Some Suggestions To Improve Dark Sectors Pvp ('snowballing' Solution)

[Renegade343]

Hello all, 

 

This thread will be discussing about the elements of the Dark Sector PvP, and provide suggestions to improve on its weak points. The content is below: 

 

In U14, there has been a new gamemode called Dark Sector PvP, where it is a 4v4 PvP. During the period between U14 to U14.2.1, there has been various changes and tweaks to this gamemode to make it better, but some areas are still left untouched and slightly unfair, while other changes actually made the game a bit more frustrating. Thus, the criticisms and suggestions to improve it are thus: 

 

The attackers: 

In the Dark Sector PvP, there are two sides: Attackers and Defenders. The attackers' goal is to destroy the core with limited attacker numbers, while the defenders' goal is to protect the core and kill off the attackers. However, this gamemode does make it a bit unfair for the attackers, as the defenders have unlimited lives while the attackers have very limited lives. Thus, to make it fairer, instead of having limited attacker numbers, there will be unlimited attacker numbers.

 

However, there will be a time limit instead (10 minutes, can be subject to change), where the attackers must complete the goal of destroying the core within the time limit, and the defenders must defend various assigned objects (barrier consoles, the core etc.) until the time limit is up. In exchange for this, the attacker and defender respawn time (when they die) will be slightly longer than the current respawn time. 

 

With this change from having limited attacker numbers to limited time, there would be more fairness for the attackers and the defenders, allowing both attackers and defenders to have a more fun and exciting Dark Sector PvP game.

 

Bleed-out mechanisms:

With U14.1.4 (or somewhere of the sort), DE(L) has changed the bleed-out mechanism for the Dark Sector PvP to a constantly decreasing HP mechanism, and that enemy players can kill the downed players by continuing to shoot at them. While it is a better change from the timer bleed-out mechanic (since that mechanism does make the downed player invincible at times, while it sometimes just goes straight-up weird and cause problems with sudden instant death, sudden increase in timer decrease rate etc.), there are a few problems with the decreasing bleed-out HP mechanism: 

 

1. The time taken to bleed-out is shortened significantly, meaning it is much more difficult to save someone if needed (critical for attackers with the current limited attacker numbers). 

2. Bleeding out players can be staggered by melee attacks, meaning they have no chance of retaliation. 

3. Sometimes, players still instantly die when they go into bleed-out. 

4. It becomes very difficult to go off and save someone, since once a player bleeds out and enemies start shooting at the downed player, the HP decrease is a bit too high. 

 

Thus, to counter these problems and make the bleed-out mechanic be more fair to both the downed player, the enemy players, and the ally players, the suggestion is below: 

 

Make the initial bleed-out HP value be 400 pure hit-points, while keeping the rate of decrease the same. The downed player will first be invincible (with removal of any status effects/DOT) when he/she is doing the falling animation, and once he/she is in the bleed-out animation (with a secondary pulled out and such), he/she can now be damaged, but will have 35% damage reduction from all sources. The downed player cannot be staggered by melee attacks, allowing the downed player to retaliate if need be. In exchange for all of this, the downed player's secondary will have either a decreased accuracy value, or have a higher recoil (25% more recoil compared to its original value), to balance out the improvements made for the downed player. 

 

With this change, I hope to make the downed player still have a chance to fight if needed, as well as allowing a bit more time for players to revive the downed player, encouraging more teamwork and looking out for team members.

 

The 'snowballing' problem (for players and enemies): 

With Dark Sectors PvP, players have to kill enemies to rank up their equipment and their Warframe. While this is a pretty good mechanic in and of itself, there is one flaw, and that is that one side could constantly gain levels and thus 'snowball' the other side, which does cause quite a bit of unfairness to the games. Thus, to solve this, a solution is below: 

 

Introduce a 'linking' system for both attackers and defenders. 

 

The 'linking' system first sets a static level difference cap of 2 (value may be subject to change). Then, if one side has a higher level than the other side, then if the higher level side hits the level difference cap (e.g.: If attacking side is level 12 and defending side is level 10, then the attacking side has hit the level difference cap), the higher level side cannot continue to gain levels until the opposing side has gained levels that would make the level difference lower than the cap (e.g.: Continuing from the previous example, once the defending side becomes level 11, then the attacking side can now gain levels up to level 13).

 

Any experience that the higher level side, once it has hit the cap, would have gained would be wasted instead (tradeoff for being at a higher level), and the higher level side will be notified that they have hit the cap through a small warning message at the top middle of their screen, saying, "Level difference cap reached.". Any players that join in the middle of a Dark Sector PvP game will have the level equal to the side they have chosen (e.g.: If the player chooses to help the attacking side, enters a game, and said game has attackers at level 15, then said player's equipment and Warframe will be level 15). 

