[Suggestion] Encouraging good fights, encouraging fighting.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Ripshaft, Jan 10, 2013.

  1. Ripshaft

    Righto, just going to jump into this, my reasoning should be fairly obvious to those who need to understand it.


    Basic premise:
    Apply scaling xp rewards based on numbers balance in a zone. Display status of balance from map screen.
    If you greatly outnumber the enemy, you get very little aside from control of the territory. If the enemy greatly outnumbers you, you have great incentive to fight them as your xp reward will be increased dramatically. The numbers will have a maximum and minimum cap.

    Additionally you get a flat scalar increase to % xp (like +2% : 100%+2% = 102%, 150%+2% = 152%), up to a cap, based on how long you've been actively participating in a particular fight.



    Little more detail:
    Requires a certain minimum number of players to be present in order to apply.

    Think of this line as a ratio of player population in a zone:
    ........................................................50% A/B.........................................................
    100% Faction A |-----------------------------|-------|-------|-----------------------------| 100% faction B
    .............<<Less xp for B, more for A | 100% xp | Less xp for B, more for A>>...............

    This is the basic rule, there's a fairly generous deadzone in the middle where additional players will not affect the xp scale, however the scale will scale rather dramatically as you move outward. While numbers this extreme are likely not a good idea, think of it like if you outnumber the enemy 2:1, you get half, they get double. 3:1, you get 1/3, they get triple.

    Edit: also the defenders will never get less than 100% xp. Kind of important.
    Edit: ahhh also equally important is that you aren't considered a "defender" unless you were there when the battle was "even" or less, or have actively been part of the battle for a certain amount of time (like 5-10min). This is to prevent "defensive zerging". If you zerg to defend a place, the people who are allready fighting will get at the minimum 100% xp, while your zerg will be subject to the xp scaling, and get severely reduced xp as a result. So it's a matter of helping the team, not a matter of xp grab.

    Re-Edit: Ok hopefully nobody copied my initial edit because it was a bit derp. For 3-ways, the ratio is calculated on a faction to faction basis, with a small exception to the defending faction. The defenders will have their xp calculated using the sum of both enemy faction's numbers, however if this number results in a xp advantage, it will be reduced by small-medium amount, to account for the general trend of the enemy tending to fight eachother somewhat, and two small enemies being generally less effective than their combined forces acting as one.

    The results would be fairly obvious. Zerging would become immediately unprofitable, and small organized groups would become highly profitable. More balanced fights *should* become more common, resulting in much better quality and frequency of fighting, since 90% of your faction shouldnt be off capping bases with 0 people defending it.

    For the bonus from taking a territory, obviously this system could not apply directly, as usually the enemy bails by that point. So for cap xp, the average player count per faction per minute during that battle is taken into account to calculate this, preventing any sudden troop explosions/explodings at the last minute from messing up the xp bonus.

    Obviously this is contingent on the battle detection system currently in game actually working, which it really doesn't right now (look at your scoreboard, there's a little "battle status" part at the top of it).



    But yeah, that's the gist of it. I'm sure I left out some critical info as I usually do, but think about it.
  2. Ripshaft

    Also figured I'd throw in another caveat, and also bump since this was knocked off the front page almost instantly by... highly intelligent posts...

    But upon writing I thought nah screw it i'll just bump.
  3. Ripshaft

    Did i mention that general gameplay is full of stuff that's decidedly not gameplay related?... just saying.
  4. traum

    more simple would be to count all frag on a zone (which is realy revelant of the fight to get the zone) and to distribute a bonus to either offensive or defensive players, when the base is capped or deffended.

    for exemple 1xp bonus per frag for offensive or 2xp per frag if deffensives finally win.

    Would help to stop empty base capping and to incite base defense.
  5. Dingus148

    Ahahah just read your post. Good ideas, but like you said about gameplay subforum...btw, did you know mods have been moving ACTUAL gameplay topics to Off Topic? Maybe you'd have had better luck there. Anyway...

    It's all good, solid ideas. I agree personally. However, Smed seems to have it in his head that zerging is the appropriate way to play. Then again, he did mention an XP system rebalance, perhaps something like this could be incoming? I guess its a matter of wait-and-see. Sorry more people didn't come along to critique.
  6. Ripshaft

    Well, no, that's actually not a simpler idea, as it doesn't accomplish the same thing, and has several rather massive problems with it. It's the same motivation that brought you to that idea, but that simply does not accomplish it.

    First off number of kills does not equate to good fights, additionally it most definately does not discourage the zerg, but actually favors it, since only one side will get the bonus. The bonus doesn't encourage defence, because it's a "why try" situation, unless you *know you can defend successfully (which is not the problem we currently face), it's a pointless endeavor. Additionally the bonus would need to cap at some point, at which point... what's the point of fighting any more? It encourages people to come into a large fight at the last minute, and discourages people from joining a fight that they know they wont be able to finish. Also needless to say it emphasizes kills over all, so doing cheese things to ensure maximum kills would be even more of a focus than it currently is. If you used score instead of kills it would still have 90% of the same problems. It definitely encourages pointlessly drawn out fights, where people would rather camp a spawn then take an objective, because it's simply more profitable.
  7. Ripshaft

    lol first i've heard of that, though i suppose it makes sence, general gameplay is being treated as a general discussion cesspool, and off topic is generally not... ah well. Also im sure that the current zerg mechanics are not what SOE is interested in... it's extremely anti-ps in style and approach, which favors the zergs classing epicly for a duration... not completely avoiding eachother whenever possible.
  8. Ripshaft

    An addition:

    To further encourage the defenders to stay rather than abandon, a meaningful xp or cert reward should be issued at the end of a lost battle based on valiant performance (aka score breaks). I think for the best effect these should be represented as "medals" or "commendations"... basically badges for ****** which will be tracked. The first one requiring a decent investment in the defence, with each subsequent one requiring more and more. Heck, if they're trackable in stats I don't even think you'd need to get a reward for them, just recognition/****** would be enough to convince many players to stick around rather than bailing... they'd basically be like accomplishments that can be gotten multiple times, and we all know how much players these days love those.

    lol also those stars are "e-ween", which is hilariously filtered =)