So this is my first time in the PS2 forums and the idea im going to propose might sound a little extreme, but honestly i think it's the way to go. So let me get straight to the point: Kills grant exp depending on the BR/KDR/Directive score the killed person has. The lower any of those variables is, the less exp will be granted, or to some extreme, killing someone in the range of BR 0-5 will not grant exp at all nor will increase the kill count in a weapon's directive line. Another option to consider, is to remember these new players this is an MMOFPS, with a message appearing on screen after they died a certain ammount of times in a row, saying that they can leave their current battle and go to another one without any kind of penalty. The idea of this is obviously to disencourage all players (me included :v) to just sit there killing people "ignoring" the sunderer where they are spawning from, and avoid repeating what happened to Thespiffingbrit's stream. I'm sorry if there is anything that isn't clear in this thread as english is not my native language, and i would like to know what you think about this meassure, how to improve it, or straight up say another solution. Thx for reading, cya :3
Think it's a great idea. However I never know who I've shot till after I've shot them. (Please enlighten me otherwise any long time players) Only then does the info come up. Would afford mercy to any new players if I knew they were new. Often times I don't shoot down a nood in my mosquito if I have worked out he/she is a new player. The reason for this mercy is not entirely altruistic. If they have an easy time to begin with and don't get shot as soon as they spawn/fly they are likely to stay playing the game and that's a win for everyone. Incidently I won't shoot you now I know your name, 'Reijav'. If your not TR that is. (Terran Repuplic/ icufosatnite or WholeArmyOfMars) and play on 'miller'.
As mentioned above, you really cant tell if a player is new in the seconds between rounding a corner and actually dropping them. If ive killed a player a couple of times and i suspect they are new, i tend to drop them a /tell letting them know a little tip that might help them in the sort of scenario they ended up getting killed by me. While i cant exactly avoid killing a new player that is/has shot at me, i can show that while the early hours of the game can be punishing, there are ways to improve and the vets arent necessarily ********... In terms of spawn killing, the game used to award less XP for a kill within seconds of spawning and a brief period of invunerability that turned off either 1-2 seconds after spawning, or when you fire your weapons which stopped the issue of spawning in already dead but neither of these things seem to be in the game, or atleast dont trigger often enough these days.
By shifting the game away from KD and murder-the-weakest-oriented goals and refocussing the game on fighting as hard as you can against the biggest and baddest target out there without a care about how many deaths it costs as long as you succeed.
What about when veterans create alts and farm tons of people as defaults? BR doesn't really mean much, a person could be ASP 100 and still suck, just like a BR one could be the most formidable of players. I think we must really address the core reasons why new players leave, and that involves playing around with damage resistances and headshot multipliers. Coming up with mechanics like this just seem like a band-aid fix to avoid addressing the real issues.
I wouldn't try to adjust behavior of the veteran doing the killing. Good luck with that. Using BR wouldn't work anyway as many players in the top tiers of the game regularly roll up fresh characters for various reasons. Changing the behavior of the new player may be the better way. Upon spawn, have a banner flash very briefly giving a warning. If population is bad: "Warning: Your allies are in need of reinforcement here. Fights may be challenging." If you have chain deaths: "The U key can be used to change fights if this one is not going well for you"
Thing is, most players (well, me anyway) only ever find out the BR of an enemy player after one of us is dead. (or by pressing TAB if he's in the score). It's not reliable, but you can otherwise more or less guess if a player is new or relatively new simply from the gear he's wearing (composite armour for example). I like your idea of a message though, and I like that you put time into sharing this, I think believe it's an issue that has been under-estimated by the devs.
That's a method in MMORPGS, where you want to avoid higher lvl people ganking lowies. It doesn't make sense in a FPS like PS2, a new player can drop a veteran in a single well aimed shot. What could work though is a system of dimishing returns. Every time you kill a player in a certain timeframe you get less XP for each consecutive kill. Timer gets reset after x minutes or if you get killed by the other player. I don't really think this is necessary, but I guess it would lessen the hardcore farming of newbies a little bit.
Not a huge fan of gimping directives. Less XP sounds fine (albeit largely ineffective), but taking away the good boy points is only hazard-proofing the NPE. Look at it this way: One NC guy sees that one of his bases is being capped with 100% VS and decides he's going to go protect it. He immediately realizes that nearly every player here is below BR20, and must have just pressed E and wound up here. Whether or not they're good, he would need to overcome however many guns pointed at him to capture a base, with a reward of... of not getting any credit toward the directive he's working on. NC guy says to himself "Screw this. I'm going to go fight at a biolab or middle base." VS group continues to move up that lane. Bases like Biolabs and center bases remain toxic. Nothing was gained. I understand where you're coming from but you can't just remove all rewards against a particular type of player.
I think we should change player behavior instead; currently the mentality of players is "farm is love, farm is life." It's why we get zergs steamrolling lanes and huge pop-sink Biolab fights in the middle of an alert. People don't want to necessarily "win" or try their best to achieve victory; they just want easy wins or team deathmatches. We need to find ways to change the game from a mechanical perspective that makes "real" fights and more tactical gameplay more rewarding, or otherwise making Zergs and stalemate "farms" a bad idea.
As much as I agree (check my signature ), that depends 100% on the devs, they make a game that promotes farming or that doesn't, it's their decision.
