Higby proposes a change to weapon medals from kill based to XP based

I really like this idea but there's an equally likely chance that I will be 100 kills from my last carbine directive auraxium and then suddenly I will only be half way done. . I would hope this doesn't happen

There a lot of issues with a change like this.

Especially with weapon systems that do lots of damage.

It's never been fair that doing more than 50% (or more) of the work on a kill nets you nothing when all that matters is the last bullet.

I can't tell you how many times I've come up against some good players and whittled them down in a battle only to have someone stroll in and pop a few rounds in and get the kill. Or the lone vehicle who shows up and finishes everyone off.

Now, the real problem is that the game is about stats in the first place. Adding the Directives made the situation far worse, but considering the fact that there isn't anything else to do, the Directives at least give SOME meaning to a thoroughly pointless game.

I would rather have a game where the infantry was happy to see an MBT stroll up in a tough fight. I'd like to see infantry call for air support and cheer when the pilot shows up and takes out a hardpoint. The vehicle layer and resources are broken, however, and that needs to be fixed before that can even come close to a reality.

The game is about individual stats and the means required to pad them.

So we have people TKing for revenge or blowing up other folks mines or turrets. Medics shooting other folks shields, Infis taking out friendly sensors... people yelling a their own troops for ruining farms and even TKing the "offender" because of that.

The situation has gotten absolutely ridiculous now.

Making the change to xp instead of absolute kills is a fair way to manage participation and it means people may be less inclined to farm and just fight battles knowing that every hit counts.

It will also create situations where weapon systems which do lots of damage will continue to spam aiming at anything that moves.

If I had MY way, I'd have it that for every point of xp you got for for using a weapon, you could lose said amount for hitting friendlies on a one for one basis. TKing would net you a painful xp loss in addition to weapon lock.

I'd even have it that TKing at 90% more of damage dealt will be a permanent stat on your player page and follow you around no matter whether you've deleted a character or not. Just like your Directive score is displayed despite the fact that you may have more than one character contributing to that score.

Then, people might think about what they're doing more often.

"Killing in the main purpose of a FPS game." False premise. The purpose of a FPS game is whatever purpose the developers decides it is. It might be taking points, bases, continents, or whatever. The focus on kills has, if anything, pulled certain players away from playing as a team(squads, platoons, outfits). I doubt this change will, well, change much in terms of behaviors, but if it does, it will be in the right direction. Team > individual.

Auraxium medals have very little to do with skills. Most people you see with them are players who spend hours upon hours every day playing. Auraxium medals and weapons should rewarded to those who contribute to the fight. That's why no one is reacting. Now, the players who do the heavy lifting, ie, those who make the first big push, dishing it out and taking it, also get rewarded.

Also, pretty sure KDR, kill counter, or KPM is staying. So don't worry, you will still be able to erect a rock hard ****** even with this change.

Your elitism is showing.

Compare these two:

• An experienced player that can, and does, put in the effort to kill other experienced players (who, by virtue of being effective themselves are "extreme menace"), MAXes, gets more headshots etc.
• Someone who spawn kill farms players that are barely fighting back?

With every kill being treated the same, doesn't that devalue the effort and capability of the former?

The XP system naturally tracks and adjusts for effort - not perfectly, but does alright. Kills ignores a whole lot of the details.

Yes this would be great.

Espcially for players like me who are part time killers in ps2. Often i will get shot and only have time to land 2 bullets or so before i die, most of my deaths are from behind.

They can keep tracking kills hell they could add a whole new tier for kills instead than, but I like the change over. I hate getting assists when it was my damage that did it.

Can we have SOE start to count the actual kill, instead of the weapon used to get the kill? (in addition to the current ribbon/medal system?)

There should be ribbons/medals for specific kills, regardless of how the kill was achieved.
i.e.: Kill 10 Sunderers, earn your xtra XP /ribbon/ medal... no matter how.. if you used C4, or mines, or pushed the darn thing over a cliff.. a dead Sunderer because of your actions is a dead Sunderer that should count for more than just simple xp

Make it give a ribbon for every 10, or 20 or whatever.. but maybe let players specialize in something other than just a specific weapon, or in addition to that, specialize in a specific play-style, that leads to the kills of specific targets.

i.e.:
every 10 MBT/lightning kills = ribbon
every 20 ESF kills = ribbon
every 10 MAX kills
every 20 infiltrator kills
etc. etc..
every vehicle, every class.. no matter how it was achieved

build an XP Auraxium around that. It would also take players away from their silly 'stat-padding' arguments..
"oh, yeah, your KDR is maybe 50.. but I take out way more Sunderers than you do.. "..
Achievements, perceived value as players, ribbons, earn more XP.. enjoy the game even more.. etc..

Does that make sense to anyone else? (not asking Higby, he is not reading this forum anyway.. )

Hurray!!! Finally!!!

Less egoists mentality and more focus on team-playing!
You help everybody AND everybody helps you!
Nice.
I'll say it again, finally!

We are in one army, already against two others, why should we fight against team-mates on top of that?

The end result is important, win the battles to win the war.

And about directives, some of them can still keep track of kills for all we know. Case by case I say on those.

All the thumbs up

It's the basic premise of your assumption that Kills in and of themselves matter, that is wrong. Perhaps not in the case of vehicle kills, but infantry kills, yes.

