Planetside 2's Culture Promotes A Different Behavior

im not sure how the new hex system will do anything to fix certside 2 mentality.

Using memes to insult, i guess your the real clever one.. you must have at least 100 friends on facebook... i wish i was popular and interesting like you. The rapier of your wit as sharp as your acid tongue... nope just posted a meme. Its not clever nor funny...

Why is OP's first picture of a member of the Vanu Sovereignty?

It's like sports. You don't beat another team and capture their territory forever. They keep going at it indefinitely and people whoop and holler like it matters. It's fun. Although it would be better if you did get territory out of a basketball game.

What I see all the time, a zerg sits at a facility, waiting for it to convert, doing absolutely nothing. They are waiting for their cert reward for capping. No scouts leave to next base, nobody prepares defense in another base, they sit around bored and WAIT.

So rewarding capping more will not solve the issue at all.Rewarding sitting at cap point will be even more weird, a few hundred players will all sit on the cap point. Haha.

Metagame has to be improved and not with the lattice system. Just a few ideas:
- better leadership system - we need more goals set up on the map by players that give you reward. Eg. defending a base would give you certs for staying there. Attacking a designated base would give you additional certs if you cap / kill there. By default, people could deploy at such base.
- better deployment system
- reward with certs transferring people with Sunderer / Flash - you get certs if someone enters the vehicle, but if he exits reenter within 5 ins, no reward (to avoid abuse)
- teamkills should mean resource / cert subtraction
- make some penalty if you die too frequently to prevent suicidal play

Ironic.

When people on the internet start understanding irony, the world will officially end...

Ok?

Oh wait a minute, you thought what you said was both funny and clever?

Good post OP. Well written and you made your argument well.

I personally play the game as if the metagame matters, even though it doesn't so much right now. I do agree with you that there is a real imbalance between how the game 'should' be played and how it is actively played. I choose to follow the 'should' rules, but many others do not. I am frequently the first on a point even though a base seems like it's already pretty secure, I guess everyone else would rather stay in their tank in the hopes of a few extra kills instead.

Proposing a solution becomes the tricky part. Simply increasing the exp for capturing wouldn't fix the problem because the effort required to capture a facility can fluxuate greatly. I think perhaps better defining what constitutes a 'battle' and then giving bonus rewards to the winner of a 'battle' might be a viable solution. For example, in that 1 hour long biolab fight, if the biolab is ultimately taken, the team who gets the biolab is rewarded with a large experience boost on top of the 1000 for capping the facility, perhaps an hour long battle could translate into an additional reward of several thousand exp.

On the other hand, if resistance is small, the SCU is quickly taken and the cap happens in 10 minutes, either no bonus exp or very little bonus exp is rewarded. This bonus exp would also need to be available to defenders who successfully push out the enemy and it would make defending more meaningful. The bonus should also not be directly related to the amount of kills or other exp you earned while in the fight because it would then just encourage more of the same playstyle. Measuring an appropriate bonus wouldn't be an easy thing to accomplish.

The exp would probably have to be based on each individual's effort rather than giving the same reward given to the whole faction (otherwise you'd have people showing up just as the battle was about to be won to receive the bonus exp). I think ideally, measuring the time each individual spent in certain areas of the fight would help. In the biolab example, the more time you spend on a point, the bigger bonus you get, the more time you spend in the generator room or the SCU room, the bigger bonus you get. Time spent inside the spawn room would not reward any bonus exp. Perhaps if you are within a 15 meter radius when a generator is blown, overloaded, or protected, you would receive bonus.

Perhaps for defending some bonus could be awarded even if the fight was ultimately lost. We don't want defenders to just give up if they aren't sure they can win the bonus. Also, simply delaying the enemy can be an achievement in itself. It would also mean defending would have potential for a higher bonus than attacking because attackers must succeed to get a bonus, but defenders just have to delay the attack.

You know why people don't go around the continents and capture as many empty territories as they can? Because it's boring.

On top of that, it's utterly meaningless. I guarantee you, not five minutes after you've capped an empty hex and are working on capping the next one, the hex you capped five minutes ago will already be half-way flipped back.

Capturing territory in this game is utterly boring and a huge waste of time. That's why I - and I'm guessing this applies to almost everybody else too - don't bother with it.

