Altis Points System

General Discussions
1

Hello everyone!

I would like to suggest changes to the current point system. I believe this has a general consensus already but nothing has happened in at least a year.

The points system as it stands is unused by the majority of players save for the auto revive feature (which is relatively cheap, has a timer, and is very useful). This is a mix of the imbalance of points in both their earning and spending as well as unfamiliarity/ignorance of the player menu. I have used YEARS of points in a conservative manner and am at a small fraction of the points I used to have because it is so hard to earn points on top of how expensive some of the items are.

To put this into perspective consider the following: several of the statics and arsenal cost 100s of points to procure and an AI costs 500 points.
However, you only get 5 points per person transported, 5 points per AO or side objective completed (which takes up to hours to even do), and 20 points if you take a means of transport and hop out.
What this means is that you need to:

  • Transport 100 persons to spawn 1 AI, 80 persons to get an arsenal, 60 persons for a static drop etc. WITHOUT GETTING SHOT DOWN (see below)


  • Perform days upon days of objectives to simply get one of the above


  • Constantly kill yourself over and over and take transports or again spend days of playtime to get anywhere

Our current server configuration is against all friendly air. This is because proficient pilots can destroy air defenses to a certain extent. When the AA was lighter it was CAS CAS CAS everywhere and no fun for the infantry so I can see that. However, this is INCREDIBLY stacked against friendly transports trying to do their jobs. What this means is that you have no chance in hell of transporting enough players to earn anything in the player menu.

What I propose is 50 points per person transported and 50 points per objective completed and an increase to 100 points for taking transports to get to the AO/base/etc. As far as I know, these are easy changes.

Why?
This will encourage transport pilots. Encourage being in the proximity of objective completion. Encourage taking transports to the AO or back to base etcetera instead of halo jumping.
I’m not sure what amount would be best for infantry taking transports but our past history has indicated that we want to encourage people to take transports instead of respawning and halo jumping so I think 100 is a good number.



Thank you all for getting this far. Seriously, I started at 50k points before I spent ANYTHING except for auto revives and am now at 8k and am always going down, never up, in points. I have been around for 6+ years, earning points all the while, and I struggle to say the least. To say the most, it is impossible.

Cheers!
G0lden

2

Albeit I do not play on NAK Altis anymore, I still lurk the forums. I think you have a great base idea Golden, progressive thinking and change is not common among admins here imho, bravo to you. A while back I suggested points for repair and other ways to earn NAK dollars to some admins/powers that be, and I was not taken seriously, and was fed a bunch of excuses and bad reasoning as to why not. Things like “people could exploit repairing vehicles to make NAK bucks”. Same as with other suggestions I made to increase points, and make doing AO’s more fair to ground troops etc. I agree that taking transports and people flying as transport pilots is the way to go, and there are ways to accomplish that, for instance set the possibility of halo drop a greater distance out, say 500m or more as one example, so that halo transports are actually better in all ways. There are many ways to accomplish what you speak of, but someone has to step up and actually do the work. Maybe just simply alter the costs of player menu items to better reflect the effort, to gain.
I will not play there again because of the current admins/management unwillingness to listen to suggestions to make things better, and more fair for the soldiers on the ground, and the people trying to fly transports, as it is too lopsided in favor of jet pilots , who abuse the AO’s and the power they wield is so lopsided, and server degrading actions they continue to perform go on and on and degrade the game play.
As a player with over 3000 hours there, I left your Altis server as the reigning player with the most hours all time on that server, and probably the highest earned rank. I also left at least 50,000 NAK bucks unused, I have a pretty good record there, no bans, a lot of friends, and I thought I had a good suggestion or two, but I digress. I suggest maybe listening to/respecting the players who love the place, and play there the most would be a good place to start… over and out.
Relic

3

I’m always interested in something new to motivate and achieve… but I think we need more numbers if it’s balance you’re looking for.

For example:

  • I mostly play during peak hours (30+ people online)


  • I mostly run infantry and IFVs (inter-AO rapid relocation, some supporting fire, and the rare cross country drive).


  • I nearly always take a transport in and out whenever possible, sometimes waiting 20 minutes or more and encourage others to do the same. Campfires and war stories help.


  • I pretty much only use auto-revive with a very rare ammo drop, usually for someone else in need or when multiple people need ammo and no transport is available to drop one


  • My points continuously go up.

Net point income
A typical mission cycle looks like this:
20 points - transport in
20 points - 4 objectives @5 points each on average
20 points - transport out

60 points per main AO (which can take 20-30 minutes)

If I use one auto-revive (75 points) I’m negative for the mission. However, most of the more “immersive” players will wait for a revive, which generates mini-rescue missions and only adds to the gameplay value. I don’t actively try and balance my points and this alone seems to do it for me. Other playstyles (lone wolves mostly) will use a lot more auto-revives, and it’s a valid playstyle for the annex and invade gamified mode.

