Tier system to make fights more even

[CmdAtino]

Hello PSU, let me introduce myself briefly,
CmdAtino, Woodman NC
Playing since November 2012 (beta) and have played for over 600 hours of PS2 (impressive number considering I've been playing this whole time on a laptop on an Intel HD4000 (dat low settings with render at minimum gives me a star wars battlefront 2 vibe ^^)

What Planetside 2 needs to do with the capture AND defense mechanic is to award xp for both, but have this amount of xp received be based on the nubmers involved in the fight.

The system I have thought up is pretty simple and, I am no game developer but, seems relatively easy to implement. The game already features a relatively decent population counter for each base on every continent. All that needs to be done is to assign a "Tier" to each of these stages, 1-12 pop is "tier 1", 12-24 is "tier 2", etc... you catch the drift till "tier 4" being the 48+

The game already also calculates the pop percentage so it obviously has a level of coding designed to know whether someone is involved in the fight or not, and regardless they are still present in the area and a possible threat unless AFK.

The tier system works with a ratio system, 1:1 means both tiers are equal and this should give the amount of xp that is already in game, however, if the attackers take the base with a tier higher than the defenders, the xp is divided by the amount of the ratio. e.g. The attackers roll into a small outpost with 24-48, take the point and camp the spawn room of 1-12 guys then the xp received for this capture is (normal xp divided by 3 because the tier ratio was 3:1 in favor of attackers

The advantages of this system are:

Rewards heroic fights against the odds the most and encourages even fights over population spam.
Split a large zerg up as they will realise they are getting far less xp (up to 4 times less is quite a lot)
Gives rewards according to the effort put in.
Forces people to split up more evenly in different lanes to get xp rather than stick to the lane that is winning due to ridiculous nubmers.


The tier system can also be adjusted to severely decrease ghost capping to reward very little xp, rendering ghost capping completely redundant and only to be practiced to flank or for an alert. (You fight no one, you get no reward from the game)

The tier system can be adjusted for defense and would give defenders a much bigger incentive.
Two types of defense:
Basic defense
Either the flag (or flags) have been captured and the timer started but is still in your empire colour. If you resecure the flags and the timer comes back to zero, you receive the base amount of xp for a defense (this value can be 75% of a standard capture xp) now weigh in the tier system, a recapture against the odds is more beneficiary and hence the defenders will become more aggressive for that xp.
Heroic Defense
A heroic defense consists of recapturing the flags and bringing the timer back to zero when the timer had already turned the enemy colour (meaning more than half the capture time was already over). This type of defense awards 125% of the xp of a capture as it would mean that you have broken the spawn room camping. This along with the tier system could make defenders that are outnumbered or at even numbers especially aggressive to the attackers.

So let me know what you think of this system, if it has been discussed before, I apologize to the OP.

I think this could work, made an account to share this with you because I felt like it could really benefit the game without being something that seems overly difficult for the devs to implement as it doesn't involve base redesigns and very complex systems, the "tiers" are basically already in the game, they just need to add this ratio system and I feel the fights would be a lot more fair, the toxic xp hungry zergs would split up a lot more, the mission system could even be redesigned with a filter to only join "heroic defense/attack" or "standard attack/defense" depending on how you feel about your personal skills and filtering out the overpopped fights in your favour. It would help to give a label to the types of fights happening on Auraxis.

My first post so I hope it wasn't too messy, just needed to share this with you and see what you guys though of it.

tl;dr Apply an xp multiplier or divider to both base captures and defenses according to a tier system based on the numbers involved in the fight, reward fighting against the odds and punish outnumbering zergs.
CmdAtino, out.

[Wahooo]

I like your thorough description and it sounds great.

We've been asking for this since Beta actually. From a bit simpler, similar to PS1 XP scaling to along the lines of what you are suggesting.

[ringring]

Good suggestion.

It's funny how players without prior knowledge look at a problem within PS2 and come up the the PS1 solution. :)

But yes, I totally agree with you what's more I think at least some devs do too.

[Dougnifico]

+1. Sounds good to me. I get most of my XP through kills though. I'll often leave before the capture time fills just because its no longer fun and I want to actually be in combat somewhere else. So for some, that capture XP just isn't a thing.

[NewSith]

One thing that always eludes me is why everyone is assuming that XP is something majority of people care about... As much as I understand your stance, I would like to point out that it'll NOT solve the problem. Why? Because while some people play to kill and progress, some people play to WIN. Thus 90%vs10% base fight is exactly their home field.

