Planetside 2

[Mrbloodworth]

Really, you and a group of people have held down a hallway for 15 minutes under fire until someone finally broke through another group on your flank only after positioning enough AMS's and securing the court yard?

Please record it next time.

I fail to see how this change is going to stop stuff like from happening in game.   

Because it does not happen in the other titles.

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. I've had multiple games in Battlefield 2142 with protracted hallway fights while trying to take over Titans. I've had matches lasting close to an hour fighting over a single objective over and over in both Battlefield 2 and Bad Company 2 (the trick being that the ticket counts were set higher than the default). Both games with headshots and spawn on squad mechanics, with large scale maps (though not as large as a PS1 continent, still decent sized maps the required a good few minutes to walk from one side to the other).

In fact, the Titan fights were very similar to tower fights in Planetside - bunch of guys outside trying to break through grenade spam.

I'm not sure you are getting what I am saying. This could be a miscommunication. Did you play Plantside one? If so, if you got past longer than a few hours, you would know I am not talking about the length of time of a map session or tickets, but holding a hallway or item of strategic importance with in a larger campaign leaning on your squad to hold that position, healing, repairing, shooting, moving from cover. This is not something I have EVER found in those other games. EVER. What you are describing is an endless meat grinder of one/two shots and deaths for over an hour. That's NOT what I mean at all. What I speak of does not happen in those games.

Abelian75 is doing a good job trying to explain some of my concerns. After reading the plans for spawn on squad I am less concerned it will erode the spawn logistics side of the game.

Again, its a war game, not a battle game.

[Ratman_tf]

I value sustained ability to aim over once. Part of the problem I am having is one shot deaths are annoying, not very fun, and remove firefights from games.

This bolded part is patently untrue. There are one-shot headshot kills in Battlefield 2 and Bad Company 2 and I'll put my big time firefights in those game up against any in Planetside.

Agreed, and this is actually  *because* they allow spawning on squad so that even though you die quick, you can reinforce relatively quick as well. Well, and medics.  But the point being, there is more than one way to make a firefight.

Quick dying and respawning makes all kinds of zerg problems that I find a real turn off in team FPSes.

[LK]

I love all the "I'm an authority on this and this is how it should be" in the thread.

[Mrbloodworth]

I love all the "I'm an authority on this and this is how it should be" in the thread.

Some one said this? If not then why would you say this. I believe we are having a debate. I have not once commented on the popularity of the design, I have simply expressed my opinion on what I am reading.

[Sheepherder]

I value sustained ability to aim over once. Part of the problem I am having is one shot deaths are annoying, not very fun, and remove firefights from games. They also really impact the need for support roles such as medical. One of the best parts about Plantsides design was the two shot rule for small arms. No one could die in one shot from small arms. This left lots of room for survivability, and sustain fights and created the need for support roles.Even opened up the game for those who are not really interested in shooting, but more casual roles ( Drivers, Engineers, pilots, cloakers ). It was not just simply who shot first. It was who was prepared, who has better sustained aim, who had better cover ability and situational awareness or tactics like flanking to remove the nested group.

...

It may very well attract more people to the game if head-shots are in, but I believe it does a disservice to the original design and lessons the overall war game.

Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon are games for rocket jumping crack addicts with no sense of strategy because of instantaneous kills and the ability to jump straight back into combat when your avatar dies.

Also, dude, clean under your "E" keycap or something.

[Lantyssa]

To make Bloodworth feel better, just remember this is the company that brought you EQ2 as the successor to EQ.  I'm sure it'll be true to the original.

[LK]

I love all the "I'm an authority on this and this is how it should be" in the thread.

Some one said this? If not then why would you say this. I believe we are having a debate. I have not once commented on the popularity of the design, I have simply expressed my opinion on what I am reading.

I say it because of the amount of conclusions being reached from scant information and even less objective insight.

Let me try to settle the "debate", if that's what you want to call this: You want Planetside, go play Planetside. What I see is that you want to replicate feelings you had in the old game, but I can't even tell if you know the objective circumstances that led to those feelings, and look like you're batting around in the dark in an almost knee-jerk, witch-hunt fashion against global features and design changes that would take your precious nostalgia from you instead of necessary changes meant to adapt to an evolving target audience, who if I had to guess outnumber you 10 or 100 to 1 (or some other ridiculous made-up ratio to emphasize a point), who have shown that Planetside, as it was, ain't for them.

I don't have a problem with your opinions, just that they seem to be so... anti-intellectual and from one very subjective viewpoint, which is grating if you want to discuss the true impact of design features (of which you have no concept, and who could, about how it feels in final implementation or works with the rest of the game's design, just how it offends your sensibilities).

A healthy dose of caution is fine, but until that game ships, all the PR and marketing aren't promises that are set in stone until RC. They may completely change their mind by the time Beta / RC hits. Buying into it is unnecessarily stressing / hyping you up.

[Ratman_tf]

Welcome to F13. Pleased to meet you.

[LK]

What can I say, I pulled right trigger.

