Was playing yesterday and the VS was on an unstoppable run. In the 4 or so hours I played they triggered and then won every alert on every continent they showed up on. (VS typically have 28-30% server pop. Leaving at least one continent with under presentation.) They were on fire. I mean it really seemed like they couldn't lose. Then today. I played for about 2 hours or so. TR won 1, then NC, then another TR. VS was just getting dogged at every turn. That's when I started really watching the map. Trying to figure out what was going on and I started piecing it together. Yesterday the VS had a string of luck when it came to WG assignment that only really occurred to me after I saw how poorly they were doing today. Here's what I've since started noticing. The alert "Critical Mass" is based on territory control. Continents have 1 WG that is in a significantly better position than the other 2 in terms of bottle necking and stalemating. Esamir it's the South West WG. Amerish it's the South WG. Indar it's the North WG. Hossin, well, Hossin seems to be the exception or I am just not that familiar with the lattice quirks because no WG really jumps out at me as having an advantage. The faction that starts in one of these advantaged WG's is set up from the get go to have an easier time of gaining control of the rest of the continent. I'm not saying they're guaranteed to win. I've seen excellent teamwork or a faction just ignore one side or the other and lose miserably while holding the "best WG". However it does seem to be the trend, at least on my server, that whoever draws the "best WG" is going to win. I of course have no statistics based on initial starting WG and Alert winnings (I would love to see stats on this to see if what I think is happening is really happening or not) I just have my own observations and intuition telling me this is what is happening. Any thoughts or ideas on the matter? Even if a best WG facilitates a win. WG assignment is random (i think) so it's not like it favors any one faction. It just means you have a good idea of who's continent/alert it is to lose.
Yup, Indar is a great example. When they had fixed positions, Apparently NC had the warpgate that you literally could lock in easily. Making them stuck there for near eternity. And the warpgates seem to cycle in present time. It's just really annoying at times.
Yeah I noticed this a long time ago but from the other angle: the warpgates that are almost guaranteed losses. Esamir is the easiest example. The northwest warpgate is the worst place to be. 2 biolabs to punch through, and the bases close to their warpgate are easier to take than the bases close to the other two who both have multi-pointbases and such to catch anyone Who pushes through the warpgate. Indar Southwest warpgate was a true nightmare. Besides the TR and VS having even more superior tanks (the Saron anti-tank sniper that also functioned as anti-infantry and the Prowler's anchor mode and general OPness were far worse problems then), besides that there was a string of bases on the south ridge above Arroyo Torre Station the VS could easily capture and use to cap the bases below (adjacency system at work) while it was a lot harder for NC to get the vehicles and troops necessary for a counter offensive up to them. Also in the first year of playing, I saw Zurvan AMP maybe twice because the game was the worst balanced at the time. Comparatively today its a wonderously balanced game. But there still is a lot to be done. Warpgate positions and some base redesigns for weak warpgates and too strong warpgates would be a place to continue.
I think the factions take turns. At release (or was it BETA???) the warpgates never rotated, so NC always had the southeast warpgate on Indar, the canyons. Then they made it so the warpgates rotated, clockwise i believe. But of course this had the problem that we were always fighting the same empire on the same flank. So then they made it as it is now, they rotate somehow on a turn basis, if NC and TR have had the north warpgate the last 2 turns, VS get it for example. Id much rather a global lattice with sanctuaries and no warpgate strongholds. That way they could have 4 (or even more) warpgates on each continent and allow empires to do flanking games on a global scale, reducing the advantages of certain warpgates. But alas, the players cant handle that sort of thing, most of them cant even see whats happening a hex away, let alone on another continent. Plus theres nowhere near enough continents. Maybe in ps3 (LOL....ye right...)
