Allow low population battlestations

[Bolen]

Low level battlestations are virtually impossible to start due to the low number of people interested in participating. I suggest that Funcom change the battlestation code so that battlestations can start even when there is only 1 person signed up. They could have a timer (small number of minutes) that would wait to see if anyone else signed up before sending invites, so that if other people were interested, then all would start at the same time.

I feel like many people find the difficulty of getting vp at low level to be a huge pain, and this would help that situation a lot.

If the idea of the current state is to prevent someone from farming a lot of VP with minimal effort, then I feel like this change would provide players with an easy way to prevent that: they can show up and compete with the person for the vp.

Preventing a side from taking over a battlestation just because the other side won't show up to compete for it also seems silly from a roleplaying perspective. If no one competes with you, you should win, not be forced into a stalemate.

Please FC, help us use a fun feature that you added to the game on our lower level characters.

[Vgman01]

Rather change low lv BS to be more like an arena type thing, last one standing wins, also revamp its size and shape for this. 2 people on one side signing up waiting for more to come = 2 people very bored dueling outside BS for the next 2 and a halve days waiting for it to start just to get in and get kicked right back out because almost every one who sined up is offline.

[Towerblock]

Aye.. this idea hath merit.

Although it comes close to WoW 2v2/3v3/5v5 idea a bit.

[Scabadus]

Who cares if it's close to WoW, if it's a good idea then put it in AO.

[Phracton]

Also, i think i have posted this before, make it that omni/clan doesn't matter on bs and just make team blue and team red. This way bs can be started even if 15 omni and 5 clan and no neuts sign up for example. Its enough waiting online (tm) already and bs is an artificial fun playfield that doesn't have to do anything with the side conflict in a storyline/roleplaying sense.

[Bolen]

Also, i think i have posted this before, make it that omni/clan doesn't matter on bs and just make team blue and team red. This way bs can be started even if 15 omni and 5 clan and no neuts sign up for example. Its enough waiting online (tm) already and bs is an artificial fun playfield that doesn't have to do anything with the side conflict in a storyline/roleplaying sense.

Despite the problems it causes, I like pvp to be primarily faction vs faction.

I do think it would be interesting if there was a more tangible benefit from winning battlestations that affected people who weren't in the battlestations, like some global cookie that a side would get temporarily if it was winning battlestations consistently, to encourage people to show up even if they didn't need VP. Maybe additional xp% based on how many of the last 5-10 battlestation wins each side had. (I realize since there are only 2 sides on the battlestation, neutrals would lose out if that was how it was done. I'm not sure how to get around that.)

As for the roleplaying aspect, I thought we were supposedly fighting over these things to get control over the orbital weaponry. I guess currently it's more like we're controlling orbital factories so that we can get them to make weapons/armor for our side. But I think there is a bit of plot support for it being faction-based.

[Bolen]

Rather change low lv BS to be more like an arena type thing, last one standing wins, also revamp its size and shape for this. 2 people on one side signing up waiting for more to come = 2 people very bored dueling outside BS for the next 2 and a halve days waiting for it to start just to get in and get kicked right back out because almost every one who sined up is offline.

I prefer the capture scenario, since killing is just 1 way to accomplish that goal. I agree that lower level battlestations should be smaller.

[rustinel]

I dunno, 1 or 2 to a side on BS is gonna be pretty damn boring. Yes I know no bs at all is pretty boring too. I wouldn't even want to play with less than 4 per side however.

[Vgman01]

I prefer the capture scenario, since killing is just 1 way to accomplish that goal. I agree that lower level battlestations should be smaller.

Personaly I don't think a ctf type bs would work in ao. lets say one side has a fix and one side dosent (or worse an adv) exactly how is the side that dosent have those compeate?

Edit: Yes I realise there are snares/roots/root graphs, but at higher lvs those become virtually obsolete

[Vgman01]

I dunno, 1 or 2 to a side on BS is gonna be pretty damn boring. Yes I know no bs at all is pretty boring too. I wouldn't even want to play with less than 4 per side however.

Making it smaller would go to fix this. Also a sort of deathmach style bs would be nice. Either last one standing or first team to kill x amount of players on the other team.

[NekoCrow]

or, how about duel pvp? The winner gets VP. Isn't that nice idea? heh.

[egadsrk2]

Duel VP? No way.

Theres no control on it. It'd be abused in the blink of an eye. Like. Log in your two guys every 4 hours. 5 Kills for each person. No baffs. You're done in 5 minutes. It's practically giving Ofab away.