Vrain Matari
Mikramurka Shock Troop
Minmatar Republic
2189
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Posted - 2014.08.23 13:51:00 -
[1] - Quote
You're right Coleman: It makes no sense in terms of immersion or backstory. I know that for myself there is no feeling that when we drop into a battle that we're working on contract for any of New Eden's ruthless corporations or militaries. The passive payout structure honestly feels more like state-based charity and is a powerful reminder that DUST is not really New Eden, but rather a poorly-designed CCP game.
Far worse, imo, is that it encourages passivity in mercs and works against other game dynamics such as warpoint mechanics and squad/social mechanics.
Tbh, passive in-match sp really go a long way towards making my lonewolf lifestyle not merely viable, but lucrative in terms of game rewards.
CCP's stated reasoning behind their recalcitrance to address this damaging mechanic is to support weaker players. I feel that in the long run this anti-meritocratic sp charity reduces the quality of the game experience for every single player of DUST.
How then do we support struggling players? We have to find a fair and balanced way to encourage action over passivity. Rattati is currently talking over matchmaking using an ELO-based system that characterizes player strength based on a single statistic, -¦(or mu).
I propose that the passive 1SP/s charity be dropped, and replaced with a simple -¦-based ratio multiplier to our our current WP payout system. A player's WP payouts would then be multiplied by their -¦ divided by the average mu for the players in the that match(-¦-player/-¦-average). In the case of WP derived from hives, uplinks, etc. this would then be a simple multiplyer to WP payouts. In the case of kills and assists, the mutiplier could come from the -¦ ratio for the players involved, so that a struggling noob taking down a lethal top-of-the-leaderboards vet could potentially earn hundreds of WP for that kill, whereas the vet would earn much less for killing the noob.
Personally, i would also like to see this -¦-ratio multiplier applied to ISK payouts.
In terms of immersion, it would be as if the corporations that we're selling our services to were paying bounties for kills of the stronger players on the opposing side. And that is how New Eden business is done, after all ;)
We the players would get the best of both worlds: Our game would become a lot more hardcore but at the same time struggling players would still be taken care of and encouraged by the game mechanics to make the biggest impact they could on the battlefield.
PSN: RationalSpark
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