Zerging the side missions with a committed transport pilot hopping as quickly as possible from side to side leads to more rapid point income, mostly from getting out of the transport several times per “main ao” timeframe. This works better with a team to coordinate with, but I’ve seen people do this solo with mixed success as well. With a team means no auto-revives and it’s all income.

Without transport it’s the old respawn->halo method and the points drop to 1/3rd per mission. And if you’re willing to do the respawn->halo dance you probably will never need auto-revive or player menu ammo drop either. Though there are some tactical advantages to reviving in place, auto-revive is mostly a matter of how immersive you want to be and there is no wrong answer on the annex and invade gamified mode.

What happens with more points?
More points would mean I could auto-revive less cautiously and use more player menu ammo drops.

More player menu ammo drops means several people don’t need to RTB, which cuts one leg off the transport route (and one unload-point-gain for both pilot and passengers) and it also takes away one of the missions that a transport pilot can do.

For pilots tho… more points means more AI gunners which encourages people to play solo. Not sure what else pilots spend points on unless they run infantry at some time which leads to a really difficult balancing task.
Here’s what I would like to see (technical issues aside).

  • Requests for transport are further rewarded. When transport is running, everything is more fun. CAP is needed, so they have a purpose other than just randomly hunting targets. Infantry have a more immersive tactical insert or extract. The whole server communicates more.


  • Heavy Lifts need to be rewarded. This should be a priority. I want to see transport pilots racing to pick up armor so they don’t have to crawl across hilly terrain to the next AO. If all other points stay the same, adding 100 for heavy lift would be very appropriate.


  • Infantry can call for an ammo drop from the player menu (say half price?) and any transport pilot who responds gets a portion of the points spent (100?).


  • Same for vehicle resupply. (100)


  • Same for refueling. (100)


  • 2000 points to paradrop an IFV to replace the one destroyed by friendly CAS while I’m repairing it.

That all said, balancing is a delicate thing and big changes can lead to big disasters.

4

You do make some good points there. I do like the heavy lifting providing points idea. Perhaps we can raise the points needed for auto revive as well? You’re also right on the AI, we don’t necessarily want to flood the server with friendly ai and discourage teamwork.

I’m more trying to get the points system more balanced to encourage the whole economy idea of our server. Definitely open to more suggestions here including more ideas for the player menu.

5

On that note I forgot about encouraging reviving.

6

I guess you answered my question, but to confirm, are points earned in game also added to your “bank account”? So, one objective gives you +5 points to your in game rank and +$5 to your account?

What about the in game rank? I know it means almost nothing, but its been my personal grind when I am not playing with a squad. Will these ranks cost more points now? Or is the goal of his to exclusively help/encourage the use of transports since they, like me when I was new, earned points so slowly? I am ok with keeping the in game ranks as they are.

7

Need to encourage both sides of that, reviving and being revived.

Maybe increase from 5 points to 10 for reviving someone… and 5 for being revived vs 0 for respawning?

8

I was talking with Sny the other day about this thread and one of the concepts I was exploring was related to the heavy lift ideas above.

I was thinking that 100 points for heavy lifts was probably a bit much – but 20 for heavy lift and +5 for each person in the vehicle being lifted might work out well. You’d often get just 25 (vehicle + driver) but every once in a while, you’d get a few extra for gunners or passengers, etc.

9

I think one aspect that has been ignored to some margin in this discussion is those players that do not necessarily play only one role. For instance I personally fly around a lot of the time, but when I am on the ground I always prefer to run armor, however most of the time when I put in chat asking for a gunner I get no responses. Sometimes I do, and it works, however there are plenty of times when I get no responses, and my only option is an AI. Now as someone who tends to fly helicopters far more often than anything else, one good day flying more often than not rewards me 0 AI in points. The concerns being presented here that pilots would suddenly never use a buddy to help, I personally believe is misguided. Will there be more pilots running solo from this type of change? Yes, of course, but I would argue at peak hours the change would be minimal, as I would imagine people would always reach out to the group first asking for a gunner, prior to spending their own points.

The point has been made here as well to try to encourage the use of transport vehicles, and I do agree to an extent, but if there was too heavy of a reward it will create an opposite reaction from the community, where we have 3/4 choppers just floating outside of the AO, or just inside in an attempt to swoop in the moment it ends in order to snag the most amount of people. I have seen some Huron’s lately that have a full chopper heading back to base, and if they received 50 points per person, they would receive around 1,000 points, which is an absurd number for a single player to receive. I think a middle ground should be found in how many points are rewarded, perhaps 20 points per person, and also create maximum points earned for one flight, for instance 150-200 points. Otherwise it would always be a fight for the Xian/Huron, as higher capacity allows for more point potential. I do love the potential being discussed here, as transport pilots most certainly do not receive enough points, however the right balance must be insured to create a valuable supply/demand for transport pilots.