[Mrbloodworth]

I've said a number of times ill wait for more info and I'm just stating my opinions. I also believe I said the changes my very well be something that gets more people into two. I apologize for discussing a game I'm following on a game site. Also, you added nothing to the discussion, you just once again singled me out. Next you will be confusing my personal opinions as trying to solve the industry's problems, then tell me how I am wrong, and you are right. You really like to do this every time. Talk about a witch hunt. I am well aware things may change over time with the info we have now, why would they not?

[Sheepherder]

Bloodworth, you are completely wrong about the effect that being able to one-shot someone has on strategic depth, because as the ability to soak damage increases the effect that the element of surprise has is necessarily lessened.  As Sun Tsu once said:  "Real war isn't fair, L2 counter rush newb, Scree Scree Scree."

[apocrypha]

Where's that Q&A from? Is it official? If so then why are the spelling and grammar so appalling? It makes it look amateurish, which doesn't exactly fill me with confidence for the quality of the final product.

[DLRiley]

I like how bloodworth is all "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah it takes PERSONAL SKIKLL TO KILL PEOPLE IN AN FPS!! 
I don't see whats tactical about derp dpsing every crap player down as you pew pew at each other for 3 minutes.

[Mrbloodworth]

Where's that Q&A from? Is it official? If so then why are the spelling and grammar so appalling? It makes it look amateurish, which doesn't exactly fill me with confidence for the quality of the final product.

First part of from the Q&A, second if from his postings on reddit.

I like how bloodworth is all "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah it takes PERSONAL SKIKLL TO KILL PEOPLE IN AN FPS!!  
I don't see whats tactical about derp dpsing every crap player down as you pew pew at each other for 3 minutes.

I haven't said anything of the like. You assume I think battlefield and games like that are bad, I do not. I simply think thats a very different design from Plantside or its line.


What I fear is, and this has to bee seen to know, is that the increased TTK will lesson the need for medics. The slower speed opened the design up for medics to be useful, more useful than other designs, and yes allowed great FPS players to still be great, but not so great to also be somewhat effective. Medic and engineer was a full fledged need in Planetside one, I'm not sure how they will be useful beyond resurrection if its increased.  I had personally hoped such things would still be intact and the game be more modernized.



EDIT: Thankfully he has clarified what he means with "head-shot", and personally, I am less concerned now as it seems a good compromise.

Q. What exactly is the planned Damage bonus for headshots? Will any Infantary weapon be able to One shot Kill?

A. The system allows us to have different damage bonuses for each weapon. This way we can make it so that sniper rifles give a 200% bonus making them OSOK on headshots and chainguns get a 0% bonus making it make no difference. Other guns like pistols or assault rifles might be somewhere in between based on how rewarding we feel precision should be with each of those weapons/weapon types. Vehicle weapons will likely have a 0% bonus.

Exact balance for this is not final, but that's the general idea that we're going with and we'll tweak as necessary.

[Sky]

OSOK on headshot = Battlefield's persistent sniper problem, with half the team hanging out in the middle of nowhere "lone wolfing" it. Maybe not as big a deal in PS2 with the larger theoretical population.

The thing about speed of combat, how long in a persistent world can you sustain fast combat? You need some downtime to stay sane imo.

[shiznitz]

Sniper squads like that are fodder for aircraft, or at least they were is PS1. 

[Surlyboi]

Sniper squads like that are fodder for aircraft, or at least they were is PS1. 

Unless that sniper was in Rexo with a rocket launcher as his secondary. I used to eat Mossies for lunch.

[kaid]

Sniper squads like that are fodder for aircraft, or at least they were is PS1. 

Yup in PS1 sniper squads were mosquito food and also very vulnerable to people in the smaller tanks or other ground vehicles. Our personal favorite was the TR 4 machine gun APC of DEATH.

[Speedy Cerviche]

OSOK on headshot = Battlefield's persistent sniper problem, with half the team hanging out in the middle of nowhere "lone wolfing" it. Maybe not as big a deal in PS2 with the larger theoretical population.

The thing about speed of combat, how long in a persistent world can you sustain fast combat? You need some downtime to stay sane imo.

The problem in older BF and most FPS games is that snipers uselessness creates team imbalances if one team has a lopsided amount (like 10 snipers on one team and 3 on the other), that team basically has a guaranteed loss. This goes double if the sniper suplus team is the attacking team on an assault style map which requires the attacker to get their hands dirty storming a heavily fortified objective, too many losers hanging back trying to be Vasily Zaitsev is a guaranteed fail.

So not only is a sniper useless, but he takes the team spot of an actual useful player which is a double whammy to team balance. Planetside not having team limits like normal FPS games actually alleviates this problem to an extent, because a useless sniper is just a useless surplus, and not taking the spot of an actual useful player.

