WDS Preseason and Upcoming Changes

To be honest, I am highly cynical of the proposed changes surrounding capping, population balance, scoring etc. Those factions which are outmatched in population and balance (at the moment the accord is TR>>VS>NC and I tend to agree somewhat) will get more scoring/xp/certs to spend on 'stuff' (swag lol) that they will only get beaten in anyway by the overpop faction? How does this fix the issue? Incentive is surely a fancy way of saying "we can only assume that people play the overpop/unbalanced faction for score/xp/certs rather than the actual fun of playing on the winning side massacring the other factions"?

You also talk about 'lucrative holds' with more 'value' that are 'behind enemy lines' under depth/variety, but seemingly want to continue to follow the path of score/cert grind based around a broken resource system caged in the current lattice (aka follow the road for the next base geographical design)? I think I speak for quite a few of us when I say PS2 really needs a strong focus on real depth. In PS1 everybody had a role and had to unlock specialist certifications at certain ranks so you could access better gear (up to a point), in PS2 you can spawn a vehicle anywhere, you can take out vehicles which cost 'resources' accumulated over time for free with free rockets from your free HA, you can press a button and 'drop in' to a fight... these things fundamentally undermine the idea of a true 'combined arms' game.

TL;DR: I honestly do not care one bit about 'scoring', XP or certs. I play for the fun. I think most people do. People will continue to stay with the overpop/unbalanced faction because it's more fun to win as a poor man than it is to lose whilst getting 'rewarded' for it. I loved that in PS1 that what you did with your faction at some point felt like it meant something and had an impact on how the others had to respond. PS2 is a constant back and fourth zerg with little incentive to keep you 'engaged' unless it's for a quick thrill. This is why outfits to me are pointless and why I wouldn't pay for membership.

It's a tough issue. On the one hand you don't want to limit someone's ability to play an empire, but on the other you want to encourage a balanced population to keep everyone engaged and interested. I definitely think more XP consequences related to population is a no-brainer, but there have to be some other levers you can pull to politely push the playerbase to play the more underpopped faction.

It's tough to do with XP alone. I think recommending new players an empire to pick based on recent population trends was a good idea, but maybe sweeten it with giving them a free additional weapon, additional starting certs, or maybe even 500 SC they can claim once they hit BR6 or something? Just some ideas.

You all showed a lot of creativity and obviously a lot of thought went into balancing things out for WDS. You're all smart capable people and I know you have some ideas on population balance, but time is of the essence.

Thanks for this, should make the WDS fun and competitive for all sides.

Is there a compelling reason that a grossly overpopulated empire on a continent can't get a negative experience modifier? It's a soft enough stick that it shouldn't drive players away. The carrots just ain't gettin the job done.

lulz...

Firstly, let me say it's awesome that SOE is giving us details about planned gameplay features ahead of time (equations are always welcome) - with so many eyes on it there's a better chance issues will be found before implementation.

Per continent difficulty modifier

• This can be exploited by simply leaving a continent where a faction has been beaten to one where it has dominance. Does territorial dominance exist if no enemy sees it?

• • Possible Impacts
    • Discourages taking back capped continents - why risk effectively bringing another faction's territory control in to existence for a period, if the attempt to wrest control fails?
    • Strategically conservative gameplay exists? - If a faction has a small but substantial lead towards the end of the competition, it will encourage them to play conservatively.
    • Doesn't Indar usually become deadlocked due to high pop? Pop imbalance correction might give very even scoring.. It might become the refuge of conservative gameplay. Risk that if skilled platoons leave it might break the deadlock. Might make Indarside worse.
    • Other features like bounties counteract this, so it might not be as big an issue.

Suggestion
Unless I've missed something - let me know if I have - it's better to use the global server population and global server cap for the difficulty modifier instead of the per continent population and per continent cap.

• • If it's desired that factions focus on one continent during very low pop times, then the rules may need to change for that period.

• This will reward coordination and strategy, and get factions working together instead of playing farming the zerg on Indar to grind certs.
• Specifically this should encourage cooperation and communication with players who aren't affiliated with outfits, possibly leading them to join outfits.
• The current Indar focus is a cultural/historical thing and isn't desired I imagine, so it probably shouldn't be rewarded.
• The equation for pop imbalance needs to be understood by everyone right now because they need to predict the impact of going to or leaving a continent, in order to set targets. Switching to global pop should allow a more accurate/complex model, than the linear one used now.

Server value in global competition

• Will high pop servers will be more valuable globally than low pop servers? Should all servers be regarded as equal in a global context? If so, some type of normalisation might be needed.

There should be some in-game stats including:

• Current score, Current difficulty modifier, Sum of facility scores per continent, as well as total.
• Historical data table or graph giving the population worth of each continent each hour - as a fraction of pop per day. e.g. last Monday 4pm to 5pm was worth 3/24ths of the total man-hours for last Monday.
• Fraction of pop used in difficulty modifier for each continent
• Amount of points per hour per faction for each continent at current control. If the score is updated based on control at points in time, how long until the next point.
• Projected score at current territory dominance at different times - taking into account historical pop data for day of the week.
• Score projector - allows determining how much territory must be gradually taken to catch up with another faction
  • Inputs: Target time. Territory dominance for each faction using sliders at N different user specified times. Specify times by day of event and GMT time!
  • Outputs: Score for three factions at target time and end of event (Linearly interpolates between the N different times and extrapolations from the last time). Times when any faction overtake another. Optionally a graph showing this.
  • This is just a description of desired functionality, rather than anything else.

Admittedly, this is a pre-season competition and it might not be possible to implement much of this..but they're the type of tools that will be needed later.

