New XP system hypocritic? Suggestions to make it&Meta better

[Killjaeden]

I'm happy about the intended changes. SOE seems to agrees that K/D isn't a good thing in the stats, because it's meaningless. K/D doesn't mean a player is good. He just kills more then he dies, but doesn't take into account in what timeperiod. Score per minute is the way to go.
Edit: Higby corrected K/D to XP/D after i made this post. All except one problem still persist with that idea however.

But wait! Why will the dynamic XP per kill be based on Kill (edit:now XP) per life then? Isn't that hypocritic? It should be based on score per minute as well, using the continent wide average.People with low K/D (now XP/D) will give "a fraction of the xp we had before" according to Higby's post.
If i didn't manage to kill somebody in my current life i give little reward, if i killed a whole squad without dieing i give alot of xp. Whenever i respawn this resets.

Problems i see when thinking about K/D (XP/D)based dynamic XP:
-K/D (XP/D) is not a measure for how well you do ingame. Not at all. You can get a K/D of 5, means 5 kills and 1 death in a gametime of 2h... that's a plain horrible performance. And yet the game rewards the enemy as if he killed a mass-slaughterer, who does that on a 2 minute basis, when someone kills you.

- Someone playing support class, doing supportive roles all the time usually has a horrible K/D - sometimes not even a single kill. And yet he helps the team big time if done right. If i kill one of them as assault class i get penalized in my reward as if i killed a newbie, who has no clue what or where to shoot. not relevant anymore

- If i try to stay alive longer, i won't necessarily get more xp, as i have to let opportunities for xp pass in order to stay alive sometimes. However, if i do stay alive longer, the game rewards my enemy that i tried hard not to die.

- A skilled guy who sprays death left and right wherever he goes just redeployed to another location. E.g. Biolab. If i redeploy there and somehow manage to kill him somehow, i get just as much xp as if i just killed a newbie who spawned at a sunderer and looks around not knowing where to go. Just because that guy didn't kill anyone/ or made XP at that moment doesn't mean he is a bad player

-A virtual life in Planetsife is meaningless: you don't get a penaltie for dying, other then the deathcounter, which has no effect on your character progress. You can respawn in a couple of seconds, or redeploy etc.
The game rewards a suicidal gameplay - run in and kill as much as possible until you die. If you killed yourself in the process, even better, because the enemy didn't gain advantage of your death in form of XP.
And with the K/D (now XP/D) based XP system the enemy won't get much reward for stopping a suicide runner before he can do damage. He only gives a proper reward after he managed to wreak havoc. At which point he could suicide once more to not give any reward.

-The K/D (now...you get it) system rewards you for letting the enemy kill your people. Imagine i am a HA walking towards the frontline. I see two of my own snipers and see a LA who is just about to flank them. If i kill him right away and protect my team mates i get little reward. If i wait until he killed both and then surprise and kill him i get alot more reward. Is this really what you want to reward, SOE?

- The system is prone to abuse, even more then the current one. We already have enough pilots who just suicide by either crashing into you - or suicide into the ground/jump out once you get on their tail and realize that they are not good enough to stand against you. The K/D system increases that even more. Imagine a "filthy rocketpod spammer" who farms infantry. He killed a dozend and now he has an A2A pilot on his tail. Knowing that he now gives plenty of XP, the urge to deny the enemy this sweety is even greater. The easiest way - crash yourself, jump out and die, deconnect... Possibilities are endless and easy. Same can be said for anybody with high XP/D, they could just redeploy to whipe their xp.

Luckily not everybody thinks like that, but there are enough people out there who do that. It doesn't matter to your faction if a medic tries to save your life, it's essentially just for his personal xp gain.
I can just as well respawn, with the benefit of beeing completely rearmed, full shield and special ability, beeing in a safe place where i can't get shot again immediately. Especially if the way between and death is just a couple of meters.
Yes i know there are people who do serious teamplay, but the majority of the unorganized hordes don't. And XP are the best way to "guide" every player to make stuff that helps your team. Not just the teamplayers.

The game should reward a faction that tries to save lifes. Not necessarily in XP. I'll come to that in a second.

- The guys with the higest XP/life are often vehiclegunners. Whereas infantry usually has a K/D of 1 and perhaps 2 assists. Speaking for an assault class. From my experience, support classes can make more easier. So, in the end you just reduce the reward for infantry in general - everyone except vehicles (which are killing machines after all) and some very good players, or lonewolf snipers get less XP in general.
And with less XP per kill you encourange what? Yes exactly, getting a vehicle to make killing easier! And fighting in meatgrinders to get XP

-Another thing this K/D per life based XP generates: it amplifies the drive to steal kills from your own team members. Spamming 4 rockets at a tank just to see it taken out by a 20mm on a sunderer and get a cheap assist is horrible. Even more so if you would get like 500xp for that HE farm-player.

