Improvement: Squads and Platoons, Specialized Bonuses

[MedicDude]

The experience bonuses from PS1 were a step in the right direction, and I would like see them return to squads in PS2. Squad experience sharing is great, I want to see more bonuses for close teamwork between squad members: including proximity, assist damage, spotting, supporting, and more.

I want the addition of active and passive leadership bonuses for squad and platoon leaders. Specialized options to surprise the enemy and turn the battle in your favor.

Squad leaders could choose short duration reactionary bonuses such as instant heals, repairs, temporary speed boosts, damage, reload, boosts to support speeds, ammunition replenishment, and more. Some bonuses could be empire specific, like firing speed for TR, damage for NC, auto-targeting or intel for VS.

Platoon leaders could dole out specific passive bonuses to each squad, reducing costs, increasing health, damage bonuses for or against certain classes, armors, ranges of engagement, and much, much more. There should be lots of possibilities to promote player choice and specialization.

[Saifoda]

I think you and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum a lot


I like what you're thinking and it sounds really nice, on paper. But you have to remember, especially as this will game will be an ftp model (and if you remember even from PS1, which was subscription) a majority of the players will fit into the "zerg model" of gameplay. On top of that, gamers are notorious for being the ones who want to "lead" everybody else. When your only connection with individuals is through a virtual world (Planetside 2 via the interbuttz) it can really quickly turn into too many chiefs, not enough indians, if you'll pardon the metaphor. Rare is the player who says "I am concerned with direct leadership and want to obey orders, and not be in charge." More likely you're either going to get the players who want to be squad leaders and platoon leaders, or they just want to go shoot at stuff and don't care about the leadership portion.



I'd also say be careful about the player-created restrictions (what you mentioned about squad leaders). The devs are doing a great job with the concept of the mission system; provides an incentive for the zerg type players (in the form of bonus xp and/or resources -- a reward) to "follow orders," but still in their own way (if the orders are "capture this base" they do it with airships, tanks, infil, engi, whatever their play style -- nothing is being dictated to them about it). Anything that is a negative in the game that doesn't have a purpose for making the game better for everybody on the whole (i.e. there is no magical invincible pony; read: BFR) is generally not a good idea and will detract from the overall game. The BFR, as exampled above, is largely cited as the main reason that Planetside "failed." It created a bunch of negatives in the form that players who did NOT have a BFR were at a decided disadvantage, no matter what other weapon system they chose. In contrast, somebody who flew a reaver had a very good advantage over tanks, but if they ran into a skyguard or a good mosquito pilot they were going to be hurting -- balanced, rock paper scissors style. I know this sounds off topic, but the point is that the BFR became a negative for everybody who didn't have a BFR, and this detracted from the overall experience of the game. Putting in a negative will always detract from the game in some certain way, and nobody really benefits (i.e. skyguard vs. reaver) from having squad-created restrictions.


Good leadership does not come from use of force, it comes from sound leadership practices. Planetside 2 should not be about funneling the "zerg" into doing exactly what you want to them to do. It will turn the game into a massive map with BF3/MW3 levels of players. Not a good thing.

[MedicDude]

Sorry to ghost edit on you there saifoda, I revised this thread to focus on my ideas for squad bonuses, I'll be taking squad size arguments to the other thread.

And, yeah, that BFR thing is quite off topic, talking about squads and platoons here.

I don't want to restrict squads at all, I want to offer them more options, especially for outfits that enjoy utilizing specialized strategy.

The idea is to provide additional benefits and features for squads to use, to promote more squad team-play and less zerg.

Don't get me wrong, I understand zerging will still happen, you'll still get those players that just want to jump into the battle, join a squad for the exp share, and start turning things into swiss cheese. But he'd have a much larger incentive to stick with his squad if he was getting additional benefits and bonuses from it.

I want to create incentives for better team-play, not overpowered such that you're useless without them, but with enough gravity to give smart, tactical squads an advantage in the fight.

[Saifoda]

hehe no problem. Yeah I get onto tangents sometimes, but it was really to illustrate my point of how to think about adjustments/additions/etc... to the game.


But yeah after reading your first post again I definitely like some of the ideas. I think there's definitely room for expansion on the leadership side of things with PS2. I'm actually in the middle of writing a couple of ideas up, one of them is about mission system and unit sizes. I won't get into it too much, but it includes addition of team leaders along with in-outfit company commanders (still have pl/sl) and a bunch of other stuff. I'll try to finish that up today or tomorrow and get it posted so we can nitpick each other half the day