Dev Discussion: Directives

Under the items tab in the chat window would it be possible to receive medal / ribbon notifications there to ?

Is there any link to see the complete dkrective list? I am especially interested in the metallic NC camo. How do i get that??

Did you get a response about this?

Any directive reward for scout radar use?

not really. I think it was too late in the game to change. I'm hoping they go back to change it

why is an APC (sundi) much stronger than a Main Battle Tank?
just curios...


the real tanks of planetside are the sunderers. they are the only ground vehicles that have the capability to actually push the frontline. fast, cheap, resistant and now with new op shield.




and if you are alone in a base, fighting against 3 other guys and you kill them but you cannot kill their sundi. what are you expected to do? they will just bring a new one thx to the resource system

I am a bit miffled about the lack of retroactive granting of things like kills, vehicle kills and base captures. I have spent almost 2 years hunting and blowing up deployed sundies, and yet the game doesnt count any of that for the progression.

What is even more irritating is the launcher progression: It does not care for vehicle kills or vehicle kill assists, no, it cares for kills. Considering how often people will bail a vehicle you are damaging, this is really asking for shooting infantry in the face with rocket launchers in order to get that directive finished.

For someone who plays mostly to blow up vehicles, be it ground or air ones, the directives trees and their lack of consideration for past achievements are pretty lackluster. Almost everything has infantry kill requirements, directly or indirectly. Heck, even the explosives directive requires AI mines, that do nothing but kill infantry. ( What do you get for that directive anyways? Auraxium sparkling tank mines? ) Tank directives mix the roles of driver and secondary gunner, not good for people that specialize in one of the two.

These directives do NOT allow you to show off your playstyle and be rewarded for it. They require you to get as many weapons in a category as possible, and go farm until you have auraxiumed them all. There are no pure support directives for example. No way to get the top tier of A2A directive if you refuse to use Tomcats / Coyotes and use noseguns only instead.

They are nothing but another carrot on the stick.

C'mon SOE, no love for the specialists? As a Liberator pilot with almost 300 hours in it, not only are most of the objectives not counting my old stats, but also some objectives force me to be a gunner? My job is primarily to get angles and kills for my GUNNERS, not myself. The belly kills, tail kills, and air kills should include my gunner's kills because guess what, my gunner's are the primary option for nailing targets; and the way to balance the difficulty in getting those objectives is increasing the total amount needed to complete it.

You're forcing the gunners to be pilots and the pilots to be gunners. Planetside 2 is a game that I love because there are roles to play and you can enjoy and master your role to help your faction in battle. Now it just feels like we are being punished for playing the game in a way we love playing it.

My question for the dev. that's in charge of the directives:

Would it be possible to add "Sidearm kills" to the Infiltrator directives? We've got Sniper kills for long range and SMG and Scouts for mid range which are great for Hunter and Nano-armor cloaking but we're missing Sidearm kills for the Stalker cloak.

Just my 2 certs on the Infiltrator directives.

i wish that the reward of the scout rifle directives would be changed to a scout rifle or make this battle rifle for infis, too.

Why only Roadkills for Flash and Harasser?

Does my Wrecking Ball not merit some love for y'know, flying two feet off the ground and hitting infantry?

What about Skywhales? They hunger.

I do agree about the Lib though, I'm primarily a pilot even though i'm a good gunner because there aren't many pilots who can last long in the game nowadays, there's what? 20 gunners for each pilot?

i like most of the directives although the weapon directives are a bit chewy and involve people using weapons that they probably don't like. could we maybe get head shot directives for these weapons and vehicle kill directives for the launchers? the explosives directives have these things so why not the other weapons. not asking to make it easy, just make it a little less of a grind.

What irks me is that Light Assault auraxium armor, awarded for the final directive tier, is supposed to demonstrate the high proficiency of the wearer, that he mastered all aspects of being a Light Assault. Instead all we have is a kill grind, and 5 out of 6 directives pretty much complete together.

Think about it: final directive tier can be completed without even leaving the spawnroom.

Light Assault is so much more than simply a kill whoremonger.
Here's some more fitting ideas:

• Flanker: kill an enemy without receiving damage from him.
• Caught Off Guard: kill an enemy while he is reloading.
• Stealth Specialist: kill an enemy while not being spotted (and/or not being on enemy radar).
• Light Assault kills - this directive is good, since it takes a Light Assault to counter a Light Assault. I would add Infiltrators here, since LAs are good against those as well. So this directive could be: Light Assault and Infiltrator kills.
• Deny Support: kills on Engineers occupying MANA turrets and repairing MAXes, and kills on medics healing or reviving someone (or recently have done so).
• Deep Striking: capture a control point with no allies around you, except other Light Assaults. Light Assault is a shock trooper, a good Light Assault is always first on point. (potentially bad, we don't want Light Assaults telling their squad "stay away from the cap point, I need to farm directives so I must go there alone")
• Sabotage: overload a shield generator.
• Scavenger: resupply from an enemy ammo pack (could potentially be abused).

These directives should not be used:

• Destroy base turrets and terminals - destroying them is not always optimal. Sometimes they must left alive to be hacked by infiltrators.
• Spawn Beacon kills: would be good, but you already put them in Force Recon.
• Shotgun/SMG/Carbine kills - what matters is the result, not means. Some players are uncomfortable with certain weapon type, and it shouldn't be forced on them.
• Vehicle kills: Light Assault is not primarily an anti-vehicle class. We don't even have anti vehicle weapons by default! C4 is a tool, an option, not primary way of dealing with vehicles.
• Mid-air kills. Right now, mid-air accuracy is non existent, and killing someone while flying on Jet Pack is hard, and rarely optimal.

