One large flaw about Battlestations in its current form many don’t realize

[wolfmyth]

Battlestations were introduced so the PvP crowd could have fun doing some PvP, not for PvMers, although they are welcome to check the place out It should not be another grind system for them. It’s the PvMers who are killing BS.


I’m going to skip the fact about the already flawed system where the side that has more numbers signed up get more people in on a ratio of about 3:2 and greater inside BS. What side gets more people signing up? The one that wins most of the time of course.


After doing over 200 battlestations, I would say that the win loss for clan has been around 10-15% wins. This however has a semi hidden long term issue. What happens when one side gets all the VPs they need fast? Whats wrong with this you ask?


The people who are there just for the VPs on Omni side get their VPs in a matter of a week then leave. However the clans that are there just for the VPs have to do BS for months to get what they need. There are lots of times where If clan did LE miss they would have gained more VPs in the time-span not to mention the bonus of +AIxp and loot.
What happens is that Omni get mostly PvP (“twinked”) people signing up for battlestations, people who are interested in PvP, because they removed the Omnis in the pool of people signing up who where there just VPs fast. Clan however get more and more people adding to the already large pool who are there just for the VPs and outnumber the people who are there to PvP. This unbalances the sides even more. These pvm people are usually not very good at pvp and play in PvM gear, free kills pretty much where you don’t have to lift a finger.


The more there is such a gap of PvP vs PvM on one side the more the win/loss gap widens, and the more it widens the more PvM people have joined the pool then left. It’s the famous catch 22.
Just further proof of this PvP skill gap is the number of level 210-213 Omni running around with tittles above rookie. We all know how easy this level range is to kill for 216+, yet they still manage to thrive in the so called “hostile” environment.

I’m sure Omni want to see more BS and have more interesting rounds on BS just as much as I do(apart for the Omni PvMers who want fast/easy VPs and the title farmers).

How can this issue be solved? Hard to say. I think that raising the min VP rewarded to the loosing side would be a start. This way the people who are just in for VPs leave the pool of players faster and more PvP players are seen inside of BS. This also would make it a little bit more bearable when loosing, instead of only getting < 150 VPs, and people will sign up more. Fixing the way signup also works would be another boost in helping the situation.

These are just my observations and thoughts from TL7 BS on RK1.

[Ionlyheal]

You mentioned a 10-15% win percentage for clanners- I hate to break it to you, but it really depends on the time of day you're in the BS. I play late night and mid morning EST- late night, clans almost always win; mid-morning, omnis pwn.

I don't know you, so I hate to make a judgement, but you're not really in a pvp org (Unity of the Rose)... seems to me that you just want min VP reward to go up so you can have an easier time grinding for your gear...?

Let's make this game a little easier?? l o l

[wolfmyth]

Originally Posted by Ionlyheal You mentioned a 10-15% win percentage for clanners- I hate to break it to you, but it really depends on the time of day you're in the BS. I play late night and mid morning EST- late night, clans almost always win; mid-morning, omnis pwn. I don't know you, so I hate to make a judgement, but you're not really in a pvp org (Unity of the Rose)... seems to me that you just want min VP reward to go up so you can have an easier time grinding for your gear...? Let's make this game a little easier?? l o l

Firstly, just because Clan win for 1-2h a day its still around 10-15% on average. A day has 24h afterall . I play during all hours as I do shiftwork.

Last time I checked not being in a "pvp" org doesn't stop you from pvping. Not even when I did NW. BS was designed to anyone and everyone could join in.

Just so you also know UoTR had its own seperate guild once for pvp . I also like to pvp on more then one toon . This doesn't have any relevace just like I could say, wow you joined in 2006 so you have hardly done any pvp. Any of this still doesnt change the catch 22 thats happening on BS clan side.

I see you have managed to completly miss the point however and think I just want VPs. I don't care if FC totaly removes VPs from BS. This would mean that only the people who want to enjoy pvp would sign up and this would again solve the issue, but its a extreeme measure.

Try to think about the situation and what I wrote a little longer.

[wolfmyth]

I acutally think FC also noticed this unbalance in players/skill, that has driven off a lot of clan pvpers. A lot of them don't need VPs but want to keep their title so they won't sign up because they know there are so many more low level badly geared PvMers on their side. Hence the new title system change...

Just a thought.

