A simple change to Dyson Battlezone please

ussvaliant

Hi Dev's I've been playing the Dyson Battlezone more frequently over the past couple of months (mainly due to having trouble getting PvE queues to pop).
A problem I've come across in this zone is the Silo campers who sit waiting for others to capture the points for the V-Rex to spawn and find themselves in the choice position of having the V-Rex drop in front of them, kill it and race to the next, whilst poor non-camper who did the hard work of capturing the zone points finds he's lost out on a chance to tag because he can't get across the zone quick enough before the V-Rex goes down and then finds they are chasing the camper pack.

Changes I propose

Delay the V-Rex spawning time. Instead of spawning straight away as soon as the trigger point is met, delay the spawn by 15-20secs giving the furthest player in the zone chance to get near the silo.

Expand the no go area near the silo

or

Add a campsite with tents/campfire and chairs and add a marshmellow toasting emote for the campers or a row row row your boat emote

ussvaliant

azrael605 wrote: »

None of this will happen

Ofc not

Well i'd say there is more chance of the campsite happening, but changing the zone towards fairer play and not be a afker's, leeches playground is never going to happen.

annemarie30

or maybe do the zoned furthest from the rex first, so you are closer to him when he spawns?

jaguarskx

I have no problem with introducing a 15 second countdown prior to the V-Rexes appearing for the boss battle. It is a very minor and subtle change to the battlezone.

usskentucky

This is an advertisement for Frosty Boots. Get them from the winter store if you want to kill all the T-Rexes. Almost a must bc of what OP says.

darkbladejk

From my understanding they didn't really want folks to get all 3 Vrex dinos to start with, which is why it was changed to what we have now. You have to do 1% of the damage to the dino I believe it was to get credit. Before you would have people running around and tagging all 3 dinos even though they only ever really helped kill one, and they would get maximum reward. I wouldn't mind seeing a 15 second spawn timer added but I don't see it being very high on the priority list.

ussvaliant#6064 wrote: »

Ofc not

Well i'd say there is more chance of the campsite happening, but changing the zone towards fairer play and not be a afker's, leeches playground is never going to happen.

A key problem is that there is no way to tell who is AFK to wait on the Vrex spawns, and the guy who captured 1/3 of the zone by himself only to AFK to use the bathroom before he continues on. When balancing these things, you want it to be fair as can be. While I agree it sucks to not get to catch the dinos the best bet you have right now is getting some frosted boots, learning some quick paths through the zones, and going from there.

ussvaliant

azrael605 wrote: »

So you can tell that everyone who is afk is just leeching and not maybe chasing their kids, answering the door, going to the bathroom, or any number of other real life issues that have nothing at all to do with leeching? Sure you can.

Quite easy to tell who is afk when you run past a silo with half the zone to capture and see 3 or more players camped at that silo. Even easier when there's 1/2 zone left and you see 5-7 players camped there.

So no I doubt it is rl issues.

or i'm just more cynical when it comes to the lifeform known as man than yourself.

lordsteve1

You could always have a mechanic so that any toon sat there for more than a couple of mins during the capture zones phases gets insta-killed by the sphere defenses and respawned back at the command center.
That would allow people to walk through without issue on their way to other zones but the legitimate afk peeps would get kicked out fairly fast. Just make up some nonsense about the sphere defense network being active and protecting the silos until you capture the whole zone and disable it to make working there safe(er).

darkbladejk

ussvaliant#6064 wrote: »

Quite easy to tell who is afk when you run past a silo with half the zone to capture and see 3 or more players camped at that silo. Even easier when there's 1/2 zone left and you see 5-7 players camped there.

So no I doubt it is rl issues.

or i'm just more cynical when it comes to the lifeform known as man than yourself.

