Motivation to hang on to bases

[gonnagetyou]

When it comes to gaining control of and loosing control of bases, what if there was a positive and negative bonus applied to every controlling faction member on the continent?

I'm new to the forums and the game so correct me if I'm wrong.

Currently players gain experience for taking over a base.

What if you added a small experience bonus to every person in the same faction who is currently on the continent that the base is located on?

In return, if your faction looses the base then everyone on the continent in that faction recieves a small negative modifier to their experience.

This would give people some incenetive to patrol or post guards at key facilities.

Is this a feasible addition to the scoring system?

Maybe even add a small faction bonus to everyone for each consecutive hour you control that facility.

[1024]

I'm not quite sure waht you mean, it's confusing.

Players gain BEP (Battel Experience Points) for kills, and CEP ( Command Experience Points) for leading a succesful attack or defense. Squads share BEP ,and CEP is held only by the commander, and is much harder to gain.

[gonnagetyou]

Sorry if my post wasn't easily understood.

Basically, if a NC team takes over a base on a specific continent, then every NC player on that continent recieves a small bonus to their experience.

If the NC team lose the base then every NC player on that continent recieves some small penalty to their experience.

In return every NC on the continent recieves a bonus for each consecutive hour they maitain control of the base.

Is this clear?

[Duilin]

Interesting idea... but I believe it would end up being pretty bad... While it would prove some motivation, I dont believe a full faction should be punished if they lose a base for many reasons - the main one being that then it would suck even more to be the underpopulated realm.

[Duilin]

In addition, this would be a short-sighted fix... once the majority are level 20, xp means nothing. While I agree there needs to be more motivation for taking bases, this is not the way... I like the idea of lower the number of bases.

[gonnagetyou]

Hmmm. Some valid points. Not everyone would like being punished for losing a base, but personally I like the challenge of being the underdog. It would make me think a lot harder about tactics and the best way to make a come back.

Are there really too many bases per continent? It's probably a matter of opinion, but if so, then yea they should take some out. Doesn't really matter if you take over a base and there's another one just down the road.

War is all about controlling land and resources. There should be some really good reasons for doing this in the game or it's going to get old taking over the same base every 30 minutes or so because no one cares about defending them.

[Cyanide]

Idea #2 for motivating the defensing of bases.

Each base that a faction controls on a given continent gives all of that factions players on the continent a bonus of some kind of bonus. Like the tech lab makes your vehicles shoot slightly faster. Or the Bio Lab increases the health of all that factions infantry on said continent. That way, once you have a base it's a little easier to defend, it hurts when you lose it, and the other team wants it more so you must defend it to maintain your bonus, otherwise the opposing factions take over the continent because they are getting the bonuses.

The difficulty comes when some bonuses outway others by too much so that only a couple of the buildings are worth holding. Also, if the bonuses are so great that opposing forces can't overcome them. This would be likely for a while, however, the beauty of an MMO game is that it's patched frequently because the DEV team has a larger budget. Thus the bugs can be worked out.

[MrVulcan]

there will not be any loss of exp or cmd pts.

[gonnagetyou]

Great ideas Cyanide.

Hopefully I can add some better ideas when I get my beta CDs. without having played the game I'm just throwing stuff out there.

I really think that having the control of bases affect everyone in a small way is the way to go. It forces people to work together in a small way for the shared benefit.

Of course not everyone is really going to care, but that is the beauty of it. You have a choice. And I think the team that decides to maximize their advantage is going to rule in the end.

[Hamma]

We will be seeing something that fixes this and other issues soon. Usually we dont know ahead of time what they plan on doing. But rest assured it will be some form of what the testers discussed. It amazes me how much the dev team listens to what people say :eek:

[Jakal]

I kind of think that a lot of people's motivation for taking bases is just to have a really cool battle. Thats the reason im going to do it. Plus the bonus of a continent lock. Although i do agree that something needs to be done to make it more important to hold bases. Maybe making each base change over time based on your team (NC the walls turn blue and anarchist graffiti appears. Actually come to think of it thats a cool idea. You should be able to graffiti the walls. It wouldn't be permanent maybe till you log out. It would add some character to a base as it would develop a community of people who like to write stuff there. There are probably numerous flaws to this. server load. But i thought itd be cool.