I agree with this. Everyone's at the crown farming their certs while the other 9/10th's of the game sits stagnant. Ghost capping in PS1 was actually a tactic used to divert attention and drain resources from an enemy empire in order to gain additional ground on the continent with the main battle. Now, it's a boring alternative to the cyclical cert-grind fest on Indar. In Planetside 1, objectives were fun and challenging. In Planetside 2, they're interruptions for everyone's cert farm because, "oh gosh, now I need to drive all the way to the next base and start over. What's an Esamir?"

Spot on. Ive said this in a nutshell in passing before, nice to see not only that someone else sees it but can put together a clear and entertaining post on the matter.

Good post OP - very similar to what Buzz has been saying about KDR and how certain stats incentivize players to maximize that ratio instead of taking the higher risk for the objective.

I dont think the game is broken, but it would be nice to see if SOE can carefully shift the incentives towards their stated gameplay objective (which also happens to be really fun and epic).

I do think the example of 1 hour to get 1000XP for a cap vs. 11,000 XP in an hour for kills is a little inaccurate. The only bases that take an hour to cap are ones that you have to fight for and get lots of kills along the way. Capping less defended bases are more like 10-15 minutes per cap. Your greater point is still valid, kills are the fastest way to get certs.

It really is hard to create sample data from scratch, so I agree it probably isn't the most optimal example. Hopefully it still conveyed the point I was attempting to make. And, definitely, the game isn't broken, but it can be SO much more fun if the incentives drive different player behavior. Your actions and your teammates' actions begin to hold more weight, suspense and excitement increases, and things just all around feel more alive and worthwhile.

Probably the best thread I've read on the forum.

Later. Let's play Global Thermonuclear War.


...Back on topic, very good post.

I have one nitpick with your analysis. The act of capturing a base doesn't only award 1000 XP. There is also all of the XP you gain along the way to capturing the base from fighting your way in. It's not that you get more certs from fighting than you do from capturing, they are the same activity after all, it's that finishing the capture ends the fight and incurs travel time.

I argue that it is the lulls of base to base travel that players wish to avoid, so they are reluctant to capture.

As well, I believe you weren't really taking into account your audience here, unless this was an academic assignment of some sort. Many more people here would be interested in what you have to say if you didn't beat around the bush with lengthy analogies that only serve to obfuscate your point. Of course, it could just be a stunt for attention since you're saying the same thing many others have since the game's release, but with more complex wording.

You definitely make a damn good point here. This could very well be the case, or even an additive to the situation. Really I just wanted to write something that would make sense, be entertaining, and maybe educate - all while trying to express my discontent with an aspect of the game. I like to use writing as a creative outlet, nothing more behind it than that.

I'm ashamed to say, that the whole Cert thing sadly influences my actions on the odd occasion where otherwise I would act differently.

I don't like it... it's literally becoming a test of real-life inner-character for me. Sometimes I've hesitated to take down lone tanks with friendlies around nearby with my Guass Saw, why? Because on just ONE occasion in the past, I spent ages shooting rocket after rocket at a Sundy. At the last moment, a friendly out of nowhere fired the last required rocket, and got the most the certs for it. I only got an "assist" or whatever for all that time expended on dwindling it's health from maximum.

And that alone - it's pathetic. I don't even refer to my friendlies action in stealing the kill, it's MY REACTION that's pathetic. I didn't rage, but I was a little miffed because I didn't get the Certs I felt I deserved.

I shouldn't be giving a crap about the certs, I should be caring we *together* disposed of the enemy threat to the base, and protected the Base we had fought hard to control.

Yesterday, near the Alvari Reservoir place (can never remember names), there was an enemy tank close to dying. I had my Rocket Launcher, but I proxy chat to a friendly also attacking it, "Take the kill man", because I didn't want to stoop to this Cert collection crap. It's an illogical choice to offer on my part, because I need the certs to progress to get the C4 and weapons I want... but it's NOT what it should be about.

This game is messed up. I want to play honestly, and with team spirit, but I'm changing my actions to compete with Friendlies. It should not be about the kill grinds - it should be truly about Territory gain... our mindsets (those that aren't in PS2 to 'Kill, Kill, Kill') would be different. People would use Proxy chat more to organise Biolab assaults and everything, I'm sure... instead it's a massive frenzie.

God, this game man -_- Sorry, it's long winded, can't be bothered to TL;DR

Auraxium would have been better if the mechanics around it had been adjusted accordingly imo.

Ah, that makes sense if you're a writer. I'm a technical straight to the point kind of guy. In any case, I did learn a few new words ...