Hmmm... i thinks the directives are a REALLY big impact on motivating 4 gaming!

I hope you bring up soon more "non cert" rewards, that can not be bought ingame.

I think it would be funny a own line for "roadkills" where you get a rams horns or bull horns as a reward for vehicle.
Also lumiphaser(the light stripes) for the max would be nice (or the max weapons?)


So anyway, thank you for bringing them into the game.

I do wish that medal kills with class specific weapons would transfer over from the weapon category to their corresponding infantry class kills.

For example:

I have every AR (Except the Gauss Prime, which I'm currently working on) Auraxiumed.
That's 9 Auraxiumed Assault Rifles.
This means I have well over 10,440 kills (9 x 1,160 = 10,440).


So, I can't help but wonder why the kills that can be tracked like this have not been considered for the class Directive page.


I really feel that, given the number of weapon types that are tied to just one class, it would be a fairly simple process to add some sort of code that tallies the total kills across the weapons that apply, and add the sum to their kills to the corresponding Directive kill counter.

AR's are specific to Medics.
Snipers and Scout rifles are specific to Infiltrators.
LMG's, ES Heavy weapons, and Rocket Launchers are specific to HA's.
Max arm weapons are specific to maxes.


This is a large portion of the requirements for directives, and I feel that we do deserve what past statistics we've earned to be retroactively counted for what can be determined without doubt.
(Unless someone doubts I earned these Auraxiums while playing a class other than those that the weapons are exclusive to. )

Sniper rifles in Infiltrator basic directives

Directives, especially the basic ones are meant to give new players some goals.
Sniper rifles should not be part of the Infiltator basic directives. Not even a zergfit will allow sniper rifles in ops. You are effectively asking new players to stop being involved in squad operations and go and farm.

It's fine for an advanced directive later on, under a weapon directive set.

This.

Also shotguns should not be part of any basic class directive set. There are plenty of players who can aim/maneouvre and don't need a massive crutch, and don't use shotguns at all on an ethical basis.


Objective rewards
Facility captures/defenses, gen compromises should get credit.

Directives aimed at killing opposition players in the same role

Higby said on his stream that eventually there would be directives aimed at killing opposition players who have completed higher level directives for a class to stop players farming new players. The current counter-class directive also involves killing opposition players in the same role.

This basically rewards cowardice. Experienced players will stop taking on odds much quicker than they would otherwise.
Any directive rewards for killing top directive players should weight according to KDR so players are rewarded for killing stat padders. Stat padders are for instance, players who play only at farms when opposition is not organised, spawn room heores, or players who don't take on odds and hang around the fringes of combat often with medic support.

For example killing a stat padder with 10 KDR, who hangs close to a spawn room with their medic buddies from a stat-pad-fit, should recieve twice the weighting of a good player who fights over points/gens against high odds with 5 KDR. This is because the stat padder's playstyle does not involve exposing themselves to danger, so they are twice as difficult to find and kill.

Similarly the current counter-class kills directive should be weighted by KDR. The KDR used should be in the correct domain: i.e. infantry vs infantry KDR for full-auto weapons in that class.

This also encourages players to stop playing the game and hunt players if a rare high directive player is present.

SOE should ensure that any directives that involve killing players with high directive scores are specific to that role - i.e. killing infantry with a tank should not count.

The real incentive to stop farming new players is XP and it's XP that should be modulated based on certs in loadout and experience. Why on earth does someone deserve character progression for killing a BR1 who just drop podded in with an instagib shotgun on a maxed out heavy or max?

Of course, getting rid of the KDR stat will remove stat-padding playstyles. KDR is meaningless because playstyles and odds in which the playstyle is applied vary.

IIRC Malorn or Higby said the reason that the directives were so crude was that more complex stuff had not been coded yet, so I trust that's why the LA and Infiltrator directives don't really cover the things players actually do.

I agree completely that these kill totals don't belong in the class directives. There's already a weapons directive page, that could be extended to cover weapon usage by class/weapon type stats.

Quick question about:

Why don't my 190 Biolab defense ribbons count to facility defenses?

To sum up my comment I'm happy with the directives idea but I'm unhappy about how its been employed to cater to players who have maxed out the game already and how its all about the "grind". Also I find it silly to even have levels to reach if the only rewards we get are at auraxium rank.

The rest of this comment is just a minor rant.

This new system is a good idea but the kill requirements and the medals from the various weapons and armors are a bit insane for any casual player to achieve. Whether the point of these releases were to cater to the lv100s who have half of this updates items auto unlocked. or to make these unlocks special or hard to get. I feel this hasn't really added what it should. we need something that isn't earn 1000 kills with 5 specific weapons. we need some form of challenge we need to complete and make it not take 500 hours of grinding to achieve. my problem with this update is that its giving most of the new content to players who have everything already and that the amount of work.

To any of our wonderful devs still patrolling this discussion, thanks! I really, really love the directives system and the rewards. Only 4 more Aurax medals before my Shotgun with a Shotgun attachment with my Shotgun secondary! I can't wait!

Anyways, I have a question regarding how deep these directives will go. With the rumor of Max weapons, will we eventually have Aurax weapons for everything? IE, Auraxium Reaver noseguns, wing mounts, sundy turrets, etc.?

Any particular reason the NS-11P is under Exceptional Weapons. So I have to buy the same damned gun for my medic for it to qualify towards Assault Rifles?