Kristoff Atruin
Subdreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
610
   |
Posted - 2013.05.20 06:23:00 -
[1] - Quote
I think there are some major problems with the concept of planetary conquest as it exists, and in the general balance of the game overall. My role as a director in Subdreddit is mostly in managing districts and making plans for conquest. I'll keep queuing up battles as long as my members are interested in them, but I've personally lost interest in the game mode and I think our members are mostly feeling the same. There is no strategy involved at the high level, and ownership straight up lacks value. In my role as director of conquest / district management I feel like a human instant battle server. I press buttons so that other people can play a game, not play a game myself.
First a side note - I think you really need to investigate the statistics about what weapons and suits people are using in conquest, and what kinds of equipment are used compared to FW / instant battles. It seems as though if you want to win you need as many people as possible on your team using assault rifle gank fits. Raising the stakes seems to drag the the balance problems right out into the open. As an anecdote, I run logistics. In other game modes I spend a lot of time healing people and giving them ammo. In conquest that has yet to happen, because nobody lives long enough to need me. I have also yet to notice a logistics suit on the opposing team. I'll leave this at that though, because the balance of various weapons and suits really isn't my concern at the moment.
My main concern is with the design of the conquest system itself, and it's been one I've been voicing ever since the designs started to be revealed to us. The current design lacks any kind of higher level strategy, or incentive other than bragging rights to own districts. Some super elite fps clans who have been playing shooters together for many years were really concerned that their low numbers would mean they couldn't hold territory and wanted "raiding" to be a viable strategy. So attackers were given big advantages in terms of clones stolen, production halted etc. The result is a system where owning territory is simply a bad investment unless you have a truly massive number of very skilled players. Consider that it costs 80m to take an unclaimed district, and 160m to 240m to take one that is occupied. Those districts can produce up to 8 or 10 million worth of clones per day. That means you need at the bare minimum to go 8 days without being attacked to simply recover your investment...but does a day ever go by without a district getting hit? At what point does it ever make sense to enter into the conquest system? The only thing to gain is bragging rights, but we didn't need conquest for that. On top of all that when I'm defending a district my corporation owns, I don't actually feel like I own it. Sure it looks the same every time, but the defender isn't defending it. The "defender" is attacking it at the same time the attacker is. I'm not standing on the wall of my fortress repelling the heathens, I'm assaulting what is ostensibly my "home". To make this more absurd, in every defensive battle we've had we've started out the fight trying to break into the very structure we're "defending". Conquest 1.0 was fun despite its balance issues because you felt like an attacker or defender. What we have now is about as far as you can get from that.
Now compare this system to Eve, where sovereignty comes with increased income. Higher risk, higher reward. Furthermore there are strategic reasons to hold control of specific systems in Eve. None of this is reflected in PC. It's a massive isk sink with few benefits and it doesn't convey the feeling of owning anything or living somewhere. Furthermore, the various SIs don't seem to convey any serious advantage. It doesn't actually matter what kind of SIs you hold, from the Dust perspective. The research lab itself is really puzzling, because it gives a reduction in attrition penalties...but how many people attack by moving clones from a currently occupied district? Doing so leaves the attacking district very vulnerable with the minimum 150 clone loss, and odds are youGÇÖre being attacked by a clone pack and canGÇÖt move the clones anyway. This attrition bonus also seems to imply a strategic level to district ownership, by using depth of terrain held to keep some central districts safe(r) and productive while battles rage on the front lines. Yet to accomplish this requires holding a bare minimum of ~25 districts (3 jumps in any direction from a single planet), which in turn would require a number of very high SP players rivaling the size of many alliances within Eve. Dust as a whole doesn't even have that many players...so what is the purpose of the lab? The basic idea is sound - turning Dust at a high level into a giant game of Slay, but the execution fails to pull it off.
Maybe these things will be less of a problem when more space opens to us, or when null is opened. Until then I won't be bothered at all if people in Subdreddit don't want to join conquest battles anymore. Conquest simply isn't that interesting in its current form. I wish I had some good suggestions for how to fix these issues. The only things I can think of are the ability to deploy onto the district to walk around and become familiar with it, and run pratices with your corp. The other is the defenders starting out with control of at least the control points inside the SI itself. If I'm defending it, I should start inside it. That doesn't address the strategic level that is sorely lacking though, only the tactical level. |
Kristoff Atruin
Subdreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
632
|
Posted - 2013.05.21 03:28:00 -
[3] - Quote
It may only be day 6, but the problems with the strategic level of conquest have been quite evident for over a month. The balance issues with the suits and weapons themselves have been outrageously evident ever since Uprising deployed. Put the two together and you've got a system that fails to deliver on the sense of location, value, ownership and really everything that was supposed to make Dust different. This is a bad thing. It is not fun. Not even remotely. |