7 replies to this topic

[ClaymoreReIIik]

Hello everyone,

this post is going to be a huge wall of text, so sorry in advance. It's going to be so extensive to explain the reason behind the suggestion and what I want to fix with it.

Personally, I find the current way in which planets are captured boring and not fair. Great (playing) teams are not awarded enough in comparison to big teams and reducing planetary conquest to 2-3 hours of gameplay does not seem fun enough either. This is where our (my team and mine) feature suggestions come in.

I will start with one big thing then go into further detail.

#1 Divide a planet into 3 Stages that have 15 sectors each.
The 3 stages will be the same for both sides, but have different names for each side.
For the attacker side the names will be "Landing Zone", "Territorial Control", "Cleanup". For the defender they will be "Cleanup", "Territorial Control", "HQ Defense". Invader "Landing Zone" is defenders "Cleanup" and so on.

Right now a real time day is divided into 3 timeslots to fight, that could remain the same. Each of the stages would still have 15 sectors to fight over, no changes there.

A planetary assault should work in the following way: The planet becomes attackable (either through PGI's scouting mission design or through the placement of the borders). First timeslot a planet is attacked the attacker tries to secure a landing zone while the defender tries to keep the planet clean. You fight over the 15 sectors and the winner either keeps the stagescore at 0 or attacker stagescore gets increased to 1.

Let's assume the attackers are victorious. The next timezone fights over the next "stagepoint for the attackers". Once again you have a timezone full of fighting and the attackers are victorious once again in our hypothetical scenario (through whatever means necessary). Now the planet will change alignment/ownership and the borders are updated (making other planets attackable), because the invader controls 2/3 of the planet. The planet will still remain defensible for the former defenders though and will still remain an attack target for the former attackers.

If the defenders would have won this, the attacker loses a "stagepoint". Its gain one or lose one, all the time.

In the next timezone (attacker cleanup phase and defender territorial control phase) you once again have 15 sectors to fight over with the roles still the same. Former planet owner will still defend with turrets etc. Let's assume the attacker is victorious again. Now the planet has all 3 stages controlled by the same faction and now that faction gets to defend with turrets and gates and the planet is officially a pacified world. If it is behind the borders it now stops being "attackable". (This is important, I will later explain why.)

What does this change?
Planetary ownership will change slower, because you need to win 2/3 timezones in order to take over a planet and move borders. Accomplishments made in a timezone will not be lost in the next timezone. This enables planetary ownership to be more "fair".

#2 Change the way planetary owners (tagging Unit) are determined
Right now you have a situation where defended planets can change ownership through one fight on one sector. If a planet is attacked a sector is lost and you counter attack it with a ghost drop, you will have control of the planet after cease fire. This is a slap in the face of the team that maybe played 20-30 drops to take the planet for the faction in the first place.

Right now the planet ownership is determined by the team having the most players in a successfull offensive drop times the amount of games won. If you drop 7 man groups and fill them up with PuGs you have the maximum chance of taking a planet. Regardless if you light rush or fight or plain and simple suck at the game and get carried to victory by your PuGs. The current system wastes every contribution that you make, unless you are from the "most pilot unit in drop". That seems unfair.

We would like planetary ownership to be determined by the summary of all match scores that any unit accumulated during the course of the planetary assault (total). From the time the planet got "attackable" to the cease fire where the Invader succesfully completes stage 2 and "ownership" of the planet changes. This should be displayed in a separate tab in the planet information in a "current (maybe 15 minute wise)" form. From attacker side another update can be made once the world gets pacified, since you do not delete contributions before that. After all 3 stages are taken by an attacker the contributions are wiped to 0 and the former attacker becomes the defender.

Defensive ownership should not change unless the attackers successfully took stage 2 and flipped the planet. If the defenders are able to rally from stage 3 and take back stage 2, the defending factions best team (in accumulated match scores during the entire PA) gets ownership of the planet.

What does this change?
You need to contribute the most in terms of fighting to get your tag on planets. Light rushing will still gain sectors and help flip a planet, it will not determine ownership of the planet though. The purely objective based tactics will have much less impact then the things that are widely considered "quality gameplay". High Quality, low Quantity units will have more chances to gain planets.

Additionally each and absolutely each match no matter when matters. If you play the first 5 minutes after cease fire you might not determine the outcome of the stage, but you will increase the score of your unit on the planet, making it more likely to get the planet tagged by your unit. This will lead to more games being played total, decrease waiting times and do all sorts of good things for CW in total.