[Borgina]

with the current system theres really no viable way to get VP other than doing BS but the OFAB stuff that you can get from VP is useful for PVMers as well as PVPers. It would be nice if there was a viable way for PVMers to get VP other than BS or if the PVP reward system only had PVP items available so that PVmers wouldn't be wanting to farm them.

[Vlain]

Originally Posted by wolfmyth I don't care if FC totaly removes VPs from BS. This would mean that only the people who want to enjoy pvp would sign up and this would again solve the issue, but its a extreeme measure.

Yup, that would definitely solve the issue, to the extreme that the BS's would be abandoned.

Originally Posted by Silirrion It was the intention however that battlestations were a better route for getting the VPs required, and if players were using them more they probably would be. Unfortunately as we are seeing this is not the case, so players want to only missions, and then don't go to the battlestation so it is a vicious circle, we recognize that.

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Originally Posted by Silirrion In many ways its a vicious circle, it is in theory possible to make more VPs in through battle station PVP then in the alien missions already, if that was all everybody was doing. Obviously though as not enough people are choosing to do that, there isn't the population there to encourage more pvp and as people are inherently driven mostly by item gain they then see the Alien missions as the only 'viable' way forward. So that being how players have approached the battle stations and alien missions we have decided to make some changes to the points allocations from battle stations (hopefully in next weeks update) so that people will be encouraged to PVP more.

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Originally Posted by lugoman People are driven by FUN. In the absence of fun they are driven by item gain.

response:

Originally Posted by Silirrion We had hoped so, but I think that the players activity has clearly proved otherwise, PVP as and of itself is not sufficient motivation for the majority to head to the battlestations.

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Originally Posted by Silirrion Here we see a situation where it simply does seem to be an issue of incentive, and the coming changes to the battlestation VP levels will reflect that. If that is the key driver for the majority of players then we have to take that into account. (no denying some do it for the fun of PVP, but I think it is now safe to say that that is not the main driver for the majority of players) So therefore as said above, the level of VPs from the battlestations will hopefully be increased in next weeks update. We do believe the battlestations are fun and engaging when there are enough players participating so the coming changes will be about giving the general playing public with the incentives that they will consider worthwhile doing to gain their VPs.

[wolfmyth]

Originally Posted by Borgina with the current system theres really no viable way to get VP other than doing BS but the OFAB stuff that you can get from VP is useful for PVMers as well as PVPers. It would be nice if there was a viable way for PVMers to get VP other than BS or if the PVP reward system only had PVP items available so that PVmers wouldn't be wanting to farm them.

Thats why I was thinking of increasing the VP reward for the loosing team. So that PvMers could get thier VPs, buy their armor and move on faster to restore the PvP-to-PvM player ratio inside BS on clan side more towards omnis ratio. I feel however in the current form the ratio on clans side is just getting worse.

I know what its like on the very rare occasion when I was inside on my soldier and omni had a bad PvP-to-PvM ratio of players.

I'm not blaming PvMers for this, its only logical PvMers want armor that in some cases is much better then AI. Its Fcs fault for puting in nice armor/rings/nanos and making LE miss so unrewarding, forcing PvMers to PvP. I know you guys would be much happier if you didn't have to do BS. I still however would like to see PvMers pop in once a while.

Maybe if signup took into accound your title rank so for one master three rookies and lower would get invited.

[wolfmyth]

Originally Posted by Vlain Yup, that would definitely solve the issue, to the extreme that the BS's would be abandoned.

Thats why I didn't even consider it an option in the first post. I only mentioned that only to prove a point after Ionlyheal with his lack of comprehension skills or lazyness to read my post properly thought I wanted easy VPs.

I do feel that adressing the ratio amount of PvPers to PvMers inside BS at one time would lead to much more enjoyable gameplay.

While I have not pvped in wow nor played it properly, their arena system and pvp rewards system has got some really nice stances. You need to PvP a certain amount of time each week( or fortnight?) so your armor/weapons don't go OE 0, or something like that. Arena teams are picked out and put against players of equal level and Battlegrounds system does something like that also.

[Vlain]

Although I hate the idea of rewarding people for losing, I can agree that the greater good of maintaining a higher BS population might best be served with such a change.

[Ionlyheal]

geez- i didn't flame you personally

i'm sad for your gimp laziness... reread the first line of your post; if BS is for the pvpers, who cares about the reward?

[wolfmyth]

Originally Posted by Ionlyheal geez- i didn't flame you personally i'm sad for your gimp laziness... reread the first line of your post; if BS is for the pvpers, who cares about the reward?

