What if there was only resources and certs? No XP or levels.

Tatwi · 2013-02-02, 03:14 AM

10 Air/Ground/Infantry Resources = 1 Air/Ground/Infantry Cert Point.
Resources are gained only from the continent you are actively fighting on and from the hexes your side holds for more than 15 minutes.
"Battle Ranks", aka levels, are removed, because they are useless/meaningless.

Everything else is the same. Yes, that means you have to choose between certing or pulling a vehicle, max, grenade, etc. OMG, the horror of it all!

End result?

I would sure as hell hope the end result would be that people would actually fight each other while trying to own as much territory as possible. The game is supposed to be about fighting for territory. Note that I said "fighting".

I think this change would solve many problems we're seeing in the game, because resources will mean everything. Want that cool new cert for your Reaver? Well, better get your buddies together to capture and hold some territory that grants air resources! Scared to pull your Reaver? Well, you should be, until you're so good with it that you aren't scared of anything! This is how we though the game was going to work, but it clearly does not work this way at all and the level of fun to be had in Planetside 2 suffers greatly for it.

People go on and on, day in and day out, about how PS2 needs a "meta game" or a "lattice" or whatever to make it work properly, when all it really NEEDS is this simple solution I have provided (which makes managing resources via territory control "the meta game"). Make this change and all of a sudden every damned hex on the map really matters to people. When hexes matter, people will defend them and good fights will be had by all. The rest of the things people would like in the game will simply be the gravy on top of a solid foundation of wicked Christmas turkey and mashed potatoes!

I am hungry. Good night.

raw · 2013-02-02, 03:32 AM

There are no levels.

DrTool · 2013-02-02, 10:29 AM

Dear Sir,

excellent point of view - approved!

To the other reply : read 'aka'

NewSith · 2013-02-02, 08:08 PM

Originally Posted by raw

There are no levels.

There are space stations...

Mietz · 2013-02-02, 10:36 AM

Originally Posted by Tatwi

10 Air/Ground/Infantry Resources = 1 Air/Ground/Infantry Cert Point.
Resources are gained only from the continent you are actively fighting on and from the hexes your side holds for more than 15 minutes.
"Battle Ranks", aka levels, are removed, because they are useless/meaningless.

Everything else is the same. Yes, that means you have to choose between certing or pulling a vehicle, max, grenade, etc. OMG, the horror of it all!

End result?

I would sure as hell hope the end result would be that people would actually fight each other while trying to own as much territory as possible. The game is supposed to be about fighting for territory. Note that I said "fighting".

I think this change would solve many problems we're seeing in the game, because resources will mean everything. Want that cool new cert for your Reaver? Well, better get your buddies together to capture and hold some territory that grants air resources! Scared to pull your Reaver? Well, you should be, until you're so good with it that you aren't scared of anything! This is how we though the game was going to work, but it clearly does not work this way at all and the level of fun to be had in Planetside 2 suffers greatly for it.

People go on and on, day in and day out, about how PS2 needs a "meta game" or a "lattice" or whatever to make it work properly, when all it really NEEDS is this simple solution I have provided (which makes managing resources via territory control "the meta game"). Make this change and all of a sudden every damned hex on the map really matters to people. When hexes matter, people will defend them and good fights will be had by all. The rest of the things people would like in the game will simply be the gravy on top of a solid foundation of wicked Christmas turkey and mashed potatoes!

I am hungry. Good night.

The problem is that this doesn't scale with multiple continents, and it will lead to a silent agreement to factions capping one cont each to farm certs as required waiting in WG for cert ticks.
If more conts are introduced, its going to be even worse.

VERY BAD IDEA (at least without intercontinental links, lattice and scaling resource systems)

/thread

Tatwi · 2013-02-02, 02:59 PM

Originally Posted by Mietz

The problem is that this doesn't scale with multiple continents, and it will lead to a silent agreement to factions capping one cont each to farm certs as required waiting in WG for cert ticks.
If more conts are introduced, its going to be even worse.