#3 Show the Match Standing in Objectives and Kills during Cease Fire for those games that are still in progress.
Change the Planet Information screen for contested planets during cease fire in a way that it displays the current score for the games that are still in progress. A smaller version of the HUD Display (top of screen ingame) would be sufficent.

Its a thing of immersion and "rooting for your team". It should not be too hard to implement either. Additionally it will give the guys waiting for cease-fire to end something to look at and talk about, possibly keeping them logged in and gaming on.

Edited by ClaymoreReIIik, 18 April 2015 - 12:28 PM.

[50 50]

Nice work ClaymoreRellik.
I like the tug of war feeling that this approach would provide and the accumulated point system that goes with it.
This is quite an elegant solution that doesn't look like it would require a lot of design change to achieve.

If I may get a bit of clarification re the time zones and stages:
* The time zones replace the existing attack phases so we have an 8 hour block to determine control of the stage which consists of 15 sectors.
* The 15 sectors are global and we compete over are the same ones regardless of time zone. Meaning the zones are not separate and have their own stage and sectors.
* The victor of a time zone will either add 1 (attackers) or subtract 1 (defenders) from the invasion stage score counter which will then determine which stage the next time zone fights over.
* At the end of the third time zone, if the attacking faction has a stage score of 2+ they will control the planet. Otherwise the defending faction will have reduced the stage score to 1 or less and therefore remained in control of the planet. Making the middle stage "Territorial Control" the victory stage.

If I understand correctly, this means that Time zone 1 would only ever fight over Stage 1 unless the invasion period extends more than 24 hours or within the one Time zone the stages can progress dynamically and more than one stage may be contested in a single time zone.

Having pondered it a bit more as I've written this I believe you are on to a really solid proposal but I think it would need 2 additional changes to the current system.
1. Each time zone battles over their own stages so all the good efforts by players in one time zone are not lost because all the players in the next time zone fight for the other faction and vice versa. The end result is then based on a global stage score from all three time zones.
2. If The stages in a time zone do not dynamically change as the battles progress. The invasion period needs to extend beyond 24 hours so that there is a chance to battle over each stage in each time zone. Meaning the invasion becomes a 3 x 8 hour battle in each of the 3 time zones to give more players in each time zone a chance to battle for the planet and affect the result.

I suppose the real question that needs to be answered is does your proposal stop the "last hour" attack/defend problem where one faction gains victory thanks to no-opposition?

[Emery]

Great suggestions. Only thing that I feel needs commenting on is your proposal for determining planet tag/ownership. Your proposal of having the unit who fought the most get the planet makes sense, but not when combined with the 3 stages over the 3 timezones. This would almost invariably lead to a US based unit gaining the planet tag, simply due to playerbase. EU and Oceanic units fight hard for things in our times as well, but in this system you propose would never/very rarely be able to get our tags on anything, simply because a US unit has more bodies to throw into the breach, in most cases.

It's a good idea, but population difference across timezones makes the current system of resetting progress for each timezone better, IMO.

[ClaymoreReIIik]

50 50, on 19 April 2015 - 04:56 PM, said:

Nice work ClaymoreRellik.
I like the tug of war feeling that this approach would provide and the accumulated point system that goes with it.
This is quite an elegant solution that doesn't look like it would require a lot of design change to achieve.

If I may get a bit of clarification re the time zones and stages:
* The time zones replace the existing attack phases so we have an 8 hour block to determine control of the stage which consists of 15 sectors.
* The 15 sectors are global and we compete over are the same ones regardless of time zone. Meaning the zones are not separate and have their own stage and sectors.
* The victor of a time zone will either add 1 (attackers) or subtract 1 (defenders) from the invasion stage score counter which will then determine which stage the next time zone fights over.
* At the end of the third time zone, if the attacking faction has a stage score of 2+ they will control the planet. Otherwise the defending faction will have reduced the stage score to 1 or less and therefore remained in control of the planet. Making the middle stage "Territorial Control" the victory stage.

If I understand correctly, this means that Time zone 1 would only ever fight over Stage 1 unless the invasion period extends more than 24 hours or within the one Time zone the stages can progress dynamically and more than one stage may be contested in a single time zone.

