[Suggestion] Can we encourage better strategic game play please?

Can we provide better incentives for strategic facility attacker/capture & defense? Players are avoiding strategic game play, and farming their weapons in this game instead. This has always been an issue (namely because SOE has designed it to be an issue), but two things have made the situation degrade further: Directives and the Resource Revamp.

Directives does have an Objectives section with Capture Point & Objective Defense, but that's just 2 items in 1 section out of dozens of directive sessions of class, vehicle and weapon directives. It's so non-impactful, it's useless to encouraging any strategic game play. And the resource revamp has a nanite replenishing rate that has increased Vehicleside and has been complained about by much of the playerbase. So players are pulling more vehicles and making more xp farming in their vehicles rather then fully involved in strategic game play of capturing facilities.

Also, I was wondering what the base xp was for flipping a capture point, so I asked in-game. Someone told me 25 xp, but I couldn't believe it. I stopped paying attention to how much months ago, and assumed it was 50-100 xp. I went to cap a low pop facility, and was astounded to find out it was truly only 25 xp. I knew it was low, but surely a capture point is not 1/4 as important as killing an enemy infantry (100xp)??

I propose we make capture points worth 200-300 xp. There would be a 2 minute increasing, waiting penalty for back-and-forth flipping of the capture point, in which case capture point flips would just be 25 xp per usual to prevent cross-faction farming. The penalty would increase to 3 minutes during a timer contested facility fight.

But can we also get more and better ribbons & directives involving capture points? Like the "First!" directive? You get 1000 xp for being first on the capture point. The facility has to change hands in order for this bonus to reset. This is an award for only one player, so the 5 other players who get there 2nd through 6th don't get the First xp. People on the Internetz love to be first! Things like that would be great incentive for strategic capture game play.

I'd like to relate a frustrating gaming experience I just had today. I had been battling a zerg and was pushed back two bases. So I decided to move down another lane, and saw that we could flank them 5 facilities later. So I start down the road with my sunderer, and see about 8 or so allies with me. Great! Then I park the sundy about 200+ meters from the capture point, and arrive at the capture point alone, flip the point, take out one enemy while waiting several seconds, and die. No one was with me. I was disappointed. I respawn at my sundy, do this again, and how many allies do I have with me at the capture point this time?........ none. So not only did we not leap-frog through 5 facilities as I dared to hope, but we couldn't even win an 8 vs 3 fight on the first facility. Now I'm frustrated. This isn't the first time this type of thing has happened.

Defenders and attackers should get increased incentive for objective game play through more xp, ribbons and directives.

Let's curb the farm. It's way out of control these days then ever before.

Yeah you really need to get a semi organized group to flank along a new lane most of the the pug zerglings will leave if there is not enough enemies around.

Not sure if increasing capture amounts would make any difference. I do sort of like the First ribbon but it needs to be expanded. First ribbon but ribbons always give out the same amount and it should be a total of 10 like most of the others maybe drop it to 5 if your feeling generous. Not sure if that will do anything to increase tactics the maps are designed to increase zergs so if you do not like thats scale your out of luck in most cases. You need to find/create a group that feels the same way and does not mind ghost capping 60% of the time to try to open up the other lanes, you should run into one of the smaller outfits on the other side who do the same and have a nice medium size fight.

Something needs to be done, every battle is now just a 48+v48+ tardfest. It's hard to find a fun one anymore really.

TL;DR

Any incentives properly attuned make all the difference. (not saying my suggestion is "properly" tuned.)

This isn't restricted to just lone wolf game play. I play half & half lone wolf/squad game play during my sessions. I was in a squad just last week in a big fight. When they arrived at a facility, they went straight for the spawn room and slammed into an untenable wall of defenders. I had to tell them to flank right to the capture point, and I wasn't even the squad leader this time. The squad leader concurred, and only half of them listened. The bulk of the other blueberries and organized squads were doing the same thing. We had time to win the fight and defend from the correct positon, but we lost it. It's the same behavior you see in the game at Bio Lab choke points. Stay at the entry way to artificially create a farm even though you have the numbers to easily push in or out.

You can be as strategic or tactical as you would like in this game. It is completely up to you...

FYI--- Farming = Killing lots of the enemy = A Strategy. See if you kill more of the enemy and faster then they kill you then you are denying them, from reaching their objective...

Everything we do in this game and any FPS revolves around killing the other side, doing it more and faster is how you succeed. Reducing or increasing XP will do nothing. Killing the enemy(farming) is how you win.

As for your example. Maybe you should be the leader of a platoon or at the very least a squad. Then you could have implemented the kind of strategy you would like to see in this game, by providing leadership. That is what we do in out Outfit.