I would want to note that any type of change like this, could have unforeseen consequences, such as pilots shifting away from fixed wing to rotary. I don’t believe that it would be to an extreme, but I do believe that it would create some pull away, leading to CAP becoming rotary, and air superiority beginning to struggle, and choppers always being shot down, which would just lead the general ground unit to stay far away from transports. There could also be an instant push for more points elsewhere on the server, so others can earn points for doing things, such as CAS doing x, or mortars doing y, there are a lot of specific areas on the server that have essentially no reward for putting in a lot of work.

10

I totally agree Alpha. Perhaps a maximum point cap is possible or we will have to run the numbers and see what are reasonable amounts. I would say that what I imagine would happen is people would use CAP/CAS to do what they love to do and use transport to obtain points for AI / ground fighting (arsenals, revives, statics etc.) Personally I love the kajman/blackfoot but finding a gunner is not always possible so I do sometimes turn to AI. Other than that I use the self revive sparingly (because let’s face it there’s normally a whole squad sitting on my body that are ready to pop me again if I use it) and have not used the arsenal much but that is a very powerful addition.

Another option is maybe even expanding the points system further i.e. what you can buy. We already have sector scan and a lot of cool stuff but maybe there’s even more we can do. So long as we keep it all in-game points-related based.

11

I’ve been meaning to make a post here. These are all great ideas. If anything, we should start small and see what reaction the players will have. The point system is structured in a way that does not really incentivize the use of the player menu other than very useful features like the auto revive. Most of the other items in the menu are not worth paying the price of what you will receive. I think more frequent transactions in the player menu will create more incentives for server population (interesting additions/uses will make players return) and team work (if players need a quick ammo drop or want to use another weapon etc. makes it unique and exciting). In order to do this, the prices need to be adjusted and/or increase the points for transport and objectives completed so players have money to spend and are not in a deficit.

The transport and objectives completed point increase are great ideas that will allow players to actually use more items in the shop and create a whole other dynamic of when they are in a current objective and when they need to be transported out. As it stands now, players usually just force respawn because its not worth their time to wait for an extra 5 or 20 points they can’t even use. I even see pilots not picking up some troops/vehicles because its too far or simply not worth the trip for them.

Also the prices in the player shop should be adjusted based on the point increase. I would say start smaller and see if players use more drops frequently if they have more points to spend. I think a majority only use the auto revive, and the arsenal is a rare treat some players buy for everyone. The rest of the options are not worth spending the amount they are to most players. Its difficult enough to consistently get 200+ points per game including kills, transport points and objective points, only for that to all go down the drain for one supply package. On top of that, most of the time players have a more relaxed style of gameplay that isn’t grinding to get that amount of points.

I made a post on points for ground transport in things like the van or SUV which didn’t seem too appealing to add. Relic mentioned in a similar post for adding points to repair vehicles to which some other admins thought would be exploited. I also made a post on there explaining how most players wouldn’t care enough to exploit for points instead of playing the game which would be easy to spot and actually get them more points instead. But since I play mostly to hang out with all my friends here and mostly for the dynamic not for points I usually had a neutral stance on things like this.

I do agree however that adding these things will provide incentives for players to use things in the shop more often (the items usually provide help for other team mates anyways) and utilize transport options so players force respawn less frequently. If anything, maybe the weapons or ammo drop prices should be reduced and bump up the points a bit for completing objectives, transporting people.

Some additional drop ideas:
Fuel (either a drop or just auto fill if empty)
ATV (adds a new exciting element players can strategize on)
Some kind of portable barrier/sandbags (idk if this is even possible?)

12

I love it :slight_smile: I can’t count the number of times I’ve ferried people into and out of an AO in a gorgon or prowler. Shouldn’t get points for vehicle crew so maybe make it limited to passengers over 2 or 3? Probably difficult to codify that in a way that works in all situations…

Relic mentioned in a similar post for adding points to repair vehicles to which some other admins thought would be exploited. I also made a post on there explaining how most players wouldn’t care enough to exploit for points

Every single points mechanic is already easily exploitable. Has it been a problem? I suspect not or it would already have been changed.

I play mostly to hang out with all my friends here and mostly for the dynamic not for points I usually had a neutral stance on things like this.

I like to say the same thing!

However, invade and annex is more game and less sim, at least for me. And games are all about push button, get pellet. So while I don’t really care about points as much as having fun with friends new and old, I do like seeing them accumulate and eventually get used for something also fun. Even if that means spending 3600 points dropping ammo crates on my position while I hide in a building with a viper team stalking me just outside… until I smush them all.

ATV (adds a new exciting element players can strategize on)
Some kind of portable barrier/sandbags (idk if this is even possible?)

o.O Gimmie. (please?)

  • Sny