First: 5 min are too much, given the length of the average Ambush match.
Second: What about logis who play legitimately and heal/revive comrades for an extended time period?

No, the solution to the problem is not to punish anyone, but to incite teamplay and make winning a match matter, i.e. SP bonus for the winning team with reduced SP gain from individual player actions. The way to maximize your personal gain should always be to play the game as intended. That way anyone will play to reach the same goal, those who play for the team and also those who play for their personal growth.

Like that you are trying to come up with a solution but this doesn't seem to be it. Too many legitimate play styles to account for that this would inadvertently affect.

Or you could just have it so that anything done in any safe/restricted area has no gain involved. If the enemy cant get to you to knife you then you shouldn't get any points for what you are doing there. Sure some might say "but I flew/drove back here to be safe to repair my Dropship/tank!" Well too bad you wouldn't get any gains in exchange for the safety you chose.

Just reward -NO- SP, WP or ISK for any actions that are not in a decent proximity to any enemy. That way repairing anything away from the enemy in a safe area will give you nothing but if it needs to be done for team-play reasons people will still do it but the farmers will not. Doing anything around the fight or front-lines like repairing a vehicle in combat or picking up downed dusters will still net you the gains that come with the help.

Good/Bad?


Edit =

Or you could just have it so that anything done in any safe/restricted area has no gain involved. If the enemy cant get to you to knife you then you shouldn't get any points for what you are doing there. Sure some might say "but I flew/drove back here to be safe to repair my Dropship/tank!" Well too bad you wouldn't get any gains in exchange for the safety you chose.

So when I snipe someone from across the map in a pile of friendlies I get nothing from it? No SPs from doing anything in the redzone doesn't work, either. When your team is redlined, you would be unable to get SP or ISK so anyone would just stop playing once redlined.

So the people doing this stuff are just repairing vehicles in a safe area? Well, how about only damage an enemy inflicts on a friendly vehicle provides points for repairing, and neutral damage due to vehicle decay, collisions, friendly fire, and so on don't provide any points? That'd end the entire thing with the least amount of effort, wouldn't it?

The other main battlefied role I play is sniper and I fail to see why sniping from beyond the redline is vital enough to warrant point gain. For ambush maps just remove the redzome completely and have start spawns be MCC and/or random. For skirmish maps not having any gains from within the redzone would benefit everyone because fewer players would be inclined to "dig in" within the redzone and fight rather than flank to claim objectives when getting pressed hard.

As far as I can see it's win all the way around, am I overlooking some compelling reason why sniping from within the red is something that must be preserved? If so please elaborate as to why.

Cheers,
Cross

It would not be the least effort, determining what damage was done by whom is trivial, but keeping track of that data is a different matter.

Incite teamwork/striving for victory by handing out a SP bonus for winning a match.
(is it possible to have a signature in this forum? Or do i have to make that the name of my corporation? )



I am a sniper, too, and I absolutely hate fellow snipers that sit below the MCC instead of trying to get to an objective. Getting them to move their asses would be an absolutely good thing. But sometimes you are just fighting a losing battle. You are redlined and anyone that ventures outside is almost immediately put down. I was on both ends of this and there was absolutely no way for the redlined team to get a foot out of the redzone (that might change once people have earned enough SP/ISK to dare fielding dropships). Snipers everywhere to kill infantry, AVs and sometimes HAVs to deal with vehicles (I actually was both...a Sniper with AV grenades). When the redlined team doesn't even get SP for 'holding the line', why should they do it? They simply wait somewhere safe for the end of the battle or log out.

Farmers might be on the winning team though. Sure their team is disadvantaged but that doesn't guarantee a loss so in those matches they actually get more than they do presently for the same activities. And they'd suffer no loss of points from present when their team lost.

Unless you are proposing that teams get less than they do in the current build if they don't win in which case how would we avoid punishing players for having the misfortune of being teamed with the farmers? "Too bad just never play random" doesn't seem like quality game design and honestly even if everyone except the farmers left random why wouldn't the farmers just stay and continue to farm?

