Team Balance in PS2? Should there be?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by DeadlyPeanutt, Jan 29, 2015.

  1. DeadlyPeanutt

    Thinking about the game experience in PS2... One of the things that consistently ruins the enjoyment of many players in PS2 is the lack of team balance in individual battles.

    When the opposing team is at a much higher pop, platoons leave, people camp in spawns, etc. When your team is at a much higher pop, you hang out bored, trying to steal a few kills from the fifty other guys pointing weapons at spawn. Unbalanced teams in most battles means that the average player in that battle has less fun.

    Balanced battles are much more fun, generally.

    MOST games have a designed in team balance mechanism. PS2 does not. Platoon leaders try to find battles where their platoons will outpop the opposing force. Platoon leaders pull their platoons out of unbalanced battles.

    Question: Should PS2 have a designed in balancing mechanism? If not, why? If yes, what would that look like?
  2. DeadlyPeanutt

    Let's try to be thoughtful... no flame wars please.
  3. FateJH

    I find this a curt assessment. The goal of a platoon leader is one that balances contribution, necessity, fun, and experience development. A good PL will realize the importance of fighting a necessary hard battle and enourage his members to utilize the appropriate tactics to make the encounters successful. A good PL will realize the prudence in pulling back on an unnecessary battle, either for purposes of focusing on more important targets or to maintain morale. A really good PL can rally his members to fight a meaningless stalemate with a significant amount of enemy under the justification of taking pressure off allies somewhere else on the continent, and knows when to stop if it appears to be bearing no fruit.
    • Up x 1
  4. Xasapis

    The big problem is that Objective gameplay and Balanced battles are two conflicting aspects of the game. One is ruining the fun for the other.
    • Up x 1
  5. Vamperial

    No. This is an MMO not a round based FPS like BF4 or CS. There is no way to implement a team balance aspect in an MMO. That would be like trying to balance world PvP in any MMORPG. Battlegrounds or arenas are specifically setup this way but because we don't have any of that, team balance wont work and will break the core aspect of the game.

    I have toons across all three factions. I play the toon based on the least pop. Why? More people to kill. I can solo fine by choosing battles that are even or 2v1.

    The way to fix the unevenness of the battles is to add content that is meaningful. Add the resource revemp v2. Add some META. That is the only way to fix it. This is the second thread that wants to turn this game into a round based shooter. That's not what this game is.
    • Up x 1
  6. Xind

    Well, in PS1 the side with less population gained a scaling HP bonus. It actually made being underpopped kind of fun because you became a juggernaut of meat. I don't feel like people would accept that same thing in PS2 because of..."reasons." But there could be some sort of scaling mechanism that gives the underpopped side a little help. Scaling Nanite costs is the first and simplest t hing to implement. If the defenders are overpopped then they have more access to MAX units to attempt to bust through the spawn camp.
    • Up x 2
  7. Vamperial

  8. Reclaimer77

    Well that's your problem right there. REDEPLOY! Go somewhere where they need extra pop, having 500 guys hanging around for capture XP for 3 minutes when the fight is already over is the whole problem.

    The average player is clueless, that's why he needs leadership to tell him where to go and what to do. Not forced game mechanics. Get in a good outfit or something.

    Not just reasons, but GOOD reasons. Why should my gameplay get unbalanced and I get thrown into unfair fights against people, just because my faction has more population? That's just a horrible horrible idea in a long list of BAD Planetside 1 ideas that has no place in this game.
    • Up x 1
  9. Xind

    Well, Reflamer, what would you suggest? Because while it might not of been a great idea, it did allow underpopped sides to have a chance.
  10. CipherNine

    Keep in mind that alternative to "unbalanced gameplay" is staring into enemy spawnroom which is no gameplay at all.
  11. Takara


    Wha...who does that? I don't do that...people who stay in the spawn room are generally morons. Don't do what morons do. When the other team has the spawn room locked down, spawn at the next base and move in and kill all the stupid SOBs camping the spawn doors from afar. The whole point of the spawn room and the capture timer is to give the defending empire a chance to mount a counter offensive from another base. If you don't...you have no one to blame but yourself.

