs actively try to fu ck over a giant proportion of players in favor of the morons who call for that fun to be fu cked. Any support for this mentality is wrong. We need to get it into the dev's minds that this is not the way, and untill then we cannot be positive on any part of the outfit wars. It's a cancer that spreads through the game, killing it.
Remove queues, remove population limits, and let live play become the sandbox it should be. Let the players balance the factions with their choices (either through logging on X faction or creating temporary alliances). Alerts needs to be connected to the fight that is rather than a goal which require you to zerg and push aggressively. For example, if an alert is triggered it won't be based on the getting the most territory but tied to the territory which was controlled at the start of the alert. The alert would then be a tug-of-war based on each lattice (2,1,0,-1,-2) If you get too many past -2 bases from original territory control, you "lose" that flank. If you get past +2 bases from original territory control, you win that flank. The faction which gets a certain amount of points win (to have a win-state for good play not just grind). Simply zerging down one lane will be actively punished since you'd lose the alert by tunnelvisioning down one flank. The purpose of this would be to have each faction fight where it is natural for them to fight. Every large fight would become the focal point of the alert. Moreover, it wouldn't a long grind versus the clock but an actual reward of effort for the CURRENT players doing well. In short, it'll make each fight relevant to fulfilling a common goal and it wouldn't try to draw people away from tough fights since those would be a key factor in getting the win. Then once this is done you could add other mechanics for outfits to test their mettle against each other based on which outfit are best at the tug-of-war alerts. Both live players + competitive players fighting for the same goals yet are able to enjoy the game they want.
PS2 just reflects the current state of gaming in general. That is that over hyped marketing is far cheaper to produce then a quality product that requires talent and passion. And when the rubes will follow the marketing and buy the over hyped garbage anyway, why spend/find the resources to make it truly good.
