One of the major issues of this game revolves in how most of the fights, even the best ones, are book-ended by long boring slogs of spawn camping. We've all been there. You fight for a base for a while, and its exhilarating. But once your team has 60%+ pop advantage, the defense collapses and then it's down to 1-5min or more of standing around the spawn building, shooting into a forcefield while "defenders" look for easy free kills from the inside. It sucks and nobody likes it. I have an idea to fix that. My idea is not a new one; I saw this mentioned somewhere else and I thought I'd make a thread for it, to add another voice to it and try to spark conversation. Earning XP for dying bravely against overwhelming odds, or in dire circumstances. Also, prevent people from firing through the forcefield. Here's the gist of it: The game checks to see if you're outnumbered. The more outnumbered you are, the more xp you get for getting kills. Additionally, you start getting xp bonuses when you die to enemy fire when you're outnumbered. When just slightly outnumbered, the bonus is rather small and perhaps even barely significant. But at larger disparities, it becomes very significant; to the point where players would be motivated into charging into impossible odds, and looking for "hopeless" fights to hunt for that sweet, sweet XP. Reinforcements to heavily assaulted areas might be something one could actually expect, as opposed to players fleeing, looking for better fights and more xp elsewhere. This would encourage players to charge out of the spawn rooms and fight back. Why? Because they know that even if they get cut down, at least it wasn't for nothing. And if they get a few kills on the way, hey! Bonus! The idea is, those who are legitimately trying to retake an overrun base will find themselves bolstered by allies who might otherwise have not have bothered. And why wouldn't they? The life is not wasted. Right now, there is little motivation to leave the spawn room when outnumbered, because there is so little chance to recoup investment for the effort. All you get is a lousier K/D and more time staring at the respawn screen. But if you get some kind of reward for at least trying. For giving it a shot and for god's sake, making it at least a little more interesting for the similarly-bored attackers, well, who's hurt for it? The devil is in the details, of course, and it all comes down to what the reward is and how good it is. But ladies and gentlemen, I appeal to you. Think about this. Outnumbered defenders giving it their best, trying to maximize their XP by charging you bravely, making you at least WORK for it. Surely that would be better than what we have now? Two minutes of fighting and five minutes of camping? If you have the moxy to take on unbeatable odds, to never give up the fight and at least make a heroic try of it, the game should reward that. Right now it does the opposite. The mechanics and reward systems are engineered to encourage you to stand in safety and try to farm kills, waiting until the base flips so you can retry a defense somewhere else. Bad design, boring gameplay. It's time to try something new. Reward failure. Reward those who would make the fight interesting. Reward the brave souls who at least give it a shot.
I think this is a solid idea if a few details could be worked out. Your right, something needs to be done about those 2-4 minutes of boredom
not a bad idea, could use some ironing tho, not allowing people to shoot out of the spawn rooms would be a bad idea, people would just tank spam like they already do, except moar
Though a large number of people are stuck in said rooms because they either a) don't want to die, or b) want to cert farm. In other words, it's their own fault for being stuck. Several times i've rushed from my spawn room and managed to off a few people before dieing. Even more when I play as a MAX. Can't count the times I'm jumped from a tower and C4-ed agroup of people camping doorways. Or when I cloak and jump off a building taking 50% damage just to get the drop on several people. But nobody follows and if I were commanding every person in said room, few would listen. Tonight I had probably 20 NC outside a room with 5-10 VS, two of which were MAXes. I rushed in with my MAX and cleared out the room while everyone else waited in the doorway. And it took about 20 seconds to dawn on them that no one else was in the room except me. And because of me, we didn't lose the base that had 30 seconds left on it when everyone finally came in.
Playing as TR on Connery you're often either stuck in the spawn room, or you're following the one EXE/XPIV zerg that's rolling through undefended bases on Indar. At least trying to break spawn camps is at least a little more interesting than setting one up. I find satisfaction in working my way from the spawn to the back of enemy lines to kill cocky AFK-ers. Straight up went head to head this morning as infil w/ emperor pistol against a NC BR100 heavy with an LMG and whooped him while I was breaking a spawncamp. He proceeded to send me /tell messages trying to criticize my BR and KDR... lol. The rage was hilarious. -Salembeats
If you get more XP for getting kills when outnumbered, doesn't that encourage camping out in a spawn when the offenders have 48+ and your faction has 1-12? You could go out and die, sure, and get bonus XP for dying, but why not just keep getting the bonus XP for kills?
