Ready for testing: Missions Phase 1

Malorn buddy... still nothing on test.

Yes, missions not yet on test, we're working on getting them up there ASAP.

Take your time! I'm working OT 'till 7 PM.

Still not there. so much for "Later this evening"

Just a bit of feedback on the idea of missions.

When people can gather together and easily get rewards with little effort... they do so. WDS has shown this. The result has been large groups of people "zerging" across the map through the areas of least resistance. Instead of defending against said groups of people, the opposing faction also chooses "zerg" across the map with little resistance.

Missions seem like they have the potential to reinforce this behavior. But I think they can also be used as incentives to promote defense and equal fights.

1.) Make defense oriented missions more rewarding than ones that encourage capturing bases.

2.) Make mission rewards scale with population advantage/disadvantage in a given area. Make missions reward less when your faction is overpopulated in that area, more when your faction is underpopulated in that area.

People would have incentives to defend bases against enemy pushes, and people would want to seek out equal fights or ones where their faction is underpopulated. Consistent and even fights across the map = more fun for everyone.

Yes! Large scale organization is what PlanetSide 2 is all about. Any outfit who is able to accomplish this knows exactly how much of a pain it is to get people to cooperate sometimes. I would love to see more incentive for this in the future as well. Eventually you might even get "randoms" helping.

I... am not too hot on the idea of automated missions, personally.

If a player cares about territory capture because of WDS, alerts, Tech Plant ownership benefits or whatever other reason, the map already provides enough informaion on that. If they want to just find a fight and fight, fight, fight - again map interface + lattice base capture mechanics will not allow them to go the wrong way on accident. A tutorial accessible from within the game that walks the player through all the map display options may be needed, but that is about the extent of that, IMHO.

I do however want to be able to place a clear and concise marker on the map for everyone in my team to see that says (for example) "There is a boatload of enemy aircraft in here, bring your AA/A2A/G2A/whatever and do it now!" in a way that is instantly discernible at a first glance.

The game placing these things for us automatically could a). atrophy any kind of recon even more since we won't need to have any actual eyes on the ground to see 'more than x enemy air units in the area!' message and b). as people have already mentioned above, it may decide to jump around if you try to leave the immediate vicinity for whatever reason. Or it may not, but that's just my current assumptions before I can actually see the thing in action.

So my suggestion would be to not implement the automated missions at all because I see no reason for them to exist. Please focus on communication options between platoons instead.

Maybe make the Squad Leader’s mission be based off of the proximity to the squad waypoint if it is available, and if in a platoon, based off off platoon lead's alpha-delta waypoints. That way, there won't be a problem with squad leads being out of position, and it will probably help mission switching?

Do you think the desired effects can be achieved by adding limited XP sharing for squads?

• If someone in a squad gets a kill, they give everyone in the squad 5xp**.
• This "bonus" could be doubled for the squad leader.
• Applies in a limited range based on what you are doing;
  • Infantry - 100m**
  • Ground V - 300m**
  • Air V - 500m**

**or whatever is appropriate. (5 * 12 = 60, this is of course distributed, but it may be a lot)
If you kill someone whilst in a X meter radius of your squad leader - the XP is shared in that same radius around the squad leader.
A secondary "XP sharing zone" could be made around the squad waypoint. (not platoon waypoints)

And if you ever expand the squad system to include a second in command, around that person as well.

Will there be a way to turn it off?
Especially the squad function; I already think it way annoying to select a spawn, click spawn, and come out somewhere else because my squadleader is currently scouting in his scythe and just crossed the border to another territory that has absolutely nothing in it.
Same I fear for missions, though I suppose I can just ignore them.

I hope this means that if I get out to repair my tank, that my mission doesn't get reset. I would like to think you guys took this into consideration, and gave a 30 second (or however long) grace period when a player leaves their vehicle.

So these are proximity missions. That said, what if a base is being captured that is out of proximity, but it will cause the territory you are in to become cut off from the lattice? Can you set something for those people to remind them to look behind and go back and re-secure?

"At this Time"

"Missions that are created follow lattice and capture rules – you will only get attack missions for places you can actually attack, and you will only get defend missions for places with significant enemy presence or are actively being captured."

This.. this is stupid.
The first thing I think about when I hear player generated mission are spec ops mission or sending a vanguard to the next base your about to attack but wont have lattice for 5ish minutes. Instead of having a capture as the final goal for that mission then it could be killing X infantry units and/or X vehicles, aswell as destroying/hacking turrets/terminals.

Also bounty missions is another thing id like to see, for those pesky people that get over 100 kill streaks (usually tankfarmers).

This = +1!

But I always believed than everything should be based on population to balance stuff.
XP, ressources, timers, etc. Overpoping much? penality. No penalties on slight overpop though, just blatantly exaggerated ones. Server, continent, territory all taken in consideration. But that's another topic...

What I'm curious about is this :
Would there be a mission asking players to redeploy to WG?
For people to gather back together and then get a mission for a new front? That could be useful to even the fights. You'd get a mission description stating that your presence is required elsewhere or that it's a waste of manpower to be so concentrated (overpoping) this territory.

They're just testing the basics right now, so yeah. It's a test server, remember? Wait until the later phases when a squad or platoon leader can call in air support missions, main battle tank support missions, sunderer destruction missions, destroy-this-generator missions, etcetera. Sort of a way to herd the cats pubbies for useful purposes. Maybe down the road they can even use this system to support artillery.

It means when you get out your mission will be re-evaluated. Really in most cases it won't change. It might if you drove a long way before getting out to repair. We have that because pilots and galaxies flying around have relaxed mission re-assignment logic, and exiting the vehicle (such as dropping on a target) will cause re-evaluation so the infantry or landed aircraft gets updated to their current location.

If the current mission becomes invalid you will get assigned the next most appropriate mission. In the case of being cut-off, you'll get a defensive mission to resecure the thing that just severed your lattice.

Will this work the same way for failed missions as well?

Yes, you will always have a valid mission. The missions follow capture rules precisely, so you won't ever have a mission to capture a facility that is not capturable (if you do, please report that as a bug).

The only situation where you won't have a mission on a continent is if you own every outpost on that continent and none of them are being captured or threatened by enemy forces. We're also looking into special casing that one to guide you to another continent.