Defense currently suffers a dilemma in rewarding defenders. Passive rewards are too inadequate for the majority of people whom try to contribute and only really reward the skilled players whom top their respective charts... A Lump Sum reward only really rewards those that 'come back' from a failing defense. A stalwart defense that denies the enemy the very chance to even touch the point wouldn't be rewarded for their work... So how do we reward defenders? I suggest: 'Proximity XP' simply said, the 5-15% bonus XP that is added to a players score for every action they do from the passive buff from defense is also doled out to surrounding players as well. This means the average player will end up receiving a point feed of 1-15 by just being in proximity of other players whom are actively defending or out performing you in defense. Guarding that Engineer while he repairs to make sure he doesn't get stabbed in the back by an infiltrator... you get will get those +1 point's he is getting to his normal 5 point repair. You wouldn't have to Race other players to overload an objective, repair a broken turret, or resupply your squad. This rewards and reinforces the desire of players to not only defend but to stick and work together.
So if I AFK next to SCU in a bio deep on my territory (setting up a macro to ensure a quick movement forward preventing AFK kick). I should be quite well rewarded for this action! I personally believe a more simple approach would be to +x% all exp gained when defending an area ie: kills, repairs, ammo, so forth. Prevents the AFK'ers from reaping anything.
What a successful base capture in PS2 feels like: What a successful Antwerp capture in WWIIONLINE feels like (It's almost impossible to take a town):
Yesterday I flew to that Indar NC AMP station near the Crown to get free cap XP just before the cap XP and I had to dodge friendly drop pods and friendly planes when I got there. The sky was filled with them. I looked up and saw 8 drop pods coming down simultaneously. This is the only thing defense XP would promote, it won't promote actual defending, just like attack XP doesn't promote actual attacking.
EXACTLY. I wish i could hit everyone in the head with a rubber mallet who thinks more XP for defending would solve the defense problem ! It wouldn't solve anything!! Not even close!! Just more XP hoarding! People just don't want to sit around in empty bases waiting for something that may never show up! How long do you expect a "player" to wait in a base with zero action? Can you even call it a player because he's doing absolutely nothing for 30 mins, one hour, an indefinite amount of time! Giving a reward for this kind of inaction is dumb. The game becomes campfest 2012. Actually we already had this in beta when Auraxium was given for owning bases and it was atrocious. People want to defend, they just can't. Why? - An extremely limited spawn system. It's a pain in the butt to go where you're needed. - ZERO INFORMATION. This is the biggest reason. Even if you wanted badly to defend some facilites. You don't know the player numbers at that facility (enemies and friendlies). So it's impossible for you to defend intelligently. All you can do is spawn somewhere and say "oh this is spawn camped". Then spawn somewhere else and say "oh, there's 0 enemies here". Then spawn somewhere else and say "oh, there's way more friendlies here than enemies... my help is not needed". You don't have ANY information before you spawn, so it becomes this massive undertaking to find a balanced fight to engage in. - Bad base design. However this isn't that big of a problem. Actually if you had INFORMATION that a tank zerg was coming, you could setup mines, setup a tank line at a choke point, pull liberators, and do plenty of preemtive actions to stop them way before they even reached the base structures. But you don't have that information. So you don't know anyone's there until 50 magriders are surrounding the spawn. This applies much less to outfits, but frankly most players aren't in an organized outfit that is tryharding all the time. They're just zerging, Because that's all you can do with zero information about your enemy movements and current friendly defenses.
and what prevents you from doing that in one of the random 2 story buildings around an amp station or tech lab? The thing is bound to change hands several times in a day. Discounting something purely because of the action of a small majority of the player base is hardly reason enough for anything... So... A xp system which slowly rewards you over time and requires you to stay in close proximity of action and team mates promotes dropping in at the last second? explain that... Pavlov effect. No reward, no action. The assumption that people want to do something and not be rewarded with it implies that you've been hit in the head too many times with a rubber mallet already and should seek medical attention for possible brain damage. exactly how does the proposed change promote 'sitting around in empty bases waiting...'? Because there is no reward or incentive to do so. You need to obtain 13/28/67 kills to break even with assaulting/capturing a territory. low incentive creates low desire.
You need to Elaborate. An enemy maneuver to intentionally cut off a segment of defense to prevent reinforcements is not the fault of the spawn system. The information is there, you're just bad at deciphering it. Territories slowly changing hands moving towards an Amp Station... Bio-Lab is adjacent to enemy territories, is flashing on the map, and reads 'Enemies Squads Detected'... A Tech lab surrounded by friendly territories, is not flashing, and reads 'No activity'... So you don't want to defend a position because you'd have to compete with allies for points... That Is The Problem. You looked at this situation and decided NOT TO DEFEND. You decided not to defend because there is No Incentive for you to contribute to the defense. You think this is just an isolated event, but enough players think like this that the prefer to Attack over Defend. Again, i stated above, the information is there... you just have to decipher it. The Bases are designed poorly, yes this is true. But the poor defense that is mounted in response to an attack is not the fault of the base. The fault lies at the fact that because of the current game design, players are conditioned to not want to defend. There is no reward in defending, so if a player gets rofl-stomped by a Maggy Platoon, instead of respawning at the nearest defense, he respawns far away from it and starts attacking some where else...
And you get nothing... Keyword: 'Close Proximity' (edit) More over, what does that prove? you can go AFK hide in any region that is highly contested.
There are several things that would encourage defense: 1. Continent based pop bonuses that are so drastic that people actually want to jump to continents where they are outnumbered. The outnumbered faction will end up defending most likely. 2. Fortification bonuses for holding a territory for a prolonged period of time. Holding on to something for a long time should make it more and more valuable, so there is a counterpoint to making a quick land grab. 3. Large installations shouldn't flip in minutes, it should take much longer than that, even several days. There is nothing that makes your efforts feel more worthless than the knowledge that the enemy can flip the continent at 4am while you're sleeping.
You could use a defense reward similar to that of GW2. For those who don't play GW2 when you defend here is how you get experience in defending a base. There is an event timer that is 5 minutes long. In order to be considered as being an active part of the defense of a base you have to kill at least 1 enemy soldier with in that 5 minute period. People who are afk or show up before the timer is over do not get the reward. After that the counter resets, and you now have another 5 minutes to get at least 1 kill. Now seems easy enough to get 1 kill, but sometimes you may not be lucky enough to land a straight kill. There were many times were i defended a base for 30 minutes and never got a kill. But an imperfect system like this is better than almost no reward.
These things. Plus: If a successful attack of a tech plant gives you 1000xp, then a successful defense should yield something similar. Define successful defense: ______. I don't know. But if a good defense involves killing about 10 dudes, then the total defense bonus needs to be double xp for a defense kill. My math is wrong, I acknowledge that, but the 15% modifier ain't cutting it. Maybe it should be a variable modifier based on the number of enemy attacking - stand in the face of a red alert, and you get a 100% modifier, where as the light green notification gives you 15%.
