WDS Preseason and Upcoming Changes

Yes. Exactly.

It's a good start, but it's going to take a lot more than this to fix the problem. As you mentioned, it has become cultural and now structural and self-fulfilling (for example, on Matthersonthose that made new VS chars have them at such high levels now, they are unlikely to shift to a different faction. There will be a shift on the margins probably, but the problem will persist). The window to fix the problem with the sort of solutions you're proposing came and went. I'm glad it's finally getting some attention, though.

No, I'm not joking whatsoever. Warpgate rotation usually comes with each GU, right?

Example;
GU10: June 5, 2013
GU11: June 20, 2013
GU12: July 10, 2013
GU13: July 24, 2013
GU14: August 12, 2013
(Information from;http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/ps/Patches)

It's now the 25th of September. It's been over 6 weeks since last GU, when it is usually around 2-3 weeks between them, and there is still no sign of GU15.[/quote]

WG rotation comes in when ever sony feels like changing them up. if u had been paying attention these past weeks u would know that they have stopped ALL content updates and are instead focusing all there efforts optimizing this game.

You know, I remember reading that part but somehow managed to forget about it by the time I made my post. Entirely my bad.

First of all it's great to see that improvements are coming for what could be a very fun series of events and a lot of this stuff sounds a lot more promising than the original concept. Certainly server specific victory conditions would be a big improvement in making people more engaged with this idea (and I play mainly on Miller!).

Two things that aren't mentioned on this list that I would like to see happen are for the start of these events to be more noticeable and for there to be some more in game interaction and information.

For example:

- At the start of each event all territory goes neutral leading to an epic rush by all the Empires out onto the map. This creates some strategic choices for all Empires to consider and makes the start more of an event in itself. Who doesn't like seeing an entire Empire mobilising to conquer the world?
- Event start timing should be done based on server prime time (i.e 7-8pm local) not on US time (i.e 1am for Europe and god knows what for Australia)
- The in game announcement system should be used to announce the start of the event and also to give out score updates once or twice a day. Ultimately it would be good to build a score update system into the games UI.

More ideas from the community on things you'd like to see or UI you believe would be helpful is a useful feedback for us!

More UI integration in-game is definitely something that would improve the event and help everyone get more involved. The lack of it is certainly holding back some of the event's potential. Unfortunately we don't have the resources during the optimization push to do more than is already planned (TAB support and regional tooltips showing the scores). More feedback from all of you on that front would be great for future planning.

What sort of information about the event would be useful to have in-game and in what ways do you think it would be best exposed?

Ok, if we are going to get to MLG then there has to be a way to track performance and rank the outfits, factions and the participation. This looks like a very good start to hammering out the details to that system. I love that we are getting closer to that end result. The proposed changes are good. I think that the biggest thing possible is to provide transparency to the scoring model and allow those of us that want to participate in WDS to figure out how we can best participate and make a difference.

Drawback: This is an aggressive implementation. The whole WDS concept. It is providing empirical data to the masses that the perception is that the TR are OP. Are they? Well, on Connery the VS are kicking it, they are keeping pace with the TR and winning their fair share of days... the only server this is happening on though ... us as the NC have actually won a day of the WDS thanks to the 400 pt head start the night crew gave us, and had a 400 pt head start today but just couldn't hold on ...

The evidence is that on Ceres is where the very best battles are going on and if you want fun even fights then that is where you should go. Otherwise, the TR are just steam rolling the servers, the data confirms this. But, if the other factions can compete on these 2 servers then it's not the weapons (although i hate a ZOE Max, the TR mid range max,the TR Vulcan, TR Striker) At least on Ceres they have figured out how to overcome the obstacles and win. Props to Ceres....

So, while the TR can't be too OP because on other servers they have figured out how to overcome the issues. There has to be something to it since on most of the other servers it just looks unfair. However, how to compensate and balance across ALL of the servers? That is the golden question? Good luck finding the answer.

Exp and Certs is the commodity that can control this for the most part.