The bigger problem isn't the players, but how the game handles things on a larger scale. There's little to no situational awareness of what's going on. Even if you are on one end of the base, you can have practically zero information about what is happening on the other end unless you physically go there and check. With this complete lack of tools to get information even in a fight you are physically standing in, there's little incentive for players to try and figure out the battlefield around them. Even worse is that simply dumping players somewhere and out-zerging the opponent is the most viable strategy, and that actual teamwork requires such a high level of communication and skill to get something out of it that practically no one can pull it off. So you can't blame the players for something that the game simply doesn't really promote or reward. There's no large-scale tactical thinking if the small-scale tactics are non-existant. I tried to remedy this with relatively simple idea's like this one: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps...-the-map-and-situational-awareness-sa.245785/ But the people who are against this are often also the people who scream for teamwork and combined arms, but when an idea that gives them the exact tools to do that without the need for adding individual features is offered they suddenly think it's a problem... If more effort was spend at increasing the situational awareness and promotes+rewards teamwork than having a grander scale battle could easily work out. With the right tools and motivation added the playerbase would easily stand up to your standards. But you can't expect a player regardless of what other games he plays to suddenly start using intricate tactics and strategy in a game that never rewarded or encouraged it just because the game could work on a grander scale.
Disagree, the game gives a whole wealth of information, more than anyone really needs. I stongly believe that if you want to get detailed info on whats happening in an area, you need some1 to go there and tell you. Id defo enjoy more info on the map if that info relied on some sort of equipment that could be placed, or permanent stuff that can be hacked, by each empire. A comms tower that relays info about the hex for example. The PS1 towers provided the tactical overlay info to the map, we get this for free in ps2 with no requirements other than enabling it on the map. TBH i think the players are absolutely to blame for zerging, just not the attackers, theyre playing the game as intended as you rightly pointed out, and using a large attack force is planetside, so i dont even believe in calling people a zerg. Its the defenders who are to blame imo, (ignoring obvious continent pop imbalances) if you dont bring enough people to defend i believe thats your problem, and a failure of command to properly assess the weaknesses. Sometimes of course your being attacked by both factions, but thats just tough luck and theres nothing you can do about it. I dont think the map needs any more information on it, but perhaps more ability to speak to other players, a simple addition would be anyone who has certed it can type in and see /leader chat, maybe a separate chat tab for it. OR at least anyone can send a sit-rep to the leader channel. I think having squad leaders be the only people who can use command / leader chat was a moronic move, squad leaders are in the action doing tactics, not deciding on the global stratergy. This is why so many zergs go incontested, because the squad leaders get busy doing their thing and dont notice. Too many times i notice a zerg moving hard, or a platoon attempting to cut us off and i cant tell anyone because im not the squad leader.....i should at least be able to tell the leaders with a sit-rep into the leader chat. Sorry for wall, really dont like writing this much, but its difficult to explain my thoughts.
The whole "need someone to go there to tell you" doesn't sound like any workable idea. You want to first tell someone "drop what you are doing and go there", than when he gets there he needs to use voice comms, which is practically one of the worst methods of communications for any large-scale game, to tell you what's going on there, before you can react to it? Frankly you are better off with the current map. Just look at it like this: A game like PUBG has only two ways to tell someone in your team where the opposition is. You either open your map and dump a marker, which isn't all that accurate most of the time, or you try to use voice comms to tell someone where the opposition is. If you've ever played it, even with a tight team it can be very hard to get the information across properly, both because people don't spot the opponent immediately even when they do look in the right direction and because players are in different positions while there's a lot of similar environment. Saying "near the tree with the stone" can often mean multiple trees and multiple stones for example, and depth can be a factor too causing player 1 to look near trees too close and player 2 near trees too far away. Then you have PS2. PS2 is a large-scale game, with tons of players who each have information about the battlefield. Voice comms or even map markers won't work as it takes too much time to sift through the information and get the information that has any bearing on you, assuming that the information isn't out of date by the time you get it. PS2 has one of the most elegant solutions to this problem: Q-spotting. You simply press Q when you are hovering over an enemy, and that enemy is now visible on the radar and gets a marker above his head for players to see and identify. This allows anyone who needs the information