Ideas for the "Rich get richer" problem

[Bittermen]

It should be easy for an empire to overextend itself.

Even if you have the resources to make tanks,aircraft, other crap it doesn't mean you have enough people to defend those resources.

[Dart]

Originally Posted by Bittermen

It should be easy for an empire to overextend itself.

Even if you have the resources to make tanks,aircraft, other crap it doesn't mean you have enough people to defend those resources.

But when an Empire is consistently dominant, particularly if it is going to have access to more resources, it will attract more people. It does need addressing.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Bazilx

we shall simply make it so that once you are down to a significantly lower amount of bases your empire gets "Emergency supplies" in the form of ONE resource! Preferably the resource that makes plain warfare easier but which still doesn't give you any of the many other benefits of the other resources, thus retaining the motivation.

I had ideas in another thread for a welfare system but the more I think about it the more I dislike giving handouts int he form of resources. Just like the real world people will abuse it. Additionally the problem with handouts is that it doesn't necessarily encourage territory capture and doesn't completely address the problem of the empire with all the territory easily holding onto it. It helps give an empire a fighting chance but that's about it.

I like discounts on very specific things as an alternative. So people who have resources can do more with them. Giving out a very minimal amount of resources as you say of the one resources that allows basic vehicle construction, combined with a discount might work out. But from what we know of resources different resources will be needed for aircraft vs tanks (was on Reddit yesterday).

Might not be able to avoid a welfare system to some extent for the worst-case scenario. Still it might be beneficial to have some minimal resource generation at the foothold, combined with a discount that renders that resource generation utterly worthless for anything but pulling vehicles on the same continent. So someone couldn't go sit on a dominated continent and rack up the resources for doing nothing.

Getting away from your post a bit, that brings another problem to mind - if the dominating empire has all the resources, more people might flow in looking to ride the resource train. I assume more people would mean the resource amount each person is given lowers, but people like free rides, so I see more people piling on into a continent when an empire is dominating it because its a lot of resources. But if they do that they'll lose resources elsewhere.

We want to avoid situations where the TR are sitting on all of Indar, the NC are on all of Amerish, and the VS are on all of Esamir, just reaping rewards of resources and bottling people into warpgates milking the gravy train.

Originally Posted by texico

I honestly think it will balance itself fairly naturally, because there's 3 empires.

If TR own 70% of the continent, the VS and NC would both normally gang up on them.

Not necessarily. If the NC and VS border one another or are locked in a big battle they might not give a crap about the resources and enjoy their fight. Before they know it they've lost everything but they're still adjacent to each other. It could be that because TR are attacking on one side the other empire decides the best course of acting is to take what few resources the other has even though the TR are the bigger threat.

To prevent that they need incentives to attack the bigger empire and not pile onto someone already getting ground up.

Originally Posted by Knocky

Take all the territory from a faction and see how hard it is to dig yourself out of that hole.

This is a good test for beta to simulate and see if whatever sort of systems they have in place are working. I'd like to see this test simulated many times to ensure they have a good sample size.

Originally Posted by Kipper

The bigger your space, the more prone to backhacks you are because your territory is 'deeper', and the less players you have in any one area of the front line, assuming you are defending the full length of it.

A team with 30 hexes vs a team with 10 is going to have on average 3x less players in a skirmish, or they're going to have to leave 20 hexes undefended.

It should balance. My worry is that it will balance too well, and just be a complete stalemate in the centre of the continent where every gain results in a loss elsewhere.

I think you're onto essentially the right way to balance this, which is making more territory naturally more difficult to hold.

However, the way the Territory control system works is based on adjacency. That is if you have all the territories in an area it is very easy for you to take a territory back, but much harder for someone to take it. The example Higby gave was that if someone takes a territory deep behind the front it'll take something like 30 minutes to cap but only 30 seconds for the empire to retake it - all because the attacker has no adjacent territories and the defender has that territory completely engulfed.

Now it might not be as extreme as that, but the implications of this are that as you gain more and more territory, the new territory you gain helps protect the other territory you have. It is similar to how in PS1 certain continent combinations had lattice links to each other such that locking one helped protect the other (like 2004's Amerish-Solsar-Searhus combo NC held for a long time).

