Planetside 2 Catch-All

How would you propose to enforce those population numbers? If TR has 2,000 people on a continent along with 2,000 VS and 2,000 NC, and suddenly all the NC and VS log off, should you just start kicking people to another continent? They already wouldn't allow more TR people in.

BadMojo wrote:

How would you propose to enforce those population numbers? If TR has 2,000 people on a continent along with 2,000 VS and 2,000 NC, and suddenly all the NC and VS log off, should you just start kicking people to another continent? They already wouldn't allow more TR people in.

There is already a hard population cap per continent. You just set a limit of 40-50% of that overall cap for each side, so you don't end up with 4k TR against 1.5k Vanu and 500 NC, to use your numbers. Instead, TR is limited to 2.5-3k tops, giving everyone else a chance to fight back.

I'd probably set the pop limit at 45%. That would allow two factions to slug it out at the pop cap, while allowing 10% for the third faction to at least contest their Warpgate area bases.

Doug wrote:

Anyone had any luck making a light assault work? It's a silly amount of fun zipping around the map but you can't do a whole lot once you get there.

Absolute favorite class. The other posters nailed it. Use your jetpack to setup ambushes. I'm not a good enough twitch gamer to take people on face to face, so instead I ambush them from ledges, or drop down/jump jet up from behind.

I just picked up the Pandora automagic shotgun. It's awesome, but requires you to be at only a little further than knife range. Good thing LA's can control engagement distance. I just hug corners and take second floor entrances so I can get close enough to get those shots off. Extended Mag+ 1x Reflex sight, and you're done.

My other loadout is Solstice-SF with the underbarrel grenade launcher, 2x sight, and suppressor. They can't hit what they can't find. Grenade launcher is a bit buggy (no dmg or no reloads), but are awesome when they hit.

Also, going over a roof and dropping C4 on an enemy position is hilarious.

Pro-tip for roofs. If you're on a flat one, you're exposed, but a lot of roofs have a very tiny slant (1-2 feet) on the edges. If you crouch down on those, you can shield most of yourself from anyone other than another LA.

Jaegor wrote:
BadMojo wrote:

How would you propose to enforce those population numbers? If TR has 2,000 people on a continent along with 2,000 VS and 2,000 NC, and suddenly all the NC and VS log off, should you just start kicking people to another continent? They already wouldn't allow more TR people in.

There is already a hard population cap per continent. You just set a limit of 40-50% of that overall cap for each side, so you don't end up with 4k TR against 1.5k Vanu and 500 NC, to use your numbers. Instead, TR is limited to 2.5-3k tops, giving everyone else a chance to fight back.

I'd probably set the pop limit at 45%. That would allow two factions to slug it out at the pop cap, while allowing 10% for the third faction to at least contest their Warpgate area bases.

Population caps only keep people out. They don't actively remove people from a continent when people leave. So, you either have to accept that you will kick people randomly off the continent, or accept that population imbalances can occur.

BadMojo wrote:

Population caps only keep people out. They don't actively remove people from a continent when people leave. So, you either have to accept that you will kick people randomly off the continent, or accept that population imbalances can occur.

I'm still talking about hard caps only, not dynamic caps based on continent population. I understand and accept that imbalance will happen, but it shouldn't happen at prime-time when you are at the continent population cap.

Way it is now(example numbers):
Indar: 1000 players hard cap
TR: as many as possible
VS: as many as possible (likely less than TR)
NC: as many as possible, but not really that many, since they're the smallest pop in general.

I'd cap it by faction as well.
Indar: 1000 players
TR: No more than 450
VS: No more than 450
NC: Fills in the rest, but will always be allowed a minimum of 100 spots reserved for their faction, if the other two are at their pop caps.

Continents should be locked by tactics and strategy, not simply out-zerging the other factions, and preventing them from bringing in their reinforcements because you've hit the population cap for the continent already.

I'm pretty sure that once you hit 33%, you can't get new people into the continent. You might think that during prime-time, you wouldn't normally see lots of population imbalance, but I think people are quick to switch to the fourth empire or abandon the continent during prime-time.

