Theory - 90% of the WDS score imbalance is due to warpgate placement.

Right, I don't participate often in Forumside, but I've been taking note of the huge amount of TR flak of late, and decided to chip in. This isn't a 'plznonerfibegu' thread in disguise, merely my thoughts on the WDS after warpgate rotation.

First, before anything else, please check the WDS scores here. (Make sure to select 'Today' and not 'Season') https://players.planetside2.com/#!/wds

At the time of this post, the scores are..
TR:16,059
VS:16,415
NC:14,226

Or in other words: TR - 34% VS - 35% NC - 30%

And now the servers themselves.
NC TR VS

CONNERY 1,681 1,794 2,211
MILLER 1,513 2,409 1,881
CERES 1,543 2,008 2,213
COBALT 2,123 1,693 2,102
MATTHERSON 2,349 1,691 1,944
WATERSON 1,774 2,272 1,753
BRIGGS 1,763 2,007 2,096
WOODMAN 1,480 2,185
2,215


As you can see, it's a far more even split, with Vanu slightly in the lead. Notably, every server's scores are far, far closer, with huge leads being rare with few exceptions. This is what leads me to believe that warpgate placement has a much greater effect on how well a faction will perform, and to a lesser extent, that faction's population, weapons, and level of organization.

"But wait! If things are just now even, doesn't that mean the TR really are OP if they're only beaten when they get the bad warpgate!?"

That is a distinct possibility, random voice in my head. I think we may need to wait a few more days to see where the scores begin to average with the new warpgate placement before we can make a judgement call, but I do feel the current system (and even the proposed scoring system in Malorn's post) will ultimately favor certain warpgate placements.

The easiest example of this is the northern Indar warpgate. Whoever controls that is practically insured half the continent - it's open, easily defensible terrain. I also believe that the previous warpgate arrangement suited the TR even more because of their selection of weapons that can operate in this kind of environment - fractures and anchored prowlers excel in such open environments with little cover, something I've taken advantage of myself.

Again, this is just me throwing a theory out there - the coming days may prove me absolutely wrong, but I wanted to get some sort of discussion rolling about it. As someone who is a loyal TR, it's saddening to see our faction becoming universally hated and deemed the noob/zerg/scrub/loloverpop/noskill faction of the game.

Ok this is totaly random but HOW DO YOU MAKE A FORUM?!!!

They also entirely changed how the scoring system works, to penalize the overpop faction and boost the underpop faction. Warpgates arent the only thing that changed.

You are probably correct and if you ask me this whole thing is just a joke without continent locking and more continents in game to balance that sort of thing out. The game is way to unbalanced atm to have this sort of competition so I just don't bother trying to win.
What they do is this, lets say the WDS is for 30days, let everyone have one WG for 10days then rotate.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the stickied thread is only listing proposed changes, not ones that have gone into effect as of yet.

WDS is an amazingly pathetic attempt to add some kind of meta game. And yea, the least important factor in winning is skill and organization. LOL.

This game is ready for MLG.

It's unfortunately a reality of making a game with Planetside's scale F2P. I'm not going to debate if that was a good move in a business sense, but I feel the game is a more hospitable environment for people who simply want to log on and play for an hour or two and log off - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's currently what defines the meta-game (or lack thereof) in the present build.

It doesn't matter if you have a platoon of the world's greatest FPS players assaulting a base, if enough randoms show up they'll be able to stall the assault indefinitely. And even if they do take the base, the horde has probably moved on to greener pastures, fighting against other randoms and making territorial gains there.

It's under this reality that I feel warpgate placement is having such a huge effect on faction success.

Think those are future improvements to the system, and haven't gone live yet.

NC has the "good" warpgates now, and NC is still 3rd in the competition.

You may have a great point if NC were the ones tied with TR overall now. Instead we just have to keep watching the trends and see what we can gather. So far nothing.

90% of the score? Ridiculous.

