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New Faction Play Format


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#1 Hobbles v

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Posted 01 June 2016 - 03:14 PM

New faction play format

A tons of the ideas here are taken from what I’ve seen other post on the forums. I’ve just taken what I liked and put it together. This is still largely incomplete, but I think it’s worth discussing.

First the simpler things:

- More maps, doubling the pool to 12 would do wonders, especially if there was more variance in the layouts of the maps.

- Make the call to arms tabs only show up in the factions tab. They are annoying as hell and often suck fresh players who are still trying to figure out the mechanic or skill trees into slaughters.

- Replace the long tom. Current long tom games are just silly. Replace it with something more like the other bonuses, more information or logistical support, not directly killing the enemy for you. Maybe ammo drops, consumable reloads or perhaps let us see the entire drop deck of the enemy.

Now onto the meat of the post:

All factions remain intact, but are lumped into four Alliances, that effectively act as one faction.

Wardens - Ghost Bear & Clan Wolf
Crusaders - Jade Falcon & Smoke Jaguar
Fedcom & FRR - Davion, Steiner & FRR
Concord of Kapteyn - Liao, Marik, Kurita

- Reset ALL LP, and instead of specific faction ranks have one tree for each alliance instead, this avoids imbalance. Resetting the LP would draw many veterans back into the mode. it was a massive middle finger to Loyalists when the merc tree was created and loyalist LP was left the same.
- Keep the separate single LP tree for Mercs in the interest of fairness, reset it alongside all the faction LP

All states of each alliance can attack and defend for each other’s territory. The territory goes to whoever’s front it is,though any unit from any of the states can "tag" the planet.

-Remove voting for attack lanes, only being able to attack one enemy per phase is horrendous, as if you make a bad call on who to Attack your faction could be stuck dry dropping for a phase or even days.

-One contested planet per front instead of an attack and defence option for each border.

- Reduce the number of pie squares on Planets to 12 and start at 50%/50% controlled by each side and all games are played as invasion modes, it is assumed that after taking a square, factions repair the gens and turrets ASAP.

-"Recapture territory" is removed.

-This format makes the objectives worth something in every game, whereas there is no incentive not to drop zone camp in recapture territory.

-It funnels everyone into the same planets, rather than having two twelve man’s dry drop a border between two factions because they both want to attack and not defend. Also means more unit on unit combat since they will have a harder time avoiding each other. Also increases the odds of Pug v Pug. Of course pug stomps will still occur, hopefully less often, but they are a necessary evil to get games sometimes.

Below image is an example of the attack lane prospects, each orange dot is a “contested system” between two enemy states.

Posted Image

Note there are no contested systems between allied states such as Davion/Steiner.
In the example map of where each faction is, there is a total of 13 contested systems. Three more than the current setup, but each faction largely has more options to choose from. Avoids problems like what has happened to factions like smoke jaguar where, in the past where the attack lane they choose is nothing but dry drops and no one is attacking any of the borders they can defend.

Wardens have 6 contested systems as options
Crusaders have 4 contested options
Fecom/FRR has 9 contested options to drop on.
Concord of Kapteyn has 7 borders.

A slight imbalance in fronts to start, but the more populous factions typically have more front to handle than less populated and map progress will open up more lanes. For example Jade falcon reaching the FRR opens another lane for both JF and SJ. The greatest strength of this is that every drop your faction has access to is an opportunity to expand territory or Tag a planet.

Post your thoughts, show some support or call me a ****ing idiot.

#2 DevlinCognito

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Posted 01 June 2016 - 03:21 PM

I like it, though as I've posted before I'd rather see the Long Tom replaced with 'Air Superiority', so the opposing side loses access to Air Strikes/Arty Strikes. Other than that, I think this is the best they can do without the drastic re-write many would like to see.

#3 slide

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Posted 01 June 2016 - 05:31 PM

Agree with most of it.

The one thing I am not sure about is the 50/50 start point for sectors. Not sure if this would encourage a last minute rush for a ghost drop on ceasefire if a planet has remained uncontested. This could give some units who can put a 12 man team together a significant number of planets for almost no effort. Maybe stick with the 13 sectors with a slight advantage to the defenders.

Apart from that "make it so".

#4 White Bear 84

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Posted 01 June 2016 - 05:53 PM

View PostHobbles v, on 01 June 2016 - 03:14 PM, said:

New faction play format A tons of the ideas here are Posted Image .


