[Suggestion] Biggest problems with the game and the single, simple solution.

This is my personal opinion and I welcome constructive feedback and suggestions.

I really enjoy this game and want it to succeed, but in it's current state/direction, I do not see that happening.

I personally feel that the largest issues with this game as it stands right now can all be solved with one, simple change. Changing the amount of experience rewarded for certain behavior.

Problems-Solution-Support

• Infantry farming
  • Killing a foot soldier with a tank or plane should reward experience relative to the amount of "effort", "skill", "time" (really want ever you want to call it) taken. Exp rewarded should be reduced down to 5-30 exp per kill rather than 100+
    • This will (in theory) get more people out of their vehicles and on the ground as killing infantry as infantry is more rewarding than farming with tanks or planes.
    • Tanks and planes will still be necessary to win battles and will still have their place, but the rewards will be much more inline with performance. (the following suggestions will reinforce armor and air importance).
• Lack of base defense
  • Defending a base should yield large amounts of experience as it is extremely important. The bonus is nice, but far from acceptable. The bonus should be bumped up to 1.5-2.0x exp either with or without large lump payouts of experience (500-1000 per 10 minutes) for being around (and earning points, not just afking).
    • This will get more people defending bases, making the whack a mole game play of hoping randomly around the map and the zerg much less effective.
• Lack of purpose in the game
  • Capturing a base should be a major feat. You should feel as though you have accomplished something impressive, because you have (or should have, especially with the above change). Exp for capturing a base should be bumped up MASSIVELY! Somewhere between the range of 5-10k exp depending on how intense the fighting was. Capturing a continent should reward an insane amount of exp between 5k-25k based on your contribution.
    • This will get more people interested in actually winning fights rather than their own personal K/D or performance.
    • Taking a base should be worth much more than ~10 measly kills as you have completed a primary goal of the game and performed a much more important task than farming for your own personal gain. This is a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE GAME after all.
    • Taking a continent should yield a reward, and an impressive one. Every base taken should increase your personal "cap count" on the continent for each player present. Based on this count you should be rewarded a decent amount of experience for your commitment to the fight on said continent. 5k for a capture or two up towards 25k for a full sweep of the continent.
      • Note: this cap count system will clear after a cont capture. Therefore, losing a single base and retaking it will not yield the same massive bonus/incentive but a much lesser, reasonable one.
• High grind
  • The above solutions should take care of this issue.

TL;DR : Properly allocating experience to game certain critical game behaviors could fix several large issues with the current state of the game. Suggestions, comments, concerns?

The biggest issue in this game is that it's the technical equivalent of foil on a TV antenna.

Fix bugs. Patch glitches away. Remove hackers. Get this game smooth. Claiming something is the biggest issue, when it isn't the mass of bugs, just makes me not want to read past the first paragraph.

I've seen 1 hacker since beta and have encountered 2 bugs... I really have not seen either of these issues.

I was previously running this game on a phenom II x4 940 BE @ 3.0GHz, 4GB DDR2 ram, and a GTX 9600GT. Quite dated. I was still able to keep my fps above 30 on low settings. The performance isn't what it should be, but I would value the issues I listed as more important than fixing the game for several unknown/awkward hardware configurations or people attempting to run this game past what their hardware can handle.

Lol.. You must not be playing Planetside 2.

There are bugs, they take time to fix. It is possible to work on other important things, like those listed here.
I view the issue as a problem with the mindset of the majority of players though, even if that mindset does revolve around certs, that is the underlying issue. Not XP. That said, it's alot easier to fix XP to 'bribe' players into playing the game instead of farming arbitrary points so I agree with most of the above.
Adding in base benefits that are worth fighting for IMO would work better than sheer number of certs, at least I would hope.

To be honest I didn't encounter that many bugs as well, or maybe I didn't care about them. Some are pretty obvious like bad performance, FPS drop over time, occasional flashing textures. Nothing that breaks the game permanently.

But I must agree with OP, since some XP rewards seems like a joke. Defending base grants you no XP what so ever except kill you manage to get and if you are playing dedicated to infantry there ain't too many of them. Repairing generators?? No reward, succesfully defended base?? No reward. Capping control station - 25 XP LOL!!.

It's the same with other rewards like destroying vehicles, destroying light aircraft - 75 XP, killing infantry over 100 XP....

I was really enjoying playing HA, but when I notice how slow I was getting certs I had to switch to engineer cause I felt like I was going nowhere! I have averege K/D 1,5 and that's all I can get playing as INF only with FPS varying from 14 to 30.