to find it immediately when he needs it and it's specific for each area you look at. The timing mechanism also removes any old data (besides the fact that players remain spotted even if they go out of vision. Would be great if they only remained spotted as long as they remain in view of an ally and their blip greys out when they leave vision and is replaced should they enter vision within the spotted time period). But PS2's system only works for the small-scale. If you are on one end of a base you can often not even see what's happening on the other end. If you have to rely on voicecomms or literally someone who is willing to listen to you and break off whatever he's doing just to go and look and give you information then it's going to be a very poor game indeed. Not only would the leaders be the only one's who get listened too (assuming they get listened to at all), the "footsoldiers" would all be without this information or get completely overwhelmed by the constant barrage of information that for the most part won't even have anything to do with the tasks they are performing. So there's a tank standing outside near the second Sunderer? That information isn't of any use for someone who is using the first Sunderer an is currently fending off enemy advances near the point. "ignoring obvious continent pop imbalances"? Stalkish, you have to realize that during even pop the zerging is definitely to blame on the attackers. During even pop, all battles should be about equal. If the attackers are Zerging somewhere, then there's also a base that is underpopped because they are Zerging, meaning the underpopped defenders who aren't to blame for the Zerg are now being punished because their brethren don't spread the playerbase properly, and leaving the base completely undefended is an even worse problem. But for some reason you want to blame those same defenders for the fact that their allies leave them to it? Then there's the fact that you only blame defenders. Just a small comparison: If defenders start to leave because they are outnumbered, it's the defenders fault. If the attackers start to leave because they aren't able to cap a base, then those attackers become the defenders as they are pushed back and suddenly it's those same defenders fault that their allies went away? Those same allies that are now Zerging somewhere else after leaving their brethren to their fate and those Zerglings are somehow to be praised for their tactical genius? Then your idea that Zerging doesn't exist. The whole point of Zerging, both in the RTS and in games in general, is that you need as little skill as possible to win. Why bother building a skillset and learning how to use each unit, if you can just build hundreds of small weak units and beat your enemy? Or in PS2's case, why bother with trying to command and strategise if you can just throw more bodies at it to win? Zerging is done so you don't need a command structure, so you don't need a lot of skill. So that the pressure of all the factors from the spawnrate to the amount of health you need to wear down to win each battle will win you the battle rather than any commands and skill. And that's the whole problem with PS2's playerbase: There's little to no reward for trying to use teamwork and skill compared to just throwing more bodies against it. Just saying "now everyone use Lancers!" and people obeying is more powerful than a mixed group of tactics and strategies working in cohesion because of the speed it can be executed and the fact that simply using more people for it beats out the tactical groups. That would be a pretty useless feature. The map needs more information, currently it's almost barren of information despite the amount of crap it contains. Voicecomms and leaderchat constists for more than 90% of information that doesn't really matter to the average player on the ground. What you need is a way that everyone can find a role to play organically. If you die, you want to be able to look at the map and say "I want to spawn there and as this because ....", rather than "I'm going to use quick-spawn because unless I ask someone somewhere else and have them describe the situation for me I won't know what's going on. Oh and I would need to know that information from several people to truly know what's going on or else I might react to something while I am more useful somewhere else". The more moronic move is to think that teamplay is based on leaders, rather than the people who follow. Good teamplay happens because everyone can fulfill the right job just by seeing what's happening. The military does this by specializing everyone, but in PS2 everyone is a potential specialist at everything so they would need to know just about everything to know what a good place for them is. You won't be hearing a commander shout at individual people "go fix that tank!", commanders give large-scale orders and those are executed because the people who follow know what to do and know what their surrounding people are doing. The commanders give direction, the people who follow translate that direction to a set of actions they want and can do. But without the proper information (where the tank is that needs repairing and if it's safe to repair the tank at that location), all you get is a direction from the commanders and no way to really know what a good set of actions is to execute. At that point you run into PS2's commanding wall: Commanders need to give orders to each individual player. The easiest way to do this is to Zerg: Everyone in a Galaxy, everyone drop on the point. Everyone hold the point. Everyone grab a tank. Etc. General unsophisticated orders with little to no strategy outside of volume wins. That wasn't a wall.
