Goals and Rewards - 2015

The current game has a variety of goals, however these boil down to two things - territory capture and certification point gain. Surrounding this are a multitude of other goals players can set themselves - building an outfit, raising your kill to death ratio, etc. There could however be many, many more which would all add to the longevity of the game and the retention rate of players. Rewards are key to keeping players in many MMO's where the game play is stale and boring, yet with FPS games we see people playing them for years with minimal yet frequent rewards at the end of a successful match. Planetside 2 could take a leaf out of the other MMO's book when it comes to rewards, especially as it is a free to play game where player retention may well be less than other MMOs.

The key to retention is getting players to invest in their characters and the game - financially and emotionally. As such I recommend making the following changes and additions:

Fixes to current systems:

• Increase territory capture experience depending on the amount of fighting in the territory (number of players, number of kills, time taken factored in). This rewards players more for getting involved in a big fight, even if they did not get a lot of kills.

• Re-secure experience should be added (number of players, number of kills, time taken factored in). This rewards players who actually defend with a visible and definite reward rather than the extra % per kill in the territory which can go unnoticed, and does not reward support players.

• Reward players for using AA weapons to drive enemy air out of their range. This rewards players without the enemy having to die by someone else's hand.

• Reduce XP gain from freshly spawned players by 90%. This will reduce the amount of spawn camping of Sunderers and spawn exits.

• Increase XP gain for faction loyalty - if you play for one empire for successive days then you get 5% extra XP each day up until 25% extra. Could also tie the resource system into this, granting the same amount of extra resources.

• One aspect which is not sufficiently rewarded currently is that of a continental capture (when there is a not a 'Continental Alert' active). XP reward (~1000-10,000) for capturing a continent - makes people fight on underpopulated continents and gives a real reward after well played strategic game.

• Time held added to the continental screen - showing just how long that empire has owned that continent. Each day that an empire owns a continent would increase its resource cost reduction by a further 10%, up to a maximum of 30%.

New Events

• Arms Race. When new equipment is released it is major news - as such it should be treated as such with a server wide event where the winning empire gets to unlock their equipment first. This could be organised by empires rewarded with points for time holding onto tech plants, the first to reach a set goal unlocks the new equipment and the other empires have to reach the same goal to unlock theirs.

• Meteorite. A meteorite crashes semi-randomly onto a continent and the factions have to hold onto it for a set amount of time to reward everyone in the empire with full resources.

• Territory Alert. A specific central territory on a continent is set as a focus for the empires, the owners at the end of the time limit (say 1 hour) rewarded with 5000 XP.

• Supply Convoy. An empire is challenged to take a Sunderer from their warp gate to a front line base they own. The other empires are alerted to the Sunderers movements and can win by capturing the target territory or by destroying the Sunderer.

Merits (aka Trophies)

The original game had a merit system which tracked a range of statistics and rewarded players with a few items but I wish it had been expanded more. In this game we could have a similar system for a range of statistics (however I am ignoring kills as they are rewarded with medals).

• Cold Warrior. Captured Esamir 5 times. Reward - choice of arctic camouflage.

• Desert Rat. Captured Indar 5 times. Reward - choice of desert camouflage.

• Bushwhacker. Captured Amerish 5 times. Reward - choice of temperate camouflage.