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Planetside 2 poll proving three factions are better than two?
tixylix
Member UncommonPosts: 1,288
in PlanetSide 2
What empire will you choose in PlanetSide 2?
Terran Republic
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New Conglomerate
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Vanu Sovereignty
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Total Votes: 2,755
How kool is that!
Comments
3 factions is better, fact.
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
Facts have facts behind them, not opinions.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
OpinionPvE is better with less factions.
PvP gets worst.
PvE gets worst with more thin out factions
PvP gets better!?<----?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
3 factions theoretically self-balances better, but in reality (particularly in games where victory isn't incentivized, like Planetside 1) it frequently doesn't pan out that way.
If you were outnumbered it's not like the 2nd underdog was automatically going to help you kill the #1 faction. Often the 2nd underdog would be like "Oh, hey, they're an easy kill" and the #1 faction would conquer like 80% or more of the world as a result. Not too good.
(PS I'll definitely be Vanu Sovreignty at the start. They were always my main faction, mostly for Magriders and MAXes since Lashers and Pulsars were crap for an awful long time in early PS. Though I spent most of my time in a Mosquito or Reaver (common pool air vehicles))
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
This reminds me of an article where the author claimed that, despite what science says, the earth is flat. But that is not the worst part, oh no sir: He actually proposed that we test this "fact" by polling people - yes, by asking their opinion.
I sure hope the author was trolling because such stupidity would make me sad. And this guy was a real reporter (I think).
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
This poll proves that Planetside has three well designed factions. I think that is a very impressive feat.
And yes, three factions for PvP is generally better than two.
Planetside's problem was that defending bases was not usually a very "cost-efficient" thing to do and due to the mechanics, eventually the attackers always won if they just kept pushing.
Hopefully in PS2 there will be a real incentive for defending and a real way for the defenders to actually win the battle (lock the base so it can't be captured for a certain time or something similar).
I prefer a lock system (though not for too long), since it will also shift battles to other locations, rather than keeping them at convenient locations.
Fixed!
But seriously. Yes, three faction gameplay is both better than two faction, but also suffers it's own issues.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Defending was plenty cost efficient if you were playing to win continents. Of course if you want to turn the battle around you're going to have to slip some forces out and pressure their connected base, but that was part of the strategy.
The main issue was the strength of towers compared to base/AMS spawns. Getting into towers tended to be a pain in the ass due to how quickly players could get to the 1st floor from spawning to cut off the enemy's ability to easily assault the higher level where the hack panel was. If the hack panel was a floor higher, or the respawn a floor lower, that would've gone a long way to making towers more assailable.
Another improvement would've been allowing players to slip back to Sanctuary and get back into a battle without the continent immediately locking behind them. That way players could at least rally air strikes from sanctuary to get out of a totally pinned base battle.
I suppose another improvement that was a long time coming was decent enough defense XP. They had a fantastically designed system for calculating defense XP ticks, but it wasn't turned up high enough to be worth it most of the time. Would've been great if they'd had stats to look at (defense vs. offense XP awarded) and tweaked the system based on that.
Level design was just never a strong point of Planetside. Nowadays I could think of a myriad of little ways they could've improved things, and even in late beta I was already pointing out how the uninspired base designs were going to get old quick (most were extremely similar to one another, with one being different (dropship center) and one being terrible (the one with the generator on the roof).) The world design was solid, and the rest of the game was a blast, but base design was always a weak point of the game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
somewhat true but i think with some decent design, like what SOE are doing it will balance itself out, for eample lets say the TR have 50%, the nc 35% and hen the VS have 15%, the TR will clearly dominate, but it will get to a point where they get stuck in the middle of the 2 factions and the TR have no choice but to face the VS and the NC on both fronts.
pictures help.
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
Three factions helps, but it also helps that Planetside doesn't really have one faction that naturally appeals to more players than either of the other two. Most people in general like playing the evil or bad faction, and you don't really have the "evil" faction in Planetside. For example, I have wondered if PvP would be better in TOR if there would be a third faction (Hutts maybe?), but even then, I think Empire would still be played by the majority of players.
The thing a three faction system does help with is that if one faction grows larger, the other two typically gang up on that faction, whereas in a two faction system the smaller faction just loses repeatedly which often leads to an even bigger imbalance.
Sometimes, that third wheel can acctually help in terms of tactics.
One thing I noticed on the PS2 website (and sorry, i'm a noob to Planetside, so bear with me) is that each faction is going to have 8 of the same vehicles, and then 2 vehicles that are side-specific. I think the same will go for the weapons, so if TR goes and conquors almost all of the map, NC and VS can team up with different tactics on different sides of the warfront, and mix and match forces so that a push can be made eventually. Then when the dust has settled and TR isn't sticking it where it pleases, fighting can continue just like normal.
Unless the population for one side is always bigger, I don't think any side will ever end up with all the territories conquered forever, especially since there are three sides, so one side would have to deal with two others, like the other posters have said.
p.s. I don't have TR, I just used them as an example.