The XP system is simply more robust and better capable of rewarding players for the actual effort they've put forth. If you're moving around intentionally taking out players that are trying to make a push on a point, or who are killing your allies, flipping objectives and the like, then you're making kills that affect the game play and are normally rewarded a fair amount of experience for those kills. If you are farming people, aka your kills take little effort, and on an overall scale, don't really affect game play: that player will respawn in a few seconds for you to kill again, or be revived, or anything that gets them back in the game, right at that exact same spot essentially nullifying your effort, or lack thereof, you're going to get less experience for what is essentially only a partial kill.

If this was a TDM, where your kills added to some total that eventually made your team win, then yeah, I'd say reward them, but they don't. The only thing that actually helps your team win is the effort used to move your team forwards. Whichever side can put more effort points into a fight, or more efficiently utilise those effort points, will win the fights, even if they get less kills than their ennemy; they were simply better at keeping their team up and operational, and better at oppressing the opposing forces.

Overall, weather you're sitting there helping oppress the ennemy into their spawn point, or hunting around the base for the more capable straglers who are attempting to route your forces, your efforts should equal out, because the experience is dynamic and will reward both play styles, as well as rewarding those players who actually attempt to make a push outside of the spawn point (because your farming will make you worth more), or even to pull back and pull vehicles, because your armor's gonna be worth a ton.

Additionally, people who help you opppress those individuals, or help you hunt down other people will be rewarded for that effort, It's not as much as actually getting the kill, but at least they get a nice little pat of the back from the game that says "you did something, thank you"; it rewards team play, without fully de-emphasising the value of that final hit, which people of your caliber seem to argue means everything, while the game itself clearly attempts to deny that VIA it's play mechanics.

I really don't see why anyone would be against this, unless they're upset it'll de-emphasize their spawn killing, but I would argue that's entirely the point; de emphasize what should be, and add emphasis where it's needed.

Yes Please.
:insert give me gif here:

I like this idea but with the added xp from assists I think they should raise the amount of xp it takes to auraxium a weapon Instead of setting it as the equivalent to 1160 kills. Also does this mean we would see non lethal weapons such as the flash/conc/emp grenades being able to be auraxiumed?

This sounds like a great plan, its so annoying when people get the last hit (though it would also be nice to have a count as kill if you do enough damage), and it would be great to be rewarded more for killing high threat targets.

I just hope it makes it easier to get medals... its SO annoying grinding them out, especially now theres fun new guns you can only get by grinding.

i was watching the wrel video linked a while back and ever since thought thought this was a great idea in the end i think this is better for the game and i disagree with the people so far who have said against this change.

edit: does this have a thread in reddit and if it does can someone link it please.

There's no such thing as kill stealing in terms of PS2 gameplay.

In terms of auxing weapons though there sort of is.



In MMORPGs initally most of them had the mechanic of last person to hit (that did the killing blow) got the exp and loot (similar to PS2 in terms of Auxing).
That was then changed to those that did most damage to the target got the exp and loot...... and now some have anyone that does damage gets a % of the exp (base on % damage) AND some loot(! - something unthinkable in early MMORPG days).



Currently PS2 does share the exp (I think you actually still get more reward of the "kill" though), but in terms of Auxing it is basically using the ruleset of 1999 EQ1 (i.e. last hit gets it ALL).


I don't think there's any real downside to this change, unless SOE use it as an excuse to double the effective number of kills it takes to Aux something, which would be plain low.

Well, what else should i care about in PS2?

• Strategy and tactics? The introduction of lattice basically removed strategy from the game. Players are forced to use the same paths and attack routes again and again. This means numbers win --> the majority of players mindlessly moves around the map in zergs.
• Territory? Resource consolidation made territory completly meaningless. No one cares about territory anymore.
• Vehicle combat and logistics? The buff of redeploying and respawning (timers got reduced) devaluated tanks and and logistics. Tanks are mainly used for farming kills now and many players just redeploy from fight to fight. Whats between the bases doesnt really matter anymore.
• Alerts? Alerts got simplified so much, now the faction who is best at redeploy-side wins.
• KDR? As long as you can kill enemies from the safety of the spawn room or rack up dozens of kills by shelling a spawn sunderer with HE cannon, KDR doesnt mean much.
• XP? High BR players have unlocked most of the stuff they want and XP has litte value to them.

Look at the list ... it seems to me that SOE wants to make the game as meaningless as possible. Getting Auraxium medals is one of the last few goals in the game. Many veteran players, including me use Auraxium medals as a goal BECAUSE its a challenge. Now devs make Auraxium medals stupidly easy to obtain ... Every noob can spray and pray and get lots of assits. Auraxium medals will be worthless. Thats like a slap in the face to all the veteran players. Higby's suggestion sounds like this to veterans: "What do you think of devaluating your achievements in the game by making Auraxium medals super easy to obtain".

I agree tough that some Auraxium medals are too difficult to obtain, like the ones for pistols and rocket launchers, but thats because all Auraxium medals require the same amout of kills. Thats just lazy design. Its obvious that it is 100x easier to get 1160 kills with a LMG than with a pistol. My suggestion:

• Adjust the numbers of kills required for Auraxium according to the kill potential of a weapon.
• Introduce kill assist ribbons and a assist directive.

I got yelled at for killing a VS sundy that was harassing the base, and I was told beforehand not to. What the hell kind of logic is that?