Dev's quotes on exp and where they are messing up

[chavr]

quote:
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Xeno...that's a legitimate question. Our current opinion (and we're watching this assumption closely) is that if you defend the walls of a base against the oncoming attackers, you'll be reaping great xp just through sheer kill volume.
If you let them through to hack your console in order to get access to the resecure points, then sure...that's legitimate. But you're going to feel mighty foolish if they defend the console well and steal the base from you.

Besides...kill points wrack up. If there are enough enemies there to accumulate points on the time slices for resecure, then there are plenty of enemies to kill. If that's the case, then just kill them. You'll get xp quickly (and more sanely) that way.
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quote:
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The max award you can get for a base cap is 5000xp. You can get this by fighting at bases for a significant chunk of the hack (and pre-hack) time with enemies in the area. That's pretty much all there is to it.
Enemies in SOI = experience.

No enemies = no experience.

There is MUCH more experience for resecuring a base than there used to be, so defenders have an incentive to stay and try to recapture the base.

Anyone that says "it's smarter to let attackers through and let them hack before killing them and resecuring" is taking a calculated risk that they can actually get the resecure to happen. That *will* net some xp...but only if there's attackers in the area besides the one guy making the hack. Again...the more enemies there are, the more xp you get...even for a resecure.

Risk = xp.

Resecuring is just like capturing, but the max xp is a bit lower (3000 instead of 5000) because the time window is only 15-minutes instead of 25-minutes. But "saving" a base in the nick of time, with enemies swarming on the base can net you very good xp now.



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Those are the quotes I want to discuss. As you can see they took the time to really explain how the exp system is working right now. However, there is a gaping hole in what they are saying.


quote:
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Besides...kill points wrack up. If there are enough enemies there to accumulate points on the time slices for resecure, then there are plenty of enemies to kill. If that's the case, then just kill them. You'll get xp quickly (and more sanely) that way
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The average base cap is worth 2500. The average resecure is 1200. The average kill in a squad is worth 15 exp.

That means you have to kill 80 people/max's to get the same exp you would for a resecure. You have to kill 167 people/max's to equal the average base cap.


That is ALOT of kills to come close to the same exp you get on the average base cap/resecure.


Right there is the entire problem with the current system. The only real reward is received for capturing or resecuring. Kills really aren't worth the effort to find them. Not to mention the best tactic to use when capturing is to stop the enemy from spawning, thus you get even fewer kills. Add in other squads are trying to get kills so your target pool is only getting smaller and smaller. Lastly, don't forget that not all 10 members of the squad will be shooters. When all those factors are added together you see it's impossible to kill enough targets to come remotely close to capture exp.

The easiest and best solution for this is to stop dividing kill exp in a sqaud. Give each squad member full exp for a kill. I'd remove the added 50 base exp though. The old standard was fine if they would just stop dividing the exp by number of people in the squad.


You'd get proper reward for kills, defense would be encouraged, support classes would not be frowned upon and you'd make progress on exp while doing the most fun part of this game.... killing other people.

[Endodroid]

I really don't understand why they've put such emphasis on messing with the xp point system, they should have just left it as it was in beta only slowing the progress rate at higher levels if they wanted to keep players from getting to br 20 too fast.

Some of the people from beta might have complained that they weren't leveling as fast ect, but in the end it wouldn't have had as great of impact as all of this spliting the xp points business.

Any day now they can release a patch that gives: platoons, orbital strikes, base bonuses like shields for vehicles, and repair pads, a new vehicle or two.. or three.

All this time and effort wasted on tweeking the xp system is going to be lost as soon as players get to a point where they feel they've done everything they would want to do cert wise. I wonder how many of them will stick around playing PS just for the fun of epic battles.

[Hijinks]

The problem with his argument about (the current) kill xp for a reward is that when 300 attackers appear you only can hold the base for a very short amount of time.

Yay, 100xp before you get run out.

[kerosene31]

Originally posted by Endodroid
I really don't understand why they've put such emphasis on messing with the xp point system, they should have just left it as it was in beta only slowing the progress rate at higher levels if they wanted to keep players from getting to br 20 too fast.


Exactly. Keep the xp system exactly as it was, just slow everything down by an equal percentage. That last minute, totally change everything just puzzles me.

[Lise]

Agreed. Granted, I wasn't in beta, but I have a friend who was. He says that if he remembers right, the original design document and all the FAQs specifically stated that one of the cool things about squads was that EXP was *not* divided. He (and I) are betting that Smedley has something to do with this. (XP divided amongst group... EQ anyone?)

Another solution that'd work well though... we have "time ticks" now, right? Well, here's a radically logical idea: if there are friendlies in an SOI, award EXP per tick per number of hostiles killed in the SOI. Voila - an incentive to defend.

[gonnagetyou]

I'm not one to complain about the experience system. I try to play for fun and join squads when ever I'm invited.

However, I have noticed that I reap way more experience when playing solo than I do when part of a squad. This is definantly not how it should be.

Just the other day I recieved 2350 bep for a base capture + all the 100s of bep from kills while playing solo. I didn't even try to stay whithin the SOI while the hack was on. I was just running around in my reaver shooting people where ever I saw them. I've never gotten that much bep while a part of a squad. I was at level 1 and jumped all the way to level 3 in about 20 minutes time.

I think the sharing of experience should be done away with. It simply isn't working as the Devs intended it to. I think in the long run it makes being a member of a squad less desirable for some people, because as a member of a squad you're forced to rely on your squad mates to bring in all the BEP you lost when it was divided up. Too often that can't be done for one reason or another.

The game should reward team play not take away from it.

That's my two cents anyway.

[mistled]

Has anyone stopped to think that perhaps they are preparing for platoons?? I heard somewhere that platoon bep would also be shared amonst all members. If that's the case, perhaps they started spliting BEP so that when platoons are started, you suddenly aren't getting full BEP for thirty people's kills.

Thoughts?

[Searo]

Squad Exp=/3
Platoon Exp=/10
That would work very well IMO.
Medic=1 BP per 2 HP Healed
Engineer=1 BP per 3 Armor Healed
Revive= 25 BP for Infil, 50 for Standard, 75 for Agile, 100 for Reinforced, 150 for MAX

Base Defense=Every enemy killed while player is in SOI of a base =x2 experience gained normally
Increase Base rewards

Would that help solve some of the problems?

[gonnagetyou]

If platoons do share in BEP like squads do then yea I can see how the new system would really work in that regard. Cool thing to think about.

[chavr]

Maybe, but it seem silly to me to cut exp by that much to prepare for something that doesn't even have an eta. The only thing we've been told is coming out soon is the bomber and it's at the end of the month.


Personaly, I think someone in charge is stuck in an "EQ" mentality and think exp is the only way to keep players. They need to stop clicking auto attack and start playign some FPS games to see how untrue that thought is when concerning FPS games.