Platoon lead, for those who choose to undertake the daunting position are gravely under rewarded. Planetside 2 has a mass following, mostly consisting of players. Platoon's desire leadership, Yet Planetside 2 provides no incentives for undertaking such a mentally tasking position. Few rise to the occasion and most view it as a burden. The effort and time spent as a platoon lead is almost entirely dedicated to the objective with 0 xp/cert reward. PS2 would do well for the sustainability and future of the game in providing the leaders of it with accolade. May I suggest an implementation of shared xp via platoon/squad accomplishments towards the platoon leader. No matter how insignificant,at least something for the travail. Sincerely, Braum
It is a thankless job but one of necessity. I salute you for your service in that area. Some type of reward would seem to be in order for those that undertake that endeavor. Perhaps a new cert for Squad/Platoon Lead. It has merit.
Normally I would be against just giving exp buffs, but terrible platoon leaders will not retain members to lead if they are terrible. So players will govern who they feel is fit to lead and it will create a reason for more "would be leaders" to lead. I generally hate leading because that usually means I will have deaths staring at the map or talking to command just trying to formulate the next move. If I was getting some bonus exp for all the effort it would totally make me more willing to do it more often.
How about a sense of accomplishment for a job well done; knowing that it was your fearless leadership and ingenious tactical insights which carried your squad to a glorious victory.
On a related issue, in the time just prior to Alpha launch, SOE discussed some sort of "Twitter-like following system" where players could "follow" a leader for some uncertain bonus - special powers, stronger communication tools, map-drawing privileges, etc. Granted, the immediate concern seems to be fake players that don't spend time playing, racking up fake followings. That's fairly easy to mitigate with playtime requirements or some hidden system for figuring out whether a character is actually being played or not and removing the "follower" from the leader's count. The system could be tweaked to optimize just how many people the player could follow, either a hard cap or relative to time spent playing. Doesn't matter, but you wouldn't want anyone to be able to give follower counts to every single person. This sort of system would be great all around. Gamification of leadership, showing leaders that their players support them and providing a new means of stratifying leadership (for perks to include later, hopefully).
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Planetside...i like it I'm all for it as long as it does not reward people that just open platoons for the rewards without actually leading. It's always a shame if a full platoon disbands just because nobody wants to step up. The Commissar hat would have been an awesome PL reward right there...obviously now not so much anymore(and probably only for TR ^^) .....but cosmetic items in general just for them are probably a nice addition instead of just a few more xp (we all know how much incentive those +5% XP population bonus are)
