Testing Request - Warpgate Rotations

Discussion in 'Test Server: Announcements' started by Luperza, Jan 28, 2014.

  1. Luperza Community Manager

    Test Request:
    Please play as you normally would and report any bugs or feedback you have regarding the Warpgate Rotation Changes in this thread! Thank you!

    Warpgate Roation Test Settings:
    On Wednesday, January 29th, 2014, warpgates will change faction ownership every 30 minutes from 8:00 AM PT to 7:00 PM PT.

    What we feel our end goal will be: (We would love your feedback on the below, so feel free to speak up.)
    • Warpgates automatically change faction ownership every 2 weeks normally
    • Warpgates automatically change faction ownership every 1 week during WDS seasons
    • Weeks will start on Friday morning at 12:00 AM PT
    Reason for change:
    We wanted to create a system that automatically rotates warpgates and allows them to be configured in the most balanced way possible. After looking through countless amounts of data, we've found several configurations that will allow players to have more equitable advantages and disadvantages based on each warpgate's location.

    Thanks in advance Auraxians! :)

    -------

    • Up x 3
  2. VSDerp

    hey maggie can you talk to somebody about instant action? it totally blows. i keep getting dropped into enemy bases with no friendlies around and even sometimes i can't even cap the point at the base i was dropped on since the base is locked.
    • Up x 15
  3. HadesR


    Seems a reasonable length of time for the standard rotation and will be fair for everyone .. Which is what most of us want isn't it ?
    • Up x 1
  4. S3X1357

    Just make the rotation happens on an off-day like Wednesday at 3:30 in the morning and you're golden.
    • Up x 5
  5. ScrapyardBob

    I still think rotations should be weekly normally, and then every 24h or 48h during a WDS -- completely random configurations per continent and per server. Let the RNG have its way with the world.

    Once continental lattice comes into play, every 2-3 weeks would be okay.
  6. FLHuk

    So, if I get this right, I'm fighting at some road block for hours I could in theory be fighting in the wrong direction for at least a proportion of it!?

    This should be tried in Football, at least it'd be hilarious!
    • Up x 5
  7. Xebov

    I have been to a Warpgate at the Testserver for the rotation that occured 2 minutes ago. The rotation works fine. I have only 2 notes to make. I recieved the message "The Warpgates have rotated" 11 times and the message in the chatbox should get another color, white is not the right color for it.
    • Up x 1
  8. shaql

    actually, the warpgates change ownership 12 times. each. one message per ownership change of the 9 territories on a given continent (each WG is 3 territories), so that's ok.
    there is no order in which the factions take ownership of the gates, and in some rotations, (checked only on Esamir so far), Esamir Eastern Warpgate was omitted. in the end, they rotated back to the state they were in...

    other than that weird 'feature', all seems to be OK from my point of view... but I'll try to break it again and again :p

    checked on amerish: 11 ownership changes, the one omitted a few times being Amerish Southern Warpgate; this time the final ownerships were different from the starting ones

    if you need more details, Maggie, feel free to PM me :p (though server logs would be more informative, I guess.)
  9. St0mpy

    Kinda sucks losing your vehicle if you dont understand whats going on, but my main question is when we are killed by timeout in a warpgate swap will it go against their stats as a death or will it be treated as a forced deploy not giving us an extra D on the scoreboard?
  10. doombro

    Whenever the rotations happen, the map becomes a complete mess.

    Territory control as a whole should probably be rotated as well.
  11. orbital

    today under the 30 minute scheme it may seem crazy but under a 2 week rotation leaving the territories the same is part of the fun.
    • Up x 1
  12. jweathers Systems/UI Design Lead

    I wanted to clear up a few points:

    The "The Warpgates have rotated" spam (in the chatbox and broadcasts) is not intended and will be resolved soon. You should only be seeing one message.

    Currently, a death caused by a warpgate rotation will be recognized as a statistical death. However, the server will broadcast warpgate rotation warnings periodically starting 5 minutes before a rotation, which should be ample time to leave the area.