There's some excellent points in there, but i'd like to comment on the quoted part. The formula suggests that absolute numbers will be used. This is very important here, as modulating point gain during prime is arguably only a secondary function of this. The primary function is to limit point gain on empty continents, i.e., during off-peak hours or on underpopulated servers.

You're right on the actual mechanics though. 120 TR/120 NC/80 VS would mean an 18% modifier for all empires. However, two factions fighting on amerish with the third not having a presence is not really what the issue is. What is problematic (and what happens more often) are situations like 200 TR vs 120 NC vs 80 VS. In that case. TR would get an 18% modifier, and VS/NC would get a 30% modifier (which would increase further if tr brings more people on the continent). I think this is going to work well.

This is our thinking as well. The max is used to keep it simple and to also not disproportionately value 3-way fights over a good 2-way fight. In the case where you have a solid 2-way fight you can still get good value out of it, because primarily on this continent the two higher pop empires are going to be fighting each other. While there there might be some cases where it isn't balanced for one faction but is for the other two, that underpop faction is still getting a lot of bang for their buck on that continent.

Thinking further down the road, two-way fights are going to be a lot more common with the continental lattice, especially since the battle islands will all have 2-gates on them. PS1 also had a great deal of 2-way fights with its continental lattice, so this does take into account how it will play into that system. This keeps those fights just as proportionately valuable as 3-way fights and doesn't force players to seek out 3-way fights to gain the most points.

The problem area is when one faction is clearly dominant over the other two. If two factions are competitive then generally things aren't too bad, so the 2-way scenario as described above doesn't seem like it is problematic. We will of course watch for it and see if there are any issues and adjust accordingly.

I had to leave and couldn't get back in to edit the post.

All in All I think WDS has been a GREAT addition to the game. I'm surprised and happy to see the quick response by SOE to account for some of the obvious issues. Props...

While I think it shows the TR with a slight advantage I think across the servers... It gives me encouragement that other factions are being successful against them on other servers which provides the determination to figure out how to succeed on our server.

Again, great addition to the game...

A few ideas for UI information additions/improvements:

- When you capture or defend a base (or win an alert when thats in) the UI displays a message telling you how many points you have added to your Empires WDS total (maybe display it in the chat tab). This keeps the event fresh in peoples minds. This is actually a more general problem with alerts and continent captures as well imo in that the display of information is not done as well as it should be (half the time I'm not sure how much XP I received when an alert ends or even when a continent flips ownership as their is no immediate obvious feedback or continuous information for these things).
- Introduce a daily score tally alongside an overall one. This way players can look at how their Empire performed and be motivated to get better scores each day. By starting at zero each day you can also create a bit of competition between Empires on a daily basis. Which leads on to...
- Empire personal daily bests: If an Empire gets a personal daily best in territory capture during an event they get some sort of feedback congratulating them. You should even add a small % exp bonus reward to the faction for 24 hours if they do. The amount of exp could be determined by the amount they exceed their personal best giving an Empire something to shoot for even after they hit their PB. This would work as lets say the VS/TR/NC do awful on the first day but by beating their total on the next day they get a reward for it which keeps them motivated to continue to participate rather than just giving up on the entire week as can happen now.
- Medals: Add WDS territory capture medals similar to the way weapon medals work.
- Map integration: Add a map filter option that displays to you how many points you get for capturing each type of territory allowing outfit and platoon leaders to play for the important territories and this also allows for long held territories to be identified which may motivate Empires to launch invasions of "dead" continents. Top Dog bonuses could be displayed here to show how many extra points you are getting for attacking them. Weekly challenge hexes could flash faintly to draw attention to them. Maybe holding your mouse cursor over them could open a small tab explaining the weekly challenge conditions although that could be handled better elsewhere such as just a bit of text in the vacant space to the side of the map.

Wonderful, maybe the hurf blurf about TR will stop.

NOPE.

Actually this raises a question: are these changes being done to evaluate the potential of introducing these changes to the XP System as a way to balance out pop? That has been widely speculated, but never really confirmed. Can you comment?

These changes are being done to make the WDS a fair and competitive event. There's no other reason.

