Malorn's Squad Spawn on Squad Leader can do much more than and in addition to what the Medic Forward Spawn Station is attempting to achieve. Squad Spawn on Squad Leader is a better alternative to the medics forward spawn tube. Improving the new player experience I think we can all agree that the new player experience could be better. How do New Players learn how to play Planetside 2? The answer is from other experienced players. Be it talking in-game, written guides, video tutorials and so on. Planetside 1 had a New Player mentor-ship program designed to pair New Players with experienced players so that they could learn how to play the game from someone. Something Planetside 2 is very much lacking. A Squad Spawn on Squad Leader system where players can spawn on the squad leader could be used to achieve similar results. Everyday this game has a hundred or so player that try the game out and quit around BR 11 because they don't understand the game and perhaps didn't enjoy playing the game alone. A Squad Spawn on Squad Leader system would allow New Players to spawn in on their Squad Leader and always have a familiar face to play the game with while the experienced player, who is the Squad Leader, can focus on taking his squad to the game's objectives. Squad Spawn on Squad Leader segments the New Player learning process making it easier to understand and enjoy the game. Rather than a Newer Player trying to learn how capture points work and how lattice connections work he doesn't have to. All he needs to know, for a beginner, is that the squad leader is a spawn point that will take him to wherever the game needs the squad. The Squad leader in turn can be asked questions, explain the merits of the game and tell the new player why he should play Planetside. Essentially Direct Spawn System is turning squad leaders into Advocates of the game! Direct Squad Spawning is the smartest spawning. No matter how many different times the spawn options are reprogrammed there's never the perfect way to get players to places where they can enjoy the game. Turning squad leaders into direct spawns is the best option because squad leaders are generally good at getting their squads to fights. Rather then relying on algorithms to offer good spawn options you can let human players do the job and far better too. In closing, this is an opportunity to implement a better spawn system that does what the Medic Forward Spawn Station is attempting to achieve but also can be used to help the New Players enjoy planetside and not quit right away from bad experiences. If the chances of a newer player learning the game goes up, the chances of a new player playing more increase, if playtime increases the chances of buying on the cash shop increase.
It's an interesting post, but I want to focus particularly on this segment....... how can you possibly think this is a good thing? I dunno about your server, but on mine there are very few decent squad leads (and most of those run outfit-only squads) and even fewer decent platoon leads. The VAST majority of "squad leaders" barely drop waypoints, let alone give competent orders over voice chat. Most of them are probably just trying to farm the Leadership directive in as low-effort a way as possible. Having these muppets be the newbies "introduction to Planetside" would kill the game for sure!
Relevant to this discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/63hu1a/long_term_planning_after_combined_arms_could_we/ Link in the bottom of my forum sig. Could use more people posting similar things about squad tactics.
I play on the emerald myself so I can't speak for Connery. There's already some existing incentives in the game to be decent squad leader. As you mentioned there's the leadership directive that has the mentor-ship ribbons in order to earn those the new players need to gain BRs. So already the squad leader is encouraged to put his squad in a position to earn experience and level up the newer players. Another important pillar is the game's community. In order for an outfit to stay healthy and grow, assuming the outfit wants to grow, it needs to recruit players. What better way to attempt to recruit new players then by having the opportunity to meet the new players, teach them the game and possibly convince them to join their outfit and give the new player another reason to login and play another day. With a Squad Spawn on Squad Leader system a new player doesn't have to always have someone dropping waypoints. As long as the squad leader is out there trying to rack up kills attacking or defending an objective as the little squad leader star on the map you already have a smart waypoint that lets you spawn on it, under Malorn's specified conditions. With the current system you have like 5-6 different spawn options and sometimes none of these spawn options have any population within the hex(es). So we get new players who don't know how to spawn hop or read the map, spawning at bases or on random sunderers, where there's nothing for them to do in the game except get lost. The medic's forward spawn station is going to have this same problem because it's another form of a deployed sunderer. Like the sunderer it can be destroyed and like the sunder it can be placed in places no one is at and just becomes another unnecessary spawn option to confuse new players with. The only difference from the sunderer is you can put the forward spawn station inside buildings and in no deploy zones. As someone who really wants to see it succeed I feel like there's a missed opportunity to not only improve spawning, by changing the nodeploy zone rules to effect attackers, but to also improve the new player experience by offering them Squad Spawn on Squad Leader a smart human controlled spawn instead of another empire wide destructible spawn point.
Here's proof of why spawn tubes are not a good idea! People are going to farm them like in this video. With Squad Spawn on Squad Leader you won't have this problem.