Though on my server 2 continents are capped by NC, I don't thing I have received any reward for taking a part in those battles, maybe its non exisitng or I wasn't logged in at that time. It's pretty dissapointing. The - 10% prices rewards are joke as well.

I really like the idea of a scaled XP distribution based on who you are (Infantry, light/heavy vehicle, etc..) vs the enemy.

Killing a ESF with a HA Infantry giving a pitiful 150-200xp (depending on boosts and IF the pilot bailed and denind you his kill)
Yet a ESF/Liberator/Tank can literally farm spawnpoints to the hell and back racking up insane amopunt of XP when in comparison a Infantry player doesn't even get 30% of that in the same time.

This needs serious rebalancing of the danger/reward system. Especially since most Infantry vs others situation force you into the way that you need several infantry people to take down one ESF or one heavy tank, yet the reward for these people (kill assist, critical assist) if beyond pitiful.

Forgot to mention this as well...taking important objectives should also be worth a hell of a lot more than several kills. Certainly not less than 100.

I'd like to see the defender's bonus XP scale with the ratio of enemies:allies there are in a facility battle. If people look at their map and see an outpost is being taken, you better believe they would try defending that place if they had the possibility of getting 2x or 3x experience. Then when other people flock to defend and the experience rate goes down to something reasonable like 10%, boom you suddenly have managed to convince a bunch of players to defend an outpost from a medium-sized host.

I fully agree. You design a game to reward the type of game play you want people to play. right now that's all attack, no defense, and farm as many infantry kills as you can in vehicles.

I would love to see xp adjusted for how hard it is to do. i think that's sort of what they were going for now, but i think it can be adjusted.

I personally think that a defense and capping bonus's should be calculated the same way but with a little more xp towards capturing(it is harder to attack then defend). When an area is capped or defended it should give you an xp report of how much xp you have earned in the area during the cap/defense, the percentage you helped cap/defend the hex and then what your bonus is based on the percentage of cap/def. However the bonus should be a small multiplier of what you did in the area based on the % you helped with cap/defense. time spent directly in the cap point should go towards this bonus. this means if you fly into an area a second before it's capped you get almost no bonus but if you have been fighting for it the entire capture you get the full bonus multiplier for what you actually did. For defense if the area is only slightly lost you get a small bonus and if it's mostly lost yet defend it you get a bigger bonus. Perhaps a extra bonus for defending an area that's been more then half lost. I would also love to see bonus's given regardless if you are in that area right that second the cap/def is completed. i'm sure air units would appreciate this. this would allow you to move to the next point when you know the area will definitely cap and not worry about losing that entire xp bonus just because you're not right there.

I think people need to see that they are being rewarded for what they do and currently defending just doesn't have that same rewarding bonus attacking does so people just don't do it. I definitely think you shouldn't get the same xp for killing infantry from a vehicle as you do on foot. difficulty should be considered and effort as well. I also agree that capping an entire continent should give a much bigger bonus, as well as perhaps a continent bonus if your down to only a few hex's this would encourage people to actually go fight where they know they will die. there are server population bonus's but you can't move characters to different servers, so why aren't there continent bonus's based on population so that underdogs feel rewarded for their fight.

I would rather see EXP rewarded for time alive. kill them shortly after spawn, 30 exp. Been a live for 20 mins, get a nice 400 exp. I miss that from PS1, the nice chunk of exp for killing someone whos been alive and killing for a while. No longer encourages farming of infantry

I am totally with you on this. Defense and captures need to be rewarded a lot more!

But concerning the vehicles i am not so sure. I'll explain myself:

To me it does not take more effort to kill infantry as infantry thannit takes to kill infantry as vehicle (perhaps except liberators right now because of insane aoe damage!) So why reward it more!

But what takes insane effort is to kill vehicles as infantry and especially air! A Galaxy or sunderer are worth a lot of points but its not enough...
Air vehicle kills and assists in current meta are a real feat to accomplish as infantry or tank. So reward it more and you might see some AA maxes trying to get that 1000 point liberator kill!

Aye.

I agree that there needs to be more incentive to defend bases, but the base defense XP bonus is a badly designed system and here is why: It doesn't actually encourage people to defend their territory, rather it encourages them to take an easy to defend installation very close to the enemies warp gate, pile into it, and then just camp there for XP, who cares if they don't control any of the rest of the continent, as long as they have a steady stream of people to kill.
Increasing the XP bonus will only make that type of grinding even more prevalent.

Even with the non HE turrets the ability to kill infantry in a vehicle is not on par with killing infantry as infantry, you have quite a few more hitpoints and a much longer TTK, especially if your target does not have an AV weapon. With the HE turrets, it's just dumb. They're basically giant grenade launchers that don't have poor physics. I encourage you to give them a shot while they're still in their current state.

but isn't that defending? If all the suggestions I made are implemented, capping bases and the continent as a whole will both have major incentives luring people away from this as well.