The result of such a system is that unless your FRONT is ever-expanding you wont' actually have that problem.

If the example Higby gave was accurate then I expect what will happen is the empires will try to claim back-territories, but since it takes so long to cap them the dominant empire has plenty of time to send a response unit to recapture or stop the capture. And since it takes nearly as long as one of the warpgate-bordering territories they have plenty of time to respond to both. So again, the rich get richer.

Because they took so much territory its actually easier for them because their front got consolidated.

This is one reason why I believe the adjacency system should take into account total territory owned by an empire so naturally as you take more territory it becomes more difficult to hold.

Originally Posted by morf

[popup]

Greetings TR,

You're being too successful, so we will now artificially limit your success so those other panzies can feel better about themselves.

-Higby


[/popup]

Is this REALLY the game you want to play, people? Is it even a game at this point? I guess when you guys were kids you played in the little league where they didn't keep score huh? I have news for you: those trophies aren't real and they don't mean anything when everyone gets them.

Territories should give a set amount of total resources, so if you have a higher pop, those resources are split among more soldiers. Furthermore, defending more territory becomes increasingly difficult on it's own - but why limit a team if they have what it takes o win? What's the point in playing if the losers get CPU assistance?

I agree, penalizing the winning empire or bolstering the losing empires defeats the purpose of the resources because no matter what you do, resources will come your way. And if capturing territory is meaningless because of some penalty people simply won't do it and the game strategy devolves.

Capturing lots of territory should be rewarding always, but it should also be difficult to maintain, and nearly impossible to maintain an entire continent lock for a long period of time. This also adds more to the satisfaction of actually doing such a feat.

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Those auto generated missions they talk about? Set them towards the rich empire.

For instance, TR has the most land. The missions generated for NC and VS would be weighted towards combating TR.

If VS and NC are both top dogs, and TR is a distance third, the the missions can push the VS and NC against each other, and less against the TR.

I like this idea. I have a feeling they will use missions like that to do subtle encouragement of the players away from un-fun situations, consolidating populations, and helping avoid ultra-laggy situations.

I think this will help solve the problem, but not utterly eliminate it. Strictly speaking at the extreme end, once an empire bottles the other two into their uncaps then the adjacency system for territory control works in the favor of the dominating empire. The other two empires on that continent already have no choice to attack the dominant empire. But missions can help encourage more people to join that underdog struggle, and missions can help discourage that situation from happening in the first place. It's good for discouraging it, but it doesn't solve it.

I would also advocate that vehicles could be pulled from the uncap for free. Air pulled from uncaps should have a much lengthier timer than ground vehicles due to their mobility.

Gotta be careful with this. People can always spawn at the uncap and for vehicles like aircraft there would be little reason to not always pull from the uncaps.

Another mechanism might be rather than giving resources, simply make things cheaper. Like if the territory is direly low, they could offer a discount on the vehicles continent-wide. That discount creeps up as territory is lost and lowers in magnitude as territory is gained. So nobody is getting handouts but they are getting some stuff cheaper to help them wage war effectively. It gives more refined control over simply handing out resources or making stuff free all the time.

I do like the idea of possibly making all vehicles free from the foothold if you have 0 territories, and then scaling back the discount from there. Example:
0 territories = 100% discount
1 territory = 75% discount
2 territories = 50% discount
3 territories = 25% discount
4 territories+ = no discount

So if you have nothing, free vehicles! That might not only allow you to wage war, but it also might encourage people from other continents to come help that effort because of the free vehicles. Since it doesn't give resources there's no gravy train to ride and those resources can't be used to get implants or certs or anything else - just free tanks for helping break out of a bad situation. Once the empire starts to recover, the discount fades and it's back to business as usual.

Originally Posted by Eyeklops

How do we know this problem even exists yet? We probably won't know until beta. I get the feeling this will not happen for the same reasons Nazi Germany lost WW2.

• population too spread out
• fighting a war on too many fronts

Its fairly easy to reason this problem exists from what we know (see my previous replies in this post). Between getting more resources and the way the adjacency system work, I dont' see how it it is not a problem.

Also your list may not be correct.