Even though it'll make fights more even XP-wise, it's not going to remove the reasoning from easy win hunters.

[CmdAtino]

I did think this system might had already been implemented in hte first game but wasn't sure of it, thanks for rectifying that, the more I hear the more I feel I have missed out A LOT.

How about this then instead of xp motivation?

For those who the xp ratio system isn't enough of an incentive, the ability to earn a rare medal along with a unique version of a gun that cannot be bought with sc or certs (e.g After the 25th heroic defense of the Crown, defending against the odds after the timer has gone more than halfway you get this message "Congratulations, You are now part of the Crown's heroic guards, you've unlocked 'Crown Heroic Guard Medal', 'Crown Heroic Guard prefix' and 'Platinum NS-Vandal' Welcome to the elite of the elite soldier! Keep fighting the good fight!"
I think that would play a lot for incentives, the numbers of defenses and captures obviously needs tweaking to make it truly difficult (as if fighting against the odds wasn't already :p )

Quite a different idea from my original one but it's another I've thought of for a while that I also think could work and that I honestly don't see as very difficult to implement, and that is what the devs need, they need things that can change a lot, whilst not having too much work to do.

What do you think?

[ringring]

One thing that always eludes me is why everyone is assuming that XP is something majority of people care about... As much as I understand your stance, I would like to point out that it'll NOT solve the problem. Why? Because while some people play to kill and progress, some people play to WIN. Thus 90%vs10% base fight is exactly their home field.

Even though it'll make fights more even XP-wise, it's not going to remove the reasoning from easy win hunters.

From my point of view I don't think the game should reward things that warp the game.

e.g. ghost hacking, turret destruction, terminal desruction or repair for that matter.

If there's a logical reason to do some of those thing, and sometimes there is, then layers should do it because it's logical and not because of a extra few ticks of xp.

I'd much rather the game encouraged playing the game for the games sake rather than gaining, read grinding, xp or acquiring digital gear. I was pretty pleased to get br40 in ps1 but what does it mean now? Nothing is the answer.

[Gimpylung]

Good suggestion.

It's funny how players without prior knowledge look at a problem within PS2 and come up the the PS1 solution. :)


Shame that the devs don't behave in similar fashion. I swear it's like they purposely ignore PS1 solutions but I suppose it's due to the fact that PS2 devs have no experience of PS1 beyond token appearances and promotion.

[Taramafor]

One thing that always eludes me is why everyone is assuming that XP is something majority of people care about... As much as I understand your stance, I would like to point out that it'll NOT solve the problem. Why? Because while some people play to kill and progress, some people play to WIN. Thus 90%vs10% base fight is exactly their home field.

Even though it'll make fights more even XP-wise, it's not going to remove the reasoning from easy win hunters.

Agreed. I could care less about XP. I want the fun factor to speak for itself.

Also, with PS1 turning free to play perhaps the devs can try it out and get some ideas. With it going free they won't have an excuse to not try it. XD

[camycamera]

yes, if i recal that is like the way PS1 worked. Higgles, are you listening?

[BeyondNinja]

Without ever playing PS1 I've always wanted XP scaling, seems like a no brainer to me.

Why bother with tiers though? Why not just do it by ratio of players on each side? Otherwise you get fights of 48 vs 49, where pops are basically equal but one side is getting half xp and 2 vs 12 ghost caps where the ghost cappers are still getting full xp.

[Binkley]

Problems I see:

Scaling payout by pop numbers promotes the zerg. Why would a small squad fight another small squad at a small outpost for 1X XP when they can join the zerg and fight for 10X XP?

If XP is scaled by pop %, then a 3 vs 3 battle earns the same XP as a 30 vs 30 battle?

Population in a hex often changes drastically during a battle. How is this to be dealt with? If the losing faction all redeploy 3 seconds before the battle ends, how much XP is given? Or if a base is about to cap and my entire faction deploys there in the last 5 seconds, do I get more XP?

I never played PS1, how did it work? I'm having trouble imagining a good system.

[ringring]

Problems I see:

Scaling payout by pop numbers promotes the zerg. Why would a small squad fight another small squad at a small outpost for 1X XP when they can join the zerg and fight for 10X XP?

If XP is scaled by pop %, then a 3 vs 3 battle earns the same XP as a 30 vs 30 battle?