Why?

• Platoon commanders need to get a handle on what targets to go for, and how important performance in the current time slot is. Training schedules might need to be changed depending on how important performance is at a timeslot.
• Sometimes plans may involve giving up territories to enemies to focus on other routes for long term positioning, or to allow one completely warpgated enemy to expand and fight the other enemy - however if territory won't be worth as much as it is now in a short while when a peak period ends..

• At faction level, leaders may need to organise 'ganging up' on a faction that has moved too far ahead . They need to know how long it will take to catch up, and the size of any regions where it is agreed that hostilities are to cease.

Further feedback possibilities

• In-game text whiteboard leaders can update situation/current focus for the benefit of users just logging on and to guide newly formed squads.
• Somewhere in-game for leaders to to specify what targets are at different hours, and somewhere to specify when factions are 'ganging up' on a specific faction - that faction should be notified too.
• FNO etc. should be notified of planned big OPS and sit in/video so they can interview willing leaders on outlook/past battles.

I like the sound of these changes, WDS is certainly something to pursue as permanent addition to the game imo. It does provide and overall point to the game, and with information provided in game and on the map, telling you what the current score is for the WDS, and giving details of what points you can get for facilities I can see it creating targets than you really want to take. As opposed to ...lets just fight over this Tech plant because .....well.....because....

I think something does need to be done about faction switchers during alerts if you are going to award increased points though. One idea I thought of is ..... how about you make it so that if someone switches to another faction 'after' the 15 minute warning of an incoming alert, or at any point whilst the alert is in progress, they get nothing at the end of the of the alert....Zero Xp and Zero certs! The only people that get xp and certs at the end of the alert are those that have fought for the same faction throughout.

I think before we look at combining these two metrics some game mechanics should change.
ie the new resource system and the continent locking system
the reason I say this is because reworking alerts to support resource runs + adding Empire points to a successful defense using resource runs would create a system to spread battles out with in game mechanics and rewards which is much better then xp scaling and would create cracks in the population imbalance problem.
Also with continent locking creating empire missions ( like alerts but) that reward caping a large base on one or more enemy home continets within a given time limmet. There would be points given to the defenders for a success full hault or to attacker for a successful cap.
There are many things that you can do to help remedy this situation besides creating metric intersections. These would be awesome but easy will always be a one way players go but there should be other tactical/strategic options.
Asside from all that rambling.
there are a couple of options I see for intersections

high rated empire point bounties on prime time enemy territories create larger xp rewards. I think these should scale on a step function with how many players there are on a continent and how long the territory has been held. ( this would be even more interesting when integrated with the new resource system)

Runaway empire: Massive pop imbalance for one empire could create a much higher xp reward against defended targets. and this should only be when the pop balance is really really effective. While I do not know how or when to measure or implement that I know It would make a large difference to the simple xp farmers in the game.

Sorry if I haven't read every single post in this thread,
but when is this going to be released? Or is it even going to be?

If no date is specified then use the default released date of: Soon

I did not go through all 6 of the pages but I know that such changes should be added permanently to PS2 instead of being particular to Alerts or WDS. Once that's done, making Alerts and WDS even more unique should be easier. Special Facilities, Vehicles, there is an abundance of ideas. As happy as reading all this has made me, it's only how PS2 should work in general, not Alert/WDS material.

That said, it's a great start as well as good indication that SOE is listening(At least to our major issues as we name them) and that they do respond. Keeping it up is in their best interest though that too is how things should have been so I can't glorify that either.

I will only go on the losing side if there is a cert increase, xp is pointless.

Yeah, it basically sounds like they are saying "well, instead of having fun you can have this consolation prize".

fix population balance first OR the whole thing is pointless cos TR WILL "DOMINATE" THIS STUPID THING ON ALL/MOST SERVERS, unless whole point is to ruin the fun for 2 empires and give 1 empire all the benefits/gifts/boosts

TR is not OP, it's Overpopulated. And the constant whine that TR is OP makes TR even more Overpopulated. Players are switching to TR, using TR alts, or brand new players join TR just becaue of the "TR is OP" Propaganda. Either way, VS and NC players are damaging their Factions by using their TR alts during alerts and whining constantly "TR is OP, nerf it!" which leads to new players joining TR. The problem is "Overpopulation", not "Overpoweredness". (Does such a word even exist?) So what SOE has to do is to find a Solution for that problem, which they are kinda doing atm.

Clearly buffing the score of under-pop faction give them magical strength to fight the over-pop empire. SOE is magic.

Empire Hopping. We will be adding a participation requirement in the preseason and are considering scaling rewards with participation in future seasons so empire loyalty is properly rewarded.

that worries me a bit, currently most of us only log on our alts for daily passive certs,
but now seeing that the rewards is 100% xp for 3 days its very tempting,
and since we can no longer get it for a simple log in it encourages 4th factioning

Whats going on with the weekly totals for week 2??
Today and This week totals are the same, around 30k.
It is like it started over this morning, TR was well ahead for week 2 yesterday when I checked it.

https://players.planetside2.com/#!/wds

Yesterday scores were all Zero, today they seem to have reset with new 'Balancing' or VS have got a whole lot better overnight.
So is this week 3 now if so what happened on week 2?

Who cares about WDS ? Any outfits actually purposefully "participating" in it?
It just promotes 4th faction or switching factions altogether.
On Cobalt NC is like chicken without the head as most of good players stopped playing or switched. Even some of people I know are now playing more TR than VS.

So Ill make a prediction about next winner.... TR.

WDS is meaningless with lettuce.