Having pondered it a bit more as I've written this I believe you are on to a really solid proposal but I think it would need 2 additional changes to the current system.
1. Each time zone battles over their own stages so all the good efforts by players in one time zone are not lost because all the players in the next time zone fight for the other faction and vice versa. The end result is then based on a global stage score from all three time zones.
2. If The stages in a time zone do not dynamically change as the battles progress. The invasion period needs to extend beyond 24 hours so that there is a chance to battle over each stage in each time zone. Meaning the invasion becomes a 3 x 8 hour battle in each of the 3 time zones to give more players in each time zone a chance to battle for the planet and affect the result.

I suppose the real question that needs to be answered is does your proposal stop the "last hour" attack/defend problem where one faction gains victory thanks to no-opposition?

Here are your asked for clarifications:

- The 15 sectors are stage-specific. Meaning if you completed a stage and won it (got more then 50% of the sectors belonging to your side) you get the "stagepoint" or delete it and all sectors are reset to 100% defender owned. (Just like it is now.)

- The cease fire that sees a planet at 2 Stagepoints will switch Planet ownership (faction and unit) and the system will update the map borders and ownership (unit). The planet will still be "fought over". The cease-fire-check that sees the planet at 3 stagepoints is the one that once again updates ownership (unit) and might make the planet "not attackable". The cease-fire-check that sees the planet on 3 stagepoints is the one that resets the "unit contribution score" (accumulated matchpoints).

This means that in order to take control of the planet you need to win 2 consecutive timezones. In order to secure the planet from attack you either win 2, lose one (which puts planet back in defender hands but sees you one stage up), win 2 in a row or straight up win 3 in a row.

Depending when you start attacking a planet and how successfull your faction is, you get to fight over a different part of the planet.

One system we considered is having a "battle direction". If you win a stage the next battle is fought over "your next stage". So if an attacker wins stage 1 the next fight will be for territorial control. If defender wins that one the next fight will be over "attacker landing zone". This would prevent default-wins for the defender side. The downside of that is you would need to display the "battle direction" and its another "system that needs explaining". You could easily visualize it by marking the stage that is being fought over with some kind of symbol.

Giving the defender default wins, if no attackers show up, makes sense in a way that it slows down the advance of a strong faction. After you won 2 consecutive timezones and took planetary control the third timezone just needs to stay on the ball or the planet is gone again. If the third timezone does not stay on it, the 2 previously victorious timezones just need to repeat their wins to seal the deal. (since they get the planet in a state where it has one stagepoint). From our point of view this constellation will be the most likely case.

[ClaymoreReIIik]

Eadon, on 19 April 2015 - 06:54 PM, said:

Great suggestions. Only thing that I feel needs commenting on is your proposal for determining planet tag/ownership. Your proposal of having the unit who fought the most get the planet makes sense, but not when combined with the 3 stages over the 3 timezones. This would almost invariably lead to a US based unit gaining the planet tag, simply due to playerbase. EU and Oceanic units fight hard for things in our times as well, but in this system you propose would never/very rarely be able to get our tags on anything, simply because a US unit has more bodies to throw into the breach, in most cases.

It's a good idea, but population difference across timezones makes the current system of resetting progress for each timezone better, IMO.

The point you make is valid, but you forget that most players do not adjust their playing times based on cease-fire times. You do not magically get tired because cease-fire has started...

The current system only counts the last 3 hours before cease-fire (max) and only counts the contributions that the unit with "most players in drop" achieve. So you stop playing CW because cease-fire just happened and you know that you are "not achieving anything" if you continue.

In the proposed system the contributions are only reset after the attackers gain the 3rd stagepoint. Every player from EU timezone who plays a game or 2 right after the EU cease-fire would contribute to his units achievements. Similarly the game or 2 you could pull off before work would not be lost either. The APAC/Oceanic cease-fire is after EU lunch break, for example. With the current system where a pilot dropping solo is just wasted contribution, nobody cares to try and get another game whenever possible...with the proposed system thats another 100+ contribution score for your units success....

Edited by ClaymoreReIIik, 20 April 2015 - 12:15 AM.

[Emery]

Very true. Perhaps an alternative planet ownership solution, based on your idea of contribution points, could be implemented instead. Rather than have contribution points towards that planet, perhaps you can earn your unit contribution points, on a faction wide level, which the unit can then use to 'purchase' ownership of a planet or planets, with steadily increasing planet cost, and a discounted 'purchase' cost on planets that the unit made a major contribution towards capturing.

Have this planet ownership require a small amount of contribution points in maintenance, to ensure that planets aren't just owned by inactive units and that planets keep recycling, and increase the cost of both buying and maintaining your tag, based on the percentage of planets in the faction that are owned, to make sure there are planets available, and you have a system where all the units who regularly contribute can own things, and not just have it based on most dropped.