    This implementation of automated warpgate rotation is by no means final, but we'd like to see how it plays out in a live environment. We fully plan to monitor and re-evaluate the system as players adapt to it. We will modify the system as necessary. Please post any feedback you have
    • Up x 5
  13. HadesR


    Since the rotations will be predictable and announced, would it make sense or even be feasible to set territories adjacent to the WG's to neutral per rotation.
    It might not be needed but knowing my fellow gamer's I'm trying to think ahead to potential issues :p

    Or are all territories already set to neutral at rotation ? ( never been online during one to notice )
    • Up x 1
  14. DeadliestMoon

    Well if the territories just outside the warpgate don't go neutral then people will just sit in those territories, wait for the warpgates to rotate, then just camp their enemies coming out.
    • Up x 3
  15. daniel696

    I think that in the middle of a great battle, in a great alert, this rotations can destroy everything for everyone, affects everyone, the territory control is still weird, when the WG rotate the owned territory should rotate too, for example if you have the south bases when the WG rotate you should have the north bases and not start all over again and being camped by the unconnected enemies bases around your new WG.
    For me this WG rotation still need some work in the table and in the paper.
    • Up x 1
  16. HadesR


    Yeah it's why I mentioned it .. Atm rotation's only happen during down time so any problems are lessened by a great deal .. But when people know that every 2nd Friday at X o'clock the gates will rotate and they will remain in game .. We all know what certain sections of the player base will do..
  17. ScrapyardBob

    Well, if it's an automated rotation -- then it will need to happen at the lowest time of that server's population. Which is probably 4-5am for east coast USA servers, probably Tue-Thur morning. I wouldn't want them to rotate it in the middle of an alert or at prime-time.

    Warp gates rotating in the middle of the night won't affect much. The night-owls who happen to be online when it rotates will just ghost-cap it back to some semblance of normal. It will be just like what happens when they rotate the warp gates during a patch day downtime, except that they won't have to take the server down to do it.
  18. Shrubbo

    I don't post often but this really pisses me off. The Warp Gate rotation and the use of an inventory station to get to another continent is a bloody silly stop gap situation that will only be made worse with automatic rotations. Talk about destroying any feeling of immersion. It's bad enough now... and now you guys are considering flipping the damn things while we are playing??? wtf please no!

    I want to drive up to the thing and drive out on another continent like it is meant to be instead of Indar Indar Indar and I want to be able to fight it out for a gate I like for gods sake. Yes there was some boring crap in PS1 but training in VR rooms by walking into them, catching the HART or organizing your troops and rolling out through a Warp Gate from "Sanc" was not one of them. They were awesome!!!! They made the game really amazing, they made it feel like a real sci-fi world. As it stands now you might as well be joining another server. Hell you are. That's exactly what it feels like and exactly what is happening. It doesn't feel connected at all. It is just plain crap.

    The first time I played PS1 I was gobsmacked in Sanctuary. Sure it took a little while to work things out but that was OK because it was awesome, you could explore and not get ganked. Stuff going on everywhere, it was alive. Now what do we have?.... rotating Warp Gates... Not win. Frustratingly horrible. You still have the same stuff to work out now, less in fact... but it is just slapped together. It makes no sense, it isn't obvious, it isn't emmersive.

    I love this game, it's the only FPS I play to be honest but this rotation stuff is just bloody rubbish. Using a station was fine in beta... but we are not in beta any more. It's been well over a year and we are still doing this stuff. Please you are testing every other silly idea... why don't you guys look at testing a Sanctuary and see how that goes? It can't be worse then this... it might just be awesome?
    • Up x 1
  19. Erilis

    I think the warpgate rotation is great. Keep up the good work SOE. ;)
  20. Tar

    How about you only switch 2 WGs every time, instead of rotating all. That would actually create some combinations not seen so far, and would be less destabilizing.
    • Up x 2