I think logi queue is an interesting idea which is worth at least checking. Not sure about partisans stopping you midway and getting you kicked by stalling you out but oh well.
Here's an alternative train of thought: address that losing-side bias. Being beaten to a pulp sucks, so players leave when that happens. So... maybe add some mechanic to the game where losing a battle can still *feel* impactful. Maybe something cosmetic like "campaign medals" for fighting in a hex outnumbered for a certain amount of time. It's more of a "game feel" solution rather than a hard numbers solution.
Spitballing now: what if when a certain side has rapidly lost an area, say they're down to a single relic after the other side has taken all their other bases over the course of a few hours; then the zone gets a "final stand" announcement which gives a buff to nearby factories or respawn timers or something like that to incentivize trying to hold out for that last base (though only for a short period of time). That might be too far though and just cause stalemates instead of epic last stands...
I think you have to award something at the individual level that is special and can only be used in the next war. A lot of it could be connected to the player actions log... but think custom paint jobs for vics, unique emotes, distinguishing skins for certain uniforms, etc. I also suspect a lot of players would be motivated by features that give them advantages relative to the rest of their faction: priority queue during the first 24 hours of the next war, a special lock they can use on their vehicle that is immune to friendly wrenches, map posts that don't disappear, etc.
I don't think the game needs anything with cosmetics honestly. An interesting idea someone had that tied really well with my minimum player amount would be that backline hexes have no population restrictions. That way all the defending forces don't have to wait in que to help defend the backline making it harder for the enemy to push in.
@@RobertLovesGames yeah I agree cosmetics aren't the solution. I think giving a defender's advantage would only serve to drag out the final stages of the war though, which might have the opposite effect with the attackers losing morale and the war turning into a grind of wills.
They could do an active economy where if your faction has 10% less active players than the other faction you get a 10% discount on for example producing a creat of shirts with the current amount of bmats being the standard price so that both sides logi are artificially equal but still requires the players to do the work. They can give a lore reason by calling the discount something like a war bonds bonus or something if needed.
That could be interesting to try! It would just fluctuate a lot based on the current population. I'd be all for trying something like this. Great idea!
I have put in suggestions as well about the EXACT thing you said about Logi Ques. Give people 15 minutes for truck/flatbed logi before they get disconnected. Making people who are the true "Logi" players keep supplies a rolling.
There's a mental aspect of the "great veteran migration" as well. It's a lot easier to endure a hard fight or to hold your ground knowing you'll have a fun powerful tool as a reward in a few days. Team Green lacks this currently and it foments a lot of negativity among frustrated players
@@skyrim654 Is it too much an ask to simply have a single 360 degree machinegun on ANY Colonial tanks? A huge problem I have against the Colonial tech tree is that the crew to combat effectiveness ratio SUCKS. To equal ONE Chieftain, you need both a Ballista and a Scorpion, neither of which go as fast, and Scorpion doesn't even have 360 machinegun coverage despite needing two gunners to use, and can be blocked by the Ballista it's trying to protect. The chieftain needs only 3 people, whereas to get even half of its effectiveness, you need 5 people on the Colonial side. Let's extend this. To get the combat effectiveness of one scout tank, you need both an argonaut and a tankette, but both are open top, and at bare minimum you need 3 people to command both, and you don't even get a 360 machinegun. To get the combat effectiveness of one Highwayman, which requires 3 to drive, you need two halftracks, one with a mounted ATR, and the other with a machinegun, requiring a total of 4. The extra pilot requirements stack up, meaning in general the Colonial team will have less infantry on the field, the population limits making their already impotent vehicles even more vulnerable. This is why Colonials just stick to Falchion and Spatha spam, because nothing else really works cost-effectively.
You are exactly right. Tanks are always one of the biggest complaints. If the devs simple just buffed colonial tanks to be better then the Wardens would just complain about how their tanks are awful. It's a never ending cycle unfortunately.
@@RobertLovesGames I love the falchion family got their buff but seems like it’s not enough to retain vets, I’m already seeing vets not logging in on the east front as much leaving new players to fend for themselves which in turn will make them not want to play or maybe even go warden because they see their advances.
War 100 was really nice. I Warden. Even if in war 100 collie had too strong sides, I really think that It is better to argue which side is OP than to play on empty servers. When I was collie I saw how weak public logi, and weak cooperation between clans. That is really demotivate me. I think, one of best option is: remove tanks from MPF, and with it change some falch/spata stats/mechanic.
the stygian back then was really op but to say that the wardens didn't throw really hard at the end is a lie. if i remember correctly we had 3 to 4 preditor shts stolen and used against us
@@KaGoIchi that's why wardens implemented their most OP wep - cry until devs ban all the good players on other side ;) it's worked for your lbgt-furry types in every other aspect of life, so not exactly surprising. we'll come back and win foxhole again once we've defeated the culture in real life ;) we busy fighting the real enemy for now.
@@calhackit9806 I'm sorry, but I didn't understand what you were talking about at all. What kind of player lockdowns, what kind of culture wars? We're talking about balance.
How about timezone differences? I've seen more american players on the colonial side, whereas Europe plays wardens. So Europe quite often gain ground and then America retaliates. But this shifts hex population to one side depending on the time. And with the current system people often times have to sit in queues.
This is where a system that changes the health of defenses or something along those lines I think would come in handy. Though again I think it would be very hard to implement.
Not true. This war battle for Briar. Wardens out poped collies 3-4 to 1 in peak USA and Oceania time. P.S. It was Monday-Tuesday 3 am in EU and Hex got 1300 kills per hour only on Warden side.
@@Necrotic99 Nah its not a single hex, a lot of hexes are the same. Stema Landing for example is very active on warden side during nights while no Colonials are around.
Robert! So glad you released a video on this. The biggest problem with colonials right now is not our production amount, because we always have hundreds of tanks in seaports! The problem is we have nobody to use them! It’s rough.
I agree with this! Or people are too afraid on the front to push with their tank and lose it! They need to use our tanks more and not be afraid to lose them because then they can just go get another one! I completely agree with this. Thanks for sharing!
@@RobertLovesGames I made a separate post, but basically colonials have had several groups leave. When BML got kicked, SHRED basically became a shadow of their former self and they used to hold an entire grid. In general the various clans seem to have less pop than they used to, the streamer effect is less as well (I remember being warden and fighting the hordes that summit brought during war 83). They used to have a strong advantage during asia/russia hours, but that has disappeared or even out for the most part. There was also internal fights between groups, some going as far as switching sides to get away. And then there is the general morale issue of losing war after war, its hard to maintain pops like that so its a self re-enforcing issue.
Colonials are underplayed because all the "meta" colonial vehicles are facility locked, and all the warden "meta" vehicles just need a hammer and rmats. This is not a balance statement, but a gameplay statement. Imagine if you're a new player and you want to use an anti-tank vehicle. If you're a colonial you need to make a Hatchet, and then either build a massive facilility to make Pcons, A2 and A3, a power source and msups... several hours of work, just to make one LTD and then you need to drive it to the front because facilities are in the backline. If you're on the warden side, you hammer out an HTD at any garage, even a front line one... and you're ready. As much as we want to balance "queues" and "add a logi queue" system etc... those are symptoms of the problem. The main problem is, all the warden mid to late game tech is EASIER and MORE FUN to use. Consider this, which is MORE FUN, to use (not overpowered): Outlaw or Falchion? Silverhand or Bardishe? Chieftain or Balista? Flask or Ignifist? Cutler (with uniform) or Venom? This is what shaped faction loyalty and ultimate affects why there more wardens: it is the more fun faction that honestly doesnt need facilities to win. If dev man removed all vehicle variants from the game today then the colonials have nothing to beat the standard Outlaw, Silverhand, HTD tank line.
I 100% agree with you on this. although it will never happen I kind of wish the Devs would just delete the falchion and put the Spatha back into the MPF. Now I understand that doesn't really fix the fact that a lot of our stuff is locked behind facilities but I think it would be nice.
Yes, but I feel like the facility update helps significantly with this. All around Colonial logi towns there are facilities for anyone to upgrade almost anything, and it is much easier to get the materials to do it. It does take a little more effort, but for the most part only BTs and SHTs are still meaningfully locked behind facilities - which also happens to be true for the wardens. I think Colonials will win this war (war 112 for future readers) for this very reason: more of our late game heavy equipment will make it to the front line and make a difference.
I can agree with this. I would say new players are not going to know all the in and outs like this right away but maybe after the first war they play they will figure it out. I agree that there needs to be some equipment changes made and it all needs to be looked at again. I just hope that if the devs do that things don't just swing to the Colonial side for 5-6 wars ya know? Appreciate your input and thoughts on this! Thanks!
@@galiantus1354 Thing is though I struggle with getting the right stuff for facilities to upgrade my tank (and i am part of a Regi) becuase you need to know what makes what etc and in the end you waste so much time just to upgrade a tank Also with facilities you need to know who owns what otherwise you run the risk of stepping on peoples toes It is so difficult
Hey Robert! Great video as always. While we're throwing around ideas, I've got several. Option A: Rather than have a hard cap, control the rate at which the faction with the larger population in the hex can join, proportional to their advantage. For example, if every 1% of advantage corresponds with 1 second of wait time, then the maximum rate Wardens can join a hex where they have 60 against 40 Colonials is one every 50 seconds (because 60:40 is a 50% advantage). And this would of course compound with every additional player trying to get in the region. This does two things: First, it presents players with the definitive maximum possible time they will have to wait to get into the region. Second, it allows things to flow more smoothly if the population in the region is stable. The main effect of the timer is it buys time for the outnumbered side to respond and equalize things a bit. Option B: Completely get rid of any concept of waiting to enter a hex. Instead, limit spawns from the home region to Tier 3 Victory point towns - no spawning directly to bunker bases or relic bases. The trade-off here is many players looking for frontline action will have to spawn a hex back, catch a ride up to the front, and set their spawn. But this is clearly more interesting than waiting for even 5 minutes in queue. And given how Foxhole players are, I think we can trust people will step up and provide a taxi service to active fronts. Plus this would give the bus a better niche to fill. I did consider a more extreme version of this where players would only start in the home region once at the beginning of a war, but I think that would cause more inconvenience than the queues do. Option C: Institute a faction-specific cap, based on the average population in the frontline hexes. For example: no hex can have a population more than double their average population, in the past hour. The goal here is to get the faction to distribute themselves somewhat evenly across the front, rather than trying to fix local imbalance between the factions. It also puts more control in the hands of the faction collectively, since the faction controls their cap, not the enemy. This would probably work better if Ocean hexes had their own separate rules, and if each faction could see their population in the relevant hexes.
Thank you! I like option A sounds like it could work and have potential. I like the idea for option B as well. I just worry to much running around to a front could get boring and new players already have a tough time finding the front most of the time. But if we put more emphasis on a "taxi service" that could help with that! Option C is an interesting one that sounds like it would fluctuate around a lot. I like the idea though of the faction working on spreading people out. I was just thinking today about how the 15 people waiting in que to get into Kings Cage could be doing something more useful than just sitting around waiting for that que to pop and it sounds like this idea could help with that. I wish there was more of that mentality, instead of just joining the "fun" front you have more incentive to join other fronts. Some great ideas! Thanks for sharing these!
there really should be a "pick for me" option on the faction select screen. some players dont care what faction they play or for new players, being forced to pick one might be bad. if there a random faction button, that looked at the average pop for each faction over the previous 5 days, and distributed random faction players at at 4:1 ratio to the under popped faction, we might see a better pop balance while still technically being random
i have been preaching for a logi que sense war 76 im so glad you brought it up i really hope the implement something like that. Amazing video keep it up!
Suggestion, for the side with more players the player limit increases slowly over time. If the smaller side never increases their numbers they will see the difference increase until they are overwhelmed, but this requires a day or two or three. I definitely like the idea of having slots that only give you 15 minutes at a time, though you wouldn't necessarily call it "Logi".
I like this idea! Foxhole players on both sides are generally good about QRFing areas. So if we had this kind of system it could still be dealt with on both sides. Why would you not call it logi? Moving supplies in and supplies out that's the main goal of the que for the frontline.
Why don't have unique hexes with static defenses / landscapes that allow for in depth infantry combat past the research of artillery? Ie. Mountains / dense jungle terrain?
Why is the lore not expanded and leaned Into, the best art and media has come from the community. I'd love to see some pursuits in other areas with this IP. The options to purchase merchandise ect.
like its pretty telling when alot of wardens only log in when tanks tech also truck swapping seems to stop working when a region maxes out you leave and have a reserved spot but it just throws you into queue so you end up with no one leaving and fights ending simply because players cant spawn anymore which is the worst way to end fights, i very much agree on the stricter afk system.
As someone who has played Warden it's pretty obvious there is a huge up tick in players when tanks are teched. Yea the truck swap system is not ideal and not be what we have to do to get logi across. And yes more strict AFK system for frontlines!
I think its largely because Collies have a massive advantage in the early war, before tanks start rolling out, because the Argenti is great and Bomas just crush Wardens because they don't have a comparable grenade. Consequently, the entire early war is generally just wardens desperately holding onto as much territory as they can, usually getting pushed back by 1-2 whole hexes, until tank tech pops, and THEN they are able to slowly start clawing their way forward.
great video and ideas, i featured it on the /data/ page :) devs have never really given much care to trialing new mechanics more focussed on shiny toys (models)
The data visualization is super interesting to see. I can’t help but feel it may be an uphill battle for the devs to try and convince so many collie players who have dropped the game to come back. Not a really good thing to see when developers likely knew this information before we did and continued to focus on new content instead of QoL changes.
I can not take credit for collecting the data only analyzing it. The owner of FoxholeStats website is the one that gathered all the data. They made the data available and I just gave my opinion on it. But I will take credit for trying to answer every comment :D I try to connect with everyone that I can ha
@@RobertLovesGames ooops on ~5 AM my sleepy brain for some reason was absolutely confident about it is you who collected data xD well then vid itself also is work!
Incentive is a big factor for people who leave when things start looking like a lost cause. We already have commends and rank, maybe its time for something new? Perhaps adding some profile accommodations like war badges on your profile that ranks up the more you participate in a certain war etc. Kinda like how a soldier would have badges on their uniforms. We have all these stats in our profile like, Damage to enemies or Supply Value delivered. It would be cool if they implemented war badges for those that went from bronze to gold depending on how much you provided as an example that stayed after the war was over and were viewable by other players perhaps. (side note, but this could also be a great way to detect alts. Would also have the side effect of making it harder for new players to find groups)
I can get behind this. I always thought there needed to be one more layer other than just commends as well. Though I don't know exactly what that is. Badges could be cool! And bringing back profiles would be awesome as well but I'm sure hard to moderate if you can customize it to much. Badges from stats would be cool! I also just want more stats in general like distance I've traveled ha. Thanks for sharing these cool ideas!
I honestly wish this game was designed without hexes and the defenses were built to require a large force to take it Zerg or Coordinated. I also would like to see more communication like their Q&A they did recently
Great video! I appreciate the correlation of statistics vs. the outliers. I do believe encouragement to stay/play in Early War post Day 1 and End War could be helpful in a game mechanic, rewarding consistent play maybe in priority queue or something Neutral Positive. Collies do complain about the fun factor and limitations on zerging via queues. A closer look on War 100 might have answers but I suspect alot of issues are mentality and perspective. I suspect players also leave End War to get on with a new war. Sooner or later defenses will need to be buffed/updated, collies could use an Endgame equipment buff, and Wardens could use an early game equipment buff. I also liked the minimum players queue option, but that might have to go with a defenses buff/update. Overall, its a teamwork game and I think that finding a way to fix queues is one of the biggest factors in game enjoyment.
Thank you! I'm sure a lot of players get burnout and when a lot of players think it's over are ready just for the new war to start so they quit out until then. And I agree wardens need a buff for early war and Colonials need one for late war. And yes raise the minimum player amount but buff defenses so that 2 or 3 people with RPG's can't just come destroy an entire base. With massive bases you should need an army to take them off. Not just slowly pick them off with crazy PvE weapons. I don't know about logi priority around things produced that would make some sense but might be hard to measure? I really think just having specific spots for logi would help a ton. Thanks for your thoughts and input on this!
@@RobertLovesGames Thank you too, good quality neutral content is needed for productive game conversation! I have mixed feelings about burn out, as the game implies being a military sim and teams such as CGC or FMAT among many others show how success can come through tenacity and preparation, and I believe a much greater reward in player experience comes not from coddling burnout or quick victories but from facing adversity and persevering. Alas, I would differentiate burnout and fun factor, and recognize many players will go into Foxhole with a Call of Duty, or Battlefields mentality which may negatively impact their first thoughts without game or meta context.
Not sure about the "120 vs 120" player per hex limit. At the start of the naval update war I counted 142 colonials in one frontline region in the F1 menu. I even counted it again to make sure it was true. This was at the very start of the war, so the servers might be able to handle more players if there is not much building slowing down the server.
I definitely think that the "queues allow a minimum population" idea is fantastic. Ideally, the devs would work copy the queueless system from Anvil over to Foxhole, but that will take a while, and not having a queue for less populated hexes would greatly ease things just by default.
The devs have always know this and players have too. I'm not sure why everyone seems shocked by this. Maybe people will understand why respawn timers Increase when you're over-popped Also - do people not know "que" Is Spanish for "what" not the English word "queue"
It's kind of like I mentioned. We knew it existed but didn't have the actual data to show it. With some of these wars certain factions would say the other side was over populated, now with the data we can see that the other side was actually the one that had more population. Respawn timers can be telling but overall I believe it to be a horrible mechanic to combat the population "solution"
3:45 I feel like you're definitely missing the mark here but I can see why you came to the conclusion you did. 1. Updates happen about every 3 wars, so definitely not a buff to whoever loses. 2. Almost never is an update completely favoring who's on a recent losing streak. Like you've said Wardens are really dominate right now, and while they did recently buff the Falchion and Spatha, they also buffed the Outlaw chassis as well as nerfing the Argonaut and buffing the Drummond. 3. What I feel like happens is the devs look at the trends since last update when they're getting ready to push a new update. They take in to account their observations of what the community is wanting balance wise (the loudest of which typically comes from the losing side), and they make tweaks to things on that side that they feel are underperforming or overperforming. So basically, they're a lot less reactionary than what you're implying. It never feels like one side lost so they take a borderline OP weapon and make it even stronger.
