[Suggestion] Putting strategy back into combat (no more TDM)

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by BigPoof, Aug 13, 2014.

  1. BigPoof

    Key Territories
    With the way things are at the moment, the game has pretty much turned into a giant TDM. The change to the resource system has effectively destroyed any reason to capture and hold territory, with Tech Plants being the exception. What I propose is not a change to the resource system (I actually prefer this system over the old, except not being able to bank consumables), but a change to region bonuses, which are cumulative with each other and continent lock bonuses. These are:

    Tech Plant
    Hold 1 Tech Plant and receive -10% to cost of vehicles
    Hold 2 Tech Plant's and receive -20% to cost of vehicles
    Hold 3 Tech Plant's and receive -30% to cost of vehicles

    Biolab
    Hold 1 Biolab and receive -10% to cost of consumables
    Hold 2 Biolab's and receive -20% to cost of consumables
    Hold 3 Biolab's and receive -30% to cost of consumables

    Amp Station
    Hold 1 Amp Station and receive -10% to cost of MAX's
    Hold 2 Amp Stations and receive -20% to cost of MAX's
    Hold 3 Amp Stations and receive -30% to cost of MAX's

    Aircraft Staging Facility (Skydocks, Watch Towers, etc)
    Hold 1 Aircraft Staging Facility and receive -10% to cost of Aircraft
    Hold 2 Aircraft Staging Facilities and receive -20% to cost of Aircraft
    Hold 3 Aircraft Staging Facilities and receive -30% to cost of Aircraft
    Maximum 30% bonus, regardless of number of ASF's held.

    Doing this would give strategic value back to the game and actually gives reason to protect these points. It rewards the factions/outfits/platoons that have a clear strategy in mind, as certain assets would be of great importance depending on what they need most. I believe this is a fairer system [than the current system], and it rewards factions for their effort, regardless if they have or have not locked a continent. For me, this makes morse sense than what we currently have.

    These bonuses are also continent specific, so capturing all 3 Tech Labs on Hossin will provide the 30% bonus to only Hossin, and no other continent.

    But for all this to work without breaking balance, the continent bonuses would need to be reduced to 20%, so the maximum total bonus any faction can gain is 50%.

    Continent Locking Bonus
    While the continent locking system might give the feeling you've achieved something, it does, however, create population and power imbalances. I play on Briggs, and prior to continent locking being put in place, the faction populations were always relatively similar, maybe 4-8% difference between highest-pop faction and lowest-pop faction, even during the early hours of the morning. Now, however, it's not unusual to see one faction with over 45% population, and it's always the population that has locked 2 or more continents (Worst I've seen was 50-30-20 NC-TR-VS). I know of a number of players that only like playing in a team that has an advantage, and they regularly swap to the faction that has the best bonuses. When a faction has -50% vehicle, aircraft and MAX purchases, it creates not only a population imbalance, but also a power imbalance, as the faction with larger pop can zerg everything without regard for resource costs. Reducing the continent bonuses to 20% and implementing the above bonuses would help to remedy this problem.


    Other Territories
    I also want to suggest giving new value to other (often seen as less critical) regions, such as Com Arrays, Med Labs, and Laboratories etc. These could take the place of the current bonuses provided by Biolabs, Techplants, and Amp Stations (eg HP regen and Turret Cooldown).

    Med Labs
    Improved HP regeneration

    Laboratories
    Improved Personal Shield regeneration

    Com Arrays
    Improved Turret Cooldown


    Temporary Alliance Alert
    This alert doesn't have anything to do with locking continents, but is in fact designed to encourage two factions to gang up on the third faction. If you've read everything up until now then you're probably thinking "Hang on, won't this make population imbalances worse?!". Short answer: No. The alert will be done in a way so that the two lower-pop factions are encouraged to attack the larger-pop faction.

    For example:
    The VS have 50% of the server population, have locked 3 continents, and control over 65% of the current continent, while the NC and TR each share the remainder of pop/territories. Unfortunately, the NC and TR are mostly ********, and spend the majority of their time fighting each other while the VS takes easy territory from behind (I've seen this happen countless times!). Then a Temporary Alliance Alert kicks in, and the NC and TR are encouraged to try and push the VS back to their warp gate. Now all of a sudden, the NC and TR have given up fighting each other and are now focussing their combined efforts on the VS. They succeed in pushing the VS back to the warpgate, and everyone celebrates.

    The rewards for participating in this alert would be based on territory captured, and not if you push the target faction back to their warpgate. There are also punishments for capturing your allies territory.
    So for instance, lets say in the above example the NC capture and hold 12 VS territories, and the TR captureand hold 11 VS territories. They then receive certs for each territory. I don't know what value would be sensible or balanced, but lets say hypothetically it's 5 certs per territory. So the NC are rewarded with 60 Certs and TR rewarded with 55 Certs. But during the alert, some (********) NC players decided to capture 5 TR territories, and as a result, the NC lose 6 Certs per allied territory captured, meaning they lost 30 of the 60 Certs they would have otherwise gained. This takes the final totals for the alert to: NC = 30 Certs , TR = 55 Certs.