Look, gate placement is a factor, but it's behind population and it's probably also behind player decisions (where the mob and zerg outfits decide to attack strongly influences how much territory is held over time.)

Weapon balance is a much smaller factor, but to try to excuse plainly-obvious imbalances is just silly. Empire weapons need to be balanced either way.

90% is too high.

If you can forgive me for bringing up the very thing your post was designed to counter, the striker alone possesses a huge imbalance simply because its an incredible AA option. If you considered its strength vs the other ES launchers in the ground game the potential disparity isn't a problem, but its effect on the air game has caused a huge disparity. One striker volley all but kills an ESF, and the other empires have nothing comparable to that power ATM.
The snowball effect is that the TR can bring in more air which lasts longer, gets more kills (by a large amount, another player posted the stats) and gains more skill. More TR players are willing to learn air because they don't have to deal with this too.
Now continue this further with how a stronger air presence benefits everything from infantry to vehicles.

Thats a pretty strong benefit from one single weapon that deserves more attention then 10%.

If you are getting downed by the current Striker I don't know what to tell you.

Breaking LOS with the shooter forces him to try and start the lock again, and after it is fired he has to maintain that lock or his rockets shoot into the air and detonate harmlessly. No more knee-jerk reactions about, "STIRKER OP PLZ NERF!" when the current version is worlds away from before in terms of effectiveness.

I have another theory:



I call this exhibit, "Miller Primetime", and I created it at 8.55pm Saturday evening.

If this is something people are only realising now, I can't imagine how they got through the first 6 months of the game.

Considering it's only been a day I doubt the current data suffices to make a good comparison, we'll see next week when we have more data to work with and can make better conclusions.

Tough I believe Warp gate placement is a significant factor I highly doubt it's only big one.

They have proposed changing the scoring but I am uncertain if that has been added to week two of the preseason.

I do agree with Malorn on one issue. It is largely cultural. It's hard to find NC on waterson that want to go ghost capping Amerish or Esamir. Few seem concerned or even aware of the WDS at all. Those who do know of it don't seem to bother because of the known off peak TR Zerg.

The striker's effect isn't about the actual damage it can cause as it is very random due to the multiple missiles. The problem lies in that it can paint any vehicle causing the warning to sound. This forces any opponent to address the threat by breaking off or modifying the attack, or potentially suffering significant damage. Combine this with the fact that almost every TR heavy has this weapon at this point due to the broken nature for months rewarding the weapons use, and any NC/VS fighting TR forces encounters the warning tone on a constant basis. They have to either leave the area, or potentially face rapid destruction. Strikers are area denial weapons reducing the ability of NC/VS vehicles to operate which then frees up the TR forces for more effective attacks.

Now, of course NC/VS could maybe achieve a similar level if every heavy would invest in the NS striker equivalent. However the costs and reduced effectiveness of the weapon has generally steered NC/VS away from this strategy. Game mechanics and the long duration of the Striker bugs existing for month has driven this imbalance of area denial extending an advantage that the TR have even though the launcher itself is now more in line with other offerings. TR continue to benefit from the Striker even if now it is far more difficult to use compared to it's performance prior to the fixes.

Yeah it sucks. Amerish and Esamir were unplayable even for me as a TR, there was literally nothing to shoot because they were both sitting at 50%+ TR. At least Indar was an even 33/33/33 split for most of the alert though.

90% is population imbalance the other 90% is the pre-nerf striker...

It's not without merit as theory, and i'm sure that wg placement has definitely some influence on the score. However, NC is now using the TR's old gates (did they all carry over?) and they're behind, with the TR going from 'way more' to 'equal'.

Anyway, two things that are important:
a) it's not clear whether the changes in the scoring system have been implemented yet and
b) weekend data might not be the same as weekday data.

Anyway, the NC vs TR score isn't consistent with the hypothesis ... so, we need to wait for few days to see whether it stays like that. If the new scoring system is in effect, all bets are off because it completely devalues off-peak scores.