1. They don't do it often but devs have changed values of tanks and weapons in between updates. 2. I mean nerfing and buffing the argonaut and drummond does not really do anything for the frontline unless I'm missing some key strategy they have been used for. 3. If the devs keep their same formula I will bet that the next update will see another Colonial buff and we will then see the shift where Colonials have something like a 75% win rate. This will happen if Wardens win the next 1-2 wars. Thanks for your input on this and challenging me! I appreciate it! Good to talk these things out!
My idea to fix this: Add a new meta-game to Foxhole that turns it from Faction vs. Faction to Clan vs. Clan. Sort of like a ranking system for clans based on a score and wins. Major clans and players take "Hometowns" where they represent hexes or towns across the map for a long fixed period of time across wars. Clans and non-clan members get some benefits and stat boosts regarding the facilities and other *things* in the hex. Starting conditions then force clans to the factions.
Maybe they could do something with how AI defenses work based on local population. Although that could go wrong or be abused very easily if incorrectly added.
As the collie loyalist i can say. Colonials have mass production stuff but we dont have people to use that. Also colies got less lore in their favor. (sorry for bad english)
Well I don't know if that is entirely true. Once MPF tanks are researched vehicle ques are constantly full. Do you mean other MPF items? Or maybe you mean as the war goes on they are not used as much which would correspond with the data of less colonials playing. No bad english at all! Thanks for your input!
@@RobertLovesGames I mean that we dont have pop to use that. Yes we produce a lot of stuff but most of it goes to privet stockpile and wardens just can get 300 falchions for free so thats another issue that clans want to produce stuff only for them not the public.
@@BlueLaminate Exactly. Once i spoke with my friend that it was an issue in siege camp becous guy from lore was scotish and writes only good lore for wardens becous he didnt likes Rome (and colies are inspired by Rome) so he didnt write us any good lore. And FOR THE PILE BROTHERS!
I wonder what server meshing ( See Star Citizen by CIG ) would do for foxhole? I could imagine a large, seamless world where instead of borders and red zones terrain could shape the battlefield in a truly open world battlefield. No more server hopping or waiting just a dynamic full war experience.
think the issues is with the late game burnout, and lack of content for collies with tanks, especially when you look at the variants the wardens have over collies, believe Wardens get 7 more variant of tanks, and just better tanks for line fighting which the meme "just flank" isnt always possible especially with bridge bottle necks and the map geography with natural blockades, trees, mountains, so line fighting just is the normal. but also late game issue is building, no one wants to build for hours just to get demo'd in 1 hour of arty because of time it takes to tech up a bunker to 1, get conc, and 2 get howies on to defend from arty. there needs to be a REAL balance between the factions and a better "rock/paper/scissor" balance between weapons and vehicles. I also personally think once tech trees are both fully teched, building tech should be halved to increase bunker defenses and pushes, so instead of a 7 day wait to tech conc/howies, maybe its just 3-3.5days depending on activity. theres more I wanna talk bout but yea, those are my kinda issues atm I keep harping on.
regarding the queues, I semi agree with what Chamberlain has stated on his stream, no queues at all, none, 0, let the chaos of war happen, let ppl actually play the game, let ppl have crazy ops and create great battles and stories, tho chamberlain believes there should be a 5min "warning" queue, but Im a pure no queue at all person, I want true mayhem of war, true fights, big battles and it will make backline building more important and will make the map crazy exciting imho.
This could be as well. But yes we need more building quality of life and changes for late game. And your tech building idea is great and wish that was implemented. I am willing to try no ques at at all. As someone has stated if your faction can't reinforce a territory to defend it then I think you deserve to loser that territory. It's like responding to any other QRF. I'm all for trying this out to see what it looks like. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
For me the problem with burnout is travel time. I love to play in vehicles, however taking certain vehicles to fronts and gearing them up ready to fight takes far too long. There is a lot of systems in this game which I feel does not respect the players time at all. For example, let us upgrade crates of vehicles and move a crate of those facility vehicles at once. Give us a mid-war flatbed tech that's faster or something. Give me the ability to pull ammo directly from bases into tanks, why do I have to constantly inventory juggle. Give me a loadout save so I can save what gear I want to pull all at once when I'm tanking. All this little stuff adds up and can easily take 30+ minutes to take a tank from backlines to a front. To me this heavily contributes to my late war burnout. This especially sucks for the collie side since all their competent tanks are facility locked, meaning moving one at a time, or having to get multiple people to run a train of 13 vehicles at most. As a warden I can take a crate of tanks to any chosen front which is quicker due to the crate being on a flatbed, and I also get 2 spares if I die in the first one.
I don't mind travel time because it makes the game feel a bit more alive. But I would like them to make gathering and production easier to offset the travel time. They already made gathering this last update easier which has helped a lot with logi now we just need production and public pull times to be a bit faster. I agree that we should be able to crate more things to move them around easier. And I like the idea of a mid-war flatbed that helps us transport goods as well. They should really remove a lot of the inventory juggling as well. These are all really great points that I hope are addressed soon! Thanks for sharing!
Just the ability to pass crates and logi through borders (think Border Transfer Station) would solve a lot of the que'ing frustrations. Sure, it means you need to be communicating with someone in hex to let them know you've restocked their Border Station with X Mats or whatever. For example; ie Deadlands calls for Bmats. You can deliver those Bmats to a Border Post at the Umbral / Deadlands crossing. People in Deadlands can pick them up. Nobody has to que and nobody has to border hop.
Yes! I would love something like this! They had something like this once in a concept idea but never went through with it. I would love for them to go back to this idea and I would gladly accept this idea over my logi que idea. Thanks for talking about this!
War 112 is my first war as a new player, playing as a Colonial. I joined a large regiment early on and took part in many long ops into Weathered Expanse. As soon as the artys started firing I lost interest in infantry gameplay with all of the times I got blown up on my way to the frontline and medics seemingly being worthless now as everyone is just dead from the blasts. As soon as I saw the big regiments move huge trains full of crates to the front, my own measly logi work felt meaningless next to it. When I log on after I get home from work and see more parts of the map have fallen to the Wardens I feel powerless, paralyzed... and log off. I haven't given up on the game but I wonder what keeps those that still play on the (subjectively felt) "losing side" playing.
Если враг тратит артиллерийские снаряды на пехоту, то это не эффективная трата ресурсов, ты должен радоваться тому что твои враги недостаточно умны чтобы стрелять по бункерной базе или реликту. А насчёт логистики, каждый человек который привёз на фронт хотя-бы ящик патронов, сделает для фронта неоценимый вклад, каждый патрон может стать аргументом в сражении с каждым Варденом, ты видимо просто выгорел удивившись масштабами происходящего, логистика всегда и всегда нужна, железнодорожная логистика это доставка произведённых снаряжении по складам, а задача простых логистов доставить из складов на фронт, простая и понятная схема, логисты нужны везде и всегда.
Gotta remember wardens play warden because it’s easiest, then they’ll act like their smarter because they chose warden. Embrace the deep lore of collies being a curse on the warden lands for them turning away from the old gods. We’re here to piss them off and laugh at them
Nice! Welcome to Foxhole! Weathered Expanse has been a lot of fun to play in this war. The arty effect is pretty rough for new players but the more you play the more you learn to dodge it and play better on the front. Sometimes you do just get spammed by shells and it do be like that. Want to make arty mad? Pick up a hammer and start repairing :D Your logi is not meaningless... As someone who has 1,200 hours doing logi and a lot of solo logi 95% of what you can bring to the front is going to be used in a positive way. Having the mindset that the things you do solo as logi is going to ruin this game for you. The more you play the better you get at understanding what a front needs. That is some defeatism mindset. It really sounds like to me you are not giving yourself enough credit in what you are doing in game. You may be a small piece of the puzzle but you are a piece of that puzzle that is needed. Also make sure to change up what roles you play and what you do. Even if you are just mainly logi make sure you are doing backline logi, midline logi, frontline logi or just help building defenses in case the enemy does push up. Lots of things to do that add value. Even if you do bring up shirts and that base was lost you may have prevented it from being lost faster which may have given more time for those behind that base to prepare for the oncoming attack.
- You lost because of your mindset, not because of the game. - You should not expect yourself to be the "Savior" in the game where 1000 vs 1000. - Warden pulls out multiple "Comeback victories" by understanding the mindset: "I'm doing my best, the rest is up to my comrades". . - I delivered 600 crates and saw my hex blown up the next day? No problem, another 600 crates will come tomorrow and even after that, until the bell finally rings. - It's just a game, enjoying it is more important than 20 seconds of winning screen. . - If you want to know how it feels playing while losing, look for "The Bath - War 106" when Collie holds 1 town for 3 days while being completely surrounded.
I am a bit late to the party but here are my thought. Queue: Logi queues are must have. The current restrictive queuing system should only be in place if their is a major inbalance in the frontline player count (defined as counting the pop in frontline hex that did respawn more than 3 times). This would allow for large scale operation to happen but gives the other side the chance to reacte to another side build up. Respawn Timer: Same as with the queues but also change it to respawn waves (maybe with each wave coming every minute). That would give the skilled/ number side a bit of an advantage side to push forward instead of the constant trickel of people returning to the front. To buff under pop faction: What you could do is like have a rolling average over items (only infantry stuff) produced by each faction. The side that under produces has the chance not consume a retrived item a the bunker base. e.g. collies do produce 10% less than the wardens, 10 shirts in a bunker base would be good of 11 respawns. Afk kicks: They should be harder but also you need a quite sophisticated system in place. It is not good enough if your afk kick gets defeated by a auto clicker or a macro that lets you walk back and forth or in circles
Ha not late at all! And yes! Logi ques are a must. I really want the devs to implement something like that this year and try it out. We have two more updates so we will see. And I agree about the frontline que for operations. I like respawn wave timers! I think that would be really cool! Would at least again be something they should try out. And yea AFK needs to be a lot more strict. I see why it's hard for them to do because of logi task and what not. But I've left my character on the frontline looking at the map and still was not kicked for at least 30-40 minutes. Whatever kick system that is needs to at least be like 10-15 minutes. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
@RobertLovesGames I think at least the respawn wave should be fairly easy to be implemented. My educated guesses is that the server tells each client anyway how long his current respawn time is. So it should be fairly easy for the Devs to chance it so everybody spawns at the same time. Thought, a respawn wave would be really bad at places where their are not enough indoor spawn points but is currently under heavy artillery fire. Logi queues are probably more tricky to implement but I really would love to see them too. It would make logi life so much easier. 30-40min afk in a frontline hex is crass that shouldn't be more than 10-15 min
A contributing factor that really needs to be addressed is how much commitment is required for building in the game. With backlines it is simply time consuming, but with frontlines it is a matter of winning & losing the hex. If you force 5/15 people to help you build up your forward operating base leaving 10 to fight 15 invaders, then you're bound to lose if the building takes a considerable amount of time. I would truly appreciate systems that allowed a few players to build rapid basic defenses. Perhaps an excavator that can build trenches/bunkers but not upgrade them & a rapid construction vehicle that builds at 3 bmats a tick but cannot upgrade past T2. Otherwise you will be hemorrhaging your own team by trying to build defenses with more than one person. And if you do just one person, that person is going to spend well over a hour just hammering/shoveling.
Yes lots of time is need to build in the game unless you have a big group with you. We need some more builder love desperately. We need a buff to building in T2 or T3 with a new vehicle that helps build or something. I honestly feel like defenses need an overall buff though some may not agree. But 2-3 people shouldn't be able to PvE down an entire base. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
I think that it is compounded by the fact that both are not armies as in teams. As a Collie player, the entire of the army can be stated as groups working together only in moments where a short term goal is sought. Otherwise said groups are hostile to one another. Point 2 is that everyone builds just to build, current example is "Bloody Palm Fort" A huge mega structure costing large amounts of resources, and to protect a total of 600 bmats worth of equipment. I don't mean to call out that one spot as the same problem is everywhere. While at the front I was in today we couldn't get even the most basic equipment as the blueberries started a push. Even though we saw it coming. It was rinse and repeat a few days ago, and we finally got pushed out as we were down to pistols and harsh language. I've jumped in available vehicles and tried to get what I could, but every forward supply dump is usually empty. Just like today no bandages for one thing and two hexes away I finally found 7 crates. If the war was won by huge unnecessary overbuilt back line bunkers then we would win every time.
This is true. Good point. At a point logistics just breaks and then you are overrun. Part of the game and a good point that everyone is needed to keep things going. And yes some bases are little over built in the backline I could agree with that. Wish those players would focus there efforts in other places sometimes. But I don't want to tell people how to play the game. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
I can list a few reasons why people like wardens more : wardens have more lore, it is basically centered around them, and they have a figure at the center of it. They also have a much better terrain, you only have to build choke points as a warden. Colonials have huge open fields requiring large defenses (and the enormous task of supplying them). The wardens also have an aesthetic that is close to Franco-Germanic traditions. Which have a long and interesting military history that a lot of player enjoy
These are really good points! Especially the building part. Warden's do have a lot of choke points to push through when going North. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
- The best part while playing Warden is that players don't blame Dev or Collie being OP when we lose ground. - I switch to Collie in War 109 to see for myself, Collie just constantly crying about how they are not strong enough to solo 5 wardens at the same time. (and yes Collie won that war). - While on Warden side, the guy who complained got shot by the Commissar.
I agree with most of what was said in the video. The problem of the faction population is really present in the game now. The only thing I would like to note is one point about trying to correct this situation by changing the balance. I am a Warden loyalist, at least someone might get that impression. Actually what I want to say. Some of my friends switched to play for the colony, in some wars, in the modern realities of balance, which I am completely not against. And they told me how easy and fun it was to play for another faction. But some also said that, in principle, they were not going to play the game with such a balance. That's basically what I'm getting at. Such a strong overestimation of the balance of the opposite faction, affecting both factions, can lead to a partially opposite effect. Something like “How dare they give this to them?”, “And yet they still complain?”, “I won’t go play for the easy gameplay faction.” etc. That is, an effect of “self-defense” may occur and rejection of the idea of switching to another faction, or even possibly quitting the game altogether. The moment itself is not so great and critical as to elevate it. I just wanted to point out situations like this.
Thanks for sharing your experience and thoughts on this! Balance certainly plays a role and is a major concern for player population. But it can't be a simple change of numbers and percentages all the time to make the population more even for each faction. I think more needs to be done. Thanks again for sharing this!
Instead of balance at the scale of hexes. Balance at the scale of bunkers. Tie spawns set of enemy bunkers within proximity together limiting spawn slots to numbers comparable to the adjacent enemy spawn numbers. Allowing both to rise and fall together. Require any additional personal to set spawn at bunkers some distance aways from any bunker at capacity. This way you can have a 3/1 population difference in a region but the frontline bunkers of each side will be at 1/1 and other 2/3rds of players if this hypothetical situation have a 500m commute to reach the front.
Solutions. I think some sort of command structure, would go very far. Then operations would be organized and engagements more fluid as a lot of the time I see the same old throw bodies at it instead of any tactics, but those require organization and there is none, unless a small group, in comparison to the large army number.
There is some organization you just need to listen to the right person which can be tough at times. Foxhole players actually can organize it just takes special circumstances for the stars to align. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
Faction balance lock/... If someone was to not login during the first few week/s, the balance act of new players will be evenly split between the factions. Though you don't need to choose only the faction that isn't with high cues. The person then logs in as a fresh recruit without having a new player lose a spot because you were active. One person doing it is one thing, but if a few hundred people did it, it could throw the pop off.
This would be the only real solution to any kind of faction lock. Is giving players a week to choose a faction and then the faction with less players has to be the one picked until it evens out. Though like other players have said when do you know its even? Total population? Total players on at certain times? Tough thing to balance for sure.
7:20 Not sure if you're aware, but logi queue is almost definitely already a hidden mechanic in the game. No idea what the specific numbers are but people abuse it all the time to get into a queued hex by driving supplies in without any intention to actually do meaningful logi just so they can join a fight. This means they're occupying the logi slots for legitimate logi players who want to get in/get out. The 15 minute timer idea would solve this issue but what about if your truck gets hit by a partisan? You need to respawn, fight them off, repair and then deliver while being worried you're going to be kicked and can't deliver your stuff. What if you're doing freighter logi and the seaport is super congested? You might not be able to get in and out in that 15 minute timer. It would be something I would be interested in feeling out for a war.
Yes I'm aware that logi get preference when they come to a border but that is such a weird secret mechanic. They should just make it public and known what you have to do to be considered a logi player. Also some infantry soldiers just come with "logi supplies" just to get that secret logi que and then they stay on the front, which a lot of people don't like because we need room for those logi players to come back and forth. So the logi specific que only gives them 15 minutes to make their delivery. If your truck gets hit by partisan then either your supplies are gone either way or you have someone else in the hex come grab your truck or you come back into the hex through logi que and get your truck. Freighter and train logi would need to be looked at. Either they do the normal que or we make the time limit more like 20-30 minutes. The main idea is for those immediate supplies that fronts needs from regular logi trucks. Great questions and thanks for talking this out!
Agree w everything across the board. The biggest issue is the queue system, I would rather deal with 4am zergs than sit in a queue because a hex has 20 good guys and only 15 bad guys
Exactly! Each side knows how to QRF we can defend these pushes. And maybe we just buff defenses a bit if zergs are to much. After reviewing all of this I honestly think some defenses are to weak. 2-3 people shouldn't be able to come in and PvE a base down with RPG's you should need a big force to take down a big base.
I think to fix the population issue they should make it so stuff is produced a little faster on the side with less people or a little lower on the other side based on the average players per day maxing out at 10% faster/slower
I've seen this suggestion a few times now. It would be like my health idea for defensive structures where it would constantly be shifting around with how much faster or slower everything is being made. I would guess that it would be a complicated system to make but interesting one to see in action.
Back before I was playing, maybe 2021, I remember hearing about a similar mechanic that adjusted the day one respawn timers. So there is a degree of precedent. But most of what I heard about it was complaints. I'm not sure if the issues were structural or implementation though.
Sadly you think too much The don't forget, the VISION persists, all these changes won't be adapted soon, we talked about the before and devman chose current dragged out playstyle as the best, because we are in MMO only on paper, some kids can't handle their shit getting "nightcapped"- a thing we as community i feel started to talk less about because we complained and got the solution for with current Q and respawn systems And don't forget, being constructive on FOD is bannable offense
Robert, I am having problem with the server. It really sucking my play as a new player. I cant get to a shard and even if I did. I cannot deploy to a region. This is a major issue. Is this normal?