 

Also, if a player dies, then when they spawn, they would still be given 50 energy just to level the PvP playing field by a bit. 

 

Finally, also make AI ally levels be linked with the levels of the defenders and attackers respectively (e.g.: If attacking side is level 12, then their AI allies will be level 18). 

 

With this check, I hope to make Dark Sectors PvP more fair for both attackers and defenders.

 

Please take the time to read this thread, and provide any constructive feedback or criticism for improvement. 

 

Renegade343

Edited August 18, 2014 by Renegade343

[Renegade343]

Added bleed-out mechanic improvements.

[Racercowboy]

I do like your idea for the attackers. A time limit will allow for more action and possibly more late game builds actually being used. While this would allow for players who are behind to farm up and get their mods, I still think that the snowballing needs to be reduced, or else we would see attackers plow through defenders and the match would be over quickly anyway, or defenders would spawn camp attackers for ten minutes.

 

The Bleedout thing sounds good, currently once you're down you are dead, or you and a friend are both dead. This would make sitting ninjas more dangerous, but not to the point where even rhino prime flees in terror. Don't see how this would hurt anything to be honest.

[Renegade343]

Added a solution for the 'snowballing' problem. 

[motorfirebox]

The snowballing problem is the biggest issue, to me. As it stands, the pattern I see most often is that the defenders get an early jump on levels because they can fight from cover rather than having to advance. Pretty quickly, it reaches the point where the attackers are still low-level and the defenders vastly outclass them. Then the defenders just walk over to the attackers' spawn area and camp out. At which point, the attackers (quite reasonably) get disgusted and ragequit—meaning the defenders don't actually get the victory.

It's not a good balance at all.

Edited August 18, 2014 by motorfirebox

[Renegade343]

The snowballing problem is the biggest issue, to me. As it stands, the pattern I see most often is that the defenders get an early jump on levels because they can fight from cover rather than having to advance. Pretty quickly, it reaches the point where the attackers are still low-level and the defenders vastly outclass them. Then the defenders just walk over to the attackers' spawn area and camp out. At which point, the attackers (quite reasonably) get disgusted and ragequit—meaning the defenders don't actually get the victory.

It's not a good balance at all.

Would my suggestions (limited time replacing limited attackers, 'linking' system) be of any help to solve these problems though?

[motorfirebox]

The linking system, definitely. Using time instead of respawns would take some of the sting out of dying at the spawn point.

[Renegade343]

The linking system, definitely. Using time instead of respawns would take some of the sting out of dying at the spawn point.

What do you mean by the last sentence?

[motorfirebox]

Right now, if you're on offense and a defender kills you at the spawn point, it's a big deal. You've just lost one of only 20 team respawns, so on top of getting killed before you can do anything, your team is losing a chunk of its primary resource.

 

If the match is time-based, technically the same thing happens—you lose time, which your team needs to win. But it's not going to feel like as much of a hit to your chances of winning. Lose a few seconds off the clock, and you just need to go faster to get things done. It's going to feel like a setback, whereas losing a respawn feels like a loss.

 

On top of that, if you're on a team with some bad players, the bad players dying over and over again doesn't affect your performance. Currently, if your LOL HOW I WARFARME teammate gets himself killed over and over again, he's directly decreasing your ability to win the match by eating up respawns that could be used by better players (such as yourself). But in a time-based match, your idiot teammate isn't hurting you—in fact, by absorbing the enemy's attention, even minimally, he's actually contributing to your effort.

Edited August 19, 2014 by motorfirebox

[Lorthos_Mornin]

Honestly none of the problems you state are that bad.  The snowballing has a lot to do with pacing.  I've done a few dark sectors on both attack and defense.  On attack, I used to rush the objectives.  This was a mistake.  I would either die easily to the defending team or ai defenders, or I would reach the core.  If I did manage to reach the core, I could damage it, but I couldn't finish it off because I had not leveled so my weapons had no mods on them.  I also had to face enemies that were much higher level and higher difficulty (heavy gunners in core room) than at the beginning (just crewmen, lancers, and specters).  As an attacker I have started to use the lives as a resource.  I try and gain exp until we have only so many spawn remaining, then I go for the objectives and ideally have enough damage to finish the core.  On defense, all I need to do is level and hold off the attackers from the objectives.  Some people spawn camp which I believe is a mistake as it allows someone the chance to move on and complete the objectives, plus it's just bad form.