Take a look at the map of Indar - as an empire wraps itself around one of the other empire's footholds their front doesn't get bigger - it actually decreases. It is smaller than the front when all 3 empires have the same territory. Additionally that front has the full power of the adjacency system working in its favor - lots of friendly territories, only one hostile territory, which means it will take a long time to capture one of those territories and fairly easy to retake it. The adjacency system protects the rest of the territories not on the front as mentioned earlier in this post.

Originally Posted by sylphaen

With a pure resource system where % of territory controlled is proportional to resources accrued, double teams are being rewarded. Getting into a 40% TR / 40% NC / 20% VS situation is easy-mode for the NC/TR and they both would get more resources from double-teaming the VS. Such a system will effectively wipes out an empire as its player population and resources will drop along with decreasing territory. Planetside could become a 2-faction game most of the time once a double team starts.

Of course, the situation could return to equilibrium once the other 2 empires start fighting each other again but in the mean-time, an empire was wiped out: not from skill but from incentives to double-team an empire. Incentives which are also compounding through the richest gets richer issue. Worse, if a double-teaming empire managed to conquer territory faster than the other double-teamer, the game would transform into a game of quantity (what's left in the double-teamed empire in stock equipment+double-teamer in ok equipment ) vs. quality (the "winner" of the double-team in decked out equipment). It could be a long readjustment process during which the game is frustrating for the losers (i.e. the majority of players) and overall, this could kill Planetside pops.

This is a good capture of what I believe to be a very realistic scenario for PS2. It happened all the time in PS1, even without resources. Resource rewards for doing it will only make it worse.

To prevent such a situation:
- there should be decreasing returns on resource per territory controlled as your empire's total territory increases vs. other empires (in order to limit the strength of the snowball effect)
- decreasing returns should kick-in much faster if there is a double team in order to not incentivize it (if you progress vs. 2 empires, you are rewarded. If 2 empires progress vs. 1 together, they are not rewarded).

e.g. by controlling TR 40% of territory, you are naturally getting more resources. Then a modifier could apply where:
- NC 30% / VS 30% = 1 so no penalty
- VS 20% / NC 40% = .5 so 33% at 100% return and the remainder 7% at 50% return

I don't think a system that penalizes people for conquering territory is a good solution. Holding more territory should always be rewarding.

Alternatives I like for this are making it more difficult to hold the territory, which means its more easy for the underdogs to retake it. A discount system as opposed to a welfare system would be another way to give them a hand-up until they established a reasonable foothold.

Having empire missions generated automatically favor attacking a larger-population faction on a continent would help avoid the worst-case scenario. If those empire-generated missions are lucrative enough that would hopefully be good encouragement without forcing anything.

[Bazilx]

Originally Posted by Malorn

I had ideas in another thread for a welfare system but the more I think about it the more I dislike giving handouts int he form of resources. Just like the real world people will abuse it. Additionally the problem with handouts is that it doesn't necessarily encourage territory capture

However (also in reddit), it was said the cap for resources would be such that you'd never really have more than enough. My idea was that since nobody would gain from this or really be able to sit around and wait to have 200 tanks worth of resources they would have only one use of it, attacking the enemy. So I understand where you are coming from with the wellfare thing, but I believe the cap on resources makes it relatively unexploitable.

This way the Handouts would be only practical in nature and not give the player anything of worth unless they actually fought to gain something. It wouldn't be beneficial to sit around doing nothing since all you'd have at maximum would be like 2 tanks worth of resources and none of the other resources.

It would be the non-proverb equivalent of giving a man a fishing rod but no fish.

Originally Posted by Malorn

But from what we know of resources different resources will be needed for aircraft vs tanks (was on Reddit yesterday).

Well... This I don't know how to deal with, I guess if that's the case a discount would accomplish the same thing as my idea.


OH! And Even though I will defend my idea to my last breath, I now believe the best idea is the mission idea where the dominant faction becomes the preferred target, it's easy, it makes sense, and it doesn't feel laboured.

[sylphaen]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Alternatives I like for this are making it more difficult to hold the territory, which means its more easy for the underdogs to retake it. A discount system as opposed to a welfare system would be another way to give them a hand-up until they established a reasonable foothold.

Having empire missions generated automatically favor attacking a larger-population faction on a continent would help avoid the worst-case scenario. If those empire-generated missions are lucrative enough that would hopefully be good encouragement without forcing anything.

