Lame planet Wars,,,,....

Wow what a crap fest that was, as a new player wanting greatness for the game. The game has gone downhill since I first started playing. And as for that planet wars we just had ( LMFAO )lame.

I went to the bathroom and the game was over. The teams were stacked with pro's Vs Noobs. Good job on killing a great game. Balance is clearly needed. There should have been at least 33% CHANCE FOR every team. Regulation is required so there is some fun in planet wars. Not just a boring one sided match, over in a blink of a eye. GG

You've packed quite a few complaints into a few sort sentences so it is hard to know exactly what you mean. That said, a feedback thread is required. Here are some issues I've noticed or heard.

• Short round.
• Imbalanced factions.
• Imbalanced teams in individual battles.
• Player skill is too important.
• Player activity is too important.
• Low skill players don't have much to contribute when there are many players of higher skill in their faction and online.

quote: Short round.

The aim of HQ capture victory is to deal with lame duck situations by finishing the round when one faction is knocked out. I want to avoid situations where one faction cannot do anything to win, as it would represent 33% of the players. Trying to keep a faction in the game when it has no control of any planets sounds too janky. My thinking now is to make HQ planets impossible to capture. This removes issues around dealing with zero-planet factions.

quote: Imbalanced factions. Imbalanced teams in individual battles. Player skill is too important. Player activity is too important.

We are open to suggestions regarding imbalanced factions. In general it is very hard to know who will be active in advance. Balancing individual battles with elo leads to people throwing games to adjust their elo appropriately. Some attempt was made by the bigger clans to balance themselves between the factions. This planning is not enough to take unclanned top players into account or variable availability.
Perhaps imbalance can be mitigated by making skill and/or activity less important, but this is hard to do without leading to random feeling outcomes or an endless stalemate.

quote: Low skill players don't have much to contribute when there are many players of higher skill in their faction and online.

We have a redesign of invasion launching, awaiting implementation: https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K-Infrastructure/issues/2132

Nobody who would implement it has enough time to do so. Comments on the new design would be useful as we want to figure out whether it is a decent candidate for a solution.

How can EtSuRii be a vet star while having started 56 days ago?

I feel Dread has some valid complaints.

I too remember my first Planetwars getting matched up 1v2 with 2 veteran Mumble Clan players. ROTFLstomp doesnt begin to cover it. It's deeply unfun to go into a battle that's hopeless and to get swarmed by a cloud of glaives when I'm still trying to figure out where my second Lotus should go. Or whether I should build a second Lotus.

On the other hand now that I'm a bit better, it's likewise unfun to make plans to attack important targets with higher ranking players, and then when I get to the battle I see they are not there. Instead, I have Noobster and Noobus Maximus at my side facing down purple and blue players. That's because the new guys just click on any button they see without waiting for a little direction.

That said: the energy and enthusiasm shown by the new players was pretty impressive. I've never seen so many names in fac talk before, nor had so many allies willing to take on impossible odds. That was cool. There were suggestions to raise the level cap for PW to something like 25 (by yours truly amongst others) but on further reflection we would be excluding the most enthusiastic part of the player base.

I think the solution is easy, and simple.

Each turn has TWO attacks and defences.One attack/defence is only accessible by players under rank 25. The other is only accessible by 25+.

The attack by the veteran players gains more influence than the attack by the lowbies, but this still gives a chance to the lower ranked players to have an impact and to play games they have a chance of winning in. Meanwhile the vets are happy because they are assured of at least a decent support companion in the fight.

Is this doable?

Wow, thanks, Katastrophe :)

I really think planet wars should have a clearer "objective" from game design perspective. We have multiple modes (campaign, casual, MM, coop) where does PW fit?

It was indeed very lame because to win meant to convince lower rank players not to join randomly.

Also, there was hard to explain why something matters, and how actions (even beginner actions) matter. For example: "hold this as long as possible you will block their good players".

Without a major re-design I will not play PW next time (besides playing few, was not nice what we needed to do to win - chat chat chat). With MM if I get in a team someone that I do not like to play with for one or two games, I can just stop MM. But in PW battles matter more, so you can't just "stop" (or you loose).

ye it felt pretty bad to tell some players please not to play...

I totaly agree with aragon

The strategy part in planetwars is nearly unimportant at the moment. Leaders are nearly not needed, and their plans unnecessairy. I dont need to list all the other problems that have been mentioned.


Instead we need to look for solutions!

My proposition:
We should form a team, maybe like 1 responsible dev and a few more experienced players, maybe 1 or 2 from each fraction?, to overwork the whole system, like totaly. (Maps, goals, structures, ...)
Because thats obviously necessairy.

i got an idea to make planet wars less lame
[Spoiler]

So regarding the 'sign up for battle' list, then you need to also have faction leadership online. So I propose adding a tick box on the planetwars tab: "I am active". This way tabs can be kept on who is actively online for the faction, and who is just chatting or playing in lobster pots.
The tick should probably automatically untick itself and give a message somewhere on the lobby screen (where the planetwars box pops up?) after a certain amount of time, to prevent people from ticking the box and then walking away for hours (or from faction leaders currently embroiled in a 2 hour battle for a key planet from having to split their attention between sending people to fight and doing actual fighting).

With that plus the signup list we'd have a system where:

- Leadership is actively kept track of with the tick box
- If there are no leaders online, the system could fall back on allowing anyone to join anything, to prevent paralysis of the faction as a whole
- If there are leaders online, the faction is much more coordinated
- Games can be better balanced ('They're attacking us with singularity-level players, let's not send in our dwarves', or vice versa)
- Faction leaders are encouraged to give everyone a chance at leadership, because you want leaders online at all times, increasing investment/participation