You are in your example are the exact thing you despise, which is the Zerg. The Zerg is a leaderless mass. You spawning a random Sunderer and traveling down a parallel Lane, in the hopes the zerg will spawn at your sunderer is not strategy or tactics, that is zerging. Also the odds are no one spawned there because it was outside of the lane the zerg was in so it did not show up as a spawn point, unless you as a squad leader put an attack marker on that location, which would have allowed them to see the spawn.

However, if you had been a squad or platoon leader, then you could have ordered your squad or platoon to spawn at your sunderer and begin a new attack. You could have also placed an attack marker on that location as a platoon leader, which would have allowed others to spawn at that sunderer and you would have also been a part of the command chat. This is the type of strategy you say is missing from the game, but it isn't missing. It is up to you to create and implement these strategies, they can't be force fed to you...

If your going to Solo, you have to do strategy on a smaller scale.
With these larger pops, thinking so far ahead alone won't work.

Back before the merge, maybe you could at 3AM, where you were 1v1 alot.

Well put

I believe that what this game needs is more "chore" kind of tasks, for example

• helping the zerg/organized outfits reach the front line
  • Via Galaxies
  • Loadstars
  • etc
• Base under attack is running out of nanites to give to troops in the form of loadouts and vehicles
  • ANT runs to the warpgate
• Ghost cap is about to cause the base that you are fighting at to go netural
  • Small elite team heads back to clear out and secure that base

PS2 needs more of the listed above, currently we are no where near these goals. However the first resource revamp is a step in the right direction

/Agree

I would also like to see capture points that require ground and Air vehicles to hold an area. Zergs by enlarge are leaderless, even if they are in squads and platoons and they simply follow the path of least resistance. I doubt they will do Chore like tasks, but I am not opposed to having them added to the game.

As they say Quality is better then Quantity, but Quantity has a quality all its own.

Farming is so prevalent and "always been there" that you actually think that is what Planetside is about. It's not. This is not an FPS. This is an MMOFPS. This is not an arena game. This is Planetside. I'm fighting for my Planetside, for the game to change and get better - not the status quo.

I disagree. Reducing or increasing xp - or whatever other incentive - does everything. The "farm" exists because of the very fact it is incentivized to be there... and be there more... and be there more so. Now Directives & the first phase Resource Revamp have exacerbated the farm problem. It's a solvable problem. SOE just went in the exact opposite direction again. I'm semi-confident the Resource system will be corrected though. And I'm definitely not saying to take the Directives system away - just beef it up in the right direction.

In my example I was with 8 other players who were just milling about in their vehicles, or running around the base everywhere except for the cap point. They were using my sunderer to do this chicken-with-head-cut-off-farm-dance-cluster-F.

I've been squad leader. I've been a platoon leader. I've been an officer since 2003, and the XO of The Renegades now. I'm burnt out. The lack of leadership tools in this game burns you out. The leadership turn-over is ridiculous here. The entire outfit turn-over due to lack of leadership tools and QoL headaches is ridiculous. Planetside 1 has way better tools then this game 1 1/2 years later after launch, and that should not be! That should not be in any way shape or form a viable statement that anyone can make - yet it is. I'm not bothering to lead anymore until this leadership **** show is fixed.

But that's not the part of the problems I'm addressing here today.

I've been touting that in great detail for over a year.

It's good to hear you're not a status quo/work-around guy like you first sounded.

I dont think we never going to get that. Only games I know that have good gameplay is games that you can mod and players set the rules on that kind of games.

PS2 is a big Zerg or idk if it is that anymore too. Its 2 teams 100 vs 100 that stand on the same spot and shot at each other (Cobalt, Quartz ridge camp). Sometimes they advance 1 m and sometimes they dont.

It should have been better if they never updated to the new resouce system.

This is an FPS = First Person Shooter. It doesn't matter if it an MMO with thousands of people or 16, it is still an FPS, which completely and totally revolves around killing the enemy, so as to deny them reaching the objective you are fighting over. It doesn't matter if that objective is worth 10 points or 10,000, if you want to deny the enemy to reach the objective, the best and only method is to kill them over and over again. or as you like to call it "Farming", the more the players the larger the farm on both sides.

It really doesn't matter how many points the capture is worth, people are going to "farm" regardless because it denies the enemy from the objective and it is fun, they will just get a few more cert points for the eventual capture. You said it yourself "Also, I was wondering what the base xp was for flipping a capture point, so I asked in-game. Someone told me 25 xp, but I couldn't believe it. I stopped paying attention to how much months ago, and assumed it was 50-100 xp." It mattered so little, that you stopped paying attention moths ago, if it was worth 100 or even 200 you would have stopped paying attention to that amount as well.

