Outfit Experience Scaling

[Kechiro]

Pretty much as the title says. I was thinking about this earlier whilst on the pot (where most good thinking occurs) since there is talk of Outfits being upgradable. You are all familiar with that exp waypoint (easy to spot, sometimes annoying, blue diamond on the map) that follows people around giving a bonus to exp for those near it.

My thought was something more along the lines of giving this benefit to outfits that squaded up together. The concept would work something like this:

- Squads consisting of 3+ members of an outfit get .5% bonus experience per person of their outfit that is in their squad. Now, with the idea that 10 players is still the limit to squad size that comes out to being a grand total of 5% bonus experience for a full outfit squad.

- The bonus is only gotten from one Outfit from which the squad leader belongs too. In other words, a member of an outfit starts the squad and two others join. Should three members of another outfit join, their bonus does not stack to the one gotten from the squad leaders outfit UNLESS leadership is passed to one of the members of the other outfit.

- Outfit members must be on the same continent/planet and within a reasonable distance (say at least within a hexagon of each other) for the benefit to take effect. Should any member of the squad in said outfit go beyond this distance, their exp benefit no long applies until they re-enter the area.

- Outfits can choose to upgrade this with their own outfit points just as if they were buying upgrades to vehicles or weapons. However, the upgrade bonus shouldn't go any higher than 10% if this becomes an option.

- Completely full platoons with nothing but Outfit members have their benefits stack, however they have significant diminishing returns. (I'll leave the numbers up to the public and the math guru's) The platoon benefit should be a noticeable chunk compared to being a single squad but not huge.

So you're probably thinking: "Why?"

The point is to reward those outfits that combine their efforts, mainly. Does it mean they have to be tactical and work as a team on everything? No. But focusing on the same target to bring down the enemy should be rewarding especially if you've taken the time to work with your Outfit and get an organized assault on the move. The bonuses are also there to encourage players to look for and work with larger Outfits but still rewards those players that would rather have their own smaller outfit.

This also benefits those players that are not in Outfits AS WELL AS those outfits that are just starting out and want more members. Why? Because the entire squad gets a small boost as long as least three Outfit members are in the squad. Even members not in the outfit gain the bonus. What this does is allow Outfits wishing to recruit members to take on non-outfitting players into their squads and give them a taste of increased exp for being part of the group; not to mention encourages group play.

The reason the benefit should remain small however, is that you don't want to make it so players are forced into squads in order to gain experience. This way your lonewolf types can still go out and do their thing all by themselves and not feel as though they're missing out. You also don't want to send the message that simply being in a particular outfit and having the largest numbers is necessarily the way to go since you still need to be within a reasonable range of each other to gain the full benefit.

Thoughts? I don't think this has been brought up so I wanted to see the public view on such an idea.