To me the obvious solution has always been tying the increased experience/resource reward to continent population, not world population. The benefits for continent ownership are almost nothing, but getting a 10% base increase to xp (certs) would motivate people to switch to a losing continent. One of the my outfit's leaders likes to try and save losing continents, but in reality it's almost always a losing battle and eventually limits play style since after about an hour you're down to no resources.

Had a good time the other night with my outfit (NNG) coordinating with a couple other large outfits to take Indar. We noticed that TE was assaulting quartz ridge and decided to do a massive three platoon drop to kick them out. I redeployed and about twenty other drop pods fell out of the sky with me. Pods kept coming down for the next minute or so and we were able to re-secure the base. We then organized an infantry assault on Indar Excavation. Such a great battle with infantry running across a huge field taking out TR tanks as they rolled out one at a time. Then TE counter attacked with air so we scrambled some AA Scythes. Just the game at it's best.

I'm taking a bit of a break right now, because I played way too much during the double xp holiday.

Another idea how to fix the continent pop issue would be to change out how the xp boost is dolled out. Right now, as someone mentioned, you get it based on total planet pop, which is fairly useless. Switch it to continent. Second increase the reward dramatically. If your only 10% of the pop you should get, minimum, 50%-75% boost. Third and this would be the one everyone would hate, have a negative boost for the leading pop. Say after any one side has 50% pop they actually start making less xp. So a fraction with 90% pop should take a 50% wallop to their xp. People would hate this but it would be damn effective.

Another fun thought I had was thinking about supply and how it was explained to me on how it used to work in ps1. I came up with this idea. Every location/base has a certain amount of supply. Everything use said supply. From re-spawning, rebuilding turrets (not repairing), spawning vehicles, rearming stations, etc. The idea is you get supply based on how well connected you were. When a base would start to run out of supply they would slowly lose functions. The turrets would go down, then can't rearm vehicles, then you can't spawn them, then weapon stations, and at the very end re-spawn times would start to go up. Generators would function the same and wouldn't use supply.

Effectively you could surround and lay siege to tough bases, and if you kept them surrounded the fight would get harder and harder for them.

Of course this works both ways. On offense you have to insure a proper supply line. The only thing you supply are sunderer so you need less supply overall. Still if you overextend your line of attack or get flanked and surrounded, things can go bad fast.

I wish they would implement something like this. It would add so much overall strategy to the game. Small to medium sized groups would become more effective then the zerg. Proper battle lines would emerge.

I just use the NV 1x scope for my Solstice SF, I can see through smoke and it helps compensate for my not being an fps twitch gamer and having really great eye sight and I rarely can't see who's shooting at me (obviously not a good idea in open terrain, but if you're in open terrain the LA is not the most effective class anyway).

master0 wrote:

Another idea how to fix the continent pop issue would be to change out how the xp boost is dolled out. Right now, as someone mentioned, you get it based on total planet pop, which is fairly useless. Switch it to continent. Second increase the reward dramatically. If your only 10% of the pop you should get, minimum, 50%-75% boost. Third and this would be the one everyone would hate, have a negative boost for the leading pop. Say after any one side has 50% pop they actually start making less xp. So a fraction with 90% pop should take a 50% wallop to their xp. People would hate this but it would be damn effective.

Another fun thought I had was thinking about supply and how it was explained to me on how it used to work in ps1. I came up with this idea. Every location/base has a certain amount of supply. Everything use said supply. From re-spawning, rebuilding turrets (not repairing), spawning vehicles, rearming stations, etc. The idea is you get supply based on how well connected you were. When a base would start to run out of supply they would slowly lose functions. The turrets would go down, then can't rearm vehicles, then you can't spawn them, then weapon stations, and at the very end re-spawn times would start to go up. Generators would function the same and wouldn't use supply.

Effectively you could surround and lay siege to tough bases, and if you kept them surrounded the fight would get harder and harder for them.

Of course this works both ways. On offense you have to insure a proper supply line. The only thing you supply are sunderer so you need less supply overall. Still if you overextend your line of attack or get flanked and surrounded, things can go bad fast.

I wish they would implement something like this. It would add so much overall strategy to the game. Small to medium sized groups would become more effective then the zerg. Proper battle lines would emerge.