Because my proposal has it that people can't shoot out of spawn rooms. you need to get those juicier kills exposed to enemy fire.
Just came up with this on the spot. Banzi charge mechanic for rushing out of the spawnroom when its about to be capped. This is the best idea ever to be had. I am taking this off my watch list so no one cant tell me otherwise. If I find out you disagree somehow I will report then block you. Then TK you in game.
Don't see that in your post, but that's also a bad idea. Spawns would be more easily camped than ever, as defenders couldn't even keep the area around the spawn clear to give them room to run out.
Here's the problem, if you make shields impenetrable then trying to break out will be totally futile. You need a little breathing room to stand a chance of getting out. How about this, then. We keep the outnumbered XP bonus. But, instead of making forcefields impenetrable, we just flag the spawn room as an area where the XP bonus doesn't apply. So you still can clear yourself some breathing room through the shields, but if you want that juicy juicy XP bonus you need to actually get out after you clear yourself that momentary path.
I feel like I am taking crazy pills sometimes. The best rewards should come from fighting against the odds. That helps balance the population. Everything they add is totally backwards and encourages over population of one faction
I would love this, I prefer fighting with uneven pop on my side, usually when it's way overboard, such as something around 80% enemy pop. Makes for some awesome "last stand" style battles, and there's nothing more satisfactory than starting to drop a bunch of ESFs with dumbfires, or sneaking out as an infiltrator and killing all of the spawncampers. Or just the simple satisfaction of rushing into a room filled with spawncampers with a MAX and taking down 15 players before a c4 fairy kills you.
I'm okay with this. No idea ever springs into the world fully formed from the get go. Iteration is needed. I like this.
I like the idea - but I'd rather see better design changes for bases to avoid the main problem to begin with.
Shields that can't be shot through are a terrible idea, have you ever played in a tower when the attackers bring a few MAXes at the double exit shields on the upper floor, just below the spawn room? Instead, I'd go for the reward for "heroic deaths/kills", maybe even a a temporary "Enlightened by Vanu/Republic's Saviour/Freedom Fighter" title shown with your name. In addition, I'd only give very limited EXP, or none at all, for kills made from inside the spawn room. So if you're in the spawn room and you're shooting out of the shields and kill someone, you'd get only 20 EXP for the kill and a message around the lines of "Killing enemies through you own shield is easy! Get out and fight like a real soldier, for the Republic/for Vanu/for Freedom!
There should definitely be more of a reward for fighting against the odds and I don't see any reason why they couldn't implement it. It took some time but they already have the system for fighting on a continent outnumbered, but why not have a similar system per region? The game already calculates the percentage population per region, but perhaps that's too dynamic for them to use as it might add too much to the server's load since you'd have to constantly calculate this for each player in each region on each continent each time a players moves across a hex boundary. I'm just speculating with that statement but, if that is a concern, maybe an alternative is to add a bonus which is set according to the more general population indicator per region, which is less dynamic, i.e. the faction with 1-12 population gets an extra 50% xp vs an enemy zerg of 48+, while if they were up against 24-48 they might only get 35% (to pick some arbitrary figures out of my ***). Oh and to stop people camping in spawns, why not just remove XP bonuses for anyone in a spawn room?
Maybe just make medics capable of über charging? *walks away with doves on shoulder* But seriously, if maybe defenders had a tool that would make them invincible for a few seconds then maybe more pushes would be made. And attackers would be less inclined to sit there and wait for a kill if the next target is more likely to kill them then they kill it. Or give LA and Infiltrators a utility that allows them to detonate all of the explosives on them with the force of several C4. Then it might be a bit more interesting to see how quickly a spawn camp would evaporate. Idk, but something has to be done to spawn shacks to make them a bit more push-out-able.
