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Hey there, folks. Wanted to make a quick post to share some design theory behind the new spawn system as a whole, and try to allay some concerns about recent issues.
Our main goals with the new system were to…
- Help filter players into more enjoyable fights.
- Discourage overpopulation as it moves from base to base.
- Allow for more freedom to move around the map.
While there have been no shortage of growing pains as we’ve worked through bugs, edge cases in the ruleset, and iterated on some of the concepts, the new system has been overwhelmingly positive for the flow of population around the continent.
You’ll quite often find fights spread all throughout the map and at many different scales, and when zergs form (fights with an extreme imbalance in the population on one faction), they disperse fairly quickly and naturally.
Aside from some bugs here and there, the main complaint being surfaced currently is that players are unable to deploy into a region at maximum capacity. For the current spawn rules, we don’t allow players to jump directly into any combat region with more than 96 players in it. That is by design.
While our messaging needs to be better, this is an important part of keeping fights populated around the map. And here’s where the design theory comes in…
In PlanetSide 2, our goal for the game in its entirety, is to keep the initial barrier to entry low for the most fundamental gameplay, and layer on deeper experiences for players who are willing to commit more time and energy. In terms of the spawn system, the way we see these layers are as follows.
The most abundant and baseline group of players expect to easily be able to find a battle, any battle, and will most often take the path of least resistance to get there. This type of player will take the spawn points suggested, and because of this, we want to encourage these players to reinforce small fights, spin up new fights, and easily jump back into the fight that they’re already at.
The next level are more experienced players who also want to quickly get to the battle, but they have a specific place in mind. This player may not always get their pick of ideal spawn location, but they’re willing to put in additional effort to get there if the desire is high enough. These players tend to help less with fight creation, but tend to balance out the fights that currently exist.
The last layer, and least abundant group of players, are the ones who are operating as a coordinated squad or platoon. Spawn restrictions matter a lot less here, as squads have benefits that allow them to move around the map with ease. These players create decisive change within the map, for example, during alerts. Even though this group of players are the smallest, they are the wildcard that helps keep gameplay from stagnating.
In terms of how this impacts the spawn system, particularly in the example of players being unable to spawn directly into an area with 96+ population, is that the players who are following the path of least resistance will get routed elsewhere to reinforce smaller fights, or generate new ones around the map. For the players who want to get there anyway, it’s a hurdle that they’ll have to climb over by either spawning at an adjacent region, or joining a squad.
It’s in this way that we keep generating that nice flow of population around the map more often than not.
That said, there are certainly drawbacks with the current implementation of the maximum capacity threshold that need to be addressed. We've seen them manifesting here and there (and more so with the most recent update that removed Reinforcements Needed.) The main one being that if a fight is imbalanced when it reaches that threshold, you’re not going to get more reinforcements from the baseline player because they’re being routed elsewhere. That means relying mainly on squadplay to contest region imbalance at that scale, which won't always happen.
We have a couple directions we can go with tuning these thresholds. We could make it so players can further reinforce these overpopulated areas, but the more loose our ruleset is, the less effective the system will be overall at spreading population balance.
More likely is that we'll want to go the other direction, where we're more strictly gating players from imbalancing overpopulated areas. This can come in the form of a per-faction population cap, to help prevent any one side from being able to overwhelm another.
We’ll be continuing to tune the spawn system rulesets with each update until we feel like they’re in a good spot that will stand the test of time. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
EDIT: Redid a couple of the bottom paragraphs for clarity.
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