Topic: Is the current land configuration not working?

First off let me start by saying that this is not a whine post. My ingame experiences may have gradually brought me to this realisation, aswell as viewing other players comments in other threads.

So there's 3 non pvp islands, and 3 pvp islands. All 3 pvp islands are claimed by sections of guilds who formed into alliances. If you are not part of one of these alliances you can forget about using the beta islands.

It's laughable that even one such as myself has trouble using any of the beta islands, to the point that it's just not worth it. Even if you get lucky enough to find that one of the entrances doesn't have an arke alt scout watching one of the 2 teleports in, you'll still be found soon enough no matter where you are, because the islands just arn't that big and most of the islands are just made up of small passageways. You can become trapped very easily.

Now what I mean by one such as myself is I refuse to join any of these alliances that claim to own the islands, I simply do not want to be part of a zerg of players. I used to pay one alliance to use their island but after they stated that 10 mill a day was no longer enough I stopped bothering with it. Also I can afford to take losses on these islands, while most players would get killed once and never go back. Or just never go there in the first place because they're too easy to find and kill.

I presumed this was going to be how things panned out ever since beta days. The 3 beta islands are simply too easy to control.

This effects all players negatively. PvP players, even the ones in the alliances don't get to have their fun, there is rarely anybody to hunt on their islands, because the second someone does enter beta, they are immediately hunted down and caught quickly. If a large group of players looking for pvp goes to a beta alliance, the alliance scout will inform everyone in the alliance and people will drop what they're doing and either hide in 100% safety or gather a zerg to get rid of the intruders.

The average player who is not part of an alliance is effected negatively too. Beta islands are basically out of bounds, for reasons already stated.

PvP players get bored because there's no fun fights, thanks to the teleport system there's no way to surpise your players who live on the islands, and thanks to the smallness and almost narrow passage setup of each island, it's way to easy for a zerg of players to catch you, then add that they only need to camp 2 exits and that settles it, you're trapped on the island. That's a major design flaw, because these 3 islands make up 100% of the pvp landmass in the game and you can be trapped on 33% of it at any one time.

Perhaps there should be a new feature added which allows you to travel across water, so that players can enter and exit a pvp island from any beach they like. This would remove a lot of the problems currently being faced. That, and adding a lot more islands, preferably bigger islands where it's easier to hide.

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

I agree that it is not right as it is now for the reasons mentioned above, and it's actually becoming worse. I don't know what would be the best (and easiest) way to fix this.. I'd say we definately need more land with distant points of interests which worth controlling/fighting for. And something which prevents or makes harder to totally controll entire islands. Stealth will be fun, but won't solve this.

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Travel between islands without teleports would be a great start.  I'm surprised that the local npc population haven't discovered flight.  There would need to be mechanics to fend off invading air drops of course so there aren't constantly 3 guys in ewars dropping in on miners.

Water travel.. There needs to be risk involved in landing on the beach as well.. Perhaps the watercraft you travel on would be easy to sink, and player controlled artillery were scattered around?  Just a crazy idea that I didn't spend much time thinking about..

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

A new robot type designed to drop pilots behind enemy lines. Probably using powerful built in teleporter arrays and placed navigation beacons.
Requiring massive energy to teleport a robot and the larger the mass of the robot the more energy required to transfer them.

Most importantly. Usable offensively! Defence or offence module. Teleport your friends behind enemy lines or the enemy group back home. it's risky but if pulled off right it'd change the favour of a battle in minutes.

The Game

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Agree wholeheartedly the OP is right on every point.  The current chokepoint system leads to the ability to avoid 90% of fights due to premature scouting.  No radar/landmark module will fix this.

Tectonic plate shifts and now the islands are touching in multiple places and fused together?  Now that would be groovy.

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Agreed, these choke points are choking the game play more than anything.

7 (edited by Fehz 2011-02-01 18:17:00)

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Alexander wrote:

A new robot type designed to drop pilots behind enemy lines

Perhaps it's time to duplicate another aspect of Eve.. 
- Turn your bot into the teleport beacon
- Become stuck for 10 minutes (including the additional 5 minutes of pvp flag afterwards)
- Have a big target on your head during that time that is viewable on the landmarks from anyone on the island
- Require fuel to use it

In this game however, if you're going to let any type of bot pass through, use more fuel depending on mass, make it so they can't grab more fuel from a can until the beacon module has been deactivated, and limit how many can come through similar to teleport beacons.  Make it slow, hard to see from a distance (see latest dev blog), and maybe an ECM bonus like Falcons in Eve.

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Fehz wrote:
Alexander wrote:

A new robot type designed to drop pilots behind enemy lines

Perhaps it's time to duplicate another aspect of Eve.. 
- Turn your bot into the teleport beacon
- Become stuck for 10 minutes (including the additional 5 minutes of pvp flag afterwards)
- Have a big target on your head during that time that is viewable on the landmarks from anyone on the island
- Require fuel to use it

In this game however, if you're going to let any type of bot pass through, use more fuel depending on mass, make it so they can't grab more fuel from a can until the beacon module has been deactivated, and limit how many can come through similar to teleport beacons.  Make it slow, hard to see from a distance (see latest dev blog), and maybe an ECM bonus like Falcons in Eve.