Conclusion: Instead of just making spawn camping unattractive, the K/D dynamic system would create even more disparity and problems, also greatly affecting infantry gameplay in a negative way.

So here's my suggestions:
- Make the dynamic XP based on score/minute. A successfull player has a high score/minute, regardless what he does. Whether that is playing an assault class, support class, driving/flying vehicles, beeing suicide runner etc.
Get the average score/minute on the current continent every - say - 5 minutes and compare the player's score/minute against that. If it is lower then the average, give lower XP to the guy who killed that player. If alot higher, give more XP

- Introduce a XP "timer" after spawn if you want to reduce spawncamping incentive. Similar to the immunity. 10seconds after respawn a player (regardless of score/minute) gives 5 xp. And then the XP slowly count up, up to the maximum. 1 Minute should be enough, because if the counter is too high it just encourages suicide runs of the defender. However, it isn't a good way imo.
Here's why:
You have to understand that spawn camping sometimes is the only way to keep the enemy forces at bay. If you don't they spread all over you and take you out. So as an attacker you have no choice other then to "defend" yourself against the possibly endless swarm that comes out of the spawn room. This also applies to the defender who stands on the walls of an AMP station and shoots attackers who made their way over to you from the sunderer hidden behind a rock formation. You put your life at risk to defend that place, but don't get rewarded as much as the attacker for doing so.

You could take out the Sunderer, but often that's not possible because of the large zerg. Or because there are 3 engineers repairing it all the time. You need a lot of firepower to counter that. All while beeing swarmed by enemy infantry.

__________________________________________________ ________
Metagame improvement suggestions:
The game should reward a faction for keeping it's soldiers alive:

Example: A large force of the enemy attacks your facility. Your smaller force defends it. The battle goes on, and the defenders could fight with the attackers to a stalemate. In other words - for everyone of you that died, 3 enemies died. Even if you didn't gain any ground, the defenders as a whole should be rewarded for their good work in making the enemy pay.
How to do it - Count deaths on both sides (teamkills count too!) for a certain timeframe, in the vicinity of the facility. If a medic revives someone, the counter reduces by one. Count the average of attackers and defenders during that dimeframe as well. Now you calculate the relative number of deaths inflicted. The side that has a higher "relative inflicted deaths" count gains an advantage.
Number example: Attackers have 40 soldiers, defenders 25. During a time frame of 10 minutes the attackers inflicted 120 deaths, the defenders 'only' 100. This results in 3 inflicted deaths/soldier for the attacker (120/40), and 4 inflicted deaths/soldier for the defender (100/25). The defenders clearly outdid their opponents, made them pay a higher price in pixel-blood, despite beeing outnumbered and not achieving the same deaths on their enemy.

The reward could be either a small amount of extra ressources, or result in higher time required to capture the facility for the enemy, etc. Or XP for all people that where present in the vicinity over the whole timeframe.

Additionally there should be boni for beeing severely outnumbered (like 2 to 1 or more) as defender. Perhaps the defend bonus % could be increased if you are outnumbered, and be decreased if you have alot of forces in the area and only a few stragglers left from the large battle before.

Most of the times people don't fight until the end. They just redeploy to another area and the whole base is empty shortly before it's captured. There could be a Last-mans-stand Bonus after the facility has been captured, IF your forces where outnumbered. So essentially it works like this: The base flips returns and as (ex) defending player you get a screen message popup: Last mans stand!. After this message appeared you get a Xp bonus of 30% if you are still in that area, which will wear off after 1-2min.

If your faction restores ownership of the facilities controllposts within 3min after a base has fallen into the hands of the enemy it could give a "counter-attack" bonus if you manage to hold the controllposts for 1min at least - perhaps 50xp for everyone in that area (similar as if you had captured the facility)

Instead of giving one large XP injection for capturing a territory you could make it smaller by giving rewards to people during that capture and reduce the final XP bonus a bit. Perhaps you could reward securing/capturing of those outposts around a facility to players near it as well, because it's crucial and not always cause of the action of just one person.

Ok this is the last suggestion (for now =P)
An outpost/facility could give more capture XP if that cuts off enemy territory, or reconnects your own territory with an isolated one.

Thanks for your attention.
Please excuse language mistakes - i'm not a native speaker.