Too many attack opportunities. Might think it would be better if you have grouped the factions, but will still split queues and population. I would suggest at best, cut this number in half.

#5 Ihasa

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Posted 01 June 2016 - 06:01 PM

View PostHobbles v, on 01 June 2016 - 03:14 PM, said:

New faction play format

A tons of the ideas here are taken from what I’ve seen other post on the forums. I’ve just taken what I liked and put it together. This is still largely incomplete, but I think it’s worth discussing.

First the simpler things:

- More maps, doubling the pool to 12 would do wonders, especially if there was more variance in the layouts of the maps.

- Make the call to arms tabs only show up in the factions tab. They are annoying as hell and often suck fresh players who are still trying to figure out the mechanic or skill trees into slaughters.

- Replace the long tom. Current long tom games are just silly. Replace it with something more like the other bonuses, more information or logistical support, not directly killing the enemy for you. Maybe ammo drops, consumable reloads or perhaps let us see the entire drop deck of the enemy.

Now onto the meat of the post:

All factions remain intact, but are lumped into four Alliances, that effectively act as one faction.

Wardens - Ghost Bear & Clan Wolf
Crusaders - Jade Falcon & Smoke Jaguar
Fedcom & FRR - Davion, Steiner & FRR
Concord of Kapteyn - Liao, Marik, Kurita

- Reset ALL LP, and instead of specific faction ranks have one tree for each alliance instead, this avoids imbalance. Resetting the LP would draw many veterans back into the mode. it was a massive middle finger to Loyalists when the merc tree was created and loyalist LP was left the same.
- Keep the separate single LP tree for Mercs in the interest of fairness, reset it alongside all the faction LP

All states of each alliance can attack and defend for each other’s territory. The territory goes to whoever’s front it is,though any unit from any of the states can "tag" the planet.

-Remove voting for attack lanes, only being able to attack one enemy per phase is horrendous, as if you make a bad call on who to Attack your faction could be stuck dry dropping for a phase or even days.

-One contested planet per front instead of an attack and defence option for each border.

- Reduce the number of pie squares on Planets to 12 and start at 50%/50% controlled by each side and all games are played as invasion modes, it is assumed that after taking a square, factions repair the gens and turrets ASAP.

-"Recapture territory" is removed.

-This format makes the objectives worth something in every game, whereas there is no incentive not to drop zone camp in recapture territory.

-It funnels everyone into the same planets, rather than having two twelve man’s dry drop a border between two factions because they both want to attack and not defend. Also means more unit on unit combat since they will have a harder time avoiding each other. Also increases the odds of Pug v Pug. Of course pug stomps will still occur, hopefully less often, but they are a necessary evil to get games sometimes.

Below image is an example of the attack lane prospects, each orange dot is a “contested system” between two enemy states.

Posted Image

Note there are no contested systems between allied states such as Davion/Steiner.
In the example map of where each faction is, there is a total of 13 contested systems. Three more than the current setup, but each faction largely has more options to choose from. Avoids problems like what has happened to factions like smoke jaguar where, in the past where the attack lane they choose is nothing but dry drops and no one is attacking any of the borders they can defend.

Wardens have 6 contested systems as options
Crusaders have 4 contested options
Fecom/FRR has 9 contested options to drop on.
Concord of Kapteyn has 7 borders.

A slight imbalance in fronts to start, but the more populous factions typically have more front to handle than less populated and map progress will open up more lanes. For example Jade falcon reaching the FRR opens another lane for both JF and SJ. The greatest strength of this is that every drop your faction has access to is an opportunity to expand territory or Tag a planet.

Post your thoughts, show some support or call me a ****ing idiot.


Tweet that shizzle and you might gain some traction.

#6 Nekomimi2

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Posted 01 June 2016 - 06:24 PM

Does not address the bad game design that makes that system extremely dependent on population so your ideas are only a bandaid. Find an easy way for them to remove population dependence so the the system will work whether there or only 96 people playing or 4000.

