[Suggestion] Tie XP per kill/assist to target's directive score

Directive points are an approximation of a player's experience level, which in turn is an estimate of how dangerous that player is. Thus, killing an inexperienced player will inevitably be much easier, on average, than killing an experienced player. As a means to correlate XP gain with the difficulty of the opponent, I propose that XP per kill and per assist become modified by the opponent's directive score. Low directive score opponents reward a low amount of XP, high directive score opponents reward a high amount of XP.

Why would this be a good idea? It would incentivize inexperienced players to actively seek ways to beat tougher, harder targets because killing them is more rewarding, thus providing a natural path towards improvement. It would incentivize experienced players away from farming low skill enemies who are easy pickings.

Tell me what you think

Directive points do not give any indication as to how dangerous a player is.

It would make more sense to do this with BR instead of directives

http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/...illing_empty_vehicles_gives_kills_for_medals/

I'll post this in a new thread if I can get verification, as this post was made a few days ago, has limited interest/participation, and I do not have the test server up to date to verify.

I think this is reasonable for infantry vs. infantry and certain vehicle vs. vehicle matchups (although I'd probably just use BR rather than directive score), but not vehicle vs. infantry. If you kill an experienced player with your PPA, Banshee, or ScatMAX, that's fine and all, but it's not like you directly outskilled that player. That's not to say what you're doing doesn't take skill, but it's hardly a level fight.

Of course they do, up to a point. Directive score indicates level of experience, and level of experience always correlates with level of ability. Naturally, you can't say a specific player with high directive score is more dangerous because of that score than a specific player with low directive score, but that's not relevant. The idea is that, on average, a player with low directive score will be a much easier opponent than one with a high directive score.

Why? You can have 2000 directive points and be an MLG pro, but you can still start a new character from BR 0. Battle rank correlates with experience only in the sense that a high battle rank means much experience - but a low battle rank doesn't mean little experience. Meanwhile, Directive score works both ways.

I approve of this.

Really those people joining the game now are so very far behind on certifications I can only wonder how many people have quit the game because they're so far behind.

The higher reward for killing a more experienced player isn't meant to indicate you "outskilled him" in the first place. It doesn't have anything to do with whether the fight was balanced or not. It's just meant to indicate that he was probably worth more on the battlefield than the guy with low directive score, and that you would've on average had easier time killing a guy with low directive score.

Also, remember that even in the current system, killing an infantry player with PPA rewards the same XP as killing that player with anything else. Tying the XP gain to directive score wouldn't increase or decrease the average cert gain of vehicle players, so I don't quite see what the problem is. AI vehicle players would still expect the same average XP per kill as currently, it'd just be variable according to opponent experience level.

Think about it... maybe if killing a newbie gave you less XP than killing the average player, we'd see less PPA/banshee etc. farming? Experienced players - i.e. players who are the most rewarding to kill - know how to avoid being farmed, thus the majority of targets would be inexperienced players who don't yet know how to avoid being farmed. There'd be an incentive to improve one's game toward taking out enemies who matter more, because they reward vastly more XP.

Why? (See above post)

It's not like my Directives end up being completed because I want them to get completed.

Directive score being heavily weighted on auraxing multiple weapons
Multiple directive categories that require atypical play to progress or complete
Cumulative score heavily weighted on playing the field rather than specializing
Grinders... uuuuusually not the best of players.

epeewee =/= experience
experience =/= ability

There could be a maximum directive score after which XP per kill no longer increases - I'm sure SOE has data on the distribution of directive scores among players and can figure out where to max out the XP reward so it makes sense. The idea is to distinguish the inexperienced players with low score from the experienced players with high score, not to distinguish the skilled from the grinders. This is because above a certain directive score (our max XP), there are no inexperienced players, and below a certain directive score (our minimum XP), there are no experienced players.

Something like this, just an example:

No one's claiming they are equal, and they don't have to be. Look up the word 'correlation'.

I promise you, my Stalker with a Beamer is probably the hardest target any newbie can come across because I have grinded directives and they should be rewarded when they finally manage to kill me even when im playing like crap and they spawn camp me.... Yeah, no.

There already is a bonus that awards people for killing high threat players so this is both not needed and its even completely random. People that only use the same weapon and have +20k kills with it are less dangerous than someone that have a total of 5k kills on 5 different LMGs? hah!

