PlanetSide Universe - View Single Post - The shape of Indar
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This is the last VIP post in this thread.   Old 2012-03-13, 03:24 PM   [Ignore Me] #21
Malorn
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PlanetSide 2
Game Designer
 
Re: The shape of Indar


Global lattice system won't help here. Having been a huge fan of it before I now see it doing more harm than good. Most of the time an empire could only attack few continents, many were locked, and the lattice links determined the same battles over and over again. If you really liked fighting on a continent and it wasn't one of the ones accessible - too bad. The PS2 system allows you to play on whatever continent you want at any time and not get locked into a losing situation on one place or being funneled into one continent.

Originally Posted by Skitrel View Post
The problem with asymmetry is that you're going to have to build a continent where 1 faction is in the middle. That means they're going to be perpetually attacked by both other factions, on two fronts.
That isn't the case for Indar. No faction is in the middle.

However, I believe due to the typical behavior of humans from PS1 combined with the geography of PS2 will create a tendancy for e NC to get double-teamed by TR & VS.

The reason is what I call the "What's next?" mentality. After a capture, they continue on the path of least resistance to the next nearest objective, along the shortest path. To provide an example, on Cyssor in PS2, Wele linked to an Amp station to the south, and to an interlink further south. Both were capturable objectives, but the zerg always went to the amp station first. Some smarter and organized outfits would go after the interlink, but it was usually a much smaller force.

The way the facilities are laid out on Indar between the 3 empires puts the closest VS facility directly north of the NC facility, with the TR to the east. Since the TR are geographically further away from that VS base they will tend to instead attack west toward the NC. The roads on Indar appear to facilitate more east/west travel between NC and TR than North/south travel between TR and VS. Since the mindless zerg tends to move to the next objective, they'll basically follow the roads and capture the outposts on the way to facilities.

But then one says PS2 isn't all about facilities... True, but they're huge landmarks and obvious objectives and noteworthy achievements. The player who's just looking for the next battle won't stop to look at the map - they'll chase after a retreating enemy along the most efficient paths (roads typically), and capture everything along the way like a tug-of-war. It will be up to outfits to capture the less-direct territories to help with the facility capture. Additionally, facilities are where vehicles/aircraft originate, so you can see armor pushes coming directly out of facilities towards enemy territories. They're easy to predict where the main force will if you just follow the path of least resistance from where the vehicles are being produced. You can trace this all along the outposts.

And then there's resources, which are supposed to make land other than facilities more valuable. Maybe it will, but in order for that to affect the typical mindless capture-and-move-on behavior those resources need to be very important and something the typical player frequently thinks about. They won't care about resources until the feel the sting of not having enough of one resource. Then they might stop and look for the nearest source of that resource and move toward it.

It all depends on the resource system and how important they are. If they're too abundant or not significant then nobody will care and the same "what's next" mentality will rule PS2 as it ruled PS1. If the resources are important enough for the typical zergling to stop and think about it then the pattern could be broken, or at least more organized forces will shift focus to the valuable territory instead of the next territory.

Resources and the resource system, random shifting of those resources, and periodic shifting of the uncaps will all keep things interesting and mixed up on the continents.

In that respect I have some concerns about Indar's layout. If the VS is going to be north of both TR & NC, it needs to be equally accessible to both of them, and I believe those facilities need to be re-balanced so it more or less forms an equalateral triangle in the center of the map betwee the facilities. As it is now it's lopsided and I'd put money on the major battles being on the NC section of the continent more often than not. The nice thing though is that if either VS or TR capture that NC tech plant they're more or less forced to attack each other so the NC won't get backed up too far. Essentially anyone that holds that base gets double-teamed.
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