Thank you for proving my point once again, you didn't bother to read it or you can't understand it. Nothing personal.

I'll give you a hint. Its about the ratio of PvMers to PvPers in Bs and how for onc side the ratio is really off and affects PvPers. The talk about increasing VP reward was just one possible _idea_ i had that might help, nothing more just like some other ideas that might help.

[Pafpuf]

It's your own (clans') fault BS is like that. Majority of the "good" clan pvpers (Spartards, Angelic Retardations) have all farmed high pvp titles (expert, master, just wait to see how many champions will pop up after 17.8 release date is set), and now they mostly pvp when there's no omni anyway, mainly in late european hours (after 2 AM GMT) in huge packs. There's nothing wrong with the BS itself, it's the mentality of your comrades.

[wolfmyth]

Originally Posted by Pafpuf It's your own (clans') fault BS is like that. Majority of the "good" clan pvpers (Spartards, Angelic Retardations) have all farmed high pvp titles (expert, master, just wait to see how many champions will pop up after 17.8 release date is set), and now they mostly pvp when there's no omni anyway, mainly in late european hours (after 2 AM GMT) in huge packs. There's nothing wrong with the BS itself, it's the mentality of your comrades.

Well pufpuf I decided to unhide you post and read what you have to say. I'm not really surprised you blame everything on the side instead of the mechanics. I mean when Omni have 12 PvP players and 3 Pvm players inside and clan have 3 PvPers and 8 PvM players its all good. As long as you can get your easy kills.

Now imagine a BS system where both sides have the same number of players and not only that, but theres an even distribution of player skill. A place where every point counts and the point diff is only < 10 points. I've had BS's like that and they were the best fun ive had. Both sides would praise the other for a great round. Now that is what BS is supposed to be like!

[Rewo]

I think there is a fundamental problem with your assumptions here. 200 bs rounds is only about 2 days gametime, depending on length of rounds, which by the sounds of a lot of the rounds you've had the unfortunate timing to be involved with, are probably much shorter than average.

In my experience, the pendulum swings back and forth a lot. The side that dominates switches in a very cyclical manner. Time of day might mean that over time one side does better than the other but it is not overly drastic.

10-15% is nowhere near the real number. It can feel that way at times but the opposite is true almost as often.

To me the biggest problem with bs is that the division between pvp'ers and pvm'ers is the desire to win. Pvm'ers want vp a lot more than pvp'ers. There is a great level of frustration due to this. Pvm'ers get upset that most people in any given round barely help cap points, work as a team etc. Pvp'ers get upset when your average pvm'er runs off to cap core at the start of a round instead of standing around OB'ing everyone on their side.

The solution in my mind is to introduce some serious VP eaters. Something that gets consumed in pvp. Something like very expensive ofab stims that will give the pvp'ers a reason to want to win rounds. As long as they have stupid amounts of vp rotting away, they have no reason to care about winning or losing.

[wolfmyth]

Originally Posted by Rewo I think there is a fundamental problem with your assumptions here. 200 bs rounds is only about 2 days gametime, depending on length of rounds, which by the sounds of a lot of the rounds you've had the unfortunate timing to be involved with, are probably much shorter than average. In my experience, the pendulum swings back and forth a lot. The side that dominates switches in a very cyclical manner. Time of day might mean that over time one side does better than the other but it is not overly drastic. 10-15% is nowhere near the real number. It can feel that way at times but the opposite is true almost as often. To me the biggest problem with bs is that the division between pvp'ers and pvm'ers is the desire to win. Pvm'ers want vp a lot more than pvp'ers. There is a great level of frustration due to this. Pvm'ers get upset that most people in any given round barely help cap points, work as a team etc. Pvp'ers get upset when your average pvm'er runs off to cap core at the start of a round instead of standing around OB'ing everyone on their side. The solution in my mind is to introduce some serious VP eaters. Something that gets consumed in pvp. Something like very expensive ofab stims that will give the pvp'ers a reason to want to win rounds. As long as they have stupid amounts of vp rotting away, they have no reason to care about winning or losing.

I actually added up all my VP from my toons and its around 130k. This being clan and loosing most of the time probably means around 400BS+. Nothing much I know, I'm not a hardcore PvP, I just like to pvp here and there when I don't have time for other things. Thats still a lot of Battlestations. Its possible that some think the losses arn't as bad because they know when to sign up for the few hours, then leave once clan starts loosing. This again makes it seem like clan doesnt loose that offten. I would really love to see the stats from FC, or from a group of people who log every BS outcome for a few days. That would be very interesting data. I know one thing for sure, and that is that theres no way in hell Clan win over 30% in a weekday.

