[Suggestion] Re-evaluate Launcher Auraxium Progress

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by jokleinn, Jun 18, 2020.

  1. jokleinn

    Hi! I hate all forms of having fun, so recently I decided I'd like to grind for the Kraken. But, I've noticed something -- the 3 decimators are great and relatively easy to get aurax'd, but the rest of the launchers function with teamwork (locks, lancer, phoenix) or purely function as deterrents (locks, striker)

    I've gone searching through some other people's thoughts on the matter (e.g. yell chat and google) and seen people commiserating (MAX melee kills auraxium!!), but struggled to find anything recent on the DBG forums. Some of the suggestions I've seen, or toyed with on my own, are:

    - Make launchers get a "kill" toward auraxium progress if they'd dealt a significant enough portion of recent damage, say, 40%, to a vehicle when it dies
    OR - Make launchers get a "kill" toward auraxium progress if the user obtains a threshold vehicle damage XP or air deterrence XP
    OR - Make launcher auraxiums strictly based on weapon earned XP altogether

    The only opposition I've seen to these ideas are "I already did the grind back when the launchers were easier to auraxium, I don't want this challenge to be easier and let other people have this thing!" -- does anyone have other thoughts as to why something like this would be a harmful idea? I think some variation of this would be healthy for the game and make a neglected auraxium directive tree see some more love.
    • Up x 2
  2. Demigan

    Make assists count as partial kills. So if you've got 75% assist XP you get 75% of a kill towards your next auraxium. 4 75% assist kills would result in 3 total kills added to your launcher. This encourages dealing as much damage as possible.

    Another thing to consider: If you get assist XP you only get it for the vehicle, not for any occupants. It's always so nice to see you deal 90% damage against a vehicle and then someone swoops in and gets both the vehicle kill and 2 extreme menace kills while you get 90% of a vehicle assist. This encourages killstealing rather than working together. The worst I've seen was when 4 tanks all stopped firing and let their ally die simply because no one wanted to deal the second-to-last shot and they all waited to finish the target off. While that is extreme, it does happen on a small scale all the time. The entire system of earning XP and ticks towards something needs to be reworked. For example shouldn't a lower DPS weapon get more XP for the same kill as a higher DPS weapon? Shouldn't we make sure that players will gladly focus on the biggest and strongest target in the hopes of getting a kill rather than focussing on the weakest and smallest target (infantry) and killing those with the biggest and cheesiest gun they can find? Shouldn't we make deaths unlisted and meaningless to encourage players to fight and experiment however they like to achieve their goals?
    • Up x 2
  3. Clipped!

    I've been wanting something like this for frag and AV grenades (stickies could use it too, but less so) because of how hard it is to get a kill with them. Yes, it's been made a bit easier to do so, but it's still very frustrating. What I originally had in mind was an "explosive kill assist" for the explosive directives (along with making ALL lethal grenades count for explosive and not just their class specific ones) so that dealing half or more of someones health with a grenade can still help you get your ARX-C4 like I've struggled for so long myself.
  4. Liewec123

    yep i've suggested this too,
    the launchers have extremely long reloads, and a smoking/burning vehicle is a very big "SHOOT HERE" beacon,
    so unless you're the jerk waiting to steal the kill,
    you're going to have to be very lucky to land the last hit with 5 seconds between rockets in an MMOFPS.

    or if the "kills only" method stays they should drastically lower the requirements for the RL directive,
    because currently the only people with Kraken are the ones who cheesed the turrets at an empty amp station.
    (which apparently can get you banned!), this directive just won't come naturally,
    it'd probably take longer than the lifetime of the game to naturally accumulate 5800 kills with launchers.
    i know this because i have a character called "R0CKET5" who i've played on and off for over a year,
    using ONLY rocket launchers.
    not a single kill with any other weapon, and i'm barely over 10% of the way towards Kraken.
    • Up x 1