Them simply standing at the silo is circumstantial at best. In my own case there have been a few times while farming the zone I've had to go AFK and have parked at the dino spawn. Reason being it's a safe area that doesn't require me to have to run across the entire zone to get back to the command center. If I've been capturing zones but have to AFK then I'll sometimes park at the dino if I don't think I'll be back before it spawns. At that point as far as I'm concerned I've done my part in capturing several zones and have earned the right to step away for a moment if I need to. I absolutely agree it looks bad but I prefer stepping away in a spot that won't get me blown up if I need to step away . In seriousness though, without some type of system to display how many zones a person has captured or been a part of capturing, there is no way to tell who is leeching, and who has had to simply step away. To borrow an analogy to illustrate the point, being in the area at the time of a theft does not automatically make one a thief.

ussvaliant

OK I see using the term leeching or afking is not to everyones liking as you have provided examples of why characters maybe positioned there.

So although positive changes won't be done cause i'm a cynic, its more likely someone from Cryptic will read this as Dyson rewards to much must nerf (and kill that zone off), rather than adjust mechanics to make it harder to be in position for V-Rex fight.

Lordsteve I had a similar idea to the one you've suggested or even once the zone is captured everyone gets placed back at the command center i.e a quick briefing from Arnold now go capture the silos, but this would require far more work than delaying the V-Rex spawn timer.

theraven2378

What about an option coming up on the UI to transport straight to the V-Rex when it spawns?
It would save legging it over

bejaymac

Sadly that BZ is the home of farming bots, and it's been like that ever since they figured out they could make more dil from tagging V-Rex than they ever could AFKing the STFs.

Only real way to get rid of them is to remove the dil rewards from the map, or delete the dilithium exchange.

warpangel

If you have set things up so that a specific tactic is beneficial, people will use it. That is all that needs to be said about the "camping."

The developers set up the battlezone with mechanics that reward killing dinos more than anything else, and specifically multiple dinos. Players came up with a popular tactic for everyone to achieve that, by "tagging" the dinos before killing them. This was later negated without changing the reward structure and what you see is the result. Players are still required to kill multiple dinos for the best rewards, but that's now harder. If camping the dinos is the best way to get rewards, people will camp the dinos. And no 15-second delay or whatever is going to change that. People will always go for the best way to get rewards and as long as that means killing multiple dinos, that's what people will do.

If players are not meant to get credit for all the dinos, they need to stop rewarding players for doing exactly that.

storules

Again...since you are new and same posts get put up year after sorry to say but Devs already nerfed this map to death many times and only lowered the earnings but have not solved the issue with campers. They know about the problem for years but if you ask for help they won't listen.​​

postinggum

OP might want to speed up your running and spike damage output. The running part is easy with boots, weapon with run mod and ground trait, you can fix that in a couple of mins. Doing more dps is trickier but people will advise.

starcruiser

This is one of the easiest map to make Dilithium. Please dont ask Devs to intervene or they will NERF it again to death.​​

warpangel

azrael605 wrote: »

They do listen there just isn't a damn thing they can do they haven't already done besides shutting the BZ down completely.

There are all kinds of things they could do to address the rewards imbalance and make capturing nodes a worthwhile activity in itself, rather than something people wait for others to do. From balancing the per-node reward (why is a dino node worth 10x the dil of a normal node?) to basing the end reward on total nodes captured instead of just dino kills.

The only thing they've changed about the BZ since it was released is nerfing tagging (which is what caused the camping problem in the first place).

ironmako

My solution to this is DoT. Equip things like the Nakhul mines, Cold fusion flash, the new Cryo Visor, the Biotoxin injection etc, and hit the Vrex with as many as you can in the shortest time possible, then run to the next and repeat. Also see the pattern that V-rex's get finished in, then follow that pattern next round, so you move with the crowd.

jaguarskx

warpangel wrote: »

If camping the dinos is the best way to get rewards, people will camp the dinos. And no 15-second delay or whatever is going to change that. People will always go for the best way to get rewards and as long as that means killing multiple dinos, that's what people will do.

The OP's suggestion to add a 15 to 20 second countdown before the V-Rexes appear is not to somehow dissuade players from camping. The purpose is to give other players who are actively taking control of areas in each zone some time to reach the V-Rexes before the campers start attacking them. An extra 15 to 20 seconds is not going to be detrimental to the campers who are simply waiting around doing nothing anyway. However, for active players who are taking control of areas far away from where the V-Rexes appears (because those are the only areas left that have not fallen into player control and if no one takes control of them, then the V-Rexes will never appear) it will be a boon to them because while it can take more than 15 to 20 seconds for them to reach the V-Rexes from wherever they are, at least they have a wider window to reach them in time to inflict at least 1% of the total damage to get credit for the kill.

warpangel wrote: »

azrael605 wrote: »

They do listen there just isn't a damn thing they can do they haven't already done besides shutting the BZ down completely.

