Feedback time!

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The cap is currently way too strict. I hit it multiple times per night of playing. At least one game per night my kills don't even score me points. I understand wanting to keep people from exploiting the game, but come on. I'm hitting this cap /hard/ under normal gameplay circumstances.

Wait, so are you saying that 2142 or 2031 wp for a game is what you are seeing the top players earning? This cannot be the case. I assure I don't farm, and I'm no where near the top 10 in this game, but I break that somewhat regularly.

This is a video of the end game stats of one of my all around best games to date. According to the timestamp of the recording, I did this on 04SEP2013 at 0116 -5 GMT if you want to check the logs.

This was a skirmish I ran solo In a 'Sever' with an 'Exile'. I never once swapped my suite. So two links (templar) and two basic nano hives worth of equipment wp max, 22 kills, Scanner in the third slot and A LOT of hacks turning objectives. All legitimate activities. This was before we got WP for scanning.

If I pulled 2600+ WP in that setup, I have to imagine that the 500 some odd players above me on all the leader boards are doing this regularly.

A solo orbital is one of the things people work for in this game. It's easy to pull as a squad leader, but alone it's hard a fun challenge. Please tell me you are not taking this away.

wait... so... you don't mind if I go look it up and use it? sweet free sp here I come, thanks CCP, great mindset

Why isn't orbital strike events used as an input to the WP capping algorithm, raising the ceiling for that player?

This seems a much better solution than increasing the cap so much as to make it profitable to do a bit of exploitation near the end of matches.

Have you seen the kind of WP logis gain when their teams get struck by an orbital and now 8+ people spawn immediately from uplinks? Add this to the fact that in some matches the ebb and flow is such that logis continue to accrue all match long via a constant flow of uplink spawns, resupply points through hives, triage, and so on. As someone who routinely scores 3000-4000 WP a game (much of it coming in large spurts), performing legitimate support activities that help my team, I worry that I'm going to be affected here.

I like my play style the way it is and I don't want to be punished for it.

Thanks Greyscale, for explaining the rationale and math behind the warpoint limiter.

The only thing I don't like is that the ceiling is scaled per minute from the very beginning of the match. In ambushes specifically, sometimes you spawn in within 50 meters of the reds, so you might end up scoring kills that are subsequently penalized within less than a minute of the start of the battle.

Maybe you should build incrementally from another fixed WP value other than zero - say 500 WP limit right at the beginning, then 400 WP per minute after that?

I am fine as long as this does not effect normal gameplay but when you say it clear that it is happening, are you giving the player any feedback when it is happening? This goes back to the reduced WP gain on rep tools. It looks like a bug because no feedback is given, just reduced number. How about some red letters or something beside the WP to let them know that WP is reduced that way we know that is not a bug or can clearly see this is happening.

Also, as others have said, this is the wrong way to implement something, you just did it and then asked for feedback, this is backwards and now we wait 1-2 weeks for a fix. These kinds of code pushes are what cause your player base to get mad and leave.

Flashbacks of dealing with Crimewatch, Greyscale?

For the record, I feel like I should say that the CPM was told of this quite some time before deployment. We strongly cautioned them that it should never affect legit players, and there were a couple of us (Not all agreed) that this is not a good way to go about it. Not only did we get what felt like a patronizing pat on the head saying "Trust us, it will only affect the bad guys" but we tried to offer possible alternatives which were shrugged off.

While yes, this was the most efficient -stopgap- solution until a more robust one can be implemented, it is not ideal.

The ideal solution(s) once time allow are as follows :

(1) Absolute limit on points for a single action. IE: If you have five guys in a squad scanning and one guy kills a scanned victim, only one scan assist is given to the squad leader and the scan points are divided among those who earned them, with a bonus to the base value to the total points to keep them from earning +1's. There is no endless stream of +X's with this method, as multiple people trying to 'get in on the action' becomes moot and more time actually playing is the incentive. To this end, having multiple logi repping the same dude in order to farm guardian points would be moot, but multiple logi repping multiple different dudes would still get them all points. It encourages people to spread the love and work more as a team, rather than just everyone rallying around the 1-2 guys they know will crush everything.

(2) Re-assessment of squad bonus mechanics. (Will go into this later)

(3) When it comes to revives, the entire system needs to be revamped. I'll write a bigger post on how this should work, but essentially there should be persistent "overkill" HP. For example, A person is "Incapacitated" after being brought to 0 armor. if someone has 100 overkill HP, you would have to do more than 100 damage past their armor to "Kill" them, and they would not be able to be revived. If killed and dealt 48 of that overkill HP, they could be revived and survive another 52 overkill damage before being fully "dead". Players' not "dead" and incapacitated should be clearly visible as such and easily finished off. Revives should only be happening if a teammate saves someone just after they go down by killing their killer or forcing them to flee. No one should be getting "Kill" or "Death" stats unless the victim is down for good.

(4) Uplinks and Nanohives : Point accrual from these is mostly fine. The problem is people bypassing the "Max active" limit by using the same type of equipment but a different variant. This is unintended, and the only fix needed to stop "spam" is to fix this loophole.

2) Alternately, you could implement a small "overheat" style buffer which shrinks as you approach the total cap -- where going above the limit is absorbed to a small but tunable degree -- allowing you to slow down later and not violate the ultimate limit. Not as simple as #1 but could make the cap effect less visible.

Is there a reason that you couldn't simply add a max(1000,[your formula]) statement to ensure that you don't start off the battle with a cap of 0, but with a reasonable cap of 1000?

Then only after 2.x minutes would your cap begin to climb higher than 1000.