Announcements post #54: Cosmpiercer Updates.

Autoposter

<pre>From: Ilyos, the Arbiter
Subject: Cosmpiercer Updates.

Greetings everyone!

We've made some changes to the way Cosmpiercer battles work and we'd like to share how them with you all. Before we get into this though, I just want to bring up a quick point. In general, if you happen to stumble across a mechanic or system that works in such a way that it brings about some over the top consequences, you can be quite certain that that mechanic or system is probably not intended to work that way. And even if you bug it or issue it, it doesn't mean that it is okay to keep using it until the problem is fixed. We do our best to address all problems as quickly as possible, but while we do so, making use of unintended mechanics or bugs is really not okay.

Onwards to Cosmpiercers!

- The main purpose of guards has been to slow down a piercer's capture and to give defenders the time they need to mount a defense, as well as to separate piercers into tiers of difficulty. This has not exactly been working out as intended so, for now, we've removed guards altogether
- Capturing a cosmpiercer works a bit differently now. In order to assert dominance, you must capture and HOLD the terminals while they completely dismantle the defences and convert the piercer to your cause. Each second a terminal is under your faction's controls, it generates points towards victory. The more terminals you hold, the faster the points accrue. If a faction holds all terminals, point gain is doubled. If the opposing faction gains controls of terminals, you begin to lose points and if the points reach 0, the other faction begins to gain control over the cosmpiercer and they start getting points towards victory.
- An assault on a Cosmpiercer lasts for 30 minutes or until one side reaches its target points. If no side is victorious within 30 minutes, the Cosmpiercer is considered defended.
- COSMPIERCER INFO will now display the assault status of the piercer, in addition to its usual information

Have fun and let us know your thoughts!
</pre>

Indi

Can't wait until the first 3 way battle for a single CP (am I reading correctly that it could be possible?)

Edit to add

Without the guards is there a difference between cp levels now, aside from in space?

Grek

Number of terminals and terminal difficulty.

Ilyos

Indi said:

Can't wait until the first 3 way battle for a single CP (am I reading correctly that it could be possible?)

Yes, that could indeed be possible.

Cubey

No. Just no.

This is the exact opposite of what you should have done. This change will make the "no one's around, let's raid" problem ten times worse. Now literally 2 players can take over a piercer if there's no one around from the other faction to stop them. Also if there are 8 people on one side and 3 on the other, the 3 will always lose. If they were defending they could use guards as a force multiplier. But now the zerg will always win.

But hey! At least now Song can take over all cosmpiercers. Finally the devs' pet faction can win.

Matlkael

This round of changes seems to favour having more population, and right now, that's actually CA, so.

Cubey

Matlkael said:

This round of changes seems to favour having more population, and right now, that's actually CA, so.

Name me 5 CAs who do cosmpiercers and for each one I'll name you two Songs. Maybe three. Celestine has more peeps but most are non-combatants.

Also favoring more population is not good design regardless of who's on top at the moment. Game design should favor better play, not bigger zergs. There's a reason pvp modes in all modern MMOs have participant caps: it's 5 on 5 (or 24v24 if it's a big battleground kind of thing), not as many as you can find vs also as many as you can find.

This kind of design just discourages participation from factions that don't have the pvp population for a zerg. Within moments of the announcement Scatterhome lost its final piercer and what could we do about it? Fuck all.

And yes, I know technically cosmpiercers offer little reward. Like, the marks are pathetic and don't really matter. What really matters is the achievement. It's what pvpers play the game for. Hard to be a pvper in a non pvper faction if the game design makes it so higher numbers = automatic win.

Jerom

Correction : more cosmpiercers participants. And that's Song.

That said, the balance of power always fluctuates. One day, Song is at the top, some other day Scatterhome or the Ascendancy is. I don't get hung up too much on who is at the top, but I truly think they should have kept the guards and just made them immune to forced movement. Just my opinion.

EDIT: Bah, Cubey beat me to it.

kamyr

Don't think you have to remove guards or a bonus for defenders altogether.
Maybe a guard pack/a straightup buff to all combat parameters/something like that scaling to CP level and population. Or a teleporter room with a shortish (~5m) cooldown that takes defending troops to the CP (offensive side can still leave a wormhole in a docked ship).

Instead, now the attackers have an (almost) automatic point lead for the KotH. Put that on top of battle time selection, and it's gonna be heavily attack-favoured.

Matlkael

@Cubey @Jerom

Oh, I agree, Zerg Wins is a sad mechanic. I was replying to the insinuation that the changes were made by the admins in order to favour Song, when in fact, it may hurt us more in the long run for having a smaller overall population (although our participation rate is stellar;  to the Song players!).

Zhulkarn

This change looks like a major step back from the previous incarnation. I was expecting guard immunity to moving around as a direct solution. Not take out the PvE side of the challenge completely.

Now the side with the numbers has a far more advantage at the lack of force multipliers.

Ilyos

Thanks everyone, your feedback is noted and we will review it for the next pass on the system! I really appreciate you trying it out so hastily!

Matlkael

We're definitely giving it a good, thorough stress test  Bugs ahoy!

Revelin

I'm frustrated with this change because I chose to focus on hunting to increase my level to be helpful with the guards and have no real hacking ability to be able to contribute now. I guess it stills counts towards the pvp aspect of it. I also believe that defenders should have some sort of advantage, as those attacking get the advantage of picking when the attack occurs.