[Camping Carl]

I like this idea, as long as you can't go down a battle rank, it'd be great.

This way, you want to make sure you gain an advantage and hold what you take, or you'll never advance. Only after you get the next battle rank can you relax.

[Ubernator]

:wave:

Hello everyone, I am Ubernator, a Tribes 2 bomber pilot. I have been following your Planetside discussions on this great fan site for quite some time now. I am sure glad I came here before the official forums, heh. I figured I would finally join the chit chat.

Anyhoo, I have thought of a small, but possibly effective way to motivate some defense among a faction. I envision that each continent would contain a base that was pertinent to each faction. In order to have any of the benefits from other bases on the continent, a faction must own its main base on that continent. So, in order for an amp station or dropship center to do any good, the main base must be safe. I do see this having flaws, though. Although each faction's main base may be well-defended, there won't be much incentive to defend many of the other bases on the continent.

I have seen one method on the official forums that went into detail on how bases can only be captured in a somewhat linear fashion. That way, each faction knows which bases to defend and which to attack. It sounds like it would produce some massive battles but wouldn't allow the surprise of attacking anything behind enemy lines (unless there are attacks on the enemy's ANT supply convoys).

I hope this hasn't been mentioned here before.

BTW, I will be VS and possibly NC on different servers. I am my own person and don't want to be pushed around by the Republic anymore. :vsrocks: :ncrocks:

[gonnagetyou]

Thanks to everyone that has responded so far.
Some cool ideas floating around out there.

I'm one of those people that plays just for the fun of it and the action. God knows I've been on the losing side of many a Tribes2 match, but I love the constant action and I've never gotten bored after 2 years of playing. I'm sure I'll be just as happy participating in some great fights with Planetside.

It will be interesting to see what the Devs come up with in regards to base capture and loss. I'm sure it's on their minds and even if it isn't all we might ask for at release, there's nothing to prevent them from adding some better features at a later date.
With Planetside being the first game of its kind I'm sure there will be some serious tweeking to do in the first six months.

Just keep throwing all the great ideas around and maybe will see them implemented in the future.

[AcidNick]

Heres an idea.... how about each type of base can grant something good to the side that owns it, lets say


BIO Facilities give you access to new medical items
AMP Facilities give you access to new ANT type vehicles
Interlink Facilities give you a radar bonus
Technology Plants give you access to a new weapon
Dropship Facilities give you access to a better armored dropship


These bonuses would only apply to the current controler of the facility, and the items would only be accessable from the controled facility.

i dunno, anyone catch what im saying?

[MrVulcan]

well, they already give you htings, such as a tech one lets you build heavy tanks anywhere, and the interlink lets you have AI controled turrits, the galixy one is the only place to get a galaxy, etc etc I dont know how much more you want them to do???

[Venoxile]

Go to zoolooman's website
(http://users2.ev1.net/~jasonsharp/index.html), definately shows what planetside could be, instead of just another death match scenario. If the devs took his ideas, I would definately be sure i'm going to buy this game. At the moment i'm about 30% sure i'm going to buy the game. After really seeing the pointlessness of the game, the complaints of lag in large battles, the lack of need to control bases, and the server problems even with a low amount of people on the server, i'm not sure that the game will be more than just a large game of unreal tourny 2k3.

[gonnagetyou]

Cool. Thanks MrVulcan. May you live long and prosper.

I wasn't fully aware of the current benefits and for some reason I'd been reading a lot of posts mentioning how frustrating and useless some of the base capturing was. Thus the inspiration for this post.

Of course I'll wait until I've played before I make up my own mind about the relative value and its impact on game play.