What I can think of, is a system where the game marks contested hexes as "frontline hexes". Traveling into a frontline hexes have an artificial "deployment time" queue and the deployment time is based on your faction's player count vs the enemy faction's player count. So if the queue start at a base 1 min to travel into a frontline hex, it will either increase or decrease the queue timer depending if your faction is outnumbering or being outnumbered. That means that people can pressure a point, but the enemy team will also get time to react as flooding a 20v20 area with an additional 80 players gonna bloat the deployment time. Ofc I am not sure how much fun it is to wait 5-10min to travel into a frontline hex. But at least it counter act the stalemate/queue meta and also somewhat prevent zerg rushing.
That could work! I wouldn't mind that and something more consistent or at least know how long you will be in que. 5-10 minute wait that I know is a 5-10 minute wait is much more preferred to an unknown que time that can sometimes be 20-30 minutes. I think this is a great idea!
@@RobertLovesGames neat! I will admit I've never played Foxhole, so it was just me spitballin' from all the content of Foxhole I've seen haha. That said, I guess the game needs to do a tick-check, so every X minute it sees how many people are in currently on the hex and in the deployment queue to adjust the deployment timer accordingly and it will be vurnable to a meta where players figure out the optimal playter-to-deployment-time ratio, but still, as you said at least consistency over stalemate. Also creates a layer of considering attacks, sure you can send 50 people into the frontline, but it means you now have 50 people out of commission for 10-15min and that creates windows for the enemy team to fortify or divert attacks somewhere else :)
Logi queue is a great idea. I had a similar idea but that it only disabled respawn. So it'd work for logi or tanks. Although that might have an issues with open top vehicles getting decrewed and not being able to get back. That screenshot of Origin is a great example of when the queue doesn't work. Specifically it was a colonial logi town that was population capped due to the wardens in that region being so low. Despite the overall population being in favor of the wardens that war. For backline regions specifically the defenders should always have the minimum like you said, although I'd say make it larger for logi hubs. If the enemy team is in the final region with 10-20 dudes then it should be pefectly fine for them to be kicked out. The next region can have the normal population balance.
Also wanted to mention there are a lot of things that balance based on population. Like the amount of tech that fields spawn and how quickly the fields respawn. So the low pop size can stick with the closer fields and the side with more pop has to use the further away fields. As for bunker health, that would not be a good idea. Like the Origin issue before, it'd create a situation where leaving a hex with little pop might become better than fighting. If anything I'd like to see more logi bonuses so more players can fight at the front and less spend time doing logi. I wished the devs would do minor adjustments each war instead of players having to wait 3 monthes for a slight adjustment. Like for example the colonial faction internally has been complaining about warden late game armor snowball. The bardiche being the only garage/mpf buildable AT tank the colonials have means that in situations where the wardens reach a critical mass of tanks and the colonials are being pushed back it's very hard and time consuming to deploy their only effective AT; the stygian. Which with the recent changes is very easy to counter. But we're not going to see any changes to colonial AT for at least 3 monthes. So when the wardens reach that critical mass of armor and the frontline quickly starts to fall, the players that fought hard to hold ground will quit thinking there is no way to build up again. (which touches on how late game building feels pointless as T2 bunkers are very weak and usually don't survive to get AI active). An example of a minor change to help colonial end game AT would be to give the ingifist the short range pen bonus (it was removed at some point for idk what reason) or to buff the Bane by reducing how heavy it is. Only being able to carry 2 ammo with it makes actually killing tanks feel impossible. A more long term change would be a suggestion I've been floating to make the final tech choice uncompleteable so it creates infinite prototypes. If the final colonial prototype aluminum weapon was for example an ATRPG v2 with way more pen (or 100% pen) that can be used in the Bane/Venom and it can be powerful due to being limited by tech drop rates, which benifits the low pop side.
Thanks! And yea not having the ability to spawn might not be the best route but it's still good idea to keep thinking of ideas that might work! I like the idea of backline regions having a minimum amount of players for sure. That would actually make finishing off those last few hexes even harder which it should be. And you may be right the bunker health may not be a good idea ha. Great idea in addition to mine! I like it! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
I believe that the major reason wardens have almost always have had more population is because they are the face of the game. Not only do foxholes creative designers put significantly more effort into warden models (a good example of this is naval ships) but wardens also have a higher appeal to European players due to the uniform and colours they use very similar to major European countries. It is no surprise that a game which has a majority of EU players will have more population in a faction that is alike to European militaries. This could be changed by actually advertising (unheard of right) the game, to American/Commonwealth audiences in which the colonials are more alike to their militaries. This could also be changed by hiring new creative designers which enjoy the concept of colonials more than wardens and will therefore put more effort towards colonials (it’s currently the other way around).
This is a good point. I started off as Warden and have played 30+ wars as a Warden. I generally like the Warden side more as well. What you are saying could happen. I do know a lot of new players generally like to join the "losing" side because they want to help and be against all odds sort of thing. Colonials for sure need some more leadership and bigger clans like the Wardens have to help lead the charge. Thanks for your thoughts and input on this!
The American style colonial uniforms and equipment vs European style Warden equipment reflects the time zone advances on the map for the wars I have been involved in. I played both sides and noticed ground gained was relative to the time zones and factions. The European time zone seem to overwhelm a bit more for Wardens and I find a lack of actual balance. Change up the visual style with some mix and match types I think will split up the time zones better. Just an observation from a new player to intermediate players perspective.
Maybe this would work but I'm from the US and only picked Warden because I liked the snow and blue uniforms not because of any historical background. So I don't know if that would be the case for everyone. An interesting idea though. Thanks for sharing!
Happens almost every war at the start of a war. Colonials have really good pushes at the start then fizzle out once tanks come out. Hopefully we can find a way to fix this that just does not shift Colonials to being overpowered.
Simple solution, resource output, crafting time increases/ decreases depending on the defecit of players on the opossing team. If team warden has 3-5% more players, make thier stuff 3-5% more expensive, longer to craft. Make it dynamic so that when the balance of players changes, this will also change the cost/crafting time. For hexes, idk, id say let a steamroll hapen. Players will need to respond quickly if they want to defend a sector, or do more scouting to see if ther building up for an attack. Again idk, this is a harder issue to fix.
It sounds simple when you type it out but would it be simple for the devs to implement? The only issue with this solution I can see is that the population is not always at a consistent 3-5% throughout the day. Ya know? At 12:00pm it might be even. So you would suggest that it is constantly fluctuating throughout the day? Appreciate the idea but I don't know if I can get behind this one. Thanks for sharing it!
@@sternthomas4218 Sounds like a headache is implement and sounds rough for logi players. Kind of sounds like my idea that base health should change based on players in the region as well. Some idea like these two would be interesting to see.
@@RobertLovesGames yeah, I do think that there should be a dynamic balancing factor depending on the player count, weather its health, production cost, etc. Maybe even a catch-up mecanic depending on the amount of hexes. This would give insent for player on the loting end to keep fighting and would mean that the loss of a hex is not as bad. This could in turn then also get rid, or change the hex que/player limmit. On the implementation factor, idk what the engine is capable of, but this is not the hardest thing to do. (Talking as a Software engineer).
Adding expense and resource output would be a bad idea... players will see that and leave. But, crafting time would be more subtle and wouldn't be terrible to implement based on an algorithm.
I’ve always played warden as a true caovish loyalist and I feel like warden beeing overwhelmed during early war but knowing that we will win on the long run is buffed recently. Indeed the new content is always more available late war. So warden gain a sort of moral boost because they know that the pesky warden clan’s (and their bureaucracy 😉😂) are more organised and efficient on the long run. So in conclusion : each update makes us stronger.
@@Juicing_JaBROni It’s a feeling so there’s no real data but the fact is warden clans have this reputation between wardens to be both very protective of resources fields and active. So it became a sort of culture i guess. But i’m only talking from my experience of course : I don’t know the colonial pov, but damn i was shocked when i saw the amount of bureaucratic work done by my clan.
I can agree with this attitude and get behind it especially as a former Warden as well. Hopefully us Colonials can pull through on this one. Going to need a lot of strength and good leadership.
Logi queue problem.. i may be missing some things in concept as relatively new player, but isnt can be the solution is just some kind of structure, similar to BB, which can allow passage of items, maybe even vehicles, through the border, BUT still without passing the logi player itself? Then internal logi players of overpoped hex can then take things from border and spread it all around hex. It even may be player-built, with limitations ofc, maybe even with some progression with tiers or some optional additional infrastructure While some attempt of separation "logi" and "non-logi" players.. honestly feels weird, starting at the "additional player is additional player" problem for full-popped hexes, which still will be additional load on system limited(as i understand) to 240 players; ending with abusing mechanics that can allow players simply repeat their 15-min appearance on hex again and again, even if we will set kind of cooldown of how often you can do it, or at least once still players can just enter and instead of logi just go fight.. and also to mention tactic of fast suicide attacks with explosives or kinda, for which 15 mins more than enough
They had this idea already but decided not to add it. It's exactly as you say where it works like a border base and you dump supplies in it that get sent to the structure across the hex. No idea why they decided it was not needed. Hopefully we can see them add something like this soon. Thanks for your thoughts on this!
@@RobertLovesGames well yeah then i can only hope they will re-consider maybe at some point, as currently it feels rather bruh. The only band-aid i can see currently for it is 15-min priority in queue when exiting high-pop hex... idk maybe currently dev's point is thats enough for it to further rely rather on players cooperation...? Not tried by myself so idk, how it feels from experienced player, is it helps?
Perhaps there could be dynamic balancing of production and refining times depending on overall faction population. Reduce the times by the % difference in active players overall at any given time. If Wardens make up 60% of active players, then Colonials production times are reduced by 10% to account for the 10% more manpower the Wardens enjoy due to the extra players. Just an example, my maths is probably way off.
This is certainly an idea they could play around with. Would take a lot of maths but yes they could look into this as well. Thanks for talking about this idea!
The thing is, equipment balance is much easier in terms of dev time than reworking the queue system or pop balance system. Changing a 40% to a 50% takes seconds, but designing/implementing/testing a rework for online mechanics is a hefty task. Equipment balance is always something that's easy to slip into updates since it's a few keystrokes to do. I definitely agree though, if you had a faction with 100 people with only mammons and stickies against another faction with 10 people all using the best of the best late game gear, the 100 people will win everytime. Equipment balance or the perceived lack thereof hurts morale and that's what is most impactful to the war itself. It would be impossible to make sure 100% of people feel like the game is perfectly balanced, but working towards it would at least help population disparity a bit.
True. But it's just a short term solution as well. So in the long run hopefully they are working on mechanics that effect things more for the long term rather than just short term stat changes.
Maybe the zerg rush should be allowed in certain circumstances. Like if hex is stalemated for three days, a system announcement is broadcast to announce queue balancing for that hex will be disabled in 24 hours. That way, one side doesn't get to steamroll empty towns, but also doesn't get to exploit queues either.
I like this! I mean we see a sort of "zerg" rush with navy invasions right now. Each side is certainly capable of QRFing and spawning into help. The only thing we wouldn't want with zerg rushing is for the ones doing the zerging to hop around to different hexes all over all the time. I don't know how you would control this but I could see that being an issue. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and cool idea about this!
Planetside 2 really was something special back in the day... anyways, while I do like that Anvil Empires is going to have more players per server, I just like the setting and aesthetic of "world war 1.5" that foxhole has. Whether they'd need to release an entirely new game to update it to the Anvil Empires engine or if they can update what they've got, I'd be much more excited for that than Anvil Empires itself. Queues are just no fun. In Planetside 2 I miss being able to take 5 or more full Galaxys to wherever hex we wanted to fight at and drop everyone in, no wait required (as long as it was on the continent you were already fighting on). Replicating that sort of feeling is pretty much what I want out of a combined arms war game and a queue between regions really puts a damper on it. Ideally there would be zero transition between hexes and it'd be seamless, but I suspect that's not within the realm of possibility for such a small developer.
I'd be more excited for Foxhole 2 than Anvil Empires honestly ha. I did the big galaxy drops when I played Planetside 2 and it was a lot of fun! I don't think it is a possibility for Foxhole but for Anvil Empires and Foxhole 2 it could be. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
I'd be interested in seeing stats on how many players are new in a war and how that affects population balance throughout a war. Most of the new players I bring into the game, which is above average running a planetside community the moonlights on Foxhole so we pull people across regularly, are more likely to stay around if the faction is fun to play. I think that might be a big part of why Collie has a large pop advantage early war (Rather than collies choosing to play early or more wardens not, more new warden players join the game and go "well this game was clearly balanced by morons" and quit) and later in the game more new collie players who find themselves limited in tank options to falchion or nothing end up having the same experience. So sort of a negative removal of people rather than a positive addition. I know the foxhole community is still big, but first-time players still make up a huge amount of each war in my experience. Also remember when talking about logi queues the 15-minute reserved spot is part of that whole discussion too.
That would be really cool to know! I think the devs have a lot of work to do in terms of retention for Foxhole. I would guess not many players get past 10-20 hours of playing Foxhole just based on what I hear from new player experiences. Some of course play and fall in love right away. But I think the devs could do more for new players. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
Fire rate of defensive structures at bunker bases with lesser player number could be increased to facilitate defenders advantage in 20-30 vs 50-70 scenarios
Buffing for pop balance is not what they’re doing, the balance issue in collie tanks and infantry AT is the reason there is a pop balance issue, sure we have a bane and venom, both rmats to create, warden at rifle that is mobile has higher dps potential and made with bmats (excluding the somewhat expensive ammo for collie launchers in comparison to 20mm). Decent collie tanks, eg spatha are facility locked, so the average few hours a night player won’t ever use it unless it’s free. Unlike the outlaw which still outranges the spatha and is in the damn mpf. The outlaw completely holds it own in a poke battle against a facility locked collie tank if not better and before recent buffs was better during a skirmish too (which said buff led to collie win). Overall collies equipment is more expensive and typically worse than warden equipment. (Haven’t even mentioned the lack of colonial roofs) So the issue with the population balance is the balance of the game, every new player i have met that has not joined a regi and are committed to colonials are going warden, only for the fact they have the better equipment to deal with everything the collies have late game. So once they balance their game the population will balance too. They aren’t buffing a faction based on population, they are buffing based on the reason of the lack of population. (The reason for this rant is because you mentioned numerous times that you don’t want them to buff for population reasons or change equipment stats but never mentioned the reasons for the drastic difference in the population)
You might be right. I am only speculating with my thoughts of course. And yes I don't want them to buff because of population and hope that they are not doing that. I hope they are just trying to make the equipment as balanced as possible against their comparisons. Thanks for your thoughts on this!
I really like the logi Que idea the only thing I could see bad is for sea transport cause iron ships are so slow. Also your vehicle should also be transported back with you.
True about the freighter logi. Depending on where the seaport is 15 minutes is probably just barely enough time to unload. Especially with the new freighter changes. Would maybe have to up the time to 20-25 minutes to give freighters longer amount of time. Thanks for mentioning this and your input on this!
@@RobertLovesGames train logi could also be a massive hanger on. You might simply have to leave trains and iron ships on a purely normal based que unless it’s an water locked hex then do a 25 min que for ships only. Simply adding in a truck only logi que would greatly help with the situation and not worry about the outlying issues of other types of logi.
@@HamadaHamada-qx9bx True! Train logi is normally a team effort anyways so getting someone across in "normal que" would help. But yea maybe just having it be more focused on logi trucks and flatbeds for quick supplies would be helpful.
Devs indeed use the tech tree to balance the population, its always been the case. I understand why they do it, but its very painful to be punished with what seems like a tech cludge to fix a population issue. I guess the solution isn't simple here otherwise but this doesn't seem right. 2:25 "majority of the wars show 3-5% population difference favoring the wardens each war". This is a very broad statement, what assumptions did you run in order to make this? do you mean all the wars in the dataset? did you exclude the end of the war pop skew? Did you exempt "break wars"? I would avoid averaging across multiple wars and discuss specific examples. 3:00 As for what has happened since war 100, I think this has a lot to do with colonials losing several key groups (I played colonial during much of this). The colonial strength in asia/russia timezone decreased which was a great equalizer, losing BML means that SHRED (which used to handle a grid by themselves) is a shadow of what it used to be, and honestly the level of cooperation between the various groups has become very poor. There were dumb fights between various groups, even leading some to switch back to warden. The naval update just made this much worse, various groups focused more on boat LARP than helping hold the line or win the game. Also there were some very even wars during these, at 80% of the war, manhours were almost the same (under 3% difference) in wars 102, 105, 106, 110 and warden's won all of those. For the most part the only wars collies won were the 2 that basically wardens took as break wars (104,409) as seen by the manhours difference on those being 10% or higher by that 80% mark and throughout. QUEUE: I don't think this impacts new players, they should just jump to a different frontline. As for a refinement of the logi queue, I think that would be interesting but you will still have similar issues, truck swapping was the way to get it in but for a long time they broke truck swapping (and some logi players preferred to sit in the queues to get commends instead of what works best for the team). As for population balance, during the 60's due to the warden winstreak, various clans switched sides to try to balance. It helped but then you had loyalist on both sides disparaging some of these at times.
True. I think I understand why they do it as well. End of war pop was included in this data set which I think I stated in the video does throw this data off a little. But if you look at the data it shows Collies having higher pop at the start so it should average out? I didn't run the maths exactly so this is all speculation of course. Don't take it as concreate information which I again I think I stated. I agree Colonials losing key groups has not helped the faction. Colonials are lacking some major clan groups that help run the wars. Which is why we have seen some return for war 112 and it looks like it has made a difference in my opinion. Some players don't know to just jump to a different frontline unfortunately. Sometimes they see that "only 3 ahead of you" and think oh I only have to wait like 5 minutes when it could be 15-30 minutes or even longer sometimes depending on the front. Someone mentioned they should implement a border building where you can transfer over crates to the other hex. The devs had something like this but never implemented it. Would love to see something like that even without my logi que idea. Lots of things to consider with this data and I of course don't have all the answers just possible solutions. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
The issue is that the devs and the salty vets dont want to improve the game. Reduce the resource costs for building things, etc. You would have full hexes of randos blowing each other up with every weapon in the game and having fun for the few hours that they play.
The devs did just multiply all resources so that they are easier to get so they made that part much easier. I do think they want to improve the game they just want to keep it within their "vision". And those randos should be having fun. That's what playing video games is about so I don't mind that.
Perhaps a system is required that chooses which faction you join to keep the populations, skill level, and hours put in similar for the factions, and you can stay with your friends by implementing some kind of 'party queue' where you ensure you join the same faction as some other people. This way, you can make more enjoyable to join the start of the war where you find out which faction you're in and get established with possibly a new community. This might take a lot of effort and time to implement and be kind of unrealistic but maybe it's a solution.
Would really depend on how long that party que system is. I wouldn't want a system that takes people away from playing their favorite. And yea it sounds like it might be pretty complicated system ha. But great idea and these are the type of ideas we need to keep having! Thanks for sharing!
For a different view of the problem, I'm a terrible infantryman. I have a lot of fun getting blown up and often just have fun scavenging on frontlines. However once a queue forms it always makes me feel like the best thing I can do for my faction is just to log off so a better player can take my spot. Feels bad.
That does feel bad! You shouldn't have to feel that way! Everyone matters! I think you should stop doing that and just play and have fun! Sounds like you are doing good things on the front and are helping out!
Maybe the devs could implement a system where they will balance out who’s on which faction by using ranks. A higher rank usually signifies someone that plays as logi or someone that’s a veteran. So with this in mind the devs could split these players up giving each faction these players. Sadly there is one problem and that being regiments.
Sometimes rank does not mean much but I get what you are saying. I don't think the players would want this though because then they can't play with their clans or friends. Thanks for the suggestion and idea though!
@@RobertLovesGames yeah and thats a major issue maybe give collies some more attention in lore. Hopefully this will grab more players attention and have people be more loyal to the colonial faction. Personally the reason why I play warden is because of the lore and Challahan. I’ll try to cook up some more ideas.
I agree, that queue must be rework. Especially now, when we have BS, that can't enter in hex. Queues and small servers is the main problems in our operations. Sometimes we are even can't start rhey normally. What I can to offer: 1) Queue restricitons must be reworked and be weaker. Sneaky or fast pushes must to exist. 2) Servers must to be bigger. Now it is unreal to do an intresting push with flanks. It is unrealistic to carry out a large landing under the cover of the fleet. 3) Tanks must be removed from MPF. Spathas/falch should be rebalance. When the tanks are removed from the MPF, their cost will increase and delivery to the front will become more complicated. The cost of tanks or spawn/production comps should be reviewed. 4) And it doesn't have to be done right away, perhaps it is better after 1 war, need to fiz frankly bad (shotguns, sniper rifles) and strong (argenti+booma) versions of infantry equipment. 5) New tanks should be added. Smth between LT and "usual" tanks.
That is the dumbest thing about the navy update. Someone mentioned that hexes without victory points just shouldn't have a population requirement at all which I can agree with. Agreed sneaky and fast pushes should exist more. Each side can QRF so it's not like we couldn't stop these pushes. Great ideas and thoughts on this! Thanks for sharing!
The problem with total faction playercounts is an issue caused by three factors. People and Morale, Money and Advertising, Asymmetrical Warfare. People and Morale. When in the war, there's two different mindsets that go through players depending on faction. The colonials feel the need to win quickly while they have the early game advantage, and the wardens hold on desperately, knowing they'll have the late game advantage. Once the colonials inevitably dont win the early game because both teams are at high morale and an unwanted game balance necessity that i'll get to later. The wardens come and win the late game because they're best at it. Because Asymmetrical Warfare. Asymmetrical Warfare. Trying to make each faction different in a way you can really feel on the front lines is a challenge. Especially since you want the game to be fun and to not ruin the lightning in a bottle gameplay they had from before asymmetry was a thing with the balance between offense and defense. So the only two *main* things they can really make different for each is Tanks and Infantry as they are both offensive and won't directly ruin the defense offense balance. So Colonials got Infantry, and Wardens got tanks. However Tanks by their nature are late game and Infantry early game. So, each faction became a specialist in either early game or late game. Alright, so what's the issue with that? Well, simple. Money and Advertising. Money and Advertising. So now each faction is dedicated to late game or early game which already means Wardens will have high morale 100% of the time while Colonials will have high morale only 75% of the time if everything else is perfectly balanced, but that so far isn't too bad. Now, the real issue is the reality of our world. You need resources to run servers. Resources that cost money. Foxhole does not have any other way to make money than to get new players to know and care about the gamr enough to buy it so they can get money. How to get new players to know? Advertising. How to get them to care? The gane does most of the heavy lifting by being _cool._ What's cool? Big super heavy tanks, storm cannons, battleships, nuclear missiles, and the game's concept in general. That will get new players' attention and give them something to look forward to from buying the game. What do they all have in common? Being Late-game (or in the case of the concept, seeing people build and research late game expensive weaponry via teamwkrk and collaboration). That means to not let the war end on the early game. We do not, in any circumstances, want to scam new players of the things they paid real money for. Colonials are early game specialists. They will rarely win if the game goes late game. But the game _must_ go late game and is enforced through game balance. See the issue? And now it circles back to People and Morale. Colonial players will notice low win rates and lose morale, exacerbating the issue into a death spiral of salt, and unbalanced player counts. The salt of colonial vets rises to heights nearing competitive FPS and MOBA games due to this, which they then dump on new players who accidentally make winning harder by doing non-meta activities like digging random trenches and as such destroy the new player influx to their faction, making the imbalance problem _even worse._ The faction keeps losing, and the hardcore vets salt gets unbearable, causing more casual players to leave the faction or, more likely, stop doing high-level coordination with others so they don't need to interact with the salt and to not get invested into a war they will lose and as such feel bad about. This causes the great coordination imbalance we see between wardens and colonials. This (of course) makes the faction imbalance even worse. The devs aren't blind. They know this issue exists and have been trying to stop the speeding train since at least right after Inferno, even with the fact it only really started with Inferno, which makes it quite impressive how fast they noticed. Sadly, they couldn't really stop the game from becoming more late game oriented because money is money and the servers hunger. You can notice the devs trying to partially re-symmetize the factions by looking at a few things. One major one is tank variants. You notice how there's so many meta colonial tanks that are variants instead of base tanks? Almost all colonial good tanks were variants! While the Wardens' non-varient tanks are way more likely to be the meta instead. This is a "surgery" scar from them making colonials better at tanks after Inferno because of Inferno's vehicle variant system being added. Another is the infantry update and how it made infantry way better/more fun to play with more toys for them and better infantry vs. vehicle combat. This is designed to make players want to play the infantry specialists who are the colonials! (And something else which is quite sneaky) This next part is conjecture, but i think it has merit. This is why planes are being added. Of course, it's the next big step, but it's way more than that. What they are doing is adding a new main power to the asymmetrical warfare so they can finally fix this problem. Colonials will probably be like the allies in ww2 with incredible air power, and the wardens can have the Axis incredible tanks. Infantry might be made mostly balanced for both factions. In fact, the infantry update might be sneakily pushing things for this currently but I'll need more evidence.
And as a collie, I will say that most of the small and medium regiments will stick to the backline and contribute nothing to the facility. They are the worst because they never participate in building defenses or fight on the frontline. However, not all small and medium regiments are like that. Some are willing to learn and efficiently manage logistics. They also need to understand that they are support and reserve soldiers for frontline players. These medium and small regiments often create LARP facilities that hinder bunker construction for effective defenses, making their own lives harder. They fail to supply anything, and when their hex gets attacked, they abandon it and return to LARPing in a backline hex and last they will never do frontline logi so that data is something but we also need more frontline regiments and new regiments don't do frontline Ops they will stay backline and make larp facility
Ok I agree that it seems like the small regiments in warden world are maybe a little more keen to take their stuff out for a fight, (maybe because the collie backline hexes are pretty and more relaxing and Warden backline is grim snow and mud) but what can you do about it? How can the culture shift? You can’t MAKE people play in a way they don’t want to, they’ll just *not play*. I doubt this is remotely close to the heart of the issue…but if it is, some kind of deployment system that “calls up” these reservists would be the way to do it. Devs are pretty allergic to adding mechanics that alter player behavior directly, I’ve hoped since I got the game for better pub squad squad based stuff via better recruiting but… 🤷♂️
@@The_CGA its is one of the reasone as most of the people who fight frontile like are old dedicated frontline regi which also getting small as most of them suffering burnout remember they do a lot from coordinating ops then QRF calls then building frontline defences then concing them then get their wet conc destroyed by emenies also dealing with larp facilies who don't make defences in frontline or Chad solo frontliner they also do QRF calls in hexs and do frontline logi or cook public Bmats and diesels in frontile refinery
I ran a small facility with like 6 other people 3 wars ago. Our only purpose was to have public pads ready for people to use with mats in them. Was chill and fun time. We didn't take up to much space or mssups either. People just need to be willing to teach one another instead of complain about what other people do. Don't like their facility? Tell them why it should be over here or why you should work together to accomplish the same thing. This game is all about working together and having good communication. Thanks for your input on this!
12:11 No idea how this would work in Anvil but Planetside came up with a really interesting system that may or may not have actually worked. They made a 4th faction that's tailored towards Solo players and made it really unique and honestly a bit OP compared to the normal three factions. The catch is that if you join the 4th faction, you act as a Mercenary without allegiance to any of the 3 factions. When you first log into your play session it puts you on the side who's struggling the most as a way to give extra population and power to who needs it. If it ends up bringing that faction ahead of the others, any more mercenaries would obviously go to the newest under dog. It's also hard to gather up your clan and steamroll a faction together since you likely won't end up on the same team at the same time. Again no idea how this would work for Anvil, maybe a Mercenary Band? You spawn in already kitted out but maybe you can't take off your armor so that way you can't die, respawn, give your equipment away, repeat.
Oh I didn't know that about Planetside! I played PS a long time ago and there was always one faction that was just always getting stomped into the ground, same thing happened in New World. Sounds like a pretty cool system I don't think it would really work for Foxhole though. It will be interesting to see what Anvil does with 3 factions.
@@RobertLovesGames It would be hard to justify because it would make planning and stuff variable but maybe a modifier to the scrap cost per emat/bmat etc would be best as it just targets the start of the logi chain, but yeah any modifier to logi output based on pop so they aren't so far apart would help. I'm not even saying 10% buff per 10% lower pop but something more like 5% per 10% , anything at all to bridge the gap without taking away from the skill of efficiently managing logi chains
I think it might be a bit safer to say more collies play in the early war because playing as warden in the early war is perfectly unfun unless you have a very specific attitude.
This is why i've been saying for so long, the game needs to be updated around the quality of life over the balance. People quitting ruins the wars, so the game needs to be less unbearable to play so people don't feel as encouraged to quit. Quality of life updates are wanted more than a balance change or a new tank.
You get it! Lots of talk about burnout going on right now. Tis the season. Hopefully some more quality of life updates are coming this year. As always thanks for your input Zach!
my brother in Callahan, Robert, you're doing amazing videos, but can you make the sound a bit louder? I'm at 100% volume on youtube and OS, and can barely hear you. the same settings for most other videos will be painfully loud
Big video, but let me try to react. On the queue system, those are all good ideas. Kicking AFK players sooner and stretching the maximum player difference would help to make the wait times more bearable. As for the population: This is my third war and I've tried both collies and wardens now. I think both sides have fun, unique weapons worth playing with. But the reason I'm prefering wardens is the culture. Their worldchat is funny, their spirits neigh unbreakable, and it's easy to find mates to do teamwork. As a collie I ran into a few kind dudes, but there was fighting at component fields, it was harder to find people to team up with and their worldchat was mostly sour grapes saying #freebadmanlarry, a toxic piece of work. In the end, culture isn't everything and it also comes down to personal preference. But it certainly has an impact, as someone said yesterday "Every day I look at world chat and know I picked the right faction" after people joked about Callahan's onlyfans.
As someone who has played 30+ Warden wars I agree with you. Warden culture side is very established where the Colonial side is more chaotic. I've been Colonial the last 5 wars and I can see it slightly getting better. I agree that culture as an impact as well. Colonials just need to find their leaders again. Thanks for your input on this!
@@RobertLovesGames Worth adding: I ran into a small regiment who saw it as their mission to encourage teamwork between colonials again. They were called XVIII I think and they were very friendly. Shoutout to them.
Mercy's Wish and Tomb of the First is such a pain to defend. I spent most of my time supplying Tomb and building there last war and I need a long break from that area ha
The biggest issue facing foxhole is people who play to win, not to have fun. Every single multiplayer game faces this issue. The game becomes less sustainable when everyone tries to win more than they try to have fun.
I hard agree with this! I certainly want to win when I'm playing but I prioritize having fun first. Well said and thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
I remember in the naval update war the WN battleship got stuck waiting in a queue causing the whole operation to grind to a halt. Maybe dedicating more server resources to frontline hexes and less for backline hedges?
@@RobertLovesGames IDK, naval ops can range from 10-50 people, meaning coastal tiles are even worse for queuing as half the player cap is doing naval warfare. Adding bigger ships like the destroyers and battleships with a large minimum crew count has made things even worse
I agree for some point but when you say balance it's only stats and percentages on tank. You also have tank that can cary A LOT of extra Bmat on one fac, guess wich one ? haha To counter balance we could have in late war the possibility of stealing ennemy tech ? What you think
I mean you can already steal enemy vehicles by being a partisan. Or when you take over a town you get a percentage of their stockpile so technically we already get enemy vehicles. I don't think I would want actual enemy tech to be researched by the other faction. Interesting idea though! Thanks for sharing!
Well 3 to 6 % pop difference is pretty good ! When you see world of warcraft alliance and horde having 80/20% split The queue could be adapted a bit more yeah, but keep in mind it's a balance between solo players and clan aswell, at the moment solo and small group can make a difference on a front, but if Zerg is too op it won't be fun either, like the early wars !
True! I did think about that while making this video. But again if you think about logi production being that different the the side with 6% less or even 10% which it is sometimes can make a huge difference. Maybe we need to make defenses stronger then to combat a zerg play style?
Would be interesting to see the same imbalance table if you remove the last couple days of the war when the pop imbalance is stronger due to people leaving because the war is over
I agree! I think the major issue overall is the Colonials having higher pop at the start and Wardens having higher pop near the middle to late war. Would like it to even out throughout the entire war.
I feel like the queue system is too strict on who can and cannot enter the region. It needs more flexibility and allow more players to enter a hex, especially during peak time with lots of action going on.
That's exactly what I thought, and I think it's a shame that the colonials start leaving the game when the tanks arrive. On this war, I'm trying warden for the 1st time, and I have to wait 45min-1h to get to wesgate to join my regiment. (the palpatine ref was very smoth XD).
I agree! We shouldn't have it where Colonials only play for infantry and Wardens only play for tanks. And that is big oof on que wait time. We should not have to wait that long in a que to play Foxhole. Thanks for your input on this!
15 min logi queue would probably be abused as QRF, fast response into the hex for 15 minutes, with perhaps people rotating on the outside.. it's just overall hard to balance I get it ❤
We will see if it goes back up. As we can see from previous data it's not likely. But I want to win so I will keep pushing on with the other Colonial forces!
True. And I don't think that should be a thing honestly. I'm all for partisan cutting off logi but it shouldn't be at the expense of logi just waiting at a border for a que.
I really, really like idea of harsher afk kick system and better queue. It would be great.
Same! Some things really need to be changed to make these fights more even on the front.
I think logi queue is an interesting idea which is worth at least checking. Not sure about partisans stopping you midway and getting you kicked by stalling you out but oh well.
yes, i love the idea of the logi queue forced kick, can even make it that you must be in a truck/transport to access it
Yeah ngl last night I was like “wow this game is so cool I don’t get afk kicked”…
…oop
Here's an alternative train of thought: address that losing-side bias. Being beaten to a pulp sucks, so players leave when that happens. So... maybe add some mechanic to the game where losing a battle can still *feel* impactful. Maybe something cosmetic like "campaign medals" for fighting in a hex outnumbered for a certain amount of time. It's more of a "game feel" solution rather than a hard numbers solution.
Spitballing now: what if when a certain side has rapidly lost an area, say they're down to a single relic after the other side has taken all their other bases over the course of a few hours; then the zone gets a "final stand" announcement which gives a buff to nearby factories or respawn timers or something like that to incentivize trying to hold out for that last base (though only for a short period of time). That might be too far though and just cause stalemates instead of epic last stands...
I think you have to award something at the individual level that is special and can only be used in the next war. A lot of it could be connected to the player actions log... but think custom paint jobs for vics, unique emotes, distinguishing skins for certain uniforms, etc. I also suspect a lot of players would be motivated by features that give them advantages relative to the rest of their faction: priority queue during the first 24 hours of the next war, a special lock they can use on their vehicle that is immune to friendly wrenches, map posts that don't disappear, etc.
I don't think the game needs anything with cosmetics honestly. An interesting idea someone had that tied really well with my minimum player amount would be that backline hexes have no population restrictions. That way all the defending forces don't have to wait in que to help defend the backline making it harder for the enemy to push in.
@@RobertLovesGames yeah I agree cosmetics aren't the solution. I think giving a defender's advantage would only serve to drag out the final stages of the war though, which might have the opposite effect with the attackers losing morale and the war turning into a grind of wills.
@@tugman1234 maybe not cosmetic but on the profile stats
Watching you drive down the center of the road like a maniac all video long was so aggravating lol.
lol sorry! I will try to do some better driving next time!
@@RobertLovesGames Whenever you crash into someone driving your way, you gotta blow them a kiss. Rules are rules.
What about border depots, where logi submits supplies on one side and then the other side can retrieve the logi from the adjacent border depot.
I would love this as well. Sounds like a great idea.
good idea!
Indeed, good idea though not sure how exactly it would work but something to refine.
But partisans would have an harder time to cut logi
We already have a structure that could facilitate this, border bases would work a charm!
They could do an active economy where if your faction has 10% less active players than the other faction you get a 10% discount on for example producing a creat of shirts with the current amount of bmats being the standard price so that both sides logi are artificially equal but still requires the players to do the work. They can give a lore reason by calling the discount something like a war bonds bonus or something if needed.
That could be interesting to try! It would just fluctuate a lot based on the current population.
I'd be all for trying something like this. Great idea!
devman will never implement good ideas, your idea has no chance
I have put in suggestions as well about the EXACT thing you said about Logi Ques. Give people 15 minutes for truck/flatbed logi before they get disconnected. Making people who are the true "Logi" players keep supplies a rolling.
Exactly! I would love to see something like this in a future update.
I like the idea, but what happens when you get partsianed?
Does it take you out of the logi queue and placed in the combat queue?
There's a mental aspect of the "great veteran migration" as well. It's a lot easier to endure a hard fight or to hold your ground knowing you'll have a fun powerful tool as a reward in a few days. Team Green lacks this currently and it foments a lot of negativity among frustrated players
This makes sense and I understand that frustration. Obviously they just need to buff the Ares to be an unstoppable machine lol
@RobertLovesGames I don't even want that. Just slap some MG sponsons in the side and I will be just peachy.
I recognize that beautiful face. ;)
@@skyrim654 Is it too much an ask to simply have a single 360 degree machinegun on ANY Colonial tanks? A huge problem I have against the Colonial tech tree is that the crew to combat effectiveness ratio SUCKS. To equal ONE Chieftain, you need both a Ballista and a Scorpion, neither of which go as fast, and Scorpion doesn't even have 360 machinegun coverage despite needing two gunners to use, and can be blocked by the Ballista it's trying to protect. The chieftain needs only 3 people, whereas to get even half of its effectiveness, you need 5 people on the Colonial side.
Let's extend this. To get the combat effectiveness of one scout tank, you need both an argonaut and a tankette, but both are open top, and at bare minimum you need 3 people to command both, and you don't even get a 360 machinegun. To get the combat effectiveness of one Highwayman, which requires 3 to drive, you need two halftracks, one with a mounted ATR, and the other with a machinegun, requiring a total of 4. The extra pilot requirements stack up, meaning in general the Colonial team will have less infantry on the field, the population limits making their already impotent vehicles even more vulnerable. This is why Colonials just stick to Falchion and Spatha spam, because nothing else really works cost-effectively.
@@skyrim654 I am a Warden, and I approve this message. I don't care how many times it kills me, it will be cool.
As a collie the biggest complaint I hear are about tanks, which might explain the drop off after mid war as well. Idk a good solution
You are exactly right. Tanks are always one of the biggest complaints. If the devs simple just buffed colonial tanks to be better then the Wardens would just complain about how their tanks are awful. It's a never ending cycle unfortunately.
@@RobertLovesGames I love the falchion family got their buff but seems like it’s not enough to retain vets, I’m already seeing vets not logging in on the east front as much leaving new players to fend for themselves which in turn will make them not want to play or maybe even go warden because they see their advances.
@@IIiQuasiII16 mainly because an extra shot on a few tanks isn't going to make up for the lack of late game AT
end of the day, collies just cant compete with wardens ability to cry.
it's just the times tbh. he who cries hardest, wins in 2024.
@@calhackit9806 mean while its whole comment section of crying collies lmao
This makes War 100, truely the Against all odds Win.
Ha! Something unique happened in that war that we don't unfortunately see happen consistently.
War 100 was really nice. I Warden. Even if in war 100 collie had too strong sides, I really think that It is better to argue which side is OP than to play on empty servers. When I was collie I saw how weak public logi, and weak cooperation between clans. That is really demotivate me.
I think, one of best option is: remove tanks from MPF, and with it change some falch/spata stats/mechanic.
the stygian back then was really op but to say that the wardens didn't throw really hard at the end is a lie. if i remember correctly we had 3 to 4 preditor shts stolen and used against us
@@KaGoIchi that's why wardens implemented their most OP wep - cry until devs ban all the good players on other side ;)
it's worked for your lbgt-furry types in every other aspect of life, so not exactly surprising.
we'll come back and win foxhole again once we've defeated the culture in real life ;)
we busy fighting the real enemy for now.
@@calhackit9806 I'm sorry, but I didn't understand what you were talking about at all. What kind of player lockdowns, what kind of culture wars? We're talking about balance.
How about timezone differences? I've seen more american players on the colonial side, whereas Europe plays wardens. So Europe quite often gain ground and then America retaliates. But this shifts hex population to one side depending on the time. And with the current system people often times have to sit in queues.
This is where a system that changes the health of defenses or something along those lines I think would come in handy. Though again I think it would be very hard to implement.
Not true. This war battle for Briar. Wardens out poped collies 3-4 to 1 in peak USA and Oceania time.
P.S. It was Monday-Tuesday 3 am in EU and Hex got 1300 kills per hour only on Warden side.
@@lucaslod2731 Using a single hex, in a single war, for a single day as an example to say "not true"....seriously?
@@Necrotic99 Nah its not a single hex, a lot of hexes are the same. Stema Landing for example is very active on warden side during nights while no Colonials are around.
@@lucaslod2731purely anecdotal reference
Robert! So glad you released a video on this. The biggest problem with colonials right now is not our production amount, because we always have hundreds of tanks in seaports! The problem is we have nobody to use them! It’s rough.
I agree with this! Or people are too afraid on the front to push with their tank and lose it! They need to use our tanks more and not be afraid to lose them because then they can just go get another one!
I completely agree with this. Thanks for sharing!
@@RobertLovesGames I made a separate post, but basically colonials have had several groups leave. When BML got kicked, SHRED basically became a shadow of their former self and they used to hold an entire grid. In general the various clans seem to have less pop than they used to, the streamer effect is less as well (I remember being warden and fighting the hordes that summit brought during war 83). They used to have a strong advantage during asia/russia hours, but that has disappeared or even out for the most part. There was also internal fights between groups, some going as far as switching sides to get away. And then there is the general morale issue of losing war after war, its hard to maintain pops like that so its a self re-enforcing issue.
Colonials are underplayed because all the "meta" colonial vehicles are facility locked, and all the warden "meta" vehicles just need a hammer and rmats. This is not a balance statement, but a gameplay statement. Imagine if you're a new player and you want to use an anti-tank vehicle. If you're a colonial you need to make a Hatchet, and then either build a massive facilility to make Pcons, A2 and A3, a power source and msups... several hours of work, just to make one LTD and then you need to drive it to the front because facilities are in the backline. If you're on the warden side, you hammer out an HTD at any garage, even a front line one... and you're ready.
As much as we want to balance "queues" and "add a logi queue" system etc... those are symptoms of the problem. The main problem is, all the warden mid to late game tech is EASIER and MORE FUN to use.
Consider this, which is MORE FUN, to use (not overpowered):
Outlaw or Falchion?
Silverhand or Bardishe?
Chieftain or Balista?
Flask or Ignifist?
Cutler (with uniform) or Venom?
This is what shaped faction loyalty and ultimate affects why there more wardens: it is the more fun faction that honestly doesnt need facilities to win. If dev man removed all vehicle variants from the game today then the colonials have nothing to beat the standard Outlaw, Silverhand, HTD tank line.
I 100% agree with you on this. although it will never happen I kind of wish the Devs would just delete the falchion and put the Spatha back into the MPF. Now I understand that doesn't really fix the fact that a lot of our stuff is locked behind facilities but I think it would be nice.
Yes, but I feel like the facility update helps significantly with this. All around Colonial logi towns there are facilities for anyone to upgrade almost anything, and it is much easier to get the materials to do it. It does take a little more effort, but for the most part only BTs and SHTs are still meaningfully locked behind facilities - which also happens to be true for the wardens. I think Colonials will win this war (war 112 for future readers) for this very reason: more of our late game heavy equipment will make it to the front line and make a difference.
I can agree with this. I would say new players are not going to know all the in and outs like this right away but maybe after the first war they play they will figure it out.
I agree that there needs to be some equipment changes made and it all needs to be looked at again. I just hope that if the devs do that things don't just swing to the Colonial side for 5-6 wars ya know?
Appreciate your input and thoughts on this! Thanks!
@@galiantus1354 Thing is though
I struggle with getting the right stuff for facilities to upgrade my tank (and i am part of a Regi) becuase you need to know what makes what etc and in the end you waste so much time just to upgrade a tank
Also with facilities you need to know who owns what otherwise you run the risk of stepping on peoples toes
It is so difficult
Hey Robert! Great video as always.
While we're throwing around ideas, I've got several.
Option A:
Rather than have a hard cap, control the rate at which the faction with the larger population in the hex can join, proportional to their advantage. For example, if every 1% of advantage corresponds with 1 second of wait time, then the maximum rate Wardens can join a hex where they have 60 against 40 Colonials is one every 50 seconds (because 60:40 is a 50% advantage). And this would of course compound with every additional player trying to get in the region.
This does two things: First, it presents players with the definitive maximum possible time they will have to wait to get into the region. Second, it allows things to flow more smoothly if the population in the region is stable. The main effect of the timer is it buys time for the outnumbered side to respond and equalize things a bit.
Option B:
Completely get rid of any concept of waiting to enter a hex. Instead, limit spawns from the home region to Tier 3 Victory point towns - no spawning directly to bunker bases or relic bases. The trade-off here is many players looking for frontline action will have to spawn a hex back, catch a ride up to the front, and set their spawn. But this is clearly more interesting than waiting for even 5 minutes in queue. And given how Foxhole players are, I think we can trust people will step up and provide a taxi service to active fronts. Plus this would give the bus a better niche to fill.
I did consider a more extreme version of this where players would only start in the home region once at the beginning of a war, but I think that would cause more inconvenience than the queues do.
Option C:
Institute a faction-specific cap, based on the average population in the frontline hexes. For example: no hex can have a population more than double their average population, in the past hour. The goal here is to get the faction to distribute themselves somewhat evenly across the front, rather than trying to fix local imbalance between the factions. It also puts more control in the hands of the faction collectively, since the faction controls their cap, not the enemy.
This would probably work better if Ocean hexes had their own separate rules, and if each faction could see their population in the relevant hexes.
Thank you! I like option A sounds like it could work and have potential.
I like the idea for option B as well. I just worry to much running around to a front could get boring and new players already have a tough time finding the front most of the time. But if we put more emphasis on a "taxi service" that could help with that!
Option C is an interesting one that sounds like it would fluctuate around a lot. I like the idea though of the faction working on spreading people out. I was just thinking today about how the 15 people waiting in que to get into Kings Cage could be doing something more useful than just sitting around waiting for that que to pop and it sounds like this idea could help with that. I wish there was more of that mentality, instead of just joining the "fun" front you have more incentive to join other fronts.
Some great ideas! Thanks for sharing these!
there really should be a "pick for me" option on the faction select screen. some players dont care what faction they play or for new players, being forced to pick one might be bad. if there a random faction button, that looked at the average pop for each faction over the previous 5 days, and distributed random faction players at at 4:1 ratio to the under popped faction, we might see a better pop balance while still technically being random
True! That would be a really cool feature! Great idea!
This is the way
i have been preaching for a logi que sense war 76 im so glad you brought it up i really hope the implement something like that. Amazing video keep it up!
That's awesome! Great minds think alike! I really hope they do something like this as well.
And thank you!
Suggestion, for the side with more players the player limit increases slowly over time. If the smaller side never increases their numbers they will see the difference increase until they are overwhelmed, but this requires a day or two or three.
I definitely like the idea of having slots that only give you 15 minutes at a time, though you wouldn't necessarily call it "Logi".
I like this idea! Foxhole players on both sides are generally good about QRFing areas. So if we had this kind of system it could still be dealt with on both sides.
Why would you not call it logi? Moving supplies in and supplies out that's the main goal of the que for the frontline.
Played the game on and off for about 50 wars. Gameplay loops with a good QoL & respecting my time as a Working Professional with a family.
If I go away for two days with the family or on business why do I loose two weeks / months work?
Why does the bb building mechanic stay the same as tech and gameplay loops progress through the game?
Why are bad actors consistently able to frustrate and troll players without facing permanent removal after numerous violations?
Why don't have unique hexes with static defenses / landscapes that allow for in depth infantry combat past the research of artillery?
Ie. Mountains / dense jungle terrain?
Why is the lore not expanded and leaned Into, the best art and media has come from the community. I'd love to see some pursuits in other areas with this IP. The options to purchase merchandise ect.
like its pretty telling when alot of wardens only log in when tanks tech
also truck swapping seems to stop working when a region maxes out you leave and have a reserved spot but it just throws you into queue so you end up with no one leaving and fights ending simply because players cant spawn anymore which is the worst way to end fights, i very much agree on the stricter afk system.
As someone who has played Warden it's pretty obvious there is a huge up tick in players when tanks are teched.
Yea the truck swap system is not ideal and not be what we have to do to get logi across. And yes more strict AFK system for frontlines!
I think its largely because Collies have a massive advantage in the early war, before tanks start rolling out, because the Argenti is great and Bomas just crush Wardens because they don't have a comparable grenade. Consequently, the entire early war is generally just wardens desperately holding onto as much territory as they can, usually getting pushed back by 1-2 whole hexes, until tank tech pops, and THEN they are able to slowly start clawing their way forward.
great video and ideas, i featured it on the /data/ page :) devs have never really given much care to trialing new mechanics more focussed on shiny toys (models)
Thank you! And I would have to agree with that. But I get it. It helps bring in new players.
The data visualization is super interesting to see. I can’t help but feel it may be an uphill battle for the devs to try and convince so many collie players who have dropped the game to come back. Not a really good thing to see when developers likely knew this information before we did and continued to focus on new content instead of QoL changes.
Agreed. A lot would need to be changed. Lets hope they are taking all of this into consideration for the other updates coming up soon.
XD want to say you are a beast not only collecting that data, doing vid, but then also seemingly answer every single comment here. gj? :D
I can not take credit for collecting the data only analyzing it. The owner of FoxholeStats website is the one that gathered all the data. They made the data available and I just gave my opinion on it.
But I will take credit for trying to answer every comment :D I try to connect with everyone that I can ha
@@RobertLovesGames ooops on ~5 AM my sleepy brain for some reason was absolutely confident about it is you who collected data xD well then vid itself also is work!
Incentive is a big factor for people who leave when things start looking like a lost cause. We already have commends and rank, maybe its time for something new?
Perhaps adding some profile accommodations like war badges on your profile that ranks up the more you participate in a certain war etc. Kinda like how a soldier would have badges on their uniforms.
We have all these stats in our profile like, Damage to enemies or Supply Value delivered. It would be cool if they implemented war badges for those that went from bronze to gold depending on how much you provided as an example that stayed after the war was over and were viewable by other players perhaps. (side note, but this could also be a great way to detect alts. Would also have the side effect of making it harder for new players to find groups)
I can get behind this. I always thought there needed to be one more layer other than just commends as well. Though I don't know exactly what that is.
Badges could be cool! And bringing back profiles would be awesome as well but I'm sure hard to moderate if you can customize it to much.
Badges from stats would be cool! I also just want more stats in general like distance I've traveled ha.
Thanks for sharing these cool ideas!
I honestly wish this game was designed without hexes and the defenses were built to require a large force to take it Zerg or Coordinated. I also would like to see more communication like their Q&A they did recently
Great video! I appreciate the correlation of statistics vs. the outliers. I do believe encouragement to stay/play in Early War post Day 1 and End War could be helpful in a game mechanic, rewarding consistent play maybe in priority queue or something Neutral Positive. Collies do complain about the fun factor and limitations on zerging via queues. A closer look on War 100 might have answers but I suspect alot of issues are mentality and perspective. I suspect players also leave End War to get on with a new war. Sooner or later defenses will need to be buffed/updated, collies could use an Endgame equipment buff, and Wardens could use an early game equipment buff. I also liked the minimum players queue option, but that might have to go with a defenses buff/update. Overall, its a teamwork game and I think that finding a way to fix queues is one of the biggest factors in game enjoyment.
Perhaps priority queue could also gravitate around logistics produced such as having refinery queues
Thank you! I'm sure a lot of players get burnout and when a lot of players think it's over are ready just for the new war to start so they quit out until then. And I agree wardens need a buff for early war and Colonials need one for late war.
And yes raise the minimum player amount but buff defenses so that 2 or 3 people with RPG's can't just come destroy an entire base. With massive bases you should need an army to take them off. Not just slowly pick them off with crazy PvE weapons.
I don't know about logi priority around things produced that would make some sense but might be hard to measure? I really think just having specific spots for logi would help a ton.
Thanks for your thoughts and input on this!
@@RobertLovesGames Thank you too, good quality neutral content is needed for productive game conversation!
I have mixed feelings about burn out, as the game implies being a military sim and teams such as CGC or FMAT among many others show how success can come through tenacity and preparation, and I believe a much greater reward in player experience comes not from coddling burnout or quick victories but from facing adversity and persevering.
Alas, I would differentiate burnout and fun factor, and recognize many players will go into Foxhole with a Call of Duty, or Battlefields mentality which may negatively impact their first thoughts without game or meta context.
Not sure about the "120 vs 120" player per hex limit. At the start of the naval update war I counted 142 colonials in one frontline region in the F1 menu. I even counted it again to make sure it was true. This was at the very start of the war, so the servers might be able to handle more players if there is not much building slowing down the server.
Hmmmm interesting. Last time I checked it was 120. Maybe devs found a way to increase it? Or maybe it was an island hex?
I definitely think that the "queues allow a minimum population" idea is fantastic. Ideally, the devs would work copy the queueless system from Anvil over to Foxhole, but that will take a while, and not having a queue for less populated hexes would greatly ease things just by default.
The devs have always know this and players have too. I'm not sure why everyone seems shocked by this. Maybe people will understand why respawn timers Increase when you're over-popped
Also - do people not know "que" Is Spanish for "what" not the English word "queue"
It's kind of like I mentioned. We knew it existed but didn't have the actual data to show it. With some of these wars certain factions would say the other side was over populated, now with the data we can see that the other side was actually the one that had more population.
Respawn timers can be telling but overall I believe it to be a horrible mechanic to combat the population "solution"
3:45 I feel like you're definitely missing the mark here but I can see why you came to the conclusion you did.
1. Updates happen about every 3 wars, so definitely not a buff to whoever loses.
2. Almost never is an update completely favoring who's on a recent losing streak. Like you've said Wardens are really dominate right now, and while they did recently buff the Falchion and Spatha, they also buffed the Outlaw chassis as well as nerfing the Argonaut and buffing the Drummond.
3. What I feel like happens is the devs look at the trends since last update when they're getting ready to push a new update. They take in to account their observations of what the community is wanting balance wise (the loudest of which typically comes from the losing side), and they make tweaks to things on that side that they feel are underperforming or overperforming. So basically, they're a lot less reactionary than what you're implying. It never feels like one side lost so they take a borderline OP weapon and make it even stronger.
1. They don't do it often but devs have changed values of tanks and weapons in between updates.
2. I mean nerfing and buffing the argonaut and drummond does not really do anything for the frontline unless I'm missing some key strategy they have been used for.
3. If the devs keep their same formula I will bet that the next update will see another Colonial buff and we will then see the shift where Colonials have something like a 75% win rate. This will happen if Wardens win the next 1-2 wars.
Thanks for your input on this and challenging me! I appreciate it! Good to talk these things out!
My idea to fix this: Add a new meta-game to Foxhole that turns it from Faction vs. Faction to Clan vs. Clan. Sort of like a ranking system for clans based on a score and wins.
Major clans and players take "Hometowns" where they represent hexes or towns across the map for a long fixed period of time across wars. Clans and non-clan members get some benefits and stat boosts regarding the facilities and other *things* in the hex.
Starting conditions then force clans to the factions.
That would be interesting! Maybe do something like that in between wars in resistance phase!
Would be really interesting to see.
