What do oufits need?

[Saifoda]

Originally Posted by DjEclipse

It can also create a BoB (Band of Brothers) drama in PS2 where one big outfit runs it all, and all the little outfit are it's bitches. Let's not repeat EVE history.

I wasn't a player/didn't follow EVE so you have more insight into this than I do, but I don't understand how this could cause a negative intra-empire effect. If you've got a good outfit and are capturing/contesting lots of resources it stands to reason that you[outfit] should have some sort of in-game reward for doing so, like in the suggestions in the space combat thread http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=42578


EDIT: Yes it is a zero-sum game model between outfits necessarily, if we're talking about pop-cap levels of gameplay going on, but otherwise there is no reason that the "big boy" on the block can't be overtaken by the "up and coming" as it were.

[ringring]

+1 to the following..

I suppose these are squad/platoon facilities, but
the (as in ps1) to recall the squad / platoon to the safe area in order to form up and hit a target
the ability to bind as an individual and squad at a specific base
the ability to restrict squads to outfit only witha request to join facility

also a much better modt than in PS1 and someting to support outfit events, whether by calendar, a popup countdown when people log in and perhaps something to allow switching of cert on a temporary basis.

something supportive of outfit alliances

on first login, show something outfit related, perhasp current outfit squads and outfit missions.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Sobekeus

Outfit uniforms yes, unilateral uniform enforcement no. Maybe make them forced when in an outfit lead squad. That way you have them for ops, but dont force it during casual or solo play.

There's more than yes/no options.

Uniform Options:

1) Always Enforced
2) Enforced when squad leader has the "officer" permission
3) Never Enforced

At the basic level, if it is a setting that can be changed any time then you can have outfit leaders toggling it on/off as needed for when they want to enforce the outfit image or not.

The squad leader option is a convenience that allows it to be automatic whenever a squad is led by someone who has a certain permission.

And as always, if you don't like the enforcement, take it up with your outfit leaders, or find a new outfit. The burden of outfit uniform enforcement should not be on the outfit leaders to police people and ensure they're doing it. The above settings should suffice for giving outfit leaders reasonable control over the uniform enforcement.

[Kayos]

The ability to sort players by cert types would be nice.
Easy to see who is spec'd in Libs etc..

[Malorn]

I also greatly like the idea of outfit resources being usable on vehicles.

If they want a sum-zero system, create a simple resource tax for members and do the Guild Bank thing from RPGs where there are permissions that allow different withdraw amounts per day.

For PS2 I'd like more specific withdraw of outfit resources, specifically something like:
- can pay for Galaxies with outfit funds, max X amount per day

The scenario I'm specifically thinking about are the guys who pull Galaxies, Sunderers, and Liberators. These are teamwork vehicles, especially the transports. The entire outfit can benefit from the Galaxies and forcing the driver to flip the bill all the time doesn't seem particularly fair to me.

That's a feature that I think could wait for post-release. The whole outfit resources, outfit bank, withdraw amounts and all that. Seems like a great feature to add in down the road but isn't a must-have for launch.

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Malorn

There's more than yes/no options.

Uniform Options:

1) Always Enforced
2) Enforced when squad leader has the "officer" permission
3) Never Enforced

At the basic level, if it is a setting that can be changed any time then you can have outfit leaders toggling it on/off as needed for when they want to enforce the outfit image or not.

The squad leader option is a convenience that allows it to be automatic whenever a squad is led by someone who has a certain permission.

And as always, if you don't like the enforcement, take it up with your outfit leaders, or find a new outfit. The burden of outfit uniform enforcement should not be on the outfit leaders to police people and ensure they're doing it. The above settings should suffice for giving outfit leaders reasonable control over the uniform enforcement.

Maybe take it a step further and allow us to distinguish between a squad and an ops squad. Different rules for each. Like an ops squad could have predefined rules for uniform, roles, etc. If you want to just cleg around, you form a regular squad.

[Madlaps]

Errr, lets try again.

Divisions should be a must, as well as different rank structures, chat, per division etc. Cert points by division would be nice, but possibly exploitable by multiple toons per person in outfit.. "oh i want to rape with tanks, ill go on my toon in tank div"

Customisable rank patches, seperate for outfit logos.

War Banners would be sweet as, placeable on maxes. Maybe a outfit cert that gives a max the banner on long cooldown (like 2 days) that gives a buff to [insert benefits here] for outfit members close by, nothing powerful... Like a resource or xp buff?