I don't think this would help the average player much, if atall actually. The game needs to be re-designed a bit to get rid of the current problems. Either that or do what I said and allow players to cross the water between islands so they can come up on any beach.

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Purgatory makes some excellent points.

However, while the current system makes the Betas off-limits to non-aligned players, it's not a serious problem: epitron flows cheaply these days. It could be much harder, but the alliances seem unable to figure out how to make it so- which is fine by me big_smile

You're right in pointing out that part of the issue is limited access: adding several more access points would lead to a lot more combat- and might be enough to lure more non-aligned players and corps to the islands. Maybe a land bridge, maybe more teleporters, what provides the access is not as important as the fact that additional access is provided.

I think that making Beta ownership more meaningful- through access to unique resources, or player-built structures, etc.- will also help. Even PvPers, bloodthirsty curs that they are, occasionally need a reason to fight. Adding more Beta-only resources would also encourage more non-aligned players and corps to consider a visit.

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Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Purgatory wrote:

I don't think this would help the average player much, if at all actually. The game needs to be re-designed a bit to get rid of the current problems. Either that or do what I said and allow players to cross the water between islands so they can come up on any beach.

I agree- a new bot type won't help much at all. While it would certainly add some fun to PvP, a teleport bot won't help the small corps or unaligned players, especially if it requires a lot of resources to build or operate.

Allowing amphibious movement would be the best solution, as it would add unlimited access points.

All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful - Kohelet Rabbah 7:16

"My transaction log shows all my NIC was from selling kernals.  All of it."
"Savin's outrage tears are the best tears." - Anonymous ***

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

BOAT!

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

I don't think robots ever will be able to cross the water from one island to an other-seamlessly. But there could be a game mechanism for amphibious landing. You embark your squad into transports from a port on your island, and then the squad leader could choose a landing destination on any islands. Every islands would have 10-20 or so landing points, it would take 2-10 mins to travel depending on distance and would cost money or some special fuel.

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Purgatory wrote:

stuff

Hai. Welcome to sandbox games.

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Myles Norvid wrote:
Purgatory wrote:

stuff

Hai. Welcome to sandbox games.

Careful junior, i've played sandbox games since UO launched.

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

I agree, we need more land mass such that alliances cannot take it all, in island fighting has to become more feasible. This also means we need something to fight for, no more dock up and wait. The new plants are the first good step here, something you have to defend or a roving enemy can take those out while you pick fluff out of cracks in the station.

Lol at pathetic troll attempt by Myles lol

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Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Purgatory wrote:
Myles Norvid wrote:
Purgatory wrote:

stuff

Hai. Welcome to sandbox games.

Careful junior, i've played sandbox games since UO launched.

........... and?

->You just lost The Game<-

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Seridur wrote:

I don't think robots ever will be able to cross the water from one island to an other-seamlessly. But there could be a game mechanism for amphibious landing. You embark your squad into transports from a port on your island, and then the squad leader could choose a landing destination on any islands. Every islands would have 10-20 or so landing points, it would take 2-10 mins to travel depending on distance and would cost money or some special fuel.

I'd prefer dropships that hold about 4 mechs including storage in the dropship holding ammo and equipment for an extended campaign.
Then give the outpost owners the abilty to construct AA emplacements in a radius around the outpost.

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

More islands less arkhe scouts thanks

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Dont do a weed wrote:

More islands less arkhe scouts thanks

You mean N-A isn't going to protect its mining ops with arkhe scouts anymore? Thanks for leading by example, NA!!

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Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

whoa am I in corp discussion

holyshit I represent my whole corp even though I don't do ***

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

/agree

Would be really great to have enought island for all. That the big corporations can't handle all of them. It would let smaller corp have an access (maybe durable) to beta island. Would allow some piracy.... etc...

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

4 outposts per islands. Rebalance speed. Redesign modules for better balance between combat, logistics and ewar.

If the devs had a large enough team to play the game while making feature that would help a lot too.

I'd like to see an event made of it. The devs spend 1 week playing their own game an a increased speed. 10 EP a minutes rather than 1 EP. (Just to get them up to speed). Would be nice to see what walls they run into within the first hour.. or 10 minutes even.

Talking here until our fingers hurt doesn't seem to get us anywhere as it's all opinion based with only a few threads having facts to back them up.

The Game

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

you impose that the DEVs don't play the game outside the DEV-server... what makes you so sure about that?

i would say, they only participate in the big events, but not the regular gameplay outside of PvP battles.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

Rather than taking a page from EVE and basically introduce one of the most broken aspects of that game into this one, lets take a page from Planetside.

Instead of putting Titans in this game, lets add drop ships that can hold certain amount of cargo room.  Give it a large hold that can be filled with active mechs and allow it to be piloted over water to the PVP islands.

It would open up a whole new world of tactics.  You never know if the one drop ship full of medium mechs is their entire force or whether they have 2-3 more drop ships hovering off the coast and waiting for the signal that they've been engaged.

Also, there would be epic lulz the first time a drop ship pilot turned traitor and dropped his load mechs right into the middle of an ambush.

Re: Is the current land configuration not working?

if they could solve the problem with the "instanced" maps, they could also do endless landmasses.

the current islands are shown as very close together - but actually that cant be - they are in different climatic zones after all.

or it is the famous "Crossroads"

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear