《Wardogs》第二赛季用更多游戏现金与XP奖励引导玩家换边并加入雨天等

How do you balance a two-faction PvP game when one side seems to be getting more players than the other? Do you force the choice? Do you apply some manner of counter-balance mechanics? Well, if you’re the early access multiplayer military FPS Wardogs, you instead bribe players to trade sides with more in-game cash and XP. Or at least that’s the plan when Season 2 launches on Thursday, October 15th.

“Wardogs isn’t supposed to be perfectly balanced at all times. But one team has had a notoriously lower win rate than the other two,” developer Bulkhead writes. “After looking at all the data, though, sentiment around the blue team is the largest driving factor behind players not wanting to play on it. So we’re running a social experiment with Season 2 to see if and how that affects their win rate and perception long term.”

What this means in gameplay mechanic terms is that players who join up on the Lonestar side will enjoy multipliers and win bonuses for in-game cash and XP through Season 2’s run, though players who are found abusing these tweaks on their community servers are warned that they face punishment. Additionally, the Lonestar faction’s uniforms have been more desaturated so they stand out less, and the losing faction of a conflict will get a 20% in-game vendor discount.

Obviously there’s more than just trying to get players to switch sides in Season 2. The season will primarily lean in on the new rainy weather condition, which the studio says will have a noticeable effect on visibility and sound, along with four new weapons, four new vehicles, three new buildables, a molotov cocktail to throw (ideally at enemies), and an “experimental” wager vendor that lets players effectively bet on themselves on whether they can complete specific challenge objectives or not.