I agree that the welfare system is a bad idea and those 2 solutions (discount+missions) are a good idea.

I don't think a system that penalizes people for conquering territory is a good solution. Holding more territory should always be rewarding.

The thing is that you would not be penalized for taking territory against 2 empires at the same time. You would just get less if captured it while taking advantage of a double-team.

[Mackenz]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Having empire missions generated automatically favor attacking a larger-population faction on a continent would help avoid the worst-case scenario. If those empire-generated missions are lucrative enough that would hopefully be good encouragement without forcing anything.

Yes, I think this could be key. Even going in the underdog, getting automatically generated guerrilla or hit-and-run missions with large rewards (and maybe achievements/medals for being the underdog?) to spoil larger empire territory holds, even if retaken quickly, encourages fighting.

Of course, you will need resources, and I must admit I haven't seen how these work so its hard to comment on that. But maybe there is some basic kit that you can get for minimal cost, such as a 'hit' squad load out for taking such a mission:

* Galaxy for transport,
* A mix of infantry, plus a MAX or two;
* Maybe one air support.

Not sure tanks would be worthwhile because only adjacent territory would be realistically accessible.

Resource taxation seems lame, and diminishing returns/hex population adjustments might work, but I can imagine it being complex and opaque. And without a good understanding of how resources work, it gets a pretty hand-wavy, at least for me.

Key is that you do the least amount of work to address this to help reduce the unintended consequences.

[PoisonTaco]

Why should you take away from a team that manages to take a large portion of a continent? If anything they should be rewarded for winning so much territory. Yeah they beat the other two factions, they deserve to reap the benefits. So here's my idea:

Give rewards factions when they cap territory. A nice fat reward. The longer a faction controls a territory or facility, give a bigger bonus to the faction that captures it. This gives the other two factions more of a reason to fight back against the dominant force. If they get too big and sit on that land for too long, then it's going to be a nice target for the other two.

Display a bonus reward for a territory or facility if it's captured. Show how much of a big payoff a team can expect for rallying together and fighting to take everything back.

[sylphaen]

Originally Posted by PoisonTaco

Why should you take away from a team that manages to take a large portion of a continent? If anything they should be rewarded for winning so much territory. Yeah they beat the other two factions, they deserve to reap the benefits.

When a situation of TR 40% / NC 40% / VS 20% comes up, neither the TR nor the NC have beaten the other two factions.

Why should it be rewarding to double team a 3rd empire ?

[Trolltaxi]

You need resources on the frontline, but your resources are mined mostly behind the lines. The greater your territory is, the more distant mines you have.

The resource train seems a fun idea, but actually it would be like antruns. That seemed to be a fun system too, but ended up in lonely long drives around the continent. This would be the same in PS2 with these trains. Even if it is easily hijacked they would most likely run safe all way long, as the empire on knees would be too heavily occupied with sheer survival.

But you may simulate the system by a decrasing rate of resource flow. The further your mines are from the frontline, the slower they will contribute to the resource. That is not just a gameplay mechanism to artifically balance the fight, but the simulation of long supply routes.

This would still not help the cornered empire's low resource problem, but it would slow the process of getting richer.

[Saintlycow]

Something like this has to happen. of course, the axis are all wrong, but hexes captured is on the x- axis and resources gained is on the y axis.

Maybe talk about supply line as justification.

Essentially, as an empire begins to conquer more and more, the amount that they take in from those bases steadily decreases. At a certain point, they take in almost no ressources from a certain base

[Boomzor]

I suppose we can agree on that while we still want to see the battle and power sway back and forth (it is after all what makes a persistent world dynamic and interesting) we don't want it to oscillate so much it actually keels over and cement the imbalances.

I like that graph in regards to Rewards (y) in relation to territory (x).

[SGTalon]

I really don't like the "Socialist" solution to this issue.

Pulling hardware takes resources, and you get resources by taking real estate right?

If a faction gains all the real estate and has a surplus and the people that have no real estate get stuff for free what is the point of having real estate? Why fight for all the stuff?