Thanks for sharing!
Maybe they could do something with how AI defenses work based on local population. Although that could go wrong or be abused very easily if incorrectly added.
I think it would be interesting to try. And yes I'm afraid of how it could be abused as well. I think it would be hard to implement.
As the collie loyalist i can say. Colonials have mass production stuff but we dont have people to use that. Also colies got less lore in their favor. (sorry for bad english)
Well I don't know if that is entirely true. Once MPF tanks are researched vehicle ques are constantly full. Do you mean other MPF items? Or maybe you mean as the war goes on they are not used as much which would correspond with the data of less colonials playing.
No bad english at all! Thanks for your input!
Maybe we should make our own lore then
*Praises the pile*
@@RobertLovesGames I mean that we dont have pop to use that. Yes we produce a lot of stuff but most of it goes to privet stockpile and wardens just can get 300 falchions for free so thats another issue that clans want to produce stuff only for them not the public.
@@BlueLaminate Exactly. Once i spoke with my friend that it was an issue in siege camp becous guy from lore was scotish and writes only good lore for wardens becous he didnt likes Rome (and colies are inspired by Rome) so he didnt write us any good lore. And FOR THE PILE BROTHERS!
Look end war too when stockpiles are dropped and you see 300 falchs and 100 bardiches in a backline seaport, and no one will use them.. 😅
Sounds like we need more later to mid war equipment for colonials?
The colonials surely think that way. If you ask a Warden they say we have all the equipment we need. I don't play enough frontline to have an opinion.
Either way, balances need to be shifted to get faction population as even as possible!
I wonder what server meshing ( See Star Citizen by CIG ) would do for foxhole? I could imagine a large, seamless world where instead of borders and red zones terrain could shape the battlefield in a truly open world battlefield. No more server hopping or waiting just a dynamic full war experience.
Think they are doing that with Anvil Empires. Think they have stated it's not really possible on the Foxhole engine. Maybe when they make Foxhole 2?
think the issues is with the late game burnout, and lack of content for collies with tanks, especially when you look at the variants the wardens have over collies, believe Wardens get 7 more variant of tanks, and just better tanks for line fighting which the meme "just flank" isnt always possible especially with bridge bottle necks and the map geography with natural blockades, trees, mountains, so line fighting just is the normal. but also late game issue is building, no one wants to build for hours just to get demo'd in 1 hour of arty because of time it takes to tech up a bunker to 1, get conc, and 2 get howies on to defend from arty. there needs to be a REAL balance between the factions and a better "rock/paper/scissor" balance between weapons and vehicles. I also personally think once tech trees are both fully teched, building tech should be halved to increase bunker defenses and pushes, so instead of a 7 day wait to tech conc/howies, maybe its just 3-3.5days depending on activity. theres more I wanna talk bout but yea, those are my kinda issues atm I keep harping on.
regarding the queues, I semi agree with what Chamberlain has stated on his stream, no queues at all, none, 0, let the chaos of war happen, let ppl actually play the game, let ppl have crazy ops and create great battles and stories, tho chamberlain believes there should be a 5min "warning" queue, but Im a pure no queue at all person, I want true mayhem of war, true fights, big battles and it will make backline building more important and will make the map crazy exciting imho.
This could be as well. But yes we need more building quality of life and changes for late game. And your tech building idea is great and wish that was implemented.
I am willing to try no ques at at all. As someone has stated if your faction can't reinforce a territory to defend it then I think you deserve to loser that territory. It's like responding to any other QRF. I'm all for trying this out to see what it looks like.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
For me the problem with burnout is travel time. I love to play in vehicles, however taking certain vehicles to fronts and gearing them up ready to fight takes far too long. There is a lot of systems in this game which I feel does not respect the players time at all. For example, let us upgrade crates of vehicles and move a crate of those facility vehicles at once. Give us a mid-war flatbed tech that's faster or something. Give me the ability to pull ammo directly from bases into tanks, why do I have to constantly inventory juggle. Give me a loadout save so I can save what gear I want to pull all at once when I'm tanking.
All this little stuff adds up and can easily take 30+ minutes to take a tank from backlines to a front. To me this heavily contributes to my late war burnout. This especially sucks for the collie side since all their competent tanks are facility locked, meaning moving one at a time, or having to get multiple people to run a train of 13 vehicles at most. As a warden I can take a crate of tanks to any chosen front which is quicker due to the crate being on a flatbed, and I also get 2 spares if I die in the first one.
I don't mind travel time because it makes the game feel a bit more alive. But I would like them to make gathering and production easier to offset the travel time. They already made gathering this last update easier which has helped a lot with logi now we just need production and public pull times to be a bit faster.
I agree that we should be able to crate more things to move them around easier. And I like the idea of a mid-war flatbed that helps us transport goods as well. They should really remove a lot of the inventory juggling as well.
These are all really great points that I hope are addressed soon! Thanks for sharing!
Just the ability to pass crates and logi through borders (think Border Transfer Station) would solve a lot of the que'ing frustrations. Sure, it means you need to be communicating with someone in hex to let them know you've restocked their Border Station with X Mats or whatever. For example; ie Deadlands calls for Bmats. You can deliver those Bmats to a Border Post at the Umbral / Deadlands crossing. People in Deadlands can pick them up. Nobody has to que and nobody has to border hop.
Yes! I would love something like this! They had something like this once in a concept idea but never went through with it.
I would love for them to go back to this idea and I would gladly accept this idea over my logi que idea.
Thanks for talking about this!
War 112 is my first war as a new player, playing as a Colonial. I joined a large regiment early on and took part in many long ops into Weathered Expanse.
As soon as the artys started firing I lost interest in infantry gameplay with all of the times I got blown up on my way to the frontline and medics seemingly being worthless now as everyone is just dead from the blasts.
As soon as I saw the big regiments move huge trains full of crates to the front, my own measly logi work felt meaningless next to it.
When I log on after I get home from work and see more parts of the map have fallen to the Wardens I feel powerless, paralyzed... and log off. I haven't given up on the game but I wonder what keeps those that still play on the (subjectively felt) "losing side" playing.
Если враг тратит артиллерийские снаряды на пехоту, то это не эффективная трата ресурсов, ты должен радоваться тому что твои враги недостаточно умны чтобы стрелять по бункерной базе или реликту. А насчёт логистики, каждый человек который привёз на фронт хотя-бы ящик патронов, сделает для фронта неоценимый вклад, каждый патрон может стать аргументом в сражении с каждым Варденом, ты видимо просто выгорел удивившись масштабами происходящего, логистика всегда и всегда нужна, железнодорожная логистика это доставка произведённых снаряжении по складам, а задача простых логистов доставить из складов на фронт, простая и понятная схема, логисты нужны везде и всегда.
Gotta remember wardens play warden because it’s easiest, then they’ll act like their smarter because they chose warden. Embrace the deep lore of collies being a curse on the warden lands for them turning away from the old gods. We’re here to piss them off and laugh at them
Nice! Welcome to Foxhole! Weathered Expanse has been a lot of fun to play in this war.
The arty effect is pretty rough for new players but the more you play the more you learn to dodge it and play better on the front. Sometimes you do just get spammed by shells and it do be like that. Want to make arty mad? Pick up a hammer and start repairing :D
Your logi is not meaningless... As someone who has 1,200 hours doing logi and a lot of solo logi 95% of what you can bring to the front is going to be used in a positive way. Having the mindset that the things you do solo as logi is going to ruin this game for you. The more you play the better you get at understanding what a front needs.
That is some defeatism mindset. It really sounds like to me you are not giving yourself enough credit in what you are doing in game. You may be a small piece of the puzzle but you are a piece of that puzzle that is needed.
Also make sure to change up what roles you play and what you do. Even if you are just mainly logi make sure you are doing backline logi, midline logi, frontline logi or just help building defenses in case the enemy does push up. Lots of things to do that add value. Even if you do bring up shirts and that base was lost you may have prevented it from being lost faster which may have given more time for those behind that base to prepare for the oncoming attack.
- You lost because of your mindset, not because of the game.
- You should not expect yourself to be the "Savior" in the game where 1000 vs 1000.
- Warden pulls out multiple "Comeback victories" by understanding the mindset: "I'm doing my best, the rest is up to my comrades".
.
- I delivered 600 crates and saw my hex blown up the next day? No problem, another 600 crates will come tomorrow and even after that, until the bell finally rings.
- It's just a game, enjoying it is more important than 20 seconds of winning screen.
.
- If you want to know how it feels playing while losing, look for "The Bath - War 106" when Collie holds 1 town for 3 days while being completely surrounded.
What if the side with the less players get speed buffs when building or anything similar
That would be nice! I would love for them to try some small buff for the side with less players to see how it would go.
I am a bit late to the party but here are my thought.
Queue:
Logi queues are must have.
The current restrictive queuing system should only be in place if their is a major inbalance in the frontline player count (defined as counting the pop in frontline hex that did respawn more than 3 times).
This would allow for large scale operation to happen but gives the other side the chance to reacte to another side build up.
Respawn Timer:
Same as with the queues but also change it to respawn waves (maybe with each wave coming every minute). That would give the skilled/ number side a bit of an advantage side to push forward instead of the constant trickel of people returning to the front.
To buff under pop faction:
What you could do is like have a rolling average over items (only infantry stuff) produced by each faction. The side that under produces has the chance not consume a retrived item a the bunker base. e.g. collies do produce 10% less than the wardens, 10 shirts in a bunker base would be good of 11 respawns.
Afk kicks:
They should be harder but also you need a quite sophisticated system in place. It is not good enough if your afk kick gets defeated by a auto clicker or a macro that lets you walk back and forth or in circles
Ha not late at all!
And yes! Logi ques are a must. I really want the devs to implement something like that this year and try it out. We have two more updates so we will see.
And I agree about the frontline que for operations.
I like respawn wave timers! I think that would be really cool! Would at least again be something they should try out.
And yea AFK needs to be a lot more strict. I see why it's hard for them to do because of logi task and what not. But I've left my character on the frontline looking at the map and still was not kicked for at least 30-40 minutes. Whatever kick system that is needs to at least be like 10-15 minutes.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
@RobertLovesGames I think at least the respawn wave should be fairly easy to be implemented. My educated guesses is that the server tells each client anyway how long his current respawn time is. So it should be fairly easy for the Devs to chance it so everybody spawns at the same time.
Thought, a respawn wave would be really bad at places where their are not enough indoor spawn points but is currently under heavy artillery fire.
Logi queues are probably more tricky to implement but I really would love to see them too. It would make logi life so much easier.
30-40min afk in a frontline hex is crass that shouldn't be more than 10-15 min
A contributing factor that really needs to be addressed is how much commitment is required for building in the game. With backlines it is simply time consuming, but with frontlines it is a matter of winning & losing the hex. If you force 5/15 people to help you build up your forward operating base leaving 10 to fight 15 invaders, then you're bound to lose if the building takes a considerable amount of time.
I would truly appreciate systems that allowed a few players to build rapid basic defenses.
Perhaps an excavator that can build trenches/bunkers but not upgrade them & a rapid construction vehicle that builds at 3 bmats a tick but cannot upgrade past T2.
Otherwise you will be hemorrhaging your own team by trying to build defenses with more than one person. And if you do just one person, that person is going to spend well over a hour just hammering/shoveling.
Yes lots of time is need to build in the game unless you have a big group with you. We need some more builder love desperately. We need a buff to building in T2 or T3 with a new vehicle that helps build or something. I honestly feel like defenses need an overall buff though some may not agree. But 2-3 people shouldn't be able to PvE down an entire base.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
I think that it is compounded by the fact that both are not armies as in teams. As a Collie player, the entire of the army can be stated as groups working together only in moments where a short term goal is sought. Otherwise said groups are hostile to one another. Point 2 is that everyone builds just to build, current example is "Bloody Palm Fort" A huge mega structure costing large amounts of resources, and to protect a total of 600 bmats worth of equipment. I don't mean to call out that one spot as the same problem is everywhere. While at the front I was in today we couldn't get even the most basic equipment as the blueberries started a push. Even though we saw it coming. It was rinse and repeat a few days ago, and we finally got pushed out as we were down to pistols and harsh language. I've jumped in available vehicles and tried to get what I could, but every forward supply dump is usually empty. Just like today no bandages for one thing and two hexes away I finally found 7 crates. If the war was won by huge unnecessary overbuilt back line bunkers then we would win every time.
This is true. Good point.
At a point logistics just breaks and then you are overrun. Part of the game and a good point that everyone is needed to keep things going.
And yes some bases are little over built in the backline I could agree with that. Wish those players would focus there efforts in other places sometimes. But I don't want to tell people how to play the game.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
I can list a few reasons why people like wardens more : wardens have more lore, it is basically centered around them, and they have a figure at the center of it. They also have a much better terrain, you only have to build choke points as a warden. Colonials have huge open fields requiring large defenses (and the enormous task of supplying them). The wardens also have an aesthetic that is close to Franco-Germanic traditions. Which have a long and interesting military history that a lot of player enjoy
These are really good points! Especially the building part. Warden's do have a lot of choke points to push through when going North.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
- The best part while playing Warden is that players don't blame Dev or Collie being OP when we lose ground.
- I switch to Collie in War 109 to see for myself, Collie just constantly crying about how they are not strong enough to solo 5 wardens at the same time. (and yes Collie won that war).
- While on Warden side, the guy who complained got shot by the Commissar.
I agree with most of what was said in the video.
The problem of the faction population is really present in the game now.
The only thing I would like to note is one point about trying to correct this situation by changing the balance. I am a Warden loyalist, at least someone might get that impression.
Actually what I want to say. Some of my friends switched to play for the colony, in some wars, in the modern realities of balance, which I am completely not against. And they told me how easy and fun it was to play for another faction. But some also said that, in principle, they were not going to play the game with such a balance.
That's basically what I'm getting at. Such a strong overestimation of the balance of the opposite faction, affecting both factions, can lead to a partially opposite effect. Something like “How dare they give this to them?”, “And yet they still complain?”, “I won’t go play for the easy gameplay faction.” etc. That is, an effect of “self-defense” may occur and rejection of the idea of switching to another faction, or even possibly quitting the game altogether.
The moment itself is not so great and critical as to elevate it. I just wanted to point out situations like this.
Thanks for sharing your experience and thoughts on this!
Balance certainly plays a role and is a major concern for player population. But it can't be a simple change of numbers and percentages all the time to make the population more even for each faction. I think more needs to be done.
Thanks again for sharing this!
Instead of balance at the scale of hexes. Balance at the scale of bunkers.
Tie spawns set of enemy bunkers within proximity together limiting spawn slots to numbers comparable to the adjacent enemy spawn numbers. Allowing both to rise and fall together. Require any additional personal to set spawn at bunkers some distance aways from any bunker at capacity.
This way you can have a 3/1 population difference in a region but the frontline bunkers of each side will be at 1/1 and other 2/3rds of players if this hypothetical situation have a 500m commute to reach the front.
I like the idea of scaling the bunkers.
I like this idea and think we should try it. Thanks for sharing it!
10:29 Bro just flies by a Prize Pile
lol I think I recorded that on dev branch when the heavy trucks first came out
Solutions. I think some sort of command structure, would go very far. Then operations would be organized and engagements more fluid as a lot of the time I see the same old throw bodies at it instead of any tactics, but those require organization and there is none, unless a small group, in comparison to the large army number.
my brother in christ, foxhole players don't organise.
There is some organization you just need to listen to the right person which can be tough at times.
Foxhole players actually can organize it just takes special circumstances for the stars to align.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
Faction balance lock/... If someone was to not login during the first few week/s, the balance act of new players will be evenly split between the factions. Though you don't need to choose only the faction that isn't with high cues. The person then logs in as a fresh recruit without having a new player lose a spot because you were active. One person doing it is one thing, but if a few hundred people did it, it could throw the pop off.
This would be the only real solution to any kind of faction lock. Is giving players a week to choose a faction and then the faction with less players has to be the one picked until it evens out. Though like other players have said when do you know its even? Total population? Total players on at certain times? Tough thing to balance for sure.
7:20 Not sure if you're aware, but logi queue is almost definitely already a hidden mechanic in the game. No idea what the specific numbers are but people abuse it all the time to get into a queued hex by driving supplies in without any intention to actually do meaningful logi just so they can join a fight. This means they're occupying the logi slots for legitimate logi players who want to get in/get out.
The 15 minute timer idea would solve this issue but what about if your truck gets hit by a partisan? You need to respawn, fight them off, repair and then deliver while being worried you're going to be kicked and can't deliver your stuff. What if you're doing freighter logi and the seaport is super congested? You might not be able to get in and out in that 15 minute timer. It would be something I would be interested in feeling out for a war.
Yes I'm aware that logi get preference when they come to a border but that is such a weird secret mechanic. They should just make it public and known what you have to do to be considered a logi player. Also some infantry soldiers just come with "logi supplies" just to get that secret logi que and then they stay on the front, which a lot of people don't like because we need room for those logi players to come back and forth. So the logi specific que only gives them 15 minutes to make their delivery.
If your truck gets hit by partisan then either your supplies are gone either way or you have someone else in the hex come grab your truck or you come back into the hex through logi que and get your truck. Freighter and train logi would need to be looked at. Either they do the normal que or we make the time limit more like 20-30 minutes. The main idea is for those immediate supplies that fronts needs from regular logi trucks.
Great questions and thanks for talking this out!
Agree w everything across the board. The biggest issue is the queue system, I would rather deal with 4am zergs than sit in a queue because a hex has 20 good guys and only 15 bad guys
Exactly! Each side knows how to QRF we can defend these pushes. And maybe we just buff defenses a bit if zergs are to much. After reviewing all of this I honestly think some defenses are to weak. 2-3 people shouldn't be able to come in and PvE a base down with RPG's you should need a big force to take down a big base.
I think to fix the population issue they should make it so stuff is produced a little faster on the side with less people or a little lower on the other side based on the average players per day maxing out at 10% faster/slower
I've seen this suggestion a few times now. It would be like my health idea for defensive structures where it would constantly be shifting around with how much faster or slower everything is being made. I would guess that it would be a complicated system to make but interesting one to see in action.
Back before I was playing, maybe 2021, I remember hearing about a similar mechanic that adjusted the day one respawn timers. So there is a degree of precedent. But most of what I heard about it was complaints. I'm not sure if the issues were structural or implementation though.
It won't help. With nobody to use the stuff that's already made, it's just making supplies for the enemy.