Is this a roundabout way of you saying "I'm just as bad at the game as a complete newb?"

1. Actually, High Threat and Extreme Menace bonuses should be gotten rid of, they are pointless and would be replaced by the XP bonuses tied to directive score.
2. Completely random? No, there is definitely a correlation between directive score and how much of a threat you are / how hard you are to kill. If it was random, then your directive score would be randomly generated and would have nothing to do with actually playing the game.

That's obviously not what I'm suggesting here. Read my reply to Ripshaft please.

I was not aware directive points carried over to new every character. But with that said, a level 100 br in general, going to be a lot tougher to kill then a level 5 br since they have everything upgraded and unlocked.

Yes... But the effect of gear is much lesser than the effect of game knowledge, experience and ability.

No it does not.

Given enough time, a half-blind dyspraxic cat could reach BR100 and have a high directive score, just by randomly walking around on the keyboard and slapping its tail against the mouse . Now admittedly, it would take an extremely long time for this to happen, but it eventually would.

By the same token, there are players who invest huge amounts of time without actually getting good at the game. Now that might be that they have unfortunately slow reaction times, or perhaps their motor precision isn't great, or whatever... They may well be extremely experienced, but their actual ability is not that great.

Just because someone has spent their time grinding out 1160 kills for x number of LMGs, does not mean they are actually any good at using them - Just that they have spent a lot of time doing it.

(My cat is not half-blind or dyspraxic, but he loves walking around on my keyboard while I am gaming. It is simultaneously cute and annoying.)

In PS1 players were worth more XP the longer they had been alive. I sort of liked that because it was dynamic.
You may have a **** day where you suck, staying alive for 20 seconds tops not doing anything useful. Not really a high threat target. Reflected by the little XP you "give" your enemy when you die.
XP tied to directive points makes that same zombie-like target give out MLG pro XP.

Neither system is perfect, so maybe a combination would be good.
There is no real 100% accurate way for the game to judge how much of a threat a target is, and what its worth in terms of XP though. (Unless someone designs a super badass algorytm)

Edit: Anyone can make a bunch of characters and get silver on all of them, making them look like MLG badasses.
Since its account wide

You completely misunderstand me. You are 100% correct and I 100% agree with you that just because someone has a lot of experience, it doesn't necessarily mean he has a high level of ability. However, while this observation is 100% correct, it is also 100% irrelevant to this thread.

I repeat, experience level always correlates with level of ability. By always, I mean regardless of context: It doesn't matter if we're talking about Planetside 2, chess, gymnastics, carpentry... it does not matter. It is always true that experience level correlates with level of ability. I don't mean that a player with more experience is necessarily better - I'm not stupid. The point is that on average, a player with a high directive score will tend to be a tougher opponent than a player with a low directive score. The average expectation of opponent ability is all that matters for the purpose of rewarding more XP for higher directive score kills. It makes no difference whether a specific player was worth the specific amount of XP.

But unlike tying it to BR or time spent alive, it never awards the same XP for an experienced player as it does for a complete newbie. As I said earlier, the point is to separate the newbs from the ones who have a pretty good idea of what they're doing, the point is not to separate the zombie grinders from the MLG pros. The reason for this is that experience correlates with level of ability. Yes, some of the high XP kills will be utterly crap at the game - doesn't matter. What matters is that next to none of the low XP kills will be good at the game.

There's no need for a 100% accurate system, there's only need for a system which averages out over time. If a low XP kill is almost never a real threat, and if a high XP kill is almost never a complete zombie, then that's good enough - over time, people who improve their game towards higher ability to compete with the higher XP targets will end up earning more XP per kill, thus providing an incentive to improve one's game; and people who farm low XP opponents instead of focusing on the important enemies, will find their XP per kill to stagnate, thus providing an incentive to move away from farming.

The idea is not to separate the MLG pros from the grinders, it's to separate the newbs from the experienced players. Both MLG badasses and silver medal grinders are quite experienced at the game.

Make it BR * KDR + 20.

• For killing a BR10 newbie with KDR of 0.5 you get 25XP
• For killing the average BR100 player with a KDR of 2 you get 220XP
• For killing Daddy you get ~3600XP