VERY BAD IDEA (at least without intercontinental links, lattice and scaling resource systems)

/thread

You quoted it, but you didn't really read it.

I wrote (and highlighted in yellow) that people only get resources when actively fighting. You could sit on a continent that you own all day if you like, but it wont help you gain certs/resources.

As for the coment about resources being complicated, I say that XP is the complicated, convoluted thing in the game. The way it's given out is so messed up, especially after this patch, that there's no point in trying to understand it. Just kill dudes and fix things and know you're rewarded for it.

The best part about the concept I put forward is that it makes the game about doing what is going to help the team succeed, rather than what will grant you the most xp. You wont get xp for shooting people or fixing things, but you will do those things because they are the right thing to do.

GTGD · 2013-02-02, 06:04 PM

Originally Posted by Tatwi

You quoted it, but you didn't really read it.

I wrote (and highlighted in yellow) that people only get resources when actively fighting. You could sit on a continent that you own all day if you like, but it wont help you gain certs/resources.

As for the coment about resources being complicated, I say that XP is the complicated, convoluted thing in the game. The way it's given out is so messed up, especially after this patch, that there's no point in trying to understand it. Just kill dudes and fix things and know you're rewarded for it.

The best part about the concept I put forward is that it makes the game about doing what is going to help the team succeed, rather than what will grant you the most xp. You wont get xp for shooting people or fixing things, but you will do those things because they are the right thing to do.

But they won't. They'll do the bare minimum to get exp and nothing more.

By the way, they had a resource = certs system in the past. It's called auraxium, and we all know how that turned out.

Tatwi · 2013-02-02, 06:37 PM

Originally Posted by GTGD

But they won't. They'll do the bare minimum to get exp and nothing more.

By the way, they had a resource = certs system in the past. It's called auraxium, and we all know how that turned out.

Just because you and your guild choose to take the easiest road to "winning", at the expense of making the game fun, does not mean that is how all players choose to or want to play the game. I rerolled to get away from the gotr and at obsession with bringing a dozen mags, scythes, and libs to every minor outpost and spamming the hell out of the spawn rooms until people got bored and went away or logged out. You people, with your choices on how you play the game, are actively ruining any fun that can be had in the game.

Thankfully, not everyone in PS2 feels or plays like you.

robocpf1 · 2013-02-02, 08:47 PM

My concern with tying specific resources to specific types of certs is that then players will "selfishly" prioritize their own preferred certs over what territory the empire as a whole needs. I put that in quotes because obviously it isn't selfish to play the game the way you want to play, but it also doesn't help the greater faction's war effort.

You would have players and outfits that are heavily invested in one style, whether air, armor, or infantry, staying at the hexes that give them that type of resource (and hence, that type of cert point). Forget the tech plant - even though the empire needs tech, all of the infantry players are going to sit in the Bio Lab and farm, because they don't need tech themselves - they need infantry cert points.

Maybe, theoretically, all the outfits would work together and hold different territories, but there is no way of knowing the balance between the different types of players that would want to fight in a particular type of hex.

Also:

Originally Posted by Tatwi

Just because you and your guild choose to take the easiest road to "winning", at the expense of making the game fun, does not mean that is how all players choose to or want to play the game. I rerolled to get away from the gotr and at obsession with bringing a dozen mags, scythes, and libs to every minor outpost and spamming the hell out of the spawn rooms until people got bored and went away or logged out. You people, with your choices on how you play the game, are actively ruining any fun that can be had in the game.

Thankfully, not everyone in PS2 feels or plays like you.

I'm not sure what outfit you're talking about. When I'm leading, I'm usually not happy unless my outfit's forces are fighting an even fight or are outnumbered. Ask any big NC outfit on Mattherson, they've fought us on Esamir around our warpgate. GOONS, TAS, WMD, Sturmgrenadier, SuperTroopers, we've fought them all tooth and nail while being outnumbered 75% to 25%. We do it every day. My guys start complaining when we have to ghost cap a few territories so we have adjacency to go for the big fight. Today, I had to ghost cap half of Amerish to get up to the big TR/NC fight at Sungrey. And I did it because I wanted my members to get what they wanted - a big, intense fight.