 

Everyone seems to believe the defenders have the advantage.  However, the attackers can start without the defenders and are always the hosts of the match.  Which I have noticed some people abusing intentionally or unitentionally to throw the defenders off their game by quitting and resetting a lot of things on map.  Including glitching out panels so they're no longer functional.  Additionally, if there are enough attackers, remember that for every mission you get rofl stomped in someone else is probably running an undefended map.

 

What I do believe to be the main issues in the dark sector conflicts are the glitches that make objectives unworkable and leave the attackers completely unable to advance and the difficulty in going into a dark sector with a full squad without it dropping some or all of the members.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Lorthos_Mornin

[motorfirebox]

Snowballing is an issue because you're not guaranteed to enter a match at the start. In fact, you're pretty well guaranteed to join a match after it's already been going for a while. That means that if you're on the side that's not doing as well, you simply have no ability to contribute meaningfully—you're going to get camped, your side is going to lose, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The match is won within the first five minutes or so; the rest of the time is just waiting for the end. That's not fun.

 

As for attackers' advantages, I'm not sure the game being broken in certain places (attacking undefended maps, glitching out panels, etc.) can really be considered an advantage. That's stuff that ought to be fixed. The defenders have unlimited respawns, a protected spawn point for the first half of the game (maybe the second, too? Never bothered to check) and the ability to fight defensively—that is, little to no need to expose themselves to reach objectives. The defenders absolutely have the advantage. The attackers have... exploits, apparently. That's pretty one-sided.

[Lorthos_Mornin]

The defenders have a protected spawn for both the first stage and the final stage.  I don't remember there being a protected spawn for the second stage.

 

As it is now, you join the match at the lowest level of anyone on your team.  If your team is really low leveled it's because a) someone decided it would be best to rush objectives on attack, or b) somebody decided not to do their job and kill stuff for exp.  In short, if you're low leveled when you joined, it's probably the result of poor decisions of prior team members, not an inherent problem with the game type.

 

The glitches, like broken panels, should be fixed.  However the ability of the attackers to attack an undefended map should remain.  If a defending clan or alliance can't be bothered to actually defend then there needs to be consequences.

 

The attackers may need to expose themselves to reach objectives, but this has never been a real issue for me.  First, the defenders are rarely actually defending.  They are typically much more interested in trying to spawn camp or face roll you.  For this reason, both as an attacker, and as a defender I have watched the attackers almost always make it to the core.  The few times I haven't made it to the core, or managed to prevent the attackers from reaching the core is because of one word: teamwork.  I have been prevented by a team working together combining rhino stomp and nova mp to keep attackers slow and knocked back as they took their time gunning us down.  The attackers that got past me (and my pub team) were stealth frames (loki, and ash) fueled by a trin who hung back.  Even without teamwork I consistently make it to the core because the defenders don't care about defending and I now always focus on leveling a little at the beginning to have enough damage to burn at the minimum a decent amount of health off the core.

 

TL;DR snowballing is a result of poor teamwork/individual decisions

[Renegade343]

The defenders have a protected spawn for both the first stage and the final stage.  I don't remember there being a protected spawn for the second stage.

They actually do, for the second stage (from the same protective barrier). 

 

As it is now, you join the match at the lowest level of anyone on your team.  If your team is really low leveled it's because a) someone decided it would be best to rush objectives on attack, or b) somebody decided not to do their job and kill stuff for exp.  In short, if you're low leveled when you joined, it's probably the result of poor decisions of prior team members, not an inherent problem with the game type.

Or simply because they have already been wiped out by the higher level team (or more quantity) prior on, even without a team (especially true with 4 vs. 1 defenders vs. attackers). The problem is, once another team has already gained quite a few levels despite the opposing team killing stuff for experience, the another team can still roll over the opposing team. 

 

The glitches, like broken panels, should be fixed.  However the ability of the attackers to attack an undefended map should remain.  If a defending clan or alliance can't be bothered to actually defend then there needs to be consequences.

The glitches actually help the defenders, not the attackers. So if the host attacker leaves, it actually helps the defenders gain a solid win (unless if all the attackers leave at once). 