#7 LordNothing

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Posted 02 June 2016 - 12:06 AM

alliances yes. ive used the term coalition in my posts but same idea.

reset lp only if we can re-earn rewards. id hate to have literally months of grinding have to be repeated before i could earn rewards again. consider rewards already earned payment for beta testing.

dont pull the long tom, but change how it works. it should be a one (or a few) time call down and be something that units can buy. it should be expensive enough to not spend on pugs but still good enough to buy.

instead of getting rid of counter attack, replace it with skirmish+deck and get rid of omega. you can use qp maps for those, they are better suited to that type of play than the invasion maps. you can also have decked versions of qp modes like extended conquest games.

the whole damn set of attack and defend rules needs to be changed. the current system funnels pugs into a grinder and is really bad for populations. it also kind of prevents the introduction of new modes. you get rid of the planet lobbies and sectors, no attack and defend queues. instead you join a military campaign, which covers many planets, each with a different mode and map (this also gets rid of a pet peeve of mine, you know where your on an ice planet one game and orbiting a blue super giant the next, and they are supposed to be the same planet?). you have 1 week to capture 2/3s of the contested planets and win. hold less than 1/3 and its a loss, anything in between is a draw and doesn't advance the front (the campaign repeats). this means no more cease fires, since the map only redraws at the end of a campaign.

campaign starts, with each side owning half the planets (a small section of the entire map but there might be 20 to 50 planets involved in the campaign). you can do battle on some of them at any one time (number depends on population). you are not told in advance what mode you will be playing. maps also match biomes but are somewhat random. so there is no more ice planets orbiting a blue super giant. also no gaming the system to force certain modes or maps.

to solve the pug grinder problem, there are also major keystone planets (with additional defenses, perhaps arty support, but on both sides), which are considered high value high risk targets. taking them unlock new planets and secure old ones. these are also the only ones units can tag and get paid to take and 12 mans are given priority there. units are strongly encouraged to take keystone planets, and pugs are severely discouraged (but you can drop where you want, such as in times of low population). you might need to greatly increase tagging rewards to make this work. things like permanent place on the leader board, bonuses that increase as you stack victories, or get their own exp trees to unlock things like unit camo. you need 5 consecutive victories to capture keystone worlds, everything else trades hands after 1 victory and goes through a cd (another planet is unlocked to take its place). victories on non-keystone worlds help the players fighting for keystone worlds. anything from unlocking artillery strikes to increasing drop tonnage and eventually npc assets.

units participating in a campaign might also issue batchalls/feuds to fight for non keystone planets in strictly unit on unit play. putting up some of their unit's stuff (coffers, unit xp, or perhaps their taxation rights on planets they've tagged), winner takes all. another feature to encourage unit on unit play, sparing the seals from the clubs.

#8 Bagor Aga

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Posted 02 June 2016 - 03:59 AM

just stop dreaming. Every project must be started from problem definition\declaration. Till now PGI does not accept problem as you (may be many of players) see. They don't accept FW design as mistake neither ask for help.

main problem of PGI is here: they thread MMO as co-op play of individuals not as big game of teams. As soon as they start building team confrontation sandbox they will receive loyal customers not eventual pays. They did not succeed in building service-reach world as they fail in generics of class balancing and realised having no alternative as pack-selling. They do not add services by each patch -> new population tiers FW for nonsense prises and isn't converted to loyal team players at all. No conversion means no future for current realisation of BT-game. They did shooter but not BT\MMO. And this shooter is badly lacking of services to be playable for casuals.

nowadays only BT fans still load client, do you read numbers?

#9 Cy Mitchell

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Posted 03 June 2016 - 11:25 AM

You put a lot of work into presenting your proposal and I applaud that. I hope it is all for naught. It is a little more complex than what I proposed as I suggested only have two factions (Clan and IS) with all units able to cooperate to gain or defend territory. I would support a four way split like you suggest too.

PGI has to know that FP is still a failure and maybe they will take well thought out suggestions under consideration and use some of the communities ideas to improve it.

#10 Hobbles v

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Posted 03 June 2016 - 08:34 PM

View PostRampage, on 03 June 2016 - 11:25 AM, said:

You put a lot of work into presenting your proposal and I applaud that. I hope it is all for naught. It is a little more complex than what I proposed as I suggested only have two factions (Clan and IS) with all units able to cooperate to gain or defend territory. I would support a four way split like you suggest too.

PGI has to know that FP is still a failure and maybe they will take well thought out suggestions under consideration and use some of the communities ideas to improve it.


Yeah I think the four way split is integral so that we always have the options of IS vs IS, Clan vs Clan and Clan vs IS

#11 bayoucowboy

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Posted 03 June 2016 - 08:58 PM

Like all of it.

Would like to add for those of us that scout - PLEASE either increase the rewards or decrease the wait/dry drop times





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