Stop and imagine a Planetside where every single base on the front line had a seriously active fight in it, and they were often very even fights. Where every player in each zone desperately wants to successfully capture or defend their base, because a huge portion of their exp depends on it. They would actually call others for help if they were losing a base. No more giant zergs hanging out in empty bases for hours - instead, they would spread out and constantly be hunting down more useful things to do, taking as much territory as they can. Seriously, imagine that, wouldn't that be awesome? That's what I'm aiming for with these ideas. Would this work? Would it need changes? Would it not work at all, and why? Let's talk about this! All numbers used here are just estimates - if you think any of them are too high or too low, simply pretend they're higher or lower as you wish. They're really not important here. 1) When attacking or defending a base, there would be a "Capture Exp" bar on the screen with a number in it showing how much exp you'll earn when you capture / defend the base. This caps out at 250, 500, or 1000 exp as expected. Each kill adds 100 exp, each assist 50 exp. If you're attacking (not defending) the bar will rise at a rate of 250 per minute while in the zone. Best of all, you get ALL Capture Exp even if you're not in the zone when the capture or defense is complete. You may leave to start another capture elsewhere, if you think this one will finish on its own. The Capture Exp bar doesn't just go away when you leave the zone. You can view all your simultaneous Exp bars per zone on the map or the main HUD so that you can return to defend them later if they're in danger of being lost. --- WHY? --- Adding a defense bonus like this a common request, the game does need it in some form. But beyond that, this encourages and rewards people who try to control multiple zones at the same time, and discourages people from sitting around in an empty base for very long. That's the smartest way to play in the smaller zones, and it rewards high-speed "scouting" players properly. My hope is that this is the key to getting fights started at every single base in the game. 2) Additionally, all other exp gains are reduced to 80%. However, 50% of those exp gains are added to the Capture Exp bar with no limit. So for example: You get 100 infantry kills because you're wicked awesome. Instead of earning 10000 exp, you earn 8000, and will earn 4000 more when the base is captured, not including the 250, 500, or 1000 bonus. --- WHY? --- This is the important one. The idea here is that the longer somebody fights in an area, the more Exp they have invested in that area. This investment will increase tension, and make people want to urgently FINISH each fight and win it, and encourage them to request help and play harder. Right now, people do not actually care if they win or lose bases very much at all, and that's a serious shame. More than that, I'm hoping it will encourage defense. People already attack bases all the time, but nobody responds to enemy attacks. With this they might, because it's a near guarantee there will be a winnable fight there, not just an empty base, and that's worth the most exp. 3) If you start a new Capture Bar in an uncontested enemy zone, it will last 5 minutes before disappearing. You need to start taking a control point to keep the exp pool going. Additionally, if you lose a base where you have a Capture Bar, that capture bar does not immediately go away - again, you will have 5 minutes to restart a new capture on that base before it vanishes. Lastly, all exp gained within an uncontested friendly zone earns an immediate +75% exp "preemptive defense" bonus, since you can't start a Capture Exp bar there. So instead of 80 exp per infantry, you'd earn 140. --- WHY? --- The point here isn't just to reward people for stopping the enemy's attack before they've even started, but to keep both teams fighting at a base even after it's been captured. A lot of times, a faction will capture the base, and then will immediately give it right back because they simply don't care, and won't even repair the generators because it's not worth the time. Or the attackers will give up completely, even when the other team is about to leave. This is meant to ensure that things stay hot for both teams. It would also make them hate the other teams for choosing to stick around and destroy their big Exp pools. 4) On the world map, not only do you get an estimation of how many enemies are in each zone, but you also get an accurate report of ally count per zone - and whether they're infantry, air, or armor. --- WHY? --- It just makes sense, this information should be available. This can help people identify where they should go, not just to avoid being outnumbered, but to avoid outnumbering their opponents by too much. If you go somewhere you can't get kills, you're going to have less fun and make far less exp - so they should be able to find a place where they'll be more useful. What do you think, would this work? Are the developers actually interested in improving the way people think about and play the game?
Issues this fixes: -Giving attackers and defenders point incentives for defending an area -people getting "free xp" just for being in the area -players have a short-term investment in the area they capped Issues this causes: -reduced xp for quickly capping an area with no defenders -reduced xp for support
The latter issue can be resolved by simply making support activities add to the xp bar. For example each point of healing gives 5 xp towards the cap limit, etc.
This is exactly the type of ambitous idea that would solve everything that SOE dosent have the balls to do.
Bad idea. It's unnecessarily complex, first of all. Secondly, it is very skewed toward killing people. Revives, heals, resupplies and repairs are all as important as killing. Thirdly, whatisthisIjustdonteven...
Like it. But yeah I would make your 50% bonus to capping/defending bonus be added from ALL actions that get you xp. I wouldn't make the preemptive defense bonus quite as high but it would be good to have something for sticking around the area.
I like the concept, but it would need a lot of work to make it viable. But a more focused XP system that rewards participation rather than just showing up and running around in circles can't be a bad thing.
First off...I'd probably rename the title of the thread. Aside from that, the capture system does need a bit of a more dynamic feel to it rather then "Go to point...hold." The fights tends to turn into grenade fests on the points when the idea is you need to capture the entire facility not just some arbitrary antenna.
Hey, I'm glad so many of you like it! I just realized I can't edit the original post to make it clearer - but in the 2nd part, I did intend for the +50% capture bonus to apply to all exp gain, not just kills. The first part being kills-only is trickier though, particularly for defense. I was trying to think of other ideas for that, but most of them led to, "let's let our base get capped more before we do anything so that we get way more exp." Having trouble with that one. Capping empty bases has a small reward like it should, and defending / saving an empty base should also have at least a small reward, somehow... Maybe a minimum flat 100 exp or something. This right here is my biggest worry about it. I think people would understand it once it was in the game, almost immediately - I'm just not sure if there's any way people could "game" it and abuse it due to a lack of foresight.