Sounds like fun. I think that might also lead to battles in between bases (which is a good thing to me).

BadMojo wrote:

I hope that user has been marked to be banned.

SuperDave wrote:
BadMojo wrote:

I hope that user has been marked to be banned.

I don't get it. Using hax and listening to bad rap makes one pro?

I've been doing it wrong my whole life.

Xeknos wrote:
SuperDave wrote:
BadMojo wrote:

I hope that user has been marked to be banned.

I don't get it. Using hax and listening to bad rap makes one pro?

I've been doing it wrong my whole life.

The best part is how bad he is at the game.

VX6-7 is the daily deal for Vanu. I picked it up and I like it over the Serpent. The quick reload is great.

[/quote]

I hope that user has been marked to be banned.[/quote]

Seeing as he hit BR5 in the video - I doubt it'll matter. It's a throw-away account. :/

Haha the comments on youtube made me feel much better. Everyone pretty much agreeing how bad he's playing they game. That being said cheating sucks but it doesn't seem that bad in planetside, never seen it happen except maybe once.

The latest patch changed a bunch of things, including how XP is rewarded.

Experience (XP) system enhancements:
Dynamic XP system for player kills, players who have more kills on their current life are worth more XP. Freshly spawned players will be worth a fraction of the current kill reward.
Partial damage XP for dealing damage to vehicles that you don't end up killing
Population XP / Resource bonus moved over to continent population instead of global
Better display of XP sources for things like defensive bonuses & population bonuses
Rebalancing of XP rewards to help support tasks
Itsatrap wrote:

The latest patch changed a bunch of things, including how XP is rewarded.

Experience (XP) system enhancements:
Dynamic XP system for player kills, players who have more kills on their current life are worth more XP. Freshly spawned players will be worth a fraction of the current kill reward.
Partial damage XP for dealing damage to vehicles that you don't end up killing
Population XP / Resource bonus moved over to continent population instead of global
Better display of XP sources for things like defensive bonuses & population bonuses
Rebalancing of XP rewards to help support tasks

That all sounds like what people were clamoring for, right? Tonight is my gaming night, so I'm excited to see what kind of a difference this makes...

Sounds pretty awesome. Especially the bit about getting XP for damaging vehicles.

Itsatrap wrote:

The latest patch changed a bunch of things, including how XP is rewarded.

Experience (XP) system enhancements:
Dynamic XP system for player kills, players who have more kills on their current life are worth more XP. Freshly spawned players will be worth a fraction of the current kill reward.
Partial damage XP for dealing damage to vehicles that you don't end up killing
Population XP / Resource bonus moved over to continent population instead of global
Better display of XP sources for things like defensive bonuses & population bonuses
Rebalancing of XP rewards to help support tasks

I don't think so.

Game development can be messy and there is always the possibility that something from this list may slip or not pass QA, and more details will be released on the specifics of all of these items as we get closer to the patch date, but I wanted to get this info out to all of you as soon as possible, so with that in mind, here are some highlights from what the team is working on finishing up for LU02 which will be released on 1/30/13.

Got to wait a little bit longer for those changes.

The update ("LU02") won't go live until January 30th. (See the end of the third paragraph.)

Edit: You guys are fast. =) I think all of those changes are awesome -- looking forward to them.

That reads like a list of play complaints. Should be interesting to see how things shake out.

I am concerned that they are addressing complaints and not the underlying problems.

Some of the XP changes will help, I think. But making spawn areas more open seems like a red herring. Their tweaks to AA also seems misguided. I think they should just make aircraft more fragile commisurate with their capability.

BadMojo wrote:

I am concerned that they are addressing complaints and not the underlying problems.

Some of the XP changes will help, I think. But making spawn areas more open seems like a red herring. Their tweaks to AA also seems misguided. I think they should just make aircraft more fragile commisurate with their capability.

Anything else would be asking for major game changes, which seems like a pretty tall order at this point in the game's cycle. They're probably going to collect a little more data and implement more of the development plan before they start making major wholesale changes. I'm actually glad they're addressing complaints. Most MMOish games tend to have a big problem with completely disregarding user feedback in favor of grand, sweeping, and mostly useless innovations.