However, looking forward it does make sense to unify rewards such that the activities which award good WDS scoring also award good XP. It's similar to how going after CEP in PS1 required tough base caps and resulted in more BEP for your squad. They weren't the same metric but had an intersection.

Do you have ideas on how these two metric types can synergize to create more fights and better balance? I think that's the ultimate goal with the system - a better PlanetSide 2 experience for all types of players and something to drive more long-term engagement and community.

And we still need to limit faction hopping with chars in same server. I say it even when I have 2 chars myself on Miller.

May ask what makes you so certain that two higher populated factions fight each other primarily? Even if it's true, is it enough that the two higher populated factions fight each other with more numbers than they fight the underdog? Is even a enemy-population-proportionate distribution of troops ok? Remember that these numbers are not given out to the players, nor is there any sort of enforcement in place.

Attacking the higher populated enemy is rewarded with more points (under the proposed new scoring system), but attacking the lower populated faction is rewarded with keeping your conquests longer and achieving easier victories. Players do not make their decisions with 100% importance placed on the WDS, so there are many more things to consider.

In a two faction fight, such as on battle islands, having the factions own population involved in the formula (like I suggested before) would not produce bad results either. Then again, if the population numbers are close enough to even where both factions have a realistic chance of victory, the difference in the experience bonus is negligible too, and when population numbers aren't even enough, you're simply giving more score for something that can't be done.

With a continental lattice and continent locking in place, the top dog can actually cause a situation where the underdogs have just two continents to fight on: Their home continent, where they fight the top dog. And the battle island between the underdogs (although the top dog can cut this off from both as well), which is the only scenario where the two underdogs are actually forced to fight the top dog, something the Runaway Empire and Bounty bonuses are intended to handle.

I fear you're assuming players will care about WDS enough (if only they know about it, hence all the UI addition suggestions you're looking for) that they change their playstyle a lot. I'm a lot more skeptical about this.

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Would you take quadruple score for something with a 5% chance of success or half score for something with a 95% chance of success?
I don't know the total score modifier values that would actually end up in place between topdog and underdog you have in mind, but maybe this question can show the way of thinking I have?

We decided not to put the difficulty modifier on alerts for a few reasons:
1) It's easy to grief/deny the winning team by leaving a continent at the end of the alert and denying them the points.
quoted from Malorn

In order to counter this problem calculate the difficulty based on the average population levels during the Alert time period. That way people leaving at the end would not mess with the score.
It would be nice if xp was generated in a similar way but I guess it is one step at a time.

yeah I was able to quote. ( last comment I was unable to do so ( no idea why))

Build the score ratings into the map as a visible option that can be toggled off. The other is to when we are given the xp for taking a base display the empire points for the capture.
Even though it is usually a collective effort in alerts and base captures displaying earned empire points this way could give players a sense of ownership with regard these points.
This and put a points earned from captures participated and earned from ownership during playing time.
Set it up like the cert's number so you can see a daily contribution and set up stats for weekly and event long. - when/ if you do this make sure you make available how it is calculated.

I agree with the sentiment that a negative feedback mechanism only degrades the alerts for the arguments have you presented. Could we perhaps see a positive feedback mechanism implemented for the alerts, similar to the runaway empire mechanism for the WDS?

This way, the underpopulated factions are motivated to join an alert and the XP reward will be balanced as well.

Please take Amerish alerts out of the rotation, on low pop late night hours.

I was happy to offer the 50th thumbs up to the OP.

Someone will always whine about something. Is this event optimal in terms of player retention and improvements, even optimization? Hahano, ofc not. But it's something, and it's a decent competition while the changes to how the game runs is pushed through.

Can you not at least be happy that the event itself is becomming optimized for more fair scoring? People have been asking for this since before the event started, and now we have a more fair and even playing field.

TLR - shut your whiny trap, this is FAR BETTER than nothing, having the event go on in the manner it did before. As for me, I will be enjoying fighting on Ceres even more now with a more rabid NC and VS breathing down my neck, for the WDS I can't ask for more than that, while we wait for an ever improving game - fairness, and eager foes. Life can be so great.