But that happens sometimes, you can't\shouldn't 'design' battles to be interesting - that would be really boring. They have to be unpredictable, simply anything can happen.
Agreed, but to me that train of thought goes against faction locking if it is used to stop people who are not yet involved in the battle from joining either side. Unpredictability of a battle is an argument against faction locking IMHO.
If it is predictable that people will rush to a faction already in a massive battle and quite possibly destabilize whole engagement through weight of bodies it will destroy any strategic consideration and planning that a WC or SF leadership undertook, then the organics of a well executed strategy go out the window I'm afraid. You won't have any unpredictability in battle, you'll have a rugby scrum.
I understand that, but by that argument then SF and faction leaders should also be banned from using 3rd party communications to get offline players from logging on as this would have the same effect.... I'm not seeing that difference between, if it's an Eldar vs Chaos battle, an Ork player switching to either Eldar or Chaos to join and Bob who is at home watching a film getting a text message to log in his Eldar/Chaos character. The only issue I see is if someone switches from Eldar to Chaos (or vice versa).
I know when I play planetside if the victory comes too quick then thats a boring battle. I enjoy it the most when the fighting is at its most intense, where victory and defeat hang in the ballance. To me these are worthy battles and I try to honor my opponents by playing as well as I can.
Damn, had a reasonably intelligent reply written (for me anyways) and hit back on my phone browser. Will get back around to it in an hour EC has a resemblance to PS2 but it isn't a sequel. There's a reason I and a lot of other people stopped playing that creature early on.
Battles should be kind of unpredictable. But they should also flow in a way that makes sense. For instance I absolutely hate the random spawns in bf4 and most of the cod game. To me this isnt much fun.
I agree with the idea to stop spying and swap to win. But when i buy a game i want to play all of it and not wait for 4 hours to play with my ork loving friends. Could we not instead of punishing swapping, reward loyalty with somthing like a time xp bonus. the longer you play the bigger your xp multiplier would be(or a other reward).
Spying can't be stopped due to third party programs, plus it shouldn't even be attempted. Its a meta-game on its own. Sure spying sucks the life out of some strategic moves but it also causes massive battles where it would've been an otherwise boring ninja cap. So spying creates battles, I am cool with it, considering it cant be stopped. Faction hopping can be limited, and is way more dangerous to a games balance than spying ever will be. Faction swapping lets trolls switch over to their enemies faction and block roads, team kill, relay false orders, etc. and after they pretty much troll their own team into victory they swap right back over and score that win. Faction hopping also causes less malicious players to join the winning team near the end of a battle no matter how close, causing a close match to become a landslide in the end in some cases. Why would you not put measures in to stop faction swapping such as mission-area faction locks? 1. "I don't want to be inconvenienced" : Sorry but inconvenience is a small price to pay for balance in a massive fps where imabalances have caused similar games and standard MMOs to die. I am going to bust out my Tau cap and say "It is for the Greater Good" stop being selfish. 2. "I want to play with my friends...": You know what faction they are on, and what times they play, and with the mission-area lock you still have to accept that mission on your current faction to fight for them. So you choose friends faction for this 1-4 hours or do I stay solo? Not overly difficult and not some friendship breaking mechanic...just plan a little bit better and take responsibility for your choice. 3. "Just use incentives, don't punish players": Reward incentives are surprisingly weak vs the will to win or not lose. Most MMOs with PVP at the world level use incentive to play the underdog, they really do, and ya know what they never work. Even if you make the incentive something insanely awesome all you will do is shift the players from one side to another in a vicious cycle...no continuity. I haven't ever played an MMO with faction lock, but I have played FPS where you cannot switch teams mid fight and those servers hosting those games are the most consistent vs servers where you can swap at will. he at will servers usually have a lopsided matchup and only stops the insanity once slots are maxed out, then new players join the match, while getting steamrolled until player cap on both sides is reached and guess what...it creates a terrible matchup and game. Lets go a step further and stop with assumptions of friendships being strained, and inconveniences or even incentives with some threads from different games about faction/team switching: Battlefield 4 http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/de/forum/threadview/2955064772438781982/2/ https://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2979150493967203453/ https://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/en/forum/threadview/2979150493822245494/ GW2: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/44595-world-vs-world-vs-world-is-a-broken-concept/ https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/wuv/wuv/R-I-P-Low-Pop-Servers (Entire Guilds do this) https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/wuv/wuv/Angry-rant-against-bandwagon-guilds http://www.killtenrats.com/2013/10/17/gw2-server-transfer-wars/ http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/77114-they-need-to-close-transfers-asap/ http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/938738-guild-wars-2/63908039 Planetside2: http://steamcommunity.com/app/218230/discussions/0/864969953592602416/ https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...ction-just-won-another-alert-waterson.153447/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/1fudc3/i_dont_get_it_why_do_people_go_fourth_faction/ (Includes bit of how incentive XP did not help) http://loadoutoptional.com/2013/07/18/population-balance-ps2/ There are probably wayyyyy more examples of team switching being a legitimate threat to this game. Again, lets be real here, average joe internet gamer has n0 loyalty, chases the joy of victory at any costs, and isn't as hardcore as we hope to collect incentives other than win or have the highest K/Ds which is usually safer to do with a winning team. Faction lock deserves a chance in testing during open beta imo.
