[Suggestion] The headshot advantage for the veteran and the hacker

Why - do such players only want to play a game where they can utterly dominate?

Levelling the playing field by reducing headshot multiplier will make the game more challenging for experienced players because they'll go up against more challenging targets - surely this will make for a more interesting game than just racking up noob killstreaks.

I run recursion with the little audio announcements. The worst sound in the world to hear is this...

"Welcome to Planetside! ... Rage Quit!"

Makes my heart sink when I hear that.

I'm not sure nerfing the HS multiplier would drive veterans away. Eliminating it would.

Get their input. That's kinda what discussions like this are for. I think the real veterans are experienced enough to know "the game" and they know it would be best in the long run to give new players an easier time.

The other bit is this... we need to increase the bonuses from getting headshots in other ways. Assimilate Implant is a perfect example. Using it gives no advantage whatsoever to the veteran in a 1:1 matchup vs a Noob. But... it is highly rewarding to land headshots and gives that veteran who has practiced so hard a shot at that "next level" satisfaction of chaining kills.

Do you recall the ****storm when thermals were modified thus preventing "highly skilled and experienced" players from having 100+ killstreaks by farming infantry overnight?

Wasn't that mostly because the certs weren't refunded though?

How many experienced players actually rage quit over that. Did the server populations drop significantly overnight as a result?

Exactly.

There are plenty of ways the game could reward head shots aside from them being utterly overpowered in 1 on 1 engagements.

How about headshot kills give double XP and count as 2 kills towards any certifications?

You could make a headshot kill negate the shield recharge delay - so that you shield starts to recharge immediately.

What if headshot multipliers were essentially removed entirely or drowned to only a slight advantage?
Or, what if headshot multipliers only counted when the shields are down? (save for bolt actions that might be specialized to pierce shields)

I'm all for the removal of headshot multipliers for the simple reason that at no point are the gun mechanics explained to new players. Sure, you can always argue 'aim for the head' as a mantra of any fps style game, but given the rpgmmoesque aspects of Planetside, it could just as easily be argued that shredding some poor sods femoral artery would be as effective as headshot multiplier.

I agree with the points others made about assimilate and regen still conferring a boon for headshots, but have to agree with Halkesh with his point on nanoweave. It would be utterly dominant in its current form if headshots were changed. I'm cool with snipers and even pistols keeping some iteration of the multiplier, and if none of this can be done, then Daybreak should at the very least explain these mechanics to new players.

So so true.

kids these days don't want a challenge they want a highly niche set of mechanics that they can master to pretend they are good, there is more to skill then headshotting consistently, considering this is a multiplayer game people higher skill in other areas should be equally rewarding, but the kids don't want that because it means people with higher developed different skills(like positioning, misdirection etc) would be able to compete with the easiest to cheat mechanic (headshots).

that's all it is.

I agree. For a game that is supposedly about teamwork and objectives - it is awfully focused on farming kills.

You get a tiny reward for taking out key deployables - like Spawn beacons - even though doing so can turn the tide of a battle, yet farm 100 people, and you coin it, even though 'killing' them does absolutely nothing to progress towards the objective or mission since they can be instantly respawned or revived.

"If a player destroys an enemy squad beacon, dead enemies who have not yet spawned on it do not get updated on the beacon's status on the deployment map until they respawn. If the said squad member attempts to spawn on it, the person who destroyed it gets kill experience and the dead player gets an updated map and must select another spawn point. A squad member who dies within n seconds of their squad's beacon being destroyed will still see the destroyed beacon, and it operates the same as described above.

"Allies see the same map anomaly as enemies; but, destroying an ally spawn beacon incurs grief for every player that tries to spawn on it instead."

How is that for a spur of the moment idea?

My God. This.

Everyone needs to remember that this can be a small adjustment. A 1.9x headshot bonus combined with a 15% nanoweave resistance might be the sweet spot where headshot are still rewarded but not mandatory. The whole world doesn't have to be flipped upside down in order to make the game better for most players.

It's not about teaching the shooting mechanics to the new player, the bad one is always going to be bad, so the game has to think about the two types of players, the one that can aim and hit the head and the one that doesn't can do, it is necessary to balance the game more because many players have already stopped playing PS2, and the only strategy I can think of is to lower the damage of headshot on ALL weapons. I just don't enjoy the game anymore when I only find immortal veterans on the map who are difficult to kill, while they kill you very easily.

Okay take a step back for a moment, you guys have no idea how little headshots are actually impacting your gameplay. According to fisu stats player lookup, my best stat for landing headshots on any automatic weapon is on the GR22 which I've landed 30.39% headshots, this gives me a rating of A++ for this weapon, if you hover over that stat, it tells me that there are 1.5% of players in this A++ bracket of headshot landing. There are 3 tiers above, (S,S+,S++, 0.8, 0.5, 0.2 percent respectively) these accumulate to 1.5% +- 1.5% of players are getting >30.39% headshot rates with this GR22 gun and my kda on the gun is only 0.79 with the gun ~ 27% accuracy with this gun. The only thing I can concur from these stats is that I'm getting blown up far more from tanks, mines, and planes far more often than anything else for an infantry v infantry stat to come into effect.

Headshots are not rewarding at all on certain guns, in fact shotguns have the highest TTK at 0.2 seconds and reward body shots, that and it is often better to try landing body shots when hipfiring, which i find better suits my playstyle (probably need the NS weapons that don't bloom much when hipfiring, would be smart for my playstyle). But overall, guns like tanto are the only guns that really need your headshots to land as they are already at roughly a ~20% reduction in DPM = BPM x DPB.

And even if it is as impactful as you're all saying well my worst KDA to any player on the briggs server is some timtams guy on TR, he has a KDA of 3.0 against me, he must be in this 1.5%+-~1.5% players who can land more headshots than me. But I think it's more likely that his connection runs a bit smoother and he gets a .1 second advantage over me in other ways (or so I theorise).

So I looked up the dudes stats because I was wondering what kind of stats a guy like that would need to come out on top in every scenario and the guys actually pulling worse headshot percentages on some of his guns, he's all about the body shots with high accuracy. I guess the main stat is that he's landing ~5% more shots than me but also this stat is really not a good indication because it doesn't compare who lets off more suppression fire. But there you go....

http://ps2.fisu.pw/player/?name=intimtams&show=weapons

Heres another example:
http://ps2.fisu.pw/player/?name=hellobug&show=weapons

This guy, rank #3 on the briggs leaderboard for head shot ratio accuracy. Primarily snipes, uses the sniper rifles which is a given, but with the t9-carv being his 3rd most used gun, he's got an accuracy of 17.4% and a head shot ratio of 94.34% with that gun. But his KDA only 1.84 which is not incredibly high for TR heavy considering intimtams KDA on numerous guns with roughly a quarter of his shots being headshots.

Exactly, I was still fairly low BR back then, as I recall I had about 6 or 7 instances of Thermals bought on my guns, so about 1200 to 1400 certs investment.

I now have dozens of weapons unlocked and under the old system would have had thermals unlocked on most of those. I can see how having 30+ times 200 certs down the drain would piss off a lot of players. You're getting into the region of 6000 certs, especially on Kobalts which could now no longer see the infantry which was (almost) their only target, using it against a Harasser or ESF is more an act of desperation rather than a real effort to kill the thing.