Population in a hex often changes drastically during a battle. How is this to be dealt with? If the losing faction all redeploy 3 seconds before the battle ends, how much XP is given? Or if a base is about to cap and my entire faction deploys there in the last 5 seconds, do I get more XP?

I never played PS1, how did it work? I'm having trouble imagining a good system.

The max xp was capped to 2400 I think it was or 2040 or 2044 I can't recall. The number can be adjusted up or down by changing the parameters of the formula according to the wishes of the devs, so there should be no intrinsic problem.

One other wrinkle from ps1; if you have participated in the battle and earned some of the capture xp you don't need to remain within the locality of the base for the capture itself. You've sort of 'banked' that xp and when the cap does go through you get whatever you've accrued. - it means you don't need to hang around if you don't want to.

[Ohaunlaim]

It has been a while, so I may be very wrong, but I think PS1 worked like this...

1. The total activity* around a base was monitored for the 45 minutes prior to a base capture. Capture experience was banked base-wide over this time. More activity* meant faster exp feed into the bank. (Note: base captures took 15 minutes after a hack for hack-n-hold base types. Getting into the command room to actually begin hacking might take multiple hours in zerg situations.)

2. The amount of time a person spent around a base prior to the base capture was monitored for all individuals. You would get 100% of the capture experience after a certain amount of time (I'm guessing it was about 15 min). Anything less than that time and you would get a lower percentage. There was also a minimal time as well so random, quick fly-overs wouldn't be netting you easy exp in miniscule amounts.

3. The time you spent around any base would be monitored. You didn't have to be near a base (only on the continent) to get capture rewards (as ringring said). It was also possible to earn capture exp from multiple base captures if you spent enough time around several bases. This was not only a boost to air jockeys, but allowed for fights to rage uninterrupted as attackers didn't have to wait around before moving to the next base.

* Activity: Not fully sure how the game defined it, but it was basically how many deaths were occurring in the area. This too had an upper limit. You only needed (guessing) 50 average players fighting another 50 to max it out to full exp levels. If those same players didn't shoot each other then the activity would be essentially zero (attackers would still get minimal exp in such a case although it was only about 10% max.)

This is how I remember it anyway. Any other PS1 vets want to fix any errors my memory has caused?

[ringring]

It has been a while, so I may be very wrong, but I think PS1 worked like this...

1. The total activity* around a base was monitored for the 45 minutes prior to a base capture. Capture experience was banked base-wide over this time. More activity* meant faster exp feed into the bank. (Note: base captures took 15 minutes after a hack for hack-n-hold base types. Getting into the command room to actually begin hacking might take multiple hours in zerg situations.)

2. The amount of time a person spent around a base prior to the base capture was monitored for all individuals. You would get 100% of the capture experience after a certain amount of time (I'm guessing it was about 15 min). Anything less than that time and you would get a lower percentage. There was also a minimal time as well so random, quick fly-overs wouldn't be netting you easy exp in miniscule amounts.

3. The time you spent around any base would be monitored. You didn't have to be near a base (only on the continent) to get capture rewards (as ringring said). It was also possible to earn capture exp from multiple base captures if you spent enough time around several bases. This was not only a boost to air jockeys, but allowed for fights to rage uninterrupted as attackers didn't have to wait around before moving to the next base.

* Activity: Not fully sure how the game defined it, but it was basically how many deaths were occurring in the area. This too had an upper limit. You only needed (guessing) 50 average players fighting another 50 to max it out to full exp levels. If those same players didn't shoot each other then the activity would be essentially zero (attackers would still get minimal exp in such a case although it was only about 10% max.)

This is how I remember it anyway. Any other PS1 vets want to fix any errors my memory has caused?

It was 10 minutes prior to the start of the hack plus the 15 minutes of the hack itself. The time itself was divided into 10 second timeslices then calculated for the number of enemies alive per timeslice in the area (in ps1 terms the SOI) while you or a member of your squad was also in the SOI, the larger the squad the more XP.

A lot of people said that it was the number of enemies killed but it wasn't it was the number of enemies alive per timeslice. This actually incentivised you to not kill your enemies and not destroy the spawns but as you'll know, no one had the discipline to do that so it hardly ever happened. :)

[Ohaunlaim]

Thanks ring.

The squad member thing I wrote then deleted. I wasn't sure if that tied into base captures or only squad shared exp.