Sadly you think too much
The don't forget, the VISION persists, all these changes won't be adapted soon, we talked about the before and devman chose current dragged out playstyle as the best, because we are in MMO only on paper, some kids can't handle their shit getting "nightcapped"- a thing we as community i feel started to talk less about because we complained and got the solution for with current Q and respawn systems
And don't forget, being constructive on FOD is bannable offense
Fair. It may be so but I can hope and dream can't I. And without anyone voicing their opinion no changes would ever come.
Robert, I am having problem with the server. It really sucking my play as a new player. I cant get to a shard and even if I did. I cannot deploy to a region. This is a major issue. Is this normal?
Hmmm I've never heard of this issue. Join my discord and maybe I can troubleshoot it with you!
@RobertLovesGames oh i did, but I double think and hesitate to ask for help this time. I did switched shard maybe that why?
What I can think of, is a system where the game marks contested hexes as "frontline hexes".
Traveling into a frontline hexes have an artificial "deployment time" queue and the deployment time is based on your faction's player count vs the enemy faction's player count.
So if the queue start at a base 1 min to travel into a frontline hex, it will either increase or decrease the queue timer depending if your faction is outnumbering or being outnumbered.
That means that people can pressure a point, but the enemy team will also get time to react as flooding a 20v20 area with an additional 80 players gonna bloat the deployment time.
Ofc I am not sure how much fun it is to wait 5-10min to travel into a frontline hex. But at least it counter act the stalemate/queue meta and also somewhat prevent zerg rushing.
That could work! I wouldn't mind that and something more consistent or at least know how long you will be in que.
5-10 minute wait that I know is a 5-10 minute wait is much more preferred to an unknown que time that can sometimes be 20-30 minutes.
I think this is a great idea!
@@RobertLovesGames neat! I will admit I've never played Foxhole, so it was just me spitballin' from all the content of Foxhole I've seen haha.
That said, I guess the game needs to do a tick-check, so every X minute it sees how many people are in currently on the hex and in the deployment queue to adjust the deployment timer accordingly and it will be vurnable to a meta where players figure out the optimal playter-to-deployment-time ratio, but still, as you said at least consistency over stalemate. Also creates a layer of considering attacks, sure you can send 50 people into the frontline, but it means you now have 50 people out of commission for 10-15min and that creates windows for the enemy team to fortify or divert attacks somewhere else :)
Logi queue is a great idea. I had a similar idea but that it only disabled respawn. So it'd work for logi or tanks. Although that might have an issues with open top vehicles getting decrewed and not being able to get back.
That screenshot of Origin is a great example of when the queue doesn't work. Specifically it was a colonial logi town that was population capped due to the wardens in that region being so low. Despite the overall population being in favor of the wardens that war. For backline regions specifically the defenders should always have the minimum like you said, although I'd say make it larger for logi hubs. If the enemy team is in the final region with 10-20 dudes then it should be pefectly fine for them to be kicked out. The next region can have the normal population balance.
Also wanted to mention there are a lot of things that balance based on population. Like the amount of tech that fields spawn and how quickly the fields respawn. So the low pop size can stick with the closer fields and the side with more pop has to use the further away fields.
As for bunker health, that would not be a good idea. Like the Origin issue before, it'd create a situation where leaving a hex with little pop might become better than fighting. If anything I'd like to see more logi bonuses so more players can fight at the front and less spend time doing logi.
I wished the devs would do minor adjustments each war instead of players having to wait 3 monthes for a slight adjustment. Like for example the colonial faction internally has been complaining about warden late game armor snowball. The bardiche being the only garage/mpf buildable AT tank the colonials have means that in situations where the wardens reach a critical mass of tanks and the colonials are being pushed back it's very hard and time consuming to deploy their only effective AT; the stygian. Which with the recent changes is very easy to counter.
But we're not going to see any changes to colonial AT for at least 3 monthes. So when the wardens reach that critical mass of armor and the frontline quickly starts to fall, the players that fought hard to hold ground will quit thinking there is no way to build up again. (which touches on how late game building feels pointless as T2 bunkers are very weak and usually don't survive to get AI active).
An example of a minor change to help colonial end game AT would be to give the ingifist the short range pen bonus (it was removed at some point for idk what reason) or to buff the Bane by reducing how heavy it is. Only being able to carry 2 ammo with it makes actually killing tanks feel impossible.
A more long term change would be a suggestion I've been floating to make the final tech choice uncompleteable so it creates infinite prototypes. If the final colonial prototype aluminum weapon was for example an ATRPG v2 with way more pen (or 100% pen) that can be used in the Bane/Venom and it can be powerful due to being limited by tech drop rates, which benifits the low pop side.
Thanks! And yea not having the ability to spawn might not be the best route but it's still good idea to keep thinking of ideas that might work!
I like the idea of backline regions having a minimum amount of players for sure. That would actually make finishing off those last few hexes even harder which it should be.
And you may be right the bunker health may not be a good idea ha.
Great idea in addition to mine! I like it! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
I believe that the major reason wardens have almost always have had more population is because they are the face of the game. Not only do foxholes creative designers put significantly more effort into warden models (a good example of this is naval ships) but wardens also have a higher appeal to European players due to the uniform and colours they use very similar to major European countries. It is no surprise that a game which has a majority of EU players will have more population in a faction that is alike to European militaries. This could be changed by actually advertising (unheard of right) the game, to American/Commonwealth audiences in which the colonials are more alike to their militaries. This could also be changed by hiring new creative designers which enjoy the concept of colonials more than wardens and will therefore put more effort towards colonials (it’s currently the other way around).
Minor reason*
This is a good point. I started off as Warden and have played 30+ wars as a Warden. I generally like the Warden side more as well.
What you are saying could happen. I do know a lot of new players generally like to join the "losing" side because they want to help and be against all odds sort of thing.
Colonials for sure need some more leadership and bigger clans like the Wardens have to help lead the charge.
Thanks for your thoughts and input on this!
The American style colonial uniforms and equipment vs European style Warden equipment reflects the time zone advances on the map for the wars I have been involved in. I played both sides and noticed ground gained was relative to the time zones and factions. The European time zone seem to overwhelm a bit more for Wardens and I find a lack of actual balance. Change up the visual style with some mix and match types I think will split up the time zones better. Just an observation from a new player to intermediate players perspective.
Maybe this would work but I'm from the US and only picked Warden because I liked the snow and blue uniforms not because of any historical background. So I don't know if that would be the case for everyone. An interesting idea though. Thanks for sharing!
oh i just realized thats why it looks like us colonials are winning
Happens almost every war at the start of a war. Colonials have really good pushes at the start then fizzle out once tanks come out. Hopefully we can find a way to fix this that just does not shift Colonials to being overpowered.
Simple solution, resource output, crafting time increases/ decreases depending on the defecit of players on the opossing team.
If team warden has 3-5% more players, make thier stuff 3-5% more expensive, longer to craft. Make it dynamic so that when the balance of players changes, this will also change the cost/crafting time.
For hexes, idk, id say let a steamroll hapen. Players will need to respond quickly if they want to defend a sector, or do more scouting to see if ther building up for an attack. Again idk, this is a harder issue to fix.
It sounds simple when you type it out but would it be simple for the devs to implement?
The only issue with this solution I can see is that the population is not always at a consistent 3-5% throughout the day. Ya know? At 12:00pm it might be even. So you would suggest that it is constantly fluctuating throughout the day?
Appreciate the idea but I don't know if I can get behind this one. Thanks for sharing it!
@@RobertLovesGames yes the population will fluctuate on time, thats why its supposed to be dynamic, constantly changing the bonus every, 15min or so.
@@sternthomas4218 Sounds like a headache is implement and sounds rough for logi players. Kind of sounds like my idea that base health should change based on players in the region as well. Some idea like these two would be interesting to see.
@@RobertLovesGames yeah, I do think that there should be a dynamic balancing factor depending on the player count, weather its health, production cost, etc. Maybe even a catch-up mecanic depending on the amount of hexes. This would give insent for player on the loting end to keep fighting and would mean that the loss of a hex is not as bad. This could in turn then also get rid, or change the hex que/player limmit.
On the implementation factor, idk what the engine is capable of, but this is not the hardest thing to do. (Talking as a Software engineer).
Adding expense and resource output would be a bad idea... players will see that and leave. But, crafting time would be more subtle and wouldn't be terrible to implement based on an algorithm.
I’ve always played warden as a true caovish loyalist and I feel like warden beeing overwhelmed during early war but knowing that we will win on the long run is buffed recently. Indeed the new content is always more available late war. So warden gain a sort of moral boost because they know that the pesky warden clan’s (and their bureaucracy 😉😂) are more organised and efficient on the long run. So in conclusion : each update makes us stronger.
What are the wardens more efficient and organized with exactly? I keep seeing warden players say this but never have anything solid to back this up.
@@Juicing_JaBROni It’s a feeling so there’s no real data but the fact is warden clans have this reputation between wardens to be both very protective of resources fields and active. So it became a sort of culture i guess. But i’m only talking from my experience of course : I don’t know the colonial pov, but damn i was shocked when i saw the amount of bureaucratic work done by my clan.
I can agree with this attitude and get behind it especially as a former Warden as well.
Hopefully us Colonials can pull through on this one. Going to need a lot of strength and good leadership.
THANK YOU FOR SPEAKING UP FOR US ALL 07 --- plz make vid about how messed up the new msup system is
No problem!
And what’s wrong with msup system?
Logi queue problem.. i may be missing some things in concept as relatively new player, but isnt can be the solution is just some kind of structure, similar to BB, which can allow passage of items, maybe even vehicles, through the border, BUT still without passing the logi player itself? Then internal logi players of overpoped hex can then take things from border and spread it all around hex. It even may be player-built, with limitations ofc, maybe even with some progression with tiers or some optional additional infrastructure
While some attempt of separation "logi" and "non-logi" players.. honestly feels weird, starting at the "additional player is additional player" problem for full-popped hexes, which still will be additional load on system limited(as i understand) to 240 players; ending with abusing mechanics that can allow players simply repeat their 15-min appearance on hex again and again, even if we will set kind of cooldown of how often you can do it, or at least once still players can just enter and instead of logi just go fight.. and also to mention tactic of fast suicide attacks with explosives or kinda, for which 15 mins more than enough
They had this idea already but decided not to add it. It's exactly as you say where it works like a border base and you dump supplies in it that get sent to the structure across the hex. No idea why they decided it was not needed.
Hopefully we can see them add something like this soon.
Thanks for your thoughts on this!
@@RobertLovesGames well yeah then i can only hope they will re-consider maybe at some point, as currently it feels rather bruh. The only band-aid i can see currently for it is 15-min priority in queue when exiting high-pop hex... idk maybe currently dev's point is thats enough for it to further rely rather on players cooperation...? Not tried by myself so idk, how it feels from experienced player, is it helps?
Perhaps there could be dynamic balancing of production and refining times depending on overall faction population. Reduce the times by the % difference in active players overall at any given time. If Wardens make up 60% of active players, then Colonials production times are reduced by 10% to account for the 10% more manpower the Wardens enjoy due to the extra players. Just an example, my maths is probably way off.
This is certainly an idea they could play around with. Would take a lot of maths but yes they could look into this as well.
Thanks for talking about this idea!
The thing is, equipment balance is much easier in terms of dev time than reworking the queue system or pop balance system. Changing a 40% to a 50% takes seconds, but designing/implementing/testing a rework for online mechanics is a hefty task. Equipment balance is always something that's easy to slip into updates since it's a few keystrokes to do.
I definitely agree though, if you had a faction with 100 people with only mammons and stickies against another faction with 10 people all using the best of the best late game gear, the 100 people will win everytime. Equipment balance or the perceived lack thereof hurts morale and that's what is most impactful to the war itself. It would be impossible to make sure 100% of people feel like the game is perfectly balanced, but working towards it would at least help population disparity a bit.
True. But it's just a short term solution as well. So in the long run hopefully they are working on mechanics that effect things more for the long term rather than just short term stat changes.
Maybe the zerg rush should be allowed in certain circumstances. Like if hex is stalemated for three days, a system announcement is broadcast to announce queue balancing for that hex will be disabled in 24 hours. That way, one side doesn't get to steamroll empty towns, but also doesn't get to exploit queues either.
I like this! I mean we see a sort of "zerg" rush with navy invasions right now. Each side is certainly capable of QRFing and spawning into help.
The only thing we wouldn't want with zerg rushing is for the ones doing the zerging to hop around to different hexes all over all the time. I don't know how you would control this but I could see that being an issue.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and cool idea about this!
Planetside 2 really was something special back in the day... anyways, while I do like that Anvil Empires is going to have more players per server, I just like the setting and aesthetic of "world war 1.5" that foxhole has. Whether they'd need to release an entirely new game to update it to the Anvil Empires engine or if they can update what they've got, I'd be much more excited for that than Anvil Empires itself. Queues are just no fun. In Planetside 2 I miss being able to take 5 or more full Galaxys to wherever hex we wanted to fight at and drop everyone in, no wait required (as long as it was on the continent you were already fighting on). Replicating that sort of feeling is pretty much what I want out of a combined arms war game and a queue between regions really puts a damper on it. Ideally there would be zero transition between hexes and it'd be seamless, but I suspect that's not within the realm of possibility for such a small developer.
I'd be more excited for Foxhole 2 than Anvil Empires honestly ha.
I did the big galaxy drops when I played Planetside 2 and it was a lot of fun!
I don't think it is a possibility for Foxhole but for Anvil Empires and Foxhole 2 it could be.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
I'd be interested in seeing stats on how many players are new in a war and how that affects population balance throughout a war. Most of the new players I bring into the game, which is above average running a planetside community the moonlights on Foxhole so we pull people across regularly, are more likely to stay around if the faction is fun to play. I think that might be a big part of why Collie has a large pop advantage early war (Rather than collies choosing to play early or more wardens not, more new warden players join the game and go "well this game was clearly balanced by morons" and quit) and later in the game more new collie players who find themselves limited in tank options to falchion or nothing end up having the same experience.
So sort of a negative removal of people rather than a positive addition. I know the foxhole community is still big, but first-time players still make up a huge amount of each war in my experience.
Also remember when talking about logi queues the 15-minute reserved spot is part of that whole discussion too.
That would be really cool to know!
I think the devs have a lot of work to do in terms of retention for Foxhole. I would guess not many players get past 10-20 hours of playing Foxhole just based on what I hear from new player experiences. Some of course play and fall in love right away. But I think the devs could do more for new players.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
Fire rate of defensive structures at bunker bases with lesser player number could be increased to facilitate defenders advantage in 20-30 vs 50-70 scenarios
That would be interesting to look at and try!
Thanks for the idea and suggestion!
Buffing for pop balance is not what they’re doing, the balance issue in collie tanks and infantry AT is the reason there is a pop balance issue, sure we have a bane and venom, both rmats to create, warden at rifle that is mobile has higher dps potential and made with bmats (excluding the somewhat expensive ammo for collie launchers in comparison to 20mm). Decent collie tanks, eg spatha are facility locked, so the average few hours a night player won’t ever use it unless it’s free. Unlike the outlaw which still outranges the spatha and is in the damn mpf. The outlaw completely holds it own in a poke battle against a facility locked collie tank if not better and before recent buffs was better during a skirmish too (which said buff led to collie win). Overall collies equipment is more expensive and typically worse than warden equipment. (Haven’t even mentioned the lack of colonial roofs) So the issue with the population balance is the balance of the game, every new player i have met that has not joined a regi and are committed to colonials are going warden, only for the fact they have the better equipment to deal with everything the collies have late game. So once they balance their game the population will balance too. They aren’t buffing a faction based on population, they are buffing based on the reason of the lack of population.
(The reason for this rant is because you mentioned numerous times that you don’t want them to buff for population reasons or change equipment stats but never mentioned the reasons for the drastic difference in the population)
You might be right. I am only speculating with my thoughts of course. And yes I don't want them to buff because of population and hope that they are not doing that. I hope they are just trying to make the equipment as balanced as possible against their comparisons.
Thanks for your thoughts on this!
have a few wars where you get randomly assigned a faction, faction loyalists won't change unless they are forced to
Ha! Only problem with this is people wanting to play with friends or clans.
Thanks for your suggestion and thoughts on this!
I really like the logi Que idea the only thing I could see bad is for sea transport cause iron ships are so slow. Also your vehicle should also be transported back with you.
True about the freighter logi. Depending on where the seaport is 15 minutes is probably just barely enough time to unload. Especially with the new freighter changes. Would maybe have to up the time to 20-25 minutes to give freighters longer amount of time.
Thanks for mentioning this and your input on this!
@@RobertLovesGames train logi could also be a massive hanger on. You might simply have to leave trains and iron ships on a purely normal based que unless it’s an water locked hex then do a 25 min que for ships only. Simply adding in a truck only logi que would greatly help with the situation and not worry about the outlying issues of other types of logi.
@@HamadaHamada-qx9bx True! Train logi is normally a team effort anyways so getting someone across in "normal que" would help. But yea maybe just having it be more focused on logi trucks and flatbeds for quick supplies would be helpful.
Devs indeed use the tech tree to balance the population, its always been the case. I understand why they do it, but its very painful to be punished with what seems like a tech cludge to fix a population issue. I guess the solution isn't simple here otherwise but this doesn't seem right.
2:25 "majority of the wars show 3-5% population difference favoring the wardens each war". This is a very broad statement, what assumptions did you run in order to make this? do you mean all the wars in the dataset? did you exclude the end of the war pop skew? Did you exempt "break wars"? I would avoid averaging across multiple wars and discuss specific examples.
3:00 As for what has happened since war 100, I think this has a lot to do with colonials losing several key groups (I played colonial during much of this). The colonial strength in asia/russia timezone decreased which was a great equalizer, losing BML means that SHRED (which used to handle a grid by themselves) is a shadow of what it used to be, and honestly the level of cooperation between the various groups has become very poor. There were dumb fights between various groups, even leading some to switch back to warden. The naval update just made this much worse, various groups focused more on boat LARP than helping hold the line or win the game. Also there were some very even wars during these, at 80% of the war, manhours were almost the same (under 3% difference) in wars 102, 105, 106, 110 and warden's won all of those. For the most part the only wars collies won were the 2 that basically wardens took as break wars (104,409) as seen by the manhours difference on those being 10% or higher by that 80% mark and throughout.
QUEUE: I don't think this impacts new players, they should just jump to a different frontline. As for a refinement of the logi queue, I think that would be interesting but you will still have similar issues, truck swapping was the way to get it in but for a long time they broke truck swapping (and some logi players preferred to sit in the queues to get commends instead of what works best for the team).
As for population balance, during the 60's due to the warden winstreak, various clans switched sides to try to balance. It helped but then you had loyalist on both sides disparaging some of these at times.