Honestly, I'm a little confused over your post. Your original rant was about Farming, a lack of strategy in the game and how having the game guide players to objectives, through the use of increased XP incentives will some how address this issue, which it won't, as I addressed. Now it is about a lack of leadership tools and QoL, which is fine, I know I miss being able to draw on the map as well from PS1.

Perhaps you can give us a list of Leadership tools and QoL tools, that would help make leading easier. However, having the game increase incentives and provide direction isn't leading, that is FOLLOWING, which is fine as well, but as I said before this game has as much strategy as you the player wishes to implement. Personally, I do not care where the game incentives me to go, XP means nothing to me I play to have fun and that generally revolves around playing in a tight knit outfit squad or platoon, that does as it pleases and implements lots of strategy and tactics to accomplish our goals. We prefer Quality over Quantity, but understand Quantity has a quality all its own.

Nope I have tons of posts about game improvements. I have never been a big fan of XP incentives though, since like all things used to incentive people those incentives tend to diminish in effectiveness over time and are really only band-aid used to mask poor design. The core of this issue is something I have been saying since beta, which is that there are not enough maps and there are too many bases on the maps, along with a lack of a home sanctuary, results in players having a lack of ownership over an area and as such care little for territory lost or gained.

Any game that pits 100+ players vs 100+ players is going to feel like a big Zerg, because you only control or influence a small percentage of those players if any.

The only reason those games you think provide good game play because they use mods. Is because you are able to pick the MOD with the rule set you enjoy the most, thus it feels to you that it has great game play, to a person that likes a different rule set that particular MOD would be less enjoyable...

Some of the directives like the rockets launcher one, aurax 5 rocket launchers? Right after a nerf to discourage "rocket primaries". The only effective way to aurax a weapon is to use it on infantry.

Point capture points were reduced because you could exploit it with a "friendly enemy faction" player.

Points for caps should increase with player numbers in the zone.

5 enemies in the zone when you cap A point? +25xp
48 enemies in the zone when you cap A point? +500xp

You could even go as far as having an XP pool on cap, look heres a formula: ((#enemies*25xp)/#friendlies)

1200xp for point cap on full zone, divide that by... 2 sqauds (assuming 24 players all on cap at once) 1200/24 = 50xp

Profit.

By and large

Nautical term - "by" meaning sailing into the wind by tacking, and "large" meaning sailing with the wind fully behind. Therefore "by & large" means "in most circumstances".

It has been a while since I have seen this phrase used and have never seen it in text.
So I just had to.
Lol.

On point though, IMO, higher rewards would just promote "over-dominance" Faction stacking.
I think there is plenty of tactics to be used, as stated in an earlier post.
Most just are not being used by the masses.

Whats wrong with a 48+/48+ fight?
That's what the majority of us are here for.
When I get in a low pop fight like 4 vs 5, I get a sick feeling in my gut like I am playing CS or something.
That isn't fun anymore.

I really can't convince you that farming exists, because it was incentivised? And not just by SOE, but the publishers of FPS games that created the farming habit through incentive. (and the "wrong" player base that SOE attracted.) I guarantee you that players would be rushing to the capture points if you set the xp to your 10,000 xp suggestion. LOL

I really can't talk you out of separating yourself from the base FPS games that are far beneath Planetside, and open your eyes to the elite game we have - (or really could have)? I truly look down upon all inferior FPS games as being lessor then Planetside. Planetside's would-be (but not) peers are lessor already - Defiance, Firefall, Destiny (or are supposed to be). And even those games are superior to the dirt under their feet of BF, COD, Halo. LOL

I was responding to you conversationally about leadership because you brought it up. Hence, I ended saying, "But that's not the part of the problems I'm addressing here today.", so you shouldn't be confused.

The more important phrasing is that I assumed capture point xp was higher, not that I don't pay attention. I assumed it was not a value set at 1/4 the amount of a single enemy infantry. I pay attention to tactics, and the capture point. I don't pay attention to farming.

People rush the points now. Increasing the xp to 10K will not make them rush any harder or smarter. The only thing this would incentive is players trying to ghost cap, poorly defended bases or zerg them in the hopes they would grab the capture before the enemy noticed or could respond in kind and get a quick 10K xp. Even if the enemy did respond, what do you think the best defense of this capture will be for the attackers? Camp the spawn room and farm the defenders as they try and retake the point and even if they do retake the point, this fight will turn right into the thing you are trying to address, which is a back and forth "Farm" between attackers and defenders.

Its not that you can't convince me farming doesn't exsist. it is just that what you call farming I call FPS tactics, which is kill the enemy faster and more often then they kill you. Even if the xp to kill a another player was NIL, and all the xp resulted from capturing the point, players would still "farm" "kill" each other over and over again in the most effective manor possible leaving themselves exposed as little as possible to accomplish their goals.