This would also work for exp rewarded for kills.

Agreed, OP. Reduce the experience gained by vehicles killing infantry. Increase the defensive XP bonus, and include a tick every 15 minutes or so depending on defender performance.

I like a lot of these ideas. What we have now is unacceptable. It's oversimplified, unrewarding, imbalanced, and.....boring.

Personally, I'm a big fan of dynamic rewards that change on the fly depending on the situation. One that was mentioned was basing rewards on the number of people in a battle, and the the length of time of the battle.

A game like this should always guide players with dynamic rewards. By increasing and decreasing rewards in a situation, you can minimize camping, spam, rinse and repeat, stalemates, and dramatically increase fun.

Some other possibilities:

* Location awards - Imagine 3 rings around a base, 1 covering the wall and perimeter, 1 covering the field between the wall and the main base, and the 3rd covering the main base. Attackers would get increasing benefits for kills the further they push in, i.e., more xp for inner ring kills than outer rings. This would be based on the position of the shooter, not the victim. For Defenders, it would be the opposite, the more they push out, and make kills from the outer ring, the more xp they get, but still based on the position of the shooter.

* Spam, camping and stalemate control - For attackers only, gradually diminishing returns on kills and damage rewards conducted within a certain radius (30m?) within a certain period of time. In other words, sitting on the flight deck of the biolab for 3 hours spamming away will eventually reduce you to 1xp per kill, instead of the 100xp it gives now. This will hopefully motivate people to move forward and push into the base, or try a different location around the base, or a different base altogether. This incentive would be applied on an individual basis. Other rewards such as repairs, healing and ammo packs would also be gradually reduced.

Those flight deck fights are ridiculous - It's nothing more than a giant camp n' xp fest. I "use" them for the xp, but I wouldn't call them fun. Any time I charge in with a grenade, I can easily get 2-4 kills, but few want to do that. That is one of the problems with shooters, is that people don't like to charge in. Charging is a blast and is highly productive.

Right now, the individual based rewards outweigh what is supposed to be the objective of the game, which is, capturing territory and conquering maps. We need things to reinforce that objective, and, reward people with the xp they want along the way.

* Empire points - This is an idea of mine that I've posted a few times since back in beta. This is a scoreboard idea, although I would love to see a weekly and monthly reward for each server/faction/continent. Imagine once every week, 1 faction on each server is rewarded with some type of in-game medal and an xp bonus, for having the most Empire points for that week, and then again for the month! I would love that, and I'm sure it would be a good motivation for a lot of people.

The basic idea is that the longer a faction holds a base, the more Empire points are earned, up to a certain cap, which would differ depending on the base. There would be no cap for any base on the frontlines and open to attack.

Attackers could halt the point gain by flipping a single CP. Once a CP is flipped, point gain halts, and will not restart until the base is capped or successfully defended. By having this 'single CP' rule to halt point gain, it would put more pressure on defenders to guard all of their CP's.

ETA: I forgot to add that Empire points could also be blocked if they are cut off from the warpgate, just as resources are cutoff now if the chain back to the warpgate is cutoff.

Point cap and gain rates:

Small bases: Cap of 250 points, earned at the rate of 10 points every 6 minutes (100 points per hour).

Big bases: Cap of 1000 points, rate of 40 points every 6 minutes (400 per hour)

Front line bases: Unlimited point totals, but earned at the standard rates.

Many of us love scoreboards in games, and I think this idea would be a very nice addition.

Hope it's ok if I commit a bit on this.

I appreciate the suggestions and ideas. Wish more people would take the time to read long posts.

Defense should reward xp. But, the xp should scale according to amount of enemy presence a few minutes prior to the rehack, and maybe also according to how "long" the hack was. Another multiplier could be influence. If you actually take your time to leave the zerg farm to go clean up your backyard, you should be awarded. No question about it, also if the "hack" has no enemy at the time you show up.

Another incentive to keep ppl going for strategic and announced targets could be through outfits. Outfits should gain benefits and ranks over time in general, and outfits should gain rewards from showing up with their squads and platoons at contested and clearly important bases and objectives. The amounts and requirements for these rewards should be up to SOE to balance, but it would make it much more desirable to #1. join an outfit and #2. make the outfit do strategic work.

Then theres everything that made the meta-game in PS1 such an epic experience, but I wont go into this. SOE have heard it a million times, but I hope they take it seriously into consideration. Theres so much about the strategics of PS1 that wasn't brought into PS2, and it's a shame.