True. I think I understand why they do it as well.
End of war pop was included in this data set which I think I stated in the video does throw this data off a little. But if you look at the data it shows Collies having higher pop at the start so it should average out? I didn't run the maths exactly so this is all speculation of course. Don't take it as concreate information which I again I think I stated.
I agree Colonials losing key groups has not helped the faction. Colonials are lacking some major clan groups that help run the wars. Which is why we have seen some return for war 112 and it looks like it has made a difference in my opinion.
Some players don't know to just jump to a different frontline unfortunately. Sometimes they see that "only 3 ahead of you" and think oh I only have to wait like 5 minutes when it could be 15-30 minutes or even longer sometimes depending on the front.
Someone mentioned they should implement a border building where you can transfer over crates to the other hex. The devs had something like this but never implemented it. Would love to see something like that even without my logi que idea.
Lots of things to consider with this data and I of course don't have all the answers just possible solutions.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
The issue is that the devs and the salty vets dont want to improve the game. Reduce the resource costs for building things, etc.
You would have full hexes of randos blowing each other up with every weapon in the game and having fun for the few hours that they play.
The devs did just multiply all resources so that they are easier to get so they made that part much easier.
I do think they want to improve the game they just want to keep it within their "vision".
And those randos should be having fun. That's what playing video games is about so I don't mind that.
Perhaps a system is required that chooses which faction you join to keep the populations, skill level, and hours put in similar for the factions, and you can stay with your friends by implementing some kind of 'party queue' where you ensure you join the same faction as some other people. This way, you can make more enjoyable to join the start of the war where you find out which faction you're in and get established with possibly a new community. This might take a lot of effort and time to implement and be kind of unrealistic but maybe it's a solution.
Would really depend on how long that party que system is. I wouldn't want a system that takes people away from playing their favorite. And yea it sounds like it might be pretty complicated system ha.
But great idea and these are the type of ideas we need to keep having! Thanks for sharing!
For a different view of the problem, I'm a terrible infantryman. I have a lot of fun getting blown up and often just have fun scavenging on frontlines. However once a queue forms it always makes me feel like the best thing I can do for my faction is just to log off so a better player can take my spot. Feels bad.
That does feel bad! You shouldn't have to feel that way! Everyone matters!
I think you should stop doing that and just play and have fun! Sounds like you are doing good things on the front and are helping out!
Maybe the devs could implement a system where they will balance out who’s on which faction by using ranks. A higher rank usually signifies someone that plays as logi or someone that’s a veteran. So with this in mind the devs could split these players up giving each faction these players. Sadly there is one problem and that being regiments.
Sometimes rank does not mean much but I get what you are saying. I don't think the players would want this though because then they can't play with their clans or friends.
Thanks for the suggestion and idea though!
@@RobertLovesGames yeah and thats a major issue maybe give collies some more attention in lore. Hopefully this will grab more players attention and have people be more loyal to the colonial faction. Personally the reason why I play warden is because of the lore and Challahan. I’ll try to cook up some more ideas.
I agree, that queue must be rework. Especially now, when we have BS, that can't enter in hex. Queues and small servers is the main problems in our operations. Sometimes we are even can't start rhey normally.
What I can to offer:
1) Queue restricitons must be reworked and be weaker. Sneaky or fast pushes must to exist.
2) Servers must to be bigger. Now it is unreal to do an intresting push with flanks. It is unrealistic to carry out a large landing under the cover of the fleet.
3) Tanks must be removed from MPF. Spathas/falch should be rebalance. When the tanks are removed from the MPF, their cost will increase and delivery to the front will become more complicated. The cost of tanks or spawn/production comps should be reviewed.
4) And it doesn't have to be done right away, perhaps it is better after 1 war, need to fiz frankly bad (shotguns, sniper rifles) and strong (argenti+booma) versions of infantry equipment.
5) New tanks should be added. Smth between LT and "usual" tanks.
That is the dumbest thing about the navy update. Someone mentioned that hexes without victory points just shouldn't have a population requirement at all which I can agree with.
Agreed sneaky and fast pushes should exist more. Each side can QRF so it's not like we couldn't stop these pushes.
Great ideas and thoughts on this! Thanks for sharing!
The problem with total faction playercounts is an issue caused by three factors. People and Morale, Money and Advertising, Asymmetrical Warfare.
People and Morale. When in the war, there's two different mindsets that go through players depending on faction. The colonials feel the need to win quickly while they have the early game advantage, and the wardens hold on desperately, knowing they'll have the late game advantage. Once the colonials inevitably dont win the early game because both teams are at high morale and an unwanted game balance necessity that i'll get to later. The wardens come and win the late game because they're best at it. Because Asymmetrical Warfare.
Asymmetrical Warfare. Trying to make each faction different in a way you can really feel on the front lines is a challenge. Especially since you want the game to be fun and to not ruin the lightning in a bottle gameplay they had from before asymmetry was a thing with the balance between offense and defense.
So the only two *main* things they can really make different for each is Tanks and Infantry as they are both offensive and won't directly ruin the defense offense balance.
So Colonials got Infantry, and Wardens got tanks. However Tanks by their nature are late game and Infantry early game. So, each faction became a specialist in either early game or late game. Alright, so what's the issue with that? Well, simple. Money and Advertising.
Money and Advertising. So now each faction is dedicated to late game or early game which already means Wardens will have high morale 100% of the time while Colonials will have high morale only 75% of the time if everything else is perfectly balanced, but that so far isn't too bad.
Now, the real issue is the reality of our world. You need resources to run servers. Resources that cost money. Foxhole does not have any other way to make money than to get new players to know and care about the gamr enough to buy it so they can get money. How to get new players to know? Advertising. How to get them to care? The gane does most of the heavy lifting by being _cool._
What's cool? Big super heavy tanks, storm cannons, battleships, nuclear missiles, and the game's concept in general. That will get new players' attention and give them something to look forward to from buying the game. What do they all have in common? Being Late-game (or in the case of the concept, seeing people build and research late game expensive weaponry via teamwkrk and collaboration). That means to not let the war end on the early game. We do not, in any circumstances, want to scam new players of the things they paid real money for.
Colonials are early game specialists. They will rarely win if the game goes late game. But the game _must_ go late game and is enforced through game balance. See the issue? And now it circles back to People and Morale. Colonial players will notice low win rates and lose morale, exacerbating the issue into a death spiral of salt, and unbalanced player counts.
The salt of colonial vets rises to heights nearing competitive FPS and MOBA games due to this, which they then dump on new players who accidentally make winning harder by doing non-meta activities like digging random trenches and as such destroy the new player influx to their faction, making the imbalance problem _even worse._
The faction keeps losing, and the hardcore vets salt gets unbearable, causing more casual players to leave the faction or, more likely, stop doing high-level coordination with others so they don't need to interact with the salt and to not get invested into a war they will lose and as such feel bad about. This causes the great coordination imbalance we see between wardens and colonials. This (of course) makes the faction imbalance even worse.
The devs aren't blind. They know this issue exists and have been trying to stop the speeding train since at least right after Inferno, even with the fact it only really started with Inferno, which makes it quite impressive how fast they noticed. Sadly, they couldn't really stop the game from becoming more late game oriented because money is money and the servers hunger.
You can notice the devs trying to partially re-symmetize the factions by looking at a few things.
One major one is tank variants. You notice how there's so many meta colonial tanks that are variants instead of base tanks? Almost all colonial good tanks were variants! While the Wardens' non-varient tanks are way more likely to be the meta instead. This is a "surgery" scar from them making colonials better at tanks after Inferno because of Inferno's vehicle variant system being added.
Another is the infantry update and how it made infantry way better/more fun to play with more toys for them and better infantry vs. vehicle combat. This is designed to make players want to play the infantry specialists who are the colonials! (And something else which is quite sneaky)
This next part is conjecture, but i think it has merit. This is why planes are being added. Of course, it's the next big step, but it's way more than that. What they are doing is adding a new main power to the asymmetrical warfare so they can finally fix this problem. Colonials will probably be like the allies in ww2 with incredible air power, and the wardens can have the Axis incredible tanks. Infantry might be made mostly balanced for both factions. In fact, the infantry update might be sneakily pushing things for this currently but I'll need more evidence.
And as a collie, I will say that most of the small and medium regiments will stick to the backline and contribute nothing to the facility. They are the worst because they never participate in building defenses or fight on the frontline. However, not all small and medium regiments are like that. Some are willing to learn and efficiently manage logistics. They also need to understand that they are support and reserve soldiers for frontline players. These medium and small regiments often create LARP facilities that hinder bunker construction for effective defenses, making their own lives harder. They fail to supply anything, and when their hex gets attacked, they abandon it and return to LARPing in a backline hex and last they will never do frontline logi so that data is something but we also need more frontline regiments and new regiments don't do frontline Ops they will stay backline and make larp facility
Ok
I agree that it seems like the small regiments in warden world are maybe a little more keen to take their stuff out for a fight, (maybe because the collie backline hexes are pretty and more relaxing and Warden backline is grim snow and mud) but what can you do about it? How can the culture shift? You can’t MAKE people play in a way they don’t want to, they’ll just *not play*. I doubt this is remotely close to the heart of the issue…but if it is, some kind of deployment system that “calls up” these reservists would be the way to do it.
Devs are pretty allergic to adding mechanics that alter player behavior directly, I’ve hoped since I got the game for better pub squad squad based stuff via better recruiting but… 🤷♂️
@@The_CGA its is one of the reasone as most of the people who fight frontile like are old dedicated frontline regi which also getting small as most of them suffering burnout remember they do a lot from coordinating ops then QRF calls then building frontline defences then concing them then get their wet conc destroyed by emenies also dealing with larp facilies who don't make defences in frontline or Chad solo frontliner they also do QRF calls in hexs and do frontline logi or cook public Bmats and diesels in frontile refinery
I ran a small facility with like 6 other people 3 wars ago. Our only purpose was to have public pads ready for people to use with mats in them. Was chill and fun time. We didn't take up to much space or mssups either.
People just need to be willing to teach one another instead of complain about what other people do. Don't like their facility? Tell them why it should be over here or why you should work together to accomplish the same thing.
This game is all about working together and having good communication.
Thanks for your input on this!
12:11 No idea how this would work in Anvil but Planetside came up with a really interesting system that may or may not have actually worked. They made a 4th faction that's tailored towards Solo players and made it really unique and honestly a bit OP compared to the normal three factions. The catch is that if you join the 4th faction, you act as a Mercenary without allegiance to any of the 3 factions. When you first log into your play session it puts you on the side who's struggling the most as a way to give extra population and power to who needs it. If it ends up bringing that faction ahead of the others, any more mercenaries would obviously go to the newest under dog.
It's also hard to gather up your clan and steamroll a faction together since you likely won't end up on the same team at the same time.
Again no idea how this would work for Anvil, maybe a Mercenary Band? You spawn in already kitted out but maybe you can't take off your armor so that way you can't die, respawn, give your equipment away, repeat.
Oh I didn't know that about Planetside! I played PS a long time ago and there was always one faction that was just always getting stomped into the ground, same thing happened in New World. Sounds like a pretty cool system I don't think it would really work for Foxhole though.
It will be interesting to see what Anvil does with 3 factions.
@@RobertLovesGames No, definitely wouldn't work for Foxhole, just referencing it for Anvil :)
they should throttle the logi crafting times and perhaps truck max speed based on average pop, 10% less pop? 10% faster wait times
That might work with crafting time! Or focus on resource side. Cost 10% less resources?
@@RobertLovesGames It would be hard to justify because it would make planning and stuff variable but maybe a modifier to the scrap cost per emat/bmat etc would be best as it just targets the start of the logi chain, but yeah any modifier to logi output based on pop so they aren't so far apart would help. I'm not even saying 10% buff per 10% lower pop but something more like 5% per 10% , anything at all to bridge the gap without taking away from the skill of efficiently managing logi chains
I think it might be a bit safer to say more collies play in the early war because playing as warden in the early war is perfectly unfun unless you have a very specific attitude.
The kits for each faction do seem to be that way. Wardens normally hate early war infantry fights and collies hate late war tank fights.
@@RobertLovesGames Is not just early war, Wardens hate infantry the whole war.
This is why i've been saying for so long, the game needs to be updated around the quality of life over the balance. People quitting ruins the wars, so the game needs to be less unbearable to play so people don't feel as encouraged to quit.
Quality of life updates are wanted more than a balance change or a new tank.
You get it! Lots of talk about burnout going on right now. Tis the season.
Hopefully some more quality of life updates are coming this year.
As always thanks for your input Zach!
my brother in Callahan, Robert, you're doing amazing videos, but can you make the sound a bit louder?
I'm at 100% volume on youtube and OS, and can barely hear you. the same settings for most other videos will be painfully loud
Oh no! Sorry about that! New mic and have been messing with the settings! I will make sure to make it louder next video!
Thanks for the feedback!
@@RobertLovesGames thank you
Big video, but let me try to react.
On the queue system, those are all good ideas. Kicking AFK players sooner and stretching the maximum player difference would help to make the wait times more bearable.
As for the population: This is my third war and I've tried both collies and wardens now. I think both sides have fun, unique weapons worth playing with. But the reason I'm prefering wardens is the culture. Their worldchat is funny, their spirits neigh unbreakable, and it's easy to find mates to do teamwork. As a collie I ran into a few kind dudes, but there was fighting at component fields, it was harder to find people to team up with and their worldchat was mostly sour grapes saying #freebadmanlarry, a toxic piece of work.
In the end, culture isn't everything and it also comes down to personal preference. But it certainly has an impact, as someone said yesterday "Every day I look at world chat and know I picked the right faction" after people joked about Callahan's onlyfans.
As someone who has played 30+ Warden wars I agree with you. Warden culture side is very established where the Colonial side is more chaotic. I've been Colonial the last 5 wars and I can see it slightly getting better.
I agree that culture as an impact as well. Colonials just need to find their leaders again.
Thanks for your input on this!
@@RobertLovesGames Worth adding: I ran into a small regiment who saw it as their mission to encourage teamwork between colonials again. They were called XVIII I think and they were very friendly. Shoutout to them.
War 111 I was at mercy defending it and it was pain when we lost the tech there and our garrison house reset
Mercy's Wish and Tomb of the First is such a pain to defend. I spent most of my time supplying Tomb and building there last war and I need a long break from that area ha
@@RobertLovesGames ya my regiment main location last war was outwitch ranch and we did a lot of QRFing both bridges and they sucked🤣😭
The biggest issue facing foxhole is people who play to win, not to have fun. Every single multiplayer game faces this issue. The game becomes less sustainable when everyone tries to win more than they try to have fun.
I hard agree with this! I certainly want to win when I'm playing but I prioritize having fun first.
Well said and thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
I remember in the naval update war the WN battleship got stuck waiting in a queue causing the whole operation to grind to a halt. Maybe dedicating more server resources to frontline hexes and less for backline hedges?
You hate to see it :( I think it has been better this war? Or at least I haven't heard of as many issues.
@@RobertLovesGames IDK, naval ops can range from 10-50 people, meaning coastal tiles are even worse for queuing as half the player cap is doing naval warfare. Adding bigger ships like the destroyers and battleships with a large minimum crew count has made things even worse
I agree for some point but when you say balance it's only stats and percentages on tank. You also have tank that can cary A LOT of extra Bmat on one fac, guess wich one ? haha
To counter balance we could have in late war the possibility of stealing ennemy tech ? What you think
I mean you can already steal enemy vehicles by being a partisan. Or when you take over a town you get a percentage of their stockpile so technically we already get enemy vehicles. I don't think I would want actual enemy tech to be researched by the other faction. Interesting idea though! Thanks for sharing!
Well 3 to 6 % pop difference is pretty good !
When you see world of warcraft alliance and horde having 80/20% split
The queue could be adapted a bit more yeah, but keep in mind it's a balance between solo players and clan aswell, at the moment solo and small group can make a difference on a front, but if Zerg is too op it won't be fun either, like the early wars !
True! I did think about that while making this video. But again if you think about logi production being that different the the side with 6% less or even 10% which it is sometimes can make a huge difference.
Maybe we need to make defenses stronger then to combat a zerg play style?
Only game I know of that players continuously complain that players go for bathroom breaks
People in League don't like it when I go to the bathroom in the middle of a game lol
Would be interesting to see the same imbalance table if you remove the last couple days of the war when the pop imbalance is stronger due to people leaving because the war is over
I agree! I think the major issue overall is the Colonials having higher pop at the start and Wardens having higher pop near the middle to late war. Would like it to even out throughout the entire war.
good video good opinions
Thank you!!
regardless the colonials always have hundreds of thousands more kills than the wardens.........
Millions of Wardens die every day to the freezing cold temperatures.
I feel like the queue system is too strict on who can and cannot enter the region. It needs more flexibility and allow more players to enter a hex, especially during peak time with lots of action going on.
Completely agree! Hope we see some changes to it soon!
That's exactly what I thought, and I think it's a shame that the colonials start leaving the game when the tanks arrive. On this war, I'm trying warden for the 1st time, and I have to wait 45min-1h to get to wesgate to join my regiment. (the palpatine ref was very smoth XD).
I agree! We shouldn't have it where Colonials only play for infantry and Wardens only play for tanks. And that is big oof on que wait time. We should not have to wait that long in a que to play Foxhole.
Thanks for your input on this!
Yes and no, it's also warden logging as tank unlock, pushing warden pop up and thus more queues
Can’t you funnel new players to the last losing side?
The devs could probably do that if they wanted to. Most new players I've met always end up choosing the losing side anyways.
Anyhow thanks for your videos, I’ll probably give this a game a go this weekend coming up because of them 🤙.
No problem! Feel free to join my discord and DM me if you have any questions!
15 min logi queue would probably be abused as QRF, fast response into the hex for 15 minutes, with perhaps people rotating on the outside.. it's just overall hard to balance I get it ❤
5 people QRF that has 15 minutes only? Think there would be better way to QRF but I understand your concern just don’t agree it would be an issue.
well if you think about it it's like a giant wave at one point colonials are winning the most, now its a low, give it some time i might rise back up.
We will see if it goes back up. As we can see from previous data it's not likely. But I want to win so I will keep pushing on with the other Colonial forces!
Logi queue is the biggest issue. Partisans love queues cos they can run down all those AFK waiting.
True. And I don't think that should be a thing honestly. I'm all for partisan cutting off logi but it shouldn't be at the expense of logi just waiting at a border for a que.
FOXHOLE 2 CONFIRMED
Woo! I honestly hope so! Would happily buy Foxhole 2!