Make outfit certs only gained or spendable in how you earned them. If you mainly do infantry, you can only get infantry certs - some may find this annoying but it will make each outfit more unique and harder to max out certs by simply zerg recruiting till you are done (not much harder)

Not so much outfits but, PS2 is much larger than PS1 and should have the next step up from Platoons.. Company? With platoon / company leaders being able move soldiers between squads and players being able to display their role in the leader interface (if im a support playing medic it displays the + symbol near my name)
---------
Am i the only one that sees "MMO" as more than just lots of players in the same place? Make outfits ridiculous, go overboard - people want to be different and want to stand out. Fuck subtelty.

[GuyFawkes]

Outfit levelling and ranks . Individuals earn status points (separate from resources so no conflict with soe shop) towards their outfit . The outfit levels up as status is earned to spend on the outfit for things like an outfit uniform , outfit logos etc.
Use the status to develop the outfit cert tree to gain outfit recalling etc . Make it so the status earned towards the outfit in gained from top 30 players in it so it dosent penalise medium, well-organised outfits that do a lot of the real work in game like resecures away from the front lines etc .

Allow sub divisions within outfits the chance for more recognition . If you in 666th devil dogs, for instance , but your tank team wants to be called the 'skullbuster' division allow them to stick that on side of their vanguards or whatever. Skullbuster 666.

edit:

I think status points could also be chategorised as Infamy /Notoriety or some other title if outfit levelling dosent suit. You could earn notoriety based on scale of difficulty , and would work in the opposite fashion to how easy it is to hack a facility eg

For a front line assault/defense , you gain resources quicker and the hack is easier, say 30 seconds. You gain +10 status for each capture point , +1 for each kill /assist etc , +5 for completing a mission.

If you attack a flanking front line you get +30 for each capture point , +3 for each kill/assist , +20 for completing a mission. Defending you get +20 , +2, + 10

If you go deep into enemy territory , you gain +100 for capping, + 10 for each kill , +50 for each mission .Defending you would get +50 , +5, +25 (since you have home territory advantage and much less effort involved)

So, in this way , if you on the main front line, the cap will be to-and-fro constantly and you get a steady stream. Pushing the game and going on the offensive beyond the obvious big battle with long cap timers has a reward commensurate to the effort. Re-securing, while drawing you away from the main battle, still has a better overall reward if you do so.
That way, the resecure teams /spec ops guys who always have to do the running around to keep the 'house tidy' still gain level .
On top of that, it makes more of the map a dynamic area , spreading the fight , but if you want big front line battles the net result to notoriety will still be achievable.

[Meriv]

Originally Posted by GuyFawkes

Outfit levelling and ranks . Individuals earn status points (separate from resources so no conflict with soe shop) towards their outfit . The outfit levels up as status is earned to spend on the outfit for things like an outfit uniform , outfit logos etc.
Use the status to develop the outfit cert tree to gain outfit recalling etc . Make it so the status earned towards the outfit in gained from top 30 players in it so it dosent penalise medium, well-organised outfits that do a lot of the real work in game like resecures away from the front lines etc .

Allow sub divisions within outfits the chance for more recognition . If you in 666th devil dogs, for instance , but your tank team wants to be called the 'skullbuster' division allow them to stick that on side of their vanguards or whatever. Skullbuster 666.

Nice idea of the outfits own certificates in this way u push ppl to organize themself in outfits to get the bonuses. And +1 to only being able to upper just in what u have received that exp, soo u get specialized outfits too .

[kaffis]

To add a slightly different perspective on Malorn's Outfit Members on the map notion...

I'd like to see this, yes -- but not on the standard minimap. Make it a terminal at a facility or something. Giving outfit leaders or operations leaders the ability to see, logistically, where their forces at is a good move, but it's also very powerful if it's just outright on-demand, especially if there aren't similar abilities for all friendlies in command certs or something. Tying it to a terminal gives you another opportunity to make facility control a tactical advantage, as well.

[Malorn]

Not giving large outfits the ability to see their members is a penalty for being a large outfit. Small outfits would see all their members in a squad or small platoon. I don't see any difference between a large outfit in a platoon or one spanning multiple platoons.

The PS1 system of showing all platoon members on the map was absolutely vital to organization and coordination. But it shouldn't be limited to just the Platoon. If you have 4 squads instead of 3, the 4th squad becomes the odd man out, difficult to coordinate with compared to the other three squads. It becomes an artificial barrier to outfit size. Can be easily resolved by showing everyone in your outfit at all times so you can coordinate operations. Such a feature scales to outfits of all sizes.