Umm not to sound too condescending but do you even play the same game I do? Minimap shows an insane amount of information and can be zoomed way out to reveal hundreds of meters worth of information. Spotting reveals the exact location of anything I can physically see to EVERYONE within range of the minimap. No conveying information. Just Q spot and there it is. Deployables, vehicles, infantry. Then there's also the automatic information, when a gen gets hacked or a point gets stepped on it begins flashing. Telling you hey some ones messing with the base. Then there's Enemy population. Which can be pretty accurate if you spend a second comparing ratios. If I'm the only guy at the base and the 1-12 pie is 50/50 there's only 1 enemy. If it's 90% enemy there's closer to 10 enemies. Finally, this game has map hacks. I equip recon darts, fire them off at anything within line of sight - I get 100m diameter circles where anyone moving through that area there exact location shows up. There's no limit to how many you can use with an ammo pack or resupplying at a terminal. Finally there's a large number of Scout Radar vehicles (my favorite is the flash) that can cover a large amount of area in very little time. Honestly how much more info could you need without every enemy being permanently spotted? The recon tools in this game are pretty effing powerful. Voice Leader chat is pretty good in itself too. My outfit uses it to tell other commanders where we're targeting and if we need reinforcements. Very few if any commanders bother with /orders but it is a way to highlight what you need to say to the entire factionn
There's a ton of information on the map, but it is too rough. Having to calculate the exact numbers you are fighting based on a pie-chart and an estimation of players from both teams anywhere from 1-12 to 48-96+ is annoying at best, and time consuming at worst. If you want to get an overall battlefield idea from that, you have to check every single area you think is important and check the differences. But it still doesn't really tell you how the fight is going. You can use the hotspot indicators to get a sketch of a sketch idea of where the enemy is located and where possible spawnpoints are, but you can't use the information available to the players there unless you go there or literally ask them. The Q-spotting system works and does basically what I want to see more globally (although less exact), but Q-spotting only works locally. The "map hacks" also only work locally. So again for a larger strategy perspective these systems are inadequate. You can't react to a spotted tank column rolling towards your base because it is neither in range of your minimap nor is it signaled in that population pie chart that these guys are tanks and there aren't any hotspots either. But they were spotted, someone has that information, but that information can't be reacted to because everyone is out of range. At best you can hope that the spotter is in a squad/platoon, and that he tells his squad/platoon despite there being up to 47 other people who could be trying to relay information, which again adds to the pile of information that gets thrown at the players while most of that information is going to be useless for them. Perhaps you should just click that link I send and look for yourself what I had in mind. Because I'm not asking for permanently spotted enemies or anything.
I definitely agree, the wargates are set up so a faction has the advantage, esamir is the easiest example with the one tech plant. On Indar the crown, quartz-indar ex and howling pass are bases that just will not be lost easily and usually cause huge stalemates. We need to remove population control queues and get a dynamic map the starts off the continent in a different, more fair way. One faction could even start off with island bases deep into enemy territory. Even if no one gal drops to defend them, it still keeps factions on their toes for 4 minutes. This would work the most on factions with the most pop. (Scatter some unliked enemy bases in their territory to slow down the zerg a bit)
Population control: Preventing one side having nearly 100% of the server's population. Ques sending people to VR: Different matter. Unless said faction can spawn in said bases, those are just easily capped by 1 person, while the zerg ignores them entirely. Since they pose literally no threat - so no one would care. Or the population shifts, said bases are now owned by the new Overpop: Said faction now has massive advantage. After all, those bases don't actually balance population. Nor would it work, when the population of one side is allowed to account for more than double the population of the other two. Which would defeat any attempt to balance out power, with additional bases, spreading or the like, as it's an endless supply of people.
