I've been going through the directives for the Vanguard and Lightning, and I have to say, it encourages poor playing. For instance, let's say I'm going for tank kills. I spend a while finding some armor if I'm not playing at peak hours. Finally, I find an enemy Prowler. There are also a bunch of friendly heavies pelting it with rockets. The obvious thing to do would be to shoot the Prowler immediately so we can take it out before he wipes out 2 or 3 heavies, but what's the benefit to me if I get two shells on him and some dude with a decimator gets the kill? A tank kill assist doesn't help my directive at all. I find myself waiting until I see fire on the enemy tank before I even fire a shot. Selfish? Obviously, but I didn't spend 10 minutes driving around trying to find a tank just to get an assist. Normally, that wouldn't bother me, but I'm trying to get my directive finished. :/ This situation applies to getting kills with primary and secondary weapons as well, not just the specific scenario I outlined. The fix is simple. Have every two or three assists count as a kill. Especially for the HE and HEAT if y'all aren't going to fix their UPness. I've been trying to aurax the HE for a long time and all I get are 1000 assists and 10 kills every time I pull it. If we would just get credit for 1 kill every 2 or 3 assists, I feel like it would encourage better teamwork, but maybe that's just me!
You have problems with tank directives? Try doing the Valkyrie directives, especially getting rumble seat kills... I hardly can get any rumble seat kills because I hardly can find any good Valkyrie pilots. Getting the transport, gunner, or squad spawning directives is no problem for me, but getting the rumble seat kills is way too hard (that throwing mines out of the seats is buggy as hell is no big help too). I do agree though that the directives encourage bad playing. I for example already found myself that I start to do dumb stuff like landing near infantry with the Valk and trying to kill someone out of the rumble seat, just to get a rumble seat kill, although this is just a stupid thing to do. And people do dumb stuff like this the whole time in this game just to somehow complete these dumb directives.
That's always an issue with achievement systems. That's the reason I don't like them. They all provide unobvious, selfish and weird gameplay, where teamplay and common sense are sacrificed in order to get that carrot slightly faster. Making several assists count as a kill as a kill is a fresh and elegant idea, and I support it totally. I thought: "why not make it 1 assist = 1 kill", but it would be worse, because then people will try to get at least one hit at any cost, and then leave the duty of finishing off the target to somebody else. Not gud.
I saw this idea elsewhere but i like it so here goes: give kills on % of dmg done. meaning if I shoot someone and do 90% dmg and someone else kills them by doing the last 10% , then i get a 0.9 of a kill for a directive and they get 0.1. this means that support weapons like the lasher will be easier to aurax. It should also work like this for kdr, so in order to help your kdr you'd actually have to help your team instead of kilstealing.
Agreed, and that idea is better, the problem with that is it's much harder to implemented, because that would require a revamp of the whole system, while the change proposed by the OP is a small addition to already established system.
ulitimatly, my idea is better, but his idea is easier, so we all know which ones going in the game, right?
I mean, the directive could be about playing your role well, but it's not. It's about maximizing kill shots. You can still have an achievement system like the current one and count assists as well, because they are already quantifiable. It would be so easy for the devs to do.
as I've proposed before, just make the % count. You dealt 30% damage and got 30% assist XP? You got 30% of a kill You dealt 99,99% damage and someone else finished it off? You still got 99% of a kill towards your directive. Edit: and seeing someone elses take on this idea, I don't see why the one who finishes the enemy can't get a full kill as well. There's plenty of times where someone else needs to finish the vehicle because you can't (think tanks that went behind cover for repairs). So just reward them with a full kill and be done with it.
Yes. Neither. This is the same company that can't be bothered to finish the critical resource revamp for years, after all.
The problem with the Directive System is that people think they need to complete the Directive System.
They were going to make directives and weapon kills exp based, but as with so many things in PS2 it turned out to be "too difficult". Which is a shame, because it would have solved an awful lot of issues with Directives. To be fair though a Directive system that no one was bothered about completing wouldn't really be much of anything, and certainly wouldn't fit SOE orginal critera for putting it in (player retention through long-term goals). It could certainly be made much better, without being made easier, as such. With things like exp based contribution and indeed more options (who really wants to finish MAX punches?).
Achievement systems keep people interested. I know people like me, who are goal obsessed, don't like just grinding to win meaningless alerts. I want to finish achievements and have something to show that I completed my goal. I'm not a big lumifiber fan, and I think they should give vehicle directives a custom banner like the weapons directives give, but it's something anyway.