[kaffis]

Well, I don't like platoons in the first place, so perhaps that helps see my perspective a bit better. I'd like multiple small outfits working together to have the same operational awareness as one big outfit of the same size.

Which is why I favor pounding on the mission system until it's hierarchical and naturally supports dividing big tasks (created by proven/popular leaders of high command certification) into smaller ones (and perhaps smaller ones, again) that support it. That's a system that neither punishes brilliant commanders in small outfits, nor unduly punishes large outfits, who will naturally use such a system to support their own outfit's missions. It doesn't create a maximum OR a minimum amount of friends under your command to play the metagame, as it were. It would just reward talent, ingenuity, and effectiveness.

Throwing outfit map visibility onto a terminal gives the outfit officers the ability to check in periodically to identify "problem" members and whatnot, without giving the single outfit of 200 guys an advantage over 4 outfits of 50 working together.

[Saifoda]

Originally Posted by Madlaps

...
War Banners would be sweet as, placeable on maxes. Maybe a outfit cert that gives a max the banner on long cooldown (like 2 days) that gives a buff to [insert benefits here] for outfit members close by, nothing powerful... Like a resource or xp buff?

...

Hehe, 40k much my friend?

[Saifoda]

Originally Posted by Malorn

I also greatly like the idea of outfit resources being usable on vehicles.

If they want a sum-zero system, create a simple resource tax for members and do the Guild Bank thing from RPGs where there are permissions that allow different withdraw amounts per day.

For PS2 I'd like more specific withdraw of outfit resources, specifically something like:
- can pay for Galaxies with outfit funds, max X amount per day

The scenario I'm specifically thinking about are the guys who pull Galaxies, Sunderers, and Liberators. These are teamwork vehicles, especially the transports. The entire outfit can benefit from the Galaxies and forcing the driver to flip the bill all the time doesn't seem particularly fair to me.

That's a feature that I think could wait for post-release. The whole outfit resources, outfit bank, withdraw amounts and all that. Seems like a great feature to add in down the road but isn't a must-have for launch.

I see your point, but I'm not so sure about this. As a player it could almost be exploitable (and in part on the outfit leader if they want to be an oppressive twat they can use it as leverage against players with complaints about the outfit) in the way that "oh this outfit has a lot of resources, I'll just join them and get my vics and nades for free" and from the outfit side "oh you don't like that we do business xyz and you want to play abc? That's fine, you can just go and pay for all your own vehicles from now on if you'd rather not be in the outfit..." see what I'm saying?



Also the issue I had before with it with an entire outfit gaining and storing tons of resources and then spamming out vanguards and libs and gals. This, I think, may be less of an issue than what I stated above, but I think it could still ruin the game for more people than make the game better for those who benefit from it.






And about the possible resource system in regards to outfits, I think the best model will probably be a similar active/passive gain based on outfit-player performance in the game. In this way, you're not punishing the player with an "outfit tax" (which would push people away from playing with outfits) but just giving the outfit a sort of dividend based on the performance of it's players. So if your outfit has 20 players that have earned on average 100 auraxium each (or whatever resource, just through the usual gameplay mechanics) for a total of 2,000 auraxium, the outfit is awarded a bonus of, say, 5% of all of that (so 100 auraxium) or 8% or 1% or 50 million %. I can't really see any flaw with this but if somebody's got one I'm all ears.

[HEISTT]

I'd like to see a ranking system within outfits. I have no idea if this was already done in PS1, but if you can tie the ranking system in with a permission system (what an individual is allowed to do within its outfit) it would be awesome. Needless to say, we should also be able to name the different ranks so it actually fits the theme of the outfit.

Originally Posted by SurgeonX

I'd like to see this idea expanded to have the ability to drag and drop players that are online into different squads and platoons.

Be able to give each squad and platoon its own name.

I'd love to see this kind of functionality!

Originally Posted by Sabot

I don't know if this is the right thread, or if it has already been confirmed, but apart from what has already been suggested (which are very good points)... I really want the ability to draw "attack plans" etc. on the map to return. Plans that can only be seen by each squad, so to speak..

This sounds awesome as well. Drawing shapes on some sort of (mini)map that can be seen by the whole squad would come in very handy, maybe limit the editing of the battle plans to squad leader only.