Progress! I'm especially happy about the view distance improvements. Right now MAXes are essentially invulnerable to ESFs because at the speed we move they don't appear until you are pretty much right on top of them. I've had to resort to zooming by at high speed to spot where they are and coming back later to run them over.

That server transfer option is going to have some interesting effects on the player population I'm sure.

Yeah I wouldn't expect any major changes until something like an expansion pack is released. They just can't do that now that it's no longer in beta. That being said those look like some real good changes, and more importantly it shows that they are listening. Good signs overall.

edit: Just read the whole thing, and if we got all of those things it'll be a hell of an update. Looking forward to actually being able to hit something with aa max or missiles. I do wonder if we will be able to tell which player has a larger bounty and such. I'd also like to know to my own bounty when I'm doing really well.

Yikes, I had forgotten how messed up Waterson was with the population imbalance. Apparently the Total Biscuit part of their promotional campaign is working; tonight the TR had 80% population on one continent, 60% population on a second, and still had enough people to make up 30% of the third continent.

Itsatrap wrote:

Yikes, I had forgotten how messed up Waterson was with the population imbalance. Apparently the Total Biscuit part of their promotional campaign is working; tonight the TR had 80% population on one continent, 60% population on a second, and still had enough people to make up 30% of the third continent.

I got to seem get blown up. Twice. So worth it.
Actually if I remember it was a goodjer who got one of the kills.

That being said I really don't like how imbalanced the server has gotten. I like fighting the NC every now and then. Except their snipers I hate those.

New patch up major stuff bolded.

General

Bonus of Composite armor for ESF reduced by 5% each rank (10/15/20/25 down from 15/20/25/30)
Base time to reload increased by approximately 25% for tank HE
Fixed an issue where lock-on rockets and missiles would sometimes not damage the target they hit
Fixed bug with Lightning 100mm AP where its outer radius was set to high
Reduced amount of decelerating that occurs after afterburning
Acceleration of Reaver afterburner increased
Addressing a server memory issue

Flak Mechanics Changes

We now remove the flak projectile when it bursts near an enemy aircraft. Previously the projectile was allowed a chance to continue and strike the aircraft directly, which would deal additional damage (burst damage + direct hit damage). We have increased burst damage to compensate for the loss of direct hit damage. This should result in an overall increase to flak damage and make it more consistent

Skyguard

Flak burst damage increased by 20%!!!!!!
Direct hit damage against infantry and other targets increased
Turret movement is now slightly smoother

Phalanx AA

Flak burst damage increased by 14%
Turret movement is now slightly smoother

MAX Burster

Flak burst damage increased by 6%
Burster projectile adjusted to more reliably hit infantry that are in close range
Direct hits with the MAX Burster can no longer damage the heavy armor of tanks, Sunderers and Phalanx Turrets

---

I'm of two minds about this patch. No more stupid lockon rockets is great. Afterburner deceleration was a little nutty, especially for scythes, you could boost up to 300 over a couple seconds but instantly snap back to your normal speed when the burners wore off. It was weird. They nerfed tank HE which was due LONG ago.

But on the other hand they BUFFED FLAK AGAIN, HOLY HELL WHAT ARE YOU DOING SOE?! Flak is already ridiculously powerful. Pre-patch two double burster maxes could kill a liberator with one reload each if they didn't miss. A single double burster max could kill an ESF with less than a full magazine! This is insanity.

Yeah the new mechanics don't change much. Flak hurts a bit more, but I died more times attempting some dumb aerial maneuvers.

My outfit was running ops last night, and I joined up with the air platoon. Eventually the mobile infantry guys took a bio lab and we didn't have much to do. So we set up a group of four libs, two skyguards, and a few ESF's. The Libs would choose a target to bomb, usually an enemy armor column near the bio lab, do a quick pass and then high tail it back to the skyguards (or buster maxes) who then tore apart any pursuing aircraft. Wait a bit, then regroup and do it all over again. Eventually whittling down the enemy air strength and making bombing runs faster. I spent most of my time in an Scythe finishing off air targets. Not great cert gain, but lots of fun.

Tamren, I really appreciate how in depth and thorough your posts are. Thanks for putting in the effort.