Thank you for the clarification <3
At the time I argued that unlocks suck.
I don't like the idea of one player being given a competative advantage over another. Especially when in the case of Enemy Territory it is the better player that gets the most advantages.
More kills= more xps = bigger guns = a viscious circle.
So noobs who are already at a disadvantage for being noobs, are now at more of a disadvantage.
I'll hang on to this
It works.
At the end of the campaign, the xps all reset. It's not persistent in any way but rather a reward for playing through the entire server rotation.
Oy forgive me my ignorance. Which did you mean:
Reset per round,
Reset per map,
Reset per full rotation, e.g. after rotating through the full rotation of maps
I've played in far too many games where one side on a server starts winning and with every win, more and more of the players on the losing side drop out. Making them win more. Until in the end you have 24 players vs 7 and no one is having much fun at all.
Unlocks in Enemy Territory give you just that little bit of incentive not to server hop.
This is the meat of your post, I think, so I'll place the majority of my response here.
First, I'll say: I would not find a per-round XP wipe as egregious as permanent, persistent, global level system a la the Heroes system in RO2 as per beta demo footage.
In a way, as a gameplay mechanic, that sort of reminds me of Warcraft 3's hero levelups. If you're not familiar, you basically get heroes that gain XP the more you dominate your enemies. It's progressive, and pawns, but you start out at 0 XP per match. So scrubs start out at level 1 and so do kingleetz in gosu clan Z.
I don't mind it, because it emphasizes that you simply do not lose units and you take care of your hero units, else you get dominated per match.
I should mention, however, that in War3 the advantage you gain from winning a sortie is progressive, and the result is that people leave at the first sign of trouble. It's become a matter of courtesy when playing War3. First people say "GG," and then as they become irritable for being forced to work for a victory that was already in the cards 5 minutes ago, that changes to "GG GTFO" and so on.
The way to change that is to make XP gain persistent past each match. The result is that players have an incentive to play each match to completion.
This introduces another problem, however, which I have made the case for here:
[url]http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=50839[/URL]
In a nutshell, that will make players more inflexible about balancing teamstacks. COD, for instance, gives bonus XP at the end of the round. That makes people stay even when they're getting pawned, but it also makes people in teamstacked lobbies sit tight and enjoy the XP farm.
Double edge sword to say the least.
Do tell me which one you meant.
With regards to the level of competiton, when you've been top ranked player in the top ranked clan, in any number of games over the last few decades.... where can you go?
One place you can't go is a random server with a load of newbies in it. You just ruin their game.
And what if you wish to play casually?
Oh god, lol, tell me you're not talking about rank-restricted lobbies. That kind of **** made Killzone 2 unplayable.
PS, I happen to know many clan players that had a tendency to join pub matches and teamstack hard for the victory rush. I can attest that it certainly helps burn off some steam to pawn scrubs after getting dominated in a clan v clan match.
I think in America's Army for example you can set your server not to allow noobs in. Or set it to only allow noobs in.
And while an honour score may not be an indication of a players ability, it certainly is one of his experience.
D:
You are talking about rank-restricted servers.
Nagghhh.
No, dude, part of the fun of playing FPS is playing in a free lobby. You're still clear to go join a pub match or go play on a locked server for clan matches.
Ugh, I can tell you, my game experience will be immediately diminished the first time I see "you can't play on this server you're too high/low rank"
The server list is there and you still get to choose which server you wish to join... or your clan server or whatever... but you have an extra inisght into what the level of competition in each one on the list might be before you join.
Think of it as one more tool to help you match make.
Matchmaking is horrible, dude.
Console gaming straight up sucks because of it