    I know there are people who will strongly disagree with some of what I've posted, but even they would agree that we need better than what we currently have.

    Please, SOE, give some sort of strategic importance back to each continent.
    • Up x 4
  2. minhalexus

    But here's the thing, is having a strategic objective really so important?

    You log in, you find a battle, you fight. That's what we used to do, that's what we still do. You're not restricted to what you're faction was doing while you were online. One of the most frustrating things that used to exist was to log on and find that you're cornered on the main continent where everybody else is.


    SOE is going to look in Mission Systems in September, so if you want objective, hopefully they'll implement something interesting.

    I've been enjoying the game much more after:-

    1) Merge
    2) Cont Lock
    3) Resource Revamp
  3. Colt556

    Yeah, actually, strategic objectives are important. Without them PS2 is literally just a glorified TDM and people have no reason to do anything except farm certs. Having strategic goals that actually impact the game encourages players to go out and actually do stuff. They aren't just mindlessly moving along the lattice, they're intentionally going for a base that gives them a benefit or something. Contrary to what some people think, people need a reason to do stuff. PS2 isn't fun enough to make people play just for the sake of playing. I mean remove the cert farming and I bet half the population would just up and leave. People need things to aspire to, whether it's capping a base for a delicious benefit or capping all four continents to brag about how their empire is the best. The single greatest failing of PS2 is the lack of any sort of objectives beyond mindless TDM.
    • Up x 1
  4. andy_m

    Seems to me some of us want to play Planetary Anhilation while trying to treat the human players like Bots.

    I agree, to a point, that at times it does appear to be a bit of a TDM. But that is kind of the beauty of this game.

    With an organised platoon you can do all the RTS stuff.

    The guys who want that TDM can just jump into a Tower fight.

    All the RPG guys can put effort into how they look, dressing up in fancy outfits and looking cool on the battlefield.

    I think all of this can be done within the game as it currently stands.

    Also, there is no need to force strategic play on the masses.
  5. BigPoof

    Yes. This game was originally based on strategic objectives, where holding territory was important for success. Biolabs allowed faster acquisition of infantry resources and Tech Labs allowed access to MBT's and faster vehicle acq. Now, that's gone, and as Colt556 has said, it's simply become TDM where cert farming is the only objective.

    I've read countless posts from now ex-players who gave up on this game because of a lack of purpose. People rejoiced when continent locking was brought in, as it gave some purpose back, but with the change to the resource system, the game hasn't progressed in terms of purpose.

    Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy the occasional mindless slaughter (you can't spell slaughter without laughter), but if logging in and just aimlessly fighting is the objective of the game, then SOE may as well do away with the current continents, and design new continents where the three warp gates are attached to a single territory with four capture points. Everybody is fighting in the same location. The battle is huge. Nobody is cornered. TDM on a grand scale.
  6. Renuse

    I dont really agree with any of the resource enhancing or reducion as it just encourages spamming w/e has the reduction. Thats not strategically enabling much besdes the zergs and spamming maxes or worse.

    There isnt really any strategy outside of the lattices and making sure key ones dont fall and tech plants. All the strategy comes on the field of battle and how you maneuver your squad or counter enemy units. There are some other general tactics and tricks, but besidesbthat the lattices and lack of large scale effects from base captures on the maps.. There really isnt any strategy but to push down a lattice.

    Even on command chat it just delegation of forces. Nothing much else besides the typical unit counters on top of that.

    Thats it. Mostly TDM.
  7. Renuse

    Sorry for the horrid spelling im on my phone.
  8. Phyr

    Adding a bonus to facilities doesn't change the TDM nature of the actual fight at the facility.
    • Up x 1
  9. minhalexus

    They have alerts for that.

    They are going to update the mission systems in September, if objectives are what you wish for.
  10. Colt556

    Alerts are stupid and pointless and the mission system is worthless without missions. It's like, yeah, ok, fancy system to go attack a base, whoop de do, what reason do I have to take the base? Why should I leave my nice big zerg fight for that? There has to be actual missions for a system about them to work. Closest thing to actual strategy PS2s getting is the resource revamp, which we probably wont see this year.
  11. Fellgnome

    Bring back the old triad: Crossroads, TR, the Crown.


    These were the meta and they were awesome. The biggest victory in PS2 has never been capping a continent with excessive pop or ghost capping, flipping odd bases, etc. as alerts/cont locks encourage. It was capturing the Crown and screw the rest of the map until you lose it. And it was fun. There was always a place you could find action at, and while obviously defense had advantages generally the crown prevented sheer numbers or vehicle spam from automatically taking the base. The Crown was actually defensible with smaller numbers and that's what made it great.
    • Up x 3
  12. Sghignifiss

    This resource revamp we're talking about is just on phase 1, as repeated many times. I agree this is not what we want from the game and I'm expecting it to change more in the next months. The fact is if we now ask to fix in some way this "phase 1 resource revamp" in order to have something better while we wait for the next phase, we're doing nothing more than delay phase 2 and 3, and meanwhile we'll continue to have a rough resource system and nearly no meta.

    What we have to do now is to be patient, try to enjoy the game with what we have and be confident things will be better in a matter of a few months.