If you have seen us taking a lot of territory en masse, we're probably trying to threaten the warpgate to get the TR or NC out of Allatum and the Crown and fighting on our terms, in the field. Nobody likes being the meat in the grinder, why should we?

But I'm sure you ran away from us, specifically. I mean, who else could you have possibly encountered on Mattherson that steamrolls around in a big ball of zerg?

Mietz · 2013-02-02, 07:57 PM

Originally Posted by Tatwi

You quoted it, but you didn't really read it.

I wrote (and highlighted in yellow) that people only get resources when actively fighting. You could sit on a continent that you own all day if you like, but it wont help you gain certs/resources.

No I did read that, except I was assuming (charitably) you meant "fights are happening" instead of "player fighting" because thats not possible to be measured.

How does one distinguish if someone is "actively fighting"?

How do you propose the game code is supposed to handle that?
Guns fired near you? Bullets fly near you? Damage taken?
Enemy forces in the same hex as you?

What is the metric, the numbers, the game needs to use to see "active fight" or "not active fight"?

Right now this measure is XP, but since you would remove that, how do you propose to measure the "active fight"?
With KD? Repairs provided? Meters traveled?
What about dedicated pilots? They don't get certs if they move troops from a non-fighting area to a fighting area?

The only thing you would do is replace the XP system with another XP system (that isn't called XP but still is used as a metric of performance).

The XP system is a way of measuring combat performance, what you are proposing is removing a way of measuring performance, but replacing it with...what exactly? Magic? Free Certs?

It's why I charitably read it as "fights are happening on the map" because else your suggestion becomes even more flawed/unobtainable.

Your system is easily exploited.

Mox · 2013-02-02, 10:46 AM

I dont like it at all. We need dynamic xp gain. We need shared squad xp. We need shared vehicle (gunners/driver) xp. Cert points are way too big as a unit to measure your progress in the game.

ringring · 2013-02-02, 10:53 AM

I can't see the point in resources at all.

I think the reason they were introduce was to provide a reason to attack outposts. But in reality, the capture XP and the fact that they're a stepping stone to the main bases is enough.

Resources are a good exsample of adding complexity without adding depth.

robocpf1 · 2013-02-02, 12:52 PM

They will continue to add content bonuses for higher BRs, I can imagine.

There are 100 BRs though, so it would likely be something for "every 10 battle ranks". Other than a change in your decal and title, it might be rough to find a unique bonus for every single rank up.

Vashyo · 2013-02-02, 07:24 PM

I'd like if certs would be gained only from capping & holding bases.

Auraxium had the issue that you could only get it from major bases, so how that turned out was...the bases that produced it were constant focus in battles and with the ridiculous short time it took to cap bases made it so that u were constantly traveling to the next battle which sucked.

Now that we don't have auraxium, people only go to the place that has the highest XP potential and battles are even more static since majority of players are at the middle of indar at all a times. I'm bored as hell of the place but it's the only sure place u can find lot of action in. So we went from bad system to another bad system, that's maybe even worse, imo.

What if they made all bases produce auraxium? That way there would be a reason to capture as much territory as you possibly can. And even more reason to actively defend the land you allready own.

The current system rewards selfish players that are masters of modern FPS-pwnage, instead of teamplayers.

I think this would be really good system once we have continent locking and intercontinental warfare, it would make it satisfying to take over continents.

I was actually gonna post a similar thread yesterday, but just didn't bother cause I hadn't thought about it indepth. So there might be some problems I can't think of atm.

Ghoest9 · 2013-02-02, 07:45 PM

Ummm isnt it already part of the road map that BR will no longer be just a measure of certs?

But anyway - the OPs idea iof simply removing BR is lame and selfish.
There is nothing wrong about have some sort of measure of either your efforts in the game many players enjoy that - the game is aimed at mant types of people.