There are all kinds of things they could do to address the rewards imbalance and make capturing nodes a worthwhile activity in itself, rather than something people wait for others to do. From balancing the per-node reward (why is a dino node worth 10x the dil of a normal node?) to basing the end reward on total nodes captured instead of just dino kills.

The only thing they've changed about the BZ since it was released is nerfing tagging (which is what caused the camping problem in the first place).

Actually, the rewards do scale with the number of areas you capture. It is simply not very apparent and it seems you need to capture at lot of areas to see the affect on the final dil reward after all the V-Rexes are killed. It has been about 2 months since I was in the Voth BZ so I do not remember the rewards exactly.

- I had the fortune of entering the Voth BZ several seconds before the players took control and the V-Rexes appeared. I managed to do enough damage to all three of the V-Rexes before they were killed and I got credit for each kill (lucky me). Each V-Rex killed rewards 672 Dil, and I got roughly 2,400 "bonus dil" for my participation. Therefore, my total dil for that round for killing the V-Rexes was approximately, 4,416 dil.

- Another time I entered the Voth BZ in a similar circumstance, but I only got credit for killing 2 V-Rexes (I made it to the 3rd, but only managed to get one or two hits before it died). I got 672 dil for each V-Rex killed, and again, roughly 2,400 "bonus dil" for my participation. That's a total of 3,744 dil.

- Killing all 3 V-Rexes and taking control of at least 9 or 10 areas in all the zones combined yielded 672 dil for each V-Rex killed and a bonus of about 4,800 dil for an approximate total of 6,816 dil. That excludes the 42 dil rewarded for taking control of each area.

- Taking control of over 15 areas and killing 2 V-Rexes resulted in 672 dil per V-Rex and 4,800 bonus dil. That works out to a total of 6,144. I took control of over 15 areas because I had to take a phone call while playing the game after taking control of at least 8 areas. I logged out of the game; I knew it was going to be a long conversation. After the phone call, I logged back into the game on a "fresh map" and took control of at least another 7 areas before killing the V-Rexes and collecting the reward.


One way to discourage camper is to actually reduce the dil reward for killing each V-Rex and the base bonus (say maybe by 50%), and offset it by increase the dil rewarded for taking control of each area to something slightly higher like 75 dil. But more importantly, each area taken control of contributes more to the "bonus dil" so that it would still be possible to collect up to 6,816 dil for killing all 3 V-Rexes.


Next time I start grinding the Voth BZ again, I will likely record how many areas I take control of and how many V-Rexes I kill in Excel as well as recording the bonus dil reward. That way I will know what the "take control of areas" threshold is that increases the bonus dil rewarded.

ussvaliant

jaguarskx wrote: »

The OP's suggestion to add a 15 to 20 second countdown before the V-Rexes appear is not to somehow dissuade players from camping. The purpose is to give other players who are actively taking control of areas in each zone some time to reach the V-Rexes before the campers start attacking them. An extra 15 to 20 seconds is not going to be detrimental to the campers who are simply waiting around doing nothing anyway. However, for active players who are taking control of areas far away from where the V-Rexes appears (because those are the only areas left that have not fallen into player control and if no one takes control of them, then the V-Rexes will never appear) it will be a boon to them because while it can take more than 15 to 20 seconds for them to reach the V-Rexes from wherever they are, at least they have a wider window to reach them in time to inflict at least 1% of the total damage to get credit for the kill.

