[Suggestion] Want to balance population? Character bound XP

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by raffa2, Oct 22, 2018.

  1. raffa2

    If you, DBG, want to balance population, why not just split something like 33% of all the XP gained to a common pool XP that can be used between characters and factions?
    This would make changing faction during low or high pop more easy, and would reduce a lot of stat padding.
    Also a single character already takes full commitment to grind, so it wouldn't cause too much of a loss in terms of people not buying boosters, as most people simply are discouraged from playing the other factions due to having to start the game all over again from br1.
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  2. tommyrocket

    Yup, that's definitely one way to do it. Seen a similar suggestion on reddit these past few months as I recall.

    My previous suggestions towards this topic have usually been around something like a "Global Cert Pool", or "Account-wide Cert Pool". All XP/Certs ever gained on any character at any time would be added to the pool to be used as the player sees fit. If you had 100,000 gross earnings on your main, that same amount should be available for use on any other character regardless of spendings on the main. This, I feel, would've been the best course of action early on in development. As we are now, it's easy to find the virtual 'financial hole' that's been dug. Memberships, buying weapons for the whole account, ISO-4, etc. Weapons for the whole account seems to give them & other folks reason enough to deny the leap of faith that I personally feel would be good for the game. I think there's money in the amount of player retention/gain that could come from it.

    As you say, factions could be more balanced, or in my opinion, forcibly balanced, as people wouldn't be as angry because they won't lose their work just by switching team. It's like, how would people feel if they lost all their accrued weapons on TF2 if they switched from Red to Blue team? I feel it's not too much different than that analogy.

    The real best way, had it been done from the beginning, would've been to make just a single character that can log into all 3 factions. (I mean c'mon, it's a video game, when has lore really mattered here?) That way the cert gain really is on the one and is simplified in that way. People won't be wondering who's new the game and who isn't, as well, as not everyone looks at directive score to see a player's account career stats.
  3. adamts01

    I think community is much more important than all of that.
  4. FateJH

    How would this balance population? While I am fairly confident in saying that this would probably assist people who would want to switch characters for reasons of avoiding overpopulation or even underpopulation, those people are not the problem in the first place. If anything, this just contributes to a "play the most successful faction" issue as now you're working to build up three characters at once.
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  5. tommyrocket

    Those points are relevant as the game is now, but you have the consider that with one major change like global xp/certs, you'd also have to change everything else. Alert focus, reward distribution (to be even instead of lopsided so that it doesn't matter who you fight for) and faction auto-balance enforcement. People can't overpop if the game simply doesn't let them. Certain things would have to change completely if they were to make a significant change to progression, especially if retroactive.
  6. FateJH

    So, this isn't actually a simple change like a global cert pool but, rather, one of those "set everything on fire" approaches?
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  7. pnkdth

    I really wish we stopped this obsession with balance on a macro-level. It is an open world, ain't going to happen. There's no matchmaking and BR1s to BR100+ are playing together with differing numbers, different outfits care more/less about long-term goals, etc.

    Focus rewards on players, squads, platoons and their outfits. Sure, keep alerts and all that but screw balance in the sense of equal outcome/numbers. It is losing battle which punishes people who just want to play the game. I mean, it is not like you can just jump over to a low pop faction without consequence. You'll lose all them certs and progression and you won't be able to enjoy the faction you ENJOY playing. The last part is the most important, I think. I happen to like playing different factions but I totally get why you'd want to commit to your team and especially outfit.

    Instead, reward the hell out of those who go up against the zerg and those who fight tooth and nail at the point to keep the base. Think of it the faction command rewarding those who refused to back down and fought till the bitter end. We're playing in a sandbox and at this point, it is more important to find ways to make the game fun and compelling where you are currently playing. As the saying goes, "you gotta love yourself before you love someone else", and if you reduce people's fun they'll just play another game.

    The short version, create a solid foundation for players/outfits to create moments of awesome. Because if there are many moments of awesome it will add up to a lot of awesome, which in turn will be good for the game and keep people playing. The longer distance between player agency and reward the lesser the impact said reward has.

    Yepp, I kind of backtracked on my position to punish the big/winning team since I think Luicanus made a good point (in the alert thread) about bringing the honey instead of vinegar.
  8. Ge0mancer

    (Because I loving making work for other people...) What if you set it up so characters on a server shared certs? Once you spend them they're gone but if you play an alt you can use the certs you have laying around on your main to get up to speed faster (there would have to be something to prevent playing the first fifteen levels on an Alt, deleting the character and playing them again of course) If population is skewed you are presented with the option of switching factions when you die. It doesn't force you to change, and maybe it only asks every five or so deaths, so if your outfit is rolling hard you just say no but if you're more or less solo and don't mind jumping to the other team to make things more interesting for everyone you have that option without having to log out and maybe even have your time playing in an Alert just transfer over to the new character.

    But this is a spitball idea.
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  9. Lord_Mogul

    Not a bad point. Would help players to play their new chars that usually start with nothing.