I'm all for promoting team play but to stop the farming the solution really must be removing the rewards specific to farming (i.e. making farming no longer valuable without imposing any further burdens on other players)

It may be a map by map issue, I have had this happen to teams I was on (or was added to during a battle in progress) and managed to use a LAV plus 'sprint fit' (scout suit with speed enhancers) to break out despite all the incoming fire. I then dropped an uplink out side the redline area of engagement and proceeded to have no one use it, not a single team member. They just kept respawning in the red even tho we were on an objectives map.

Once I'd think was a fluke but this happened to me several times last build, each time I'd get an uplink placed (sometimes after many deaths in the attempt) and it would see no use from my team.

I agree that gaining no WP when inside the red does give little incentive to hold the line when pushed back and creates a frustrating situation, but it doesn't seem any more frustrating than what I witness in games under the current iteration.

Again tho it may be map related as I've really only been in redlined games (on either side) in the larger mountainous maps.

It would not be the least effort, determining what damage was done by whom is trivial, but keeping track of that data is a different matter.

Incite teamwork/striving for victory by handing out a SP bonus for winning a match.

Too complicated.

Keeping track of 'sources' of damage is too complicated to bother with programming, and doesn't offer enough 'reward' for that effort.

The simplest solution is to only allow +points from Repairing stuff that is or is piloted by another player.

Run around smashing up your buggy and repairing it? Nada. Which is as it should be.

Now, can two people team up and one be a 'bum' that the other repairs? Sure, but the average SP-over-time, when divided by 2, makes this a much less likely option to be used.

Also, what about damage done by bumping against objects in the field? That is damage done by legitimate playing, and it should be rewarded to repair that.

Except, of course, that current farming is done without friendly fire, so if you reward neutral-damage repairs you're still not solving the problem. Current teams are damaging their vehicles by ramming into things.

Which brings up a possibility: Maybe objects in the safe zone cause no damage to vehicles? Without friendly fire or environmental damage, these teams will need to move out of the safe zone to farm, where they will be vulnerable to enemy forces.

While I dislike screwing with the laws of physics, I could support this.

I think the simplest way to fix this problem is to completely removed SP/WP gains from repairing vehicles and structures that were damaged by friendly/non-enemy actions. Since the basic crux of this issue relies solely on these players staying back behind the safe zone, crashing vehicles into objects to damage them and then repairing them to gain absurd amounts of SP/WP, the simplest way to fix it is to prevent them from gaining anything for not actually being involved in combat. In the end, the only thing this change would hurt would be A) people who are terrible pilots and B) people abusing an obvious exploit.

Yeah, I don't like it for that reason either, but if it's possible to get hit by a friendly's forge gun without taking damage this makes about as much sense. And the more I think about it, the more I think it might be the only really viable solution for this problem.

I don't think we'd need to carry this mechanism over to nullsec if friendly fire is on, but then you might get corps making a tactical decision to have WP-farming squads in order to collect precision strikes and orbital bombardments. Not sure whether that would still count as an exploit: at least the entire team is (implicitly) agreeing to it, but you're still getting WP without putting yourself at risk.

There are a few threads related to this subject but I don't believe I've mentioned this here (forgive me if I am in error).

What about the concept of simply decreasing impact/crash damage across the board?
Are there any unintended negative consequences that spring to anyones mind?

I know it would make dropships and LAVs a bit more durable but 'on first blush' that doesn't seem like a major issue, and if it were harder to damage vehicles in the first place (via crash damage/ i.e. safe damage) then the fundamental value of farming would also decrease across the board.

Thoughts, improvements, suggestions?

Take away the red zone.

Also, have different kinds of point rewards. Skill points. War points. Repair points. Peace points. All with diminishing returns. Only War points should add up to allow for orbital strike.

Repairing crashed vehicle should not get you a ton of war points. But repairing shot at vehicles should accrue war points.

After you have crashed an LAV into a building or repaired a crashed LAV for the 4th time you probably know all you need to know about that particular activity and gotten what you can from the exercise.

They should just turn down the volume on the damage from hitting a structure or team mates truck/ship/tank.. problem solved.

Though they may have to keep damge volume on high for drop ships. Drop ships used to be like fell hammers of the sky, crushing 10 to 20 enemies a match, simply by letting gravity do the work of flattening the opposing team...