I am not sure how this whole resource thing works. My gut feeling is that the old way is ideal. Real estate for abilities (like tech plants and dropship centers). Resources are a way to keep the facilities functioning and conversely another way to capture a facility (drain resources)

So what happens when you run out of resources? If i am fighting an epic battle and getting my stuff blown up a lot/ spending resources, what happens when i run out? Does this mean that i can't pull the good hardware anymore? Am i now limited to basic equipment? How is this going to help me retake my real estate?

This seems like another penalty. Similar to Grief Points. Some retard keeps running in front of my MAX while i am suppressing a door and pretty soon i can't fight anymore because my grief points are maxxed out. So now if i die a lot and pull a lot of hardware i deplete my resources and can't fight anymore?

I don't get it.

[Graywolves]

Could provide a resource gain buff to empires that are on the ropes and have very little territory. This would have to be balanced to NOT be equal to that of the largest empire because that would defeat the purpose of grabbing territory.


I have an idea where the hex's closest to the safezone's/warpgates/empire footholds/w.e could be deemed as the "Home territory" and this territory could be harder to grab or just produce more resources the more it was encroached on but less to the opposing empires if they did take it. Unfortunatley this would probably encourage factions to NOT fight there as the physical reward of resources would be greater elsewhere.


Perhaps something could be done like WC3's system of 'Upkeep'. In WC3 when you had so many units you were basically tax'd on your income or something (been forever since I played). What we could do is give a Tax to the incoming resources after a certain empire has reached a certain amount of Hex's under their control. This would encourage an empire with the most territory to play more defensively if they were being attacked but their gain would not stop with the more territory they had, they would only have their income not grow as large as it normally would.

I think an Upkeep or Tax would work well. If you make it work with specific resources it could provide a stronger meta-game in predicting where the enemy will go based on what resources they mostly control and the richer empire's commanders will see a stronger benefit in grabbing other resources than that which they are monopolising.

( VS have the majority of Auraxium, Normally for each auraxium node they control they have 25gain per minute as an empire. Future Auraxium nodes will only provide 20/15)

You don't stop the rich from earning or being rich, just curve it so that they don't become too powerful.

[Uberculosis]

Just have it so that in the event of not being able to pull enough resources(eg, empire has 1000 gold, you need 1500 to pull a magrider) you can use other resources at a less efficient rate than the 'standard' element(1500 gold for a magrider vs. 3000 platinum). Compounding this, make empire dividends on resources global(e.g. resources from Ceryshen benefit the fight going on in Cyssor) but at a slower rate of updating(resources on Cyssor[where the fighting is going on] get refreshed every 5 units of time, vs. 15 units of time from Ceryshen).

To recap, assuming all else equal, you get 1500 gold every 5 minutes from the continent you're fighting on, and 1500 gold every 15 minutes from abroad, added to the empire-continent pool of resources to draw from.These resources can be used in varying efficiency rates depending on availability.

This way, you can still have a chance at defending even when you have less resources than desirable. And if you have NO resources left, well you're boned anyway.

[Malorn]

An observation I had while in the car is that this problem really has multiple facets.


1) Enabling the have-not empires to wage effective war

Without giving them free resources, which defeats the purpose of fighting for them


2) Motivating the have-not empires to fight back for territory instead of going to some other continent

The dominant empire will be motivated to stay to reap the rewards of their conquest, but the dominated empires have little reason to stay on the continent.


3) Maintaining the intensity of the battle

Essentially this means both sides of the battle need to be motivated to stay and fight. Penalizing conquest is a way to make the conquerors leave and discourage conquest and intensity, which would lead to some un-fun situations for everyone involved (ghost hacking a continent for the underdogs, not getting to reap the rewards of their conquest for the dominators).

4) Making it difficult to maintain a large amount of territory

This does not happen naturally in PS2 due to the adjacency system making it harder to lose a territory as you have more adjacent territory next to it. This is the mechanic that creates the "front" in PS2, but in extreme cases it can also help a dominant empire maintain their territory. A likely solution involves factoring in territory owned into the adjacency system's mechanics.


These 4 aspects sort of create constraints and show why there is no silver-bullet answer to address this problem. There's been good ideas but I think a combination of ideas is required to address all facets of the problem.

This thread has yielded some good ideas for each of these different aspects. I'm going to think on this more, I think some ideas are converging in my head which I need to put to paper.