Detailed stat tracking also exposes snipers. A lot of the mentality comes from older FPS games where the only thing tracked was kills & deaths. So a sniper could pretend he was badass going 6-1 in a round by hiding away and picking off semi-afk people at a spawn point, while an assault guy who went 14-16 (or worse, the medic/engineer who went 3-16) fighting through heavy defence to an objective ends up with crummy stats. Now FPS games score objective fighting, kills per minute, healig, repairing, assists, targetting and other support functions MUCH better, so a snipertard will be exposed as useless with his crummy score.

New class balancing in PS2 could help also, maybe snipers won't be able to easily carry AA rockets as 2nd weapons.

[AcidCat]

Personally I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on all the changes, we'll only really know how it all comes together when we play it. I'm optimistic.

[kaid]

Snipers were deadly in planetside 1 but they have enough counters they never really caused to much problems. One of the main things being once the fights go indoors snipers quickly become tits useless and they were very vulnerable to vehicles. Plus side where they could be used they were very potent so you wanted a them but I never really saw fight where there were hordes of snipers running around. Plus if they keep the spec system the same it is easy enough to swap out gear at those lil portable base things.

[eldaec]

Bad snipers are exactly why sport pvp sucks monkey balls in an mmo.

Don't have limited team spots and problem goes away entirely.

[Sky]

Snipers were deadly in planetside 1 but they have enough counters they never really caused to much problems.

Thus the concerns they don't stray too far from the original formula, which worked and wasn't like a bajillion free shooters.

[HaemishM]

I played Planetside solo, joining in big battles for at least a month or so during the free reserves thing. It was fun enough (though the mechanics of shooting people in the face sucked MONKEY BALLS) but I never ever got the impression Bloodworth is trying to portray. Towers were grenade spam fights, just like breaking into bases. The only difference I saw between a good BF2142 Titan fight and a base fight was that there was a larger continent, mostly empty, around the big fight. It didn't change the protracted nature of the fights. You take the timer off of BF2142, set the ticket count higher (so each side has more reinforcements) and you have the same kind of protracted fights as you'd have had in Planetside, only the shooting mechanics played better and made more sense. Headshots do not take away strategic options or protracted firefights.

[Speedy Cerviche]

Titan mode was way better than PS1 base fights. Both were shitty hallway spam fights, but at least in titan mode it had an equilizer to people turtling in the hallway, cuz you had cannons below which you could capture and shoot down the titan to win (alternatively if the other team's ground game was too strong you could assault the titan to pull off a come from behind win. I don't think PS1 had this many layers built into major objective captures so it is pretty funny to hear people romanticize about how sophisticated tactically it was.

[Mrbloodworth]

It had more. Drop the gen, kill the tubes, drop on the roof, use the back door,drain the base, max crash, front door, upload viruses ETC...


EDIT: The 1%

666th Devil Dogs Planetside on Gamespot

[Trippy]

It had more. Drop the gen, kill the tubes, drop on the roof, use the back door,drain the base, max crash, front door, upload viruses ETC...

People got really pissed on both sides when you did that when I played though cause everybody (but especially the commanders) got a lot less exp

[Mrbloodworth]

But it was possible. It only became "the wrong thing to do" years later when everyone was just XP Horeing. That was a direct effect of some additions to the game that came from session based games.

[DLRiley]

The more you describe ps1 the more it sounds like the diku dps fights of global agenda, where engineer nest sit out in the open and medics heal for hours as they are flanked by several small ineffective firing squads hoping to get someone below 50% hp...needless to say my frothing hatred of global, compounded by a lot of other issues with the game, really peeked when every game around a central objective generally devolved into pathetic elite mob encounters. Now imagining that scenario in a hallway, two teams not bothering to aim at anything in particular just tossing dps in the general direction of the enemy as heals are sprayed into the air...yeah i'll pass.

[eldaec]

Many of the problems people are talking about could be avoided entirely by never going inside.

I appreciate this implies the game design probably needed tweaking, but I always found there was plenty to be getting on with despite never significantly subjecting myself to the interior bullshit.

[Strazos]

Dunno about you guys, but some of us on F13 had TONS of fun with PS1 for some time. Galaxy drops, Liberator fleet runs, back-capping, cloaking through a battle in the woods and stabbing people in the face, guarding towers with only a handful of folks, combined armor runs...

Shit was great for a time.

[DLRiley]

But f13 finds the fun in SWG, has a dedicated EVE thread and cries fuzzy tears when tf2 releases more hats....

[Rasix]

But f13 finds the fun in SWG, has a dedicated EVE thread and cries fuzzy tears when tf2 releases more hats....

We also have a WoW subforum with nearly 67000 posts. 

[Kitsune]

My outfit never had any qualms about dropping in and going for the generator if a base was too heavily defended to make it to the CC.  It wasn't our default plan of attack, but we'd do what it took to take the base and if the zerg were being retarded that night one of the few things a single squad can do well without support is knock out the generator and hold the room for a few minutes.  Once the zerg managed to get over the walls and hold the courtyard, the momentum was often shifted enough that it didn't matter if the other side took us out and got the power back up.

[Mrbloodworth]

The more you describe ps1 the more it sounds like the diku dps fights of global agenda,

It was faster than GA by far. It was really not that alike.