The use once items are ingame already in the form of rocketlauncher ammo but I guess thats not enough. More pvp one use items could just help BS become stronger, its a good idea, one that cant hurt.

[skybert]

Originally Posted by wolfmyth Battlestations were introduced so the PvP crowd could have fun doing some PvP, not for PvMers, although they are welcome to check the place out It should not be another grind system for them. It’s the PvMers who are killing BS. I’m going to skip the fact about the already flawed system where the side that has more numbers signed up get more people in on a ratio of about 3:2 and greater inside BS. What side gets more people signing up? The one that wins most of the time of course. After doing over 200 battlestations, I would say that the win loss for clan has been around 10-15% wins. This however has a semi hidden long term issue. What happens when one side gets all the VPs they need fast? Whats wrong with this you ask? The people who are there just for the VPs on Omni side get their VPs in a matter of a week then leave. However the clans that are there just for the VPs have to do BS for months to get what they need. There are lots of times where If clan did LE miss they would have gained more VPs in the time-span not to mention the bonus of +AIxp and loot. What happens is that Omni get mostly PvP (“twinked”) people signing up for battlestations, people who are interested in PvP, because they removed the Omnis in the pool of people signing up who where there just VPs fast. Clan however get more and more people adding to the already large pool who are there just for the VPs and outnumber the people who are there to PvP. This unbalances the sides even more. These pvm people are usually not very good at pvp and play in PvM gear, free kills pretty much where you don’t have to lift a finger. The more there is such a gap of PvP vs PvM on one side the more the win/loss gap widens, and the more it widens the more PvM people have joined the pool then left. It’s the famous catch 22. Just further proof of this PvP skill gap is the number of level 210-213 Omni running around with tittles above rookie. We all know how easy this level range is to kill for 216+, yet they still manage to thrive in the so called “hostile” environment. I’m sure Omni want to see more BS and have more interesting rounds on BS just as much as I do(apart for the Omni PvMers who want fast/easy VPs and the title farmers). How can this issue be solved? Hard to say. I think that raising the min VP rewarded to the loosing side would be a start. This way the people who are just in for VPs leave the pool of players faster and more PvP players are seen inside of BS. This also would make it a little bit more bearable when loosing, instead of only getting < 150 VPs, and people will sign up more. Fixing the way signup also works would be another boost in helping the situation. These are just my observations and thoughts from TL7 BS on RK1.

Easy. Raise VP gain from missions.
NOT by adding more loot-clumps .
NOT by giving the loot-clumps more value.

By completely removing the clumps and adding a VP reward as mission reward.
Also, let that reward scale according to the difficulty of the mission!
Higher mission=more VP.

Then us PvM'ers would stick to missions and you PvP'ers could have the battlestations for their intended use.

[Rewo]

No. Be happy its even possible to get any VP from pvm at all.

[skybert]

Originally Posted by Rewo No. Be happy its even possible to get any VP from pvm at all.

Then you'll have PvM'ers "messing up" Battlestations like now!

[Pafpuf]

Originally Posted by wolfmyth Well pufpuf I decided to unhide you post and read what you have to say. I'm not really surprised you blame everything on the side instead of the mechanics. I mean when Omni have 12 PvP players and 3 Pvm players inside and clan have 3 PvPers and 8 PvM players its all good. As long as you can get your easy kills.

And then we invite your so called good pvpers who chicken out hugging their precious titles. Who's fault is that ? Game mechanics ? Omni ? PvMers ? Mine ? Funcoms ?

I didn't blame anything or anyone, just told you the truth, if you ever pvped as an omni on the BS you'd know it's very much like that. The whole "both sides are just the same" is more or less plain bullsh*t, and the differences in player mentality is much different, the saying is just made up when one side tries to justify their self-aware wrong doings by trying to blame it on the other.

[Rewo]

Originally Posted by skybert Then you'll have PvM'ers "messing up" Battlestations like now!

Good, that's the point. I'm not some elitist that feels only pvp-minded people belong there. The more pvm people that go the better. I think if there is enough incentive in place for the pvp-minded people to want to win every round rather than just run around farming titles then BS as a whole would become fun for even the most pvm-minded people out there.

I know a lot of pvm focused people that have fun in BS and some of them have even become more focused on pvp than pvm since BS's came along.