Maybe my explanation for change got mistranslated but this is preciously what the 15-20 adjustment is intended to do without having to change the reward structure of the zone, which would only end in disaster and the death of this zone.

warpangel

azrael605 wrote: »

First off that is far from the only thing they changed, they cut Dill rewards across the entire zone on multiple occassions, for just one example. Secondly I play the Voth BZ all the damn time and none of the capture points have any different rewards, same Marks, same Dill, same Command Credits. The V-Rexs have higher rewards because they are a Boss Stage, just like the Stations in the Badlands, the Planet Killers in the Undine BZ, and whatever the Boss Stage is the Tzenkethi BZ. Boss stages deserve higher rewards and if they didn't have them nobody would play the zone at all. "Nerfing tagging" also did not cause any camper problem, there were campers in the first week the zone was active.

None of the other BZ's give higher reward for the boss nodes. Either way, doing that for the voth BZ is clearly a bad idea. Same calculating the end reward only by number of boss nodes participated (especially if the player isn't even intended to get all of them). It would be more fair to count all nodes captured by the player and then players would want to cap nodes for the higher reward instead of waiting at the dino spawn.

And yes, there were some campers before tagging was nerfed, but it wasn't a problem because they would only tag the dinos rather than kill them and deprive others of reward. Campers only became a problem after they devs forced them to kill the dino to get credit.

bejaymac

Given this some thought and I believe there is something they can do, crank up the chance of failing to secure a silo.

Lets take the Undine BZ, in it the important part is to kill all three planet killers, yet as often as not an instance will only get two of them before the timer runs out. Why? because too many players have gone to the same PK, as a result the number of the undine ships there is dramatically increased, as is their size. As a result it takes longer to activate the device to shut down the PKs shield, as you are continually being shot at and interrupted.

Haven't run a silo in quite some time so no idea if it still works the same or not, iirc you had Voth show up and try to empty the silo, with a V-Rex as a distraction, kill six of the Voth and the silo was secure and you could kill the V-Rex at your leasure, fail to kill the Voth and you got nothing.

My suggestion is to remove the V-Rex, make the six Voth harder to kill, and spawn a small army of Voth to protect them, the more players at a silo the more Voth get spawned, and the larger they become. This will increase the chances of failing to secure a silo much more likely, because if everyone is at one silo the other two will be emptied rather quickly.

I know there is an accolade for getting all three V-Rex, so as an added extra they could add a Voth invasion similar to what's in the Undine BZ, but instead of ships use raptors of all sizes including V-Rex, stick it right outside the command center and give you 5 minutes to kill as many as possible, but, and this the kicker, only if your instance secured all 3 silos, fail to get all three and your waiting for the zone to reset.

echatty

That's an interesting suggestion. I haven't played that BZ in a long time, so I'm no expert on it.

I have played the Undine BZ more often than not and have not had an instance where we did not kill all three PKs. And that's when almost everyone goes to the same one each time. Still, I know it's possible not to get them all, just I have not been in an instance where one of them 'got away'.

ltminns

Not getting all three is more likely to happen in the Badlands rather than Undine BZ, and then not very often at all.

echatty

ltminns wrote: »

Not getting all three is more likely to happen in the Badlands rather than Undine BZ, and then not very often at all.

This. I've played the Badlands several times, though we did get all three bosses each time. Still, I found it to be more difficult than the Undine BZ.

sharmutashlikha

jaguarskx wrote: »

The OP's suggestion to add a 15 to 20 second countdown before the V-Rexes appear is not to somehow dissuade players from camping. The purpose is to give other players who are actively taking control of areas in each zone some time to reach the V-Rexes before the campers start attacking them. An extra 15 to 20 seconds is not going to be detrimental to the campers who are simply waiting around doing nothing anyway. However, for active players who are taking control of areas far away from where the V-Rexes appears (because those are the only areas left that have not fallen into player control and if no one takes control of them, then the V-Rexes will never appear) it will be a boon to them because while it can take more than 15 to 20 seconds for them to reach the V-Rexes from wherever they are, at least they have a wider window to reach them in time to inflict at least 1% of the total damage to get credit for the kill.

That's how I interpreted the OP's suggestion. Last time I was in that BZ I was capturing points with my bad ground builds just to find out that I had no chance to reach the V-Rexes at the end. I did another run, trying to get to the healthiest V-Rex to get at least credit for one of them, but again, no luck. That happened a long time ago, and I tend to work on my dyson reputation via event mark boxes like the winter event now.