Just spitballing here, bear with me and help refine the concept.
We’ve seen observations that one side or the other of a campaign can suffer or benefit greatly from situational changes in the perceived balance, event tasks and rewards, etc.
The idea my brain won’t shut up about to help mitigate that issue is rotating the availability of the campaigns.
I’m unsure of the number in rotation, or how long I want that rotation to be, but I’m envisioning a three day cycle where days 1-3 would be Moscow/Normandy, 4-6 would be Berlin/Tunisia, repeat. Any campaign that was required for specific tasks during a specific time would be forced into rotation at the time, while the second continues to rotate, so right now Normandy would be up with whatever happened to be next.
I think this would go a long way to solving our migration issue which causes perceived imbalance where none may exist, keep the game engaging over time by forcing players who main a single faction in a single campaign to diversify a little, and prevent the current issue from getting worse when they implement future campaigns like the Pacific. The recruitment system would need adjustment to compensate for forcing players into more than one campaign, but that’s doable.
Yeah I think we will need to have the campaigns on a couple of days rotation once we have more campaigns added. Also hoping that we can get a mode with a lot more players per side for maybe future event?
I think that many/most players are chasing that “Golden Ring” or rings for each faction in each campaign. Being forced to stop grinding, let’s say Normandy Axis, 8,000 XP before you unlock
the FG42, Panther or whatever, might frustrate some/many to abandon the game.
Imagine going from level 28 in Moscow and being forced to choose being level 2 in another campaign.
You wouldn’t want to spend silver/orders on a campaign that you aren’t focused on or burn the last bit of gold. Some/many might be prone to taking the off days to do something else. Seems like this would artificially double the grind for each faction of each campaign.
I honestly never thought of that and it’s a really good point to bring up about map rotation. I’ve been grinding every campaign so for me it would be fine but I think after the point you just made that it really might not be such a good idea
Restricting campaigns to players that only play one, because they barelay have silvers in them is not a good idea right now.
I agree however that we need to concentrate playerbase for better matches that are not 90% bots.
Incentive would be better.
So a Berlin week with 50% more xp would bring more players,and just cycle through month.
That’s a concern to be sure, but I think the idea still has merit. Hell, if they fix custom battles, we have a ready-made mechanic for people who don’t want to play the campaigns that happen to be in rotation at the time, but that might lead to overpopulated custom games and no play on randoms.
I suggested the rotation the way I did to try to avoid this problem. I was originally thinking there’d only be on campaign up at a time, but if you don’t like playing germany and don’t want to play soviets during moscow rotation, what do you do? I figured doing it Moscow/Normandy then Berlin/Tunisia would give us a decent balance of playable factions, as well as a decent choice between older(bolt action) stuff and newer stuff in each rotation.
I agree with that, as things are it’s not a good idea, which is why I said the recruiting system would need adjustment.
^The Goal
That’s a solid alternative. I’d rather see an adjustable bonus for underplayed factions, TBH, like HnG had for low-pop factions in the war mode. So if Axis Tunisia isn’t seeing play, increase rewards there, if Axis Normandy is seeing way too much in comparison, don’t give them extra and look for balance issues.
Honestly, they should change it into a matchmaking system like how they have it with custom games. So have a few Official servers per campaign that players can select on that list that play map after map, removing the need to search for a match again after every game.
Something like this would make me uninstall the game on the spot and never look at it again.
There are certain campaigns that are just shit, like Normandy, and I main normandy, it’s still shit. Then there’s Tunisia, where every time I have to play it because of tasks I can feel tuberculosis developing.
The only imbalance is that players dislike losing and are prone to switching sides.
Lost match as axis? Switch to russia and stomp, which causes the imbalance gap to be wider, and more people will jump ship, until enough good players happen to play Axis, then they stomp russia, and those players will swap to axis, rinse and repeat.
It’s something that happens in every game since the dawn of gaming, and nothing will really change this.
Forcing people to play in specific campaigns or maps is prone to cause anger, see how hated Conquest is for reference.
Instead of that, a very basic and simple fix is better, give the faction with lower population an XP bonus to playing said faction. It works, it’s been proven that it works repeatedly, and it doesn’t make people quit for being forced to play campaigns they despise.
I’m unaware of any matchmaking mechanics for custom games, please explain.
Never mind, you mean a server browser, which is not the same as what I think of when I see “matchmaking.” That would also be a good compromise to keep people playing during a rotation they don’t like.
Normandy and Tunisia are shit at the moment because of low player pop on one side or the other, and also because they’re the only campaign available for the wave of free-to-play past-gen console freshies we just got. If we all had access to all of the campaigns, they’d get better, but I think if there were a limited number of campaigns available at a time, we’d never have a problem getting no-bot PvP lobbies.
That’s still also a good idea.
But you could play soviets in berlin, or play tunisia with actual real people if the bolt-gun stuff is what you want.
Rightfully so? How? If they did implement a system where the side with less players overall got a scaling XP bonus based on the numerical difference, what leg would axis players in normandy axis stand on while complaining their over-populated faction isn’t receiving the same? I agree, they’d complain, but they wouldn’t be right.
They could do it almost exactly how Call of Duty did it, mixing some RS2 stuff. Have the matchmaking from Rising Storm 2, but on the main page show some featured stuff (new campaigns, new maps, new features, new weapons, etc) and give bonus exp for playing those campaigns. If they’re new maps, they could make it like a custom match with only those maps available in that specific queue.
Because to reward only one faction in a battle with extras would piss people off.
Once/If they fix CBs and restore full XP rewards, it’s quite possible that “normal” campaigns
will be further drained of humans and the entire game will be 95% PVE. Which from reading
this forum, seems to be A-Ok with a significant percentage of players.
As the Devs continue to add new levels to existing campaigns and release future campaigns, the
player base will be diluted even further. To me this is obvious and bribing players to spend time in less attractive campaigns/factions seems futile.
That’s just me though. I played one match yesterday and one so far today, so I’m probably not the average player.
Yeah, that’s a problem I hope the do more to fix. Adding more silvers to the end of BP was not nearly enough, and for Elite BP actually slowed down the rate you can grind them out.
That’s not an unreasonable opinion to hold. This is just my proposed solution to the problem, and others have suggested the XP bonus for low pop, and neither is perfect.
They wouldn’t have to bribe people to play specific factions or campaigns if they’d focus more on patching bugs and less on squeezing more and more money out of us while the develop new content, beyond the stated scope of the beta roadmap, that we never asked for.
Nothing compares to my beloved Moscow… Nothing. Nowhere else can I play Soviet cowboy with Winchester and Nagant revolver (yes I use it, it’s terrible but it’s a thrilling challenge to use). Or play a Soviet pirate with his hand cannon.
Moscow has it all. It’s the most balanced campaign for now.