 

The attackers may need to expose themselves to reach objectives, but this has never been a real issue for me.  First, the defenders are rarely actually defending.  They are typically much more interested in trying to spawn camp or face roll you.  For this reason, both as an attacker, and as a defender I have watched the attackers almost always make it to the core.  The few times I haven't made it to the core, or managed to prevent the attackers from reaching the core is because of one word: teamwork.  I have been prevented by a team working together combining rhino stomp and nova mp to keep attackers slow and knocked back as they took their time gunning us down.  The attackers that got past me (and my pub team) were stealth frames (loki, and ash) fueled by a trin who hung back.  Even without teamwork I consistently make it to the core because the defenders don't care about defending and I now always focus on leveling a little at the beginning to have enough damage to burn at the minimum a decent amount of health off the core.

I beg to differ with defenders rarely actually defending. I have played most matches where the defending team actually pulled all the stops to defend the objective, and can actually stop the attackers before they reach the core, even without much teamwork (and vice versa for attackers). So I think that is your subjective opinion. 

 

And the problem is that defenders do not really need teamwork to defend the objectives, since they have unlimited lives, meaning that factor is taken out for the defenders themselves, and thus they can sometimes just throw their lives away without much care or thought just to get the attacker numbers down. And that is a quite a bit of an advantage for the defenders. 

[--Q--uaint]

Something I'd like to point out: the new system means that the rail needs to be entirely destroyed. That, combined with the shorter conflict times means that for the rail to change hands you'd basically have to have Catalyst-BP-invasion-level population.

 

Possible fixes: lower rail health, higher conflict time, or maybe just disallow repairs?

Edited August 22, 2014 by L33tV154g3

[Renegade343]

Something I'd like to point out: the new system means that the rail needs to be entirely destroyed. That, combined with the shorter conflict times means that for the rail to change hands you'd basically have to have Catalyst-BP-invasion-level population.

 

Possible fixes: lower rail health, higher conflict time, or maybe just disallow repairs?

I have been thinking about that, and I would post a solution for it later on in the weekend. 

 

EDIT: Or at the next weekend, since I am swamped with other things to do and cannot collect my thoughts yet. 

Edited August 24, 2014 by Renegade343

[AbstractLemons]

Current system favors large clans with resources, dark sectors give clans resources, resources are appealing can make clans bigger by attracting more people. Takes like 2-3k people constantly attacking to drain the rail's health in a sensible manner, so if your clan doesn't have a dark sector with their emblem on it your not going to get one, unless all the planets align and all the world leaders hold hands and sing.

 

I've noticed a decrease in frequency of when dark sectors change hands, and the clans that are holding them are just going to get more resources to pay players to fight for them to further stall out and discourage their attackers, and can get even more members from the fact they even own a dark sector. So its ridiculously exclusive and I feel its pointless to even participate in this content after attempting to take a dark sector  and saw just how ridiculous of a wall it was just to do like 6% damage to rail and being required to get that down to 0% to actually take a sector now pretty much denies other clans from even participating in this content to get the resources that will help the grow. Always the same clans holding dark sectors, and a lot of the time they are holding multiple sectors at once so not much of a chance for anyone else to grab a sector the system feels very pointless and I feel I wont be participating in this content even at the request of my own clan mates.

 

I get what they were going for by giving clans a goal to encourage them to grow and stuff but it's way too in favor of defenders at the moment.

Edited August 23, 2014 by AbstractLemons

[ImSethos]

The snowballing problem is the biggest issue, to me. As it stands, the pattern I see most often is that the defenders get an early jump on levels because they can fight from cover rather than having to advance. Pretty quickly, it reaches the point where the attackers are still low-level and the defenders vastly outclass them. Then the defenders just walk over to the attackers' spawn area and camp out. At which point, the attackers (quite reasonably) get disgusted and ragequit—meaning the defenders don't actually get the victory.

It's not a good balance at all.

THIS !!! annoys me... 

ive had two instances where me and my team were spawn camped. once as attacker and second the most recent as attacker.

as defender the enemy team just came outside our spawn and camped the door. they were high level so like someone stated earlier bad choice of team on not leveling up and rushing objectives.

but the second one was just asdkljfa;lksdjfas

as a attacker i was basically alone for the first 10 minutes of the game. decently leveled. then group of players joined my team and we got to 30.

obviously the enemy team wasnt sitting around and leveling themselves. but the point where problem started was by the time we dropped the core to 7%, the attackers decided to spawn camp us. and the thing is. the guys camping werent even half bad. they had very good mods and good weapons on them so there wasnt really a need to camp.

 

my suggestion about spawning points would be make them higher and unaccesable to enemy team. attackers have that sort of thing . their spawn point is unaccesable but still it dosnt really help that much since the doors can me camped and your shots dont penetrate the barrier from the inside as well as from outside. so you dont really have the option to defend yourself from attacks as soon as you get out . leaving your objectives undefended.