I'd also make it so that units lose their planet ownership, on switching factions, or drastically increase maintenance costs for units that are not currently tagged to the faction owning the planet. But that's coming from a faction loyalist, so feel free to ignore that one.

This system would also open up ownership for all those planets in the core areas of the larger factions, which are unlikely to ever see a tag simply because of location. It also means units who play defense can still earn the right to have their tag on planets, even if they aren't out conquering them.

As an example... Unit A, Unit B, Unit C and Unit D all drop on Planet X. Unit A drops a 12 man of it's own, and Unit B drops 6 players, Unit B 4 players and Unit D with 2 players, in a second 12 man.

Obviously, assuming everyone fights it out and doesn't just light rush (which would be fixed by making match score = contribution points) Unit A would earn the most points, and be rewarded with the planet in the current system, and in the one you propose. In the one I propose, Unit A would earn (as an example) 50,000 contribution points, Unit B would earn 25,000, Unit C would earn 16,667 contribution and finally Unit D would earn 8,333.

Then, depending on the amount of planets the faction has, etc, the amount available (would need to make a system where it's fair, and doesn't just let one unit buy up tonnes of planets) For this example lets say that a planet costs 100,000 contribution. Meaning that Unit A could buy a planet after 'taking' two planets, unit B could buy one after 3 or 4 planet captures, Unit C after 6 captures and Unit D could eventually buy one after taking 12 planets.

Edited by Eadon, 20 April 2015 - 12:49 AM.

[ClaymoreReIIik]

Eadon, on 20 April 2015 - 12:24 AM, said:

Very true. Perhaps an alternative planet ownership solution, based on your idea of contribution points, could be implemented instead. Rather than have contribution points towards that planet, perhaps you can earn your unit contribution points, on a faction wide level, which the unit can then use to 'purchase' ownership of a planet or planets, with steadily increasing planet cost, and a discounted 'purchase' cost on planets that the unit made a major contribution towards capturing.

Have this planet ownership require a small amount of contribution points in maintenance, to ensure that planets aren't just owned by inactive units and that planets keep recycling, and increase the cost of both buying and maintaining your tag, based on the percentage of planets in the faction that are owned, to make sure there are planets available, and you have a system where all the units who regularly contribute can own things, and not just have it based on most dropped.

I'd also make it so that units lose their planet ownership, on switching factions, or drastically increase maintenance costs for units that are not currently tagged to the faction owning the planet. But that's coming from a faction loyalist, so feel free to ignore that one.

This system would also open up ownership for all those planets in the core areas of the larger factions, which are unlikely to ever see a tag simply because of location. It also means units who play defense can still earn the right to have their tag on planets, even if they aren't out conquering them.

As an example... Unit A, Unit B, Unit C and Unit D all drop on Planet X. Unit A drops a 12 man of it's own, and Unit B drops 6 players, Unit B 4 players and Unit D with 2 players, in a second 12 man.

Obviously, assuming everyone fights it out and doesn't just light rush (which would be fixed by making match score = contribution points) Unit A would earn the most points, and be rewarded with the planet in the current system, and in the one you propose. In the one I propose, Unit A would earn (as an example) 50,000 contribution points, Unit B would earn 25,000, Unit C would earn 16,667 contribution and finally Unit D would earn 8,333.

Then, depending on the amount of planets the faction has, etc, the amount available (would need to make a system where it's fair, and doesn't just let one unit buy up tonnes of planets) For this example lets say that a planet costs 100,000 contribution. Meaning that Unit A could buy a planet after 'taking' two planets, unit B could buy one after 3 or 4 planet captures, Unit C after 6 captures and Unit D could eventually buy one after taking 12 planets.

While your system makes a lot of sense and would probably be fun, the problem is that it is a lot to design and needs quite some finish on the "edge cases". It would be a big undertaking to implement that and this would probably push it back on PGI's priority list.

If you want the SCRUM-Monks to do your bidding, you need to feed them small and achievable objectives. The system we propose would fit nicely into a 2 week production cycle and could ultimately "evolve" into a more elaborate system you propose.

PGI needs to do baby steps and accomplish the low hanging fruits first.

So yeah you are right, but for now less would be more likely implemented.

[ClaymoreReIIik]

So nobody is against the proposal and all questions are answered? Gogo PGI then, eh?