I mean, if you see an enemy, no matter what BR he is, you would still need to kill him as he can be a thread to any base defense / capture, but in the case there was a sunderer spawning a bunch of people, killing the sunderer should be more rewarding than just farming them, maybe by giving exp depending on how many players keep spawning in the sundie and some other variables to not make it exploitable. This can and will give exaggerated amounts of exp in big fights, making hiding and defending sunderers a more important task. In the case they are spawning from a spawn room, you as the player can only kill him over and over, and maybe drop them a /tell as i saw above giving him some tips, thus the redeploy/challenging fight message. The method of diminishing returns is a great idea, it will make farms a lot less rewarding, but during epic killstreaks might be more of a bad thing. It should also take into account if the killed player was damaging you to determine how much exp you receive. Maybe we could readjust the mentor rating thing we have. Both "Drill sargeant ribbons" and "Mentorship ribbons" can be easily exploited as long as you have a friend, as they are based on BR. Moreover none of these give as much as a reward than it should (one of these is not necessary to get the NS commander helmet either). First of all, it should be based around Directive Score, as its the only account-wide variable we have, unless they can consider the highest BR player an account has. Then, it should give actual rewards to be someone's mentor, like getting some number of one of these new currencies for each time the new player achieves a directive mission. This way it will be more rewarding to teach a new player all aspects of the game. Also, a new player should be notified when a person with a high mentor rating is online and viceversa, so that the veteran can find these new players easily and get to work. I think i have extended too much in this one :v. Thanks for reading.
Ideas for a meta that doesn't promote farming? Here are mine: 1) More XP for successful captures, as well as finishing a point cap (currently that's like 10% of a contest ping?). 2) Same amount of XP for a successful defense as for attack. 2.5) Give the same resource drops for defending as for attacking; maybe shift base ownership after a successful defense if another outfit exceededs the saved point pool of the originally owning outfit. 3) Increase XP scaling based on facility population ratio, adding +1% XP for every % your faction is underpop (including going into negatives for outpopping factions, I'd say up to -66%; that also makes ghostcaps less appealing).
I picture color changing shadows that goes from green to yellow to red so you know who the big money is.
There's tons of ways, like you said tweeking the XP, or the resources may influence player behaviours. Basically, just to keep things simple, they could work on 2 things ; 1. incentives (that's the obvious one, give XP / certs for something, people will want to do it) Think oif it like a carrot for a donkey; but it doesn't have to be a reward per se, it could simply be something that feels rewarding (like a statistic, like the K/D ratio) or or is simply easier to do or more convenient (like re-deploying instead of walking). But more than the rewards, the experience is what counts the most here, and that isn't simply whether something is fun, that is also whether something is meaningful. For example, players (just like people IRL) may often do things that aren't really fun, but they do it anyway because it makes sense for them, or it is meaningful in some way. One example of this would be, you're having fun somewhere doing whatever, and as you die you notice on the map screen that a base needs help defending, but it doesn't necessarily look like a nice fight, or a fair one, or a fun one, but you go anyway because that means something to you, whether it's a sense of duty or because it will contribute to a bigger reward later on (like winning an Alert). But it could be very simple things like switching to engineer to repair a vehicle. That's not fun, no one gets a kick out of repairing a vehicle, but people do it. 2. deterrents (that would be the stick) This is the kind of thing where authorities or people responsible organise any event involving the public and strcture things to help keep them safe but also efficient. Whether it's places like the underground tube or a football arena, people are "guided" without making them feel like they are being manipulated, for example, people will tend to try and take the shortest route, so making a route seem longer will tend to guide them towards another one. It's the same in the virtual world, for example ; when respawning, the green dots become available at different times, the first ones that become green are usually picked by the players simply because they will tend to not want to wait any longer. "the stick" is usually considered to be a punishment, and it often is, but deterrents can also be subtle, many times even not intended by the devs in the first place. In short, though it isn't that simple, and without being patronising about it because it's the same in the real world with real people everywhere, design, using the carrot and the stick, is an important factor and I would say that it holds the biggest responsibility (as opposed to other things such as human nature or behaviour which is known by everyone). Therefore player behaviour in a game, in the same way as the behaviour of the general public in a football arena or the undergound tube or the steets, is ultimately the responsability of the hosts who, (therefore therefore therefore) are the ones whoo ultimately, and even if it is only a matter of opinion (and not a legal thing) should be held accountable for it.
I feel like having a proper tutorial would help the new player experience. Something that actually goes over some more in depth mechanics such as CoF management, recoil control and corner Pieing, as well as more in depth explanation of vehicle combat and class specific functions. A VR training scenario with bots or moving targets could be useful, since it teaches how to lead and compensate for bullet drop. The last I remember about the tutorial was from launch, and it was VERY barebones, simply telling you basic infantry controls and capture points, then it literally dropped you into the biggest fight it could find. Mentoring was a step in the right direction, but you cannot foist all the responsibility of a good newbie experience on veteran players. Especially in a naturally toxic environment like online gaming. Sure some will be friendly and helpful, but they are very much the exception.
The newbies I've had the fortune of running with all whine about the same thing, aiming mechanics and friendly fire. All of them come from lollipop shooters. Overpowered aim-assist and No friendly fire. Not all newbies whine mind you, a small share actually embrace the freedom. For the love of gaming don't put PS2 on their lollipop level. o7
