Is PS2 going to be intercontinental enough?

[kaffis]

This still doesn't get around a very simple problem:

Yes, "continent locking" is a goal Planetside vets are familiar with, and think is a good idea.

HOWEVER, the devs have repeatedly stated that the reason they've removed continent locking is that it quite simply removes large areas of land from the fight, for all the reasons that players feel like it's an accomplishment.

You can do that when you procedurally generate over a dozen continents, and don't have the subscription numbers to demand that each continent remain full.

You can't do that when you're handcrafting 64 square kilometers per continent. That's a huge amount of developer man-hours sunk into a big space that you've just said isn't in play so that some of the players can have an arbitrary sense of accomplishment.


Here's another idea: Let's get in beta, and figure out what kinds of arbitrary, emergent goals the system that's in place will support!

Edit: Vancha, I was almost going to outright mention that I'm not opposed to having warpgates in addition to 3 footholds per continent. I think that's a fine idea, and a good way to shake up the concerns about 3-way stalemates with stagnant lines that are always in roughly the same place.

I'd put the warpgates midway between the footholds, as you've done, but I'd make it so that the warpgates link up one-to-one, and link them up such that continent A's warpgate adjacent to faction X and Y will link up to a warpgate on another continent which is adjacent to Z. This gives Z a route by which to flank the other factions on continent A, and shake up the battle lines if it wants to.

I point that out because your diagram appears to link warpgates between the same two factions on both sides, which I feel is less tactically interesting.

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by kaffis

HOWEVER, the devs have repeatedly stated that the reason they've removed continent locking is that it quite simply removes large areas of land from the fight, for all the reasons that players feel like it's an accomplishment.

This is why I think they need to try to have all the fighting on one large supercontinent; because small continents are easily locked. And I know one of the objections to a supercontinent is the fear that people will concentrate in too large of numbers, but surely that can be avoided.

Anyway, with supercontinents, it should be easy to sneak behind the lines and cap back-bases, AND, they could still have warpgates that go to other places on the continent.

They could also, instead of having one supercontinent, put the continents physically close together and allow flying between them. It should take 10 minutes or so to fly that far, but that would be OK, because the enemy would have no idea where you're going to come from if that's the case.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

This is why I think they need to try to have all the fighting on one large supercontinent; because small continents are easily locked. And I know one of the objections to a supercontinent is the fear that people will concentrate in too large of numbers, but surely that can be avoided.

...

They could also, instead of having one supercontinent, put the continents physically close together and allow flying between them. It should take 10 minutes or so to fly that far, but that would be OK, because the enemy would have no idea where you're going to come from if that's the case.

The problem with a supercontinent isn't *only* that people will concentrate in numbers that exceed targets and break stability.

It's also that creating seams between the servers on the back-end is very difficult.

Standard MMORPGs that take a seamless world approach do this by basically not putting anything of interest along those seams, so you don't notice the NPC pop-in as you cross over. You see the NPCs and data for the slice of the continent you're on, then you cross over, and suddenly you can't see those NPCs anymore, but now you can see NPCs on the new slice. If you don't stick NPCs that hang around within view distance of this, you don't have to worry about NPCs appearing and disappearing. Similarly, I've never seen an MMO that didn't "leash" NPCs when you crossed these boundaries.

FPSes will make it even worse, because instead of allowing a limited amount of cross-talk for the rare case where other players or NPCs approach a seam while you're near it, and you need to "see into" a new slice; with an FPS, you need to be getting updates about stuff on the other side just as often, and there can't be any lag, and you even need to do HIT DETECTION across that boundary.

That's the reason we've got 3 8km x 8km continents instead of one 14km x 14 km mega-continent.

[Vancha]

Originally Posted by kaffis

I'd put the warpgates midway between the footholds, as you've done, but I'd make it so that the warpgates link up one-to-one, and link them up such that continent A's warpgate adjacent to faction X and Y will link up to a warpgate on another continent which is adjacent to Z. This gives Z a route by which to flank the other factions on continent A, and shake up the battle lines if it wants to.

I point that out because your diagram appears to link warpgates between the same two factions on both sides, which I feel is less tactically interesting.

I was going to do it in the way you suggest, so that TR+VS on Indar would link to TR+NC on Amerish would link to NC+VS on Esamir would link to TR+VS on Indar, but I thought the fact that every warpgate would lead to a different conflict composition might be too chaotic...But if it wasn't, I'd certainly prefer that, yes.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Vancha

I was going to do it in the way you suggest, so that TR+VS on Indar would link to TR+NC on Amerish would link to NC+VS on Esamir would link to TR+VS on Indar, but I thought the fact that every warpgate would lead to a different conflict composition might be too chaotic...But if it wasn't, I'd certainly prefer that, yes.

I think that "chaos" would be a welcome component. Besides, the amount of chaos can be limited by who controls the gate.

[texico]

Originally Posted by kaffis

This still doesn't get around a very simple problem:

Yes, "continent locking" is a goal Planetside vets are familiar with, and think is a good idea.

HOWEVER, the devs have repeatedly stated that the reason they've removed continent locking is that it quite simply removes large areas of land from the fight, for all the reasons that players feel like it's an accomplishment.

You can do that when you procedurally generate over a dozen continents, and don't have the subscription numbers to demand that each continent remain full.

You can't do that when you're handcrafting 64 square kilometers per continent. That's a huge amount of developer man-hours sunk into a big space that you've just said isn't in play so that some of the players can have an arbitrary sense of accomplishment.


Here's another idea: Let's get in beta, and figure out what kinds of arbitrary, emergent goals the system that's in place will support!

Well, I never attempted to address that problem because I don't think it can be addressed, because the two ideas, "locking" (a nicer term is ownership) and "open for all" are completely different stances.

Think of continental ownership in terms of the hex territory ownership system hypothetically. If there was no territory/facility ownership, you could potentially have people fighting eachother on every square km of land at ALL times. HAVING the hex-territory system means that at any one time, most of the land is well within somebodies borders and nobodies fighting there...

But it's necessary, because you have to create a feeling of ownership for the players. You can't just have them spawning and running at each other.

The same is true on an intercontinental level. By having no proper system of ownership and progression of owning continents, there's no feeling of ownership by the players. The sense of ownership is literally EVERYTHING in a tactical game. If there's no ownership of continents, then there's no intercontinental play AT ALL, and the game's scale is therefore reduced... The only thing players will feel like they're fighting to control is hexes/facilities, and not continents or planets like in PlanetSide.



And then, I mentioned this in another thread. You're looking at it the wrong way if you think it's a good thing for people to be able to play on any continent they want at any time. Locking continents means that continents that are locked will feel like PREMIUM content in the eyes of a player. They'll log in one day and see that the battle is taking place on their FAVOURITE cont which hasn't had any fights on it for a couple of weeks, and you can bet that they're going to spend as much time as they can playing that fight, because they don't always get the chance. It's exploiting the "string in front of the cat" psychology of people, and it's perfect too, because most of the time what continent their fighting on doesn't really affect their actual gameplay experience and it's not something they're actually going to feel dissatisfied by... when they DO get to fight on a continent they really like, it will feel like an epic bonus.


So yeah. Plus remember, locking isn't that common especially with a big population. The only continents in PS1 that were ever truly "locked" for extended periods were the home continents, and that was just to do with the way the lattice system rules worked.