    And no balanced battles generally are not more fun...they are generally stalemates. The fun fights are the ones where one side is out popped but still holding the line....or pushing the line and winning. That said...fun is subjective..meaning different people find different things enjoyable. But FORCING everyone to play by some silly rule of population is not a good idea. People play this game for the freedom it offers. And most Platoon Leaders SHOULD be looking for a place where their platoon is USEFUL....if that means you throw the balance to your empire in terms of pop...that was a good choice if you turn the tide. But you can also bring your platoon to a place where you are out popped but with a little communication you might turn the tide of the fight by using teamwork and showing up all together and going hunting for the opposing team's AMS sundies or removing their air superiority. If your platoon leader does nothing but say..."GO HERE ZERRGGWOOOOO!" Then they are a poor platoon leader...again not the game's fault...but your own.

    So....TL;DR answer? Please don't implement a system in a game to force people to play by your idea...if you don't like being out popped..find another fight. That is the point of having such a large battlefield.
    • Up x 1
  12. Reclaimer77

    Tactics and teamplay?

    Not saying the game doesn't have issues, but when you have bases getting swarmed yet 65% of your population is in a hopeless Biofarm fight or somewhere else they shouldn't be, it's not the games fault.
    • Up x 1
  13. Xind

    Fundamentally, I agree with this. However, just like how people don't look up or run into rooms without checking corners, tactics/strategy really only applies to a minority of the player base. The rest of them continue to directionlessly zerg and there is no real counter to that aside of a zerg of your own...and that sort of gameplay is a stale as being in a 2:1 fight.

    So sadly, we have to solve the problem for the majority...because the minority don't suffer from this issue.
  14. Regpuppy

    I'm of the opinion that any forced balancing, on a per-battle basis, would be too heavy handed and would go against the entire point of making this an open world FPS, rather than a lobby-based auto-matched shooter.

    Quite frankly, there are MANY options available in the mmo market, if I were interested in such a thing.
    • Up x 2
  15. Reclaimer77

    *sniff*

    Smells like Socialism....

    Or Terran Communism :p
    • Up x 1
  16. TheShrapnelKing

    I have an idea.

    Or rather, Heroes & Generals had a good idea.

    Now that game has a lot of issues. I still play it because it's one of exactly two WW2 FPSes that people still play. Regardless, they do have some good ideas. For example:

    Here is how Heroes & Generals balances its teams and keeps things on track:

    You are, as in Planetside, allowed to have multiple characters. BUT: you can only use one at a time. See the game has a win state (capture 9 major cities of Western Europe - the extent of the game map currently, though RUssia is in the works), and the fight towards that winstate is known as a "war". I believe we're on War #147 or something now. You can only use 1 character per war. So you can switch sides if you want, but only once the current war ends and a new one begins - then you can pick a different character.

    So in PS2, this would basically mean a victory condition (lock all continents is the simplest one), and you can only pick one character to use per server until the current war is over. So you really have to think before you pick a char, because you could be stuck with it for a long time. And naturally, alerts that lock a continent for a victory should be done away with.
  17. CipherNine

    What about frontline balance? Would it be a good idea to ensure that number of players fighting against faction X never exceeds the number of players fighting for faction X?
  18. Ronin Oni

    If you "solve" this problem by forcefully enforcing battlesizes, you destroy what this game is at it's core.

    ALL the tools requisite for players to make good battles are there.

    If people CHOOSE to play the game like morons and be bored, then they only have themselves to blame.

    There can be certainly some imrpovements to the system though.

    One of the things they're looking at is maybe scaling up respawn time with higher population. This is in large part due to a performance issue, but has an ingame benefit of adding a small balance mechanic to overpop fights.

    Resource 2.0 will add the "Power" resource to bases, limiting how much nanites can be spent in a region before that faction can no longer pull vehicles/spawn consumables, also limiting zerg effectiveness.

    These are GOOD gameplay mechanics that will add depth without removing choice.
    • Up x 1
  19. Ronin Oni

    You can't do that though.

    I can also just fly a clak 1 way into a fight to get anywhere, no matter what spawns you offer me.
  20. Vamperial

    None. That is not a question for this game. If your being over run you fall back. If your over-running the enemy you split your forces to cover more ground. No to Hex based balance! No to round based game play.